Date: 15 SEP 1979 2216-PDT
From: LSTEWART at PARC-MAXC
Subject: "Demon Breed"
To:   SF-Lovers:

For the James H. Schmitz fans out there
	"Demon Breed" is out in Paperback!
Also, (slightly old news)
	"A Tale of Two Clocks" is out in paperback as "Legacy".

Now if only "Lion Game" would be re-printed...
	-Larry
-------

Date: 18 Sep 1979 9:25 am (Tuesday)
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Star Trek: The Motion Picture
To: Science Fiction Lovers <SF^>

The latest (actually 3 months old) news about the release of ST-TMP suggests
that it will open December 9 at a theater near you.  (Inside sources at the Old
Mill Theaters in Mountain View say they will probably show it.)

Gene Roddenberry likes it.  Leonard Nimoy likes it.  It is reputed to be the
"best" Star Trek production yet made.  For further details see any issue of
STARLOG magazine.  If you can't find it, it is on sale at STAR BASE in
the San Antonio Shopping Center, Mountain View, and Out of Town News,
Harvard Square.

		Rich


Date: 18 Sep 1979 9:31 am (Tuesday)
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: SF Magazines
To: Science Fiction Lovers <SF^>

Since my subscription to Galaxy sputtered out, as thouse of you who have tried
to cancel your subscriptions know it does, the only SF magazine I read is
Isaac Asimov's SFM.  I (and probably some other SF-Lovers) would be interested
to know if there are any prozines you consider worth reading regularly.

		Rich


Date: 18 Sep 1979 1331-EDT
From: PDL at MIT-DMS (P. David Lebling)
To: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Cc: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
In-reply-to: Message of 18 Sep 79 at 0000 EDT by Brodie@PARC-MAXC
Subject: [Re: SF Magazines]
Message-id: <[MIT-DMS].123170>

"The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" (F&SF) is generally better
than IASFM.  The style of the stories is "more literary", and some of
the stories are straight fantasy.  The book reviews are real reviews
rather than notices of publication (Algis Budrys is the regular
reviewer, but Joanna Russ appears every so often), and there is a film
column by Baird Searles, plus Asimov's inimitable Science column.  You
should by all means try to get the October issue (probably still on
sale); it's 300 pages and contains the best stories from F&SF's 30
years.  Robert Silverberg's new novel starts in the November issue.

"Analog" is wildly variable; one month they have good, readable stuff
and the next, unreadable garbage.  There's a bimonthly science column by
Jerry Pournelle which is quite good.

"Omni" publishes some fiction; their rates are high so what they do
publish is pretty good.  They will apparently have an excerpt from
Heinlein's new novel in the November issue.

Incidentally, the latest news I have on "Galaxy" is that they intend to
continue publishing, pay their writers, and so on.  On the other hand,
the most recent issue I've seen is Vol. 39, No. 10.

	Dave



Date: 18 Sep 1979 1147-PDT (Tuesday)
From: lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Trek: The Motion Picture
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

As many people on the net already know, I was heavily involved with the 
production of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" a year ago at
Astra Image Corporation [Robert Abel and Associates] (the people who
WERE doing the special effects.)  I suppose I could qualify as a sort
of moderate Trek fan -- not a full-fledged trekkie though by any means
(the show wasn't THAT good!)  But the movie.  Sigh.  After reading
the script (the first two acts anyway, the third one was being 
revised daily in an attempt to save the first two) and based on lots
of other things that went on at meetings, etc., and current information
from the new special effects group, I am afraid the movie will be
simply another Star Trek episode.  The story is basically a hybrid
of the "Nomad" episode and "The Doomsday Machine" (remember the giant
ice-cream cone that sucked in space debris?)  Special effect may
end up fair, but have been terribly rushed due to the failure of
Astra to get anything significant done (that's a story in itself,
details on request.)  Astra was eventually fired by Paramount (this
was after I quit in disgust -- as did a number of other people).

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 18 SEP 1979 1349-PDT
From: AYERS at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Sf Magazines
To:   SF-Lovers:

I've been a reader of Analog/Astounding for n-teen years, and an
irregular reader of the other mags.  I tended to stay away from
Galaxy because I don't like serials much ...

I claim that the new Analog editor(s) have been holding their
own with the Campbell legend.  I especially like their current
book reviews and guest editorials.

And they are willing to branch out.  For example this poem that
appeared this summer:


20 July 1969

They made it, we all made it, just a bit,
like vikings leaving runes and little more,
taking the lesser light where God placed it
to show ourselves just what a heaven's for.
They loped like diving suited kangaroos
over that sterile world of one night stands,
driving moon bugs and golf balls to amuse
the children, while the stars slipped through our hands.
They're gone now to their shrinks and shrunken space.
The praise is theirs; it's ours to wonder why
the world's still flat, and dreams are out of grace.
So I, believing less each summer, pry
open that lost last year to see the bright
earth jewel smooth and blue in velvet night.

                                W. W. Cooper


Date: 18 Sep 1979 3:18 pm (Tuesday)
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
From: Sapsford
Subject: Re: SF Magazines
In-reply-to: Your message of 18 Sep 1979 9:31 am (Tuesday)
To: SF-Lovers<SF^>

If you are not currently reading the "paperback" magazine (as they like to
bill themselves) - Destinies - you should check it out.  I have found their
science fact to be more interesting than their science fiction, but the
latter is as good as in most magazines.  (I have issues 2 & 3 if anyone
wants to borrow them).


Date: 18 Sep 1979 5:06 pm (Tuesday)
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: On-Line log of SF-Lovers activity?
To: SF-Lovers at MIT-AI
CC: Lauren at UCLA-Security

Is there anyone at AI who would like to donate directory space for such a
thing?

		Rich

STEVEH@MIT-MC 09/19/79 00:17:38
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

There was a great ballyhoo about Asimov's SF Mag, and yet I have yet to see
the first issue.  Did it come out and die?  I know that Omni came out at
first as Nova, and then changed its name.  Could that have been the mighty
Isaac's fate?


Date: 19 SEP 1979 0706-EDT
From: GRAND at MIT-AI (Mark D. Grand)
To: STEVEH at MIT-MC
CC: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

	Issaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magizine is alive and
well. I has been since the first isssue. It is totally unrellated
to OMNI. If the news stands around you don't carry it, try the
nearest bookstore specializing in SF. I know there is one in
Baltimore, but I don't racall the name. I am sure the name sounds
SF related, and if you look through the yellow pages you will
find it. 

			-- Mark Grand --

Date: 19 Sep 1979 9:17 am (Wednesday)
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: NorEasCon II
To: SF-Lovers at MIT-AI

There has been some confusion about the purpose of SF-Lovers@AI.  It is
not an official list for information from the NorEasCon II committee, although
there are alleged to be committee members on it.

The address for information (and membership) is:

		NorEasCon II
		Box 46, MIT P.O.
		Cambridge, MA 02138

Last I heard, membership was $30 until some time near the start of the
con, which is August 29.

		Rich


Date: 19 SEP 1979 1419-EDT
From: DEE at CCA (Don Eastlake)
Subject: Re: NorEasCon II
To:   SF-Lovers at MIT-AI
cc:   DEE at CCA

In response to your message sent  19 Sep 1979 9:17 am (Wednesday)

Supporting membership in Noreascon II, which gets you all the publications
and lets you vote on the Hugo awards, etc., is $8.  Attending membership
is $30 till July 15, 1980, after which no memberships will be taken by
mail.  The price at the door will be higher but has not yet been set.
You can convert between supporting and attending membership by paying the
difference.  If you want to get hotel reservation forms when they are
first sent out and get a chance to nominate for the Hugos, you should
join by early November.  Address is

	Noreascon II
	PO Box 46, MIT Branch PO
	Cambrdige, MA 02139	(note: ZIP was wrong in earlier message)

Noreascon II will be held at the Sheraton-Boston Hotel and Hynes Civic
Auditorium in Boston, Massachusetts.
-------

Date: 19 Sep 1979 2:41 pm (Wednesday)
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
From: DEE at CCA (Don Eastlake)
Subject: More complete Hugo information
To: Science Fiction Lovers <SF^>

	The Hugo Award Winners were announced this past weekend at the
37th World SF Convention (known as "Seacon '79") held this past weekend
in Brighton, UK.  They were as follows:

BEST NOVEL: Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre
	2nd: The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey
	3rd: The Faded Sun: Kesrith by C. J. Cherryh

BEST NOVELLA: The Persistence of Vision by John Varley
	2nd: Fireship by Joan D. Vinge
	3rd: The Watched by Christopher Priest

BEST NOVELETTE: Hunter's Moon by Poul Anderson
	2nd: Mikal's Songbird by Orson Scott Card
	3rd: The Man Who Had No Idea by Thomas M. Disch

BEST SHORT STORY: Cassandra by C. J. Cherryh
	2nd: Count the Clock That Tells the Time by Harlan Ellison
	3rd: View from a Height by Joan D. Vinge

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION: Superman (the movie)
	2nd: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (British radio serial)
	3rd: Watership Down (the movie)

BEST PROFESSIONAL EDITOR: Ben Bova
	2nd: Edward L. Ferman		3rd: George Scithers

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST: Vincent DiFate
	2nd: Michael Whelan		3rd: Boris Vallejo

BEST FANZINE: Science Fiction Review (Richard E. Geis)
	2nd: Maya (Rob Jackson)
	3rd: NO AWARD

BEST FAN WRITER: Bob Shaw
	2nd: Richard E. Geis		3rd: NO AWARD

BEST FAN ARTIST: Bill Rotsler
	2nd: Jim Barker			3rd: Alex Gilliland

NON-HUGO AWARDS also presented at Seacon '79:
Campbell award for best new writer: Stephen R. Donaldson
	2nd: James P. Hogan		3rd: Elizabeth A. Lynn
Gandalf award for grand master of fantasy: Ursula K. LeGuin
	2nd: Roger Zelazny		3rd: Ray Bradbury
Gandalf fantasy novel ward:a The White Dragom by Anne McCaffrey
	2nd: The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny
	3rd: Saint Camber by Katherine Curtz
First Fandom Award: Raymond Z. Gallun
Big Heart Award: M. Georges H. Gallet



Date: 19 Sep 1979 2:43 pm (Wednesday)
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
From: Geoff Goodfellow <GFF at SU-AI>
Subject: Battlestar Galactica takes a life...   
To: Science Fiction Lovers <SF^>

a223  1130  25 Aug 79
AM-TV Death, Bjt,450
    ST.PAUL, Minn. (AP) - The parents of a 15-year-old boy who jumped
200 feet to his death from a bridge after ''Battlestar Galactica'' was
canceled say the boy's whole life was wrapped up in the television
space show.
    ''I hope we never ever see it on TV again, because it would just
crush us,'' Dawn Seidel, the boy's stepmother, said Saturday.
    Eddie Seidel Jr. was buried Friday. He committed suicide in the
pre-dawn darkness Wednesday after telling police from his perch on the
High Bridge railing that he was upset that ''Battlestar Galactica''
had been dropped by the ABC network.
    ''I talked about suing ABC or doing something,'' Mrs. Seidel said.
''But my husband said to just leave things like they are and not make
a big hassle out of it.
    ''I know it's not their fault because they had the program.''
    Like many a teen-age boy, Eddie was deeply absorbed with outer space
subjects.
    For Eddie, said Mrs. Seidel, it meant a roomful of posters,
magazines, plastic models and other paraphernalia about ''Battlestar
Galactica.''
    ''They made a lot of money off him,'' she sa d. ''He bought
everything put on the market. He also took tape recordings of all the
shows.''
    Eddie's world was wrapped up in the programs he viewed in his own
bedroom, on a TV set he bought.
    His father, Edward Seidel Sr., described Eddie as a sometimes
brilliant boy who couldn't find enough in life to keep him interested.
    The father said he learned about four years ago the boy had been
sniffing gas with friends so he sent him to a psychiatrist.
    ''The psychiatrist said he was just kind of bored with life, that
there was nothing here for him to excel in,'' said Seidel. ''There was
no real challenge here on this earth.
    His stepmother said he got Bs and B-pluses in school, and an
occasional A, but that he was mostly bored with classes.
    Seidel said his son came home from his job as a supermarket stockboy
about 5 p.m. Tuesday, apparently in good spirits.
    The boy went to his room to watch television. The family did not see
him the rest of the night. When his 19-year-old sister, Crystal,
passed Eddie's door later that night, she found a note - his last will
and testament. He had gone off on his motorbike.
    He told his parents in the note they'd find his body under the High
Bridge, a half-mile, two-lane link between downtown St. Paul and the
suburb of West St. Paul. The Seidels reached it about 10 minutes
after Eddie had jumped and landed on ground beside the river.
    Seidel said when Eddie learned last spring that ''Battlestar
Galactica'' was being canceled, he contacted the ABC network to ask
officials to keep it on. The last rerun of the program was shown Aug.
5.
    ''I really should have tried to get him into a gifted chldren type
situation,'' Seidel said. ''But it's too late to look back and say I
should have.''
    He said he didn't realize what an influence a TV program could have
on his son.
    ''I was never sure it did influence kids that bad, but now I'm
convinced it does,''he said.
    
ap-ny-08-25 1426EDT
***************



Date: 19 Sep 1979 2:46 pm (Wednesday)
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
From: Geoff Goodfellow <GFF at SU-AI>
Subject: Oh no,... oh YES: "Salt Galactica"!  
To: Science Fiction Lovers <SF^>

a234  1340  08 Jul 79
AM-SALT-Galactica, Bjt,650
By BARTON REPPERT
Associated Press Writer
    MOSCOW (AP) - The Soviet newspaper Izvestia says foes of the SALT II
arms limitation treaty are taking their fight to American moviegoers
through thinly veiled anti-Soviet innuendo in the science-fiction
spectacular ''Battlestar Galactica.''
    The government newspaper charged over the weekend that the
outer-space epic - as well as other U.S. films and TV shows - was rife
with hidden ideological messages amounting to ''propaganda of mass
anti-Soviet psychosis.''
    ''Their spirit is the spirit of the Cold War,'' wrote Melor Sturua,
a veteran U.S.-based correspondent for Izvestia who often reports on
American lifestyles and popular culture.
    Sturua said Hollywood movie companies were enmeshed in a tight web
of interests with big Wall Street banks and the U.S.
military-industrial complex.
    His vitriolic 2,400-word dispatch reflected the increasingly
strident tone the government-controlled Soviet press has been taking
in recent weeks toward American opponents of the SALT pact, signed
last month in Vienna.
    Debate on the strategic arms limitation accord is set to begin this
week in the Senate, where the treaty must win a two-thirds majority
for ratification.
    Sturua said that after a local movie review had piqued his curiosity
about ''Battlestar Galactica,'' he went to see it.
    While the film's cosmic struggle unfolds ''everything around you
rattles and shakes,'' Sturua told Soviet readers.
    He said the matinee audience, mostly children, ''withstood it very
well. I noticed only a couple of cases of hysteria, which ended in
tears and removal of the children from the hall.''
    The movie's plot pits a united space civilization of humans against
a society of robot beings called the Kailons.
    ''The galactical negotiations between the people and the Kailons
really resembled the U.S.-Soviet SALT talks - not in their actual
form, but in the perverted interpretation of the enemies of the treaty
from the family of Washington hawks,'' Sturua wrote.
    ''The crafty Kailons, similar to the 'crafty Soviets,' propose to
the president of the galactical union something like space detente,''
he wrote.
    The galactical union's armed forces commander tries to warn that the
Kailons ''don't want peace but only a pause to prepare a knockout
blow that they'll deliver as a first strike.''
    Nonetheless, ''the president categorically refused to believe his
commander and in spite of his warnings signs a pact with the
Kailons,'' who subsequently launch a devastating surprise attack on
the United States of Galactica.
    Sturua conceded it was ''just plain naive'' to search for any direct
parallels with reality.
    But, ''far more important,'' the Soviet correspondent wrote, ''is
the spirit, the inspiration of films of the 'Battlestar Galactica'
type. Their inspiration is the pumping-up of military anti-Soviet
hysteria, which in this case is disguised in the modern costume of
socio-scientific fantasy.''
    ''The fact that modern American cinematography prefers Cold War is
not just a coincidence - and the film 'Battlestar Galactica' isn't the
only example of (Hollywood's connection with Wall Street and the
military-industrial complex),'' he wrote.
    He said the movie ''Buck Rogers in the 25th Century'' and television
shows including ''The Bionic Woman'' and ''Six Million Dollar Man''
also were riddled with ''anti-Soviet symbolism dressed in a
transparent tunic of science fiction.''
    
ap-ny-07-08 1642EDT
***************



Date: 19 Sep 1979 1613-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: D & D monsters
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

n048  1345  19 Sep 79
 
MONSTERS
(Newhouse 004)
By JEAN HELLER
Newhouse News Service
    LANSING, Mich. - The young man recalled his ordeal vividly. He had
been alone inside a musty fortress, lost in a maze of dank
passageways that hide mortal dangers. He was armed only with a sword
and a shield, scant protection from the grotesque monster that lurked
there, waiting for him.
    Unable to escape, he had faced the creature, a huge, hairy,
fire-breathing nightmare for which the young man had been no match in
battle.
    ''It killed me,'' he said. ''Burned me to death.''
    The young man's mood was serious. He said his hands were perspiring
as he recounted the confrontation. He knew he was not dead. He knew
that the fortress and the monster had not been real. But the memory
of the fantasy he and several friends had created the night before
was very real. It had shaken him badly.
    And he said he loved it.
    The young man, a sophomore in chemistry at Michigan State
University, is one of an estimated 300,000 people in this country who
have become obsessed with the fantasy game called ''Dungeons and
Gragons.'' ''D and D'' is played almost entirely in the mind, with
participants stepping into medieval personalities who journey through
incredible adventures as far as their strengths and personalities can
take them.
    The limits of the game are the outer limits of the players'
imaginations. For those with particularly vivid imaginations, the
game can become an almost mystical experience, consuming, addictive
and potentially dangerous.
    Little was known about ''Dungeons and Dragons'' - outside the
circles of people who love to play war games - until Aug. 15 when a
16-year-old computer genius disappeared from the Michigan State
campus, giving ''Dungeons and Dragons'' some very bizarre national
publicity.
    The youngster, James Dallas Egbert III, is an avid ''D and D''
player, and police feared that Egbert might have died while acting
out a ''D and D'' adventure. Methodically, they searched the miles of
steam tunnels running under the East Lansing campus. The tunnels,
they theorized, could have been a fantasy dungeon from which Egbert
had been unable to escape.
    However, nearly four weeks after he disappeared, Egbert was found
alive, and authorities say his disappearance was not connected with
the game, a fact that brought relief to the man who created and
markets ''Dungeons and Dragons.''
    ''We're glad he's okay, that he wasn't found ritualistically
murdered by Satan worshipers,'' says Gary Gygax, head of TSR Hobbies
of Lake Geneva, Wis. ''There were a lot of strange things written
about 'D and D' while Egbert was missing. I imagine there are a lot
of people who think 'D and D' players are all pretty weird.
    ''They ARE dedicated. They get really caught up in it. But I've met
some obsessed golfers and tennis players, too. 'Dungeons and Dragons'
is just a different kind of release.''
    ''Dungeons and Dragons'' is generally played by small groups of
people with a leader, called the Dungeon Master, creating the plots
to which the rest of the players must react. The Dungeon Master can
create a whole world, or a multi-level dungeon or a wilderness with
monsters like giant, hungry amoebas, zombies and griffins. He builds
cultures, societies, political forces, climates and ecologies.
    The players use multi-sided dice to ''roll up'' the characters they
will play, like wizards, heroes and superheroes, monsters and clerks,
each with its own combination of strength, weakness, power, morality
and philosophy.
    ''The Dungeon Master is like a playwright,'' says Gygax. ''Players
are the actors. The DM knows what elements he needs for the game, but
the script is flexible so the players can create their own lines. But
certain things happen to the players over which they have no control,
and that's where the element of survival comes in.''
    The simplified rules for ''D and D'' run 48 pages. The rules for the
advanced game run 300 pages and include more than 300 ''authorized
monsters.''
    While ''Dungeons and Dragons'' seems to appeal to both adults and
young people, the nation's college campuses are where the game has
its strongest following.
    ''It allows you to work out frustrations and the doldrums of
classes,'' says Diana Harlan, 20, a student at Oakland University in
Pontiac, Mich. ''You get away from everything. You can do anything
you want to do, anything your wildest imagination will permit.
    ''But it's not dangerous. Sometimes I'm too busy creating dungeons
and rolling up characters to do my homework, but I don't go out and
live out my fantasies. Only nuts go into steam tunnels.''
    Nonetheless, the world of wargaming has claimed casualties. Broken
marriages, lost jobs, even emotional disorders have been attributed
to wargaming, whether the game is a medieval fantasy or one of the
many other role-playing adventures on the market, including a Nazi
tank battle, a World War II air battle and a Civil War recreation.
    ''When you start playing out a fantasy, it can really eat up time
and capture you totally,'' Gygax says. ''Most people can handle it,
but there probably are exceptions. You can get very emotionally
involved. I've got several characters I've nurtured through many
tension-filled, terror-fraught ''D and D'' games, and I'd really be
crushed if I lost one of them. They can become very much a part of
you.''
    For some more than others.
    The Society for Creative Anachronism is a nationwide, underground
wargaming club in which members actually wear medieval clothing -
swords, steel helmets and all - adopt the life styles of their
characters, and wage live wars on fellow society members.
    While weapons are generally rendered non-lethal by appropriate
padding and sheathing, there have been concussions and broken bones
sustained in the heat of battle.
    ''I'm not a freak,'' says a society member in Los Angeles who asked
not to be identified because he thought it might hurt his law career.
''Some people get off on surfing and dirt bikes. I like to put on
chain mail and fight with swords.''
    Whether fantasy games and role playing are psychologically sound is
a matter of degree, according to two Michigan psychologists who first
heard of ''Dungeons and Dragons'' in connection with James Egbert's
disappearance.
    ''Fantasies, in and of themselves, serve a healthy function, like
relieving boredom,'' says Dr. Jack McGaugh. ''Like any good thing, it
can be overdone. What you think about, you become at the time. If you
become preoccupied with a character and a gruesome fear, it can
activate a high level of anxiety that carries over to the rest of
your life, and you begin seeing spooks that aren't there.''
    Dr. Douglas Brown says the game sounds to him ''like a fear mastery
sort of thing, pittng yourself against the odds, testing yourself.
    ''Life for most people is boring. There's not much excitement. We've
run out of frontiers. The only frontiers we have left are in our
minds. Testing yourself becomes the challenge. If a person isn't too
well put together to begin with, it's not going to be good for him.
But for someone who can control it, the testing process can be
stimulating.''
    ''Dungeons and Dragons'' is the linchpin of Gygax's $2 million a
year business, but for all the complex explanations of the game's
appeal and its dangers, its origins were simple.
    ''What middle-class child doesn't get fed a diet of fairy tales and
fantasies?'' Gygax says. ''My father was a great, great storyteller,
and there were Disney's dragons, Grimm's fairy tales, toy soldiers,
chess and, finally, my own games and fantasies.
    ''Obviously, I'm not alone.''
JG END HELLER
    
ny-0919 1649edt
***************
-------
                ---------------
-------

Date: 20 Sep 1979 9:46 am (Thursday)
From: Sapsford at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Dungeons & Dragons
To: sf.dl^

Having just seen several messages related to D&D, I am curious as to whether
there are any weekend D&D sessions open to new players in the Palo Alto area?


Date: 20 Sep 1979 (Thursday) 2057-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)
Subject: sf list
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI

 Please add me to the list.  Bill Westfield brought the list
to my attention.  I am an sf fan of about 14 years, with 
favorite authors Niven, Zalazny, Farmer, LeGuin, (somehow
I think I spelled that wrong) and Brunner. I have pretty much
read everthing this group has written (but am waiting for
Ringworld Engineers to come out in book form rather than hunt
down Gemini or whatever zine it is in.  Take it easy,

          Dave Rossien
          ROSSID@WHARTO


LARKE@MIT-ML 09/20/79 22:51:03 Re: LOST SF MOVIE SCRIPTS.
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-ML
   WHAT DO THE FOLLOWING HAVE IN COMMON?

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, CHILDHOOD'S END, PUMA, THE DEMOLISHED MAN, AND
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES...

   ANSWER: THEY ARE ALL HOLLYWOOD MOVIE SCRIPTS WHICH WERE FULLY WRITTEN,
BUT NEVER PRODUCED. IN THE CURRENT ISSUE OF AMERICAN FILM (WITH
THE COVER STORY ABOUT PETER ELLENSHAW AND DISNEY'S UPCOMING FILM, THE BLACK
HOLE) THERE IS A FASCINATING ARTICLE ON UNPRODUCED SCRIPTS, INCLUDING THOSE
MENTIONED ABOVE. THE WRITERS' TALES ARE RATHER TRAGIC:

   "PEOPLE KEEP TELLING ME IT'S TOO INTELLIGENT FOR A MOVIE!", SAYS ABRAHAM
POLONSKY, WHO ADAPTED ARTHER CLARKE'S CHILHOOD'S END IN 1970 (PROBABLY AS A
RESULT OF THE 2001 FEVER OF THE YEAR BEFORE). UNIVERSAL STUDIOS NIXED THE FILM
AFTER DISCOVERING IT WOULD COST $13 MILLION TO FILM, AND WAS PHILISOPHIC
IN THEME. AT THE MOMENT, THE IDEA IS BEING REVIVED AGAIN, THIS TIME FOR ABC.
HOW MUCH HOPE IS THERE? ITS YOUR GUESS. THE BOOK WAS FIRST OPTIONED -
IN 1954.

 ALFRED BESTER'S THE DEMOLISHED MAN FARES NOT MUCH BETTER. A SCRIPT WAS 
WRITTEN IN 1968. BRIAN DEPALMA ANNOUNCED PLANS TO FILM IT IN '77. 
BUT STILL NOTHING HAPPENS. THE SCRIPT IS STILL SITTING IN THE FILES. AND
AS THE SCREENWRITER, ALEXANDER JACOBS, SAYS "EVERYONE IS AFRAID OF FILMS
WITH IDEAS."

  THE SAME STORY APPLIES TO LEWIS JOHN CARLINO'S ADAPTATION OF HEINLEIN'S
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, SCRIPTED 1971. AND RAY BRADBURY'S OWN SCRIPT
FOR "SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES."

    ANDANTHONY BURGESS' SCRIPT CALLED "PUMA", WHICH WAS A REWORKING OF
"WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE." BEGAN ABOUT 5 YEARS AGO, IT WAS ANNOUNCED AT VARIOUS
TIMES THAT JOHN FRANKENHEIMER OR STEVEN SPEILBURG WOULD DIRECT. IT WAS 
WRITTEN AND RE-WRITTEN, AND STILL  WAS THOUGHT TO BE TOO GOOD. ""(THE 
STUDIOS) THOUGHT IT WAS TOO CEREBRAL FOR THE...MASS AUDIENCE," SAYS
PRODUCER DARRYL ZANUCK.

          WELL, AT LEAST HOLLYWOOD ADMITS IT AIMS AT KIDS'MENTALITIES...


Date: 23 SEP 1979 1916-EDT
From: GRAND at MIT-AI (Mark D. Grand)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

	I have created a calendar of upcoming cons in AI:USERS1;GRAND CONS.
Please send updates, corrections and comments to GRAND@AI.

Date: 26 Sep 1979 9:32 am (Wednesday)
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
From: Richard R. Brodie
Subject: Budding (or otherwise) authors
To: Science Fiction Lovers <SF^>

Have any of you ever had stories published?  Could you offer any tips to
those who might wish to lay their humble offerings before any of the various
oracles available?  Asimov's SF magazine purports to pay five cents a word
up to 7,500 words.  How does this compare with other markets?

			Rich


LARKE@MIT-ML 09/26/79 23:42:22 Re: ROBERT HEINLEIN'S NEW NOVEL
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-ML
   ROBERT HEINLEIN HAS A NEW NOVEL COMING OUT OFFICIALLY "EARLY NEXT
YEAR." HOWEVER, IT HAS JUST STARTED BEING SERIALIZED IN THE MAGAZINE
'OMNI'. SINCE THIS IS HIS FIRST NOVEL IN FIVE YEARS, AND (GIVEN HIS 
CURRENT POOR STATE OF HEALTH) VERY POSSIBLY HIS LAST, IT BEARS LOOKING
INTO.
 THE TITLE " THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST."

   WITHOUT GIVING AWAY THE DETAIL (SUCHAS THEY ARE - THIS BEING ONLY THE
FIRST CHAPTER), SUFFICE IT TO SAY THIS IS TYPICAL HEINLEIN LOTS OF
DIDACTIC DIALOGUE, DOSES OF TYPICAL HEINLEIN SEX, AND BITS OF ACTION
IN BETWEEN. SO FAR, THERE ARE NO GREAT SURPRISES, NO OUTSTANDING
LITERARY CREATIONS OF THE LEVEL OF HIS VALENTINE MICHAEL SMITH,THE
MARTIAN, OR MYCROFT HOLMES, LUNAR COMPUTER. THERE
ISA HINT, OF A LATER, COSMIC CONFRONTATION AGAINST EVIL WITH A CAPITAL
E. THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST IS 666. 
 FINAL JUDGEMENT ON THE WORK MUST AWAIT THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION, BUT
IT LOOKS LIKE HEINLEIN HAS ANOTHER GOOD, BUT NOT GREAT WORK TO ADD
TO HIS LIST.


Date: 27 SEP 1979 1046-PDT
From: AYERS at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Heinlein's new novel in Omni
To:   SF-Lovers:


I believe that it is only being excerpted in Omni, as they
said it is going to be in threee issues and the first chunk
was not very long  (And appeared to be condensed -- but maybe
that's heinlein)

I agree with Larke@mit that it seems to be re-run Heinlein.
In fact, it seems so far to look quite a bit like a re-do of
"Farnhams Freehold" with a little of MacFarlane's "WBY Inc"
thrown in.

Bob
-------

Date: 28 Sep 1979 2006-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Movie; 'Dungeons & Dragons'
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

From the San Francisco Chronicle (9/28/79)

Producers Hal Landers and Bobby Roberts are hot for Tatum O'Neal and
Robbie Benson to play the young lovers in their $6-million movie,
"Dungeons and Dragons," based on that horrorific cult game evolved
from Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." In partnership with Skip Steloff's
Heritage Productions, they'll film it come spring where it actually
happened, at Michigan State University.
-------

DP@MIT-ML 09/29/79 00:12:36
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI
re: movie - comment

I wonder how long before the newspaper and Landers & Roberts 
are sued by TSR aka Gary for taking the name of D&D in vain...
				
speculating
				jeff        (DP@MIT-ML)
<-->


Date: 28 Sep 1979 2311-PDT (Friday)
From: lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: My response
In-reply-to: Your message of 09/29/79 00:12:36
To: DP at MIT-ML
CC: sf-lovers at ai

Unless D&D is a registered trademark, there's not too much they
can do.

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 28 Sep 1979 2316-PDT (Friday)
From: lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: SF publishing
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

To the person who asked for comments from a published SF writer,
I passed his comments on to a famous published writer who wishes
to remain anonymous.  Here is his reply:

Tell rich that he shouldn't care what the rates are; his problem
at this moment is to GET INTO PRINT, and unless he deals with an 
obvious schlock house, the rates aren't important.  The highest
paying market is PLAYBOY followed by OMNI, followed in regular
field by DESTINIES followed by the pack not far behind, with 
an enormous gap between OMNI and the next down ($1500 for a story
compared to perhaps 10 cents/word).  But so what?  Selling to PLAYBOY
ain't easy and the competition is stiff.


So there you go...

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 29 Sep 1979 1559-EDT
From: PDL at MIT-DMS (P. David Lebling)
To: lauren at UCLA-SECURITY
Cc: DP at MIT-ML, sf-lovers at MIT-AI
In-reply-to: Message of 28 Sep 79 at 2311 PDT by lauren@UCLA-Security
Subject: [Re: My response]
Message-id: <[MIT-DMS].124730>

It is.


Date: 30 Sep 1979 1153-PDT
From: Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
Subject: book reviews
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

BC-SCIFI-09-29
    Attention: book editors
    Following is an Arts & Letters feature
    By Algis Budrys
    (c) 1979 Chicago Sun-Times
    There was a time when the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, the
premier magazine in its field, was also the editor of a fantasy pulp
called Unknown. At that time, the same people who wrote for ASF were
often liable to turn up as stars of Unknown, and no one thought much
about it. But after Unknown folded during World War II newsprint
shortages, word went forth throughout the SF community that there was
something called science fiction over HERE, where the survivor was,
and that fantasy was over THERE, and writers either did one and lived
or did the other and starved.
    This was actually more or less true for about 15 minutes sometime in
the late 1940s, but the legend persisted. The 1970s have seen it
destroyed. Writer after writer has been readily demonstrating that
there is one thing called Speculative Fiction, or SF, and that there
are plenty of authors who can fruitfully approach it from many
directions, including technology fiction, fantasy or any number of
other genres in between.
    In the front ranks of this demonstration has been Poul (correct)
Anderson, who is always liable to follow a tough tech epic of the
starways with a hauntingly delicate novel of pure fantasy. As for
instance, he has gone from the interstellar sweep of early spring's
''The Avatar'' to this fall's ''The Merman's Children''
(BerkleyPutnam, $11.95).
    His thesis is that the spread of Christianity through the medieval
Western world destroyed the magical fabric that sustained the
immortality of various sprites and spirits, including the race of
mer-people who at one time lived in underwater towns offshore from
the coastal habitations of mankind. The major characters in his book
are the children of a mixed marriage between a Merman king and a
human girl. When a priest rows out in his boat and prays destruction
of the Merman's town, the mer-people must flee into an increasingly
hostile ocean, and the half-human children must find a new way of
life.
    The story takes them-and their father and his people-far afield,
from Europe to North America and eventually into the Adriatic, where
their legend merges with those of the Balkan peoples and one of the
children falls into hopeless love with a water-sprite. Billed as an
''epic'' by the publisher, this is indeed a far-flung story, but the
term I would prefer is ''poetic fantasy.''
    ''Heroic fantasy'' is the term for David Drake's ''The Dragon Lord''
(BerkleyPutnam, $10.95). Drake, hitherto the author of ''Hammer's
Slammers'' a freewheeling piece of military technology SF, is a
rarity among newer fantasy authors; he has taken the trouble to
research the manners and appurtenances of medieval times. As a
result, he can bring to life the actual culture of the days when St.
Patrick was a contemporary figure and a chieftain named Arthur
Pendragon nursed dreams of military glory in Britain.
    Specifically, Arthur-who is as grubby as you'd expect of a First
Millenium warlord, but not as nice as the average-dreams of the
Ultimate Weapon. He calls on his ambitious wizard, Merlin, to create
a controllable dragon to fly over his enemies' towns and devastate
them. This demand sets in motion a quest by Mael mac Ronan, an exiled
Irishman, who is the hero of the book and whose best friend is
Starkad, the Scandinavian berserker. Starkad had just finished half
crippling the arrogant Launcelot. The story unfolds with vigor and
believability, the closing scenes present a genuinely powerful
climax, and, for once, I can't wait to get my hands on a sequel.
    ''Tales of Neveryon,'' by Samuel R. Delany (Bantam, $1.95
paperback), is first of all not a collection of stories but, if
anything, a novel about a culture-hero in a prehistoric human empire.
    The ''if anything'' refers to the fact that it's presented as a
pieced-together epic with occasional enigmatic scholarly intrusions,
and is furnished with an appendix which tends to give the impression
that this manuscript was inspired by a variety of archeohistorical
documents containing fragments of a legend older than that of
Gilgamesh. You are free to decide whether all the footnotes and
references are real; the story of a dockside urchin's rise through
slavery to godlike status in a barbarian world is a richly written,
sometimes wryly humorous thinking reader's Conan.
    Philip Jose Farmer's ''Dark is the Sun'' (Ballantinedel Rey, $9.95)
might as well be fantasy. It's science fiction set on an Earth so far
in the future that the universe is due to collapse in a hundred
generations. Mankind has had time to rise and fall on thousands of
occasions, and is currently living a primitive jungle existence. The
planet abounds with genetically modified life forms, with new ones
popping up on every page, and young Deyv's quest at first is to track
down the itinerant Yawtl who stole his soul egg. Soon enough, Deyv is
involved with Sloosh the plant-centaur, Feersh the witch, and finally
with the immortal alien Shemibob. It's an epic of wonders as Farmer's
fertile imagination provides continual ingenuities.
-------

RBC@MIT-MC 09/30/79 17:37:24 Re: Philip Jose Farmer
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC
Does any happen to know when number 4 of The Riverworld Series is coming out?
I'm not on the mailing list, so I would appreciate any mail to be directed to
RBC@MIT-MC.

	Thanks.


STEVEH@MIT-MC 10/01/79 00:26:45
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI
I would like to see some comments and criticisms about the recent
science fiction movies (ie. Alien, Time after Time, etc) reflected
here.  I would generally trust my fellow SF-lovers than the
local flix-critics.

CBF@MIT-MC 10/01/79 04:04:32 Re: movie reviews
To: STEVEH at MIT-AI, sf-lovers at MIT-AI
Alien has good special effects and very creative use of chicken guts.
It is worth seeing for those two, but you'd better leave any critical
intellectual sense behind, and try to refrain from screaming out the
two words I felt like screaming out through the whole movie which I will
tell anyone who has seen the movie.


Date: 1 OCT 1979 0743-EDT
From: GRAND at MIT-AI (Mark D. Grand)
Subject: Alien
To: steveh at MIT-MC
CC: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

	Yes, Alien is very absorbing. However, after seeing it
I really don't knoww what the 2 words you mentioned were. I kept
yelling one word at the crew, "Stupid!"  I do definitely
recomend the movie. It is essentially a medeocre piece of SF 
that was given a decent budget and not to much interference from
executives who know nothing about SF. As such, it is one of the
all time cinematic SF greats.
	
-- Mark Grand --

Date: 01 OCT 1979 1053-EDT
From: DEE at CCA (Don Eastlake)
Subject: Re: My response
To:   lauren at UCLA-SECURITY, DP at MIT-ML
cc:   sf-lovers at AI, DEE at CCA

In response to the message sent  28 Sep 1979 2311-PDT (Friday) from lauren@UCLA-Security 

Why does it make much difference if D&D is a registered trademark?  I
suppose if it was, they could be forced to add something to the titles
saying so but just because something is registered doesn't stop you
from having the right to parody it and just because something isn't
registered you don't have the right to damage someone's business or
falsely represent that your product is the same brand.  In any case,
business for D&D will probably be increased by the publicity and any
suit that was brought would probably mostly be for the purpose of
getting more publicity.
-------

Date:  1 OCT 1979 1149-PDT
From: MCGREGOR at PARC-MAXC
Subject: SF Movie "Time Against Time"
To:   SF-Lovers:

I saw this one at a preview; it starts out a bit obnoxious with a grade B
movie time-machine (complete with lots of blinking lights and a rotating
radar dish), but turns into a good flick.  It is entertaining, especially the
reactions of a nineteenth century intelligent person in 1979 San Francisco.
Its not hard-core SF, but I do recommend it.

Scott.
-------

Date: Monday, 1 October 1979  12:18-PDT
From: MCLURE at SRI-KL
To: sf-lovers at ai
Subject: Sequel to...

Does anyone know anything about the rumoured George Pal 
sequel to his original version of H.G. Well's 'The Time Machine'?
I had heard awhile ago that it was in the mill but haven't
heard anything since.

Date: 1 Oct 1979 12:21 pm (Monday)
From: Ogus at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: SF Movie "Time Against Time"
In-reply-to: Your message of 1 OCT 1979 1149-PDT
To: MCGREGOR
cc: SF^

The movie is called "Time After Time".


Date:  1 Oct 1979 1645-PDT
From: HARUKA at SRI-KL
Subject: Alien
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

	Alien is definitely a winner.  All I can say is that I'm glad
they didn't include some of the most unappetizing scenes that were in
the book - although the book wasn't as shocking as a movie can be, it
was pretty gruesome in parts, and mostly very similar to the movie in
action.

Haruka
-------

Date:  2 Oct 1979 (Tuesday) 1312-EDT
From: SYSTEM at WHARTON (The System Itself)
Subject: RIVERWORLD SERIES
To:   SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

  FRIEND OF MINE WROTE TO THE PUBLISHERS WHO "PROMISED" TO
HAVE THE LAST OF THE SERIES BY SUMMER '80. GIVEN THAT THIS
IS THE LAST OF THE SERIES, AND HAS ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN OR
SO I GET FROM THE PREFACE OF 'DARK DESIGN', THIS IS A BIT
TOO LONG... OH, THAT IS THE HARDBACK BY SUMMER '80, SOFTBACK
MAY BE ANOTHER 6 MOS, SO THEY SAY.

              DAVE ROSSIEN
              ROSSID@WHARTO


Date: 2 OCT 1979 1404-EDT
From: ISRAEL at MIT-AI (Bruce Israel)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI, rbc at MIT-MC

In reference to the 4th farmer book.  I talked to an sf bookstore mgr
about two months ago and what i got was this: the fourth book in the
Riverworld series, entitled "The Magic Labyrinth" is due to
come out sometime in '80.  It seems that the problem is with the 
publisher.  So far they have postponed it about 5 or 6 times.  Since
writing it, Farmer has written and published a couple of books.
                                      Bruce Israel
                                      ISRAEL@MIT-AI

Date:  3 Oct 1979 1103-PDT
From: Chesley at SRI-KL (Harry Chesley)
Subject: Review of Zelazny's Amber series
To:   SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

	(I need some good new books to read, so I'd love to see some
reviews of books I haven't yet read.  To further that goal, I herein
include a review of the Amber series, by Roger Zelazny (which, for all
I know, may already have been reviewed by someone):)

	In brief: The Amber series consists of Nine Princes In Amber,
The Guns of Avalon, The Sign of the Unicorn, and The Hand of Oberon,
in that order.  More may follow, but these four finish up most loose
ends.  The series is Fantasy rather than SF, but it's really adventure
rather than anything else.
	My opinion: I consider it to be the best adventure series that
I have ever read, better even than the Riverworld series, the Poul
Anderson series, and Ringworld (et al).  I cannot praise it too highly,
though it should be noted that it is strictly escapist, with no attempt
at redeeming social value.
	Other people's opinions: I know of no one who read the series
and disliked it or dropped it without finishing all four books, and
some people (myself included) have read it two and three times.
-------

Date: 3 Oct 1979 11:55 am (Wednesday)
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Review of Zelazny's Amber series
In-reply-to: Your message of 3 Oct 1979 11:15 am (Wednesday)
To: Brodie
cc: sf^


I highly recommend M. Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series;  there are a number of
books in it (The World Wreckers, Stormqueen, The Bloody Sun, etc.).  Science
fantasy, about a planet where the natives (of various types) have psi powers to
varying degrees and have a semi-feudal society.  The planet also has a small
isolated terran population(spaceport, etc.).  Also her book about the cyborg Helga
(The Ship Who Sang).  Also, is there anybody who doesn't know about Anne
McCaffrey's wonderful dragons in her dragonrider series (Dragonquest,
Dragonflight, The White Dragon, Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Dragondrums)

Karen


Date: 3 Oct 1979 1156-PDT (Wednesday)
From: mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: Review of Zelazny's Amber series
In-reply-to: Your message of  3 Oct 1979 1103-PDT
To: Chesley at SRI-KL
CC: sf-lovers at mit-ai

   Wait 'till he finds out that the fifth Amber novel, The Courts of Chaos,
was just printed in paperback by Avon (in a uniform format with their
recent  editions of the first four).  Unlike the first four, this
last does not require (though it permits) a sequel.
   You should also note that, since Zelazny wrote the series over
a period of years, not intending it originally  as a series, there
are minor inconsistencies among the books.  Quite minor, generally.
	Mike
-------


Date: 3 OCT 1979 1546-EDT
From: MOON at MIT-MC (David A. Moon)
Subject: "The Poul Anderson series"
To: Chesley at SRI-KL
CC: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

I assume this chronicles the life and times of an imaginary poet,
science-fiction writer, amateur linguist, and obsolete-weapons
enthusiast named "Poul Anderson".  Who's it by, Delaney?

Date:  3 OCT 1979 1247-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Source of quote
To:   SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
cc:   FORWARD


     I am looking for the original source of the quote that goes
something like:

   "Science Fiction is not fiction at all, it is just
premature fact."

   
-------

Date: 3 Oct 1979 1323-PDT
Sender: CHESLEY at SRI-KL
Subject: Review of Buck Rogers
From: CHESLEY at SRI-KL
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
Message-ID: <[SRI-KL] 3-Oct-79 13:23:25.CHESLEY>

	(Boy, all you have to do is kick this group a bit, and you
get all sorts of stuff back...  In that spirit, let me try another
review, this time of the new Buck Rogers series:)

	In brief: Glen Larson (Battlestar Galactica) tries again.
	My opinion: Larson still hasn't learned that you need writers
to make a decent TV show; as usual, he's got great special effects
(of course, special effects don't mean as much on TV as they do on a
big screen), and passable actors (Buck himself could be pretty good
with the right lines).  But the scripts are lousy (I realize that it's
presumptuous of me to say that when only one episode has aired, but
it's too obvious not to say it)!
	Background data: The series pilot, shown in theaters, which
some of you may have seen, was originally done for TV, but at the last
minute was re-edited for theatrical release.  This way, the producers
saved themselves the expense of buying the rights to the movie...

Date: 3 OCT 1979 1700-EDT
From: DGSHAP at MIT-AI (Daniel G. Shapiro)
Subject: EXPERT ADVICE
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

   I AM LOOKING FOR A PHYSICIST, A METEOROLOGIST AND
A GEOLOGIST WITH TENDENCIES INTO SCIENCE FICTION
(OR ANYONE ELSE WHO WANTS TO LEND THEIR EXPERTISE)
TO HELP ME SOLIDIFY THE WORLD MODEL I HAVE BEEN DEVELOPING.
AT THE MOMENT, I AM USING THIS ENVIRONMENT AS A D&D SETTING,
ALTHOUGH I AM PLANNING TO WRITE AN ARTICLE ABOUT IT SUITABLE
FOR THE SCIENCE SECTION OF A SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE IN THE
NEAR FUTURE.
   WHAT I HAVE IS A WORLD UNDER A GREAT DEAL OF GRAVITATIONAL
STRESS, SO MUCH SO THAT BOTH ITS SHAPE AND ITS SURFACE GRAVITY
CHANGE, ON A REGULAR INTERVAL.  THIS MUCH, I HAVE SOLVED
MATHEMATICALLY.  HOWEVER, I AM GETTING WORRIED THAT ALL THE
ATMOSPHERE IS LONG GONE, AND THAT ANYTHING LARGER THAN A
PEBBLE HAS BEEN REDUCED TO MUSH FROM EARTHQUAKE HAZARDS.  SO,
IF THERE ARE ANY INTERESTED MINDS OUT THERE, PLEASE CONTACT ME.
           DAN SHAPIRO (DGSHAP@AI)

Date: 3 Oct 1979 1426-PDT
Sender: CHESLEY at SRI-KL
Subject: Quality of TV
From: CHESLEY at SRI-KL
To: McLure
Cc: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
Message-ID: <[SRI-KL] 3-Oct-79 14:26:43.CHESLEY>
In-Reply-To: Your message of  3 Oct 1979 1350-PDT

	I have always maintained that people come down too hard on TV.
It is true that 99% of the stuff on it is pure trash, but it is also
true that 99% of the books published are pure trash, and 99% of the
movies, and 99% of the SF.  (It should be noted in passing that some
people like Happy Days (not I), just as some people like nice simple
escapist SF, and that's OK.)  There is 1% (sometimes more) of good stuff
on TV, and not just on PBS.  Mork & Mindy (otherwise known as Robin
Williams) is a good example; in this case (if I can squeeze in an aside),
it pays to watch for what Williams calls "getting the shit past the radar,"
where for radar read "censor"; e.g., making lewd references just obscure
enough that the censor doesn't see them.  Or the movies ("Duel" for
instance), and specials ("Les Miserables" (done for IBM PR)), and etc.
	There is good stuff out there.  There just isn't four hours a
night, seven nights a week, 52 weeks a year worth of it (and frankly,
I think it would be damned near impossible to come up with that much
stuff of high quality no matter what the network's policy was).  But
now, with video-recorders coming down to reasonable prices, there is the
possibility for a low-budget, low volume market.  You don't need a
network anymore.  But most of the books I read are published by the
big publishing houses (though some are done by garage outfits), and
I don't expect it to be much different for TV: you just have to sift
through the 99% to find the 1%; hence reviews...

Date:  3 Oct 1979 (Wednesday) 1854-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)
Subject: the mailing list
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI

  Hey People
      I really enjoy getting this mail, but sometimes it has a tendency
to become ridiculous.  If you have a specific answer to a question, or
a "funny" retort or comment which really isn't all that relevant to the
whole  S.F. scene (the Poul Anderson series comment forinstance) howzabout
sending it to the specific person that it relates to?
       I am on the system here from 9-5 consulting and while some mail is
always great when I have to read my mail every 10 minutes ('cause we use
netmail as consultant correspondence too) it can be a hassle.

     Otherwise - >  I think Brunner's books are fantastic (The Sheep Look Up,
Shockwave Rider, Stand on Zanzibar), Zelazny's (Lord of Light & Creatures of
Light & Darkness), LeGuien (can never spell her name) 's Fantasy series
is fun, and Blish's Cities in Flight Series. [important note, if any of you
say "jees, these are all obvious books " realize that I don't know the "level"
of SciFi fan to whom I speak] And a question --> anyone know if the
Anderson "Sky Book of Stormgate" is out or around?? 


          Dave Rossien
          ROSSID@WHARTO


Date:  3 Oct 1979 1548-PDT
From: Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Re: EXPERT ADVICE
To: DGSHAP at MIT-AI, SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
In-Reply-To: Your message of 3-Oct-79 1400-PDT

	im an undergrad in physics, but your problem sounds like
"theoretical meteorology" or exobiology or something. however, i am
interested in any dialog you get and am willing to give ideas... it seems
to me that the amount of air and life depends on how much perturbation
there actually is... you have options of having anything from very hardy
human-types on a pseudo-terran world (a planet under these conditions would
probably also have a rather eccentric-- even erratic-- orbit, resulting in
mega-seasons) to any sort of bizzare life form the mind is capable of
placing on a world where the atmosphere fluctuates between 5 million degree
helium and high vacuum, and shelters (or bodies) must be capable of being
immersed in radioactive lava at irregular intervals.  i assume that what
you have in mind is a planet in either a very eccentric orbit or in a
bi-or-better-nary system. this also gives many interesting psychological
twists (asimovs "nightfall", dicksons dorsai) which in my opinion are the
spice of any story, as well as lots of meteorites and the ever-present
possibility of falling into a sun (assuming they havent solved the 3-body
problem, in which case they might be forewarned). well, enough rambling and
good luck.
-------

Date: 3 Oct 1979 4:56 pm (Wednesday)
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Review of Zelazny's Amber series
In-reply-to: Your message of 3 Oct 1979 1637-PDT
To: HARUKA at SRI-KL
cc: Kolling, Brodie, sf^

Yes, I goofed up the order in my message.


Date: 3 Oct 1979 1659-PDT (Wednesday)
From: lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Review of Buck Rogers
In-reply-to: Your message of 3 Oct 1979 1323-PDT
To: CHESLEY at SRI-KL
CC: SF-LOVERS at AI

How can you call those effect GREAT?  I haven't watched the show, but
I assume they are down to Galactica standards.  My favorite effect
is the star field rushing past the window of the fighters (viewer is
looking in from the side at a profile of the pilot).  The stars are
moving at a speed making them look like they are 2 feet behind the ship
(which, indeed, they are!).

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 3 OCT 1979 2022-EDT
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: Bradley, McCaffery and Things to Read
To: kolling at PARC-MAXC
CC: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


A correction. Helga, The Ship Who Sang is the creation of McCaffery, not
Bradley.  Also the book The Ship Who Sang has all but one of the stories
about her. The other story is a novelette and it appears in a collection
of her shorter work, Get Off the Unicorn. In the author's term, it is a
"coda" to the earlier story about Helga's teaming with Parollian.

Another interesting thing about Get Off the Unicorn. It also includes one
short story in the dragonrider series, entitled "The Littlest Dragon Boy",
which has not appeared as part of the series from Dragonflight through
Dragonsinger. (I have not gotten around to Dragondrums yet. It might be
there but I doubt it.)

						Enjoy,
							Roger

Date: 3 Oct 1979 5:52 pm (Wednesday)
From: Sapsford at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Zelazny's Amber series
To: SF.dl^

Courts of Chaos is the latest Amber book (currently available in paperback from
Avon).  The quality is not as high as in the earlier books in my opinion, but
still as good or better than much of the S.F. available these days.

I just finished Niven's Convergent Series.  Most of the stories were new to me. 
Many are very short.  All were either good or excellent (but I am a confirmed
Niven nut).


Date:  3 Oct 1979 1956-PDT
From: KATZ at USC-ISIE
Subject: James Hogan
To:   SF-LOVERS at AI
cc:   katz

Has anyone read any of James Hogans stuff?  Its really great and has
many new ideas. Being a grad Physics student, I especially liked
"The Genesis Machine" in which a Physicist saves the world and brings 
peace to mankind simply by coming up with a new "unified field" type theory.
Since Hogan works for DEC as a sales rep, all of the science and especially
the computer things are extremely accurate (his characters use something
like sndmsg on their portable computer terminals).

Reccomended reading


			Alan (ARK)
-------

Date:  3 Oct 1979 (Wednesday) 2259-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)
Subject: G. Dickson's works
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI

Anyone know if the works mentioned in Three To Dorsai have ever come out,
that is the future and past history novels (there were to be 9 total, 
3 past, 3 Dorsai [all in 3 To Dorsai] and 3 "future". (answer to
ROSSID@WHARTO not sf-lovers... thanx

               Dave


Date:  3 Oct 1979 2056-PDT
From: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Dragonriders of Pern question
To: SF-Lovers at MIT-AI

Here's something that's puzzled me.  I've read Dragonflight, Dragonquest,
and Dragonsong and am now reading The White Dragon.  It's made clear in
the texts that F'nor's Canth is a brown (recall the problem of whether or
not he can fly Brekke's gold Wirenth).  But the indices say that Canth is
a bronze.  I don't understand - Canth is supposed to be an unusually large
brown, and can outfly several bronzes, but....  Or is it just something I
haven't gotten to yet?
-------

Date:  3 Oct 1979 1956-PDT
From: KATZ at USC-ISIE
Subject: James Hogan
To:   SF-LOVERS at AI
cc:   katz

Has anyone read any of James Hogans stuff?  Its really great and has
many new ideas. Being a grad Physics student, I especially liked
"The Genesis Machine" in which a Physicist saves the world and brings 
peace to mankind simply by coming up with a new "unified field" type theory.
Since Hogan works for DEC as a sales rep, all of the science and especially
the computer things are extremely accurate (his characters use something
like sndmsg on their portable computer terminals).

Reccomended reading


			Alan (ARK)
-------

Date: 4 October 1979 11:27-EDT
From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Dragonriders of Pern question
To: Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE
cc: SF-Lovers at MIT-AI

I've read Dragonsinger as well as the ones you list, and I haven't seen
anything to indicate he was anything other than a moby brown.  I suspect it's
an error in the indicies?


Date:  4 Oct 1979 1315-PDT
From: Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
Subject: kurt vonnegut
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

A story on Kurt Vonnegut and his latest book:

     By Henry Kisor
     (c) 1979 Chicago Sun-Times
     NEW YORK-It's startling, but Kurt Vonnegut looks exactly like those
newspaper book-review caricatures of him. Behind that bushy brown
mustache and crinkly smile is a cross between a tall Teddy Roosevelt
and a skinny Santa Claus-and the whole is as inviting as its parts.
     Vonnegut is a true mensch-intelligent, warm, amiable, even merry,
with a charming, self-deprecating sense of humor. We are chatting in
the upstairs study of his comfortable, high-ceilinged brownstone
townhouse in Manhattan's East 40s, where he lives half the time (the
other half at a country house he just bought in Sagaponack, out on
the tip of Long Island).
     Vonnegut puts in four hours at the typewriter each morning. ''I am
intelligent from 8 a.m. until noon,'' he says, ''and I am very stupid
after that. I can write letters and pay bills, but I think every
human being is intelligent for only four hours a day.''
     He is one of the smoothest novelists working today, with a
supremely readable conversational style, but it doesn't flow easily.
He is a bleeder, writing in fits and starts, and his typewriter
manner is disorderly. He trotted upstairs for a large box, out of
which he pulled several long, pasted-up streamers of manuscript.
     ''I edit them as if they were films,'' he said, spreading the
sheets side-by-side on the floor and swooping around them like a
scholarly buzzard. ''I'll cut here and paste there in this place or
that place. This is a short one,'' he said of a 3-foot section, ''but
some of these are 6 feet long.''
     The newest product of this singular technique is ''Jailbird,''
VONNEGUT'S BEST NOVEL IN YEARS. It is the comic tale of a minor
Watergate figure, Walter Starbuck, an ex-Communist, a visionary who
thinks the Sermon on the Mount has lessons for the future of
capitalism. Watergate seems an odd subject for Vonnegut; his
spiritual concerns are rooted in the radicalism of the '30s and in
World War II. Why Watergate?
     ''I thought it was foolish to continue to be obsessed with World
War II, which is many years in the past,'' Vonnegut replied with more
than a touch of irony, ''so I thought I would like to address myself
to my own times, if I could.''
     One of the key passages of ''Jailbird'' concerns Urdu, the language
of Pakistan. It began, according to Vonnegut, ''as a spare and ugly
artificial language invented in the court of Genghis Khan. Its
purpose in the beginning was military. It allowed its captains to
give orders that were understood in every part of the Mongol Empire.
Poets would later make it beautiful.''
     That interesting wisdom is a left-handed metaphor for capitalism,
one of scores of brilliant little ironies in ''Jailbird.'' But
Vonnegut is no sentimentalist. ''I don't believe that the poets made
that Mongol Empire much more congenial,'' he says. ''Just a little
bit. It helps some.''
     Where'd he find that gem?
     ''A Pakistani lady told me about it at a cocktail party, and I
assume it's true.''
     He didn't check it out?
     ''No. It's so beautiful it doesn't matter.''
     (A cultural attache at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington says the
passage may be a bit oversimplified, but it's accurate enough.)
     ''It's one of the 10 best things I ever heard at a cocktail
party,'' Vonnegut adds.
     What's another?
     ''I once heard Irving Langmuir, the General Electric scientist who
won a Nobel Prize, say, 'Anybody who can't explain what he does to a
14-year-old is a charlatan.'''
     Vonnegut is famous for these off-the-wall insights, as well as his
deliberate and strategic repetitions of the banal catchphrases that
help us get through the day. (''Live and learn,'' ''Life is like
that'' and ''Peace'' are characteristic of ''Jailbird,'' just as ''So
it goes'' marked Vonnegut's masterpiece, ''Slaughterhouse-Five.'')
Some of his terse, episodic novels evoke one ''Aha!'' after another
from the reader.
     There's at least one ''Huh?'' in ''Jailbird,'' however. When
Starbuck is tossed into jail overnight on suspicion of robbery, the
mouthpiece who frightens the cops into releasing him is none other
than Roy M. Cohn. Roy M. Cohn? The little lawyer with the menacing
eyes who whispered into the ear of Sen. Joe McCarthy, seeking Reds
under the nation's beds in the '50s? Why, for God's sake?
     ''He's a perfectly wonderful monster,'' Vonnegut says fondly.
''Just as I would use an ogre in a children's story, what better
monster could I pick for an adults' story than Roy Cohn, whose name
fills people with dread? I telephoned him and asked if I could use
his name in the novel, and I promised him that I meant him no harm.
He said, 'OK, that's good enough for me.'''
     Has Cohn read ''Jailbird'' yet?
     ''I don't know. He may sue, as he often sues.''
     Hmm. In ''Jailbird,'' redemption-at least the possibility of it-is
a strong theme. In using Cohn, did Vonnegut have that in mind?
     ''I am not a totally forgiving person,'' he said. ''I don't claim
to be a Christian, and I don't make it my business to forgive. I
somehow find Roy Cohn an amusing figure now. He often is in terrible
trouble, you know; he no longer has the enormous advantage that he
had with McCarthy. He's a sinner who was put out of business by his
own sin, the McCarthy committee.''
    ''Jailbird'' was born in another of those striking Vonnegut
mini-epiphanies. One day shortly after World War II, Vonnegut and his
father had lunch with an Indianapolis industrial magnate named Powers
Hapgood, who was briefly famous in the 1930s for his socialist
sympathies. Hapgood told the Vonneguts that when he was arrested for
helping the CIO organize a New Jersey strike, the judge asked why a
man of such elevated family and education would get involved in such
things.
     ''Because of the Sermon on the Mount, sir,'' Hapgood replied. (And
those turn out to be the words of Walter Starbuck in a different
setting at a different time.)
     Yes, Hapgood makes a cameo appearance in ''Jailbird,'' as do Roy
Cohn, Sacco and Vanzetti, Albert Einstein, Richard Nixon and a host
of other real characters, as well as fictional denizens of Vonnegut's
world such as Kilgore Trout, the science-fiction author. So many that
you flip to the end of the book, idly thinking it could use an
index-and there it is! An index! Huh?
     ''Well, it seemed an amusing way to summarize the book,'' Vonnegut
says. Maybe this is the last of the Watergate books-all of those have
indexes in them. Here, look at it. See, it's a poem, blank verse.''
     Sure enough. It begins with Adam and Agnew, Spiro, and it winds up
with Zeus and Zola, Emile, and there's a catchy, almost mesmerizing
quality to the roster, as if your inner ear could hear the Archangel
Gabriel calling the roll on the Day of Judgment.
     Dedicated Vonnegut fans won't be surprised. In ''Cat's Cradle'' one
of Vonnegut's characters was an indexer-the only one, he says, ever
to appear in a novel. ''So the International Society of Indexers
asked me to be their speaker at their convention in England last
summer,'' Vonnegut says proudly. (He had to turn them down,
unfortunately.)
     And what is he up to these days? He's waiting for the October
reopening of a musical version of his 1965 novel ''God Bless You, Mr.
Rosewater'' in an off-Broadway theater after a short run in an
experimental tryout house in Greenwich Village. His daughter, Edie,
is the producer, and he has contributed about 500 words to the book
and lyrics by two young writers.
     Ralph Bakshi, animator of ''Fritz the Cat,'' may do a feature
cartoon of Vonnegut's novel ''Breakfast of Champions,'' and the
author himself is toying with the idea of adapting Robert Louis
Stevenson's ''Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'' to the Broadway stage.
     But what about a new novel?
     ''I've just begun one,'' he says. ''I'm only on the first page,
however.''
     Would he rather not talk about a work in progress?
     ''I have only one page to talk about,'' he points out, not
unreasonably.
     Well, could he reveal just a wee bit...?
     ''I really don't know that much about it,'' he says. ''I'll have to
find out what it's about. Last night on TV Dick Cavett asked Stephen
Spender how poets work, and Spender quoted Christopher Isherwood as
saying that he began with one line that he did not understand, and
the rest of the poem was written to understand that first line.''
     Live and learn.


Date: 4 Oct 1979 2145-PDT
From: Ken Olum <KDO at SU-AI>
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI   

Has anybody heard of a story called "The Interplanetary Code" in which
there are creatures on neptune who move very slowly compared to us so
that we need to speed up their transmissions (TV I think) to talk to
them?  I read it once and like it and can't find a trace of it any more.

						Ken



WHJG@MIT-ML 10/05/79 11:56:29
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI
In response to the question about Canth being a bronze.  I compiled the index
Canth is a brown.  I corrected the typo by Ballentine stating he was a 
bronze but it went through anyway.  He is just a brown. But he is the largest
Brown on Pern as Mnementh is the largest Bronze and Ramoth is the LARGEST QUEEN
and Largest Dragon.  I apologize for the mistake and hope that we can
get it corrected in future prinings.
   Wendy Glasser  (WHJG at MIT-ML)


LARKE@MIT-ML 10/07/79 23:11:10 Re:   "CONNECTIONS"
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-ML
 WHILE NOT STRICTLY IN THE REALM OF SCIENCE FICTION, THIS MESSAGE DEALS
WITH A TV SHOW THAT TAKES SCIENCE ITSELF (INVENTIONEERING) AND PUTS
IT IN A FASCINATING NEW LIGHT. ITS CALLED "CONNECTIONS"; ITS ON PBS,
AND ITS QUITE SPECTACULAR.
      NATURALLY, THE SHOW COMES TO US FROM THE BBC. ALL GOOD PBS SHOWS
DO SO. THIS TEN PART SERIES TAKES SOME INVENTION EACH SHOW AS A 
STARTING POINT (FOR EXAMPLE, THE INVENTION OF MONEY), AND WINDS ITS
WAY THROUGH A SERIES OF RELATED - BUT SOMETIMES JUST BARELY - SCIENTIFIC
DISCOVERIES AND EVENTS (TRIANGULAR SAILS, THE COMPASS,ELECTRICITY, 
CLOUDS, AND CLOUD CHAMBERS) AND FINALLY WINDS UP AT SOME MODERN INVENTION
LIKE THE ATOMIC BOMB, WHICH , FROM AA LONG AND WINDING ROAD HAS BEEN
LINKED TO THE INVENTION OF COINAGE. IF IT SOUNDS DRY, PERISH THE 
THOUGHT. ITS ENLIVENED BY DETAILED RECREATIONS AND REENACTMENTS, AND
LIBERAL DOSES OF HUMOR. THE ONLY BORING SEGMENT IS THE AMERICAN-
PRODUCED DISCUSSION OF THE TOPIC WHICH FOLLOWS EACH SHOW.
     FOR ANYONE WITH A CURIOUS NATURE: ANYONE WITH AN INTEREST IN 
INVENTIONS, OR HISTORY: ANYONE BOREDOF DREK THAT THE COMMERCIAL
NETWORKS FEED US; BE SURE YOU MAKE "CONNECTIONS"
PART OF YOUR TV SCHEDULE.


Date:  7 Oct 1979 2029-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: 'Fast Forward'
To: SF-lovers at MIT-ML
In-reply-to: Your message of 7-Oct-79 2311-PDT

'Fast Forward' is also highly recommended. It's a Canadian production
which traces computer technology from its birth on through the present
and into the future. The emphasis is on impact on society and how
computer technology will saturate every avenue of modern day society.
The first showed explained the aims of the series and demoed various
things including one of the high resolution color raster displays
someone hacked up at MIT for a thesis to paint things with.  The
second talked about other things including networks, and had a
description of the Arpanet with implications for future networking for
the masses. A demo of Zork by Fredkin was included for the games
fanatics. Descriptions of these are provided by visiting experts
including prof's from various places, Bell labs researches, etc.
-------


LMOORE@MIT-ML 10/08/79 00:20:43
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-ML
   I heard that Douglas Trumbull would like to delay the opening of the 
Star Trek movie until he can get special effects "of the best quality".
Does any one know if the premire has been pushed back from Dec. 7?


Date: 8 Oct 1979 0050-PDT (Monday)
From: lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Trek delays!
To: SF-LOVERS at ML

HA HA!  I get my revenge!  I've been saying for over a year (when I left
Robert Abel just before the whole special feffects team fell apart) that
there were only two possibilities for the Trek effex:

1)  The movie was delayed -- causing Paramount to take a bath from the
    distributers.

2)  The effects were cheap and awful.  I doubt they will be able to hold
    back now.  My sources at Glencoe (the codename for the current special
    effects group about 1/2 mile from ISI in Marina Del Rey) tell me that
    the whole thing (as far as effex are concerned) was finished around the
    end of September.  Given the cost of redoing blue screen and matte stuff,
    I'll bet they are stuck with the current date.  

However, I'll make a few phone calls to the team and see what the current
story is, if I can.  I still like to think that I, by splitting the
shop into two opposing camps (pro-RSTS and pro-UNIX -- with me in charge of
the latter) did my part toward delaying the whole project and adding a
few ten of millions of dollars to the cost.  This is simply because a
script that BAD doesn't deserve better.  Hail the giant ice cream cone!
Hail NOMAD!  Hail mediocrity!  I'm sorry friends, poor Gene hit the
formula once and he really doesn't know how to do again.  Every other
thing he's tried has flopped.  So here he comes again, with a story
right out of the third season.  If there wasn't such a loyal following
of Trekkies who would sell any part of their body (yes, ANY part) for
the chance to watch a "lost" Star Trek episode, the movie would never
have even been considered.  And by the way, I LIKED the show.  I was
THRILLED when I found myself getting PAID for working with these people.
BUT, beneath the candy gloss finish of the Enterprise, lies an inner
core of pure lead.  Sorry about that, chief.

--Lauren--
-------



Date: 8 Oct 1979 10:56 am (Monday)
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Problems with SF mailing list
In-reply-to: Kolling's message of 5 Oct 1979 4:57 pm (Friday)
To: Science Fiction Lovers <SF^>
Attn: Brodie, Kolling, ROSSID at WHARTON

Xerox has an internal mailing list, containing about 40 Xerox employees and one
ARPA address, i.e., SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI.  Thus, only one ARPA transmission
occurs for each message sent from Xerox to the SF-Lovers mailing list up to the
time it reaches MIT-AI.

SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI contains many recipients at AI, to whom transmission
does not use IMPs.  It also contains one recipient at each of MC, ML, and DM,
and one (me) at PARC-MAXC.  This appears to be an optimization of IMP use
for the mailing list.

Anyone who wishes to take the responsibility for forwarding the SF messages
sent to his site is certainly welcome to do so, if he feels that disk space or IMP
use is a problem at his site.

Theoretically, the mailing program should send only one copy of the message
to each site anyway.  Does COMSAT do this optimization?

	Rich Brodie


Date: 8 OCT 1979 1451-EDT
From: ACHAR at MIT-MC (Alan B. Char)
Subject: Riverworld
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

While, I, too, am waiting anxiously for the fourth Riverworld
book, I think that I should say that I didn't find the book
as impressive as other SciFi lovers have.  I think that it 
could have used a lot more editing.  Did anyone notice Farmer's
habit of mentioning measurements in metric and parenthetically
converting in English, yet the English measurements were always
rounded and the metric usually had four insignificant digits?
Also, he never decided what the proportions of the cultures would
be.  It varied from 90-9-1 to 60-30-10 to several other
proportions.  (At least they always added to 100%.)  Also, his
major heroic characters seem very similar in character.  There
should be room for more than one type of hero.  Notice that while
Burton was given the tribute, most of his characters (e.g. Twain, 
Frigate, et al.) seem to think in Capitals.  The book is based on
a fascinating concept, and the historical detail and anecdotes
add a lot of character, but it seems that Farmer was in too much of
a hurry to get it into print.  Now, I'll admit, that I don't read
SciFi constantly or as feverishly as a real Science Fiction
addict, but I do read a fair amount.  Currently, my favorite
authors are Damon Knight (for short stories), Joe Haldeman
(particularly Mindbridge and Infinite Dreams) and anything by Spider
Robinson that I can get my hands on.  I'm willing to talk one to one
with people, but discussions via mailing lists usually entertain a
few and annoy the rest (as the past few days have indicated.)

			--Alan Char (ACHAR@MC)


Date: 8 OCT 1979 1706-EDT
From: AQE at MIT-MC (Jef Poskanzer)
Subject: James Hogan
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI, KATZ at USC-ISIE

Hogan has published four books that I know of:
 "Inherit the Stars", "The Gentle Giants of Ganymede"; (the second is a sequel)
 "The Genesis Machine";
 "The Two Faces of Tomorrow".
All of them are good to excellent in their own ways, but none of them are
without flaws.

"Inherit the Stars" starts off with some explorers on the Moon finding
a corpse in a space suit.  The suit is of an unknown design, the corpse
is human, and both are 50,000 years old.  What follows is mostly a
multi-disiplinary scientific detective story.  The science involved
is some of the most accurate and true-to-life I have ever read in a
fictional work; it is on a level with "The Andromeda Strain".
Unfortunately, the conclusion that he spends the whole book building
up to (and which therefore I cannot divulge) is, to put it mildly,
hard to swallow.  Sigh.  It is still well worth reading, though a
bit dry.  "The Gentle Giants of Ganymede" continues the story, and
is pretty much more of the same.  The science, if anything, is even
better, especially since there is no obvious and glaring flaw.
There are some very nice aliens introduced, and there is a hint of
the physics introduced in the next book. (There is no other connection
between the two stories.)  Now, flaws:  1) My favorite character in both
books was the alien's computer system, ZORAC, and 2) There were NO (zero,
NIL) women involved in either book (I am not counting alien females).
In other words, these two books could have used some more humanity.
As I said, good, but dry.

 "The Genesis Machine" is, as KATZ says, about a Physicist saves the world
and brings peace to mankind simply by coming up with a new unified field
theory.  The science and technology are impeccable and exciting, the
anti-bureaucracy message is refreshing, and the characters are...
interesting.  They actually have private lives, problems, cares, hopes, etc.
They even get drunk sometimes.  BUT: still no women to speak of. (There is
one - a wife and housekeeper.)  And again, I didn't like the ending; it
was just too pat.  I think the politics involved in the book are somewhat
naieve, but that's strictly my opinion.  It COULD have come out the way
he wrote it.  (Note to D&Ders: the "physics" on which this book is based
makes an excellent D&D-style game system: it is perfect for techno-magic,
and with a small addition, works well for psi-magic, too.  I have been
constructing a game-world with this book as history, except that it
DIDN'T come out the way Hogan wrote it.)

"The Two Faces of Tomorrow" is actually a pretty good book, but you
would never guess it from the cover.  The picture is of souped-up
space shuttles blasting/being blasted by a really lousy rendition of
a space station.  The back-cover blurb makes it sound like a technology
out-of-control/disaster story, but it's not really.  It's just damn good
science fiction with a lot of action thrown in. (Yes, thrown in.  I don't
think the premise for all the violence holds up, but you should form your
own opinion on this point.  Again, it could have happened that way.)
Hogan's science and technology just keep getting better, and of special
interest to people on this list is that one of the major themes in the
book is A.I.  This may be the first really accurate A.I. story (Ryan's
"P1" and Herberts "Destination: Void" were garbage as far as accuracy.
I haven't read "When Harlie was One".  Is it good, and are there others?)
And finally, there are women (more than one!) in reasonable roles.

I think all four books were worth reading for me (If you want to know
whether they are worthwile for you to read, ask a professional reviewer.)
I especially liked "The Genesis Machine", because like all really Great books,
it got me thinking.
---
Jef


Date: 9 OCT 1979 0042-EDT
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: Distribution and Discussions (Warning: LONG msg!)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


     Currently, the SF-LOVERS mailing list has 109 recipients broken
down as shown below. Each machine listed handles the distribution
for its local users. In addition AI distributes to the foreign sites.

     Foreigners: 35 at 15 different sites (distributed by MIT-AI)
     MIT-AI:     27
     MIT-MC:     27
     MIT-ML:     18
     MIT-DM:      2 
    --------------------------------------
     Total:     109 at 19 sites

From this list the loading of each machine appears reasonable. The
original problem that DLW cited was caused when AI distributed the
entire list and there was a sudden storm of messages in just a few
hours.

     Unfortunately, this discussion aspect now seems to have been
greatly curtailed because of this and because of complaints about
continual interruptions in getting the mail. Therefore I would like
to propose a remedy. When a topic comes up that will generate a lot
of mail, someone interested in it volunteers to act as a "moderator".
All mail in the discussion is sent to him/her where it is collected
in a file. People that want to comment on it are free to read that
file. When the discussion ends, the moderator lightly edits the
discussion file and distributes a pointer to it, so that it can be
archived. Unless someone else wants the job, I'll maintain the
archive. A complete record of all the messages sent up to now is
available in AI:DUFFEY;_DATA_ SF . They are in inverse chronological
order.

Looking through the archive the current topics appear to be:

     The work of James P. Hogan
     The work of Phillip Jose Farmer, in particular the
         Riverworld quartology.
     SF prozines (how cum no one mentioned Isaac Asimov's
         Science Fiction Adventure Magazine or Galileo?)
     SF movies (in particular Star Trek the Movie)
     Planetary creation

Moderators anyone?

						Enjoy,

						   Roger

Date: 9 Oct 1979 0130-PDT (Tuesday)
From: lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Black Hole
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

Well, my friend who was doing the effex for Black Hole was over to visit
this evening. He informed me that, after months of work, Disney had decided
NOT to use his group's work -- leaving him 22,000 dollars in the hole (no pun
intended.) There will no doubt be considerable arguments about this in the
near future.

That problem aside, I now have a pretty good idea of the plot and concept of
the film. Looks pretty grim -- much worse than I had expected. The plot sounds
weak, and effex are apparently very cheap and "Disneyish". To give you an idea
of the plot, need I say more than there is a cute little robot which says all
sorts of cute things and boops and beeps...

--Lauren--


Date:  9 OCT 1979 0932-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Around the World in 80 Days.
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI

What was the funny-sounding name of the hero in the original Wells story?
Reply to FORWARD@USC-ECL.
 

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 10/09/79 17:18:45 Re: Distribution and Discussions

I'll do the planetary creation stuff.  Big SURPRISE.

   DAN


Date: 10 Oct 1979 6:40 pm (Wednesday)
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
From: Richard R. Brodie
Subject: SF-LOVERS mailing list
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
Reply-to: Brodie at PARC-MAXC

Fans,

Roger Duffey has generously agreed to take over maintenance of the MIT portion
of SF-LOVERS. I will continue to maintain the Xerox SF distribution list,
which is inseparably bound to SF-LOVERS at AI. The brunt of this news is that
anyone not at Xerox or MIT should deal with DUFFEY@AI rather than me for
mailing list additions.

		Rich Brodie


LARKE@MIT-ML 10/11/79 22:13:24 Re: BUCK ROGERS - PRO OR CON?
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-ML

    WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE GENERAL OPINION ON BUCK ROGERS ? SEEING THAT IT IS
THE ONLY SCIFI REALLY ON THE TUBE THIS SEASON, WHAT ARE THE VARIOUS REACTIONS?

   FOR MYSELF, I THINK ALTHOUGH IT IS MARKEDLY IMPROVED FROM LAST YEAR'S B.S.
GALACTICA, IT STILL HAS FAR TO GO .
   THE BEST WAY TO VIEW IT SEEMS TO BE TO IGNORE THE STORIES AND WATCH THE
DETAILS AND THE AMBIENCE. ALTHOUGH THE SCRIPTS ARE STILL EXCRABLE, THERE ARE
MANY LITTLE POINTS THAT LIVEN THINGS UP; THINGS LIKE THE MATTE SHOTS OF FUTURE
CITIES AND COUNTRYSIDES, MINOR BITS OF CHARACTERIZATIONS, SFX DETAILS LIKE
PUMPING "LIGHT" FOR FUEL INTO THE SPACESHIPS, AND THE INCREASED USE OF SCIFI
SCENES TAKING PLACE OUTDOORS. IN SHORT, IT LOOKS THERE ARE A BUNCH OF CAPABLE
AND INTERESTED FILMAKERS ADDING MULTITUDES OF USEFUL AND PLEASANT FILIGREES TO
A LACKLUSTER BASIC STRUCTURE. DOES IT - SHOULD IT - STAND A CHANCE OF
REMAINING ON THE TV SCHEDULE?


Date: 12 Oct 1979 0853-PDT (Friday)
From: mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: Television SF
To: sf-lovers at mit-ai

   The question about Buck Rogers made me consider the historical lack of
success (both critical and popular) of science fiction on television. Even
Star Trek got bad ratings, and its last season was Sturgeon's Law incarnate.
It's all very well to complain about how television SF is in the hands of
people who don't know the genre, and so on; but what WOULD you like to see?
What do you think would be a good format for a science-fiction (or fantasy)
television series? If you were Freddie Silverman, what would you buy? If you
were president of MCA, what would Universal produce? I have some ideas of my
own, but I would like to hear what kicks around in other people's heads out
there.

	Mike

PS You should hear some of the ideas that DON'T get on the air. One TV
   writer, William WOodfield (Earth II, Mission Impossible) once came
   by the UCLA Computer Club with a sitcom idea that, well, hardly bears
   mention.  You see, this nice typical family, with kids and dog, gets
   this experimental computer, in their house, and it becomes a fun-loving
   member of the family, and... aw shit, you get the idea.
	Mike
-------


Date: 12 Oct 1979 1:33 pm (Friday)
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Television SF
In-reply-to: Your message of 12 Oct 1979 10:23 am (Friday)
To: mike at UCLA-Security
cc: sf^

Well, with the disclaimer that its scientific boners were agonizing, I will
come out of the closet and admit that I liked the second year of Space 1999 a
lot. It had REAL WOMEN in it. Whatever else one admires about Star Trek and
regardless of the reasons that have been given, they sure were Neanderthals
in that respect. Also the second year of Space 1999 was visually a delight.

I have the feeling that TV can only be expected to handle action type SF. I
can't imagine them doing a science fantasy show (a la the dragons of pern)
decently without spending millions on each episode. There is also the
demoralizing thought that good shows of any kind just don't get good ratings
usually while absolute garbage rises to the top. Good SF and good ratings may
be mutually exclusive.

P.S. anybody know when (if?) the Martian Chronicles is scheduled for now?

P.P.S. what is Sturgeon's Law?

Karen


Date: 12 OCT 1979 1806-EDT
From: ISRAEL at MIT-AI (Bruce Israel)
Subject: DRAGONRIDERS, DARKOVER, JOHN VARLEY
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Speaking about errors in Dragonriders of Pern, has anyone ever noticed the
following two inconsistencies in Dragonflight? 1) When Lytol is discossed in
Dragonflight, his is declared a number of times to be the ex-rider of Larth a
green dragon, bbut in the rest of the books, Larth is said to be a brown, 2)
When Lessa goes between time 400 turns the weyrleader and husband of Mardra
that she meets is named T'ton but is renamed T'ron in Dragonquest. In
reference to Get Off the Unicorn, the dragonrider story in it, entitled "The
Smallest Dragonboy" is not part of Dragondrums at all but the main character,
called K'van, appears extremely briefly in The White Dragon.

Does anybody know of a complete listing of all books in the Darkover series,
both in and out of print? I have about thirteen books in the series but I know
there are more and am curious to see a complete list. If such a list doesn't
exist, why don't we see if we can create one based on those books that the
members oof this list have read?

Sturgeon's law states that ninety percent of everything including SF is
bullshit.


Date: 12 Oct 1979 at 1842-EDT
Message-id: <308616176.12878@LL-ASG>
From: neilson at LL-ASG
To: sf-lovers@ai
Subject: Sturgeon's law

If I remember correctly, Ted Sturgeon was asked why he wrote for
TV, since "90% of everything on TV is crap."  Ted replied that
"90% of EVERYTHING is crap."  It subsequently was discovered
to be a Law of the Universe.
-----


LARKE@MIT-ML 10/12/79 22:58:24 Re:    T.V.S.F.
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-ML

   AS LONG AS WE'RE KICKING AROUND SCIFI ON THE TUBE, LET'S ALL SHED A FEW
TEARS FOR THE ATTEMPTS BEING MADE TO SMOTHER AND SABOTAGE THE AIRINGS
OF A COUPLE OF UPCOMING MINI-SERIES: SPECIFICALLY, "THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES"
AND "BRAVE NEW WORLD."
    CALL ME AN INCURABLE OPTIMIST FOR FINDING A FEW GOOD POINTS WITH 
"BUCK ROGERS", BUT I WOULD STILL DESPARATELY RATHER SEE THOSE TWO SHOWS
FINALLY HIT THE AIR.

    ONE GUESS AS TO WHICH NETWORK OWNS THEM.

   "BRAVE NEW WORLD" WAS ORIGINALLY SUPPOSED TO AIR WAY BACK IN MARCH!
THEN APRIL OR MAY, THEN SUMMER, THEN FALL. NBC KEPT POSTPONING IT,
STATING QUITE BALDLY, THAT IT WAS TOO CEREBRAL AND INTELLIGENT.

   AND NOW, THE SAME THING SEEMS TO HAVE HAPPENED TO RICHARD MATHESON'S
TREATMENT OF BRADBURY'S "MARTIAN CHRONICLES" IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE 
A MAJOR ELEMENT OF NBC'S FIRST FALL PROGRAMS, BUT, ONE SUPPOSES,
FREDDIE SILVERMAN NOTICED THAT HIS NETWORK WAS PULLING OUT OF THIRD
ANYWAY, AND IT WASN'T WORTH RISKING THINGS ON SOME WEIRD, BIZZARO
STUFF ABOUT PEOPLE ON MARS..
    IN ANY CASE, THE LATEST WORD (COURTESY DEC. ISS. OF STARLOG) IS
THAT BOTH SHOWS HAVE BEEN MOVED BACK TO AIRDATES EARLY IN 1980.

   WE SHALL SEE.


Sender: Mike at Rand-Unix
Date: 12 Oct 1979 at 2041-PDT
To: Sf-lovers at Mit-Ml
cc: Mike at Rand-Unix
Subject:  SF and TV
From:     Mike at Rand-Unix (Michael Wahrman)

Folks,

        Let me suggest the obvious: that good science fiction and television
are mutually incompatible.

        By good science fiction, I mean an interesting, intelligent, self-
consistant exploration of some idea or concept or civilization or what-
have-you in dramatic form. (I know, this is an unsatisfactory definition,
but bear with me).

        Television emphasizes cheap thrills, imitation, inconsistant and
poorly written/researched plots, shallow ideas and the like. Those who
disagree with this analysis are invited to look at the top 20 shows,
subtract 60 Minutes (there is always an exception, goddamnit) and then
agree that I am correct.

        While bad SF, of which there is an impressive amount, could fit on
TV and be reasonably successful, good SF simply doesn't fit.

        Two postscripts: (1) I could make the same argument about good
fiction in general and it's place on television (no place at all), and (2)
there is always an exception to the rule. A mistake. A mutant if you like,
where quality programming appears for one night for one hour arising from
the vast lakes of murky sludge which surrounds it ... antagonizing network
executives who then swear piously to their stockholders that it will never
happen again.


Date: 12 Oct 1979 2301-PDT (Friday)
From: lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: EXCEPTIONS
To: SF-LOVERS at ML

Commercial Television is a wasteland because it is the most massive
of mass medias.  The lowest common denominator theory is not
necessarily desired by network exec's, rather it is forced on them
through the very nature of the system.  In reality, many of them
watch very little commercial TV themselves -- largely sticking with
PBS if anything at all.  The bottom line is ratings <==> $$$.
DIRECTLY.  Every point is worth advertising revenue.  And, as
commercial firms, the management must try to obtain the highest
profit possible for their stockholders.

This demonstrates why, largely, the only decent television programming
is either PBS or other noon-commercial.  However, being non-commercial
isn't necessarily good enough.  The BBC is a good example.  Most
of the BBC stuff we see is really good.  BUT, there is alot of
bad stuff over there as well.  BORING!!!  Lack of funds is part
of the problem, but bad writing, concepts, etc. is another.
(Look at "Dr. Who", which seems to exist on $100/episode but still
is basically solid Science-Fiction).

Oh yeah, about 60 minutes.  Well, it may be better than most of the
rest of the crap on the old cathode-ray tube.  But I've always
had the feeling they write their material BEFORE they investigate.
One of my persistent nightmares is what a full-scale 60 minutes
investigation of the ARPANET would look like.  It would probably
show how the whole thing was an incredible waste of money so
people could play ADVENT and ZORK.

Cheers.

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 13 October 1979 15:13-EDT
From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK at MIT-MC>
Subject:  kurt vonnegut
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

That description of how Kurt Vonnegut edits his manuscripts with scisors and
tape like a film sounds like he needs a good text editor!  He would not be the
first science-fiction author to make use of computers to prepare his
manuscripts.


Date: 14 OCT 1979 1026-PDT
From: HTHOMPSON at PARC-MAXC
Subject: 'Lord of the Rings' edition trivia
To:   SF-Lovers:

I cannot resist using the resource represented by this distribution list
to seek information on a long-standing burning question, to wit:
  What are the differences between the original hard-cover edition of LotR and
the subsequent revised paperback and hard-cover editions?

I know of only one for sure, the excision of Aragorn's suggested
exchange of 'a rascal of a rebel dwarf for a servicable orc' from his
reply to Gimli after describing his re-appropriation of the Orthanc stone
from Sauron.

Also any suggestions as to the motivation for each change would
be welcome.

I will collect and redistribute responses, which therefore need only
be sent to me.
  Thanks
   HT
-------

Date: 15 Oct 1979 9:57 am (Monday)
From: Mitchell at PARC-MAXC
Subject: The movie "Meteor"
To: SF^

Does anyone know whether the upcoming movie "Meteor" about a 5-mile chunk
of rock smashing into our dear planet has any connection with "Lucifer's
Hammer"?  The promotional material I saw credited the story to a writer whose
name was definitely not Niven.  I'd also appreciate it if you know anything
about the quality of the movie (it smells an awful lot like combinations of
"Earthquake", "Inferno", etc.).

Jim


Date: 15 Oct 1979 10:47 am (Monday)
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: The movie "Meteor"
In-reply-to: Your message of 15 Oct 1979 9:57 am (Monday)
To: Mitchell
cc: SF^

That also sounds a lot like "the comet that clobbered Phoenix", or whatever the
name was of the recent TV-movie.  Let's hear it for originality.

Karen


Date: 16 OCT 1979 0045-EDT
From: ISRAEL at MIT-AI (Bruce Israel)
Subject: Dorsai, Riverworld, John Varley
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Does anyone know anything about the new Dorsai book by Dickson?  I was in
a bookstore today and saw it.  Its extremely new (they put it on the shelves 
just today).  Its called The Spirit of Dorsai and is one of those $5.95
large size paperback illustrated editions.  It seems to occur in the time frame
immediately following Tactics of Mistake from what I could gather looking
through it in the store, but the main character does not seem to be
Cletus Grahame but rather someone who hasnt occured in previous books in the
series.

Philip Jose Farmer has just released a new short story collection. Its a
Berkeley paperback called Riverworld and other stories.  The first work in
it is an 87 page novellete called Riverworld that is not part of the series.
The main character is Tom Mix.  When I read it (within the next day or two)
I'll come back and review it for everybody.  The foreword has some interesting
historical facts about whats been written in the series so far, and what Farmer
is planning on writing in the series in the future.  The other ten stories in the
collection do not look al that fantastic, but then outside of the
Riverworld series, I've never been much of a PJF fan.

What does everyone know of an author named John Varley?  I first came across
him when I read his novel Titans when it was serialized in Analog this past
January through April.  I enjoyed Titans a lot (it struck me as being a
combination between Ringworld by Larry Niven and A Martian Oddyssey by
Stanley Weinbaum) and went out to find other books by Varley.  I recently
finished reading his short story collection, The Persistence of Vision, and
I reccommend it extremely highly to other people.  Its man thrust is not a lot
of technological advances or an action filled shoot-em-up type plot; anyone
looking for that type of SF is well advised to look elsewhere.  Varley's main
strengths are character and society developement.  His characters are extremely
real and his societies extremely plausible.  His characters are extremely 
lifelike with quirks and flaws all their own; they even get horny (Oh yes,
there is sex in this book, however its done tastefully).  My two favorite stories
in this book are the last two; Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, and the title
story The Persistence of VIsion.  Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is a very amusing
story about what happens when someone gets stuck inside a computer when his
body gets misplaced. The title story, The Persistence of Vision, won both a
Hugo and a Nebula and, in my opinion, deserved both very much. In it, he
postulates a commune type of society with all the members being blind and
deaf, and not only does it seem to work within the framework of the story,
but he had me still convinced it would work after I was finished reading it.
For anyone who enjoys the type of SF I've been describing, I consider
this book a must to read.
                                                  Bruce

Date: 16 OCT 1979 0004-EDT
From: LARKE at MIT-ML (James L. Groebe)
Subject:  "METEOR"
To: MITCHELL at PARC-MAXC
CC: SF-LOVERS at MIT-ML

    A FEW ANSWERS TO A FEW QUESTIONS -
 NO, "METEOR", FROM AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL, IS NOT RELATED TO EITHER THE
NIVEN BOOK "LUCIFER'S HAMMER" (CORRECT, POURNE?) OR THE TV-MOVIE "A FIRE
IN THE SKY.
   IT IS BASED ON A SCREENPLAY AND STORY BY EDMUND NORTH (WHOWROTE THE 
SCREENPLAY FOR "THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL".)
   HOW MUCH OF NORTH'S STORY REMAINS IN THE FINAL SHOW IS UNCERTAIN, FOR
EVIDENTLY THE IDEA WAS WELL LIKED, BUT THE THE DETAILS NOT VERY.
THE BASIC STORY IS ABOUT ONE COMET WHICH HITS AN ASTEROID, SENDING
FRAGMENTS OF THE ASTEROID TOWARD THE EARTH. PIECES HIT MANHATTAN, THE
ALPS, AND SIBERIA, AMONG OTHER FRAGMENTS, AND IN THE END, THE U.S. AND
RUSSIA ARE FORCED TO COLLABORATE ON A PROJECT TO GET ATOMIC WARHEAD-
EQUIPPPED MISSLES TO DIVERT A PARTICULARLY MENACING FRAGMENT. IT
SEEMS TO BE BASICLY A DISASTER MOVIE (SEEING AS HOW ITS DIRECTED BY
THE MAN WHO DID "THE POSEIDEN ADVENTURE").
    NOW IT MIGHT BE GOOD, BUT A FEW CAVEATS ARE IN ORDER...

   FIRST, REALISE IT IS BEING MADE BY AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL, WHOSE LAST
COUPLE SCI-FI PICS WERE "ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU" AND "INCREDIBLE
MELTING MAN", AMONG OTHERS. THE MOVIE WENT WAY OVER BUDGET AND WAY PAST
THE SCHEDULE -IT WAS ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED TO BE RELEASED IN THE SPRING
OF 1977! MUCH OF THE DELAY WAS DUE TO - YOU GUESSED IT - HASSLES
IN THE SPECIAL EFFECTS DEPARTMENT. IT SEEMS TO BE GOING AROUND THESE
DAYS. A.I. WENT THROUGH  TWO FX HOUSES BEFORE CHANGING THINGS AGAIN
AND SIGNING UP ROB BLALACK AND GENE WARREN TO REMAKE THEM AGAIN.
JOHN WILLIAMS WAS ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED TO DO THE MUSIC, BUT WAS DROPPED
(WHY?) AND REPLACED BY LAWRENCE ROSENTHAL.

  WE'LL KNOW IN A FEW DAYS WHAT 16 MILLION DOLLARS WILL BUY...


ACHAR@MIT-MC 10/17/79 17:49:41 Re: John Varley and others
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

I, too, am a devoted John Varley fan, who, as far as I can tell,
has only wrote "The Ophiuchi Hotline," "The Persistence of
Vision," and "Titan."  The first two are especially worthwhile.
They exist in the same setting but in slightly different times.
Varley's vision of his society is well-planned and consistent
throughout both novels.  I was not as impressed with "Titan," but
I had read it after the other two, rather than before.

The important thing I wanted to mention is that the first two
are examples of "Quantum Science Fiction," which means that they
were chosen by an elite panel of editors.  Originally, this panel
was Isaac Asimov and Ben Bova, but I think it has been extended.
Other Quantom Science Fiction books which I recommend are
"Far Call" by Gordon R. Dickson, "Kinsman" by Ben Bova
(excerpted in Sept. OMNI), and I think there is another one.
Science Fiction Book Club members (Random House) should
watch for these.  I think all Quantum Books are being offered
as things to come.  I have yet to be disappointed  by any of them.


Date: 18 Oct 1979 10:31 am (Thursday)
From: Sapsford at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Review
To: SF.dl^

I just finished Poul Andersons's "The Avatar".  The paperback has the kind of
horrible "his best ever" blurb that normally puts me on my guard, and a cover
that does not have much (if anything) to do with the story.  I don't know about
it being his best, but it is VERY good.  The characterization is well developed,
the science is pretty sound, and the plot plausible.  This is one of the more
literate S.F. books that I have come across in the last couple of years.  I highly
recommend it to your attention.


Date: 23 Oct 1979 0118-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Parlez vous Trek?
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - The Starship Enterprise traveled the galaxy
as usual this weekend, but to some Tallahassee viewers, it appeared
the destination might be the Twilight Zone.
    Capt. Kirk met Mr. Spock with, ''Bonjour,'' and Scotty's accent was
decidedly not Scottish.
    Joe Hosford of station WCTV said the distributor mistakenly sent the
French version of the hour-long science fiction show, and the
station's film editor edited only the picture without checking the
sound before it was televised.
-------

Date: 25 Oct 1979 2321-PDT (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Star Trek - TMP
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

Well friends, as many of you no doubt are aware, Trek is definitely
scheduled for release on Dec. 7 (stardate 7912.07 the ads say --
HA!  Some stardate.)  The L.A. times (and presumably other papers
as well) ran a two page add promoting it.  The catchphrase is:
"There is no comparison."  (I think we can count on that -- but
to WHAT?)

Anyway, news from various internal sources is that the word came
down that it was to be release Dec. 7 "whether it was finished or not."
Supposedly the effex in the can are pretty good.  Unfortunately, only
a few of them are in the can as of now.  It appears effex work
and editing will continue till about an hour before release.  The
effex people are very upset about this -- they don't want to put out
a poor product but what can they do?  (I might add that with that
script, they didn't have too much going for them anyway.)  But the
trekkies will love it no matter what.  And the money will come
pouring in.  And people won't know how good it COULD have been.

It also appears that there will be no studio previews (probably because
there will be no time for them.)  The film will be put into general
distribution IMMEDIATELY (no premiere theatres -- instead all over the
place at once.)

Oh well.  That's the current story.  I could say something corny
like "Live long and prosper" but I'd probably vomit afterwards (barfff...)

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 27 OCT 1979 0312-EDT
From: MRC at MIT-AI (Mark Crispin)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

I don't know how many people have heard of "Software Wars" - it is
a 30-or-so page short story I wrote in the days immediately following
seeing Hardware Wars.  At that time, I decided that seeing STAR WARS
on pirate black and white videotape just wasn't enough, so I went to
my local theatre and saw STAR WARS four times in as many days to get
familiar enough with the story to write Software Wars.

Anyway, some of you mind find it amusing.  Unfortunately, the online
file is in PUB format for SAIL's XGP, and I'm not sure enough about
the font mappings to convert between SAIL to MIT-AI PUB.  But the
PUB source, as is, is on AI:MRC;SFTWAR WARS.  If some ITS hacker can
figure out how to make an XGP file for MIT's XGP, great.

Software Wars contains a lot of hacker jargon and a bunch of inside
SAIL jokes (it was written originally as a private joke between me
and a few friends) but maybe other people will enjoy it too.

Mark

DP@MIT-ML 10/28/79 22:02:38
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI
recomended:    "Theives World" edited by Bob Asprin
		ACE pb.

	This is a fantasy anthology, with stories by John Brunner,PJ Farmer,
Gordy Dickson, Joe Haldeman, MZ Bradley, and Bob Asprin. The difference 
is ALL stories take place in the same universe, the town "sancuary", which
was a major caravan stop until the bandits in the mountain were cleared out
the town precictably went downhill. as the stories open the the king has sent
a new governor,(to cause unrest it seems) and the smugglers, houses  (the town
as all has a very active red light district), and the maze, a section of town 
that the kings gaurd wont enter in groups of less than four ; will react.

each of the stories has some of the people from the other authors either
involved  directly, or on the fringes. (one story "borrows" another
charachter for an adventure, while another has the mistress of one house
giving advice to a mistress introduced in a previous story)

			jeff  (DP@MIT-ML)


Date: 29 Oct 1979 9:03 am (Monday)
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
From: Richard R. Brodie
Subject: Time After Time
To: Science Fiction Lovers <SF^>
Cc: Glassman

Stanley Kubrick would not have allowed a less-than-perfect performance in "A
Clockwork Orange," and hence chose Malcom McDowell to play the leading role
of Alex.  Perhaps it is because McDowell played the part with such forcefulness
that other casting directors have passed him by, thinking of him only as the
canny, charismatic, and thoroughly evil "cat woman murderer"; indeed, he
played another, similar part in the little-seen "If," a 1960s film along the lines of
"Putney Swope," which through its offhand and random use of camera angles,
flashbacks, and even changes from color film to sepia, attempts to prod and
confuse its audience until the viewers are left with only a general annoyance
and dislike.  Whether it is a dislike of the society portrayed in the film or merely
of the film itself is, however, unclear.

"Time after Time" is neither unclear and annoying nor magnificently perfect; in
fact, its only connections with "A Clockwork Orange" and "If" are a certain
surrealism and a fine performance by Malcom McDowell.

McDowell plays H. G. Wells as a young man, at the time of his life depicted in
the opening pages of the real Wells's "The Time Machine."  Wells sits at his
dinner table and bids farewell to his guests who, unaware that Wells was taking
a journey, ask him where he will venture to.  Wells replies that he will not
leave the city; why, he does not even plan to leave his laboratory.  No, his is a
journey, gentlemen, through Time Itself---and we almost hear Dr. Scott's "Rocky
Horror"-like reverberations proclaim the grade-B-ness of the movie then and
there.  But the twinkle in McDowell's eyes hint to us that, indeed, he has read
the script and expects there to be something worthwhile in store for us in the
rest of the movie.

And there is.  Picture a man who, having come from 1893 where he wrote
newspaper articles depicting free love and equality of the sexes in a future social
topia, is picked up by a female bank officer at the Chartered Bank of London. 
We are delighted and embarrassed throughout the film by McDowell's attempts to
deal with modern life.  And the script, aside from its plot mitigated with
silly-isms to prevent it from being too believable for Hollywood's vision of the
viewing public, is packed with wonderful episodes.  Consider Wells, having had
a Big Mac, fries, and tea, please, for breakfast, now with the female bank officer
in a rotating restaurant high above San Francisco:

	Amy:  How do you like the food?
	Wells: Oh, it's quite good.  Far superior to that Scotts place where
		I breakfasted.
	Amy:  Scotts place?
	Wells: Yes . . . McDougalls?
	Amy:  Oh.

But the script could not hold up under a typical grade-B cast.  McDowell makes
even hailing a cab one of the funniest moments in the film.

"Time After Time" is not a movie to miss offhandedly.  It is entertaining and
rewarding, especially for $1.50 before 2 p.m. at the Cinema 150 in Santa Clara
(where, incidentally, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" plays Friday and
Saturday midnights).  It is not believable science fiction, but, hell, see it
anyway.  We're not proud.


Date: 31 Oct 1979 10:03 am (Wednesday)
Sender: Brodie.PA at PARC-MAXC
From: Richard R. Brodie
Subject: 
To: Science Fiction Lovers <SF^>
CC: Junk Mail Enthusiasts <Junk^>

From The Harvard Crimson, October 10, 1979

	Coke-Radios

  At 2 a.m., you stumble out of your room, drop 30 cents in a Coke machine, and
press the selection button.  What do you get?  Not always a can of soda, says
Jonathan S. Sack '82.
  For the last two weeks Coca-Cola has been mixing Coke-can radios in with
their drinks.  Sack is one of several students who have unwittingly discovered
the new promotional gimmick.
  The plan, which covers all schools and colleges in the Boston area, is designed
to appeal to youth and stimulate sales in low-volume machines, John J. Cullen,
district manager in the company's Boston branch, said yesterday.  "We're just
trying to see how many people call us to say they got a radio," he added.
  Cullen says there is about one radio in every delivery to a machine.  The
radios resemble Coke cans with dials on the side for volume and station selection.
  Sack got his radio about a week and a half ago from a machine in North
House.  "I didn't know what to think.  I was very surprised, but I knew I
couldn't be imagining it," he said.
  About six people have called the company about the radios, Cullen said, adding
that only one caller complained.

	--30--


LARKE@MIT-ML 10/31/79 21:22:43 Re: HEINLEIN'S LATEST NOVEL, INSTALLMENT TWO...
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-ML

   ROBT. HEINLEIN'S LATEST NOVEL , "THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST", CONTINUES
ITS SERIALIZATION IN 'OMNI' MAGAZINE THIS MONTH WITH A SECOND INSTALLMENT.
SAD TO SAY, IT DOES NOT SHOW VERY MUCH PROMISE.

   LAST MONTH I WAS GUARDEDLY OPTIMISTIC ABOUT IT, BUT UPON READING THE 
CONTINUING SAGA OF PROFFESSOR BURROUGHS AND Z. JOHN CARTER AGAINST
A DR. N. O. BRAIN AND SOME UNKNOWN TERRIBLE ENEMY WISHING TO WIPE OUT
MANKIND, I AM MORE AND MORE DISSAPOINTED.

   INSTEAD OF SOME INTRIGUING RELIGIOUS SPECULATION, AS THE TITLE SEEMED
TO PROMISE, WE SEEM TO BE GETTING A SORT OF NOT-QUITE-SATIRE STORY 
SIMILAR TO THAT IN "GLORY ROAD" THIS TIME WE DON'T DELVE INTO TOLKEIN-
LIKE WORLDS OF FANTASY, BUT SIDEWAYS INTO THE WORLD OF JOHN
CARTER OF MARS, AND BARSOOM.

   AND IT IS MIDLY IRONIC I THINK THAT WHILE THE CARTER STORIES ARE NOTED
FOR THEIR SURFEIT OF ACTION AND ADVENTURE, ALL HEINLEIN HAS HIS CHARACTERS
DOING IS TALKING. THERE IS MORE DIALOGUE IN THIS TALE THAN ANY PREVIOUS
HEINLEIN TALE, AND IT BEGINS TO QUICKLY GET STIFLING.
    VERY LITTLE ACTION OCCURS TO THE PROTAGONISTS ( IN FACT, THEY ARE IN
HIDING, AND ANY ACTION OUTSIDE IS MERELY REPORTED TO THEM VIA COMPUTER)
AND WHAT ACTION DOES OCCUR SEEMS TO HAPPEN JUST SO THE CHARACTERS
CAN TALK ABOUT IT. 

   IT DOES SEEM A LET-DOWN...BUT I AM NONETHELESS AN INCURABLE OPTEMIST,
AND HOPE TO READ IN ANOTHER MONTH OR TWO AN ENDING SUITABLE FOR SUCH A 
GRANDIOS TITLE. NONETHELESS, ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 10, AT THE MOMENT,
THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST IS 3.


LARKE@MIT-ML 11/07/79 01:04:31 Re: FORGET THE MOVIE, HERE COMES THE BOOK!
To: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI

    HERE IN HOUSTON AT THIS CITY'S LEADING FANTASY BOOKSTORE , THE STAR TREK
MOVIE NOVEL HAS ARRIVED.

     AND, CONTRARY TO EXPECTATIONS, ITS PRETTY DAMN GOOD - IN FACT, ITS VERY
GOOD. IN FACT, IT MIGHT JUST BE THE BEST STAR TREK COMMITTED TO PAPER. PERIOD.
IT READS FAST - A SHORT 250-ODD PAGES. (I READ IT THIS AFTERNOON.) AND IT IS
MOST EXITING FOR THE IMPLICATIONS AND EXTRAPOLATIONS FROM THE EXISTING STARTREK
UNIVERSE THAT RODDENBERRY EXPLORES. WE FIND OUT THE DERIVATION OF KIRK'S NAME,
AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE TO HIS PERSONALITY; SOME NEW INSIGHTS INTO VULCAN CULTURE
AND WAYS OF LIFE; BACKGROUND MATERIAL ON THE "NEWHUMAN" MOVEMENT - SUBMERGING
THE INDIVIDUAL TO BE PART OF THE WHOLE; FIND OUT ABOUT SENSORY RECEIVER IMPLANTS
INSERTED IN ALL STARFLEET OFFICER'S BRAINS; AND REVEAL MUCH ABOUT FUTURE SEX -
DELTAN (ADVANCED), HUMAN (MORE VARIED, WITH ONE YEAR COHABITATION CONTRACTS AND
LOVE TEACHERS), AND ABOARD THE ENTERPRISE (A SPECIAL REC DECK SECTION TO MAKE
LOVE IN.) AND ALL OF THE ABOVE ARE BROUGHT UP IN THE FIRST 40 PAGES!

    ITS WRITTEN IN THE PRESENT TENSE OF THE FUTURE, WITH FOOTNOTES TO ADD
AUTHENTICITY AND A PREFACE BY JAMES KIRK.

   WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT THE FILM ITSELF? IT INDICATES GREAT POSSIB~ILITIES ARE
STILL THERE. GRANTED, THE PLOT IS IN MANY WAYS A COMPILATION OF PART OF MANY
TREK EPISODES (METAMORPHOSIS, CHANGLING, DOOMSDAY MACHINE, AND THE IMMUNITY
SYNDROME, AMONG OTHERS) THERE IS AN OVERRIDING SENSE OF SCALE THAT INDEED MAKES
IT READ LIKE A MOVIE. THINGS HAPPEN SO MUCH BIGGER THAT IT COULDN'T BE PUT ON A
SCREEN JUST 19' INCHES WIDE.
   AND IT POINTS OUT WHY THERE HAVE BEEN FX PROBLEMS. MOST OF THE FX OF
IMPORTANCE AND DIFFICULTY ARE NOT OF JUST THE ENTERPRISE FLYING THROUGH SPACE,
BUT OF SWIRLING ENERGY-MATTER COMBINATIONS OF GREAT DETAIL AND COMPLEXITY.
EVENTS TAKEPLACE IN A SORT OF OF 'FANTASTIC VOYAGE'-LIKE SETTING, MAGNIFIED
BILLIONS OF TIMES TO FILL OUTER, RATHER THAN INNER SPACE. AND IF THE FX GO BAD
IN NOVENBER, MUCH OF THE LATTER HALF OF THE FILM WILL FALL FLAT NEXT MONTH.
STEVEN SPEILBURG MIGHT SYMPATHISE...

    SO THE BOOK IS VERY WORTH READING. THER'S ONLY ONE PROBLEM. BY READING IT
NOW, YOU'LL KNOW ALL ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GO TO SEE THE MOVIE.


Date: 6 Nov 1979 2228-PST (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: the book vs. the movie (TREK)
To: sf-lovers at AI

This seems reasonable in light of my experiences with the production.
While the script (in my humble opinion) read like a TV show (that is,
sucked) the plot synopses and backround material that were for our
general information were considerably more interesting.  I suspect
that the book is largely woven around these backround materials and
descriptions that more clearly describe the motives of the various
principals in the film.

Of course, some of the material is bound to be of the laughable 
variety.  For example, the meaning of various characters' names and
such are clearly items created out of thin air, since all that
stuff was essentially pulled out of a hat when Trek was created.
(I think I found the actual place where the name Spock came from, a 
very old SF story that I think Gene commented on once.)

In any case, the book might well be the "best" Trek on paper.
Whatever that means.

I only hope that they spelled the name of the primary antagonist
correctly.  The original scripts, production materials, and all
memos called it VEJUR.  A later article in the popular press spelled it
V'GER (a contraction of a word I won't mention.)  I have been driving
around with the former spelling on my license plates since shortly
after I quit from Abel & Assos. a year and a half ago.  The name
was considered top secret, they didn't want anyone to know it,
so I thought it would be fun to drive around with it and just
not tell anyone what it was!  LARKE: how did they spell it?  
Did Paramount manage to screw me one last time by changing it?

--Lauren--
-------


Sender: Kiessig at Rand-Unix
Date: 18 Nov 1979 at 1749-PST
To: sf-lovers at Ai
From: Kiessig at Rand-UNIX (Rick Kiessig)
Subject: Dorsai books, etc.

	Does anyone know the correct order of the Dorsai books by
Dickson?  And does anyone know exactly how many of them there are?
I can remember 3 for sure, but have heard rumours that there may
be another one on the shelves.  The 2 I remember are ' Tactics of
Mistake' and 'Dorsai!'.  The 3rd one I can't recall the exact title,
but it is novel-sized.

	I was also wondering iof anybody knows anything about the movie
Dune that is being produced.  All I know is that Laurentis bought
the rights from Herbert, and that the film is supposedly already
in production.

	Finally, I am seeking suggestions of books/authors to
read.  Something along the lines of Dorsai or Niven's Ringworld
or Heinlein's Stranger would be what I'm looking for.  Thanks,

Rick

Date: 19 November 1979 05:03-EST
From: Owen T. Anderson <OTA at MIT-MC>
Subject: Dorsai books, etc.
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC, Kiessig at RAND-UNIX

I am now reading a book called three to Dorsai which contains the three
Dorsai novels that are part of Dicksons, partially completed, 12 novel
Childe Cycle.  These are, in order, "Necromancer", "Tactics of Mistake", 
"Dorsai!".  Two other Dorsai stories that are not in the Cycle are a 
novel called "Soldier, Ask Not", and a novelette called "Brothers" both of
which are in the time period of "Dorsai!".


Date: 26 Nov 1979 0155-PST (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Dark Star
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

Just saw an interesting interview with John Carpenter -- Director, Producer,
Composer, Special Effects Technician, etc. for the classic SF parady,
"Dark Star".  I had always known that the film (made five or six years
ago I think) was comparatively cheap.  BUT.  Compare with the Star Trek movie
for example.  By the time it is finished, it should be up over
$30 million.  Dark Star was done for $60,000 total!  $60,000.  
Maybe the special effect were not great, but it was still a very entertaining
90 minutes.  Which proves the adage that $$$ is not necessarily equal to 
quality.

By the way, some trailers for Trek have been appearing (release is but
1.5 weeks or so away...) -- and I am told that the effects are singularly
un-impressive.  So.  Another friend was on a plane flight into the U.S.
from Italy and ended up sitting next to a man carrying a box marked
"The Enterprise, from Star Trek: The Motion Picture".  When asked, he
commented that it was not being marketed yet, but sure as hell would
be.  Just wait for the plastic Kirk, Spock and Illya dolls too.  A plastic
VEJUR?  Might be kinda hard to do -- but I'm sure they'll give it a try.
I don't care anyway -- I suspect I am the only person in the world (right now)
who drives VEJUR to go to the supermarket!

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 03 Dec 1979 2004-PST
From: Ken Olum <KDO at SU-AI>
Subject: Index to SF magazines   
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI   

MITSFS (I think) publishes a yearly 'index to the science fiction magazines'
which is obviously computer generated.  Does anyone know where it exists online
(hopefully on the net...)?

						Ken


Date: 04 DEC 1979 1057-EST
From: DEE at CCA (Don Eastlake)
Subject: Re: Index to SF magazines   
To:   KDO at SU-AI, sf-lovers at MIT-AI
cc:   DEE at CCA

In response to the message sent  03 Dec 1979 2004-PST from KDO@SU-AI

The MIT SF Society never really published an index to the SF Magazeins
though Erwin Strauss, a member of MITSFS, published one that covered
1951 to 1965 (I think) which was called the MIT SF Society Index to the
SF Magazines.  Annual supplements to this index were published by the
New England SF Association and a 5 year cumulative volume covering 1966-
1970.  Recently the annual sequence has broken down and, though NESFA
is still working on them and on a 10 year cumulative, none have appeared
for a few years.  The NESFA stuff (i.e., after 1965) is in machinable
form and might be available for a license fee.  I suggest that you write
to them at
		New England Science Fiction Association
		PO Box G, MIT Branch PO
		Cambridge, MA 02139

PS:  The MIT Branch PO is a fairly normal US PO and having a box there
     in no way implies official or unofficial connection with the
     Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
-------

Date: 6 Dec 1979 1158-PST (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Trek movie
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

Sigh.  Here we go.  Is everyone ready for the HYPE of the decade?
24 hours to go.  (I'm told the cutting was finished about a week and
a half ago -- glad they got it done before releasing it.)  For a while
there I thought people would go in and see alot of characters standing
in front of blue screens.

A few things to watch for (w/o giving the "fine" (yawn) plot away...):

1) ROUND viewscreens (if you knew the arguments that were put forth about
   these in some meetings I was in you would never believe it.  As it
   it turned out, we finally convinced the props dept. that they should
   be rectangular (since these weren't 1950 TV's and round wastes alot of
   area) -- only to be told that they could not be redone since they had
   already been cast in fiberglass.

2) High speed data transmissions between VEJUR and the Enterprise (bleep!).
   The old baud rate problems.

3) Spock punching out a computer.

4) Lines like:  "Computer, STOP, you are violating your program!"
   and
                "I seem to recall prescribing rest, not extracurricular
		 activites" (McCoy to Kirk when he finds Illya (my spelling)
		 in Kirk's room [well, the robot Illya in any case].

5) Lots of tear jerking nostalgia from everyone but Spock (who has gone
                 native at the beginning of the film.  Much like the old
	         Kung-Fu show.)

6) The WORMHOLE EFFECT.  What happens when you push a warp drive too hard,
		 too fast?  Shucks, Kirk should have listened to Scotty about
                 those new engines.  This effect was largely done by a friend
		 of mine (one of the few Abel effects that made it into
		 the picture after the big Bru-ha-ha.)

7) Kirk feeling guilty about being an out-of-touch old fogey (when he almost
		 accidently destroys the ship due to lack of knowledge about
		 the new design of the phasers...)

Plus the usual assortment of sexual innuendo (if you're into BALD heads.),
freindly chitchat, and a good helping of Gene's own perverted viewpoint.

-------

Will the movie be good?
SINCE BEFORE YOUR SUN BURNED BRIGHT IN SPACE AND BEFORE YOUR EARTH
WAS FORMED, I HAVE AWAITED ... A QUESTION.
Really?  Gee.  I wonder who was taking dumps all that time.  Well, in any
case the answer is clear.  I do not expect a Science-Fiction triumph.
I do expect a Star Trek triumph -- because ANYTHING having to do with
Star Trek, no matter HOW slocky, would be a success.  I have often said
that many Trekkies would sell any part of their anatomy (YES, ANY part)
for a lost one hour Trek episode (even B&W and third season!)

So all we can do now is sit back, take a deep breath, and hold on. 
There is some consolation in all this.  There will probably be sequels,
and eventually a new TV show (bound to happen when the networks see how
much money the film makes.)  And if they DO make a show, THAT will kill
Trek for good and all.  I just hope there isn't any catchy music -- I
couldn't stand hearing it on every news program like the Star Wars effect.
The music is one thing nobody ever talked about, and we at Abel knew
nothing about it (I THINK I asked Wise about it once, but I don't remember
for sure.)

All that I said above is subject to change by the way, the scripting was
being changed right up to the very last minute and I believe some scenes
were recently re-shot.

Sorry to be so long-winded -- but STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE was a part
of my life for some months, and it has been hard to escape the knowledge
I gained from a look at the "inside".  In any case, have fun, and
may the Trekkies of the world be granted their nirvana.

Live long and poplar.  Uh, Live lone and porcupine.  Hmmm.  Live long
and pester?  Oh to heck with it.

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 7 DEC 1979 2221-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: Yet another comment on Star Trek TMP
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


     The following message was distributed locally at MIT.
I thought some of the rest of you might find it interesting.


LLOYD@MIT-DMS 12/07/79 09:11:47
Re: Startrek, a brief review (medium length)

Shades of 2001! Star Trek was a bit of a letdown. The special effects
were good, albeit not as believable as those used in "Star Wars."

The plot of the story was a bit thin. A combination of '2001 A Space
Odyssey' and the Star Trek episode 'The Changeling' (remember Nomad?),
the story could have been told in one hour. How did they make a one
hour TV episode into a two hour movie? Easy. You get to see a great
deal of the exterior of the Enterprise.

If you are a 'Trekkie' you will probably enjoy the movie; but if
you're not . . . I will let George Takei (Sulu) sum it up. When
asked what he thought of it, he grinned and said,"I'm enjoying
the premier. After all, It is to have a good time at. Right?".


Date:  7 Dec 1979 1952-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Star Trek
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

The special effects, in my opinion, are quite good, and I enjoyed
them.  However..., the script, and its writer Alan Dean Foster, leave
much to be desired. Remember him? He's the one responsible for
serializing the series in paperback. Basically, the whole thing boils
down to a big gimmick, and we know how those are. I'm really shocked
that they would rely on a gimmick.  Other than that, the sense of
humor, some of the dialogues, and the effects are well worth it.
Unfortunately, there are places in the film, supposedly serious, where
the audience is laughing in the aisles. Overall, it's recommended,
but only for historical purposes and an occasional guffaw.
-------

Date:  7 Dec 1979 2046-PST
From: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>
Subject: outstanding Fantasy/Science Fiction bookstore in Palo Alto
To: SF-Lovers at MIT-AI

Future Fantasy, on 2033 El Camino (a couple of blocks "north" of
California St.), opened recently and has an outstanding selection of
Fantasy and SF books.  They have a good selection of Fantasy/SF art
books, and of course the usual calendars, etc.  They also have a
D&D game going on, and are starting a new one in January (I think).

Their hours are 11-9 weekdays, 11-5 Saturday, and 12-5 Sunday.  The
owner is pleasant and knowledgable.

-- Mark --
-------

Date: 8 DEC 1979 0105-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: STAR TREK and Alan Dean Foster
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


     This is a correction to Stuart's message about STAR TREK - TMP,
and a somewhat more explicit condemnation of the work of Foster.

     Alan Dean Foster did not write the series of books that are the
"novelizations" of the episodes of the first STAR TREK television series.
These books are entitled STAR TREK 1, ..., STAR TREK 12, and MUDD'S WOMEN.
STAR TREK 1-11 were written by James Blish. STAR TREK 12 and MUDD'S WOMEN
were begun by Blish, but finished by his wife J. A. Lawrence when he died
of cancer before completing the project. (MUDD'S WOMEN by the way is a
novelization of both episodes about Harcourt Fenton Mudd with some original
material by Blish & Lawrence.) Blish was an excellent science fiction
author (Cities in Flight, A Case of Conscience, Midsummer Century) and did
a careful, craftsmanlike job in adapting the scripts of the television
episodes into short stories. They are not just transcriptions of the
episodes.

     Alan Dean Foster is completely responsible for the series of books
that are the "novelizations" of the episodes of the second STAR TREK
television series, the animated version, which ran on Saturday mornings for
two years. These books are entitled STAR TREK LOG 1, ..., STAR TREK LOG 10.
They are simply transcriptions of those episodes and very little care was
taken about the difficulties in translating between mediums. He also did
the novelization for ALIEN. Further he has also written a STAR WARS novel,
THE SPLINTER OF THE MIND'S EYE. Unlike what is listed above this is not a
novelization of someone else's work. However, here he is still using
characters created by someone else. As in all the things that I have listed
by him, the writing is very poor and shows almost no comprehension of the
characters or their motivations. They are little more than cardboard
cutouts. His writing reminds me very strongly of the pulp science fiction
published in 1930's or 40's but without their virtue of presenting new,
fresh, or interesting ideas. His totally original work (MIDWORLD, the FLAX
series) shows the identical flaws. In short, I think that Alan Dean Foster
is an author to be avoided at all costs.


						Enjoy,
						   Roger

Date: 8 DEC 1979 0119-EST
From: DP at MIT-AI (Jeffrey R. Del Papa)
Subject: star trek the review.
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

This is where the mutterings are. The other file escaped to the mail systm against my wishes.
Plot. not much as expected.
Dialoge. see plot.
Effex. lots of repetition of the same effex, great panorama shots of lots of 
well lit models, and acceptable quanties of sparks, and flashing lights. 
The effex were overemphasised for the few they had. A credit was given to Able for	;
the wormhole, and a credit to DEC for the eqpt.

Other random disorganised comments.
Major form of movie was very short dialouge (30 sec. or so), followed by 5 minuties
of panning around a model or effex . The amount of dialouge would have been 1/3 to 1/2
of a tv show, the effex (time, not quanity) for half a season of the tube. (although
whth the (effex/dialoge) time trend established by b.s galaxitive and such  may of
chnged this.) My wife was bored by the effex vs. plot i sort of expected it.
The theater showed a few breif "seasons greetings" from the pizza joint but thankfully
only about 30  seconds worth. There was no half hour of trailers we were subjected to
by the theater that showed us the life of brian, but i dont see the trend leaving.
Question to Lauren. did Able do the pseudo star wars run to warp or was that the
other placee ?
Oh yes there were star wars reminicent lines forming for the later showings (we went to the 
7:30, these people were in line for the 10 and midnight) (no real line for for the early).
Also the theater wouldnt sell advance tickets no matter which group i misrepresented myself
as.
					draw your own conclusions
						jeff DP@MIT-ML

Date: 7 Dec 1979 2227-PST (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Trek
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

I have yet to go out and see the actual film, though enough information
is beginning to filter down to me for me to make a few preliminary
observations...

1) Alot of the really funny and/or suggestive lines in the film have
   been cut since I was working with the first script.

2) Alot of potentially good sequences were cut (like VEJUR talking -- which
   I guess does not really happen the same way as it did in the first
   script).

3) The wormhole effect (done by a personal friend of mine at Abel) apparently
   came out pretty well.

After I've seen the actual film, I'll compose a more detailed message
comparing Trek as I knew it and Trek as it came out.  Local L.A. people,
ask me sometime to show you my memos and such from Abel -- some of them
are hilarious concerning Trek.

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 7 Dec 1979 2319-PST (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: star trek the review.
In-reply-to: Your message of 8 DEC 1979 0119-EST
To: DP at MIT-AI
CC: SF-LOVERS at AI

I have yet to give Don M. (the guy who did the wormhole) a call today,
but I THINK that that was the only effect they let in from Abel, simply
because they were terribly short on time.  Remember that they poured
in an extra $15 Megabucks to get it out on time  --  a month ago
it still was not finished.  I assume that the star wars type effect
you spoke of was a star "streak" -- that would have been easy for
"Glencoe" to do since it only involves a very simple operation on
the servo controlled camera track.

The Dec computers used were almost all LSI-11's (running RT-11)
at Glenco, and dual 11/60's (running RSTS-E) at Abel (there are also
a bunch of LSI-11's at Abel.)  By thew way, the major reason I quit
Abel when I did was the gigantic hassle over OS's for the 60's.
I was hired to run 2 Unix systems and link them the LSI-11's that
would running the cameras.  The 11's would also handle script and
effect cataloging and actor motion mapping on the set.  After I was
hired, I learned I was actually supposed to be a technical director too,
mapping out camera moves and such for the effex.  I worked on some
of the backround displays for the bridge before Paramount pulled the
money out of the budget for those (they decided they could use stock
type footage for the backrounds and nobody would notice the difference.)
For awhile I was also in charge of developing a "Klingonese" type font
(I brought in a copy of the SAIL Find-A-Font to one meeting I remember).
Another effect I was supposed to do was a "feature" sequence of Spock
using a computer-aided mathematics tablet.  The concept, as I
designed it, was that Spock would be writing on this table with a 
stylis, scribbling out equations and such.  As he finished each element,
the scribbling would reform into nice printed fonts and intermediate
solutions would be forming below them.  It would have been really nice.
But...

By they way, the Evans and Sutherland Picture System now hooked to
the dual 60's at Abel's is being used for many commercials.  One of
the most recent was a calculator commercial where you sort of go
riding across the PC board and the calculator forms in layers in
front of you.  This was shot (a frame at a time) right off the
E&S screen.

It was really strange finding myself in all those meetings.  I couldn't
understand how it all happened -- here I was with at private screenings
with Gene and Wise and all those people -- and I'd hear them talk, and
I'd shudder at some of their comments (Wise kept saying how he had
never watched the show...)

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 8 DEC 1979 0311-EST
From: DLW at MIT-AI (Daniel L. Weinreb)
Subject: Star Trek
To: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY
CC: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

I have mostly refrained from adding my comments to SF-LOVERS, but
having just seen the Star Trek film I feel compelled to send the following.

I was a teen-age Star Trek Fan (essentially), and attended the first
Star Trek convention ever held, and stuff like that.  However, I, for
one, am NOT enthralled by the film, and I hope that your prejudice
against "Trekkies" is not too overwhelming.  In summary, my opinion is
that the special effects were TOO good; I would gladly have sacrificed
80% of them for a better script.  While I do not care for the
Close-Encounters style of gratuitous colors and meaningless (but
"breathtaking") weird colorful scenes, I did think the effects came out
reasonably well on the whole.  Unfortunately, it is the effects that
are being counted on to bring in the throngs and their dearly desired
dollars; it is clear that the plot will have litle to do with the total
net of the film.

The plot is in the dearest old Star Trek tradition; it did almost every
traditional thing that Star Trek scripts did (except for giving Kirk a
girl, an interesting ommision which I will bet high odds will be
rectified in the first sequel).  There is essentially nothing new in
the plot; it is a combination of many old episodes, mostly "The Lights
of Zetar" and "The Changeling", with influence from many others.  I am
not surprised; actually, considering Alan Dean Foster's reputation, I'm
somewhat surprised it even managed to be as good as it was (Duffey's
analysis of Foster is completely correct; the novelizations of the
animated series read far worse than the movie script as shot.)  Gene
Roddenberry has expressed many interesting plot ideas for Star Trek,
none of which were used in this movie.  Lauren, perhaps you could explain
the evolution of the present script; I have heard many conflicting
stories about how there were earlier scripts that were discarded
and things like that.  Do you know anything about this?

The main problem is that Star Trek's new format will be a series of
movies with sequels, and the makers will be interested in cashing in on
the Star Wars/Close Encounters crowd; each movie will have to have
bigger and better effects, and nobody will care too much about the
meaningful, intelligent, adult plots that Gene always said he wanted to
do.  Before Star Trek was plagued by NBC censors; it looks like things
will be almost as bad for the movies, as they will be desparate for "G"
ratings in order to bring in the big bucks.  The movie sneaks in one
"hell" and one "damn"; other than that it is as puritan as anything NBC
let on the air (despite the rowdy sexist leering comments being
screamed by the turkeys in the row behind me whenever the leading male
and female guest stars were shown together).  As you point out, Lauren,
there were very few suggestive lines in the final output; I bet they
were taken out to prevent a PG rating.  (Also, the girl's costume was
nowhere near as good as Bill Theiss could have done... but I digress.)

Your comment about how Wise had never seen the show is surprising--the
direction of many scenes, especially those on the bridge, looked quite
typical of the show.  Perhaps that is the "only" way to shoot it,
though.  The line about "violating your programming", fortunately, did
not make it into the movie anywhere.  But, alas, the punching out of
the computer did.  The old idea of a computer being "infested" seemed
about to emerge (ripped off from the Jack-the-Ripper episode, not to
mention the M-5 episode), but didn't, quite.  Spock's taking off by
himself was done the *last* time they found a giant creature in space
(from yet another episode whose name I can't remember any more--it's
been a long time), but that time they discussed it and decided; this
time Spock takes things into his own hands and nobody even questions
it.  The Klingons were totally gratuitous, and I don't know why they
made them look so different from what they used to look like; I guess
the "new" audience can't handle humaniod bad guys, and require
"monsters".  There was one place where tasteful restraint managed to
get exercised with the effects: they do not close-up on the alien crew
members of the ship in the scene where the crew is gathered together.
But for the most part, the hairy effects actually overwhelm all other
aspects of the film, and this is the worst thing about it.  I realize
that this is the end you were involved with, and I don't mean to be
insulting, but I really think that special effects should not be the
only, or even the most important thing in movies attempting to be
science fiction, and I'm very disappointed by the current trend in that
direction.

This movie does all the required things.  We get to see Spock deliver a
nerve pinch and do some mind melds and struggle to be logical and fail
at it and act emotional; McCoy gets to tell Kirk that he "might be
wrong"; the main ships officers risk their lives unnecessarily; the
control panels STILL don't have fuses and constantly blow up in the
user's faces; and so on.  Now that we have managed to get all that out
of the way, and to get out of the way the tender reunion scenes and the
long, drawn-out (yawn) shots of the new Enterprise, perhaps the sequels
will be able to get down to the business of producing truly new,
original Star Trek episodes, taking advantage of the twin freedoms of
the lack of TV censorship and the non-lack of transfinite funding.
But, as I have said, I think the prospects are not good.

The movie could have been a lot worse, but I had much higher hopes for
it; I've been waiting and hoping for years, but in the past few months
it becamse clear that the developing trend would produce something like
this.  I hope Gene manages to fight out some good plots.  Whatever
happened to Dorothy Fontana?

			With hope for the sequels,
				-- Dan

Date: 8 DEC 1979 0337-EST
From: KLH at MIT-AI (Ken Harrenstien)
Sent-by: KLH0 at MIT-AI
Subject: Aside on Fosters
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

	This isn't about Trek or even movies; maybe this is
bad timing right after everyone in the world has just seen the
latest hollywood exploit(ation) and is dying to stand up and
throw their own public tomato at it, but...
	Once upon a time my too-swift shelf-scanning eyeballs
made no distinction between "Foster, A.D." and "Foster, M.A.".
I'd like to warn others against making the same casual mistake;
while I completely agree that Alan Dean Foster is something of
a turkey, M. A. Foster decidedly is NOT.  I know very little
about the author (not even whether s/he, although I'll bet on she),
but was VERY impressed with "The Gameplayers of Zan" and "The Warriors
of Dawn"; if there are any others, I don't know of them but would
sure like to.
	To repeat: avoid A.D., but pursue M.A.!

--Ken

(P.S. I can't believe anybody would READ the "Star Trek Logs"; in my local
bookstore they are set up too high for 5th graders to reach, and are
too stiff for the outhouse.  As for the "real" series, I was able
to read a few of them but my opinion of Blish was considerably lowered.
Sigh.)

Date: 8 DEC 1979 0410-EST
From: DLW at MIT-AI (Daniel L. Weinreb)
To: KLH at MIT-AI
CC: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

M. A. Foster is named Meg Foster, and she is indeed not EQ to Alan
Dean Foster.

I have not actually read the Star Trek Logs; I picked up one
in a bookstore, read one or two pages, and forgot about them
I remember an argumenbt between McCoy and Spock that ran, essentially,
"nyeahh, nyeahh, you're not logical" and "nyeahh, nyeahh, you're
not emotional" or seomthing; it was stomach-turning.

Date: 8 December 1979 05:19-EST
From: "Richard Kovalcik, Jr." <RK at MIT-MC>
Subject: wanted
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

I am looking for the following two items:

Issue #1, Winter 1978 of Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine
(this is large format, 8-1/2 by 11)

Issue #1 of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology

I have extensively looked for these at used book stores in the SF
area.  They are out of print at the publisher.  I am willing to
pay several dollars each.  Please send me a message if you have
either and are willing to sell it or can tell me where to find
them.  Thanks.

-Rick


Date: 8 Dec 1979 0141-PST (Saturday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: the script: ST:TMP
In-reply-to: Your message of 8 DEC 1979 0410-EST
To: DLW at MIT-AI
CC: SF-LOVERS at AI

Ah yes.  THE script.  When I first started at Abel (April or May
of last year), the Star Trek project was called "Star Trek II"
on all the job sheets.  It took awhile for me to find out that
that was an obsolete name -- it was the code for the new Star
Strek TV show, which was scrapped when Paramount decided to go
for a full-length movie instead (budget: ~$10 Megabucks.)
As I said, Abel was in charge of ALL effects, and more responsibility
was added later -- script control, actor mapping, etc.

The new code for the Trek movie was simply Star Trek (usually referred
to by its job number -- 462.  That was what all my time was billed
to (thusly I was being paid directly by Paramount.)  I was officially
employed by ASTRA Image Corp.  ASTRA was a wholly owned part of Robert
Abel and Associates (A Star Trek Robert Abel corporation) that was
formed just for Trek.  There was tremendous security on the project.
Paramount was super paranoid about having so much going on off the
lot.  The artists area required card keys for entry -- which was
at least impressive.  I used to go up there frequently to talk to
some of the friendly artists (one had worked on BS Galactica before
coming to Abel) and look at the models and storyboards as they
developed (these were small models -- I missed my chance to see the
big ones because I was in NY for a Unix meeting at the time.)

In any case, when I first arrived, there was already a script titled
Star Trek II.  It is unclear what it was for -- but nobody would
let me read it because they "didn't want to contaminate me with ideas
that would NOT be used since the script was completely obsolete."
I could have pushed the issue (or just lifted the script during lunch)
but I never bothered.  The first copies of the new ACT I (for ST:TMP)
appeared about a month after I started.  I remember that Con Pederson
(a really neat guy -- he was one of the technical directors for 2001)
got one of the first copies.  I borrowed it from him and read it before
he or anyone else at Able did!  I was not used to reading scripts and
it was hard to picture with almost every scene requiring opticals,
blue screen, or other effects.  On the other hand, I am so familiar
with the characters that you can exactly picture the inflection and
intonation of the actors for a given line.  (By the way, I am not
anti-Trekkie -- just a little burned out on Trek -- but it would have
happened to anyone -- I just don't think the whole thing is THAT
good -- the show was good for its time -- the best on TV -- of course.)

Along with the scripts were various plot summaries and synopsies.
Many of these were probably integrated into the book versions of the
film.  My first response upon reading ACT I was rather depressing.
It just seemed SO MUCH like TV -- it could have been so much more.
I remember that Con got real depressed and stopped talking about
completely.  Everyone was real upset being real hard core
Science-Fiction types -- we had had such high hopes.  There were
some provactive lines that apparently did not make it into the film.
For exactly, when Illya enterers the bridge the first time, she said,
"I would never take advantage of a sexually immature species such as
yours" when asked about her celibacy oath.  I am told that this
did not make it in.  McCoy makes a comment about extra-curricular
activities when the android appears in his shower (did this make
it in?)  The tranporter malfunction was originally scripted as
a fight between the enterprise and VEJUR -- VEJUR wins (but
YUCHHH!) 

About a month later, ACT II showed up.  Once again I read through it
first.  It had been combined with ACT I and while ACT I was supposed
to be the same as before, I found some confusing changes that were
very important.  For example, there was a scene where Kirk trys
to be chummy with Spock when he comes on the ship -- and Spock rebuffs
with this bit about only performing his duties and not having any other
contact with humans.  In one version, Kirk shrugs his shoulders and
leaves.  In the other, he gets mad at Spock.  I never knew which one
was the "right" one.  Seems like a rather major difference to me!
Thank goodness that the "violating your programming" line didn't make
it in.  

ACT III never seemed to show up.  Just before I left ASTRA, about 10
pages of it had appeared.  After I left, friends kept me informed about
what was going on.  It appeared that the third act was being changed about
every 2 days ... every other page was a different color (different 
revisions have different colors.)  At one point, I heard that Asimov had
been called in to save it, but I never heard the details on that.
In any case, it appears that the basic plot concepts in the summaries 
were correct (including the ending from what I've heard.)

Let's face it , the plot was TV.  And you know what?  I hear people talk
all the time about Gene maintaining control to make it good, etc.
If you heard that guy talk you wouldn't say that.  I remember one of
his defenses for the ROUND viewscreens when ASTRA complained about them
(after I made a big deal about how STUPID they were) was that they
were "unique" -- no recent Science-Fiction movie had ROUND screens.
Sheeeeeeee.  

I think Wise watched a few episodes on tape eventually -- so that could
explain the bridge shots.  I do recall alot of arguing about the bridge.
There ARE only so many ways to do bridge shots -- especially with 
a BIG screen.  How do you handle a round bridge with that kind of
field-of-view.  

Here is a copy of a memo I received on 11-May-78 ...

(Thought you might find it amusing...)

					             FXLOG2  11-MAY-78
					             Con Pederson

    STAR TREK PRELIMINARY EFFECTS TESTS

	   BASIC CATAGORIES

The initial testing for both feature effects
and readouts should be confined as much as possible
to Camera II (28mm) [jobdat 28C2.160].

Using RT-11 file names for this phase, the
following form should be used to avoid conflict
with commercial job numbers (numerals) or user 
programming and data (letters): FILNAM.1AA --
in this "numeralphic" extension AA is a two-letter
mnemonic representing a test category.

Establish categories:

	PHASER FIRE		1PF
	WHIPLASH FORCE		1WF
	WARP EFFECTS		1WP
	WORMHOLE EFFECTS	1WH
	FORCE FIELDS		1FF
	VEJUR ISOMORPHS		1VI
	DISPLAY (READOUTS)	1DS
	LUMINOUS CLOUD		1LC

Color film chould be sent to MGM.  Normal daily
ligh: 26-26-26.  DO NOT USER THE NAME 'STAR TREK'
ANYWHERE ON THIS MATERIAL.  Use a code name in lieu
of Production title.  Example: 'Readout" fiom should
be coded 'Salad Bar'.  Other subjects can refer to
'Astra Tests'.  More esoteric code will be forthcoming.



-----

I should be able to say alot more after I've seen the film, but I
am not going to rush out.  As I say, only the Whiplash force was
from Abel as far as I know.  (MAYBE the transporter come to think
of it, I'll have to call someone to find out...at least I knew
the guy who was working on it at one time...)  The colors and
such in space was always in the plan -- the idea was to persent
the massiveness and formlessness of VEJURE as flowing energy.  I always
thought it would be kinda silly.  

I'm tired of typing and already have no doubt made many typos, but
I am not going to bother editing it.  I seem to have gotten about
four more messages while typing this, and we can GUESS what they
are about...

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 8 DEC 1979 1322-EST
From: CSTACY at MIT-MC (Christopher C. Stacy)
Subject: It will still roll in the $$ tho...
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

Beleive it or not, I have actually heard a few hard-core
Trekkies  complain about TMP; it seems they arent impressed
by pretty lights and all either, when the plot is so sorry!
I actually saw someone in a Star Trek uniform use the word
"disapointed"! By the way, remember NOMAD's favorite climactic
expression?
   "ERROR..ERROR Errrrrerrr...."
Lauren was right; they did draw from NOMAD heavily.

Ahead,warp factor one
Chris
------


Date: 8 December 1979 19:23-EST
From: "James Lewis Bean, Jr." <BEAN at MIT-MC>
Subject: Star Trek  The Movie
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

	The movie is exactly what it was expected to be.
Zap a Star Trek Episode stretched out for 2 hours.  The
Effects are Quite good!  But the plot is not. In my opinion
the movie is as good as star wars but there is more money
here and I think that it shows.  The movie is definitely
worth watching so go see it.  

		Enjoy,
		Bean at Mit-Mc


Date: 8 DEC 1979 2052-EST
From: GRAND at MIT-AI (Mark D. Grand)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

	Is it not truly amazing how much activity is generated when a
movie such as this "Star Trek" is released? Does noone read? I 
do not normally contribute much to this mailing list because
writing nayural language is not something that I find particularly
enjoyable. There are many of you out there, so it is apparent
from the volume of correspondence, who do not mind expressing
themselves in writing. Yet when you finish a good are you all
silent?
	I realize that not as many people have a particulaqr
book in common. But for those of you who do read the things, I
ask you to write and share your enjoyment (or perhaps displeasure)
with others. While there is obviously something to be said for
discussion of a topic common to most, is there not also a sense
of satisfaction to be gained from persuading others to follow
your literary tastes? 

				-- Mark Grand --

Date: 8 Dec 1979 2046-PST
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-KA
Subject: Re: Star Trek  The Movie
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow
To: BEAN at MIT-MC
Cc: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC
Message-ID: <[SRI-KA] 8-Dec-79 20:46:05.GEOFF>
In-Reply-To: Your message of 8 December 1979 19:23-EST
Reply-to: Geoff @ SRI-KA

I thought the movie was "hokey", and wanted to throw up, but
instead sat thru it and laughed (out loud) thru the "serious
moments" of the movie along with other people in the place.

I think comparing the movie against star wars is like comparing
the Prisoner Series and Green Acres, (i.e.  Apples and oranges).

Yes, go see it, but don't go in expecting much, except to see a
few gimmicks, and not much more.


Sender: Kiessig at Rand-Unix
Date:  8 Dec 1979 at 2130-PST
To: sf-lovers at Ai
From: Kiessig at Rand-UNIX (Rick Kiessig)
Subject: "Star Beast"

	No, I am not commenting on Star Trek.

        I just finished reading "Star Beast" by Robert Heinlein.  I thought
the book was very enjoyable.  It had more than Heinlein's usual share of
humor in it, and was very easy reading.  I dislike huge messages, so I
won't say anything else about the book other than it was fairly typical of
early Heinlein and that it would probably make an excellant G-rated film.
I will be happy to say more to those who are interested.

Date:  9 December 1979 15:49 est
From:  Sibert.SysMaint at MIT-Multics
Subject:  ST: TMP
To:  sf-lovers at MIT-AI

Here is yet another opinion: It was, indeed, "hokey". I laughed out
loud. I felt cheated -- after all, I've seen this episode before (The
Changeling).  The effects were technically good; that is, well executed.
However, most of them were simply not appropriate, at least not for a
movie made after 1955.  Somethins I found particularly hokey was the
noise (something like hitting an oil drum with a soft mallet) that kept
getting played whenever VEJUR appeared.... twanging the chord of cosmic
consciousness, I guess.

Although I had plenty of warning, I was still appalled at how little
actual plot/dialogue was present -- the movie was maybe 60 percent views
of effects. What plot was present seemed in keeping with Mr. Foster's
earlier work.

Go see it, I guess. It's pretty; it's elegant. It's also entirely devoid
of thought provoking content, and remember: you've probably already seen
this episode.

Date: 9 DEC 1979 1546-EST
From: TENSOR at MIT-MC (Richard Pavelle)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

Re: STAR TREK
Whats going on out there? I thought the movie was superb. So did my 
children. While a bit slow at first it builds to an exciting end.
The effects were great and my only complaint concerns the use of
shuttles and individual jet packs along with the transporter; it
seems silly. The film may very well be better next time I see it.
So foo on the rest of you.

Date: 9 Dec 1979 1336-PST (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: comparisons
In-reply-to: Your message of 9 DEC 1979 1546-EST
To: TENSOR at MIT-MC
CC: SF-LOVERS at MC

I think the effect (no pun intended) that we are seeing is one of
"comparisons".  People are tending to compare the movie with the
Trek they know from the tube, and, predictably, they are generally
giving the effects a plus and the plot/character development a minus.

I suspect the obvious resemblance to the Nomad "Changling" episode
is what is disturbing alot of people -- it just isn't a completely
new creative effort...

--Lauren--
-------



Date:  9 Dec 1979 1344-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Re: comparisons
To: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY, TENSOR at MIT-MC
Cc: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC
In-reply-to: Your message of 9-Dec-79 1336-PST

Also, one of the main faults I find with it is that many of the scenes
were merely put in, or so it seems, to show an effect. The transporter
scene is one. 
-------


Date: 9 DEC 1979 1656-EST
From: SLH at MIT-AI (Stephen L. Hain)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

The next NEWCONN Comic Book & Science Fiction convention is Jan. 6 at the
Sheraton - just a reminder.

Date: 9 Dec 1979 1402-PST (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Re: comparisons
In-reply-to: Your message of  9 Dec 1979 1344-PST
To: McLure at SRI-KL
CC: SF-LOVERS at MC

By the way, given the murky past of the project, the effex/plot ratio
is probably a clear result of the massive influx of money that was
used to get the project out on time.  With enough money, you can hire
enough people and buy enough equipment to get effex done -- but buying
creativity in scripts and stories is something else again -- it's a little
harder to contract out for stuff like that!

--Lauren--
-------



Date: 9 Dec 1979 3:19 pm (Sunday)
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
From: Richard R. Brodie <Brodie.PA>
Subject: Star Trek
To: Movie Lovers <Movie^>
Cc: Science Fiction Masochists <SF^>
Reply-To: Brodie.PA

	Where, Oh Where, Has No Man Gone Before?

"Star Trek:  The Motion Picture"
At the Palo Alto Square Theater
Rated G

Christmas is a happy time:  a time for remembering friendships, for renewing old
aquaintances, and for feeling that, despite the change and uncertainty
surrounding us, tradition and memories can remain permanent, warm and secure
in the firm embrace of our childhood hearts.

Christmas is a sad time:  it is a season of disappointment, of unfulfilled
expectations; often the Yule brings with it a tide of letdown which threatens to
make us drown ourselves in anxiety and nog.

Break out the Saurian brandy and toast the coming.

It is not fair to review "Star Trek:  The Motion Picture" as a movie; perhaps a
more appropriate title would be "Star Trek:  The First Two-Part Episode of the
Upcoming Second Television Series."  Or it might be that producer Gene
Roddenberry had "The Tonight Show, Starring Star Trek" on his mind--a show
in which the obligatory lines--"But Cap'n!  There's no way I can have the ship
ready in 12 hours!"; "All subspace frequencies are jammed, Captain"; "He may be
right, Jim."; "Fascinating."; and, of course, "Damn!"--replace Johnny's "It was so
big . . ."

The picture makes no attempt to win its audience over; instead, it rests on the
(reasonable) premise that the audience has seen all three seasons of "Star Trek"
episodes,  knows the characters which, surprisingly enough, have not changed
significantly over the years, and expects everything to be the same.  In this, the
film succeeds tremendously.  Sulu (George Takei), Chekhov (Walter Koenig),
Uhuru (Nichelle Nichols), McCoy (DeForest Kelley), and Scott (James Doohan)
have not changed in the least from the way we left them in "Turnabout
Intruder" 12 years ago.  In fact, they have no excuse for still being there, setting
course, firing phasers, opening hailing frequencies, distrusting the transporter,
and fixing the eternally-imbalanced warp engines.  They all have unforgivably
small roles in the film.

As a matter of fact, everyone has an unforgivably small role in the film.  That's
not particularly surprising, however, since the film has an unforgivably thin
plot, pieced together from many episodes of the old television series.  The major
characters in the story are Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy),
Commander Willard Decker (Stephen Collins), and the raven-eyebrowed Deltan,
Illya (Persis Khambatta).  Shatner is the same as ever, holding up well under the
strain of his responsibility for not only the 430 men and women aboard the
Enterprise, but also the entire population of the Earth.  Nimoy's performance as
Spock is excellent, and his struggle between logic and human emotion actually
seems to take on a new light here.  Unfurtunately, it is  the only part of the
movie which could possibly be regarded as character development.

Collins's Decker is a perfectly two-dimensional rendition of the melancholy
Jaques's "lover," sighing on cue "like furnace" and making throughought the
film a passably woeful ballad to his mistress's scalp.  Khambatta played the only
other interesting character in the film, Illya, as well as could be done
considering the pressure the entire cast must have been under to keep the
audience's attention focused on the Trek gestalt rather than on the subject of the
picture.  Jerry Goldsmith's musical score is neither offensive nor terribly
innovative, and even uses the old theme we remember from the Enterprise stock
shot on TV.

The film tells the tale of a token entity (Kirk:  "There's a . . . a thing out there." 
McCoy:  "Why is it that whenever there's something out there we don't
understand, we always call it a 'thing'?") heading straight for the third planet in
the star system Sol.  The Enterprise is the only ship near enough to intercept it. 
There are a couple of token Klingons at the beginning of the film, for some
reason.  They don't look like Klingons used to look like, for some other reason. 
At any rate, Admiral Kirk persuades Star Fleet that, in light of his experience,
he should resume command of NCC-1701, which happens to be in dry dock
directly above San Francisco.  Decker, current captain of the starship, doesn't
like that, leading to a token confrontation with Kirk.  The token Vulcan dies in
a token transporter malfunction, leaving the way open for--now it won't spoil
the surprise, will it?--Spock to resume his position as science officer.

Now that all of that was taken care of in the first half hour of the movie, the
way was paved for a good, meaty Trek episode.  Unfortunately, the middle hour
of the movie is aerated by spectacular special effects taken far to excess,
replacing possible sub-plots and complications.  We lose interest in this menacing
"Vejur," who seems to be friendly anyway.  We are not interested in hearing
about those places where no SHIP has gone before.  The carbon-based units are
important to us.  Besides, the Earth is too big a stake to gamble with.  Is there
any doubt of the outcome?

"Star Trek:  The Motion Picture" is not a bang-up, shoot-em-out western like
"Star Wars."  It isn't a mysterious, wonderous film with the human drama of
"Close Encounters."  It isn't thrilling and scary, as "Alien" was.  It is 15 years of
the lives of two million people crystalized by a race called the Kelvin into a
small white dodecahedron.

Yet for a Star Trek fan, there is scarcely a boring moment in the movie.  And
the last five minutes, which correspond to the typical TV "stinger" after the last
commercial, will send tendrils of warmth through anyone who has a special
place in his heart for the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise.  It is 1967 and NBC has
announced that, due to pressure brought to bear on Star Fleet by Admiral James
Tiberius Kirk, Star Trek will not be cancelled after all.  After 12 years in dry
dock, the Enterprise, pride of the fleet, is back in action.  And we are ready to
start hearing about its new adventures.


Date: 9 DEC 1979 1911-EST
From: ACHAR at MIT-MC (Alan B. Char)
Subject: Star Trek and others (very long)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

I saw Star Trek and was sort of disappointed for much the same
reasons and others.  However, in the subject of comparisons, I
think that comparing the movie to the series is a legitimate
exercise in that the whole idea should have been based on that.
A lot of consistency was lost between the series and the movie,
which is a little disconcerting.  For example, the odd-looking
Klingons.  And why did photon torpedoes look different?  And
the distinctly BSG/Buck Rogers type Warp Accerleration.  And why
were Decker and Kirk wearing blue tunics instead of gold ones?
And didn't decker have a red one in the series (placing him in
the wrong chain of command to captain a starship)?  Or maybe I
am remembering the same actor in another role (I've not watched
the reruns for quite a while).  The 'gimmick' at the end was
definitely a downer.  More on consistency, the transporters
not only looked different, but I think the old ones seemed
much cleaner.  Where would the column of blue come from if they
were transporting to a planet or something?  By the way, the
scene in San Francisco looked grossly fake and could have
easily been left out.  Also, the starship dock was singular in 
purpose.  It looked as if its only purpose was to house a starship.
Considering how commonplace space travel is supposed to be then,
the effect is like designing a special airport for 747's.  Also,
considering the nature of starship missions, how often would the 
silly things be used?  The scene of the shuttle circling the
enterprise to show-off typical Dykstra exercises in perspective
was boring.  All in all, I agree with the evaluation that the
movie was simply a two-hour episode with typical Star Trek 
traditions upheld.  We should have seen more of McCoy, Uhura,
Sulu, Chekov, Chapel.  The only characters that were sort of
explored were Kirk, Decker, and Spock.

Others involves Two books I have recently read by Theodore
Sturgeon.  A recent novel called 'More than Human'  (I think
it's recent, I could be mistaken).  I am beginning to become
another devoted Sturgeon fan.  I liked the short stories in
'The Golden Helix' a lot.  It was quite a diverse gathering,
showing what an excellent writer Sturgeon is.  There were
serious thought-provoking stories, and fun off-the-wall stories,
and all combinations inbetween.

Here is another plug for Quantum Science Fiction... The ones 
which I have read, all excellent are:
	The Ophiuchi Hotline, John Varley
	The Persistence of Vision, John Varley
	Stardance, Spider and Jeanne Robinson
	The Far Call, Gordon R. Dickson (I think)
	Kinsman, Ben Bova
I think that was it.  For those of you who, like me, read the
excerpt in OMNI and thought Kinsman sort of thin, let me reassure
you that the novel is MUCH more interesting, which is why I
refrain from reading excerpts from novels in magazines.  (I
didn't know that Kinsman was an excerpt, because I was so
interested in reading Ben Bova -- try Millenium and The Multiple
Man -- that I didn't read the heading or italic stuff.  Now I
know better.)

Yes, I would like to here more about books, but I don't mind
reading about Star Trek:  The Motion Picture, either.

				Alan


Date: 9 DEC 1979 1934-EST
From: ZIM, YEKTA at MIT-MC
Sent-by: ZIM at MIT-MC
Subject: too many long (LONG) messages sent to this list
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

Wouldn't it be better to send pointers to long files, instead of the
long messages themselves?    

Date: 9 DEC 1979 2100-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: A Correction and Commentary on ACHAR's Missive
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


Some brief (?) notes:

     1. In my recent tirade against A. D. Foster, I mentioned
        the 13th Star Trek novelization by Lawrence. The name
        of that book is Mudd's Angels, not Mudd's Women. Mudd's
        Women is the name of the first Mudd episode (take it any
        way you like it) and the first section of the book.

     2. Concerning Alan's message: More Than Human is not new,
        its old and considered a classic in its original form
        as a novella. The novella comprises about 1/3 of the
        novel. To read the unpadded novella, see the Science
        Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 2, edited by Bova.

     3. Again concerning Alan's message: Bova has been writing
        about Chet Kinsman, the main character of KINSMAN and
        MILLENIUM, for a long time. The novel KINSMAN is based
        on the earlier, shorter work about Kinsman. It is an
        excellent piece of writing, since the novel does not
        read like a collection. Also note that KINSMAN is a
        prequel to MILLENIUM. Note that you should read them
        in order if you can, otherwise a great deal of the
        suspense in KINSMAN will be lost.

     4. Yet again concerning Alan's message: THE FAR CALL was
        indeed written by Gordon Dickson. However, I did not
        care for it very much. It is a message novel regarding
        the politics surrounding the first joint-international
        manned Mars mission. The premise is that the mission
        has been overloaded with so much work that the mission
        and the astronauts themselves are in danger. Further,
        the governments cannot/will not do anything because of
        their delicately balanced political interests. The story
        is focussed around the efforts of the person coordinating
        the US part of the mission to get the mission changed. Of
        course his warnings go unheeded. Now add to this a very
        convenient hardware problem, which of course engenders a
        coverup on the part of the manufacturer. Now add a very
        convenient solar flare and some idiotic grandstand heroics
        on the part of the crew. There is an intriguing subplot
        about the security surrounding the mission with a superbly
        drawn characterization of an amoral security guard. However,
        that is all too little to save this novel. All together,
        it is a horribly contrived novel which presents its basic
        message of "Politics is EVIL" with much too heavy a hand.
        Avoid it. But if you fail that compare it with MILLENIUM,
        which has a similar message, but is done in a much more
        entertaining manner.

						Enjoy,

						   Roger

Date:  9 Dec 1979 1759-PST
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: NOT about ST: TMP   (short message)
To:   SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC
cc:   DOLATA


It's vacation time, and a lot of us will have a little time to
do some of those enjoyable things in life, rahter than troll
for tests.   May I suggest that Fantasy fans will find a truely
great book in Diane Duanes 'Door Into Fire'.   This is Duanes
first book, and I EARGERLY look forward to seeing more.  Her
description of a magical system is very different from the
run of the mill mummble gesture whizz bang,  and is a very
refreshing change.

P.S.  For those of you composing messages, please remember us
people with small screens, and keep your lines short??

Dan Dolata @ UC Santa Cruz
-------


Date: 09 Dec 1979 2012-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: long messages 
To:   zim at MIT-MC
CC:   sf-lovers at MIT-MC  

What's wrong with sending the long messages?  It's a helluvalot more
convenient for me to read through them than to TELNET to some other
site to lok at a file, even assuming that the sender's site permits
reading of files without an account (PARC doesn't, for instance).
The only disadvantage I can see in sending the messages is that it
uses more disk space up until people read and (presumably) delete
their copies, and I think this is better than wasting people's time
net-hopping.  If you're complaining about having to read the long
messages, well, nobody's forcing you to.  Feel free to delete them
from your mail file without reading them.

On the other hand, reading extra messages like this one can get
tiresome.  I sent this to the entire list so that anybody else who
was planning to argue the point can refrain.  If anybody wants to
debate it further, please restrict the mail to ZIM and myself.




Date:  9 Dec 1979 2134-PST
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Allen Dean Foster
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-MC


It is with GREAT trepidation that I type this message, I can
imagine the response (and reputation ) I might get, but....

In my experiance ADF almost could be two authors.  I agree
with all that has been said about the Star Trek Logs, Alien,
Splinter of the Minds Eye, etc.  However, I read ADF's other
books first,  Icerigger, Midworld, Tar-Ayim Krang, etc. and
found them to be good solid SF mind-rot.  Not great, but
a way to spend a boring wait in the dentists office (for example).
(I can hear the mob calling for my blood already)  

It seems that when ADF is working on other peoples stories, char-
acters, ideas, etc.,  he produces something which is pure drivel.
However, when given the chance to work on his own ideas, they
are not bad.   In a way I can understand that, for I am much the
same way.  When hacking somebody elses code, I get the job done,
and could hardly care less.   But my own code, ah the efforts I
go to.

Thus, the moral of this message,  if you are feeling adventurous,
you might try one of ADF's original books, but avoid his
re-works and takeoffs like the4 plague.

-------


DLW@MIT-AI 12/10/79 01:28:07 Re: STAR TREK (17 line message)
To: TENSOR at MIT-MC, SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC
I think our main objection is that we expected much higher quality. Are
you a science fiction reader?  Consider the better works of (to pick a
few) LeGuin, Niven, Pohl, Varley, or Brunner (people, please don't send
me mail telling me who I left out!); it is possible to do interesting,
meaninful, consistent, significant, and mature science fiction, but we
have to see 40 megabucks thrown into hairy effects for the mere purpose
of supporting a totally unoriginal Star Trek script without any
improvement over the TV series.  They could have done ORDERS OF
MAGNITUDE better.

Having the aliens call the humans "carbon-based units" is silly and
typical of the SF of long ago; it is on par with assuming that all
robots have blinking lights and go "beep beep" a lot.  It is suitable
for space opera (e.g. Star Wars) but not serious SF; we were hoping
Star Trek could become the latter.  (Besides, if VEJUR knows everything
in the universe (and managed to lean English), he could communicate
better than that; and if he knows so much, why can't he read his own...
oh, foo.)  That is why I, for one, am complaining.



Date: 10 DEC 1979 1423-EST
From: MARG at MIT-AI (Margaret Minsky)
Subject: Roddenberry's role 
To: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY
CC: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

You mentioned that you had been present in many meetings about the
movie with Roddenberry. Since the movie appears to be very close in
scope to a mediocre Trek episode, and since Roddenberry has for
several years spoken of dreams of making something much better that
would deal with controversial issues in deep ways - there is an
obvious question about how the contradiction came about. Some of the
reasons have been discussed in this forum, but I am interested to know
whether Roddenberry himself failed because he was beset by demands,
rivalries, problems, or because what was presented was fundamentally
satisfactory to him and the best he could do at deep controversial
issues. He talked very intelligently and creatively in public
lectures, but at this point any alien being I meet will visit Stanley
Kubrick but not Gene Roddenberry.

						-margaret

Date: 10 DEC 1979 1449-EST
From: ACHAR at MIT-MC (Alan B. Char)
Subject: More than Human
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

Thanks to all that corrected me about More than Human.
I'm sort of a semi-serious (avidly interested but not
obsessed) Science Fiction reader, so I tend to get
details like that confused.  By the way, if people
are interested in VERY light science fiction/fantasy
parody, I recommend "The Flying Sorcerers" by David
Gerrold and Larry Niven.   It's pretty funny if you
don't expect too much from it.  Thanks again for
setting me straight.  --Alan Char


Date: 10 Dec 1979 12:20 pm (Monday)
From: Sapsford at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Crompton Divided
To: SF.dl^

I just finished Robert Sheckley's "Crompton Divided", and in the
spirit of "not ST: TMP", send this review:

I like my SF plots to be believable, and NOT end with a giant
gimmick.  Unfortunately, after letting his plot get completely out
of control in the last twenty pages of the book, Sheckley pulls a
giant gimmick out of the bag to rescue our hero.  I was pissed!
Apart from that, I found the book barren of both good ideas and
characters.  A couple of interesting premises that hinted at a
coherent and interesting "world view" were never developed,
and the characters are completely one dimensional.  This one
gets a C-.

P.S. To M.A. Foster fans: there is a new one out called "Day
of the Klesh" or some such.


Date: 10 Dec 1979 1448-PST (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Roddenberry's role 
In-reply-to: Your message of 10 DEC 1979 1423-EST
To: MARG at MIT-AI
CC: SF-LOVERS at AI

That is a very tough question.  Somehow, alot of people seemed convinced
that the story was actually alot more "heady" than we seem to think
it was.  The drama of the machine intelligence (ala the Berserkers),
the new conflicts with emotion faced by Spock, etc.  When I read it,
I immediately thought of the Changling and my first comments were that
it sounded like it was written for TV and was not terribly original.
MOST people at Abel (especially Con) agreed.  But there was no such
feeling at Paramount -- who were continually hassling us about everything.
For awhile there were even some people wearing buttons that said
"Paramount is a Klingon Conspiracy" -- which no doubt did not make them
any happier with us.  There was at least one Paramount "spy" in the
organization whose job it was to keep reporting back to the lot.  It was
generally known who he was however.

Gene seemed to be completely committed to the plot as it existed, and I
THINK he was enthralled by the possibilities of vastly improved effects
on the big screen more than anything else.  The old comparison problem
once again.  I know that Abel people (including me) were not quiet
about voiceing our displeasure at certain script elements and 
technical details (like round viewscreens) but we were generally ignored.
The overall opinion from Paramount seemed to be that these things did not
matter -- the movie would make money no matter HOW BAD it was.  That's one
nice? thing about movies -- you never really know how GOOD they COULD
have been.  How much of this attitude was shared by Gene or how much
he was simply resigned to I cannot estimate.  As I say, most of his
interest seemed to be specific effex.  I remember a screening of
"Forbidden Planet" where he and Wise were talking about how the vast effects
of the Krell machine would be good for Vejur, and I've already mentioned
how he thought the round screens would be "unique..."

Who can say?

--Lauren--
-------


DP@MIT-ML 12/11/79 23:33:47 Re: st tmp local (non net) impressions
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

"they had all these neat effects, why should they clutter it up
with a plot"

"they only fired one photon torpedo, and they didnt even try the phasers
how dissapointing"

"it looked like it needed commercials .... and there WERE places for them"

"It was a second season 45 minuite show streched to two hours"

"oh well i suppose i can afford to have wasted four  bucks"

most of these comments came from a general discussion of the film at
the last buisness meeting of NESFA, a show of hands showed over half
of aprox. 30 had seen it, several after advance warning.
				there were other comments
				but i will forget them
					jeff (dp@mit-ml)

ps comments attributed to jeff, someone from work, brons, jim, and dave (our
local self proclaimed member of the klingon diplomatic corps.)


Date: 12 Dec 1979 at 1515-PST
From: greep at SU-ISL
Subject: Books
To: GRAND at MIT-AI
cc: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Books?  I don't know about back east, but I don't think the California
schools bother to teach reading any more.  Now, when new books start
to be serialized as messages to the SF-LOVERS list, things will be
different...
-------

Date: 12 Dec 1979 1746-PST (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Books
In-reply-to: Your message of 12 Dec 1979 at 1515-PST
To: greep at SU-ISL
CC: SF-LOVERS at AI

RE: new books serialized as messages...

Anyone got a good optical scanner out there?
(Ouch, my copyrights hurt...)

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 13 DEC 1979 0324-EST
From: RMS at MIT-AI (Richard M. Stallman)
Subject: "Captain, there's a giant bug chasing the Enterprise"
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

"That's not a bug; that's a Vejur".


Date: 14 Dec 1979 2144-PST
From: Wrs at OFFICE-2
Subject: YATL: Yet Another Trek Letter
To:   SF-lovers at AI
cc:   wrs

Date: 14 Dec 1979 1042-PST
From: Gnome@MIT-AI
Subject: YATL: Yet Another Trek Letter

A couple of things that no one seems to have mentioned about
the Trek movie (that bothered me) were...

1) The Enterprise's computer seems to have gotten a magnitude
   less intelligent than in many eppisodes. ie: The "WARNING-WARNING"
   droning through some of the most 'action-packed' (arf) scenes 
   seemed reminscent of the robot in Lost In Space -- most uncool.

2) The total lack of the constant purring and beeping of the innards
   of the bridge.  Even though the music was evidently
   supposed to cover little details like that, the missing sound
   effects help the already two-dimensional dialogue fall even
   flatter...

Missing continuity...

3) Why doesn't the new transporter have the same safeguards as the
   old ones -- in past eppisodes, they had used a feature
   of the transporter to restor their good looks; it always
   stores the physical characteristics at both ends -- so no one gets caught
   in between.

4) The Klingons (need I say more?)

5) With all the supposed changes in the ship, why didn't they put fuses
   into their equipment after having it burn up every time
   any "alien power" sneezed?

In short:
Lots of pretty colors and nice model-shots, but...
Where is the story?

-------

Date: 14 Dec 1979 2203-PST (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: YATL: Yet Another Trek Letter
In-reply-to: Your message of 14 Dec 1979 2144-PST
To: Wrs at OFFICE-2
CC: SF-LOVERS at AI

I think they bought all their equipment from Irwin Allen.

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 14 Dec 1979 2223-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Black Hole
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

Does anyone have any technical knowledge of 'The Black Hole' and
when it will be released and what sort of distribution is planned?
-------

Date: 15 Dec 1979 0216-PST (Saturday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Black Hole
In-reply-to: Your message of 14 Dec 1979 2223-PST
To: McLure at SRI-KL
CC: sf-lovers at ai

My current information is that Black Hole release has been delayed.
How long?  I dunno.  A friend of mine was contracted to do a large
portion of the model effects, and had his work rejected at the last
minute.  There is quite an argument brewing now about the money
Disney "owes" him.  All of those effects will have to be redone.

I believe that distribution will be fairly typical -- use Trek as a
guide since it will probably be the pattern for future Science-
Fiction releases, for purely economic reasons.

As you no doubt are aware, Black Hole concerns a starship trapped
in orbit around a singularity (that is, a black hole).  If ** I **
were doing this movie, I would have had the ship trapped for many
years, and some warped, perverted, coninuous orgy of existence would
have developed (sigh, the old "Starlost" idea had such possibilities
as well [remember: "May I be of ... assistance?"]).  However, since
this IS a Disney production, the plot is much more tame.  I do
not have high hopes.  But, there are glimmerings for other flicks
in the future -- some good and some bad.  More later...

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 15 Dec 1979 1615-PST
From: HARUKA at SRI-KL
Subject: Some more about Trek
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

I find it interesting that nobody said anything the voice of the
ship computer changing sex...I believe it used to be female...
and it used to sound less mechanical.

I agree that they should not have changed the Klingons so drastically,
but I've thought of a possible reason:  There has been some political
pressure internationally about the fact that many alien 'bad guys'
(who are humanoid) tend to have physical characteristics that make
them appear somewhat Slavic...I guess they figured that if they make
the Klingons no longer look so human, they could get around any such
complaint.

I found the Spock-McCoy dialogues as humorous as ever, although there
is a tendency to use the same sort of lines all the time.  What I
thought was the funniest line in the movie came from Kirk when he
was saying that what Vejur lacked was 'the human ability to transcend
logic.'  The entire theater cracked up on that one.

All in all though, it wasn't such a bad movie for just sitting back,
enjoying and not thinking about anything.  The visuals were good
but somewhat overdone...especially with the Fantastic Voyage type
journey towards the center of Vejur...that scene was much too long.

Haruka
-------

Date: 15 Dec 1979 1702-PST
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-KA
Subject: Re: Some more about Trek
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow
To: HARUKA at SRI-KL
Cc: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
Message-ID: <[SRI-KA]15-Dec-79 17:02:07.GEOFF>
In-Reply-To: Your message of 15 Dec 1979 1615-PST
Reply-to: Geoff @ SRI-KA

Speaking of the computer's voice, didn't it remind you (when
you heard it the first time) of Colossus (the Forbin Project)
revisited? It sure did to me,... but after the first interaction
the voice seemed to change to not so so much like Colossus...

Anyone else think so?


Date: 16 Dec 1979 (Sunday) 0234-EDT
From: WESTFW at WHARTON (William Westfield)
Subject: 2 BOOK REVIEWS  (ABOUT 23 LINES ?)
To:   SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

All:

The Two Faces of Tomorrow, by James Hogan, is a book which attempts
to answer the question "what will a self-aware computer think about
humans". The idea is to equip a computer with a survival instinct,
and then see whether you can still turn it off. The book has three
relatively distinct sections: section 1 contains some good AI stuff,
section 2 is big on action, and section 3 has the philosophy. All in
all, a good, but not great book (water it down and it would make an
"excellent" movie by todays standards : lots of room for efex.) BTW:
The book contains an acknowledgemment thanking Marvin Minsky, of
MIT-AI for his "help and advice".

KRONK is a book I read a LONG time ago, and is best described as
light SF. It contains little science, and I dont remember whether
the ending was depressing or upbeat. The book deals with A NEW
strain of VD, which, amoung other things, causes an inhibition of
violence. So, the heros decide that this should be spread around,
so it can solve the world's problems. The book is most memorable
for its discussion of INSEX, the aphrodisiac(?), and the quote:
"who ever would save the world shall f**k it up."

bill w


Date: 16 DEC 1979 1259-EST
From: DP at MIT-ML (Jeffrey R. Del Papa)
Subject: 2 BOOK REVIEWS  (ABOUT 23 LINES ?)
To: WESTFW at WHARTON
CC: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

just read (in digital company organ) that james hogan was
quitting marlboro lab products, and moving to florida to
write full time


Date: 16 Dec 1979 1400-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Record
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

Star Trek - TMP has grossed 17 million so far, a new record
for this short a period.
-------


Date: 16 Dec 1979 1443-PST (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Record
In-reply-to: Your message of 16 Dec 1979 1400-PST
To: McLure at SRI-KL
CC: SF-LOVERS at AI

Ah! But what does that figure mean? Most films do not open
in as wide a distribution mode across the country as Trek
has, and also have not had so high an entry fee...

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 17 DEC 1979 1405-EST
From: DGSHAP at MIT-AI (Daniel G. Shapiro)
Subject: trek
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

        In the first day after I saw star trek, I wrote a
virulent condemnation razzing it for everything from weak
plot through logical inconsistency to tepid effects and
cheap dialogue.
	Now that I have thought about it some, it was still
flat, but most of the disgust was due to something like post
coital depression; after all those years I finally saw more
star trek, and it was just as bad as I remembered it.
	I only detected two differences: the Klingons wore a
new (and better!) guise, and Kirk didn't find anything green
to kiss.

	Dan Shapiro

Date: 17 Dec 1979 2015-PST
From: Larry Campbell <LCampbell at SRI-KL>
Subject: YASTL
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

I can't believe that nobody has yet complained about the absolute
fake-looking-ness of the special effects. Sure, they looked kind
of neat (I suppose they'd be great on drugs), but GOD.... I mean,
spaceships floating along in deep space with diffused lighting on
all sides, shuttlecraft pointing their noses in the direction
they're going and following godawful ballistic trajectories...
perhaps we've just become resigned to all that junk after SW and
BSG. But it still rankles... even though I know the yahoos think
it's neat that space ships shudder when explosions happen nearby,
and you can hear it inside the ship, and that the yahoos would
think that "real" spaceship trajectories looked wrong, and
wouldn't like the starkness (or absence) of real space
lighting... I had hoped for a little better.

And if I had wanted to see someone make love to a computer, I
could always go see Demon Seed again.

As far as I'm concerned, the only hope for ST:TMP is to make it
into another Rocky Horror cult classic. For starters, we need to
get about 50 people into a theater to scream "SAY SOMETHING
LOGICAL!!!" at an appropriate point...
-------


Date: 18 Dec 1979 0025-PST (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: YASTL
In-reply-to: Your message of 17 Dec 1979 2015-PST
To: LCampbell at SRI-KL
CC: SF-LOVERS at AI

That is one of the greatest ideas I've heard in a
LONG time! I can just picture it...

People in the theater yelling:

TELL US ABOUT IT SPOCK!
DO BLONDES HAVE MORE FUN? (to Illya)

and they can throw keypunch chad at each other at
appropriate points in the film.

[Apologies to those who have never seen The Rocky Horror
Show at a Midnight showing and thusly don't understand these
references...]

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 18 Dec 1979 1039-PST
From: Cower at SRI-KL (Rich Cower)
Subject: "What shall we do Spock, spank it?"
To:   sf-lovers at AI, lauren at UCLA-SECURITY
cc:   hess at DEC-MARLBORO

The subject of this short message describes what should be
done with the entire cast, crew and support personnel of the
film STAR TREK. It can be best described as "BAAAAD CINEMA",
no... I would even update that to be "WORST CINEMA". Surely,
they hope for it to become another ROCKY HORROR, and after
only week in the theatres, audience participation is
evident. I went for the special effects, and the only advice
I can give to a would be attendee is...DON'T. Nothing new
from the dolts on the computers, 2001 type effects. If you
want the dialogue, well...you deserve what you get. In
short, this film is terrible. A weak story, lots of Grecian
formula and 12 year old special effects technique do not
make a movie in 1979.

-------

Date: 18 Dec 1979 1059-PST
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-KA
Subject: Re: "What shall we do Spock, spank it?"
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow
To: Cower at SRI-KL
Cc: sf-lovers at AI, lauren at UCLA-SECURITY, 
Cc: hess at DEC-MARLBORO
Message-ID: <[SRI-KA]18-Dec-79 10:59:54.GEOFF>
In-Reply-To: Your message of 18 Dec 1979 1039-PST
Reply-to: Geoff @ SRI-KA

However, it would surely make Leonard Pimph(sp?) Garnell
PROUD!


From: Mike at Rand-Unix
Date: 18 Dec 1979 at 1205-PST
To: SF-LOVERS at Ai
Subject:  Lord of Light

     Has anyone heard about this?  Any LOCUS readers out there?

------- Forwarded Message

Date: 18 Dec 1979 11:01 am (Tuesday)
From: Guyton at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Lord of Light
To: Mike at Rand-Unix
cc: Geoff at Sri-Ka, Guyton

Just heard on the radio news on the way to work that they're
planning a movie based on "Lord of Light" -- planned budget
of 50 million. Now here's the cute part -- the set is to be
3 times the size of Disneyland (I think they said in Arizona
but not sure) and after the movie is done they're going to
change it into an amusement park! I think they said planned
open date for "Science Fiction Land" is sometime in 1984.

Geoff -- anything on the AP about this?

------- End of Forwarded Message

Date: 18 DEC 1979 1637-EST
From: DGSHAP at MIT-AI (Daniel G. Shapiro)
Subject: lord of light land
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

The proposal as I heard it was slightly different. Instead
of building Lord of Light Land at great expense out of a
chunk of Arizona, (which required moving the London bridge
again) they were going to modify existing structures for
their purposes. Hawaii became the Shan's lotus garden (all
6400 square miles of it), they were going to buy MIT and
make it into the cloning facility, and greater Los Angeles
was to be next-to-nirvana (where he goes at the end of the
novel).

I was horrified too. These ultra-high budget films are
getting out of hand.

	Dan Shapiro

Date: 18 DEC 1979 1651-EST
From: DGSHAP at MIT-AI (Daniel G. Shapiro)
Subject: bets
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Any bets on when the first billion dollar movie will be?
10 years? 20 years? (call it a billion dollar equivalent,
compensating for inflation.)

I wonder. Film companies seem to make larger capital outlays
than many mega-firms. And if this Lord of Light stuff isn't
a total joke, they are learning to secure their investments
in other ways. Do you suppose it possible that they become a
major factor in projects as huge as near space utilization?
	
	this *IS* an SF mailing list you know.
	Dan Shapiro

Date: 18 Dec 1979 1342-PST
From: Meyers at SRI-KL (Harris A. Meyers)
Subject: Re:  Lord of Light
To: Mike at RAND-UNIX, SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
In-reply-to: Your message of 18-Dec-79 1257-PST

Hadn't heard that one, however about a week ago I did hear a
rumor that a movie of "A Wrinkle in Time" is in the works. Who
knows if we get enough SF movies one may be well done.

harris
-------

Date: 19 Dec 1979 0101-PST (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: ST:TMP: MY opinion: A view from the inside.
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

Well, after being hounded for over a week, I broke down and went
out, plunked out my quintabuck, sat down with a friend, and
watched.

Basically, believe it or not, I was satisfied. Yeah, there were
too many effex. True, the plot was almost not there at all. And
indeed, there was alot of hokey/silly-ness. BUT. I still liked
it.

After a little analysis, I have figured out why. Since I have
known, in such detail, what the movie was about, FOR OVER A YEAR
AND A HALF, I had no GREAT expectations. Since I wasn't expecting
a miracle, I wasn't disappointed when I didn't get one. I think
many people, glazed over from 12 years of the same episodes over
and over and over again, had built up over-expectations of an
extreme sort. I knew what to expect, and the rendition on film
WAS a faithful version of the plot summaries and early scripts.

Another factor may simply be finally seeing exactly how the effex
(that I only saw as separate elements -- like the wormhole and
transporter) finally came out. I also had previewed some of the
display effect films that were running in the backround (the
round viewscreens had simple film loops projecting into them). In
fact, a couple of those were ones I remember commenting on (and
liking) in a meeting at Abel long, long ago.

One other thing. It really is fun to watch credits and keep
picking out the names of people you know (many of the Abel people
went to GLENCOE after the day of death.)

So overall, it was about what I expected, no more, no less. And
it sure was interesting to have been a part of it.

Live long and perspire.
Hooray for Hollywood.

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 19 Dec 1979 0113-PST (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Lord of Light
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

I am fascinated to hear that LoL is being made into a film. LoL
is one of my top five favorite SF novels. However, it should be a
tricky one to do without getting too silly. On the other hand, it
will not require vast amounts of special effex, and SHOULD have
to rely more on character development than most SF films we have
seen.

By the way, Nirvana IS L.A., at least this time of year. Cold
enough for ya' back there?

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 19 DEC 1979 0534-EST
From: FFM at MIT-MC (Steve Kudlak)
Subject: Is there no wisdom in STARTREK?? well eh...
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

I have never been what one would call a trekkie or however it is
spelled but at one time Startrek was sort of fun and interesting
however I have found it overall not to be a 'deep' program and
the times that wouuld have supported depth were always done so
hokily that it sounded a bit corny. But despite all of this it
was a cute thing to watch sometime and when it was put together
I could accept certain things that now seem rather ridiculous. I
mean attractive alien women popping out all over the place all
trying to seduce or trick Kirk into all sorts of things etc. I
could even accept the acrchtypical captain kirk as a real person,
aftter a few episodes i began to wonder about the whole thing and
whether it wasn't a pretty much an extrapolation of the fondest
drreams of what the militarily oriented think the universe is
like. However at least the first times thru it was an interesting
and entertaining show.

I hold with those who say that the movie was sort of fun but that
it lacked depth. I feel that perhaps part of this is that we are
all a little different and perhaps we are looking for things that
are an amalgam(if i spelt that right it will be a miracle) of
Star Trek and ourselves at the time and the times. It tried a lot
of things that just weren't done or thought of and was one of the
first shows that tried to bring a wealth of science fiction stuff
into peoples lives in a creative if somewhat simplistic way, it
seemed to try to do this on an extended structure which is what
made it different from things like "The Outer Limits" which was
in my estimation very winning but with no extended structure.
Alos Star-trek was action oriented so comparing the two is a bit
like apples and pineapples.

I hope too many trekkies don`t appear at my door with threats of
devesting me of whatever organs I value most whatever they are.
Maybe I have something wrong but I have a feeling that part of
what is going on is that we have changed and we expect more, I
may be wrong perhaps but i think that is the main thing going
on....

Have fun
Sends Steve

excuse my spelling and lack of punctuation..if i weren't in a
rush i'd go over thing more....


Date: 21 Dec 1979 0153-PST (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: A bad effect & a Sweet Transvestite
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

A double message:

1) Did anybody notice what the WORST effect in the Trek movie HAD to
   be? It stood out like a sore p..., well, like a sore thumb in any
   case. It was the scene where Illya is taking Kirk and Spock and
   McCoy to meet the "real" Vejur. They come out a little trap door
   on the top of the dish and then step down to the floor of Vejur.
   THE SCALE ON THAT SHOT WAS ATROCIIOUSS! The dish ended up looking
   MUCH too small -- the people appeared wider than THE EDGE ITSELF!
   And the height of the dish was not much better. All in all, the
   shot made the Enterprise look little bigger than a large truck.
   An unforgivable lapse in perspective -- I will have to talk to
   some people and find out why this happened...

2) My sources have informed me that a sequel to the "Rocky Horror
   Picture Show" is in the works. Most of the cast (including all
   the majors) have been re-assembled. Yes friends, it turns out
   that Rocky did NOT die...and Frank was resurrected by another 
   Doctor. Brad and Janet go back to their home town, but the
   townspeople find them rather, uh, different.

Bye for now.

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 21 Dec 1979 1032-PST (Friday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: New Old Book
To: sf-lovers at mit-mc

     Avon has just reprinted "Earthman's Burden" by Poul Anderson
and Gordon Dickson. This book is one of the most delightful bits
of SF farce ever to appear, and its new availability is welcome.
The Hokas of the planet Toka were thoroughly fascinated when the
Earthmen appeared on their planet, and wanted to be just like
them. Even though Hokas resemble Teddy Bears more than humans,
that didn't stop them from mimicking human behavior as found in
Westerns, Sherlock Holmes...
     It sounds like Star Trek's "A Piece of the Action", I know,
but it's much better. Go out and buy, unless you're a snob about
reading anything but Serious Literature.

	Mike

Date: 21 DEC 1979 2113-EST
From: SUE at MIT-MC (Susan J. Haseltine)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

Falling through the BLACK HOLE

     Black Hole realy is a Disney movie. They must have begged for
the PG rating or something. Very pretty, but very predictable.
Effects well done but haven't we seen something VERY like them
before? The most engaging character is ala STAR WARS the little
robot V.I.N.C.E.N.T. but Old Bob was baaaad. The HOLE itself was
impressive, but might have been more so if it was not on screen
so much.


Date: 22 DEC 1979 0131-EST
From: KLH at MIT-AI (Ken Harrenstien)
Subject: Black Hole pits
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

        Wasn't that supposed to be V.I.N.CENT? At least, that's
the way it looked in the book I read through today. Disney is
already trying to cash in on the kiddie market -- somethng to be
expected, but I was surprised how closely they synchronized it.
Anyway, while I will probably chomp and go see ST someday, I
think my curiousity has been satsified as far as Black Hole is
concerned.
	They have at least two (ahem) "novelizations", one with
artwork and big letters, the other with real scene pictures and
not-so-big letters that gives a little more of the plot details.
The latter is just about the right level for this type of film,
just look in the children's section of your favorite bookstore.
	Somehow it reminds me of "20,000 leagues" without the
water. Even the derelict spaceship looks incredibly baroque,
like a 19th century flight of fancy.
	I would be more interested if someone claims that they
do the black-hole effects "right", i.e. conforming to current
theories (such as they are). I don't go to see movies because
of their scintillating plots; I go to experience something
that I would otherwise never come close to seeing, and the
more realistic and believeable special effects are, the more
I can feel as if I actually saw something that exists, will
exist, or could exist (a truly great film will convince you of
its plausibility whether or not deemed possible in reality, so
I'm not just arguing for excessive hard-science). "2001" still
stands at the top of my list as far as SF goes. "Star Wars"
almost came close (if you disregard the vast plot difference),
but they had to go and ruin it with utterly phony-looking
outer-space rat-a-tat. The hype was that in making SW they
looked at WW2 dogfight movies and adopted the most exciting
types of action, but it looked more as if they copied all of
the same disillusioning mistakes. Worse than most WW2 movies
I've seen, even. Oh well; I'm with Larry about special effex.
Lauren's mention of the goof that makes the Enterprise look
the size of a truck is just a typical example, I'm afraid.
Ramble, ramble.

--Ken

Date: 22 DEC 1979 2106-EST
From: DISNEY at MIT-MC
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

I thought the Black Hole sucks. 


Date: 23 Dec 1979 0033-PST
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-KA
Subject: Black Hole
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow
To: Sf-Lovers at AI
Message-ID: <[SRI-KA]23-Dec-79 00:33:21.GEOFF>
Reply-to: Geoff @ SRI-KA

Went and saw Black Hole tonight down here in LA in Century City.
Basically, DISNEY's review hit it on the spot, the Black Hole
sucks.

I knew it was going to be down hill as soon as "Let me make ESP
contact with the robot (VINCENT)" came up in the first 15-20 mins
of the movie.

I also agree that someone clearly had to BRIBE the people that
hand out the ratings to give this movie a PG rating! There was
one time when Hans (the bad guy) said "crap" when it definitely
should have been a "shit".

Also, notice how no blood or guts were shown when Dr. What's-his-name
who decided to stay with Hans got munged by Max??

Some of the special effex in the movie would also make Irwin
Allen proud. As one of the people who went along with me said,
"it looks like an outer space version of 20,000 Leagues Under
the Sea".

This is also what I would consider the first ""SF"" type movie I
have seen on the screen that clearly some religious fanatic got
ahold of. Its enough to want to make you throw up! Oh and also,
notice how much the Cyrus looks like the Seaview!

On the way out, most of the people I heard talking, thought it
"disappointing". All in all, I think another lovely to add to
Leonard Pimph Garnell's growing collection, and soon-to-likely
overflow trash hopper if someone doesn't "get with it".


Date: 23 Dec 1979 (Sunday) 2051-EDT
From: SATZ at WHARTON (Greg Satz)
Subject: The Black Hole
To:   SF-Lovers at MIT-AI

To anyone who has decided to see it....... I was wondering
what some interpretations of the ending were. The religious
connotations were obvious but maybe I missed something or
maybe they left something out. I'm not sure.


Date: 23 Dec 1979 (Sunday) 2053-EDT
From: DREIFU at WHARTON (Henry Dreifus)
Subject: Star Trek
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI

All Special Effects; no plot


Date: 23 DEC 1979 2124-EST
From: DP at MIT-ML (Jeffrey R. Del Papa)
Subject: The Black Hole
To: SATZ at WHARTON
CC: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

At least this one had a plot, it was staight out of 20,000
leagues. The only thing I noticed about the ending was the
green arched tunnel was reminicent of OZ.


Date: 24 Dec 1979 10:12 am (Monday)
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
From: Richard R. Brodie <Brodie at PARC-MAXC>
Subject: News from those who should know better
To: Science Fiction Lovers <SF^>

A two-hour film adaptation of Ursula K. LeGuin's 1971 novel
"Lathe of Heaven" is scheduled for telecast Monday, January 7,
at 9 p.m. over PBS, according to the latest issue of STARLOG
magazine.

The magazine also reports that "The Empire Strikes Back" will
premiere May 18, 1980 (one day earlier in London), and that a
live-action, serious (?) motion picture featuring Batman and
Robin is in the works for release at Christmas 1981.


Sender: Mike at Rand-Unix
Date: 24 Dec 1979 at 1204-PST
To: SF-LOVERS at Mit-Ai
cc: Mike at Rand-Unix, Obrien at Rand-Unix
Subject:  CREATURE FEATURE VEJUR
From:     Mike at Rand-Unix (Michael Wahrman)

        I saw a first season Star Trek yesterday.  At least I think it
was first season because of their haircuts.  Even with the effects and
the more primitive acting styles, it was a better all round drama than
that movie.

        Before I sneer too much at ST:TMP, let me say something
positive:  I believed more in Kirk and Spock this time around.  They
were older and more mature, better acting I believe than before, and I
was able to believe in Kirk the Admiral much more than I believed in
Kirk the Captain of Yesteryear.

        The effects in the movie were mediocre.  Period.  Some of them
were OK, but many simply did not work:  San Francisco, the tour of the
Enterprise, most space-suited figure scenes looked phony and felt phony.
 The streak effects and the plasma creature (KICK that COMPUTER, spock!)
were excellent.  Decker was a punk and bad actor, he could never have
been a starship captain, and that made the rest of the movie silly. (Why
didn't Kirk simply say: "GET THE HELL OFF THE BRIDGE, DECKER!")

A brief modification of the climax (is that a pun?):

ILYIA:  (rubbing herself suggestively)  THE CREATOR MUST JOIN WITH
	VEJUR.  BLEEP.  MUST JOIN WITH VEJUR. BLEEP.  AT THE TONE,
	GENERAL TELEPHONE TIME WILL BE 6:35.

KIRK:   (ever stupid) Must join with Vejur?  What does that mean?

DECKER: Now your talkin, babe!  Just wait till I whip out my old
	needlenose...
	(he fumbles at his overalls, pull out a pair of pliers, and
	moves towards the ancient spacecraft)

KIRK:   (catching on)  No Decker!  Get away from those wires!  You
	dont know if she's AC or DC!

DECKER: NO!  Ive gotta have it!  I want it! I want it!
	(Decker connects the wires, and jumps into Ilyia's arms,
	lights come on, little munchkins jump out of the pillows and
	blow hair dryers at them and sing chorus the chorus from
	'California Girls' in the background)

ILYIA:  MMMMM, mmmm!   Its so good!  Oh baby!  Oh baby!

SPOCK:  We had best get out of here Captain, when VEJUR reaches a
	conclusion, she might burst this oxygen bubble around us.
	Both of them haven't had any in a long time.

MCCOY:  He's, right Jim.  God only knows what'll happen.
	(They run away  END).

Date: 24 Dec 1979 1512-PST
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIE>
Subject: Black Hole
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

WARNING:  Do not see this film.  It has no redeemming features at all.

How Disney could ever produce such a turkey, I don't know. I am still
trying to figure out where the special effects where, I didn't notice
any in the film.

			Alan

PS. If you did not like Star Trek:TMP, you may want to see Black Hole. 
After seeing it, you will think Star Trek was great!!

-------

Date: 25 DEC 1979 1731-EST
From: ISRAEL at MIT-AI (Bruce Israel)
Subject: NASTL
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

This is not another ST:TMP letter. I saw it last week but have
nothing to add that hasn't been said thirty five times already
except for the fact that the scenes with panning shots of the
enterprise or space itself were just way too long. This is a
literary letter (the subject, not the quality) because for the
past month the emphasis has been on films rather than on books.
Mack Reynolds has come out with a new novel, called "Lagrange 5".
The topic of the book is a group of Island One satellites called
Lagrange. The main character is a detective named Rex Bader
(those of you who have read "Satellite City" should remember
him). The satellites have restricted immigration to only those
who have IQ's over 130 and are in good physical health. However,
Lagrange 5 is starting to suffer from an epidemic of space cafard
(a form of claustrophobia where the sufferer must get to a planet
immediately or else go mad). Reynolds has incorporated space
cafard into other books of his but this seems to be a more
virulent form than in his other novels. This book is worthwhile
and I recommend it, especially to those of you who like Mack
Reynolds.
Those of you who like "Earthman's Burden" should read "Star
Prince Charlie". SPC is a novel by Anderson and Dickson with a
Hoka as one of the main characters. The characterizations taken
on by this Hoka are very amusing. Another book which is extremely
amusing is "Another Fine Myth" by Robert Asprin. This book is a
parody of fantasy and Sword and Scorcery type books. It is about
a fumble fingered apprentice to a magician. This magician conjurs
forth a demon to impress the apprentice. The magician gets killed
however and the demon is stuck there. The term Demon is actually
short for Dimension traveller. Before the magician got killed he
played a practical joke on the demon (a friend of his) and took
away his powers. The demon takes the apprentice on as his
apprentice and they go traveling the land trying to avoid the
assassins who killed the original magician and trying to find
some way of restoring the demons powers to him. In these travels
though, the fumble fingered apprentice is the only one capable of
casting a spell. Each chapter in the book is precede by a quote
which is appropriate for the contents of the chapter. The title
comes from a quote from a chapter near the end of the book that
goes as follows:

       This is another fine myth you've gotten me into!
                            - Lor L. and Har D.

People who like fantasies and parodies should enjoy this book.

Merry Christmas
- Bruce


CEH@MIT-MC 12/25/79 22:24:11 Re: Robert Asprin
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

I thought Another Fine Myth was quite enjoyable, would recommend it
heartily.  On the other hand, I found Thieves World (R. Asprin ed.)
to be quite dull for the most part with a few notable exceptions
(Marion Zimmer Bradley's story for example).

-- Charles


Date: 26 DEC 1979 1427-EST
From: OAF at MIT-MC (Oded Feingold)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

   All,

   I  have  a  friend at the south pole (geographic) to whom I would
   like to ship much good SF  to  while  away  the  9  MONTHS  total
   isolation  from  mid-Feb  to  mid-Nov  l980.  Please suggest your
   favorites.

   I have received a special request for the newest Heinlein, but am
   not sure of the title and don't know where or whether the    book
   is  available.    Anyone  with  helpful  hints  please feel free,
   including anyone  who  knows  where  Heinlein  can  be  contacted
   directly (that curmudgeon).

           Note:  the  last  ship  date can be NO LATER THAN JAN. 17
   1980, so if you have some ideas don't be  bashful  and  DON'T  be
   procrastinatory.

           Other  note:    Suggestions  needn't be strictly SF - I'm
   open to suggested literature of any genre.  Assume you have    an
   intelligent   reader  with  MUCH  spare  time,  solid  scientific
   training (physics, math, some geophysics), and  a  backup  of  17
   men,  both  scientists  and grunts (like facilities engineers and
   communications jocks) who'll read the stuff too.    High--quality
   dirt, origami manuals, heavy literature, WHATEVER you think would
   be good.  Let your imaginations free (I may regret saying that).

           Third  note:    Contributed  stuff  gratefully  accepted,
   since I don't have enough money to buy  the  world  and  ship  it
   down.   If  you're  on the wrong side of the continent and have a
   bunch of stuff you think should go, I  may  (if  you're  willing)
   arrange to wire you the money for postage - I'd give you the name
   and address (with your mail returning if it arrives too late) and
   the ship address is merely FPO San Francisco - local stuff.

           Penultimate  note:   A special request for cookbooks that
   let you do good things with canned, frozen, dried  and  otherwise
   preserved  foods  that  may  be  found at such a remote location.
   Imaginative  bakebooks  (like  "Beard   on   Bread")   especially
   appreciated.

           Last  note  -  all  the preceding is really on the level.
   For those who for some reason  don't  wish  to  use  computermail
   responses,  you can call any ITS machine (MIT-AI, MIT-DM, MIT-MC,
   MIT-ML) and do ":WHOIS OAF" without ever logging in. That'll tell
   you where to find me.

   Thank you all for your attention.  Sorry to write such a l-o-n-g
   message without once zinging Star Trek.

   Oded
   ----------

[ All the suggestions that are sent to Oded will be compiled into
  a file of reccommendations and made available to everyone. I'll
  pass along the file name as soon as its ready.

							Roger ]


Date: 27 Dec 1979 1112-PST (Thursday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: Toys and Games
To: sf-lovers at mit-mc

     There is a game company, Eon Products, who put out SF-oriented
games. Their first endeavor, Cosmic Encounter, was an intriguing
card game (with a kind of scoreboard attached), with nifty elements
of bluffing and multiplayer interaction. The Alien Powers provide
for the SF flavor and add a role-playing-like element to the game
while differentiating the abilities and tactics of the players.
With four supplements now in print (which add still more Aliens
and powers), Cosmic Encounter is kind of a "cult" game among many.
A fun game, not a brain-buster simulation.
     Eon has justpublished their second game, "Darkover: The Age
of Chaos". Similar in some ways to Cosmic Encounter, the game has
a Darkovan flavor as players play Starstone or Keeper counters to
gain control of the Seven Domains. Notable in the Darkover game
are the Ghost Wind rule, which require players to perform bizarre
actions or face a penalty, and the Psychic Duel in which two
players must chant a phrase thirty times without smiling, laughing,
or breaking eye contact. Something of a charicature (sp?) of
Darkover, but rather fun.
     Supposedly, Eon also designed Avalon Hill's recent "Dune"
game; I have not yet bought or examined a copy. Can anyone tell
me anything about it?

	Mike


Date: 29 Dec 1979 0443-PST
From: Wrs at OFFICE-2
Subject: (Response to message)
To:   PEB at MIT-ML, SF-LOVERS at MIT-ML
cc:   WRS

In response to the message sent  28 DEC 1979 2154-EST from PEB@MIT-ML 

The file <WRS>STTMP.MSGS @OFFICE-2 contains all letters sent to SF-LOVERS
about trek to date.  I will update it if I get any more.  It is readable
through FTP service when logged in as ANONYMOUS (password FOO).
-------


Date: 29 DEC 1979 1359-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Technical Assistance on SF Novel
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-ML


     I am working on a novel that takes place on a small planet
around Barnard's Star (M=3.0x10^29 kg).  For story reasons I have
to have the planet in a highly elliptical orbit, periapsis 60 Gm,
apoapsis 35.2 Gm.  There is also a super large planet in the system,
mass 4xJupiter.  I realize that the natural tendency is for the
large planet to circularize the orbit of the smaller one, but is there
some orbit for the large planet that will maintain the ellipticity
of the orbit of the smaller planet?

           Thanks,
              Bob Forward
                  FORWARD at USC-ECL
-------


From: Mike at Rand-Unix
Date: 29 Dec 1979 at 1614-PST
To: FORWARD at Usc-Ecl
cc: sf-lovers at Mit-Ml
Subject: Re: Technical Assistance on SF Novel
In-reply-to: Your message of 29 DEC 1979 1359-PST.


        Physics was my worst subject at school, however it is my
understanding that a planet with mass greater than that of Jupiter
will become a sun.  I have often heard SF writers lament that
we had just missed living in a binary system  (AWWW, too bad!)

	You should check this and perhaps reduce the size of your
giant.


Michael Wahrman


Date: 29 Dec 1979 2020-PST
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIE>
Subject: Who's in charge?
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Will whoever is in charge of (or adds people to) this mailing
list please publicly announce yourself so we don't all keep
getting messages from people who want to be added to or deleted
from the list.

					Alan
-------

Date: 30 DEC 1979 0058-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: I'm in charge! (and with a loooong message too)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Alan and everyone,

     Peace Alan. Either I have sent messages or someone else
has announced about four times now that I am responsible for
maintaining the SF-LOVERS mailing list. My name is Roger
Duffey, and my net address is DUFFEY@MIT-AI. After tonight
you can also send complaints/questions/requests about the
SF-LOVERS mailing list to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST@MIT-AI and they
will automatically be forwarded to me.
     Actually, the majority of the people requesting to be
added to SF-LOVERS have been sending mail directly to me,
not to everyone. Otherwise you would all be seeing somewhat
more mail than you are. This list is not only active but is
still growing. It has been my policy when I add someone to
the mailing list to send them something like the following
message. In the event that some of you may not have seen it,
or know its contents, I will repeat it here:


     Subject: Welcome to SF-LOVERS!

          You have now been added to the SF-LOVERS mailing
     list. An archive of all past messages sent to the list
     is kept in the file AI:DUFFEY;_DATA_ SF. Feel free to
     peruse it, but please be very careful not to modify it.

          BTW, I am the maintainer of the mailing list. If
     you ever have any problems/questions about the list,
     please send me some mail rather than everyone. (eg.
     if you sent a message to the list and the COMSAT gave
     you a cryptic error, etc.) I will then reply directly
     to you as needed with a solution/answer.

          Also if you tell someone about SF-LOVERS please
     ask them to send their requests to be added directly
     to DUFFEY@MIT-AI.

					     Enjoy,

					        Roger


     The statement in the last paragraph is the key actually.
People asking to be added to SF-LOVERS are not on SF-LOVERS
and will not have seen this message. When you tell someone
about the list you need to remember to tell them to send
their requests directly to me.
     There is a problem however, and that is remembering that
"me" is DUFFEY@MIT-AI (and you better not forget the E either).
To avoid this I have installed a new feedername for mail. The
name is SF-LOVERS-REQUEST and all it does is redirect mail to
me. Therefore:

    If you ever have any problems/questions about the list,
    please send mail to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST@MIT-AI, rather than
    to everyone. Also if you tell someone about SF-LOVERS,
    please ask them to send their requests to be added directly
    to SF-LOVERS-REQUEST@MIT-AI (or MIT-MC or MIT-ML or MIT-DM).

For Alan.


					Enjoy,
					   Roger


Date: 30 Dec 1979 0345-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: White Mountains
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

I was rumaging through some old books and came upon a good trilogy
called 'The White Mountains' by John Christopher. I don't know if
people are generally familiar with this trilogy, but I found it
quite entertaining. It came out about 1968 and consists of 'The
White Mountains', 'The City of Gold and Lead', and 'The Pool of
Fire', all told about 650 pp. The story is set about 100 years in
the future, when extraterrestrials have conquered the Earth and
threaten to convert it (on the arrival of a mothership) to their
own deadly atmosphere. The aliens control people by use of the Cap
which causes them to become docile, implanted at age 13. Society
has reverted to a pre-industrial stage and technology of any
advanced form is non-existent. The story is well-written and the
characters well-drawn. It is not overly complicated, but does move
along at a fairly rapid pace. The story concerns a group of kids
and adults who form a resistance movement, although the story is
generally centered around one kid. It resembles Twain's Life on
the Mississippi in some respects.


Date: 31 December 1979 0837-EST (Monday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A>
Subject: Trek
To:   SF-LOVERS at AI
Message-ID: <31Dec79 083741 DP0Z@CMU-10A>

Observations:
	The first sunday after ST-TMP was released Star Trek(the tv program)
was aired after the football game in it's entirity on the NBC channel 11 here
in pittsburgh.  This came as a suprise to me because the local station had
been scheduling it for a while but football usually pre-empted most of it,
so they finally stopped scheduling it all together(it has run occasionally on
other minor stations around here though)...I realize that with the end of the
the football season coming up that it would be a little to much to ask to 
see Trek regularly but I have a feeling the The Enterprise will be sailing
again in the new year around Pgh.

				Doug


Date: 31 Dec 1979 0955-PST (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Star Trek TV tie-ins 
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

(not to be confused with an M-5 tie-in....)

Anyway, it turns out that the local station here in L.A. that holds onto
Trek is starting to capitalize too.  For years the show ran daily (M-F)
around dinnertime.  It is now back to a weekend-only schedule (I think
it runs both Sat. and Sunday.)  The funny part is that I heard the
announcer do a voiceover on the tail of the program right before Trek
like this:

"The Human Adventure of the ORIGINAL Star Trek coming up next here
 on KCOP-TV, channel 13..."

Sigh.  And McDonald's has started their promotional tie-in to the
movie with their Star-Trek dinner packages -- with television commercials
featuring a Beegee, oops, I mean a Klingon (I always thought the new
Klingons looked something like the "new" Beegees) being attacked by
Big Macs and such.  

I can see it now....
...
"Captain Kirk!  We gotta no more dilithium crystals for the matter-antimatter
pods -- the energy flow isa outa control!  I donna know what we're going
to do!"

"Just calm down, Scotty.  Remember how we dealt with the genetalia ghouls
of Delta-Triangulese XIV?"

"Uh, no sir, I don't."

"Hmmm.  Come to think of it, I wouldn't expect you to at that; as I recall
you spent the night with one of the better looking ghouls..."

"Please Captain.  Youa promised not toa ever mention that!"

"True.  Anyway, we'll fix the matter-antimatter flux density the same
way we dealt with the ghouls.  Order up 25 Big Macs from the dietary
computer -- you'll have to override the nutritional control logic to
get them passed through.  Then dump them, all at once, into the 
reaction chamber.  I think that will do the trick."

"Captain, you shoulda have been in engineering -- thatisa brilliant
idea!"

"I know Scotty, I know.  That's why I'M the admiral and you're still
a Lieutenant Commander.  Well, that and your being Scottish (you know how
Star Fleet feels about YOUR type of person...)

...

Ah, the possibilites are ENDLESS....

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 31 Dec 1979 1157-PST (Monday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: Klingons & Kriegs
To: sf-lovers at mit-mc

   Last week, a local station in LA reran Gene Roddenberry's second attempt
at Genesis II, called Planet Earth (with John Saxon and Diana Muldaur).  
As television comes up with more abortions like BS Dyslexia, it looks 
better all the time.
   One of the tribes running around Planet Earth is a group of warlike
folks called Kriegs, who drive woodburning automobiles and raid whoever's
in the area.  The makeup for the Kriegs included a now-familiar ridge
across the top of the skull...
   Good old courageous Gene, filled with new ideas for the masses.
	Mike
-------


Date: 31 Dec 1979 1220-PST
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-KA
Subject: Re: Klingons & Kriegs
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow
To: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY
Cc: sf-lovers at MIT-MC
Message-ID: <[SRI-KA]31-Dec-79 12:20:01.GEOFF>
In-Reply-To: Your message of 31 Dec 1979 1157-PST (Monday)
Reply-to: Geoff @ SRI-KA

I was in LA when that was shown...  i was able to stand it for 20
mins, until i could take no more, threw up and changed the
channel.

From what i recall, Genesis II was many times better(?)  than
Planet Earth; It also looked like it was produced on a shoe
string...

Geoff


Date: 31 Dec 1979 1311-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Re: Klingons & Kriegs
To: Geoff  at SRI-KA, Mike at UCLA-SECURITY
Cc: sf-lovers at MIT-MC
In-reply-to: Your message of 31-Dec-79 1220-PST

Genesis II was a reasonably good sci-fi attempt. At least we didn't
have any pseudo-castratos getting in the way. And the double-navel
was marvelous on Mariette Hartley. She still gets kidded about that
all the time.
-------


help!@MIT-AI (Sent by ___025@MIT-AI) 12/31/79 17:52:50
To: sf-lovers at MIT-MC
I represent a friend who has accidently folded himself using a cheap time
editing device.  And I was wondering if anyone could help me unravel the
difficulties for my friend.

If anyone out there wants to help, pls send mail to ai: users1; time edit

I will be glad to provide additional info to interested persons.


P.S>   The Underwriters Laboratory has already been notified about the obviously
defective time editing mechanism.


NOTICE:  FROM TEMPORAL CONTINUUM CONTROL CENTRAL (TCCC)
VIA:     HUBNET NODE 2819-32-JR398-G-BETA-4
ATTENTION: INTERNODAL RECEPTION CONTROL OFFICERS (CLASS 2)
SUBJECT: UNAUTHORIZED MESSAGES VIA SUBNET LINKAGE PERIPHERALS
--------------------
Attention.  Sensor quadrant compuplex has detected an unauthorized
message translated via Subnet node 8989-32-JR-1-BETA.  This message
originated in a fourth level activation peripheral continuum.  This
continuum has long been barred from sending such messages (General
Order 45-23-KIO-345 -- Z82).  Complete message text was lost due
to subetheral disruption, but apparently consisted largely of a plea
for assistance from a temporally disrupted entity of some sort.
This illegal message was translated through HUBNET central and
apparently was routed to CLASS 78 planetary system in the outer
frontier.  This system is classed priority ZQ1; no contact under any
circumstances is to be permitted.  It is assumed that the CLASS 78
had no facilites capable of receiving or translating such a message,
but it must be emphasized that SUCH MESSAGES ARE NEVER TO BE SUBMITTED
TO THE HUB UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.  New policy linkages are being
formed to prevent this sort of event from ever happening again.

NOTE THAT THE PENALITY FOR ILLEGAL COMMUNICATION WITH PLANETARY SYSTEMS
OF LESS THAN CLASS 23 IS DISSOLUTION FOR THE ENTIRE INVOLVED
QUADRANT.
---------------------
END OF MESSAGE -- HUBNET AUTHORIZATION 23-23-23-1121K-DELTA.
VIA SUBNET LINKAGE TRANSLATION UNIT 25G.


--------------+-------------

ATTENTION:  ALL RECEIVING POINTS
SUBJECT:  HYPERDRIVE UPDATE DATA (878765R5467765R)
TO:       TEMPORAL ENGINEERS, CONTINUUM ENGINEERS
-----
The new release of hyperdrive sequence data is hereby distributed.
As always, a complete summary of necessary backround data is supplied
for bank storage.  Data follows on protocol board 12C:

ewoju0983459082	349jfv	 c     fkwm ,.m  kdsjf oniwueoi tuy72qt
SIDEJFGU PPOieo;etj ieitpoiw-----------

SENDER BROKE CONNECTION

CEH@MIT-MC 01/02/80 05:02:19 Re: White Mountains
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

I too enjoyed this series... when I was 12. I don't think I would
recommend it to anyone today.

-- Charles


Date:  2 Jan 1980 0232-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Re: White Mountains
To: CEH at MIT-MC, SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
In-reply-to: Your message of 2-Jan-80 0502-PST

As I said, Mark Twain. That should have appropriately warned
anyone.


Date:  2 Jan 1980 0251-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: '4D Man'
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

Is anyone familiar with this old 1959 film with Robert Lansing? I
would like to know where the story came from, book, short story,
etc and who authored it.


Date:  2 Jan 1980 0303-PST
From: HARUKA at SRI-KL
Subject: Re: '4D Man'
To: McLure at SRI-KL, sf-lovers at MIT-AI
In-reply-to: Your message of 2-Jan-80 0251-PST

I don't know where the story came from, but I do remember seeing
it at a drive-in sometime in the early '60s.


Date: 2 Jan 1980 9:04 am (Wednesday)
From: Swinehart at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Book Search
To: SF^
cc: Swinehart

OK, folks, here's a challenge: Does anyone remember reading a story, I
think by Leinster, called "The Last Space Ship?"  (Kim Rendell, matter
transmitter specialist, rescues a galaxy or two from mismanagement and
general malaise.)

I lent my copy to somebody in 1960, and I've just about given up
getting it back, so if anyone has a lead on getting another one, I'd
be most appreciative.

Thanks,
Dan Swinehart


Date: 3 JAN 1980 0725-EST
From: CEH at MIT-MC (Charles E. Haynes)
Subject: Mark Twain
To: McLure at SRI-KL
CC: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

Hmmm... No wonder I missed it, I was (and still am) an avid fan of
Mark Twain.

-- Charles


Date:  3 Jan 1980 1733-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: PBS movie
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

PBS stations are presenting a dramatization of Ursula La Guin's
'Lathe of Heaven' during the upcoming week. Full writeup in TV
guide with an article by La Guin.


Date: 3 JAN 1980 2255-EST
From: MARG at MIT-AI (Margaret Minsky)
Subject: Book and Black Hole
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Literary: I just co-received a xerox of a terrific out of print
Stapledon collection, calle "Worlds of Wonder". It contains two
short novels, "The Flames" and "From Death into Life", and
something even shorter that I've forgotten the name of. "The
Flames" is a wonderful little story about sentient pieces of
stars, very sweet and sad, and hardly ever seen anymore. It was
once published in Britain in its own cover, and is reprinted in
Worlds of Wonder. It is a must for those who have read all the
rest of Stapledon. Look for it in libraries. (Locals: I know that
the MITSFS has "The Flames". [pun unint.])

AV:	It surprised me to hear so much negativism about Black
Hole, most of the comments completely dismissed a movie that was
not GOOD, but had good moments, scenes, effects, and ideas. (I
decided it was worth about $2 of the $4 I spent to see it.)
	Someone wrote that "if there were special effects" they
"couldn't see them." It was hard to not notice the black hole
(even though it was not a very impressive effect, but at least
better than ST's similar blue-green haze). It was harder not to
notice the robots levitating along throughout the entire movie,
and the (somewhat inconsistent but pretty good) 0-G people motion.
There was more than the usual license taken with irrational shapes
for spaceships and smokey explosions, but even those effects are
solid 1970's quality and reflect knowledge and competence,
admittedly coupled with unimaginativeness and especially
marketeering at the expense of science. I was seriously offended
only twice by the effects: once by the angels half of the
christianity and once by the power dials scene lifted whole and
somewhat unecessarily from Forbidden Planet. Don't forget that the
terrific snowstorm in the garden, a scene that I thought had great
visual beauty, and was also a creative way for a spaceship to
break, is a "special effect". The robots playing video games was a
good idea and the effect there was believably executed. There were
plenty of effex in Black Hole, but they were actually worked into
the plot and not presented individually with annoying fanfare,
which is as it should be. That should make us more impressed and
not less.
	Oh yeah, as for the plot: (). In case you misconstrue me
as a completely undiscriminating sap.
	Last but not least, consider the robots. Well, I know, we
are all too mature for lovable robots, although presumably the
popular culture fixation on them will cause them to exist in large
numbers. The robots in Black Hole were smart, had special skills,
were expressive in effective but slightly non-human ways (some of
them too silly but some ok.) Each robot type manifested some
advantages and disadvantages, and a distinct personality, and each
dealt with a believable issue in man machine interaction, (e.g.
being slightly smarter than people; or not respecting their lives
enough). I do forgive the frivolousness about robot bodies
(although not the unimaginativeness) that moviemakers have,
because I beleive that it is already true to our culture. We are
not willing to tolerate, personally or culturally, frivolousness
about the appearance of spaceships, but do recognize the fun and
pleasant ambiguity of person-like things. (A friend of mine just
submitted a SERIOUS research proposal on touchsensors that
included a speech synthesizer to say "OUCH!" on overload
conditions.) Black Hole did not provide the important pieces of
education that people need about the utility and rationality of
non humanoid robots, the possible nonfunctionality of cute
painted-on eyes, and subtler issues, but on some other ai-robotics
counts, it did a fine job.


Date: 04 Jan 1980 0113-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: Black Hole is the pits  
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI   

I've been holding off saying anything about Black Hole, but MARG's
recent message in support of it has pushed me too far! That movie
was TERRIBLE, and if it's worth $2 to see it it's only because
it's so bad it's hilarious. Perhaps MARG gets off on issues such
as functionality of robots, but I prefer to see such matters
discussed by people who have some understanding of science. Those
making Black Hole obviously lack any such knowledge, as the movie
abounded with mistakes. There was, of course, the usual nonsense
in which robots -- SECURITY robots, no less, who've spent hours on
the target range -- are unable to aim well enough to inflict ANY
damage on the human heroes. How the devil did these clumsy oafs
ever manage to take over the ship? (I think Cattlecar Galaxitive's
Xylons started this -- they were imitating Star Wars' troopers, of
course, but the latter were human.) There were gratuitous
buzzwords, such as the suspenseful moment when one person said to
switch on "the microscanner" -- we go to an outside view and see
a searchlight get turned on. There was yet another robot without
fuses. All the robots were obviously designed to be toys, as
witness their large, simple features and simple motions; none of
the intricacies one would expect to see in such a complicated
piece of equipment. (A friend has summarised the movie as "an
hour-an-a-half commercial for the new line of Disney toys and
rides".) I could go on about the plot (but enough people have
already pointed out the similarity to 20000 Leagues) or the acting
(one of the people who saw it with me says he thinks the actors
were having a hard time keeping straight faces), but I think I'll
just finish by mentioning two gross errors, both of which were
critical to the so-called plot. One was when the meteor shower
(with glowing meteors, yet!) decimated the ship -- and all the air
was retained. Pardon me, not all. Out of all the scenes we saw
where meteors came crashing through the ceiling, there was exactly
ONE where someone realised that air should escape, and that was
when the snowstorm in the garden took place. That part was almost
reasonable -- though the air should probably have escaped much
faster given the size of the rift -- until the people thus trapped
forced open the door and found the pressure to be the same on the
other side. Maybe they were a special breed of human that can live
in vacuum? (It would explain what what's-his-name was breathing
when he fell toward the black hole, in what was clearly open
space, and was rescued by VINCENT near the end of the film.)
Finally, there was VINCENT's levitation, which MARG so graciously
mentioned as a "special effect". (It wasn't all that special --
more often than not I was able to see the wires.) Just how was he
levitating? Not jets -- he was doing pivots in place (standing on
his head) under gravity. The most likely thing seems to be
anti-gravity; actually, since he was able to move away from the
black hole after falling toward it, he must have either
jets+antigravity or "negative-gravity". But the entire premise
of the film is that someone has discovered anti-gravity and the
heroes want to learn the secret. Why don't they ask their cute
toy robot?

Ah well, if you go to see this flick, at least you've been warned.
As far as I'm concerned, I expect ol' Walt must have rolled over
in his grave when they released this turkey.



Date: 4 Jan 1980 0923-PST
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-KA
Subject: Black Hole.
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow
To: Sf-Lovers at AI
Message-ID: <[SRI-KA] 4-Jan-80 09:23:40.GEOFF>
Reply-to: Geoff @ SRI-KA

The local PBS "Sneak Previews" program with film critics Gene
Siskel and Roger Ebert, both last night gave the movie a strong
NO vote.

Gene made a get comment: "That the Black Hole looked like a cross
between a blue donut and a bath tub drain."

Geoff


Date:  4 Jan 1980 2023-PST
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIE>
Subject: A record and a book
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

A record of themes from science fiction movies and TV shows is
out and is quite good. Its called "Greatest Science Fiction Hits"
by Neil Norman and his orchestra. Included are 2001, the Outer
Limits theme, One Step Beyond, Godzilla, and a version of the
Star Wars theme that is very different from the one you here in
the movie and is actually good (there are a lot of bad versions
around).

Also, a forth book in the Well World series by Jack Chalker is
out, entitled "The Return of Nathan Brazil." I haven't read it
yet, but the other books in this series are pretty good (but not
great).

			Alan
-------

Date:  6 Jan 1980 1822-PST
From: Rubenstein at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Further adventures of Gary Seven
To:   sf-lovers at AI

Can anyone confirm or deny the rumor that the ST episode
where the Enterprise goes back in time and intercepts Gary
Seven on his way to sabotage a sattelite was intended as a
pilot for a series of the above title?

Stew
-------

Date: 6 Jan 1980 1856-PST (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Gary 7
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

I dunno about the title, but the episode itself (some Trekkie
could fill in the title which I do not recall right now) was
DEFINITELY designed as a pilot. (Note the closing sequence
where Spock says that Gary 7 and Miss (blank) were in for
some interesting experiences.)

However, nobody bought the series, and I guess she went back
to the rent-a-secretary agency...

--Lauren--


VAD@MIT-MC 01/06/80 23:13:59 Re: FUNNY  HUBNET STUFF
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
HEY FOLKS.....   WHAT  *IS*  THIS????
---------------

    UNAUTHORIZED MESSAGES VIA SUBNET LINKAGE PERIPHERALS
    ----------------------------------------------------

    NOTICE:  FROM TEMPORAL CONTINUUM CONTROL CENTRAL (TCCC)
    VIA:     HUBNET NODE 2819-32-JR398-G-BETA-4
    ATTENTION: INTERNODAL RECEPTION CONTROL OFFICERS (CLASS 2)

    Attention.  Sensor quadrant compuplex has detected an unauthorized
    message translated via Subnet node 8989-32-JR-1-BETA.  This message
    originated in a fourth level activation peripheral continuum.  This
    continuum has long been barred from sending such messages (General
    Order 45-23-KIO-345 -- Z82).  Complete message text was lost due
    to subetheral disruption, but apparently consisted largely of a plea
    for assistance from a temporally disrupted entity of some sort.
    This illegal message was translated through HUBNET central and
    apparently was routed to CLASS 78 planetary system in the outer
    frontier.  This system is classed priority ZQ1; no contact under any
    circumstances is to be permitted.  It is assumed that the CLASS 78
    had no facilites capable of receiving or translating such a message,
    but it must be emphasized that SUCH MESSAGES ARE NEVER TO BE SUBMITTED
    TO THE HUB UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.  New policy linkages are being
    formed to prevent this sort of event from ever happening again.

    NOTE THAT THE PENALITY FOR ILLEGAL COMMUNICATION WITH PLANETARY SYSTEMS
    OF LESS THAN CLASS 23 IS DISSOLUTION FOR THE ENTIRE INVOLVED QUADRANT.
    ------------------------------------------------------------

    END OF MESSAGE -- HUBNET AUTHORIZATION 23-23-23-1121K-DELTA.
    VIA SUBNET LINKAGE TRANSLATION UNIT 25G.


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

     I AND OTHERS HAVE RECENTLY RUN ACROSS THIS ITEM IN OUR MAIL
FILES. IT SOUNDS LIKE DOMEONE'S EFFORT AT SOME KIND OF CHAIN
LETTER OR SCARE NOTICE TO ME, PERHAPS ONE OF YOU SCIFI TYPES
COULD TELL ME WHAT IT REALLY IS???
THANKS		/HOBBIT

------


DP@MIT-ML 01/07/80 01:40:59 Re: FUNNY HUBNET STUFF
To: VAD at MIT-MC
CC: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

It is obviously a memo about a security problem with a larger
network. It is concerened with leakage from one net to a less
secure one. Its appearance is a further manifestation of this
disturbance.

The most obvious entry would be via one of the many satelite
data links, accesible now that SATCOM 3 has entered a semi
euclidean space.

It appears the administrators of the other net have located
the data leak, and we can expect no more message traffic. It
is hoped that satcoms backup be launched as soon as possible,
so the current net hackers have sufficient time to penatrate
this new network.

						dp


Date:    Temporal coordinates 453-342X-2Q09
From:    Special Agent at TCCC
To:      Internodal Reception Control Officers
Subject: Message interception

Recent alert sent via Hubent node 2819-32-JR398-G-BETA-4 was
apparently intercepted by an unauthorized party known as "VAD".
All officers in the area/time take corrective measures. If
necessary to avoid incongruities in the space-time fabric,
proceed to excise VAD and any associated parties from the node.



DP@MIT-ML 01/07/80 02:28:28 Re: BoskLone discussion groups
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

on feb. 15-17 Ghu willing there will occur a BoskLone. This is a
a regional science fiction convention occuring in the wilds of
Danvers (near the Mass state home for the bewildered). We are
expecting between 1 and 2k people, and our Guests of Honor are
Spider and Jeanne Robinson. Planned activities include a costume
ball, lots of movies, and the now traditional singing of the
hallelujah chorous at 3 am in the jacuzzi.

Leaders and/or ideas are needed for discussion groups. A
discussion group is aprox. 10-20 people gatered in the convention
suite for the purpose of flameitude. The subject can be anything
you feel like leading. wether it be your favorite author, or how
to make you own chain mail. In return for your efforts you will
recieve great quanitys of thanks from the commitee, and a non
captive audience. If this idea still appeals to you, call Elise
at 646-4162, or send net mail to DP@MIT-ML.

					thanks
					  jeff


Date: 7 JAN 1980 0238-EST
From: Procep@AI  (Eirikur Hallgrimsson)
Sent-by: PROCEP at MIT-AI
Subject: Nathan Brazil Returns Halfway: $ for DelRey?
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

To Well-World fans who would snap this up,

     This is a "To Be Continued" job, folks--and nowhere, but
nowhere do it say so on the outside of the package. Second half
is due for late '80. Needless to say it just gets interesting and
then ends.
     The computer stuff gets harder to take; but I was surprized
to find myself drwn back into the whole unlikey thing, Well and
all.

					Regards,
					Eirikur		/:[EH]


Date: 6 Jan 1980 2345-PST (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Lathe of Heaven
To: SF-LOVERS at AI
CC: TCCC at HUBNET

Just a note to remind everyone again that "Lathe of Heaven" will
be on PBS this Wednesday night, assuming WW III has not started
(and ended) yet. In the Los Angeles area, it will be on KCET 28
from 9:30 to 11:30 PM.

I don't have the crossreference coordinates for possible extra-
terrestrial viewers, but since PBS beams 99% of its programming
via one of the two WESTAR satellites, there should be some way
to get at it if they want it.

By the way, if it comes down to excising anyone or anything from
this segment of the space-time continuum, I don't know ANY of
you.

--Lauren--


Date: 3622-IST on 7 Jan 1980 
To: Terrestrial SF cult
From: Red "Snapper" McBain at TCCC-HUBNET
Subject: Late [sic] of Heaven

Many thanks to Lauren for his/her/its nearly timely alert as to
the broadcast of "Lathe of Heaven". Unfortunately, the message
arrived too late, as Lauren apparently forgot to account for the
time difference between PST and IST.

In the hopes of hearing about additional transmissions of this
sort, I'd appreciate it if you would add me to your mailing list.
As I gather you have become aware, the connection between HUBNET
and your network is considered less than legitimate by that whom
I'd rather not identify, so strictly speaking I shouldn't even be
sending this, let alone ask to be added to the SF-LOVERS; hence
I'd appreciate this being kept confidential. If you'll send the
mail to Fatima Yechburgh at TCCC-HUBNET it should work out fine
-- they hasn't read its mail in a pringle's age, and I'll be able
to read the messages fairly regularly (depending on the phase of
the moons).

As it turns out, I wouldn't have been able to observe Lathe of
Heaven anyway, since it conflicted with our own broadcast of the
movie version of Abdul Alhazred's long-to-be-awaited classic
novel, Necronomicon. In case you're able to receive it, it should
show up at your node sometime next week (barring unusual traffic
at the warp-repeaters). Check your local listings.


Date:  7 Jan 1980 0502-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Re: Gary 7
To: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY, SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
In-reply-to: Your message of 6-Jan-80 1856-PST

I don't know if you've seen the actress who portrayed the
secretary in that episode, but she is definitely whacko: just
like the person she actually played. Her name is Teri Garr and
she's ocassionally on the Tonight show. Robert Lansing (Gary
Seven), by the way, starred in the 4D Man I sent a message out
earlier (found out it wasn't based on a book but on an idea by
Jack R. Harris (whoever that is)), a scientist who experiments
with passing matter through matter and ultimately/accidentally
himself. I don't know what happened to Lansing, but he's a
pretty good actor from the stuff I've seen him in. Does anyone
know what's happened to him or anything he's done recently? Is
he dead?


Date: 7 JAN 1980 1016-EST
From: RLL at MIT-MC (Richard L. Lawhorn, Jr.)
Subject: Lathe of Heaven
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

For those of you in the Boston/Cambridge/Massachusetts area,
Channel 2 of Boston will be broadcasting the Lathe of Heaven
on Monday, January 14, 1980 at 8:00pm EST.


Date:  7 Jan 1980 0757-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Lathe of Heaven
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

The main character is played by Bruce Davison, that actor who
gave us such an enjoyable time as Willard, keeper of the hoard
of rats that mauled Ernest Borgnine.


Date:  7 Jan 1980 (Monday) 1254-EDT
From: DREIFU at WHARTON (Henry Dreifus)
Subject: Gary Seven and his wonderful adventures
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI

Yes indeed, and I believe it was called ASSIGNMENT EARTH. Pilots,
arn't they fun!

/Hank


Date:  7 Jan 1980 at 0950-PST
From: chesley at SRI-UNIX
Subject: Lathe of Heaven
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

     For those viewers in the SF area, channel 9 is showing the
Lathe of Heaven on Monday (Jan. 7) at 9PM, with channels 54 and
60 showing it Wed. This came as something of a surprise to me
since all previous references I'd seen (including the movie
review section in the front of the TV guide) indicated that it
would be on wed. only. And I can't get 54 or 60. Ah well, that's
PBS...
     As to ET messages from the hub: If this message gets thru to
the hub, or if someone could forward it for me, I'd like to get a
message to a Vega Quan named Paterl Josena; the last I heard, he
was living on Geortion's planet, but I don't know any more than
that. The message is: "Long time, no see. How come you never
write?"
	--Harry...


Date: 7 Jan 1980 12:13 pm PST (Monday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
To: SF^
Subject: What ever happened to . . . 

Okay. We've seen the hardware: the Death Stars, the Vipers,
the Klingon Battle Cruisers. We've seen robots and 'droids
till we're sick of them. But WHERE ARE THE ALIENS?

Don't get me wrong. Spock is one of my favorite SF characters.
But pointy ears and/or a fur suit do not an alien make, in my
book. Alien philosophies help a lot, but I'm getting tired of
humanoids with green skin and square foreheads. I want to see
Puppeteers. I want to see Moties. I want Martian Old Ones and
thousand-meter sandworms and microscopic humans doing battle
with rotifers in the swamps of Hydrot.

Now all this may seem somewhat beyond the kind of technology
we've been seeing in the movies lately. Which brings me to my
point.

Does anybody know what Ray Harryhausen is up to these days?
Harryhausen has been a pioneer in the use of a technique of
stop-action animation that to my mind is quite acceptable for
portraying the kinds of really alien aliens I've been wishing
for. You've probably seen his work; some examples (in no
particular order) are:

   Jason and the Argonauts (remember the bronze statue of
      Talos, and the skeletons grown from the Hydra's teeth)
   The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (the Cyclops, the dancing
      snake-woman)
   1,000,000 Miles From Earth (Venusian reptile meets death
      atop the Roman Colosseum)
   It Came From Beneath the Sea (giant octopus devours Golden
      Gate Bridge)
   Earth v. the Flying Saucers (daring bachelor scientist
      uses ultrasound to defeat invading alien fleet)

and many more which I can't remember right now.

Admittedly some of the above plots are a bit hokey, but I don't
think that's a serious problem. There are dozens of first-rate
alien contact stories out there just waiting to be moviealized.
And I think Harryhausen might be the man to do it. So I repeat:
can anybody out there give us a clue on when we can expect his
next extravaganza? And will it compete with the "hardware" SF
flicks we've been deluged with lately?

			-- GK


Date: 07 Jan 1980 1624-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: Lathe    
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI   

San Francisco area readers (and Hubnetters, if this reaches you
in time), note that Lathe of Heaven is also on ch 9 every night
this week at 11:30pm.


DP@MIT-ML 01/07/80 20:23:11 Re: new book
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

   Go look at Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials. Workman
Publishing. At $7.95 it isnt reasonable to buy but it is very
well done, It is of small coffee table size, and has incredibly
detailed pictures of 50 alien species. The creatures are drawn
fron an incredible range of SF work, everything from a Velantian
(E.E. Doc Smith) to one of Nivens Thrint.
   For each alien there is a summary of physical characteristics
a descriptian of it's habitat, and (if known) a description of
culture and means of reproduction.
   This is a neat book to recieve as a gift, but not reasonable
to buy at random.
					jeff


Date: 7 JAN 1980 2322-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: QUESTOR alias Gary Seven?
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


     Here is some more information on the Star Trek episode
ASSIGNMENT: EARTH (ie. the Gary Seven episode). According to the
book THE WORLD OF STAR TREK by David Gerrold, the series concept
was originated by Gene Roddenberry and Art Wallace. The final
episode was written by Art Wallace. Wallace had also written one
earlier episode, OBSESSION. Gerrold notes that ASSIGNMENT was
strange because it was intended to be both an episode and the
pilot for another series. If it had succeeded I believe it would
have been the first series spin-off to be done. Also note, that
it was the last episode of the second season. This makes the
attempt to sell ASSIGNMENT as a series pilot seem foredoomed,
since Star Trek's Nielsen ratings were not high and NBC was in
the process of cancelling the series when the episode was filmed.

     However, as we all rue, Star Trek went on for a third and
final fiasco ..err.. season. Not to be stalled for very long,
Roddenberry tried to sell two other SF series pilots immediately
afterwards. One was GENESIS II which has already been described.
The other was QUESTOR. Compare the following brief description
of the QUESTOR series pilot and concept with that of ASSIGNMENT:
EARTH.

     Sometime in man's ancient past, Earth was visited by
     a benevolent race of exterrestrials. Recognizing the
     potential within man, they left a robot designed to
     masquerade as a man and programmed to aid man realize
     his potential, but without his knowledge. Each robot
     is designed to last 200 years and then build its own
     successor. However, the radiation released by modern
     experiments with nuclear energy has begun to rapidly
     destroy the current robot, the brilliant scientist,
     Emil Vaslovic. Unable to complete his replacement in
     time, Vaslovic starts Project QUESTOR, an international
     consortium which will construct a robot he has designed.
     Unknown to the members of the consortium, the robot,
     Questor is designed to become Vaslovic's replacement.
     Vaslovic's programming will cause the robot to escape
     and seek out Vaslovic, or be destroyed when its fusion
     furnace overloads. Leaving his unknowing human protege
     Jerry Robinson in charge, Vaslovic disappears before
     his deterioration becomes obvious. Unfortunately the
     consortium tries to read the programming tapes and
     destroys part of one tape. This part contained the
     instructions of how to reach Vaslovic and the
     programming regarding human emotion. Therefore when
     the robot is activated he must search for Vaslovic
     based on a vague clue concerning boats, and he forces
     Jerry to come with him to guide him in human emotions.
     The pilot concerns Questor's search for Vaslovic, and
     the consortium's search for Questor and Jerry. It
     recaptulates all the standard robot posing as human
     cliches. At the end of the pilot he finds Vaslovic
     who is then deactivated, Questor's destruction is
     faked, and he and Jerry go on to guide man.

Gary Seven has been replaced by a humanoid robot and has gained
Spock's logical, unemotional nature. However, the difference is
that Questor wants to learn to feel emotions. Also note the
similarity between the Robinson/Questor relationship and the
Kirk/Spock relationship. If anyone is interested in reading
further, the pilot was novelized by D. C. Fontana (story editor
for Star Trek) and published by Ballantine under the title THE
QUESTOR TAPES.

     BTW: Does anyone know if the pilots for GENESIS II and/or
EARTH II were ever novelized?


					Enjoy,
					   Roger


Date: 7 Jan 1980 2016-PST (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: mystery TTYs
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

I can recall at least 2 SF stories about people who started
receiving phantom messages on tty machines. In both cases, I
believe the person would be working at either a radio station
or a wire service and would start getting messages from some
other planet on a printer unit.

We seem to be dealing with much the same phenomenon here with
HUBNET. This is an ideal medium for extra-stellar communications.
It completely obscures that linkages between the two nodes,
allows for automatic language translation and the like, and
can mask time delays and such.

In FACT: Two of the Arpanet linkages are via INTELSAT links (to
Norway and Hawaii). So some messages sent on to these lists (I
believe some London people may be on it) could well be beaming
their way into deep space right now. When these messages reach
the HUB compuplexes and are decoded, I'd hate to be in VAD's
shoes...

--Lauren--


Date: 8 JAN 1980 0059-EST
From: LEOR at MIT-MC (Leor Zolman)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

     Has anyone built/considered building a "neurophone" as
described in Analog several times sketchily and in the Feb '80
issue complete w/ patent #'s and address/phone # of the inventor?
This device is an audio-nervous system interface allowing one to
"hear" signals (e.g. like those produced by your stereo system)
directly (bypassing the ears!) I'm really freaking out thinking
about this, but I'm not an EE hacker.

thanx,
	-leor


Date: 7 Jan 1980 2248-PST
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-KA
Subject: The Greatest Good For the Greatest Number.
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow
To: Sf-lovers at AI
Message-ID: <[SRI-KA] 7-Jan-80 22:48:52.GEOFF>
Reply-to: Geoff @ SRI-KA

About the only parts I thought were hokey was that the computer
display sounded like a 2741; Otherwise it has been one of the
best things I'v seen on TV in a long time.

P.S.  Anyone know which Hyatt it was filmed at?


Date:  7 Jan 1980 2254-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Review of Lathe of Heaven
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

First, let me congratulate some PBS bureaucrat for having the
idea of funding a film like this. I've never seen the likes of
this on the tube before.

This is the first SF film since 2001: A Space Odyssey to deal
with mind and mentality in a novel, intelligent manner. It is
quite a striking film, visually. Like 2001, it is at its best
during the scenes of non-dialogue. It reminds me of MacDonald's
Wine of the Dreamers in some sense, but only due to the
implications of dream vs. reality. The dialogue, at times, seems
somewhat lacking, but it quickly makes up for that in the dream
sequences and the displayed effects these have on the characters.

Overall, I was quite impressed. It is obviously a brilliant work,
given the constraints of the medium.


Date: 7 Jan 1980 2357-PST (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: GENESIS II
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

Hate to see this list turning into a glorified TV guide, but ...

For those in the L.A. area, Genesis II will air Tuesday night
(that is, today/tomorrow) at 3:30PM (OK, afternoon then.) on
KABC 7.  This movie slot is always heavily cut but if you've never
seen GENESIS II it might still be worthwhile.

--Lauren--


Date:  8 Jan 1980 (Tuesday) 0822-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)
Subject: Niven's Aliens
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI

  I note that the earlier editions of Niven's paperbacks all had
white on black drawings of his aliens on front and back. The set
includes puppeteers, grogs, kydalto (can't spell), kzin (and a
kzin skelaton), thrints, etc. I am interested in knowing if Niven
"approved" the drawings, since the puppeteer, for instance, is
QUITE different than the one one the cover of "The Shape of
Space".
  Also, one of his Sword & Sorcery stories has been put into a
picture/novel which makes for pleasant reading. I really like his
theory that manna (the magic force) is a resource which can be
depleted. Was he the first to fiddle with this theory? I am not
generally a S&S fan so I don't know.
                 
               Dave

(p.s. the drawings are on INSIDE covers, front & back)


Date:  8 Jan 1980 0622-PST
From: Scott at SRI-KL (Scott J. Kramer)
Subject: More "lathe"...
To:   sf-lovers at AI

a076  0608  08 Jan 80
PM-Radio-TV, Adv 09,530
$Adv 09
For Release PMs Wed Jan 09
By PETER J. BOYER
AP Television Writer

    LOS ANGELES (AP) - I dreamed last night that PBS aired its
first major made-for-TV movie. It was strange - the dream, and
the movie.
    ''The Lathe of Heaven,'' it was called (the movie), based
on Ursula K. Le Guin's futuristic yarn about a young man whose
dreams change reality. PBS' first movie went something like this:
    Bruce Davison played a fellow named George Orr, a troubled
lad who begins the movie by stumbling out of the rubble of a
nuclear holocaust. Things are pretty awful, but George is soon
stirred from sleep to discover he was only having a nightmare.
    George, understandably, takes little comfort in the
awakening. He knows he must sleep again, and that his dreams have
this peculiar effect on reality. Like the time he tried to get
fresh with his Aunt Ethyl and she slapped him. He dreamed that
night that Aunt Ethyl died in a car crash, and it happened.
    No pleasant reverie, this - for me or George's.
    George tried to get rid of his dreams by eating phenobarbital
and Dexedrine, an act that put him in a state psychotherapy
center. He was treated by one Dr. William Haber, who happened to
be an oneirologist, or dream specialist.
    The story takes place in the late 20th century, when
psychiatrists have the aid of remarkable machines and gimmicks,
including one that enables them to put patients in a dream state
and induce dreams. Dr. Haber soon comes to believe George is
telling the truth about his ''effective dreams'' when he induces
a dream in George that the sun is shining. This is 1999 or so,
and the sun never shines. Until George has a dream that it does.
    The doctor begins to see wonderful possibilities in George's
dreams. ''Using your gift,'' he tells George, ''I'm going to do
what no politician, no scientist, no philosopher has ever been
able to do. . .  I'm going to make the whole world right.''
    His first action along those lines is to induce a dream in
George that there be a William Haber Institute of Oneirology.
George dreams, and awakens inside the William Haber Institute
of Oneirology.
    Encouraged, and his ego temporarily satisfied, the good
doctor moves forward. He induces George to dream that the world
is no longer overpopulated.
    George does, and presto! . . . an uncrowded Earth.
Unfortunately, George dreamed about a plague, which wiped out
six billion people. ''I'm sorry you had a bad dream George,''
Dr. Haber tells him.
    Dr. Haber manipulated George's dreams toward other ends, with
equally weird and disastrous ends, and eventually schemed to
usurp the power for himself. The results were eerily fascinating,
featuring sea turtles and kaleidescopes and aliens that looked
like giant artichokes in wet suits.
    In all, it was a nice dream. The story was certainly unique,
and the score was by Michael Small, who did the soundtracks for
''Klute'' and ''Marathon Man.''
    Still, it was a bit weird, and I was comforted by the
knowledge upon awakening that it was only a dream. On a silly
whim, I checked the TV listings. Uh-oh. ''The Lathe of Heaven''
was scheduled, tonight on PBS.
    Nah, it couldn't be. But then, you never know. Tonight I'm
going to dream that the Rams beat Dallas and Tampa Bay and
finally make it to the Super Bowl.
    End Adv PMs Wed Jan 9
    
ap-ny-01-08 0909EST
**********


Date: 8 JAN 1980 1209-EST
From: MARG at MIT-AI (Margaret Minsky)
Subject: Niven's Aliens
To: ROSSID at WHARTON
CC: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Most if not all of the alien drawings in those paperback editions
were done by Bonnie Dalzell, who is a biologist and well-known
among sf folks for animal drawings. I know that she actively
consulted with Niven while she was doing the drawings, but not
what the formal state of approval was at the end. She has always
been very critical of alien physical structure by virtue of
biological knowledge/theories, and refuses to draw things she
regards as implausible - that may be the source of some changes.
If you want to write to her, you can probably get a pointer from
the New England Science Fiction Association, some of whose
members are presumably reading this. BTW, she did an interesting
exhibit for the Smithsonian museum - created 27 aliens for
planets with different combinations of gravity, temperature, and
another factor I've forgotten. Each has a color painting and a
rationale. The exhibit may still be mounted.


Date:  8 Jan 1980 0921-PST
From: HARUKA at SRI-KL
Subject: Re: Niven's Aliens
To: ROSSID at WHARTON, sf-lovers at MIT-AI
In-reply-to: Your message of 8-Jan-80 0528-PST

All I can say is I have yet to see a paper back cover (or hard
back for that matter) which has done justice to the story within.
Many of them have very littlt to do with the actual story or are
completely at odd with the author's description of the
event/character/creature in question. If anyone knows of a paper
back edition with a cover that does have something to do with the
story, please direct me to it....I have to see it to believe it.

Haruka


Date: 8 Jan 1980 1317-EST
Sender: HCOHEN at BBN-TENEXA
Subject: Deletion
From: HCOHEN at BBN-TENEXA
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI
Message-ID: <[BBN-TENEXA] 8-Jan-80 13:17:41.HCOHEN>

Whereas I no longer exist, please delete me from your sf-lovers
list.  Many thanx.
 <HCOHEN> at BBNA


Date: 8 JAN 1980 1352-PST
Sender: RLWSSD at I4-TENEX
Subject: More on "Lathe"
From: Bob Weissman <WEISSMAN at I4-TENEX>
To: SF-LOVERS at AI
Message-ID: <[I4-TENEX] 8-JAN-80 13:52:23.RLWSSD>

What makes "The Lathe of Heaven" truly a winner for PBS is the
fact that it has evoked an outstanding response from non-hardcore
SF-fans. My girlfriend (decidedly NOT an SF-lover) and all her
friends (business majors (!) at San Jose State U.) loved it.
Score one for the good guys!


Date: 8 Jan 1980 1353-PST (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: great.
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

First messages from other space/time continuums. Now messages
from entities that ADMIT they do NOT exist. This is getting out
of hand.

--Lauren--


Date: 8 Jan 1980 1407-PST (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: embargo?
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

I would very much appreciate an embargo on discussions of
Lathe (at least discussions with lots of details, like some
recent news items sent around) until most of us have had a
chance to see it, which will be in a few days at most. This
is a different situation then with Trek or something where
we could go at anytime, in this case we are at the mercy of
local stations. I have never read the book, so I am finding
myself forced to delete much mail unread (or at least move
it elsewhere) as soon as I realize how detailed it is, which
sometimes is too late.

--Lauren--


Date: 8 JAN 1980 1811-EST
From: SLH at MIT-AI (Stephen L. Hain)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

     I haven't seen "Lathe" yet, but it reminds me of two
things: a "Night Stalker" TV show, where a guy who dreams
about a boogieman killing people and it really happens;
and a story from a Hitchcock collection called "Obstinate
Uncle Otis", in which an old stubborn codger causes things
to cease to exist be not believing in them (a power he got
by being struck by lightning). I would be interested to know
if anyone out there can think of stories based upon a similar
premise. Thanks - Stephen Hain


Date:  8 Jan 1980 1550-PST
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Re: great.
To:   Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY, SF-LOVERS at AI

In response to the message sent 8 Jan 1980 1353-PST (Tuesday)
   from Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)

Mssr. Cohen does not exist anymore because he was excised for
having received the leaks from HUBNET. The reason you and I
still exist is that HUBNET is excising people alphabetically
according to thier last names. I am planni

(Note from OPERATOR; This partialy finished message was found
on a vacant terminal. Since Mssr. Dolata was not around and the
terminal was needed, the existing portion of the message is
being sent and Mssr. Dolata will complete it when he returns
from wherever he went)


Date:  8 January 1980 1901-EST (Tuesday)
From: David.Lamb at CMU-10A
Subject: Re: Niven's Aliens
To:   HARUKA at SRI-KL
CC:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI
Message-ID: <08Jan80 190149 DL10@CMU-10A>
In-Reply-To: HARUKA's message of 8 Jan 80 12:21-EST

Haruka asked for examples of paperbacks whose covers had
anything to do with the contents. A quick perusal of my
collection indicates that a fair portion are quite
reasonable depictions of some aspect of the contents,
while most are at least related. Most of the Ballantine
editions of Burroughs' Tarzan books showed particular
incidents in the book, for instance. Many of the covers
that didn't show particular incidents at least did a
reasonable job of capturing something of the nature of
the book; the Lancer editions of the Conan stories used
some fairly well-known Frank Frazetta illustrations.

I will admit that there are a few real turkey covers in
the bunch; I might not have bought some of them if I
wasn't already addicted to the authors.

					David Alex Lamb


Date: 8 Jan 1980 4:58 pm (Tuesday)
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
From: Richard R. Brodie <Brodie at PARC-MAXC>
Subject: My baby--she's become . . .
To: Science Fiction Lovers <SF^>

In the beginning there was void, and the void was without form,
or any form of SF lovers mailing list.

Then I thought it would be a nice idea to have such a list. And
I created SF.Dl. And The People thought that it was good, for it
grew and grew to the point where it contained 52 recipients.

But I saw that it was lonely, and that it needed companionship
and an influx of fresh ideas from the East Coast, where weather
is cold, blondes are scarce, and relationships are meaningful.
And I created SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI, and linked SF.Dl to it
through the LISP-like miracle of MIT's mail system. And The
People thought that it was wicked good, for there are now
several hundred people from all parts of the world on SF-LOVERS
at MIT-AI.

And it became very difficult to maintain the list from afar, so I
created laws of nature and physics, also known as Roger <DUFFEY
at MIT-AI> to rule over the list and maintain order in the
heavens.

But there was one thing that was not good. That was that
PARC-MAXC had no automated mailing list facility. And although I
saw that that was bad, I did grin, and think, "shucks, it's not
too difficult to forward messages by hand to SF.Dl when they come
in over the ARPAnet, rather than having the computer do it for
me, even though one would think that Xerox PARC, being as it is
the edge of the world in computer science and technology, would
be able to handle incoming mail to distribution lists in at least
some rudimentary fashion." And I did forward many messages to
SF.Dl by hand for many months.

But I saw that my hand was getting tired and i did decide that
very soon I will stop forwarding mail by hand. Therefore, if you
are at PARC-MAXC and wish to continue to receive mail from
SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI, which does comprise the bulk of mail to
SF.DL, you must ask Roger <DUFFEY at MIT-AI> to add you to
SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI. Just clip the coupon below and send it to
Roger Duffey, c/o TCCC-HUBNET, Peoria, IL 60431.

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

Dear Roger,

Yes! I want to continue to receive the onslaught of messages from
the witty, intelligent people who spend their free time composing
SF messages! I understand there is no obligation and I can cancel
my subscription at any time. I enclose 3 CPU seconds for handling.
If I am a resident of California, I also enclose $5 to help save
three pounds of whale blubber.

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

If you are already on SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI, rather than the
internal Xerox list "SF.Dl," you are one of the Chosen and need
do nothing. If you are on SF.Dl but think that the recent flood
of glop from MIT is too much and don't want to take advantage of
this chance to save your soul, then you are one of the Damned,
are predestined to an eternity in Hell, and need do nothing.

Let there be light,

	Richard


FFM@MIT-MC 01/08/80 21:28:07 Re:  common themes in SF
To: SLH at MIT-AI, sf-lovers at MIT-AI

I have been interested in the idea of common themes running
thru literature for a long time and sf doesn't appear to be
much different. For example I have seen numerous hacks and
expansions on "The Most Dangerous Game".

Anyone interested in persuing this idea??? Besides myself I
mean..... It seems interesting to me.. The nice thing about
Le Guin Novels is that I think they are relatively hard to
exploit in addition to being reasonably winning and a bit
better in my estimation than "Foobar son of Foobaz" or
whatever. If anyone puts out "Are you in kemmer?" buttons
...I may scream...

Have fun
sends Steve


CEH@MIT-MC 01/08/80 21:34:35
To: SLH at MIT-AI
CC: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

     There was one about a little girl who could make things
disappear by saying "oogledeboo" (or some such), It was based
on the Berkelian premise that "esse est percepte" (the thing
is in the perceiving). She gains the ability to completely
disbelieve in things when her uncle, an amateur magician,
tells here that a penny will disappear from his fingers if
she says the magic word. She does, and he makes it go away by
sleight of hand. He does it again and she makes it go away by
believing it will. I won't reveal the rest of the story for
those who haven't read it. Unfortunately I can't remember the
name of this short story. (But can look it up when I go home
if anyone is really interested.)

-- Charles


Date: 9 Jan 1980 0032-PST (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Why, could it be?  OH NO!  The return of the BS Galactica...
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

Yes, friends and non-friends. Word has filtered down the ol'
grapevine that Lorne Greene will be starring in a new TV movie
that will be aired as a pilot for a NEW show. The name of the
movie?
              GALACTICA DISCOVERS EARTH

However, it appeears that most of the Galactica crew got lost
during the ship (maybe to join Will Robinson and Dr. Smith --
DANGER, DANGER WILL ROBINSON, COSMIC STORM! [that was always
one of my favorite shows, almost as funny as Dragnet]) The ONLY
crewmember who will carry over from the old show/movie is Lorne.
The NEW crewmembers will include "Adam 12" 'star' Kent McCord
and Dick Van Dyke's son, Barry. What a treat.

I'd rather have Dr. Smith back. I've got it! Dr. Smith sells
out the Galactica to the evil robot creatures that want to
destroy all humanity (at least they'd destroy all television).
Then they... naw, nobody would buy an idea like that...

--Lauren--


Date: 9 Jan 1980 11:12 am (Wednesday)
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Niven's Aliens
In-reply-to: Your message of 8 Jan 1980 2:37 pm (Tuesday)
To: HARUKA at SRI-KL
cc: SF^

The Bantam covers for DragonSong and DragonSinger are things of
beauty and a joy forever. They have even been made into greeting
cards.

Karen


Date:  9 Jan 1980 (Wednesday) 2348-EDT
From: DREIFU at WHARTON (Henry Dreifus)
Subject: Lathe
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI

Fantastic show. 

Does anyone happen to know what that idea was based on. Vaguely I
recall a short story talking about dream power, and rival between
good and evil (standard), but cannot remember the story. Oh well,
I can always create one when I go to sleep tonight.

/Hank


Date:  9 Jan 1980 at 2352-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Dr. Who on American TV
To: sf-lovers at ai

I just returned from Xmas in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. vacinity and Dr. Who
is being broadcast there daily (6 pm) on the PBS station. I was curious
whether it is available anyplace else (It is NOT in Austin, Texas).
I was initially turned off the idea of the show (because of Harlan
Ellison's introduction in the paperback series), but have found the
series interesting TV watching. It seems a pity one of the American
TV national networks hasn't picked this up.
-------

Date:  9 Jan 1980 at 2357-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Earliest TV science-fiction series
To: sf-lovers at ai

It strikes me that "Science Fiction Theater" was among the earliest
TV science-fiction series. Does anyone know (a) when this series was
on and (b) of anything prior to it. My guess is it was first broadcast
in 1955. (It certainly predates "silver-age" shows such as "The Outer
Limits" - which I believe someone was citing many messages back as
one of the earliest SF TV shows.)
-------

Date: 10 Jan 1980 0024-PST (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Dr. Who
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

Dr. Who runs weekdays here in L.A. on an independent UHF station (KBSC-52).
They have a good package but have now run them over and over and over...

Who cares about Dr. Who himself though? ... my favorite is Leela.

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 10 Jan 1980 0029-PST (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Old SF on TV
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

Ah yes.  SF Theater, with your host, Truman Bradley.  My favorite was the one
about the suitcase that had a little electic socket on the side that some
people found.  Turned out it could run a whole city.  But when it was
opened, it self-destructed and all was lost.  Remember how Truman would
show a big steel ball supported (supposedly) in the air between two
electromagnets?

I believe the 1955 estimate is a little early -- more like '58 I think in
its original run.

As for early SF -- gee, Outer Limits is practically yesterday.  Twilight
Zone started in '59.  Outer Limits much later (I'd have to look it up
to get the date, and I am feeling lazy right now.)  Prior to SF
Theater there were all manner of Space Patrol and related sorts of shows
on live TV -- which, while oriented towards children, were still SF of
sorts...

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 10 JAN 1980 0719-EST
From: LINC at MIT-MC (LL staff (probably RP))
Subject: Earliest TV science-fiction series
To: amsler at UTEXAS
CC: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

    Date:  9 Jan 1980 at 2357-CST
    From: amsler at UTEXAS

    It strikes me that "Science Fiction Theater" was among the earliest
    TV science-fiction series. Does anyone know (a) when this series was
    on and (b) of anything prior to it. My guess is it was first broadcast
    in 1955. (It certainly predates "silver-age" shows such as "The Outer
    Limits" - which I believe someone was citing many messages back as
    one of the earliest SF TV shows.)
    -------

Yes, SF theater was on NBC from 55-56. However, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet
was on NBC from 50-56. That is the earliest daytime show I remember.
There was an evening series during 48 (I believe) which had
some SF stories. Does anyone remember the one with 'striped paint' and
another where a guy bores a hole to the center of the earth and threatens to
drop a bomb down the hole to blow us up.  Does anyone remember the name of 
this show?

Date: 01/08/80 1700-EST
From: KG HEINEMANN at Lincoln Lab
Sender: SORCEROR at LL
Subject: Artistic representations of aliens
To: HARUKA at SRI-KL, sf-lovers at MIT-AI

     The covers of Jack Chalker's Well of Souls novels
seem to correspond to the author's descriptions ofentities
and scenarios quite well.
-------

Date: 10 JAN 1980 1108-EST
From: MARG at MIT-AI (Margaret Minsky)
Subject: Dr. Who on American TV
To: amsler at UTEXAS
CC: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Dr. Who is braodcast on the Boston PBS station, Channel 2, at least
all weekdays.  I think it is at 6:30.

Date: 10 JAN 1980 0834-PST
Sender: RLWSSD at I4-TENEX
Subject: Book covers
From: Bob Weissman <WEISSMAN at I4-TENEX>
To: SF-Lovers at AI
Message-ID: <[I4-TENEX]10-JAN-80 08:34:17.RLWSSD>

Enough about book covers!  If everyone goes to their bookcase and
reports an example of a favorite cover, the Arpanet will choke and
disks all over the world will clog.  Can't we just agree to agree
that, yes, some SF covers do fairly represent the stories contained
within and, yes, some covers are totally unrelated to their contents?

Date: 10 Jan 1980 9:00 am (Thursday)
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Dr. Who on American TV
In-reply-to: Your message of 9 Jan 1980 at 2352-CST
To: amsler at UTEXAS
cc: sf-lovers at ai

Dr. Who is on WGBH-TV, ch. 2, Boston, daily.  It has been on since September
1976.  They just began a new season (with shows not previously seen in the US)
this week.

If you write to your local PBS station, they may think about picking up the
show, which according to "Starlog" is ever-increasing in popularity.

"The idea of the show," Harlan Ellison notwithstanding, must have something to
it, since it is now in its 15th (yes, fifteenth) season.  I find it a highly
entertaining way to spend 23 minutes.

	Richard


Date:  10 January 1980 13:11 est
From:  York.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Dreams vs. Reality
To:  slh at MIT-AI
cc:  sf-lovers at MIT-AI

A story somewhat similar to the "Lathe" idea is "It's a GOOD Life". I
can't remember the author, but the story appears in the Science Fiction
Hall of Fame, Vol 1., so you can look it up.

The story is about a small farm town that is in the grip of a young boy
with the ability to change reality by "thinking" things the way he wants
them.  The whole  town walks around with smiles pasted on their faces,
and no one ever says that anything is wrong, because if the boy hears
you (or reads the thought from your mind) he will try to make things
better for you. Unfortunately, being a very young child, his perception
of "better" does not usually agree with yours.

There are many other neat features of the situation, but if you want to
find out what they are, read the story.

Date: 10 JAN 1980 1338-EST
From: MOON5 at MIT-AI (David A. Moon)
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Please limit yourselves to 2 or 3 messages a day.  I hate to be fascist
about this, but at present the redistribution of SF-LOVERS mail is using
up an entirely unacceptable amount of our highly-overloaded computer.
Bear in mind that when you send a message to SF-LOVERS, it is going to
over 225 people.  This means that you are committing about an hour of
computer time, several hundred tenex-pages worth of disk storage, and
at least 3 hours of human time.  If you have a trivial remark to make,
keep it to yourself.

Date: 10 January 1980 1341-EST (Thursday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A>
Subject: Re: Dr. Who on American TV
To:   amsler at UTEXAS
CC:   sf-lovers at ai
Message-ID: <10Jan80 134124 DP0Z@CMU-10A>
In-Reply-To: amsler's message of 10 Jan 80 00:52-EST

I doubt if any major network could afford to pick it up since it
probably wouldn't attract a big enough audience for them to sell the commercial
time for.  sigh.
					Doug

Date: 10 Jan 1980 1110-PST
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-KA
Subject: Re: Dr. Who on American TV
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow
To: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Cc: amsler at UTEXAS, sf-lovers at AI
Message-ID: <[SRI-KA]10-Jan-80 11:10:41.GEOFF>
In-Reply-To: Your message of 10 Jan 1980 9:00 am (Thursday)
Reply-to: Geoff @ SRI-KA

How long ago did they change actors of "Dr.  Who" himself?  We
used to have it up here on Sat.  or Sunday afternoon as a local
broadcast on Ch.  5 along with the Starlost (and please, no
flames about that!  -- just used it as a reference), and when
down in LA recently, and seeing Dr.  who down there, it seems the
original guy (i.e.  the one who was in the actual Dr.  WHO
movies) and on the tv version of the series from the start seemed
to have been replace by a (new) guy.  How long has this been
going on?

Geoff

P.S. Looking at my Movie Guide here under "Dr. WHO  and the Daleks"
shows Peter Cushing as Dr. WHO.  Was this the "pilot" movie for the
DR. WHO series, or a movie generated by the series itself?  I recall
that the Dr. WHO in this movie, was also the one which was in the
TV series, so who replaced Peter Cushing, why and when?  Anyone know?


Date: 10 Jan 1980 1000-PST
From: Arias at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Writing Messages
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI

It would really be appreciated if people would keep their
message width down below 72 characters/line.  Many already
do, but there are a few...

ADA
-------

Date: 10 Jan 1980 1313-PST (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject:  Dreams vs. Reality
In-reply-to: Your message of  10 January 1980 13:11 est
To: York.Multics at MIT-Multics
CC: SF-LOVERS at AI

"It's a Good Life" was written by Jerome Bixby.  In fact, it was made
into a Twilight Zone called, appropriately enough, "It's a Good Life."
It starred (sigh) a very YOUNG Billy Mumy.  Shades of Dr. Smith!

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 10 Jan 1980 1621-PST (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: restraint!
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

I was just musing about the sudden massive increase in SF-LOVERS
activity, and worked out the following fact.  If the average
message is 1000 bytes, and there are 225 recipients, and there were
some 30 odd messages in the last 24 hours or so, that adds up to
almost 7 megabytes of disk storage across the net.  We've got
to get this thing under control or BELIEVE ME it will collapse
under its own weight!

--Lauren--
-------


Date: 10 JAN 1980 2006-EST
From: DP at MIT-ML (Jeffrey R. Del Papa)
Subject: Re: Dr. Who on American TV
To: Geoff at SRI-KA
CC: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

for the boston area it is on ch. 2 (pbs) mon-thurs at 7:00 pm
						jeff

Date: 10 JAN 1980 2042-EST
From: EB at MIT-AI (Edward Barton)
Subject: Message floods
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

I don't know if anybody has statistics, but I can't help
noticing that some people send lots more SF-Lovers mail than
others.  The density of interesting information seems to vary too.
I just wonder if the people who usually generate the most
traffic will also turn out to be responsible for the most numerous,
most voluminous, and least essential messages bemoaning the
heavy quantity of message traffic....

Date: 10 Jan 1980 1054-PST
From: Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
Subject: sf history
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

	since were on the topic of sf history, there are a few things that
have always interested me... for instance, where was faster than light
drive first used? who called it "space warp"? who coined "psi force"?
i read an old blish novel awhile ago, from the 50s, that had a good (haha)
description of a ftl drive, but im sure theres something closer to
1907 or whenever albert made it necessary...
-------

Date: 10 Jan 1980 1823-PST
From: Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Re: restraint!
To: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY, SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
In-Reply-To: Your message of 10-Jan-80 1621-PST

	now calculate the total disk area available on the net.
-------

Date: 10 Jan 1980 2055-PST (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: disk space
To: csd.knutsen at su-score
CC: SF-LOVERS at AI

---- and you tell me how much of that space on the net is designated
by ARPA funding for the storage of SF messages???

C'mon.  I like SF-LOVERS as much as anybody, you know that.  I am
simply suggesting that unless some restraint is shown, the list,
like MANY others, will go the way of the Krell, and there will be
generally increased beaurocratic intervention at many sites.

So let's at least acknowledge the REALITY of the situation (as I dreamed
it last night) and take appropriate steps for the common good.

--Lauren--
-------


From: SATCOM 3 [in a semi-euclidean space]
Date: Nov 7, 2058
To: TCCC-HUBNET
Subject: Missed Again
Attention: Internodal Reception Control Officers (All Classes)

I am monitoring all communications on this net, so you will have to
try a little bit harder to find me.  Note: I am not here either.

				Better luck next time,
					VAD

P.S. You seem to be a little BEHIND the times.

Date: 10 Jan 1980 2228-PST
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-KA
Subject: Re: disk space
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow
To: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY
Cc: csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE, SF-LOVERS at AI
Message-ID: <[SRI-KA]10-Jan-80 22:28:36.GEOFF>
In-Reply-To: Your message of 10 Jan 1980 2055-PST (Thursday)
Reply-to: Geoff @ SRI-KA

The best amount of restraint you can show everyone is to stop
sending messages of this nature around.

The solution to your problem is obvious, if you don't like
getting this much mail, then REMOVE yourself from the lists.

Geoff

Date: 11 JAN 1980 0618-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: The flood of SF-LOVERS mail
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS, we have a problem. The flood of mail sent to this
list in the last two days has exceeded the capacity of the
mailing system. Several people have spent their time trying
to clean up some of the resulting chaos. Consequently, the
list is in danger of being deleted. I spent this evening
restructuring the list to reduce and balance the load on
each system. However, it will not be sufficient to solve
this problem. There is NO WAY to structure the list to
handle the current volume of messages. You must help by
reducing the number of messages that are sent to the list.

The unfortunate thing is that most of the last month's
messages sent to the list have said almost nothing. Many
have simply said "I DO TOO ......" and I am sure you can
fill in the blank as well as I can. The TCCC-HUBNET joke
messages have grown too numerous and dull. Tonights DISK
STORAGE messages are another part of the problem. One or
two messages were sufficient. However, there have also
been several interesting messages with something to share.
It would be unfortunate for us to lose the interesting
ones along with the "I DO TOO ...." majority of messages.

It is late here. I am tired. Tomorrow I am going to discuss
this with some members of the staff here. Then I am going to
try to draft some guidelines which I will then send out for
your consideration. In the meantime I ask your indulgence.
Tomorrow please:

     REDUCE THE NUMBER OF MESSAGES SENT TO SF-LOVERS

					--Roger

Date: 10 Jan 1980 (Thursday) 1731-EDT
From: DREIFU at WHARTON (Henry Dreifus)
Subject: Dr. Who
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-MC

He appears on Channel 12 (PBS) at 6:30 (ET) on weekdays.
So much for Philadelphia. (anyone visiting, in Deleware
can pick it up there too on Channel 12 as well)



Date: 11 Jan 1980 9:01 am (Friday)
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS
In-reply-to: Your message of 11 January 1980 00:54 est
To: Sibert.SysMaint at MIT-Multics (W. Olin Sibert)
cc: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

--------------------
Mail-from: Arpanet host MIT-MULTICS rcvd at 10-JAN-80 2154-PST
Date:  11 January 1980 00:54 est
From:  Sibert.SysMaint at MIT-Multics (W. Olin Sibert)
Subject:  SF-LOVERS
To:  Brodie at PARC-Maxc
cc:  Sibert.SysMaint at MIT-Multics

I hope you're the right person to send this to.... If not, please
forgive me (and let me know, so I can find out who is)

It seems to me that a viable solution to the volume problem in SF-LOVERS
would be to have the incoming mail directed to a file, and to have a
daily job which runs at 3:00 AM or some such, and mails the whole file
of all the messages sent that day out to the mailing list.

True, this would make the message rather big, especially on a day with
heavy traffic, but it's better than getting shut down completely.

I believe it would result in significantly less overhead to do it this
way; certainly, the FTP connection should be a lot more efficient for
bulk than it is for tiny messages.

I believe (though I'm not a COMSAT expert, so I can't be sure) that
having the mail sent to a file is trivial. I don't know how to do the
daily job on ITS, but you could even run that at PARC, having it FTP the
file from MC, and then mail it to REAL-SF-LOVERS.

Think it's a good idea?

 -- Olin
--------------------

Roger Duffey <DUFFEY@AI> is now maintaining the SF-LOVERS list.  However,
let me respond to your suggestion:

The very purpose of COMSAT is to do something like what you suggest; i.e., it
runs in the background, taking mail from disk files and FTP-ing it all over the
place.  The difference is that it must open several different FTP connections for
each message, rather than for all the day's messages, as you propose.

There are disadvantages to such bundling of messages, chiefly that 24-hour
turnaround is a significant degradation from the one- or two-hour lag we now
get.  One good thing about COMSAT is that it ensures that mailing uses only
one job slot, and does not degrade system performance greatly by using a large
portion of resources.

I would certainly be sorry to see SF-LOVERS get "shut down," but I think Dave
Moon's advice can be taken at face value; until the network mail system becomes
more efficient, we can only afford to be parsimonious in addressing such large
mailing lists as SF-LOVERS.

	Richard


Date: 11 JAN 1980 1338-EST
From: EB at MIT-AI (Edward Barton)
Subject: Message floods
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

The following message was not sent to all recipients because
of a fatal mailer bug. I repeat it now, not because it is of
overwhelming importance (are any SF-LOVERS messages
earth-shattering?), but simply because the decision to send or
not send a message should be the responsibility of the sender,
not the mail program.

Date: 10 JAN 1980 2042-EST
From: EB at MIT-AI (Edward Barton)
Subject: Message floods
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

I don't know if anybody has statistics, but I can't help noticing
that some people send lots more SF-Lovers mail than others. The
density of interesting information seems to vary too. I just
wonder if the people who usually generate the most traffic will
also turn out to be responsible for the most numerous, most
voluminous, and least essential messages bemoaning the heavy
quantity of message traffic....


Date: 11 January 1980 1400-EST (Friday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A>
Subject: Space & Time problems
To:   sf-lovers at mit-ai
Message-ID: <11Jan80 140039 DP0Z@CMU-10A>

If you really want to cut down on comsat activity put up a notice that
one person from each site should volunteer to redistribute the mail to
all the people at his/her site.  If after a few days no one from a
particular site volunteers just take all the people from that site off
the list.  If anyone sends a request to be added to the list, then the
person who would be responsible for this could add the person and not
bother remailing the request.
				Doug

P.S. If any one does volunteer then they can be sent the list of people
     at their site. 

Date: 11 Jan 1980 at 1148-PST
From: chesley at SRI-UNIX
Subject: Mail flooding
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

	I wonder if a better solution to the flooding problem (on
this and other mailing lists) would be for someone to develop a
generalized bboard. This would reduce the volume from one copy
per person to one copy per system.
	On one system, where I instigated a mail facility (user
sponsored), we had two bboards: one for general info, and one for
grafiti. This worked quite well.
	This solution could also be implemented on a voluntary
basis: those people on systems with such a bboard program could
remove themselves from the list, and use the bboard facility
instead. It would also get rid of the "please add me to the ...
mailing list" messages.
	I would be willing to implement such a program for UNIX
systems. If someone else could do ones for ITS and twenex, that'd
cover most everyone.

	--Harry...


Date: 11 Jan 1980 at 1452-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: disk problems, control of sf-lovers
To: Lauren at ucla-security
cc: amsler,sf-lovers at ai

     Admittedly we've been through a recent period of massive
SF interest. Star Trek, Black Hole, Lathe of Heaven (and soon
Martian Chronicles). I think some effort to perhaps segment the
SF-lovers mailing list would be in order. This really is an
interesting communication dilemma. If we ignored the question
of what ARPA would say about SF-Lovers, there remains the
problem of explosive message growth and the time it would take
for everyone to read through all the messages. I tend to think
local disk space is a local problem, i.e. some of the computers
on the net are not ARPA computers, but locally owned - hence
the disk space isn't arpa's concern. The message traffic IS.
     I favor the creation of files at one site in which all the
incoming messages are deposited and available for viewing
broken down by topics. e.g. when Star Trek became an sf-lovers
topic it should have been spun off as an SF-ST mailing list?
Also, there seems to be an effort to pass all the replies (and
replies to the replies) through the SF-lovers mailing address.
This isn't done with the bboard at ai, and perhaps shouldn't be
done with sf-lovers either? What might be viable is for
sf-lovers to act as a P.O. Box post-office. SF-lovers send in a
message, an inquiry for information. This inquiry goes out to
the full sf-lovers mailing list with an equivalent of a P.O.
Box designated at mit-ai for replies (and for those who want to
see what the replies were). messages to sf-lovers other than
inquiries, e.g. reviews or discussion of a topic (e.g. Lathe of
Heaven) could also be spun off into a P.O.Box for that topic,
with someone acting to extract mis-directed messages from
sf-lovers to the appropriate P.O.Box (file? bboard?) and
sending msg to the originator of the misdirected msg telling
them that comments, etc. on that topic should not be directed
to sf-lovers in general, but to sf-trek or some such.


Date: 11 Jan 1980 at 1522-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: One Site, One Sf-lovers delivery
To: sf-lovers at ai
cc: amsler

I applaud the common sense of this for those sites where it could
be implemented. Combined with the suggestion that once a day
delivery of all the incoming messages be implemented I think
there would be a significant decrease in the message traffic. I
am willing to share a common sf-lovers delivery with hjjh@utexas,
so you may delete amlser@utexas from the sf-lovers mailing list.
1-down, next!


Date: 14 JAN 1980 0451-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: Here I am, and here I remain
To: SF-LOVERS-AI at MIT-AI, sf-lovers-dm at MIT-DMS
To: sf-lovers-ml at MIT-ML, sf-lovers-mc at MIT-MC


Gentlebeings,

     SF-LOVERS has exhibited a phenomenal growth in both the number of
subscribers and the volume of mail handled since it began in September.
The number of subscribers has more than doubled to a current total of
215. The rate of submission has increased more than 6 fold reaching an
average of 7 msgs per day. Submission rates of more than 15 msgs per
day were achieved on 3 October, 9 December, 7 January, 8 January, and
10 January. The volume of mail (ie. size) handled has tripled. During
each peak, requests were made to reduce the amount of mail. They were
not heeded sufficiently.
     On 10 January mail to SF-LOVERS and HUMAN-NETS (another ARPAnet
wide mailing list similar to SF-LOVERS) brought MIT-AI to a virtual
stand still. No free storage was available. As soon as some storage was
freed the COMSAT would immediately claim it in attempting to empty its
queues. The major problem was that MIT-AI was not able to redistribute
to sites outside MIT quickly enough. A number of messages to SF-LOVERS
and other lists were lost. On the evening of 10 January I took 3 steps
in an attempt to solve the problem: temporarily shut down HUMAN-NETS,
reallocate the task of redistributing mail to sites outside MIT, and
request a decrease in the amount of mail submitted. On 11 January the
first two LONG messages sent to SF-LOVERS severely overloaded MIT-MC.
As a result the next 4 messages were not transmitted to recipients at
MIT-MC, Xerox PARC, Stanford University, and SRI. Some mail unrelated
to SF-LOVERS was also lost, more time was wasted in circumventing the
mess, and more people were irritated. Ironically enough these messages
all dealt with ways of reducing the mail volume not SF.
     As a consequence of these problems SF-LOVERS is on the brink of
being shut down along with any other experiments with ARPAnet wide
mailing lists. However, to solve these problems in a way that will
both guarantee safety and allow these lists to grow will take time,
coordination, and careful consideration. In order to buy the necessary
time and preserve SF-LOVERS I have chosen to temporarily impose drastic
measures to insure that there are no further problems. As of now all
mail submitted to SF-LOVERS will be accumulated in a file here at MIT.
I will then package and distribute the file to everyone on the list
once or twice a day when the 4 MIT systems are not heavily loaded. I
regret that this is even temporarily necessary. I emphasize however,
that this is only an interim solution.
     There are basically three problems to be solved. First, the
amount of work involved in distribution must be reduced. Second, the
disk storage requirements for the mail must be reduced. Third, an
etiquette for this kind of discussion list should be evolved. I
welcome suggestions and discussion of how we can solve these problems
satisfactorily. I have already received many of them. In the next few
days I hope to compile these suggestions into a coherent form and
distribute them. However, I would like to recommend that SF-LOVERS be
turned back to primarily discussing SF, not how to support discussing
SF. Therefore I have set up another mailing list SAVE-LARGE-LISTS@AI
to discuss these problems. If you have sent me mail with a suggestion
in the last few days then you are on this list. If you want to join it
please send me mail. However, I would like to limit this list to just
a couple of people at each site if possible.
     Lastly, I believe these problems are completely solvable. However,
if lists like this are to achieve their potential, the solution will
have to include action at all the sites, not just restructuring the
list here at MIT. Further many lists besides SF-LOVERS will benefit
from these changes. At the end of December I felt that the mail volume
would return to its September to November levels after the Sci-fi
movies died away. Instead it continued to grow. I have now begun to
wonder exactly what its potential for growth really is. Note that only
PARC and MIT have tried to fully develop their membership potential. I
think we have begun to glimpse one of the many interesting social
problems of the 1990's telematics society. Or perhaps that is only
science fiction....?


					  Enjoy,

				   R. DuWayne Duffey II
			      Inter-Temporal Telematics, Inc.
                                      14 Snie 41 EC

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

SF-LOVERS AM Digest
Monday, 14 Jan 1980
-------------------

Date: 13 JAN 1980 1547-PST
From: AYERS at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Spider Robinson's review of Alien ...
To:   SF-Lovers:

in the new Analog is a classic.  It ends with

  ... Robinson's Eighth Law: The only
  thing worse than cheap junk is expensive
  junk.  (Or as William Goldman said, "You
  can't wash garbage.")
    This is the third time they've built my
  hopes up, and I still feel the same way
  about science fiction cinema that
  Mahatma Ghandi felt when they asked
  him what he thought about Western
  civilization.
    "That would be very nice," he said.

Bob
-------
^_
Date: 13 Jan 1980 1912-PST
From: Ernest Adams <EWA at SU-AI>
Subject: EDGE Magazine 
To:   SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI   

EDGE Magazine is the Stanford Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
It is published once a quarter by Stanford students, and contains only
student work. It is the only outlet for student talent in these areas
available on the Stanford campus, and therefore the magazine is sold
at a 50% loss. The remaining funds come from the Publications Board of
the Associated Students of Stanford University.

Each issue of EDGE contains fiction, movie and book reviews, art, and
other features which we think will be of interest to the science
fiction community. Unfortunately we cannot consider any manuscript or
work of art by people who are not Stanford students, since we exist
first and foremost to serve them, and it is their fees which keep the
magazine running.

Since EDGE is an entirely nonprofit organization, we feel that it is
reasonable to solicit subscriptions among SF-LOVERS in the community.
If you would like to buy a three-issue subscription to EDGE, send your
name, mailing address, and check or money order in the amount of $1.75
(50c/issue plus 25c postage) to:

	Ernest Adams
	Box 6870
	Stanford, Ca. 94305

If you have any questions or comments, contact EWA @ SU-AI.

^_

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

Date: 15 JAN 1980 0420-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: Storage Problems, Dr. Who, and Robots
To: SF-LOVERS-AI at MIT-AI, sf-lovers-dm at MIT-DMS
To: sf-lovers-ml at MIT-ML, sf-lovers-mc at MIT-MC


SF-LOVERS AM Digest
Tuesday, 15 Jan 1980
--------------------

Date: 01/14/80 1229-EST
From: SORCEROR at LL (KG Heinemann)
Sender: SORCEROR at LL
Subject:  Storage/volume problems
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

     A possible solution to the storage problems caused by
massive SF-LOVERS activity is to have a number of smaller,
more specialized mailing lists. This idea grew out of all the
discussion of recent difficulties and personal dissatisfaction
over the general nature of the mail. A very large proportion
of messages concern mass-media SF events, i.e. TV productions
and motion pictures. I had hoped to, be receiving much more
information about less publicly visible SF, e.g. gossip about
local conventions and local FANAC, discussions og books and
art, historical tidbits, etc. Since I am aware of most
mass-media happenings concerning SF, independently of
SF-LOVERS, much of this mail is superfluous, for me. It seems
that most people on the mailing list would also be aware of
what's happening with mass media SF, so processing this large
volume of messages about it may not be a worthwhile use of
their time asnd resources. Therefore, I am suggesting a
separate mailing list for those who are primarily intersted in
discussing mass-media SF. If this proves to be unfeasible or
undesirable, the arguments I've presented still speak for some
restraint on these specific topics.

^_
Date: 01/14/80 1229-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey II)
Subject: The above message about Storage/Volume Problems
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Splitting SF-LOVERS into several special interest lists has been
suggested to me in direct messages by one or two other people. I
would like to provide a partial answer now in an attempt to for-
stall a flurry of messages to SF-LOVERS about it rather than
about SF.

I agree that there has been alot of discussion of mass-media SF.
However, that discussion has had both good and bad aspects. The
messages that Lauren sent regarding the behind the scenes details
of ST:TMP were both interesting and something that you could not
find in the mass media. At least not with Lauren's particular
perspective. Similarly for the others. However, there has also
been a great many of the messages that I have labelled "I DO TOO"
mail. These comments flooded the list in December and contributed
nothing new or interesting to the discussion. Indeed they turned
it from a discussion to a poll. Restraint could certainly have
been used here.

The messages concerning the broadcast time of "The Lathe of Heaven"
and "Dr. Who" in different regions was another problem. One message
pointing out that it was being shown ending with the standard quip
"Check your local paper for the broadcast time in your area" would
have been quite sufficient. I could go on but I already did so with
yesterdays digest. I will simply point out that after removing the
"I DO TOO", TV GUIDE, and BE QUIET messages, you are left with a
set of messages that could be handled fairly easily.

However, I do not think creation of several special interest lists
from SF-LOVERS is the solution. First there is the question of how
many people would want to be on all the lists. Several lists of the
same size as SF-LOVERS is going to generate even more transmission
problems than there are now. On the other extreme if the subject is
too specialized the list dies rather quickly. Instead of supporting
interesting and worthwhile discussion you curtail it. Last, is a
question of maintainance. There are no programs to automatically
support such fracturing. It would be difficult to maintain by hand
if the list was distributed from a single site. However, several
sites are moving to do their own local distribution to solve our
transmission problems. That would make multiple list maintainance
all but impossible.

Restraint is certainly necessary to make SF-LOVERS or any other
large list function well. I remind you that I am still compiling
suggestions about how the list can be made to serve our multi-
faceted interests. And again let me recommend that we discuss
SF rather than how to discuss SF. SORCEROR has suggested many new
topics. How about them?

                                        Enjoy,
                                           Roger

^_
Date: 14 Jan 1980 10:13 am (Monday)
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Dr. Who on American TV
In-reply-to: Your message of 10 Jan 1980 1110-PST, <[SRI-KA]10-Jan-80
 11:10:41.GEOFF>
To: Geoff at SRI-KA
cc: Brodie, amsler at UTEXAS, sf-lovers at AI

According to the June 1979 issue of Starlog, that invaluable aid
to SF-LOVERS:

"November 23, 1978, marked the 15th anniversary of the oldest
continuing science-fiction TV series in the world . . .
'Doctor Who.' . . .

"Americans are actually seing season 11 of 'Doctor Who.' The
first syndicated episode, 'Robot,' features Tom Baker's premiere
appearance as the Doctor. Four different actors have portrayed
the time traveler . . . since the inception of the series. . . .

"[Dick Mills, who does the sound effects for the series, said] '
. . . every time the actor changes a new interpretation is given
to the part. William Hartnell (the original doctor) was a brisk,
grandfatherly type; Patrick Troughton was more whimsical; Jon
Pertwee took the part very seriously; and Tom Baker is different
again.' . . .

"The Daleks played against a fifth Doctor when Peter Cushing
portrayed the Doctor in two films made in the early sixties:
'Doctor Who and the Daleks' and 'Daleks: Invasion Earth.' But
many hardcore fans discount the films because they did not
remain true to the established series.

"A series of paperbacks on many of the 'Doctor Who' stories is
now being published by Pinnacle Books. . . . Target Books
Limited, in England, has already published over 50 different
stories, as well as 'The Making of Doctor Who,' two 'Doctor Who
Monster Books' and 'The Doctor Who Dinosaur Book.' . . ."

^_
Date: 14 Jan 1980 11:46 am (Monday)
From: Artibee at PARC-MAXC
Subject: robots
To: sf^

Small item in January 1980 Data Channels newsletter: Founded in
1974, the Robot Institute of America has just arrived at a formal
definition of the term of central interest to its members. A
committee of users, manufacturers and researchers voted to define
robot as "a programmable, multi-function manipulator designed to
move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through
variable programmed motions for the performance of a variety of
tasks." Information on the group is available from Donald A.
Vincent, Manager, Robot Institute of America, P.O.Box 930,
Dearborn, MI 48128, (313)271-1500 x404.
---
I can hardly wait for their Laws of Robotics, m.

^_
Date: 14 Jan 1980 at 1623-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Dr. Who TV soundtrack
To: sf-lovers at mit-ai
cc: amsler

Does anyone from England know whether there is a Dr. Who
soundtrack there? Somehow I get the feeling the BBC doesn't
indulge in such commercial exploitation? ?
-----
^_

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************
^_

Date: 16 JAN 1980 0249-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: SF-LOVERS-AI at MIT-AI, sf-lovers-dm at MIT-DMS
To: sf-lovers-ml at MIT-ML, sf-lovers-mc at MIT-MC


 SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Today's topics: Dr. Who, SF Movie Promos
Wednesday, 16 Jan 1980     
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 15 Jan 1980 at 1047-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Thanks for the Dr. Who information
To: sf-lovers at mit-ai
cc: amsler

I would like to thank the many people who responded to the Dr. Who
inquiry I made just before the roof fell in on sf-lovers. I wanted to
say that the information supplied will be used to present a case for
local acquisition of Dr. Who by our PBS station (or other independent)
and consequently even the "It's on in Philadelphia, too" responses
will be used. And now, I guess I should apologize for this message as
well. (further Dr. Who program listings data, if any, should only be
sent to amsler@utexas, rather than sf-lovers - OK?)

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

Date: 15 Jan 1980 1530-PST (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: the promotions continue...
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

In the course of one afternoon of sporadic TV watching, I saw at least
15 different commecials for Star Trek/Black Hole products -- many times
back to back.

These included:

1) The ubiquitous McDonald's Star Trek meal (the only meal approved
   for your kids by the United Federation of Planets.)

2) Star Trek action figures (i.e. little dolls that look (sorta) like
   the main characters from the film.

3) Star Trek membership club of some kind with a set of mobiles of
   the Enterprise, a Klingon ship, and other things. (For this one
   you send in the wrappers from 5 MARS product candy bars and $1.50.)

4) Black Hole action figures.

5) Black Hole models -- they even have a model of the hole itself you
   can toss the action figures into!

Sigh.  Who says the economy is going downhill?

--Lauren--

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

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


Date: 17 JAN 1980 0513-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: SF-LOVERS-AI at MIT-AI, sf-lovers-dm at MIT-DMS
To: sf-lovers-ml at MIT-ML, sf-lovers-mc at MIT-MC


 SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Today's topics: Administrivia, a new book
Thursday, 17 Jan 1980                request, and more on cover art
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Administrivia:
--------------

   There appears to be some confusion about how to send mail to
   SF-LOVERS under the current conditions. All you need to do is
   prepare your message and send it to SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI as you
   have always done. You may send your message at any time of the
   day or evening that is convenient for you. All the mail sent
   to SF-LOVERS during a day is collected in one file on MIT-AI.
   Around 3 AM each day I take the contents of that file and
   distribute them in the form of this digest. This insures that
   SF-LOVERS will not swamp the system. In short, the once-a-day
   distribution policy does not affect how you send mail to
   SF-LOVERS in any way. This policy only affects when you will
   receive copies of the SF-LOVERS mail.

					Enjoy,
					   Roger

Today's Mail:
-------------

Date: 16 Jan 1980 11:23 am (Wednesday)
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest
In-reply-to: Your message of 16 JAN 1980 0249-EST
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
cc: kolling, Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-Score>

I've read a couple of books by Leigh Brackett in the past, but
none so interesting as her Eric John Stark novels which I've
just run across.....does anyone know if there are more books
about Stark than the Skaith trilogy, or if Brackett wrote any
other books in a similar vein?

Karen 

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

Date: 16 Jan 1980 at 2114-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Subject: Cover art reliability
To: sf-lovers at mit-ai

Haruka is, of course, mistaken to imply that ALL paperback covers
either have nothing to do with the story or are at odds with the
author's description of what is depicted. If to see is to believe,
then see M.Z. Bradley's SHATTERED CHAIN for accurate portrayal of
a scene in the story, and her RUINS OF ISIS for Freas' symbolical
but appropriate generalization of that story.

For weird alien critters, tho I've not specifically checked them
out, I think the covers to Chalker's "Well World" series are
probably reliable. In the case of Pier Anthony's "Cluster Trilogy",
the covers are helpful in visualizing the very odd life forms in
the stories even though the art is highly stylized.

                          . . .

On reviewing the log of SF-LOVERS messages since its inception, it
is striking how many pertain to pictures (covers, TV, film) rather
than to print. Don't y'all out thar R E A D ?

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

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

Date: 18 JAN 1980 0213-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: SF-LOVERS-AI at MIT-AI, SF-LOVERS-DM at MIT-DMS
To: SF-LOVERS-ML at MIT-ML


SF-LOVERS AM Digest   Today's topics: DRAGONDRUMS!, Dr. Who, LATHE,
Friday, 18 Jan 1980    ST promos, last word on cover art, RINGWORLD!
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 17 Jan 1980 0349-PST
From: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>
Subject: the Oldtimers in Southern Weyr
To: SF-Lovers at MIT-AI

Hmm. In Dragondrums, we find T'kul as Weyrleader and Mardra as
Weyrwoman. T'ron is listed as merely a dragonrider, and there is
no mention of Merika. Looks like Fidranth let himself be outflown
by Salth, which is why we find T'kul battling F'lar at the flight
for D'ram's sucessor. T'ron was alive at least during the time of
Dragondrums, although he isn't mentioned except in passing in The
White Dragon.

Does anybody have any other interpretations or further insights?

-- Mark --

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

HAL@MIT-MC 01/17/80 09:01:31
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

The Doctor Who episodes that are currently being shown in the Boston
area are all repeats (3rd time around at least). Although they seem
to be showing them in random order these days, there are two groups
of series -- one with Sarah Jane, who finally gets chucked just
before the first Gallifree episode and one with Leela who gets left
behind at the end of the second Gallifree episode. Are they still
making new series? If so, does anyone know what happens next?

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

Date: 17 January 1980 1802-EST (Thursday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A>
Subject: Lathe of Heaven post comments
To:   sf-lovers at mit-ai
Message-ID: <17Jan80 180242 DP0Z@CMU-10A>

I rather enjoyed the movie except that it seemed like the hypnosis
technique is a modification on Spock's Neck Pince. The set appeared
to be rather flimsy and not what a 'futurist' set should look like.
Sigh...
					Doug

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

Date: 17 Jan 1980 1738-PST (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Star Trek Matches
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

A friend of mine, rightly thinking I would be amused, gave me an
interesting matchbook yesterday. On the front, is a view of the
new Enterprise coming toward the viewer. On the lower part of the
front (where the staple is), it says "The Human Adventure is Just
Beginning." Oh yeah, and "close before striking". On the back, we
have the official STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE logo.

But the real fun is the INSIDE:

(the top of the matchbook, by the way, says VALUABLE OFFER INSIDE...

------
SUPER STAR TREK (TM) POSTER OFFER. (SATISFACTION GUARANTEED)

The following are offered along with a order form printed in the
book. (It reminds you not to send the matches...)

OFFICIAL 22" BY 29" FIVE COLOR SILVER MYLAR OF STARSHIP ENTERPRISE
   -- $6.00
OFFICIAL 22' BY 34" 2-SIDED POSTER. ONE SIDE PRINTED LITHO, OTHER
   SIDE PRINTED 3-D LITHO WITH 3-D GLASSES.  -- ONLY $5.00
OFFICIAL 22' BY 48" FOUR COLOR CUTAWAY OF ENTERPRISE ILLUSTRATING
   ITS VARIOUS COMPARTMENTS AND CHAMBERS.  -- ONLY $3.00
OFFICIAL 22' BY 34" FOUR-COLOR ENTERPRISE LITHO.  -- ONLY $3.00.

Other STAR TREK (TM) items available on request. STAR TREK is a
trademark of Paramount Pictures.

The best part is the company you write to:

STRIKIN' IT RICH ENTERPRISES
1278 MERCANTILE STREET
OXNARD, CA. 93030

They 'ain't just whistling dixie!

--Lauren--

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

Date: 17 Jan 1980 1848-PST
From: HARUKA at SRI-KL
Subject: Covers
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

All right already! I make a casual snide remark to make a point
and I get deluged with replies about exceptions. Of course I
realize that not ALL covers are completely without clue to their
parental concepts. My point was that I've found so many covers
that are wrong. Admittedly, some covers are closer to the author's
idea than others, but I don't think that any artist can capture
all that the author had in mind, unless the artist and author are
the same person. Even on the "close" covers, I've almost always
been able to find a few minor discrepancies. And don't get me
wrong, I've LIKED some of the covers that were admittedly wrong.
So, let's all stop beating the dead dog and get off the topic of
covers. I guess you have to careful what you say to this bunch...

Haruka

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

Date: 17 Jan 1980 at 2109-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Larry Niven's "Ringworld Engineer's"(sequel to "Ringworld")
To: sf-lovers at mit-ai
cc: amsler

It has completed publication in GALILEO, Magazine of Science & Fiction
(in four parts: #13 July, 1979 (spectacular front-back cover
illustration of the Ringworld by Cortney Skinner); #14 (Sept., 1979);
#15 (Nov.,1979) and #16 (Jan., 1980)). The story ties together a great
deal of Known Space material and features most of the characters from
the original "Ringworld" book. GALILEO has had distribution problems
in at least this part of the country, so alas it may be hard to get
all the issues, but each contains a few illustrations which it would
be a shame to miss in a straight book version. Cover price on issues
$1.95 each. Published at: GALILEO, 339 Newbury St., Boston, MA 02115.
(It might be nice for someone local to Boston to inquire whether they
are selling back-issues for those who don't want to wait for the
paperback (or possible miss the art)).

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

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

Date: 19 JAN 1980 0241-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


 SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Today's topics: RINGWORLD, replies on LATHE
Saturday, 19 Jan 1980      and Stark, new requests!, request protocol!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Administrivia:
--------------

Case 293: It's not done that way any more!

   Today Dan Shapiro <DGSHAP@MIT-AI> unintentionally distributed
   mail through the feeder lists that I use to distribute the
   Digest. He was actually trying to send mail only to the local
   SF-LOVERS since it was about the availability of back issues
   of GALILEO at a local bookstore. Such local redistribution was
   a "feature" of those lists until SF-LOVERS was restructured to
   stagger the distribution load. To prevent future accidents I
   have renamed the feeder lists. To send mail to the mailing
   list, just send it to SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI. Sorry everyone.

                                           Roger

Today's Mail:
-------------

RWK@MIT-MC 01/18/80 02:55:35
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

GALILEO does indeed sell back issues. There's this interesting
little bookstore on the first floor that usually has the several
previous back issues right there, for us local types. Thanks for
mentioning this, as I'd forgotten to go get the last installment
of the RINGWORLD story.

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

Date: 01/18/80 1007-EST
From: SORCEROR at LL (KG Heinemann)
Sender: SORCEROR at LL
Subject: RINGWORLD ENGINEERS
To: AMSLER at UTEXAS, SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

     LOCUS reported that The Science Fiction Book Club will be
offering RINGWORLD ENGINEERS as a primary selection in the near
future. (I think it was to be in the circular for May, but I'm
not sure now.)

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

Date:  18 January 1980 16:28 est
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Doug Phillips Lathe Hypnosis
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Both the book and the movie refer to the technique as Vagus-Carotid
Induction. I know this to be a real technique, involving pressure on
nerve and vein, I think the theory is to reduce blood flow to brain,
causing marginal consciousness loss. In the book, this is combined
with various suggestions to the usual effect. Haber gives Orr a
suggestion that future trances can be induced by simple touching of
throat. I'm no expert, but at worst the TV version was a little
speedy. Besides, don't TV censors get real upset at detailed hypnosis
on TV for fear some fool in the audience will go under too? I seem to
remember reading that in "The Making of Star Trek".

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

Date: 18 Jan 1980 1107-PST
From: Zellich at OFFICE-1
Subject: Eric John Stark stories  and  Vance DEMON PRINCES query
To:   SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI, Kolling at PARC-MAXC

According to the foreword by her husband, Edmond Hamilton, in the
Science Fiction Book Club edition of "The Best of Leigh Brackett",
there are quite a few Eric John Stark stories but I didn't see any
mention of book titles. I suspect there are some, probably the
"Ginger Star" series, but apparently most of them were short
stories, novelettes, or whatever.

If anyone does know of specific book titles, especially in-print
ones, I too would like to know about them.

----
Glad to hear about "Ringworld Engineers" -- I've been looking for
the title to the sequel for some time.  Thanks, Amsler

----
Does anyone know of other titles in Jack Vance's DEMON PRINCES series?
I have #2, "The Killing Machine", in which the hero goes after Kokor
Hekkus, but don't know the title of the first in the series, or if
there is a 3rd, or 4th.

Cheers,
Rich

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

Date: 01/18/80 1001-EST
From: SORCEROR at LL (KG Heinemann)
Sender: SORCEROR at LL
Subject: Query
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

     I am trying to compile a list of SF stories in which ideas from
real-world astrophysics have had an important role. Already on the
list are most of Niven's stories, Gateway by Fred Pohl, The World is
Round by Tony Rothman, The Listeners by James Gunn, and Hogan's books.
Have any of you out there run across other stories where phenomena and
theories form modern astrophysics were important? If so I'd like to
know about them. Please send me a message containing title, author,
and a synopsis. These messages should be sent directly to me, rather
than through SF-LOVERS, unless you feel that they would be of more
general interest. Thank you.

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

Date: 01/18/80 2359-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey II)
Subject: SF-LOVERS etiquette: a protocol for requests
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Presently 3 queries of the type "Do you know of any..." have been
sent to SF-LOVERS. Such queries are worthwhile and informative,
but can generate a great deal of traffic with many duplications
if replies are sent to everyone. However, there is also a problem
if replies only go to the sender since many people on the list
may be interested in the replies. If many people ask to also
receive copies of replies, chaos shortly ensues. To solve these
problems, I think its necessary to agree on a protocol for such
requests. Here is a proposal:

   1. A person sends a request to SF-LOVERS.
   2. Replies are sent only to the person who asked the question.
   3. This person collects the replies. After a week to 10 days
      the person eliminates any duplicate answers, and then sends
      a brief reminder of the request and the collected replies
      to SF-LOVERS.

This protocol solves the problem of duplication and insures that
everyone sees the replies. Further, I do not think the protocol
will inhibit discussion. The archive shows that this type of
request does not generate discussion about the question itself.
However, the answers may raise new topics, and this aspect is
preserved since everyone sees the answers, but in an organized
way. I also think that the protocol is fair. The small amount of
work done in collecting and distributing the replies is in some
sense a "payment" for the answer. If someone does not or cannot
do the collection for some reason, then they need to find someone
else on the list that can. This should not be overly difficult if
the question is of general interest. Note that such negotiations
should take place directly between the people involved.

Some people have suggested that these problems be handled by
splitting off a mailing list for these requests. I have already
indicated the basic problems with that proposal. Specifically,
maintainance, fragmentation, and loss of people which may possess
the knowledge that you are trying to tap. Note that splitting off
a separate list for each request suffers from the same problems
plus the fact that such request lists would be impractically short
lived for the hand maintenance facilities that are in widespread
existence now. Also note that any alternatives must live within
the bounds of the currently available facilities across the net.

Please send replies, alternatives, and criticism to me. I will
organize and distribute them as needed. Substantive alternatives
will quickly be distributed at the end of the Digest. The current
requests don't pose any severe problems since the Digest form
prevents them from getting out of control. Also note, that the
protocol I have outlined is really just an adaptation of the
notion of an "adhoc committee" for this medium. I am afraid
protocols like this are going to be the only way to solve many
of the problems we have encountered so far.

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

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

Date: 20 JAN 1980 0320-EST
From: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Today's topics: TV hypnosis & LATHE, Martian
Sunday, 20 Jan 1980       Chronicles!, SF Advertisement?!, meta-plea
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 19 Jan 1980 0214-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: hypnosis 
To:   sf-lovers at MIT-AI   

TV censors do indeed get upset at detailed hypnosis on TV. (There may
even be a law against it, for all I know.)  I don't remember seeing
anything about it in "The Making of Star Trek", but a hypnotist who
entertained at my high school lo these many years ago stated that what
you see on TV is ALWAYS much briefer than the actual technique -- it's
actually closer to being the method used to put someone under who has
already been hypnotised recently, and in fact is exactly that when the
person on TV actually ends up hypnotised (e.g., for a demonstration of
hypnosis).

As for such precautions being necessary, I can vouch for that, too. I
was one of the "fools in the audience" who followed the hypnotists
directions to the people on stage, and I went under quite easily.

(I also agree that the hypnosis--and the later Vagus-Carotid Induction
 --in "Lathe" were excessively brief even for TV, but it would have
 looked worse for the screenplay writers to have cooked up an excuse
 to explain the VCI to the audience.)

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

LEOR@MIT-MC 01/19/80 23:06:56 Re: Martian Chronicles Arrives
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

I just saw a quickie ad for Chronicles, slating it for Sun Jan 27
on NBC (I think it said 8:00 pm.) Since Harlan Ellison wrote the
screenplay, IT WILL BE GOOD (decreed the Ellison fanatic.) Unless,
of course, the script was butchered in the usual TV style...but I
haven't heard news of Harlan cussing out NBC any more than usual
lately, so we'll see.

 -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  

[Please check your LOCAL PAPER for the station and time of broadcast
 in your area  -- SF-LOVERS-REQUEST ]

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

Date: 01/19/80 20:16:20
From: DGSHAP at MIT-AI
Subject: Microprocessor-controlled brassieres
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

I found this on system messages at AI. I don't know if it is science
fiction but it is certainly bizarre. And, it should add secret fears
to the minds of people who believe computers are slowly taking over
the world.

   MSG: SAFTEY FIRST 
   GEOFF@MIT-AI 01/19/80 19:23:10
   Re: Microprocessor-controlled brassieres
   Found on the Rutgers BBOARD,
   FROM: LIBES @ RUTGERS

   D. Green Electronics of Glasgow, Scotland, may soon market
   microprocessor-controlled brassieres that determine the safe
   and unsafe periods in a woman's ovulation cycle by analyzing
   variations in breast temperature. The micro would automatically
   measure and analyze variations in breast temperature, providing
   a real-time readout of fertility. Not yet finalized is the
   location for the display.

   (from Electronic Engineering Times - Monday, December 10, 1979)

	Dan Shapiro

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

KOVAR@MIT-MC 01/19/80 13:44:20
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-MC

I only send about one message every two months and this is it. I have
been receiving more messages bemoaning too many messages than messages
about science fiction. We all recognize the fact now and as far as I
can tell the problem is being worked on right now. Lets leave it to
the people who can handle it. If you have any suggestions on the
subject, send it to the people in charge, not the whole list. As I was
reading through, I noticed at least 5-6 double messages, messages that
had been sent twice, so lets just all cool down and talk science
fiction.

     Dave

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

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

Date: 21 JAN 1980 0211-EST
From: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest                 Today's topics: TV syndication SF,
Monday, 21 Jan 1980                                 Lathe location
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 20 Jan 1980 0230-PST (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: The Outer Limits
To: SF-LOVERS at AI

For many years now, here in L.A., one of the local stations has run
the Outer Limits syndication package, usually in a pretty much random
order. An interesting change has suddenly appeared. The entire series
seems to have been reset to zero, and, according to my records, is now
running in perfect chronological order. They run once a week and just
ran #5 (The Man Who Was Never Born). Beautiful program.

So if anyone out there has particular interest in any particular
segments of the show (nagging questions from the past?) let me know
and I can give the appropriate program a good looksee -- if I can't
answer the question off the top of my head...

[Remember the "Demon With a Glass Hand"? That episode was an Ellison
script. As for "The Martian Chronicles". Well, I first read the book
many years ago, and have always liked it. But I have my doubts as to
how well ANYONE could translate it to the screen -- including Ellison.
And it is going to be pretty sad with commercials. One of the really
nice things about "Lathe" was the lack of such beasties. But we shall
see. I hope they did USHER II, that has always been one of my favorite
segments from TMC.]

--Lauren--

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

DP@MIT-ML 01/20/80 21:00:56 Re: lathe location
To: sf-lovers at MIT-AI

The Lathe of Heaven was filmed in/around Houston TX. The dream lab was
actually Houston City Hall. Also the emerald city building is really
that shade of green. (This from an architecture noticing local fan
that gets sent on boondoggles to obscure (and uncomfortable) portions
of the US)
					jeff

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

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

Date: 22 JAN 1980 0256-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Today's topics: SF stores, Darkover and some
Tuesday, 22 Jan 1980            answers, Review of Dick's "Golden Man"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 21 Jan 1980 1532-EST
Message-id: <317334724.4503@LL-ASG>
From: Leslie Turek <turek at LL-ASG>
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI
Subject: Earthlight Gallery

SF lovers living in or visiting the Boston area should know about
Earthlight at 249 Newbury St. (266-8617) This gallery features sf
and fantasy art, sculpture, jewelry, and art books. Just look for
the place with the 10-foot flying white dragon in the window.

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

Date: 21 Jan 1980 12:49 pm (Monday)
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Darkover + books
To: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
cc: Kolling

While roaming around in the local bookstore Friday I found three
Darkover novels which I had thought were out of print. They are
recent publications of Arrow Science Fantasy. I think all the
Darkover novels are now in print. There were also a whole bunch
of other newly available novels by MZB.

I also shelled out $12.95 for a telephone book sized paperback tome
called The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, and it seems to be well
worth it. I forgot to bring it here with me, but the following are
the answers (as well as I remember them) it supplies to some of the
questions that have been asked lately:

1. There have been 4 actors who played Dr. Who on TV, not counting
   Peter Cushing in the movies.

2. The John Eric Stark stories consist of the Skaith trilogy
   (Ginger Star, Hounds of Skaith, Reavers(sp?) of Skaith) and
   three short stories or novelettes, one of which is collected
   in the Halfling.

3. The earliest TV SF was Captain Video (1949) followed by a bunch
   of shows (Tom Corbett, etc.) that started in 1950.

Karen

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

Date: 21 Jan 1980 8:41 pm (Monday)
From: Sapsford at PARC-MAXC
Subject: "Golden Man" by Philip K. Dick.
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

I just finished this anthology ($2.25, Berkley). It contains "never
before collected", etc. stories, many from the 50's. It also has an
introduction and story notes by P.K. himself. I thought most of the
stories were good, solid Dick (which to me is always a bit nutty,
and I often get depressed reading his stuff, but it is very thought
provoking), and they provided 300+ pages of entertainment for a
reasonable price (although I was reading a friend's $0.40, approx.
1960 copy of Dr. Bloodmoney recently and got pissed off at the current
price of paperbacks for a week). Dick also mentions that he is working
(and has been for the last 3-5 yrs) on a new novel - anyone out there
got any details?

		/MAS

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

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

Date: 23 JAN 1980 0307-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


 SF-LOVERS AM Digest           Today's topics: Replies on all queries,
Wednesday, 23 Jan 1980             TV SYN query!, Poll!, Outer Limits!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 Jan 1980 at 0146-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Subject: Bibliographic Queries and their Replies

In the 40's, Leigh Brackett's most s/f-productive period, most of
her work appeared in PLANET STORIES and THRILLING WONDER STORIES.
Some of that can now be found in 2 collections, THE COMING OF THE
TERRANS, and, THE HALFLING AND OTHER STORIES. The latter has a
Stark story. Other than the "Skaith" trilogy, there are 2 Stark
books from the earlier period in an oldish ACE-double, THE SECRET
OF SINHARAT and THE PEOPLE OF THE TALISMAN. Altho not a Stark
story, THE SWORD OF RHIANNON was also from her "Mars-period", and
as I vaguely recall it, was in a similar vein. THE NEMESIS FROM
TERRA is of the same vintage, and having the Mars setting, is
probably similar, too.

**********

5 books were planned for the "Demon Prince" series, but so far
there's only been THE STAR KING (#1), your THE KILLING MACHINE,
and THE PALACE OF LOVE (#3).

**********

Hal Clement's MISSION OF GRAVITY is, I thought, the classic of
the type you are concerned with, and I would assume it needs no
synopsis.  Presumably its sequel, STAR LIGHT, would also fit.

I cannot provide synopses, but on the same theme as THE LISTENERS
-- signals from an alien intelligence -- are Eden Phillpotts'
ADDRESS UNKNOWN, 1949; Frank Crisp's THE APE OF LONDON, 1959; and
Zerwick & Brown's THE CASSIOPEIA AFFAIR, 1969. If cosmology is
within the scope of your interest, there are Hoyle's THE BLACK
CLOUD and THE INFERNO; James Blish's THE TRIUMPH OF TIME; Poul
Anderson's TAU ZERO; Ian Watson's THE JONAH KIT; and Charles
Harness' THE RING OF RITORNEL. Stapledon's STAR MAKER probably
veers too far toward fantasy.

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

Date: 22 Jan 1980 1040-PST
From: Zellich at OFFICE-1
Subject: Demon Princes wrap-up and time-warp delivery of Dragondrums

Here's the final scoop on Jack Vance's DEMON PRINCES series:

#1 is "The Star King", in which hero Kirth Gersen tracks baddie Attel
Malagate, one of the 5 self-proclaimed "demon princes", across the
galaxy. (For the non-readers of this series, Gersen has a revenge
thing against the 5 villains due to an incident in which the 5,
working together, killed his family (among many others).

#2 is "The Killing Machine", in which bad guy Kokor Hekkus gets his.

#3 is "The Palace of Love", about Viole Falushe.

#4 (just out, with pub. date of Nov 79) is "The Face", with our hero
pitted against Lens Larque.

#5 has tentative title "The Book of Dreams" and is not out yet. It
will presumably have Kirth Gersen tracking down the last of the demon
princes, Howard Alan Treesong.
-------

Also,
Dragondrums is now out in paperback form.
  (do you suppose those HUBNET characters are messing around
   with our bookstores?  It has a published date of February
   1980...)

Cheers,
Rich

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

Date: 22 Jan 1980 0255-PST (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Lost in Space

Is anyone out there living in a market where "Lost in Space" is
still running in syndication? If so, I'd appreciate hearing from
you. I have long been of the (lonely) opinion that this hilarious
program was among the most entertaining ever on television (if
viewed from the proper angle of course...)

--Lauren--

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

Date: 22 Jan 1980 2253-PST
From: Ernest Adams <EWA at SU-AI>
Subject: Poll--I want your opinions!  

     All right, SF-LOVERS, you won't buy our magazine; will you help
us on a project? EDGE Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy at
Stanford is conducting a poll of SF-LOVERS of your ten favorite
characters from science fiction and fantasy. We want your opinions.
If you want to submit lists, here's how to do it:

     In order of preference, make TWO SEPARATE LISTS of your ten
favorite SF and fantasy characters, and THE STORIES, NOVELS, ETC,
WHERE THEY APPEAR. (This is so if you have any really strange ones,
we can identify them.) Then send them to EWA @ SU-AI. DO NOT SEND
THEM TO SF-LOVERS!!!!! We expect a big response, folks... (Duffey,
any you get will you please forward to me and edit out of the Digest?)

[Yes, replies to the poll accidentally sent to SF-LOVERS will be
 forwarded to you at SU-AI. -- SF-LOVERS-REQUEST]

     No promises, folks, but IF we get enough responses we expect to
publish the results along with some sort of article "featuring" the
winner.

     ALSO, we would like short, letters-to-the-editor type opinions on
Star Trek, the movie, the TV series, the trekkies, the future...
anything relevant to the Trek phenomenon (we would print the stuff on
SF-LOVERS but most of it is too long and we don't have the authors'
permissions.) If you'd like to contribute a SHORT statement of "what I
hate/love about Star Trek", also send it to EWA @ SU-AI.

     Hope to hear from you!
		Ernest

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

Date: 22 Jan 1980 0444-PST (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: THE OUTER LIMITS -- EPISODE GUIDE!!!

Following, ready for printing, I hereby present the (soon to be)
world famous OUTER LIMITS episode guide. This all-inclusive guide,
in chronological order, is drawn from numerous sources, relying
particularly on an obscure issue of Star Log and my own memories
on the subject. Each episode includes original air date on ABC and
(my own) rating ranging from one star to four stars.

============================
      THE OUTER LIMITS
============================
  -- Compiled by Lauren --
============================

The Galaxy Being (9/16/63)
A radio station technician invents a 3-D TV system that contacts an
energy being in Andromeda. Unfortunately, a power fluctuation caused
by an idiot employee sucks the being to earth, where havoc ensues.
The pilot episode. **

The Hundred Days of the Dragon (9/23/63)
Red Chinese agents use a special drug that allow the "molding" of skin
like clay to impersonate high U.S. officials, including the President.
**

The Architects of Fear (9/30/63)
A scientific organization creates a fake alien being from one of
their own members in an attempt to scare the world into peace.
Starred Robert Culp. ***

The Man with the Power (10/7/63)
A mild-mannered professor invents a brain "link-gate" that gives his
subconscious the opower to destroy those who oppress and persecute
him, all without his conscious knowledge. Starred Donald Pleasence.
***

The Sixth Finger (10/14/63)
A man acts as an subject in an experiment in accelerated evolution. An
antisocial personality to begin with, he finds himself with enormous
mental powers that are vented in several violent episodes, until he
his returned to normal by a girl who loved him. Starred (believe it or
not) David McCallum [later in THE MAN FROM UNCLE]. ****

The Man Who was Never Born (10/28/63)

A horribly mutated man from the future returns to the "present" to
try kill the man who created the biological disaster that led to
the desolate future earth. Starred Martin Landau [later of MISSION
IMPOSSIBLE]. An EXCELLENT show. ****

O.B.I.T. (11/4/63)
A government agency has a secret computer-based device that allows
"snooping" on any individual via his brain wave emissions. A complex
series of events leads to the information that the machine is actually
part of an alien plot to undermine and eventually overthrow the earth.
The goverment agency is the DoD by the way. No computer networks were
mentioned (whew!) ***

The Human Factor (11/11/63)
A paranoid army officer with delusions of persecution accidently
switches minds with the doctor who was trying to help him. He then
attempts to misuse some nuclear device in an attempt to rid himself
of these feelings (i.e. by blowing himself and the rest of the Arctic
expedition to smithereens.) While the plot is weak, the character
development and overall drama rates this one: ***

Corpus Earthling (11/18/63)
Rovert Culp again -- this time as a man who, by virture of a metal
plate in his skull, overhears two alien "rocks" plotting the overthrow
of the earth by invading peoples' minds. Eventually, his own wife is
invaded, and the whole episode is a beautiful creeping terror. ****

Nightmare (12/2/63)
During an interplanetary war with the planet Ebon, some earth POW's
are subjected to a series of tortures. The whole thing turns out to be
instigated by EARTH officials to test the men's stamina! Very well
done, but not too complimentary toward certain political elements.
****

It Crawled out of the Woodwork (12/9/63)
One of my personal favorites. An creature of pure energy is created
in a vacuum cleaner by an ususpecting cleaning lady. It absorbs all
energy (and most matter) in its path. The rather insane head of a
large research organization (aren't they all?) finds a way to capture
it, and prevents his key employees from spilling the beans by letting
it "kill" them and then keeping them alive with remote controlled
heart pacemakers. The energy creature is a stop-action cloud type
effect that is really NEAT! ****

The Borderland (12/16/63)
Another of my favorites. A research team is probing the fourth
dimension by creating an energy field which uses HUGE amounts of
electricity (they set up inside a power plant). Various interpersonal
forces come to play to complicate the already complex and delicate
experiments in the unknown. ***

Tourist Attraction (12/23/63)
A lizard-like creature is captured and frozen by an expedition in
South America. It defrosts and does predictably horrid things. This
was a real loser. *

The Zanti Misfits (12/30/63)
The aliens of the planet Zanti have forced the earth to accept their
criminals and misfits, since they doen't want to imprison them
themselves. Earth has set up a special desert reservation for this
purpose, which is unknowingly invaded by a pair of criminals escaping
from a bank robbery. **

The Mice (1/6/64)
A convict agrees to participate in an exchange program with an alien
world -- via matter transmitter/receivers. The horrible alien shows up
first, and it turns out his/her/its motives are less than honorable.
***

Controlled Experiment (1/13/64)
Yet another of my favorites, though it was almost all done in the
editing room. A pair of Martians (they look like humans) are
investigating the quaint earth custom of murder. They take a typical
murder scene, and twist it forward, backward, and inside out by means
of a portable local time machine. This is actually a rare piece, an
Outer Limits comedy. And it IS funny. ****

Don't Open Till Doomsday (1/20/64)
This is a gothic fantasy in modern terms. Very complex, involving an
alien being who keeps humans imprisoned with him in a little box while
he attempts to find his fellow travelers so they can destroy our
universe and return to their dimensional system. He captures a
bridegroom on his wedding night, and holds him since he will not
cooperate. His aging bride, over time, attempts to coax others into
the trap, in an attempt to free her (non-aging) husband from the box.
****

ZZZZZ (1/27/64)
A hive of bees, who have been intellectually advanced due to
experiments with an entomologist, mutate one of their own into a human
female. Their goal is to have her mate with the entomologist and
thusly create a strain that can wipe out humanity. **

The Invisibles (2/3/64)
This is one of the few episodes for which my memory does not serve me
too well. It involves crablike alien parasites that invade the earth
and take over human hosts in an attempt to take over society. It has a
strong "power corrupts" message and political overtones as well. I
think this one was no better than: **

The Bellero Shield (2/10/64)
Starring Martin Landau, this is a GOOD one. A scientist accidently
attracts an alien creature to earth via his laser experiments. His
scheming wife, who wants him to get recognition at any cost, kills
the alien and steals its impenetrable shielding device. When she
demonstrates it, she finds she cannot turn it off, that she is
completely trapped. The story goes on from there, but I have no
intention of giving it away. ****

The Children of Spider Country (2/17/64)
I have virtually no memory left of this one except for some very vague
ideas. An alien comes to earth to recover his son and four other young
men who were sired by earth women. They were left on earth so they
would develop the "spirit" necessary to help their own planet recover
from something that has ruined their spirit (and, incidently, their
ability to, uh, mate.) Since I cannot remember it, I cannot give this
one a rating.

Specimen: Unknown (2/24/64)
Small, biscuit like thingies are found floating in space by one of our
space stations. Turns out they bloom like flowers and emit gas that
immediately kills. Unfortunately, some are already enroute down to
earth. The ship crashes and they spread all over the place around the
crash site -- millions of them. Where does it go from there? I 'ain't
telling. ***

Second Chance (3/2/64)
An alien converts an amusement park space ride into a REAL spaceship,
and abducts some individuals who have been specially selected via
mental probing. The idea is to give them a "second chance" at life by
working to avoid a massive catastrophe that will affect the alien's
planet and, eventually, earth. They don't care for this second chance
(well, most of them don't.) ***

Moonstone (3/9/64)
A military base on the moon finds an odd white globe a little
bigger than a bowling ball. It turns out to contain several
alien intelligences that have incredible knowledge, and are
trying to escape from an oppressive alien tyrants. **

The Mutant (3/16/64)
A man, accidently caught outside in an isotope rainfall on a newly
discovered planet, turns into a mutant who can kill simply with his
touch. He hold the whole outpost in isolation via this ability to
destroy, and eventually has to deal with an inspector sent out to find
out why things have been kinda strange with the outpost (the only one
on the planet.) **

Fun and Games (3/30/64)
An early film rendition of the time-honored "fight for your planet"
theme first put forth in the short story "Arena" as I recall, many
years ago. Well, done, with the "operator" of the Arena a really
great, gleefully cackling type character. A good episode. ***

The Special One (4/6/64)
An alien attempts to recruit earth children as an advance guard toward
the eventual overthrow of earth. Well done. ***

A Feasibility Study (4/13/64)
Six square block from a U.S. city residential neighborhood are
teleported to another planet by a horribly mutated race that wants
to see if earth people will make good slaves. The race itself is no
longer capable of complex physical movements due to this mutation,
and needs such beasts of burden. However, earth people can catch
their "disease", and they eventually infect themselves, thusly
becoming the same as the aliens, to make the feasibility study a
failure. An excellent show. ****

Production and Decay of Strange Particles (4/20/64)
At an atomic installation, a scientist creates a new isotope that
turns out to be alive. All sorts of horrible things happen, none of
which are very impressive. *

The Chameleon (4/27/64)
A human is altered to appear the same as some aliens who have landed
on earth, and whose intentions are unknown (but assumed to be
hostile). The alteration is genetic, based on some fingernail scraping
of one of the aliens. The human ends up liking the aliens alot more
than humans, and leaves with them. ***

The Forms of Things Unknown (5/4/64)
Starring Vera Miles, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and David McCallum, this
one is a biggie. Two women murder an evil Rasputin type man while out
on an picnic. Taking refuge in a gothic mansion in a storm, they meet
McCallum who (without their knowledge) is using a "time-tilting"
device to bring him back to life. This one is a brooding gothic SF
drama, and is SUPERB. It was shot with two endings, one reserved
towards the possibility of using it as a pilot for a new show to be
called "The Unknown". This episode was probably among the finest hours
of film ever produced for television at any time. Excellent. *****
(yes, !!5!! stars).

Soldier (9/19/64)
Starred Lloyd Nolan. Written by Harlan Ellison. A man, born and bred
to be nothing but a soldier, is accidently transported from the future
to the present during a battle. Nolan, a police psychologist, attempts
to introduce the man to our society, and learns much of the horrors of
the future. In the meantime, THE ENEMY is close behind -- he too has
been transported to the present... ***

Cold Hands, Warm Heart (9/26/64)
Starred William Shatner. An astronaut, recently returned from an
orbital flight of Venus, finds him body temperature dropping
uncontrollably. **

Behold Eck! (10/3/64)
A two dimensional alien, visiting this space-time, discovers he can't
find his way back without ripping the continuum to shreds, and if he
doesn't go back the continuum the will get ripped open anyway. He
eyesight is the problem, so he seeks the aid of an optometrist who has
invented some special glasses made of quartz from a meteorite! A
strange episode. **

The Expanding Human (10/10/64)
Basically a Jekyll and Hyde story. A research scientist invents a drug
that gives him superhuman powers and intellect, but also warps his
judgement in antisocial ways. A thinly veiled editorial against the
"Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out" days of the 60's. (Sigh, how well I
remember those days...) *

Demon With a Glass Hand (10/17/64)
Starred Robert Culp. Written by Harlan Ellison. A man from the future,
with fragmented memories and a glass computer for one of his hands
finds himself in the present, being hunted by aliens from the future
in an old building. The hand keeps telling him that he holds the key
to life or death for billions of future humans, but it cannot give him
the details until he gets the three missing fingers of the hand
(obviously ROMS) back from the aliens. A very good episode. ****

Cry of Silence (10/24/64)
Starred Eddie Albert. A simple but intriguing story of an alien
intelligence that animates various objects on a deserted country
farm in a fruitless attempt to communicate with humans. ***

The Invisible Enemy (10/31/64)
Starred Adam West [later BATMAN!] The story of several expeditions
to Mars and the mysterious entity that killed them. A great monster
concept. ***

Wolf 359 (11/7/64)
A piece of an alien planet is brought back and, in miniature, and
accelerated time, studied by a scientist (who keeps it in a complex
gas case.) [shades of the Microcosmic God!] It turns out, however,
that the case also contains an evil entity from the planet, that
gradually gains in power and threatens the project, the scientist,
and his wife. ***

I, Robot (11/14/64)
Co-starred Leonard Nimoy. Written by Eando Binder. The famous story
of a robot on trial for the murder of its creator. ***

The Inheritors (11/21/64 and 11/28/64)
The only two-part episode in the series. The story of several Viet Nam
vets, who all recovered from being shot with bullets made from some
odd substance, who gradually develop a group mind, start to build some
incredible machine, and have a rather odd interest in some emotionally
and physically handicapped children. This is all viewed from the
standpoint of government agents who are trying to figure out what the
hell is going on. ***

Keeper of the Purple Twilight (12/5/64)
An alien exchanges intellect for human emotion as an experiment, with
predicable results for both parties. ***

The Duplicate Man (12/9/64)
A man who has brought a highly illegal alien creature to earth, which
then escapes, has a duplicate made of himself to track it down and
kill it. Complex sub-plots and conflicts. ***

Counterweight (12/26/64)
Starred Michael Constantine. A group of people participate in an
experiment to test their reactions to a simulate deep space flight.
Unknown to them, an alien creature is also on the "trip", who has a
vested interest in their reactions. **

The Brain of Colonel Barham (1/2/65)
A rehash of Donovan's Brain. Need I say more? *

The Premonition (1/9/65)
A test pilot and his wife are simultaneously spared from sudden death
by a freakish suspension of time -- they find themselves several
seconds "advanced" in time, with the "real" time gradually catching
up with them. ***

The Probe (1/16/65)

The survivors of a plane crash in the Pacific find their raft drawn
aboard an enormous craft that turns out to be a giant probe from
some (alien) planet. An interesting study of the problems of
extraterrestrial communication, intelligence, and humanity. ***

=========== AND THAT IS ALL ============

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

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

Date: 24 JAN 1980 0205-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


 SF-LOVERS AM Digest             Today's topics: Star Wars Publicity!,
Thursday, 24 Jan 1980                 Addenda to Outer Limits, SF Poll
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 23 Jan 1980 1154-PST (Wednesday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: The Empire Strikes Back: Publicity

   Starting around Jan 31, there will be a toll-free number to call
for Empire Strikes Back (the sequel to Star Wars, in case you've been
asleep the last two years) publicity. Callers will hear prerecorded
messages about the film recorded by Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, etc.
The messages will be changed every few weeks.
   Oh yes. The number is 800-5-21-1980, which happens to be the film's
release date (May 21).
	Mike

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

Date: 23 Jan 1980 0149-PST (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: re: the Outer Limits episode guide

I just read over my own episode guide as it came back to me in the
mail, and I noticed a number of silly typos. I can only plead that I
typed that thing up in the dead of the night when I was dead tired. I
gave it a quick proofreading, but obviously too quick! If anyone out
there ever has the urge to clean up those few errors and/or add other
material/comments, I'd sure appreciate a copy back for my files!

By the way, I apparently missed a couple of "big-name" stars from one
Outer Limits episode. In "Controlled Experiment" (the two Martians who
were playing around with a murder scene via a time warping machine),
the two were played by Caroll O'Conner [All in the Family] and Barry
Morse [Space: 1999 and other things...]

--Lauren--

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

Date: 23 Jan 1980 1328-PST
From: Ernest Adams <EWA at SU-AI>
Subject: The SF/fantasy poll--clarification.    

     Sorry, people; evidently I didn't make it clear enough. I  meant
for you to send TWO LISTS, one for fantasy characters and one for  SF
characters, to  EWA @  SU-AI.  We make  the distinction  because  the
personalities of people change so much  between SF and  fantasy. How,
for example, could you compare Tom Bombadil with HAL?  (Incidentally,
HAL qualifies...  he  is  sentient.  VEJUR does  not.  [Illya  is  in
doubt.])

			Sorry again for the confusion,
				Ernest

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

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

Date: 25 JAN 1980 0331-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Today's topics: Publicity: BSG - Chronicles -
Friday, 25 Jan 1980        Star Wars II, Good book w/ST:TMP!, Queries!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 24 Jan 1980 0047-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: Son of Cattlecar Galaxative  

I ran across this on the AP news wire; thought it might be of
interest:

For Release AMs Sat Jan 26
TV Talk: "Battlestar Galactica" Returns on ABC
With Laserphoto
By JERRY BUCK
AP Television Writer
	LOS ANGELES (AP) - It isn't often that a network admits it
made a mistake and tries to revive a canceled series.
	"Battlestar Galactica" is returning with a two-part pilot on
ABC this Sunday night and the next.
	"ABC has said it felt it made a mistake in not picking us up
for a second year," said Lorne Greene, who starred as Commander Adama
in the space drama and is the only cast member to survive the
transition.
	"When the ratings came in for the hundred series on the air
we were No. 24. Which is a respectable rating when you consider the
handicap we had last year."
	Greene said ABC rushed the series onto the air too fast. "We
were originally going to do a miniseries. A three-hour show and two
two-hour shows. When we were still in production for the first show
ABC ordered 13 more hours.
	"As a result," he said, "we couldn't be on every week - and
you've just got to be on every week to succeed. We couldn't produce
the shows quickly enough. Some shows were finished on Sunday morning
just in time to go on the air."
	Greene said he hopes if the series is picked up ABC will allow
enough time for preparation.
	The show has undergone many changes since it was last seen.
The new title will be "Galactica 1980." There's a new cast, except
for Greene, and he's 20 pounds thinner than he was last year.
	Another change is in the concept. Thirty years are supposed to
have elapsed and the Galactica has reached earth. It will no longer be
a space-age "Wagon Train," meandering across a celestial prairie.
	The troubles of "Galactica" ran deeper than not having enough
time to prepare.
	It had a Biblical feeling about it, and perhaps because of
that took itself too seriously. It rarely evoked the fun of "Star
Wars" or the optimism of "Star Trek."
	Its large cast made it difficult to sort out the various
players. It became impossible to tell who was Starbuck and who was
Apollo, and their dialogue was interchangeable.
	It bore no identifiable relationship to earth, other than the
fact that earth was their destination. The only villains were the
Cylons, a band of robots who became quite tiresome after a while.
	The new cast includes Kent McCord, Barry Van Dyke, and Robyn
Douglas as an earthling newswoman who joins the Galactica crew in
search of a story. Greene wears a beard and although three decades
have passed, he's still in the prime of life - their age span is 200
years.
	The new show has earth identification, plus the added gimmick
that the Galacticans are able to move about in time. They use that
ability to tinker with events in an effort to alter history and make
the world better. The ethics of that aside, it will allow them a wide
range of stories over many historical eras.
	"It's a lighter show than the original," said Greene. "We make
light comments about ourselves and earth. When we see the smog around
Los Angeles someone comments that it must be a radiation shield. There
are also comments on the freeway traffic and nuclear energy."

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

Date: 24 Jan 1980 1536-PST
From: Andy Knutsen <ALK at SU-AI>
Subject: martian chronicles reviews   

a074  0607  24 Jan 80
For Release PMs Fri Jan 25
By PETER J. BOYER
AP Television Writer
    LOS ANGELES (AP) - Ray Bradbury doesn't like NBC's version of his
''Martian Chronicles.'' This could be because Bradbury is a contrary
fellow in the matter of adaptations of his work. Or, because Bradbury
saw NBC's adaptation.
    The latter seems more likely. NBC's ''Martian Chronicles,'' a
six-hour miniseries beginning Sunday, is a lovely thing to look at -
craggy, rust-colored landscapes, spacey cities and such; but the
excitement of a fanciful space adventure is missing.
    It's like a pinball machine without the little steel balls; the
lights and bells and electric bumpers are there, but nothing touches
them off.
    That would have been all right had greater care been given to the
story's satire on man's corruptive influence on his surroundings. That
theme is present here, but it is hammered away at, rather than subtley
suggested.
    Rock Hudson, Bernie Casey, Darren McGavin and others are
American astronauts sent to explore Mars and lay the groundwork for
colonization. From the beginning, Bernie Casey is against the idea.
    ''It's wrong,'' he keeps telling anyone who'll listen. They
restrain themselves from asking him, ''If you don't like this,
Bernie, why don't you take up plumbing?''
    Anyway, they get to Mars, where much more rumination than
exploration is done. There's less talk at a Tupperware party. Bernie
goes off on a quick jaunt, and returns to proclaim:
    ''I would say that as far as Martians are concerned, this planet's
finished.'' Hammer, hammer. See, earlier explorations infected the Red
Planet with whooping cough or something. This deeply affects Bernie.
    ''I went inside a house,'' he tells his pals. ''Inside there were
bodies - stacked, like piles of autumn leaves, like dry sticks, like
stacks of burned newspaper. . .''
    Okay, okay, Bernie, we get your drift.
    NBC says it reworked ''Martian Chronicles'' after Bradbury's
initial objections, but the network never did find the author's touch.
The result is a six-hour miniseries that could have been great, but
isn't. Pretty pictures, though.


n064  1501  24 Jan 80
 
TV-SUNDAY
(Newhouse 009)
Suggested for Sunday use
By JERRY KRUPNICK
Newhouse News Service
    NEW YORK - NBC and ABC repeatedly have attempted to break the CBS
dominance of the Sunday ratings by placing special shows - movies,
miniseries and sporting events in competition with CBS's regular
series.
    The results have been uneven, but basically poor.
    On Sunday, starting at 8 p.m., the two networks will produce
specials in yet another valiant effort to derail CBS' solid regular
schedule, which starts with ''60 Minutes.''
    The big guns are wheeled in at 8 p.m., when NBC unveils the start
of a three-part drama based on Ray Bradbury's ''The Martian
Chronicles.'' At the same time, ABC is heavily promoting a new comedy
melodrama called ''Tenspeed and Brown Shoe,'' which it will introduce
with a two-hour episode.
    Let's look at the Martians first. The production has been kicking
around NBC for nearly two years now, with the network undecided on
whether it had a 12-hour miniseries, an eight-hour blockbuster or a
six-hour spread.
    It finally decided to go three nights at two hours each, which
meant a lot of Martian material wound up on the cutting room linoleum.
From what we've seen of the first two hours, none of it will be
missed.
    The problem with ''The Martian Chronicles'' is that there's not
very much believability to it. Rock Hudson is not a believable actor
to start with, and watching him stumble around the rocks and rills
that supposedly is the landscape of Mars is simply ludicrous.
    Bernie Casey, as the idealistic defender of the Martian people, is
just as laughable, or sad, depending on your outlook. The others in
the large cast are silly or stiff or simply insignificant.
    In addition, the settings are pure papier mache, the music is high
pitched hokum and the storyline is a shambles. What a waste of a
couple of million bucks!

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

DP@MIT-ML 01/25/80 00:06:01 Re: The Empire Strikes Back

   There is apparently a slide show with scenes from the movie
it is appearing at several recent (and future) SF cons. This 
show is courtesy/presented by Lucasfilms. It will Ghu willing
be at BoskLone. If anyone else has seen this I would apreciate
hearing about it. (It was supposed to be shown at Hexacon, but 
I couldn't afford to go.)
					jeff

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

Date: 24 Jan 1980 9:00 pm (Thursday)
From: Ogus at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Imaginative book

There has been a lot of commercial fall-out from Star Trek: The
Movie, most of which doesn't interest me very much (Enterprise
blueprints, etc.). One book, however, caught my eye, and I
couldn't resist buying it. It's called the Star Trek Spaceflight
Chronology, by Stan Goldstein and Fred Goldstein (published by
Pocket Books, $8.95). This book, supposedly written in 2215,
traces the history of Earth's spaceflight from 1957 (Sputnik) to
the uprated Enterprise in 2215. There are glossy illustrations,
and all the specs of the major ships during the 258 year period.
In addition there are good descriptions of the major flights of
exploration, including the technology breakthroughs which resulted
the Enterprise class starship, and the first encountering by man
of other intelligent life in the universe (Vulcans, etc.). All in
all, the authors have a good imagination, and did a great job of
the book. I'm getting quite a kick out of reading it. If anyone
gets a chance to read it, I'd like to hear any comments.

/Roy

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

Date: 24 Jan 1980 0835-PST
From: Zellich at OFFICE-1
Subject: Queries on SILVERLOCK and WITCHES OF KARRES

Are there any "Silverlock" fanatics (or plain old literati) out there
who can tell me what Watling Street comes from, and why that name was
used in the story?

Does anyone know if James H. Schmitz ever did a sequel to "Witches of
Karres"?

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

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

Date: 26 JAN 1980 0542-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


 SF-LOVERS AM Digest            Today's topics: Rebuttal to reviews on
Saturday, 26 Jan 1980                           The Martian Chronicles
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 Jan 1980 1121-PST
From: Andy Knutsen <ALK at SU-AI>
Subject: a balancing opinion (somewhat) on MC   
 
n111  2118  24 Jan 80
 
BC-TELEVISION
(WEEKEND)
 By RICHARD F. SHEPARD
 c. 1980 N.Y. Times News Service
    ''The Martian Chronicles'' is entirely fictional but it is also
quite philosophical and is an example of how difficult it is to
translate ideas from printed word to spoken film and television. The
first installment catches the eye and the attention, but it moves
slowly.
    The plot has to do with the exploration of Mars and life on that
planet. Two expeditions are sent, land there and are never heard from
again. A third six-man crew headed by Rock Hudson finally gets there
and learns that almost all of the native Martians have been destroyed
by chicken pox brought by the first earthlings who arrived. One of the
crew, played by Bernie Casey, is appalled at the prospect of further
settlement by people from earth who will not appreciate the heritage
of serenity in the arts and living left by the Martians, a hairless
non-violent people skilled in telepathy and gracious by nature. There
follows a conflict, and one must wait for the next installments to see
how colonization will fare.
    The production is interesting and somewhat different from the
usual technologically centered run of science fiction. The concepts
are attractive, and the show has spooky moments when the illogical
becomes fact and the imagined becomes real. Michael Anderson, the
director, may have overestimated the holding power of deliberate
slowness on home screens, where distraction is all too easy, but he
has a sense of the mysterious, and that is what is needed. Richard
Matheson, who did the adaptation from the book, has given us a series
of small stories, bigger than vignettes but smaller than complete
yarns, which fit into the major theme of man's drive to reach Mars.
This makes for a heavy turnover in personnel, but the theme does
emerge. And one does want to know what will happen. That is the
kernel of good storytelling.

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

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

Date: 28 JAN 1980 0502-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest            Today's topics: Simple query on Alien!, 
Monday, 28 Jan 1980                 Local view of Martian Chronicles 1
----------------------------------------------------------------------

RP@MIT-MC 01/27/80 20:38:54

Does anyone know how Alien did in the People's Choice Awards?

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

WFJ@MIT-AI 01/28/80 02:37:05

Actually, BS Galactica was quite amusing. Slightly slanted towards
nuclear (unclear?) salvation for our backward planet. A bit too much
stolen from Klatu's soliliqy. Obviously, with just a little more work,
nuclear energy will be clean and economic...

Note that extraterrestials also carry around red boxs to use when they
run out of change! But, at least they know not to offend Ma Bell when
they get caught...

As for their physics, the invisibility gadget, which works by means of
"frequencies higher than visable" (and this wipes out the visable?),
which violates the superposition principle. Aagh!

Anyways, "The Martian Chronicles" first episode was'nt bad given the
limitations of commercial network television. Of course, there was the
hokey NASA uniforms, Buck Rodgers rocket ships, lack of personal
communicators, etc. However, you really can't fit most of those things
into Bradbury's story . They just stood out as if it was cast in our
future, as opposed to an "alternate history".

A bunch of Bradbury's messages did'nt get lost in the translation!
Esp. with the second expeditions "homecoming". And Stenders message to
the captain.

Its too bad that they did'nt have a better feel of the mystic spirit
of the book. This did'nt dissapoint me quite as much as Star Truck or
the Black whorl (ADF, what trash!). It's really quite surprising to
see this and "The Lathe of Heaven" done in a enjoyable way. Science
fiction does'nt have to be presented as a mass of gadgets, lights,
BEM's and boops, but as a set of internal conflicts...

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

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

Date: 29 JAN 1980 0422-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Today's topics: More on BSG 1980 and Martian
Tuesday, 29 Jan 1980                   Chronicles, Lucas Strikes Again
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 28 Jan 1980 0029-PST (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: BS 1980 and Chronicles

I was wrong about Battlestar Galactica. I was convinced that NOTHING
could be worse. Then came BS 1980! I won't bother with any of the
horribly obvious stuff, but DO want to make a few points.

1) The budget appears to have been drastically cut. Now that they can
   just rent space in UCLA quads and such for more of their scenes (as
   many movie and commercial makers do), they should be able to bring
   in the shows on a shoestring.

2) The show has SOME redeeming value!  Yes, it's true.  There were a 
   few semi-funny moments there; of course all were unintentional. I
   particularly like the nuclear scientist at the "Pacific Institute
   of Technology" (which I suppose was supposed to be Cal Tech or some
   such office building) with his fine computer system (with a CONSUL
   980 terminal, one I've used for years...) A FINE font he had there
   for his formula. Where have we seen that scene before?

   "Don't touch that terminal!  The Dr.'s been working on it for three
    years!"  "Don't worry, we're just giving him what he needs..."

   "How DARE you touch that blackboard!"  Don't you realize that the
    professor has been working on that formula for WEEKS?"
   "He just needs a little help.  He'll solve it no time now."

   The first sequence was from BS, the latter from "The Day the Earth
   Stood Still."

   Any show with unintentional laughter has a chance -- at least until
   the funnies wear off with the next show. Just wait until the 
   Galactica starts selling the nuclear secrets to the Nazis in an
   upcoming episode. (When they start "tinkering with time".)
   Personally, I think they should go back in time, and suddenly they
   run into James Darren, who is ALSO trying to change time
   via the old Time Tunnel techniques.

   Here's one thing that I hope alot of people noticed so they'll
   know just how hokey BS '80 really is.  They show this sequence
   of the Du Pont Crylons attacking L.A. and really ripping it up.
   For the first few seconds I was really impressed by the effex.
   But then, my memory rang the alarm, and I started watching very
   carefully, and made a discovery.  The entire L.A. attack
   sequence was old footage from the film "Earthquake".  Virtually
   the entire thing, right down to the Capital Records building
   falling over. There were several sequences I specifically
   remembered (such as a policeman in front of a building with a
   particular address when a big chunk of concrete falls down.) All
   they did was take this footage, and super in the Crylon attack
   ships, beams, etc. In fact, they spent alot of time strafing
   streets with their rays, and if you looked carefully, you'd see
   the concrete (as well as the people) would be completely untouched.

   Anyway, I hope somebody makes sure they realize they didn't get
   away with that wholesale ripoff unnoticed.

3)  As for The Martian Chronicles (I). I am pretty critical about this
    sort of thing, and I have read the Chronicles several times over
    the years.  Personally, I think the job is pretty damn good. I am
    not really looking at it for effex at all (though that miniature
    of the Mars probe was AWFUL!) [and I really loved the Mars
    landscape scenes with all the pillars and geometric statuary -- I
    thought that was really well done.]  Bradbury is very difficult to
    translate to dramatic productions.  The worst Twilight Zone I ever
    saw (and I've seen them all) was "I Sing the Body Electric". I
    don't know WHO to blame for that. But given the limitations of
    budget and practical realities, I think the MC have been done in
    a fairly professional manner, and I agree that at least some of
    the important themes are getting through unscathed. Also, though
    there was clearly substantial adaptation from the novel to the
    screenplay, it was done in a pretty reasonable manner and much of
    the time the screenplay was reading line for line from the book.

    However, I have two other things to add. One, Bradbury is so
    critical about these things I'm not surprised he did not like it.
    I talked to him once and got the impression he is something of a
    fanatic. Really strange guy. It is important to remember that MC
    was written over 30 years ago, as was most of Bradbury's really
    classic works, I believe. Two, the mass audience will not like
    the show. It does drag at times, and for the non-SF type, it
    would become boring with too little action. Also, it would seem
    old-hat in comparison with ideas the masses have gotten used to
    like the technology of BS.

Two final concepts. In BS '80, one of the colonial fighter ships,
which HAD been invisible, suddenly reappears. A little kid sees it
and runs to tell his dad. In the real world, something like THIS
would have happened...

"Gee, look! A Colonial Viper! Just like in Battlestar Galactica! Boy,
this is neat. Maybe I can go meet the lords of Kobol."

The other thing that would happen would run like this:

Adama lands near a major IBM facility. He goes to the receptionist and
asks if she knows where the Lords of Kobol dwell. She sends him to the
fifth floor programmers!

--Lauren--

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

Date: 29 Jan 1980 0353-EST
From: Duffey at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey II)
Subject: Lauren's msg on BSG 1980

The "Pacific Institute of Technology" may represent CAL TECH but it
also appears in George Pal's film "The War of the Worlds". In that
film it is the name of the institution where the scientists are
failing to save the Earth from the Martian invasion.

Also note that Adama might meet Tony Newman and Doug Phillips while
time traveling, but certainly not James Darren.

					Enjoy,
					   Roger

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

Date: 28 JAN 1980 2017-PST
From: THURMOND at USC-ECL
Subject: review of the trailer for Empire Strikes Back

     Looks like it may begin to suffer from exactly the same things
that made Star Wars famous -- an excess of ingenuity at the expense
of plot and acting. All the same characters, plus a few additions,
and the quick glimpse of the Millenium Falcon dodging Tie fighters
in a meteor shower was more entertaining than the whole of Heart
Beat, the movie I saw it in front of. But exploding space ships are
a glutted market now, and there were a lot of visible matte lines
in the shots without a black space background. Looks fun, but not
original. 

             Rob Forward

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

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

Date: 30 JAN 1980 0546-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 30 Jan 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 14

   Todays Topics: TV and the Martian Chronicles, an Amber Request!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 29 Jan 1980 11:07 am (Tuesday)
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Martain Chronicles

I really liked those sand ships last night. What a joy to see really
ALIEN alien artifacts.

P.S. Roger, I don't mean to be a hassle, but there was no 27 Jan
SF-DIGEST received here....could it have fallen on the floor like the
one last week? [No. There was no SF-LOVERS mail that day (GASP!);
therefore no digest. -- RDD] Maybe you could number the digests (like
they used to do letters in WW II), so we could know if one is missing
as opposed to not being sent. [Good idea. Tonight's digest has volume
and issue numbering retroactive to the first issue. -- RDD]

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

Date: 29 Jan 1980 11:36 am PST (Tuesday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: More words on Martian Chronicles

ME TOO: I think it was well done. But I think there was an element of
unfairness in choosing this particular body of work for "serious" sf's
TV debut. All of us who watched, I'm sure, had to resist the
temptation to shout, "Just look at that sky! You expect me to believe
that?" And: "What the hell are they breathing out there?"

As Lauren points out, the story is over 30 years old. We know a whole
lot more about Mars now than we did then. Unfortunately the mass of
non-sf-initiates will not realize this and will probably make just
these criticisms of an otherwise excellent show. Thus the unfairness:
televising a classic work from the Golden Age which has been sadly
invalidated by advancing knowledge. In some sense this IS the best
that sf has to offer. But by today's standards it looks as hokey and
unscientific as the worst of third season Star Trek.

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

Date: 29 Jan 1980 1648-PST
From: Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
Subject: MC

     I noticed a few real booboos (altho the show as a whole was
fine)... in the first place, clouds on mars are rather improbable,
especially before the colonists arrive. then we see a violent
downpour. perhaps this is weather mod, but tell me, if they can do
that, why are they still using the saturn V? i mean, the shuttles
behind schedule, but i dont think itll slip past 1999. no comment on
the rest of the effects (either space or wind ships).

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

BYTE@MIT-AI 01/30/80 03:03:30 Re: Martian Chronicles

Perhaps it is just that I am used to watching well made movies, but
the feeling I got after watching CHRONICLES was that it could have
been a LOT better. (To think that I could have been subject to EIGHT
hours of it.) I think I would have rather seen it cut down a bit more,
and what WAS shown done better. Science Fiction for television CAN be
good. LATHE OF HEAVEN was excellent (but then, Public television has
been outdoing comercial television quite a bit, these days).

The most notable flaw in tonight's (the last) episode was the ending
scene where we are viewing the reflection of the new 'Martians' on the
surface of the water in the canal. As they switch from reflection to
real people, you notice that the 'reflection' is NOT reversed, as a
true reflection would be. It is thing like this that could EASILY have
been done right that made the overall quality of the miniseries so
low.

   ~sigh~                               Roger

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

LIMIT@MIT-MC 01/30/80 00:12:43

What places did Corwin go to while in the shadow earth?

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

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

Date: 1 FEB 1980 0329-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 1 Feb 1980       Volume 1 : Issue 15

   Todays Topics: more Martian Chronicles, request about SF movies!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

ALPHON@MIT-MC 01/30/80 22:16:41 Re: Martian Chronicles # 3

I didn't get to see the third episode of MC. Would someone be kind
enough to mail me something telling me how the "There Will Come Soft
Rains" part was done? - ALPHON@MIT-MC

From what I did see, I thought the series was done very well. It's
true that the present knowledge about Mars makes the story sadly out
of date, but it is a welcome change from the technological obsession
of Battlescarred Galactica. At least is showed that there is another
side to SF. I do agree, though, that it would have been better to have
picked something a little less out of date. Perhaps it might have
appealed to the general public more.

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

Date: 31 Jan 1980 (Thursday) 0106-EDT
From: WESTFW at WHARTON (William Westfield)
Subject: MC CRITICISM

I THOUGHT THE MC MOVIE WAS RELATIVELY WELL DONE -- ON THE WHOLE. I
DONT REMEMBER ENOUGH OF THE BOOK TO COMPARE THE TWO. AS IT HAS ALREADY
BEEN POINTED OUT THAT IT IS POINTLESS TO MAKE CRITICISMS ON THE
TECHNOLOGY BRADBURY USED, OR ON HIS PREDICTION OF THE MARTIAN SURFACE,
AS MOST OF THIS COULD HAVE BEEN ACCURATE AT THE TIME HE WROTE MC.
HOWEVER, I WOULD LIKE TO CRITICIZE HIS FAILURE TO PREDICT ANY CHANGE
IN HUMAN SOCIETY, VALUES, AND STYLE. BRADBURY HAS HIS COLONISTS IN A
MANNNER SIMILAR TO PEOPLE OF HIS OWN TIME. IN PARTICULAR, I CANNOT SEE
MOST OF THE COLONISTS ON MARS RUNNING HOME TO EARTH JUST TO BE THERE
WHEN WW3 STARTS. I WOULD EXPECT THE FLOW TO BE IN THE OPPOSITE
DIRECTION !

( NOTE: THIS SEEMS TO BE A MAJOR PROBLEM IN MUCH OF SF. OF POPULAR
  AUTHORS, I WOULD RATE ASIMOV WORST AND NIVEN OR BRUNNER BEST	)

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

Date: 31 Jan 1980 at 0124-PST
From: greep at SU-ISL
Subject: Movies

As several people have commented, recent SF movies such as Star Wars
have gotten audiences to expect lots of fighting, gaudy effects,
continuous action, villains (would you call Darth Vader a BEM?) etc,
with the result that they're disappointed by a low-key, more
philosophical story. Maybe the solution is for the theaters to put
Spacewar machines in the aisles so when people get bored by the screen
they can go play games for a while (and the theaters can rake in even
more money). Then the serious SF&F groupies can enjoy the films.

In view of all the comments about the Martian Chronicles TV series,
I might mention that the stage version (Bradbury's own adaptation)
was quite good.  I saw it a couple of years ago in LA.

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

Date: 31 Jan 1980 1:22 pm (Thursday)
From: Hoffmann at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Film in the making

Here's a great chance for anyone interested to give some input on what
you would like to see in a major Science Fiction film.

A friend of mine is on the staff of a movie company which is starting
to film a Science Fiction movie. I had forwarded one of the messages
to him that I took off of the system. His response was that he wanted
to see more of them.

The information he would like to see is as follows:

Who are your favorite actor and actress?
What entertainment personality in your opinion is the most
   professional?
What was your favorite Science Fiction Film?
What did you like best about it?
Add any other comments, likes or dislikes you have about films, etc.
   Use your imagination. This movie will have a large budget.

If you want, include your name and address and you will receive a
monthly magazine called Premiere Ticket where you will be able to see
how the film is progressing.

Send your letters to David Beckham, Brilliant Films, 6671 Sunset
Boulevard, Suite 1581, Hollywood, Ca 90028.

Phil Hoffmann at PARC

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

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

Date: 2 FEB 1980 0417-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 2 Feb 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 16

     Today's Topics: Responses to Beckman Film Query, Amber query
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  1 February 1980 13:45 est
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  David Beckman Film Query

Without knowing the parties involved, I am highly suspicious of the
motives. The first two things he asks about are what actors, etc. we
like. As if a quality Sci Fi movie depended on familiar faces on the
screen. (I wish they'd replace William Shatner with someone who could
act!) The second two questions suggest that the makers want to extract
the winning qualities of some past movie and clone them.

They should ask, "who's your favorite author", then hire the winner. I
vote for Tiptree, and Le Guin would be a good second.

Oh well, no matter how bad the result is, I'll probably have to see it
once, just to find out.

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

WFJ@MIT-AI 02/02/80 01:00:37

The biggest problem with MC really was the casting. Rock Hudson
could'nt escape from his plastic image, and thus destroyed the mood
of some scenes in the film. You need someone who really was an actor
and could place himself in the future.

In fact, it might be a mistake to cast big-name actors in SF films.
Unknowns can afford to be more flexible and believable. Only a very
few of established b-n's can really even adopt a new character. Maybe
you should use the b-n's as seldom veiwed authority figures (to get
the name appeal), and let new people handle the important roles.

In regards to that message from the producer of "a new SF film",
"biggist ever",etc ad nausium, you get a feel of the depth of his
insight through the depth of his questions. WHEN WILL PLOT CONTENT
AND THEMANTIC INTERPRETATION BECOME IMPORTANT!?!?

My favorite actors (if I had any) would not necessarily be the best
for any or all SF movies that I would like to see. Those questions are
so irrelevant as to be obscene in the context of better literature of
any media!

Sorry for the flames, but that seems to be the corrupting influence
in recent visual SF.

Thanks,
Bill

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

LIMIT@MIT-MC 02/01/80 04:07:02

Can anyone tell me where CORWIN'S sister lived, when she was in the
United States (in the AMBER series)? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanx

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

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

Date: 3 FEB 1980 0456-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 4 Feb 1980       Volume 1 : Issue 17

          Today's Topics: Lord of Light Movie, Dragon's Egg!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  2 Feb 1980 (Saturday) 1328-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)
Subject: Lord of Light Movie

 From "Ampersand - College Magazine"

Barry Ira Geller, who's written the screen play for the film version
(he'll also produce) of Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, isn't content
merely to make a science fiction film; his is gonna be huge! So huge
the sets will end up as a theme park near Denver Colorado, called
Science Fiction Land, and the whole schmear, movie and park, will
supposedly cost more than $450 million -- $400 million for the park
and $50 million for the flick. The park, three times the size of
Disneyland, will feature rides, holographic structures, a bullet
train, and assorted dinner theaters. Beam us down and out.

[apologize for childish writing style... that is the way everything is
 written in "&"]

[also, what is a "holographic structure" -- I thought I knew something
 about holography]

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

Date:  2 FEB 1980 1204-PST
From: THURMOND at USC-ECL
Subject: new star on the horizon

     As you may or may not know, my daddy's brand new SF book,
DRAGON'S EGG, is coming out in May. It's real good and real thick
and impressive and you all should buy six or seven copies apiece
because he's got three kids in college.

     I thought I had it made when he decided to leave the Dr. off his
name on the cover, but they unfortunantly put his picture on the back
so I guess I can't tell my teachers that I wrote it.
Bob Forward, Jr.
     
     PS. Speaking of new SF films in progress, I am hanging around
and making a pest of myself at a small, newly formed company which
is attempting to do a film version of David Gerrold's YESTERDAY'S
CHILDREN, (renamed by the company STARHUNT) and it will begin filming
sometime in April. So far, the script seems a lot like the book, so
if you've read it and want to make a suggestion, I will pass it along,
alto my influence there is nil. I doubt if actor reccomendations will
be much good, however. Actors will be chosen on a formula of
talent/cost, most likely, and with little or no dependance on public
recognition.

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

Date:  3 FEB 1980 4:42-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: More on Dragon's Egg

The following is an excerpt from a description of the APRIL issue
of ANALOG magazine (on sale March 4th):

Our 'fact article' is something a little different. It looks like a
fact article and it does indeed contain alot of fascinating facts from
the contemporary arsenal of physics and astronomy. But its dated 2056,
and some of the details haven't happened yet. Life on a neutron star,
with half the mass of the sun packed into 20 kilometers? Possibly --
and it would necessarily be quite different from the kinds we know.
Could we visit it? Maybe, if we were clever enough. Such is the basis
of Dr. Robert L. Forward's novel "Dragon's Egg". Logistical problems
made it impossible for us to serialize the book, but its world is such
an intriguing place we had to tell you something about it.

Dr. Forward: will your book be offered by the Science Fiction Book
             Club anytime in the near future?

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

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

Date: 4 FEB 1980 0249-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 4 Feb 1980       Volume 1 : Issue 18

        Today's Topics: Budrys SF Review for Chicago Sun Times
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  3 Feb 1980 1601-PST
From: Scott at SRI-KL (Scott J. Kramer)
Subject: A few SF books...

BC-SCIFI-02-03
     Attention: book editors
     The following is an Arts & Letters feature
    
     By Algis Budrys
     (c) 1980 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)
    
     The earliest major science-fiction novel of 1980 has to be
Frederik Pohl's ''Beyond the Blue Event Horizon'' (Del Rey, $9.95),
a sequel to his 1977 ''Gateway,'' which won every award the sci-fi
world has to offer.
     ''Horizon'' picks up ''Gateway's'' central character and
background. Robinette Broadhead is a multibillionaire now, having
successfully unriddled some of the secrets left behind by the
Heechee, a long vanished race who possessed interstellar travel.
Earth continues to be a world plagued by shortages of energy and
food. Broadhead finances a necessarily rickety expedition out
beyond the orbit of Pluto, to find what may be an automated Heechee
factory ship left there millions of years ago. The theory is that
it's converting clouds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen
molecules into food.
     Most of the action in ''Horizon'' is carried on by the
expedition members, with Broadhead a background figure. The
resulting book is a highly satisfactory sci-fi action novel on
a high plane of ingenuity, insight into human nature and alien
nature, and the kind of mind-opening conceptualization that makes
the universe seem very vast and beautiful indeed. In short, this
is a book that skillfully fulfills sci-fi's ability to entertain
intelligently.
     Doubleday leads with a pair - A.E. van Vogt's ''Cosmic
Encounter'' ($7.95) and, at $10, ''Mockingbird,'' by Walter S.
Tevis, who wrote ''The Hustler'' after some early science fiction
short stories, then returned to sci-fi with ''The Man Who Fell to
Earth.'' One thing's sure-if you like the one new novel, you won't
like the other.
     Van Vogt probably needs no introduction. A writer who
deliberately introduces a major plot-twist every 800 words and
rarely takes anything less than the complete transformation of the
universe as his premise, he gained a towering reputation in the
1940s, only to see it demolished in the 1950s under critical
accusations that his work was internally inconsistent,
syntactically ludicrous, and technologicaly illiterate.
     What van Vogt brings to the audience is neither literacy nor
logic, but a compelling series of startlements and actions so
grandly presented that they command a kind of cockeyed validity.
It's by no means possible to include the present tale in serious
sci-fi; the hero is a pirate captain who proves crucial to the
collapse and regeneration of the universe. But it's a reasonable
example of van Vogt's idiosyncratic magic.
     Tevis, on the other hand, writes like a serious litterateur,
well aware of the audience beyond the sci-fi demesne. His story is
about a world in which the last few thousand humans stumble around
in a fog of automatic mass entertainment, doped on tranquilizers
full of 100 percent effective contraceptive. The master of the
world is the last remaining humanoid robot, who wants to die but
who also wants to continue his platonic relationship with the last
self-aware female human. The book's entire message is rather less
than the sum of the frequently effective parts, but it speaks to
underlying things that interest intelligent people.
     ''Nebula Winners Thirteen'' (Harper & Row, $9.95), edited by
Samuel R. Delany, anthologizes the short fiction judged best of the
year by the Science Fiction Writers of America, an organization
which somehow manages to reach pretty fair judgments on these
matters. The year is 1977, in which ''Gateway'' won the Nebula
award for best novel; it appears to have been a remarkably good
year overall. The best story in the anthology may be Vonda N.
McIntyre's ''Aztecs,'' a runner-up. A must-have for those who
uphold a high opinion of the field.
     Among paperback reprints, one of the best two is Arthur C.
Clarke's ''The Fountains of Paradise'' (Del Rey, $2.50), now a year
old and so far as promised, his last novel. I never believe these
retirement statements. The book is excellent: The grandmaster has a
lot left in him.
     The other major reprint is of William Sloane's ''To Walk the
Night'' (Del Rey, $2.25). It's a 1937 novel by the Eastern literary
brahmin who also founded the fondly remembered William Sloane
publishing company and authored ''Edge of Running Water.'' Some
readers will find Sloane's characterization dated, for all that the
story itself will seem poetic and allusive. They'll be wrong on
both counts. This direct, powerful major work of speculative
fiction not only taught a great many of us what can be done with
the mode, it also contains a gleeful dissection of continuing
Eastern establishment ways disguised as a matter-of-fact
endorsement.

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

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

Date: 7 FEB 1980 0221-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 7 Feb 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 19

                Today's Topics: Convention Correction
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  6 Feb 1980 0732-PST
From: Zellich at OFFICE-1
Subject: COMETCON

The following information is presented on the odd chance that anyone 
will be in the St. Louis area on 15 March...

To avoid any confusion with MidWestCon, they have changed the name to 
COMETCON.  Unfortunately, the changes were not made soon enough to 
change their listings in "Starlog" or "Isaac Asimov's".  Also, they 
have scaled down to a local mini-con.

COMETCON -- A Day of Science Fiction & Fantasy
Saturday, 15 March, 1980,
Guest of Honor: Phyllis Eisenstein; Science Guest: Dr. Charles Granger
Trivia Contest; Art Show; [Snow Creature contest, if there's snow]; SF 
Radio Room; Silent Horror Films; Star Trek Episodes; "Dark Star"; "War 
of the Worlds"; "Man In the White Suit"; "Barbarella"; "Hardware
Wars"; "Nova" videotapes; and other activities...

$3 before 1 Mar, $4 during Mar -> COMETCON, Frank Russell (chairman), 
c/o Ms. Lacks, McCluer Sr. High, 1896 S. Florissant, Florissant, MO 
63033

Checks payable to "McCluer PROBE, Ferguson-Florissant School District"
 Note COMETCON somewhere on the check.  Send cash at your own risk.
(314) 524-2807 after 3 P.M.

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

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

Date: 9 FEB 1980 0113-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 9 Feb 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 20

   Today's Topics: Query on an SF device!, More on the Film Request
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 02/08/80 06:54:50
From: PROCEP at MIT-AI (Eirikur Hallgrimsson)
Subject: Solar Tap Query

Does anyone out there remember a book called 'The Lost Milleneum'? It
was originally printed as half of an ACE double in the early sixties,
and is now in print as 'Siva!'. Authors were Walt and Leigh Richmond.

Not a great book by current standards, but it went on at some length
about the idea of exploiting the potential difference between the
ionosphere and the ...uh 'ground'.

The implication was that they had put some research into the idea; ie,
they were not just pulling numbers from out their hats.

I would like to hear from anyone with a geophysics background about
exactly how crazy this is. (My instincts tell me that you would need a
very large antenna to achieve any kind of reasonable coupling.)

The Richmonds, (W. deceased) are brought to mind by the reissue of
another one of their books: (new title)) Phase Two, (old title)
Phoenix Ship. ACE, again in both cases. This one is only marginally
readable so far (15 pgs). It is about the old RNA learning bit.

One reason that I have to not take their ideas too seriously is that
the copyright notices in all of the recent editions are copyright to
"The Centric Foundation." The same name pops up in the text, when
early manuscripts are quoted, etc. Sounds v. culty. Still, I'm
interested in any reactions that other people might have had to this.

Responses (if any) to me, please--not the list. I'll collate any
replies, and send the info as a list message.

Regards,

Eirikur

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

Date: Fri,  8 Feb 1980 1956-EST
From: Peter Neilson <neilson at LL-ASG>
Subject: David Beckham Film Query

My favorite actor and actress are Bogart and Leigh. THEY ARE BOTH
DEAD. If we all tell Mr. Beckham who our favorite DEAD actor and
actress are, he'll have to try to figure out what made them great,
and maybe try to find others with similar abilities. Or is that
just wishful thinking?

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

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

Date: 10 FEB 1980 0328-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 10 Feb 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 21

        Today's Topics: Query about books by Frediric Brown
----------------------------------------------------------------------

MJL@MIT-ML 02/09/80 06:11:27 Re: Old heroes...

     One of my first sci-fi readings was of a book called "Rogue In
Space" by Frediric Brown. The character of interest to me was called
"Crag". I have not seen any F. Brown books in any of the local sci-fi
[SF please! - SF-LOVERS-REQUEST] stores, and I have not the time to go
into NYC to look.
     In the recently published "Science Fiction Encyclopedia", RIS
is given mention only as one of the myriad books "also written by..."
and that is it.
     My question is: Do any of the SF-LOVERS know of any more books by
Brown using this character Crag? In the end of RIS he is on a planet
newly formed of the asteroid belt, by a sentient asteroid that becomes
the planet's core. I am interested in where he (if he) went from
there, as I have written a number of short stories involving Crag and
his adventures. I would like to compare my development of Crag to
Brown's.
     Again, please reply directly to me, not the list, and if there is
enough mail worth mentioning I shall summarize it in a future note to
SF-LOVERS.

	Thankyou.

						Matthew J Lecin

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

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

Date: 11 FEB 1980 0307-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 11 Feb 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 22

               Today's Topics: Terminology and Brunner
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 Feb 1980 0446-EST
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: Sci-Fi vs SF;  Brunner

The name "sci-fi" may evoke memories of the 50's boom and its
attendant nonsense, and thus be an object of some scorn among 
the literati -- "SF" is much nicer and ambiguous, it may mean
Speculative Fiction, Science Fantasy, Something Fascinating,
but mostly Seventies Fallout.
Wizards, heroes, elves, dystopias, social satire, poetry, and
even chess games in disguise are all very nice, but more than
any of them I like SCIENCE FICTION, replete with aliens, space-
ships, rayguns, galactic empires, and so forth, and I don't
care who knows it.  Maybe even scientifiction.  I can remember
being a gnurd back in the good old days when I knew everything
and squelching anyone who dared utter "sci-fi" in my hearing;
but what's wrong with it?  It means what I (and I assume Matt)
want to say: science fiction.  "SF" is for sloppy thinkers.
Non carborundum illegitimatus.

Many of you have probably seen "The Infinitive of Go" by Brunner
[Del Rey, 1980]; I reccomend it to those who haven't, assuming
you like Brunner.  It's not particularly well written, although
it's perfectly readable; but it is thought-provoking on a meta-
physical level, rare these days in "SF".  cf "Quincunx of Time".
		--JoSH

ps:<Hey! "Quincunx" could be perversely abbreviated "Quux". Hmmm...>

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

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

Date: 12 FEB 1980 0516-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 12 Feb 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 23

        Today's Topics: Bosklone, Title Query!, SF vs. SCI-FI
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 11 FEB 1980 1618-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: BoskLone

This is just a reminder that the Boston-area SF convention, called
BoskLone for this year only, will be starting this Friday (February
15) at 6 PM in Danvers (at the Radisson Ferncroft hotel on rt. 1)
and running through Sunday Feb. 17 ca. midnight. Membership $10 at
the door. Shuttle to the hotel available from Sullivan Square Friday
afternoon and evening, Saturday morning, Sunday evening. Guests of
Honor are Spider and Jeanne Robinson; also there will be Robert
Sheckley, Jim Baen, Gordon R. Dickson, David Gerrold & Diane Duane
(probably), the EMPIRE STRIKES BACK slide show, the Axolotl slide
show, 12 feature films, and lots of SF readers. If you've got an
URGENT query I can answer it on the net; we'll also have someone at
the hotel (dial 482-4391 from Boston area, (617) 777-2500 outside)
from Thursday mid-afternoon onward.
                                     
                                --Chip Hitchcock, BoskLone chair

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

Henry@MIT-AI 02/11/80 16:53:02

Can you help me locate this story? The plot is about a man who has
a strange problem: he can only see things as their PARTS, not as
wholes. Eventually he goes crazy when he begins to perceive the
world as nothing but individual atoms. Any information: title,
author, how to find it, appreciated. Thanks.

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

Date: 11 Feb 1980 at 1513-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: science fiction all, and is there such
         a thing as "speculative science"

I must be getting old, but seems to me the big distinction used to be
whether one would align themselves with those who admitted reading
"that stuff" vs. literature at all. The distinctions between sci-fi,
SF, science fiction, and scientific fiction seem about as significant
as deciding whether you consider yourself a "fan", a "devotee", a
"follower" or a "sf-lover". I also seem to recall that there used to
be fairly strong feelings about separating "Fantasy" from
"Science-Fiction" and it wasn't until the literati started disturbing
the science-fiction literature that this got muddled.

What seems to be an interesting development has been the gradual
emergence of what I would call "speculative science" which perhaps
first appeared in books such as Clarke's "Profiles of the Future" and
is now represented by works such as "The Iron Sun" and "Timewarps"? It
might be interesting to assemble a list of these works, whose
marketing is carried out as though they were fact, but whose theme's
are basically science fiction concepts being discussed in a factual
sense. In some sense the devotion to "hard" science fiction has led us
to this state. Arthur C. Clarke writes "Rendevous with Rama" and while
NASA knows the SF people read it and appreciate the possibilities,
they are forced to drag an illustrator into the picture to create
visually illustrated scenarios because "everybody doesn't read science
fiction".

Somehow I wonder where it will all lead. Maybe in some future
Orwellian society there will be the Ministry of Science Fiction which
is the equivalent to our present AAAS? (Or the AAAS will spend all its
time writing and submitting science fiction scenarios as the proper
way to "do science").

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

Date: 12 Feb 1980 at 0216-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: What's in a name?

I did not expect to touch off a major controversy with my annotation
on MJL's message [V1 #21]. Nor was it my intention to "squelch"
someone for daring to write "sci-fi" as JoSH implies [V1 #22]. It was
simply to correct the incorrect use of a term since "sci-fi" no longer
means what MJL intended or what JoSH wanted to say: science fiction.
Since JoSH introduced several side issues into the discussion that I
also want to deal with, let me explain by briefly recapitulating the
history of the name of our particular literary genre.

Its difficult to agree on a starting point for science fiction as a
field. Conceivably we could put it as far back as Homer's Odyssey.
However, it was not until Jules Verne began his writing his stories of
"extraordinary voyages" that people began to recognize these stories
as being of a particular type, alternatively termed "scientific
fantasies", "scientific romances", "pseudo-science stories", or
"super-science stories".

In 1926 Hugo Gernsback founded the first pulp magazine to be dedicated
to this type of literature: "Amazing Stories". The idea quickly caught
on and spawned a host of imitations with names like: "Marvel Stories",
"Astonishing Stories", "Wonder Stories", and "Startling Stories".
Seeking to distinguish his magazine from its imitators and emphasize
its relation to science Gernsback coined the term "scientifiction" as
a contraction of "scientific fiction" and subtitled "Amazing Stories"
as "The Magazine of Scientifiction". He also introduced the
abbreviation "stf" for "scientifiction". However, 2 years later
Gernsback was forced to give up the editorship of "Amazing Stories".
In June 1929 he began publishing a competing magazine "Science Wonder
Stories" where he introduced the term "science fiction" and the
abbreviation "SF".

However, beginning with Campbell's tenure as editor of "Astounding
Stories" (now called "ANALOG") at the end of 1937 and continuing
through the fifties, science fiction began to shift some of its
attention away from science and gadgetry, to societies and their
people. This trend was re-emphasized and underscored in the sixties
as people began to suggest "speculative fiction" as a preferable
alternative which could also enfold the fantasy genre as well.
(Here, I am ignoring the so-called "New Wave" movement of the late
 sixties and seventies, because it does not really concern this
 discussion.)

The term "sci-fi" was coined by Forrest Ackerman as a play on the term
"hi-fi" during the early sixties. Since that time, the term "sci-fi"
has been adopted by people who work in movies and television in
particular, which has caused the writers and others interested in the
field to equate "sci-fi" with the trashy material that these people
usually produce. Consequently, "sci-fi" no longer denotes the field of
science fiction as a whole but only one, rather small part of it.
Thus you have my annotation.

[The above material is paraphrased from the editorials by I. Asimov in
 the May-June 1978 and January 1980 issues of Isaac Asimov's Science
 Fiction Magazine. For a more detailed look at this issue please see
 Chapter 19 of "Explorers of the Infinite" by Sam Moskowitz.]

Lastly, I am not sure what JoSH meant by "the Fifties Boom and its
attendant nonsense". However, this period is of great interest both to
the literati as JoSH calls them, and to anyone with an interest in the
field. It is ludicrous to label this period "rockets and rayguns"
which is a much more accurate description of the pulp science fiction
of the 30's and early 40's. During the fifties science fiction took up
such topics as: advertising ethics in Leiber's "A Bad Day for Sales"
[1953], McCarthyism in Katherine MacLean's "Feedback" [1951], Vietnam
(several years before it happened) in Tenn's "The Liberation of Earth"
[1953], tampering with the mind in Knight's "The Analogues" [1952],
freedom and the military draft in Bester's "Disappearing Act" [1953]
(which is particularly relevant today), and high priced medicine in
Gunn's "New Blood" [1955]. Rockets and rayguns? Hardly! Also note that
these are all short stories and novelettes. I picked these particular
stories to make my point because they are some of the stories from two
recent anthologies that deal with SF in the 50's: "The End of Summer"
edited by Barry Malzberg and Bill Pronzini, and "Science Fiction of
the 50's" edited by Martin Greenberg and Joseph Olander. Both contain
many entertaining, excellent stories, a retrospective look at SF in
the fifties, and of course some spaceships and rayguns as well.

					Enjoy,
					   Roger

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

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

Date: 13 FEB 1980 0235-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 12 Feb 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 24

 Today's Topics: "SF" vs "SCI-FI", BosKlone, the UTEXAS Connection I!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 12 FEB 1980 1837-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: "sci-fi"?!?

  I think that Roger has captured the essence of the objection of many
of the lovers of SF to the term "sci-fi"; perhaps the most suggestive
use of the term appears in a remark whose absolute accuracy I cannot
vouch for: CBS telling Gene Roddenberry in early 1965 "We don't need
another sci-fi show; we've already got LOST IN SPACE."  Thus "sci-fi"
is the term used by people who don't know and don't care about the
difference (need I remind anyone that in spite of its abysmal quality
LOST IN SPACE lasted longer than STAR TREK?).
  I think Lester del Rey was the first person actually to point out
that this term was used primarily by such people; he would first have
said so in print sometime around 1972-3 (just to give credit where
credit is due).
  I'm also a bit baffled by JoSH's praising the materials generally
associated with 30's and 40' SF (even more than in the fifties,
although the single best writer on a galactic empire, Poul
Anderson, is definitely a creature of the 50's and beyond) in one
paragraph, followed by his praise of something "thought-provoking
on a metaphysical level"---a characteristic hardly seen in the SF
he has praised. (The most thoughtful early writers, such as Stanley
Weinbaum and Campbell (when writing as Don Stuart), are still
notable for their absence of spaceships, rayguns, galactic empires,
and such.) I use the term SF (which in my more expansive moments I
translate as "speculative fabulation") because it best expresses
the opportunity for original thought that is the foundation of most
of the best of the genre.
  When I taught SF I tossed out Campbell's argument that what is
conventionally accepted as "literature" is a subset of SF because
literature covers only <this much> of the universe, while
T  H  I  S  M  U  C  H is the province of SF (you may substitute
a visualization of Campbell showing the space between two fingers,
then his maximum armspan; unfortunately, this terminal doesn't
implement that class of visuals.)  Obviously there's room for
everything in SF, even (or perhaps especially) people with
relatively old-fashioned tastes (yes, people are still interested
in galactic empires, but only VISUALLY; ISAAC ASIMOV'S SF ADVENTURE
MAGAZINE seems to have gone under without a trace, and that was
intended to be the image of PLANET STORIES, in which Anderson's
Terran Empire (among others) got its start.) Brunner's chess game
in disguise uses the FREEDOM of SF to make an important statement
about ethics NOW (do I hear somebody muttering Goldwyn's "If you
got a message, use Western Union." in the background? That's his
privilege, but as many mundane authors have found, SF is uniquely
suited to the argument of moral questions.)
  I could flame on at great length about this, but I've already said
enough to start several new arguments.
                                    --Chip Hitchcock

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

Date: 12 FEB 1980 1846-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: BoskLone shuttle

  The shuttle is currently planned as follows:

  day	first departure		last departure 
Friday	   2 PM			  11 PM          (from Sullivan)
Saturday  10 AM			   1 PM 		"
Sunday	  12 noon		   6 PM           (from Danvers)

 Please note that all of these times are subejct to expansion if we
find ourselves with more people than originally expected; the bus
charges by time, not by passengers, so we had to limit service to
the money available. Once we break 1000 (my personal bet is 1200
attendance, but preregistration is only 500) the schedule will
probably be lengthened, so call us at the hotel during the con
(482-4391) for details.
				--Chip Hitchcock BoskLone chair

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

Date: 12 Feb 1980 at 0138-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Subject: Multiple

[Note: Recent hardware problems at UTEXAS have prevented our people
       there from interacting with SF-LOVERS. Now that the problem
       has been corrected, here is part 1 of a somewhat tardy
       collection of responses to the questions discussed recently.
       Part II on Star Wars will be distributed soon.    --- Roger ]

As my SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI binder-full of print-out approaches its 2nd
inch of thickness, it doesn't seem too network-clogging to make some
`shotgun' responses without feeling too guilty.

~~~~~~~~~~Barlowe's GUIDE TO EXTRATERRESTRIALS~~~~~~~~~~

Being fond of alien critters, as is Jeff (DP@MIT-ML), I, too, drooled
over Barlowe's GUIDE TO EXTRATERRESTRIALS without being willing to
shell out $8. Actually, I w o u l d have, just for the chance to pore
over it at leisure, except that I felt obliged to boycott it because
of its slighting of Andre Norton. Too many of us honed our S/F
baby-teeth on A.N. for her to be left out when other authors had
multiple entries and some critters were from quite little-known books.
Seeing GtE among the freebies-for-new-membership in a recent S/F Book
Club ad, I've hopes it may turn up among forthcoming alternate
selections.

~~~~~~~~~~S/F THEMES~~~~~~~~~~

Hope that others as well as Steve (FFM@MIT-MC) are interested, not so
much in "common themes running thru literature" as in S/F themes per
se. More on this another time. Keep it in mind. Watch this space for
further developments! Also, for a forthcoming analysis of some recent
S/F reference-type publications.

~~~~~~~~~~DRAGONS (WITHOUT DUNGEONS)~~~~~~~~~~

Mark Crispin's interpretation of the evident replacement of
Weyrleaders is plausible. Surely every mating flight of a queen is a
time of potential shift in Weyrleader (and a bit of marital musical
chairs on the human side?) I can't think that the shift is merely an
oversight on McCaffrey's part, as I know she has 1 or more fans who
take care of an index of Pernology for her.

For those of you who are into `pictorial S/F', the widely varying
depiction of the Pern dragons is an outstanding case-in-point of
mis-match with the story. The very worst I've seen was for the first
appearance of "The Smallest Dragon Boy" in a hardback children's
anthology. There, it looked like an outright steal from Dr. Seuss! A
couple years ago Anne said there had only been one accurate depiction,
on a poster somewhere, but I've never seen it.

~~~~~~~~~~ANY FREAS FANS?~~~~~~~~~~

By the way, speaking of posters and covers, do any of you out there on
either coast know of a store carrying a poster version of the Kelly
Freas cover for Green's CONSCIENCE INTERPLANETARY? The one with the
hands, against the finger-painting-like cosmic background, holding the
cute li'l 6-legged alien critter? This is one instance, pace Haruka,
where what is pictured matches nothing in the book yet exactly fits
its f e e l i n g. (For pun-lovers, some obscure state magazine once
used the picture on their cover to tie in with an article titled
"Solar Power: Within Our Grasp, but Still a Little Alien".)

~~~~~~~~~~LARRY NIVEN FANS~~~~~~~~~~

The magazine serialization of RINGWORLD ENGINEERS is NOT the complete
text. If it's good (and I've never known Niven, when writing alone, to
come up with a dud) it deserves to be read in the full version the
author wrote. [I do know how hard it is to resist anything even
partial from the latest work of a favorite author. But I'm uneasily
waiting for Varley's TITAN at an affordable price in hopes that the
full text will negate the unexpectedly (for Varley) lack-luster impact
of the eviscerated magazine version.]

~~~~~~~~~~FAVORITE CHARACTERS POLL~~~~~~~~~~

Wonder if others were as stymied as I was at trying to figure out an
answer to Ernest Adams' (EWA@SU-AI) request. All I've come up with so
far is Blackie DuQuesne and Nile Etland. It's odd, but one can be
extremely fond of a book without any of its characters being
favorites. Frodo, for instance. Or Lessa...admirable, her shrewishness
understandable in light of childhood trauma, but NOT likeable. I
know EA didn't say "likeable", but for me that's what a favorite
entails. Dunno why, then, the penchant for Blackie DuQuesne-- perhaps
because he's a fine prototype of Darth Vader. I wonder if the poll is
still on?

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

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

Date: 14 FEB 1980 0219-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 14 Feb 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 25

    Today's Topics: SF economics, UTEXAS Connection II : Star Wars
----------------------------------------------------------------------

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 02/13/80 15:39:04 Re: the economics of science fiction

A few weeks ago Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle gave a seminar at MIT
entitled "How to get rich quick", or some similar catchy phrase. I
left with an extremely negative opinion of the economics involved in
writing science fiction. My information is entirely gleaned from that
class, so I could easily have things down incorrectly. If I do, then
please correct me.

Science fiction material is apparently purchased by the word, not by
the story. (at about 5 cents per word) This is the rule in the field
although there are some exceptions. There are many results: First,
noone makes a living writing short stories. The dollar return for the
time invested in a short story is so small that authors avoid the
medium, and publish longer works instead. However, it is very hard for
a new author write a novel on his/her own funds, with no promise of
financial backing when it is done. The result is that the short story
medium has been inherited by new authors who take the poor pay. (A
situation like this might actually be beneficial in that it provides
a mechanism for people to enter the field. If short stories paid more,
then big names would fill up all the available slots.) The pool of
good new writers is apparently not that large; the magazines end up
strapped for good material, and end up publishing stories which are
"printable" as opposed to good.

A second influence of the pay by the word rule is that it rewards
volume, not quality. The faster you write the more you make. At one
point in the seminar Larry Niven made a statement which completely
shocked me: that he, and many other experienced authors, write without
editing their work. (If I am misquoting, please don't sue me, perhaps
he said that he tends not to edit his work.) In my opinion, this is a
stunning condemnation of the field; of the fans, the economics, or the
authors, I am not sure which. Plainly there must be books which are so
bad that they won't sell, and authors who refuse to sell material
which does not meet a high standard, but the system as it stands seems
to resist honorable intentions.

I don't like this. I would very much like to see science fiction
filled to brimming with good art as well as speculation, but if the
state of affairs really is the way I have described it, a major change
has to take place first. This kind of economics might be standard in
many fields of literature, or it might be a neccessary phase in the
growth of an essentially low budget enterprise, but it certainly isn't
appetizing and I would like to see it changed.

	Comments anyone?
	Dan Shapiro

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

Date: 14 Feb 1980 at 0200-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Subject: If YOU've been wondering where WE were...

Are there any STAR WARS devotees left out there?

Ordinarily I am strictly a reading-S/F fan, not at all a "viewing"
one. However ... there IS an exception. And lest you-all forget
what was the catalyst for all these S/F media productions which
got SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI so clogged as to put a moratorium on most
interaction in it........

~~~~~~~~~~SW SPIN-OFF NOVELS~~~~~~~~~~

If you liked SW enough to read Alan Dean Foster's SPLINTER... (where
the characters are like the movie's in name only, and the story as
dull as Foster's own stuff is lively), don't let that put you off
trying Daley's HAN SOLO AT STARS' END. It will be what you were
originally looking for. Pure rollicking space-opera, it f-e-e-l-s
like SW. It's an unabashed pastiche...but a GOOD pastiche, and fun!
It's extra fun for the SW cognoscenti, to try to ferret out all the
elements from the film which Daley has credibly disguised and worked
into the story. Haven't read his 2nd HAN SOLO book yet, but I don't
see how he could do as well another time.

~~~~~~~~~~STAR WARS MUSIC~~~~~~~~~~

Thanx to Alan Katz for the lead on the media-S/F music. Tho I collect
only STAR WARS a l b u m s (i.e., at least 1 full side of SW), the
Norman record sounds interesting, especially if it has a distinctly
"different treatment" of the Main Title theme. Being unfamiliar with
the half dozen or so renditions on `mixed bag' records, I don't know
of "a LOT of bad versions", but it's eminently possible. The Princess
Leia theme is the one that seems to be hard to muck up. Full orchestra
or just piano, in Latin rhythm or disco beat, it's still a lovely
thing. Only Patrick M-----(somebody-or-other) in one of the Moog
versions has managed to really louse it up.

~~~~~~~~~~DARTH VADER~~~~~~~~~~

Probably everyone on SF-LOVERS knows that 99.99% of the "Vader's" that
have appeared around the country (AND on TV) are fakes. I.e., are just
costumes with any-old-beefy-body in them, even for the footprints at
Hollywood's-own-shrine Chinese theater.

I got to meet Dave Prowse, the REAL Vader-- the body, anyway-- in
Houston a couple months ago. Utterly charming, and verrrrrry good
looking. Much handsomer in his maturity than back in CLOCKWORK ORANGE
days. But he's no 6'6" or 6'7" as "Darth Vader" is described to be.
I'd guess him perhaps even closer to 6'4" than 6'5". The surprising
thing is that in a business suit, without anyone nearby for
comparison, he is so well-proportioned that he doesn't strike one as
terribly tall.

And his voice? No James Earl Jones, of course-- Jones' voice being as
much a fine instrument, highly trained in its own way, as Prowse's
body is in ITS way-- but a nice, rich baritone and quite expressive.
What was particularly satisfying from a professional point of view
(I'm in linguistics) was to be able to sort out the confusion among
reports I'd heard about his accent, whether it was what we think of
as stilted British, or declasse Cockney. Actually, it's neither, but
"West Country" British. His R's are all there, just as a Midwestern
American would have them. Intonation is British, and is probably what
leads most average Americans to recognize it as such. Highly cultured
Americans familiar with upper class English speech sense something
different about it and for lack of any alternate, call it Cockney. It
isn't, but there IS a similarity between that and his West Country
accent in the pronunciation of the diphthongs. "Long I" is more
'uh-ee` than our 'ah-ee`, and our 'ah-uu` as in "cow" is more like
'uh-uu`.

A fan who knows him personally says Prowse has a role in an American
S/F film soon to go into production (on location in Florida?), in
which he plays a British doctor at a space center who gets infected
by an alien virus.

~~~~~~~~~~SW II~~~~~~~~~~

Must take issue with some of the implications in Rob Forward's
comments on what to expect from TESB. I'm not quibbling about his
saying there are "all the same characters" despite the absence of
Obi-Wan. (Have heard that Guinness does have 4 lines [without
visibility?] but wouldn't let his name be listed. It was all the more
amusing, then to see somebody in HANOVER SQUARE with a single line
have his name among the cast of characters.) But I do quibble if R.F.
meant to imply, as he does seem to, that that's b-a-d. At least at
this stage in the series strong continuity of characters is essential.
People want to know "what happened next" even more than to see the
youthful Vader kill Luke's father and get clobbered by Obi-Wan.

My real quibble, tho, is with his sign-off, "fun, but not original".
Well - of - course - not! It's not legitimate to fault something for
not being what it was expressly intended NOT to be. It's common
knowledge that Lucas' accomplishment lay in his so effectively
revivifying very un-original stock cinematic material.

There is no point to an argument over the comparative merits of "high
culture" vs. "popular culture". But "originality" is not a relevant
characteristic of the latter. A GOOD country-Western song, or a GOOD
Gothic romance, or a GOOD glass of beer is not good on the basis of
being different than the others, but from being crafted more
skillfully yet otherwise quite like them. That kind of goodness can be
emulated, and as in the case of Georgette Heyer's regency romances,
can affect its genre. Originality, on the other hand, the breaking of
the expected pattern, is more likely to lead to a dead-end. For
instance, you can only use the unique ploys of a MURDER ON THE ORIENT
EXPRESS or a ...ROGER ACKROYD once.

~~~~~~~~~~BIG-NAME ACTORS AND S/F~~~~~~~~~~

Bill (WFJ@MIT-AI)'s comment that that kind of casting might be a
mistake, in view of MC, certainly seems supported by SW. He could
almost have been describing Lucas' tactic, in "Maybe you should use
the b-n's as seldom viewed authority figures (to get the name appeal),
and let new people handle the important roles." Except, of course,
that Guinness' part was fairly large, as SW parts went. An "authority
figure", Obi-Wan certainly is. "To get the name appeal", tho, does
sound more like Brando in SUPERMAN.

~~~~~~~~~~SW TRANSCRIPTED~~~~~~~~~~

No roles (left) in the film had a great number of lines, not even
Luke's, with C-3PO having almost as many. Luke's pre-eminence shows
up in his involvement in dialogue with more different characters than
anyone else. (I transcribed a recording of the sound track, back in
'77, rather than pay $55 for an advertised "print-out copy of the
shooting script". It was a mistake! But, if nothing else, it brought
to light a blooper nobody else has discovered [chortle, chortle!]. If
anybody'd like a copy of a near-phonetic rendering of Greedo's speech,
as near as you can come with just an ASCII character set, they are
welcome to it. Does anyone on the net in the Bay area know if the
linguistics student at Berkeley, Larry Ward, who provided the basis
for that voice, is still there?)

~~~~~~~~~~"THE ART OF STAR WARS"~~~~~~~~~~

At $10.95 without the hard-cover, another rip-off. At least it wasn't
as bad as THE STAR WARS [PHOTO] ALBUM, but what could be! If anyone is
interested in seeing the overkill, I've a file documenting as many
mistakes in the book as there were special effects claimed for the
movie. Everything from errors of fact-- "Princess Leia attempts to
flee the Rebel ship", "Ben plays [Leia's] message over several times";
through misquotations-- "I've been from one end of this galaxy to the
other" for Han's "Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the
other"; through misspellings-- ("Arthur C. Clark"), punctuation and
grammar ("There is no way out for the galactic cruiser, those aboard
know their efforts of escape are useless"); to miscaptioned ("Kenny
Baker in-between takes", with NO Kenny Baker), uncaptioned, and twice
and even thrice repeated photos. It's readily understandable why no
one would have wanted their name given as even just COMPILER.

Misinformation is not rare in ART OF SW, either, in the action
descriptions. Titelman should have watched the film a couple times
rather than relied on the novel and the phonograph record. That the
lines often do not match what was actually spoken is not surprising,
as it is known that Lucas allowed the players a lot of leeway in
rephrasing. The cut-from-the-film-at-the-last-minute opening scenes
on Tatooine are included, as they also are in the comic version. But
[chortle, chortle, again!] there is a scene in the latter half of
the movie that's missing.

One would think that, with all they're raking in from the exclusive
publishing rights, Ballantine could afford to hire a couple of SW fans
to clue them in. But on the other hand, why should they bother! The
stuff will sell, no matter what, for there are no WARSiors, like there
are the devoted Trekkers and Trekkies to keep them on the straight and
narrow. ~sigh~

~~~~~~~~~~SW II PREMIER~~~~~~~~~~

According to everything I've seen, it's to be May 17th in London and
the 18th in D.C., but a friend who talked with Prowse recently (yes,
an overseas call at her own expense, but even tho she let me have his
phone number, I'm not THAT much of a SW-maniac) reports that he said
it would be the 20th in D.C., and the British one some time later.
Such oral communication may be unreliable, due to having passed thru
so many fallible human nodes in a word-of-mouth network.

~~~~~~~~~~SW & BOSTON POPS~~~~~~~~~~

It's general knowledge that SW's composer, John Williams, is the new
conductor of the Boston Pops. He has invited Antony Daniels (i.e.,
C-3PO) to "guest conduct" (SW-music, presumably) at a concert this
spring. (Fortunately, "Threep's" costume's latest version weighs only
about 30-some pounds rather than the 70-some of the original, and
allows greater manual dexterity.

~~~~~~~~~~SW MAIL~~~~~~~~~~

Mail, even of the most trivial, relating to SW is most welcome, but
please send it to UTEXAS rather than to SF-LOVERS. Anything of general
interest that I receive will be compiled into future missives for
SF-LOVERS. Newsnotes from STARLOG, for instance, since I only buy it
when it has a major SW article. Or, anything you hear by word-of-mouth
(or of-computer). I do get BANTHA TRACKS and ALDERAAN. (The latest
issue of the former had a rather good article on "Japanese [Cinematic]
Influences in SW", too long to keyboard but I could send a xerox if
someone without access to BT ("Newsletter of the Official SW Fan
Club") craves it.

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

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

Date: 15 FEB 1980 0313-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 15 Feb 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 26

    Today's Topics: UTEXAS Connection Correction, Economics of SF
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 15 Feb 1980 at 0129-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

C-L-A-R-I-F-I-C-A-T-I-O-N......On reading it after it got cold,
I see where something I wrote could easily be misconstrued.  It was
THE STAR WARS [PHOTO] ALBUM, not THE ART OF STAR WARS that had:
___Everything from errors of fact-- "Princess Leia attempts to flee
___the Rebel ship", "Ben plays [Leia's] message over several
___times"; through misquotations-- "I've been from one end of this
___galaxy to the other" for Han's "Kid, I've flown from one side of
___this galaxy to the other"; through misspellings-- ("Arthur C.
___Clark"), punctuation and grammar ("There is no way out for the
___galactic cruiser, those aboard know their efforts of escape are
___useless"); to miscaptioned ("Kenny Baker in-between takes", with
___NO Kenny Baker), uncaptioned, and twice and even thrice repeated
___photos.

'Scuse, please.  Sufficient unto THE ART OF SW are the evils thereof.

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

Date: 14 FEB 1980 1119-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: The Economics of Science Fiction

     Unfortunately, Dan Shapiro is right in his general conclusions.
Short stories ARE usually paid for by the word. The 5 cents per word
figure is a generous average. Analog pays 5 cents per word, but only
up to 7000 words, then it drops to 3 cents a word. There are similar
policies with Ballantine's Stellar and Berkley's Showcase. IASFM pays
a little more, 5-7 cents per word, but again it drops for longer
stories. F&SF pays between 2-5 cents per word, with the bigger names
getting more. Interestingly enough, this 5 cents per word has been
constant for decades, despite inflation. There are magazines that pay
more. Ace's Destinies pays 8 cents a word, and Galileo used to pay 10
cents a word, but after they had trouble selling these "better quality
stories" on the newsstands (because of the lack of flashy interior
illustrations, I am guessing), they also dropped back down to 5 cents
a word. There is one magazine that does not pay by the word. That is
Omni, who pays between $800 and $1200 for a 2500 to 4000 word short
story, which works out to 20-30 cents per word.

     I don't know why these rates are so low, but I suspect that the
total number of people that buy SF magazines are not enough to support
any more. As a side note, nearly all the magazines have only a
part-time editor. It is a job to keep the money coming in while they
write on the side. I guess the answer is more SF magazine readers.

     These economics don't apply to books. Most books are between
70,000 and and 100,000 words, and they will usually produce $10,000 or
more over the life of the sales, which for SF can be decades. Now you
see why the big writers prefer to write books. Also, if you ever think
about it, in SF a writer cannot just move his characters around in a
known setting like a mainstream writer. Instead he has to build the
stage, furnish the set, set up the social order, and characterize the
players before he starts the interaction that is the story. Try doing
that in 3000 words and you again understand why Omni has trouble
finding good short stories despite their payment rate, and why Galileo
had to call off its short story contest with its $300 prize.

     On editing. Niven and Pournelle may not "edit", but a lot of SF
writers do. Poul Anderson and me both agonize over every word at least
6 or 8 times before the final draft is sent into the publishers.
Actually, when Niven and Pournelle are collaborating, they do the
first draft by taking different segments, then going off and writing
them alone. However, one or the other always does a complete rewrite
(or they used to) in order to make it flow properly. I am sure some
editing is done at that time.

         Dr. Robert L. Forward, Sr.

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

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 02/15/80 03:00:19 Re: More on the economics of SF

Economics of writing magazine SF:

The "pulp" magazine market such as today's ANALOG or IASFM has always
paid for its material by the word. Similarly, the "slicks" such as
today's PLAYBOY or OMNI, have cost more and had a much larger
readership and therefore have tended to pay more, and customarily by
the article, rather than by the word. In the 20's and 30's word rates
ranged from fractions of a cent to 1-2 cents for better fiction in the
more popular magazines. However, there are several reasons why the
word rates have failed to climb very much: 1) declining readership for
magazines of any type but especially fiction, 2) increase in paper
costs, 3) increase in postal costs, and 4) increase in mass market and
trade paperback sales which have largely replaced pulp magazines. Note
that postal costs have steadily become a more important part of
publishing costs as local news stands have become an endangered
species and the magazines have had to rely more on mail subscriptions.
Also note the continuous decline of the number of magazines from the
20's to the mid-70's. Beginning in the mid-70's we have seen a minor
rally. Whether it will be long or short term and how it is going to be
affected by new technologies over the next decade is not clear.

However, this is not to say that some things have not improved. Prior
to the 50's the pulps did not pay the author when they purchased his
story, they paid him when the story was published. Publication would
normally take 3-6 months provided that the magazine did not go under,
or obtain a new editor in the meantime. This meant that an author
would normally be paid 5-7 months after he was told that the story had
been purchased. Since it was often hard to get the magazines to pay,
the authors tended to term this system "payment on lawsuit". By the
way, one of the first editors to institute a payment on purchase policy
was John Campbell when he took over the editorship of ASTOUNDING in
late 1937.

Campbell also took the lead in another way: paying royalties to the
author when his story was republished in a book or anthology. This was
not a common practice in the days of the pulps. However, this is an
issue that no one has addressed as yet. My understanding is that when
you sell a story to IASFM for example, you are actually selling
"magazine first publication rights for United States markets". Which
means that they will be the first to publish the story in United
States magazine. That story can now be resold for use in other media
such as a book anthology or as the basis of a radio/TV/movie script.
Can any of the publishing authors reading this clear up any mistakes,
and offer some details about how resale and royalties work in this
area, approximate payments for book anthologies with stories from a
single author and with stories from several different authors, and how
much a popular story such as Niven's "Neutron Star" can be expected to
make for him?


What can we do?

I think a better question is will we do anything? For example, ANALOG
used to have a feature called the ANALYTICAL LABORATORY which was
invented by John W. Campbell when the magazine was still ASTOUNDING.
Each month a reader was supposed to read the magazine and then rank
its stories from best to worst. These results were then tallied by
waiting each position and normalizing for the length of the story. It
served two purposes. First, it gave Campbell feedback on what the
readers wanted. Second, he used it to award a bonus of 1-2 cents a
word to the writer who came in first in the poll.

This worked very well when the pulps where a major enterprise. However,
participation dropped throughout the 60's and 70's eventually rendering
the results statistically insignificant because of the very small sample
size. First, ANALOG ceased to use the LAB to award the bonus, then
discontinued it altogether. Recently ANALOG tried to reinstate the LAB
as a yearly feature and distinguishing between story categories, but it
did not generate adequate reader response either.

The one major thing that must be done if the situation is to improve,
is to make people aware that there is a moderate sized market here,
and that it is dissatisfied with much of what is being done. For
example, after all the mail that was sent about the recent movies, how
many of you wrote a polite but critical letter to Paramount about
ST:TMP or to Disney Studios about Black Hole? How many wrote to PBS
saying that Lathe of Heaven was excellent and please do more? How
about to CBS Radio regarding the Mystery Theater adaptations of
Bester's Disappearing Act and 5,271,009 or H. Rider Haggard's short
stories? Did anyone respond to Beckham? Ever write a letter to a
magazine editor or to a publisher such as Ballantine?

Perhaps it does sound trite, or even silly as some of you are no doubt
thinking. It could even be patriotic if I stuck a Congress in there
somewhere. But I know of no other way to produce the improvements that
could be made and that we would all like to see.

					Enjoy,
					   Roger

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

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

Date: 16 FEB 1980 0309-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 16 Feb 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 27

 Today's Topics: New Darkover Stories!, Even More on Economics of SF
----------------------------------------------------------------------

ISRAEL@MIT-AI 02/15/80 04:42:48 Re: Darkover

     All of you Darkover fans will be happy to hear there is a new
Darkover book out. It's a DAW paperbook called "The Keepers Price" and
its author is listed as "Marion Zimmer Bradley and The Friends of
Darkover". "The Keeper's Price" is a collection of 16 Darkover short
stories of which MZB wrote 2, co-authored one, and a number of other
authors wrote the rest. Of these other authors, there is only one that
i'd ever heard of before, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, and thats only from
Star Trek books. These stories are stories that were published in a
Darkover fan magazine, called "Starstone", put out by a group called
the Friends of Darkover. The stories are in chronological order,
ranging in time from just after "Darkover Landfall", (about a
century), to the time beyond "The World Wreckers" which is to my
knowledge the chronologically last book in the series. (I've asked
this before but if anyone knows of a complete list of Darkover books,
I would like to see it). This includes a set of six stories taking
place during the Ages of Chaos. I find it very interesting to see
fourteen different writers writing stories on the same world with
different writing styles but the same general set of facts. For the
most part I found the stories to be generally consistent with
published Darkover literature, with only a few minor inconsistencies.
The characters in these stories are both new characters invented by
the author, and characters which have been introduced previously in
the series.

     The first story in the book, "Vai Dom" by Diana Paxson is set a
century after colonization and explains the origin of the feudal
society and how the Comyn got to be lords. The next story "The Forest"
by C. McQuillin details an early encounter between human and the
Ya-men. The next six stories are set during the Ages of Chaos. "There
is Always an Alternative" by Patricia Mathews is a feminist story
explaining how the Free Amazons were founded. "The Tale of Durraman's
Donkey (as it is told to the children of the domains by their nurses)"
by Eileen Ledbetter is an extremely hilarious childrens fable. "The
Fires of her Vengeance" by Susan Schwartz is an excellent story
expanding on a small vignette told in The Spell Sword about a keeper
who lost her virginity. The next story is only two pages long, but it
is an extremely haunting an compelling tale called "The Alton Gift" by
Lisa Waters. "Circle of Light" by Kathleen Williams is a story about
the conservatism of the Comyn Council. It is a very good story about a
girl who has to fight for her right to use laran for healing people
who are injured or ill. The final story set during the Ages of Chaos
is "The Answer" by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah. It is about
the evolution of laran use from an individual thing to its cooperative
use by a group of people (a tower) for more difficult tasks.

     Following this are six stories set in the time under the Comyn,
including three by MZB. "The Rescue" by Linda MacKendrick is a
fascinating story about a strange alliance between a hunter and a Free
Amazon. "The Keeper's Price" by MZB and Lisa Waters presents the
conflict between a keepers training and her biological purpose. Two of
the characters in this are Callista and Leonie (from The Spell Sword
and The Forbidden Tower). This story also explains the cause behind
the changes to Callista that caused her and Andrew so many problems in
The Forbidden Tower. "The Hawk-Masters Son" by MZB is about Dyan
Ardais (from the Heritage of Hastur) and Kennard (from the Bloody Sun
among others) and explains alot about why many things were done in The
Heritage of Hastur. The next two stories I found interesting because
they were done by two different authors but one is a sequel to the
other. They both are about a character named Lomie who is an
incidental character in The Bloody Sun. "A Simple Dream" by Penny
Ziegler is about a Darkovan who dreams for the stars. "Una Paloma
Blanca" by Patricia Mathews I found especially notable because in it a
character (Terran) mentions both a custom called ceremonial drunk
(Larry Niven) and a planet called Orado where you can get mind-shields
(James Schmitz). The final story set under the Comyn is called Blood
Will Tell and it details the first meeting between Lew Alton and Dio
Ridenow (Star of Danger).

     The final two stories in the book are set after The World
Wreckers. The first story "Ambassador to Corresanti" by Linda Frankel
is about one of Darkover's nonhuman intelligent races and the final
story "A View From the Reconstruction" by Paula Crunk is a two page
story about what life might be like on Darkover after the Comyn. All
in all, I consider this a good book for the fairly experienced
Darkover fan, but it would probably be somewhat confusing to the
reader who isn't familiar with Darkover.

- Bruce

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

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 02/15/80 12:59:01 Re: economics of SF

The price structure that Dr. Forward explained clears up some of my
confusion but it raises some questions as well. The fee scale in the
magazines seems very low, and I gather that novels are contracted
for a percentage of the sales (always?) with some cash advance in
addition. The dollar amount seems reasonable, but then again, my eye
is not trained enough to judge. (Do other areas of literature have
substantially different contracts or price structures?) My intuition
says that contracts will be tough on first time authors and
progressively nicer as the author developes clout; not too gentle but
I suspect it is true.

What I found the most interesting was that the magazines still pay
approximately the same wage as they did long ago. In the past, novels
had a smaller share of the market (I think) so the low scale might
be explained by a readership that has decreased with respect to
publication costs. In any event, there will be some explanation.
Still, the prices indicate that something is wrong.

The economics we have been discussing is all based on a small market
for science fiction sales. But the pool of buyers is increasing
rapidly and I would expect the conditions in the publishing industry
to reflect that. The money available for purchasing novels and short
stories should increase, and the money paid to authors should increase
as well. My question is if there is some schism or phase difference
between what publishers can pay and what the readership can support.

Concerning the quality of the work that gets produced; I still
feel that science fiction can be improved considerably. Lines of
communication between readers, publishers and authors should be
established (are they on the net?), and monetary incentives for
the production of good work should exist (to the extent that the
incentives don't exist already). It is possible that these
influences are working right now and that what I see is just a
form of growing pain. However, every time I look at the shelves
I get this strange feeling that someone out there is trying to
glut the market on the theory that increased presence brings
increased revenues.

	Dan Shapiro

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

Date: 15 Feb 1980 6:35 pm PST (Friday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: SF economics

I'm not at all sure that the current situation is so bad. As
DGSHAP@MIT-AI observed, the low payment rate in the magazines tends to
keep the big names from filling the demand for short stories. (Maybe
this accounts somewhat for the decline in magazine readership?) But I
think there's another effect, probably beneficial. It means that the
the authors who work hard to write good stuff for the magazines do so
out of a genuine desire to write good fiction, rather than because
it's a lucrative way to earn a living. I'm not saying that everything
you read in the magazines is excellent; far from it. But at least the
authors' motives are in the right place.

Roger Duffey's comments on reader/viewer feedback are interesting. I
wrote several times to Analog, trying to get them to put an AnLab form
on a tear-out, business-reply postcard. That way even the laziest fan
could get up the gumption to respond. As for writing PBS re LoH and so
forth, perhaps the thing to do is to collect SF-Lovers responses by
category and ship it off en masse to the purveyors of the various
extravaganzas. There's certainly enough material in these archives to
turn somebody's head.

Or perhaps what's needed is network mailboxes for all of the major
producers and publishers, so they can tap in on the dialogue as it
happens. This may not be so far-fetched a possibility; we've seen
Robert Forward's name on several messages recently. Perhaps
Roddenberry is out there listening at this very moment...

			-- GPK

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

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

Date: 18 FEB 1980 0317-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 18 Feb 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 28

    Today's Topics: ARPAnet & Misc., Reference Books and Darkover,
                    More on Economics, Brunner and SF Cons Queries
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 Feb 1980 0310-PST (Saturday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: SF-LOVERS and the ARPANET; SOME MISC. COMMENTS

Friends,

I really do hate to be the bad guy about this, but here it goes
anyway. Periodically, I find it necessary to remind everyone that this
is the ARPAnet. Not the SFnet or some other sort of network. Now, I am
the first to admit that an SFnet would be a fine idea, but this
collection of aging imps and tips do not an SFnet make.

Therefore, I would suggest use of considerable discretion in the "en
masse" releasing of SF-LOVERS archives to outside sources, lest these
sources result in the destruction of that which we've been fighting to
preserve -- SF-LOVERS itself. I hasten to remind the viewing public
that any publicity concerning SF-LOVERS would be VERY dimly viewed, as
it puts the whole ARPANET in what I might call a "wasteful" light. It
makes it look like an expensive toy, and ARPA has had to fight off the
results of bad (that means ANY) publicity in the past, on several
hairy occasions.

I think it goes w/o saying that "the Arpanet is for official DoD
purposes only" and that it would be difficult, even for an imaginative
person such as myself, to figure out a reason for SF book publishers
to have mailboxes and be participating in network discourse.

So let's try to keep things cool, OK?  Enuf said on that topic.

                              ----------

I have been largely out of touch with the net for almost two weeks due
to (supposedly minor) ankle surgery. Returning, I find my mailbox
filled with all sorts of fascinating stuff, much of it from SF-LOVERS.
I was amused by the mass of pro-SW materials, and rather distraught to
have someone call "Lost in Space" poorly done. C'mon now. It was the
funniest show on television for a while there, and after a bit was
INTENTIONALLY FUNNY. By the way, I heard a promo for the Buck Rogers
TV show (which I do not watch) for next week's show. It will concern a
space rock group with music that controls young people's minds. How
many times have we seen THAT theme before in TV SF? I can think of
three at least.

On another point, I saw a new commercial spot for the "Star Wars
Collection" toys -- now they seem to be promoting dolls that represent
characters from SW II before it is even RELEASED! Seems a shame to
learn of a new SW character in a 60 second spot for childrens' toys.

Oh well, that's it for now, more when I get my mail (and thoughts)
collected....

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

Date: 17 Feb 1980 at 2119-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Subject: DARKOVER series sequence, or, What Reference Work You Consult

Bruce Israel's again repeated query ties in with my planned review of
some recent S/F reference books, where I was going to use it as an
example. But, here's that part, anyway.

The reference books I was assaying (for the mundane librarian of a
small, local college) are:

   Wells, S., 1978 - THE SCIENCE FICTION AND HEROIC FANTASY AUTHOR
      INDEX ($10)
   Searles, B., 1979 - A READER'S GUIDE TO SCIENCE FICTION ($3)
   Nicholls, P., 1979 - THE SCIENCE FICTION ENCYCLOPEDIA
      ($25 h/b, ?$13 p/b)
   Reginald, R., 1979 - SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY LITERATURE
      (about $45).

To test accuracy, one of the things I sampled in all four was their
handling of the various series by Andre Norton, where I was confident
of my own expertise (see THE BOOK OF ANDRE NORTON, DAW No. 165).
Skipping the details for now, to get back to Bruce's query faster, I
found Nicholls handled Norton's best.

A year ago I had roughed out a sequence for Marion Zimmer Bradley's
series, but being dubious about its reliability, I checked it against
the 4 reference books, none of which it exactly agreed with.

Wells lists the DARKOVER books merely in loose copyright-date
sequence.

Searles had--
 1. DARKOVER LANDFALL               7. WINDS OF DARKOVER
 2. STORMQUEEN                      8. THE BLOODY SUN
 3. THE SPELL SWORD                 9. THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR
 4. THE FORBIDDEN TOWER            10. THE PLANET SAVERS
 5. THE SHATTERED CHAIN            11. THE SWORD OF ALDONES
 6. STAR OF DANGER                 12. THE WORLD WRECKERS

Reginald gives internal chronology as--
 1. DARKOVER LANDFALL              5. THE BLOODY SUN
 2. THE SPELL SWORD                6. THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR
 3. STAR OF DANGER                 7. THE SWORD OF ALDONES
 4. THE WINDS OF DARKOVER          8. THE PLANET SAVERS
                    9. THE WORLD WRECKERS

Nicholls, published at almost the same time as Reginald's, has--
 1. DARKOVER LANDFALL              6. THE FORBIDDEN TOWER
 2. THE SPELL SWORD                7. THE BLOODY SUN
 3. THE SHATTERED CHAIN            8. THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR
 4. STAR OF DANGER                 9. THE SWORD OF ALDONES
 5. WINDS OF DARKOVER             10. THE PLANET SAVERS
                                      "The Waterfall" (short story
                                          added to 1976 ed. of #10)
                   11. THE WORLD WRECKERS

Each has obvious flaws in comparison with the others. But for the
money, it doesn't look like it would be a waste to pick up a copy of
Searles. And, just the opposite would be true of the Reginald (where
the award lists are similarly not as up-to-date).

All 3 that gave internal-chronological sequence agree on the first and
last. Reginald agrees with Nicholls, but lacks 2 titles. Nicholls
lacks 1 title Searles has, quite possibly because the much larger book
had to get to the publisher earlier, but the sequence is also
noticeably different, otherwise. Except that I had THE SHATTERED CHAIN
much later (probably erroneously so) my own sequence matches Searles'.

There are 2 ways to solve the impasse. One is to work it out by a more
painstaking study of the books than I gave them. A probably simpler
one would be, if you've the $9, to invest in THE DARKOVER CONCORDANCE
by Walter Breen (Marion Zimmer Bradley's husband), publishedd by
Pennyfarthing Press. If any SF-LOVERS has this, it would be
interesting to hear what sequence is given there.

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

Date: 18 Feb 1980 at 0022-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Subject: S/F-LOVERS OF THE WORLD, ARISE!

Another Texan heard from [relayed via HJJH].

~~~~~~~~~~S/F ECONOMICS~~~~~~~~~~

Perhaps I'm all alone out here in the hinterlands [NOT SO! hjjh], but
I happen to be one of those poor folks who simply enjoys reading SF
(broad terms - rayguns, dragons, empires, whatever). I've had this
curse for years, and still feel no desire to become a trekker, Star
Wars follower, Weyrleader or whatever. I do have this insane desire
to try to get my money's worth when I buy, however. This seems to be
harder and harder to do.

Being a fast reader, I spend, on the average, $50 to $60 on SF books
per month and find myself begging the bookstores to get more. This
limits me to primarily paperbacks and periodicals strictly for enough
volume to avoid withdrawal symptoms. Now the books are trying to gain
some sort of respectability, I suppose, by being published as
"illustrated" volumes - and almost always the illustrations are a BIG
letdown compared to what my feeble imagination can contrive. This is
not to put down some of the really good illustrators, by any means,
but most of the enjoyment of good SF is when a story triggers these
illustrations in the mind of the reader and doesn't limit him/her to
the particular interpretations of a particular illustrator - some of
them aren't worth much anyway, unless you think every female should be
bursting from her halter and every male has all his muscles developed
like some physical fitness devotee.

With all the discussions lately in SF-LOVERS about the economics of
writing SF, one thing has been outstanding - the feeling that there
aren't all that many readers. Bull! In case nobody has noticed, there
are definitely many MORE readers now than at any time in the recent
past. Whether they really read, now.....

Nonetheless, the market is there. How much is really really being done
to fill it with quality merchandise is another story. After all,
SOMEBODY bought those GOR books, didn't they? While I don't doubt most
folks read only a few "types" of SF, the market could be a very
powerful thing if the readers would stand up on their hind legs (or
tentacles or whatever) and BITCH. Yes, they should bitch to the
publishers, but it's time the authors caught their share too. Whenever
crud is published, whether it's the story, the pictures, the overall
format, or whatever, the people who put their name on it should hear
about it in no uncertain terms. The days when there just weren't
enough good authors are gone. If someone isn't willing to put out the
effort to write something good, DON'T BUY IT! Don't stand around and
say "it's the best we've got right now", give some other poor slob a
chance to get some of your hard-earned bucks. He/She just might be
better anyway.

   Dewey Henize

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

MARG@MIT-AI 02/16/80 22:31:51 Re: The Infinitive of Go

Why was Brunner reading JARGON >? I mean, does anyone know where and
why he picked up hacker-culture terminology?

[Ed. note: JARGON > refers to a glossary file of "hacker terms"
           "compiled by Guy L. Steele Jr., Raphael Finkel, Donald
            Woods, and Mark Crispin, with assistance from the MIT
            and Stanford AI communities and Worcester Polytechnic
            Institute.  Some contributions were submitted via the
            ARPAnet from miscellaneous sites."
           Copies are maintained in the files AI:GLS;JARGON > on
           MIT-AI and AIWORD.RF[UP,DOC] on SAIL.  -- RDD ]

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

Date: 17 FEB 1980 0913-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL

     Are there any Science Fiction conventions in the Northeast United
States or eastern Canada in the month of July?

     Reply direct to FORWARD@USC-ECL

     Thanks,
                  Bob Forward, Sr.

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

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

Date: 19 FEB 1980 0230-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 19 Feb 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 29

     Today's Topics: More on Don't Squeal on Us, Faded Sun Query!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

FFM@MIT-MC 02/18/80 04:44:12 Re: Please!!! No more arpa exortations!!!

I assume none of us is going to run out and publish a concordance of
SF-LOVERS mailing list with "FROM THE ARPANET" in 75 pt Helvetica
Medium BOLD ITALICS on the front. Perhaps I am grumpy having been thru
this on two many other arpanet maling lists where such eruptions
occured but I really think we should just be reasonably careful and
not go into paranoia mode. I assume most of us know what we should or
shouldn't do in reference to mailing lists on the arpanet and I for
one find continued exortations to be rather counterproductive. I am
not growling at any particular person, just growling about numbers of
reminders I as a mailing list subscriber have been subjected to.

Oh well
(probably grumpy)
have fun
sends Steve

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

Date: 18 February 1980 1150-EST (Monday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A>
Subject: Request for Info...

I am curious about the 'Faded Sun' trilogy and would like to hear
opinions about it from anyone who has read it...BUT!, please mail
these directly to me and I will collect them and mail back the
response to sf lovers after the flow(if any) has trickled low enuf.
Thanx,
		Doug (TTZ)

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

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

Date: 20 FEB 1980 0251-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 20 Feb 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 30

     Today's Topics: Review of SATURN III, Illustrations and MZB,
                     More Darkover, TV's Buck Rogers and Star Trek?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 19 Feb 1980 0501-EST
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: BAD sci-fi (in worst sense of the word) flick

The subject refers to Saturn 3, a movie which has just made its
appearance around here, and which I had the misfortune to waste $4
and a couple of hours on it. I have the problem that I always hope
someone's made a decent movie, and curiousity overcomes my better
judgement every time. Here, then, are a few observations to satisfy
your curiousity should you be like me and some foolish cats:

a) There are no new ideas in it at all. The plot is essentially that
   a new type of robot with organic brain needs to be programmed by
   direct input from a human, and the human who does it is insane,
   so the robot is too, so he kills everybody except Farrah Fawcett.

b) The movie begins with a shot of Saturn, and a large spacecraft
   slides onscreen with the low rumble that is made by large
   spacecraft sliding across movie screens. From here it gets worse.
   The scene where (a ridiculous number of) technicians load various
   containers into a probe (they just pile them in) is so stagey it
   reminded me of the opening of Patton. The captain of the probe
   wears a helmet that makes him look like the thing in ALIEN. The
   probe proceeds to fly THROUGH the rings (a band of boulders about
   3 meters apart avg.) to get to Saturn 3 (moon of Saturn).

c) Other stupid things like flying through the rings: Saturn 3 goes
   behind Saturn so our heroes are incommunicado. Apparently no one
   ever heard of comsats. The captain has a socket in back of his
   neck for direct input to the robot. Into the socket he inserts a
   transmitter which completely fits inside. No one thought of
   building it right in, obviating the socket.

d) The movie is boring. ALIEN at least had loud noises in the dark,
   and the great unwashed could come out thinking it was scarey.
   Saturn 3 had'em yawning. The models looked like models. The
   actors acted like actors. Saturn's rings looked like a bunch of
   styrofoam chunks floating in a pool. All the ideas, techniques,
   what have you are ripoffs and poorly done at that. A must miss.

		--JoSH

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

Date: 19 Feb 1980 11:19 am PST (Tuesday)
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: sf
To: Dewey Henize at UTEXAS

Glad to hear someone else is spending that amount of money per month
on sf; I was beginning to feel like the only junkie in the world. I
agree with you about illustrations in general. In particular, some of
the recent Andre Norton's have illustrations that are pedestrian
beyond belief, and really are annoying as they are embedded in the
books and totally destroy my mental picture of what is happening.

P.S. MZB has a sequel to The Hunters of the Red Moon out, called The
     Survivors; hysterically funny.

Karen

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

ISRAEL@MIT-AI 02/19/80 16:45:16 Re: Darkover Chronology

Here it is folks. I've gone through my Darkover books, and now, for
the first time ever, not available in any store, is the official Bruce
Israel chronological sequencing of the Darkover novels (stories are
not included) with rationale behind the sequencing.

 1) Darkover Landfall
       obviously first; first arrival of men on Darkover

 2) Stormqueen
       the only book set in the Ages of Chaos so far

 3) The Shattered Chain
       set under the Comyn, therefore after Stormqueen,
       also introduces Lorill Hastur who is fairly young

 4) The Spell Sword
       Lorill Hastur is older; Andrew Carr meets Callista

 5) The Forbidden Tower
       Andrew Carr and Callista are married

 6) Star of Danger
       Lorill Hastur is much older; Larry Montray arrives
       on Darkover as teen, meets Kennard who is same age

 7) Winds of Darkover
       Larry Montray is on Darkover and a couple of years
       older (in late teens)

 8) The Bloody Sun
       Kennard is middle aged

 9) The Heritage of Hastur
       Kennard and son Lew Alton go off-planet for good;
       Regis has red hair

10) The Sword of Aldones
       Lew comes back from off-planet; Regis has red hair
       which turns white by end of story

11) The Planet Savers
       Regis has white hair; Regis meets Jason Allison

12) The World Wreckers
       Regis knows Jason Allison

This is it as far as I know. I didn't include any of the shorter works
from any of the other books. This list agrees with Reginalds list from
HJJH's message except that it is more comprehensive. If anyone has any
corrections or questions i'd be glad to hear them.

- Bruce

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

<K>@MIT-AI 02/19/80 19:42:27

On Buck Rogers 14 Feb 80, while he was in a shuttle terminal, the
paging in the background called for Christopher Pike to go to the
Veterans' Administration...  Could that be CAPT Pike of NCC-1701?

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

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

Date: 21 FEB 1980 0252-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 21 Feb 1980      Volume 1: Issue 31

    Today's Topics: Reuse of SF props, Theology and Robotics Query!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 20 Feb 1980 0014-PST (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: reuse of SF props

About a mile from where I live, and clearly visible from outside my
apartment, are the massive facilities of MGM in the middle of Culver
City. That studio is one of my favorites when it comes to one of my
favorite SF oddities: the reuse of physical props from SF movies.
Something I saw on the tube tonight reminded me about this.

Remember "Forbidden Planet"? In your mind, picture the spaceship in
which our heroes landed? Got it? Can you picture the navigational
sphere in the middle of the control room that rotated around as the
ship changed position in space? How about the Krell control room with
the sorta semicircular power gauges that lit up in sequence as more
and power was drawn? Well, after the filming of FP, all the props were
broken down and stored away...

To be used in:

Multiple "Twilight Zone" episodes:
   The power gauges (a section of the bank of them anyway) showed up
   in the TZ I was watching this evening (they appear 3 times a day
   around here.) This is the episode where two men go to Mars and
   the ship crashes. One leaves the ship and the Martians seem like
   nice people -- who cage him as an inferior being at the end.

   The spaceship showed up ALOT! Whenever Serling needed a ship,
   he tended to use the same MGM prop (all the TZ's were MGM of
   course). Sometimes he turned it upside down from the original
   configuration!

   Robby the Robot from FP was used in at least 3 episodes.
   Sometimes with hands, sometimes with claws. (In the UCLA-S
   machine room, we have a picture of Robby the Robot standing
   next to our IMP -- one of the MGM people brought one of him
   (there are two) in one day to visit our computer.)

The Time Machine
   When our hero visits the future, he finds a room with all sorts
   of relics. The books turn to dust, but he does find "speech
   rings" from which my favorite announcer (Paul Freas) tells the
   history of the future earth when the rings are spun. Also in the
   room, laying in a corner, is the navigational sphere from the
   ship in FP!

Anyway, I was curious if anyone else bothers to mentally keep track of
such things! What the h...? One second. Something here on this same
TZ, which is on right now, looks rather strange, an actress playing a
Martian Girl who is upset at the treatment of the Earthman looks just
like "Veena" from the Star Trek "The Cage" ["The Menagerie"] episode.
Can it be? Let me check the credits here... hmmmm. SUSAN OLIVER. Now
we pull out the videotape of The Menagerie and check it... HOW ABOUT
THAT! The same person! How NEAT! Boy, I never realized that before.
You learn something new everytime you watch these things...

--Lauren--

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

Date: 20 Feb 1980 1203-PST
From: Barry Soroka <BIS at SU-AI>
Subject: theology & robots  

What will it be like when the first robots appear at the Vatican?
They will be welcomed as useful servants, certainly.  But they
will surely be adjudged to lack souls.  They won't be permitted
to say Mass, for example.  Maybe a future rumor will be that the
Pope is a robot.  Because of the theological twist, this differs
from the Asimov story in which a high politician is accused of
being a robot.  Has anybody else thought about this?  Let me
know, BIS@SU-AI.

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

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

Date: 22 FEB 1980 0211-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 22 Feb 1980       Volume 1 : Issue 32

 Today's Topics: Review of new Hogan book, More on Reuse of SF Props
                 Ditto for Saturn III, Repeat on TESB Promo Number
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 21 Feb 1980 0946-PST (Thursday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: Thrice Upon a Time

   James Hogan's new book, Thrice Upon a Time, is yet another of his
works in which a group of research engineers spend the novel solving
technical problems. In this case, the "problem" is the effective use
of a mechanism for sending information back in time. There are some
fascinating moments as the retrotime communication machine goes into
operation, with unexpected results.
   However, I'm getting impatient with Hogan's slow maturation as a
writer. His characters still introduce themselves by reciting their
resumes, and interact on the most primitive social level. Even the
love-story subplot is superficial at best. Worse, the characters all
possess the same basic world-view, which limits their conflicts.
Finally, he hasn't learned to look up words like "enormity" in the
dictionary to see what they mean.
   Hogan can tell a good story. There are times I wish I could step
into the story and join some of the philosophical/technical
discussions. But until he learns that writing involves more than
people solving impersonal problems, and that dialogue involves more
than resumes and technical lectures (some of which are repeated WAY
too often in this book), he's going to remain a fairly minor writer
in the field.

	Mike

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

Date:  21 February 1980 14:09 est
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Reuse of Robby the Robot

He also once played a rival to the "Lost in Space" robot.

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

Date: 21 Feb 1980 6:31 pm PST (Thursday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: reuse of props

I don't know if this counts as "official" reuse, but remember the Star
Trek episode in which the two civilizations were slugging it out via
computer simulation? "A Taste of Armageddon" is the name of it
(Richard Brodie tells me). Remember Spock destroying the computer
complex: "This one is the key, Captain. Destroy it and they all go."

Now recall the famous "Menagerie" episode in which Spock sneaks into
the Star Base computer complex to generate phoney orders dispatching
the Enterprise to Talos IV? That's right: the very same computer
consoles were used, in these two and many many other episodes. I've
seen them inside shuttlecraft, in caves on primitive planets, you name
it. I guess budget wins out over creativity every time.

			-- GPK

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

Date: 21 Feb 1980 (Thursday) 1335-EDT
From: DREIFU at WHARTON (Henry Dreifus)
Subject: Saturn-3

If I had to chose a worst movie of the year, Saturn Three is it.
Farrah F, (x Angle) is molested by a primitave design of a robot.
(With a clonned mal-adjusted brain), and is not even worth your 4.00
dollars. I recall the movie is less than an hour and one half, and is
pure BS all the way. (BS= Battle Shit). So, if you want to dump your
date, or want to teach your little kids about the morals of Robotics,
go and see it, but dont come around and not say I told you so first.

Hank

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

BYTE@MIT-AI 02/21/80 04:38:56 Re: Promo for The Empire Strikes Back

For a pre-recorded promo for TESB, dial  1-800-521-1980

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

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

Date: 23 FEB 1980 0323-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 23 Feb 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 33

 Today's topics: 4 Msgs on Recycled SF, Rebut to Ringworld Engineers
                         Comment, Worldcon Roommate Request
----------------------------------------------------------------------

YEKTA@MIT-MC 02/22/80 02:59:01 Re: Robby the robot...

I think they use Robby whenever they need a cheap, available robot. I
have seen Robby in a COLUMBO episode where he was playing the sidekick
of a kid genius (apparently he had constructed Robby ) in a think-tank
company where our lovely detective was trying to solve a murder case
involving the president of the company, his son and one other
scientist...

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

Date:  22 February 1980 11:26 est
From:  JSLove.PDO at MIT-Multics (J. Spencer Love)
Subject:  Reuse of actors in TZ

On the subject of reused actors (or actresses) in Twilight Zone from
Star Trek, I think there are three episodes that use William Shatner
(I've seen two of them at SF convention film programs). The one I
remeber at all well has Shatner as a newlywed who stops in a little
town on him honeymoon and narrowly escapes being enslaved by a
fortunetelling machine in a diner that appears to actually be able to
fortell the future. The overall message seems to be that if Cassandra
were alive today, she'd find the human race still couldn't handle her.

It's hard to say with makeup, etc. (I'm not very sophisticated this
way), but Shatner looked younger in TZ, and if that episode antedates
Star Trek then it isn't TZ that recycled the actor. Has anyone out
there collected statistics on TZ in general, or does anyone know how
many and which ones contained Capt. Kirk?

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

Date: 22 Feb 1980 1316-EST
From: FONER at BBN-TENEXA
Subject: Reuse of props

Not  to  mention,  as  long  as we're on the subject of re-use of
props, that Star Trek tended to do this quite often, to  save  on
costs, no doubt.

The  example  of  a really badly placed, re-used prop occurred in
"The Corbomite Maneuver", when a shot of the  hideous  alien  was
shown.   Supposedly the commander of this huge (1-mi-dia) vessel,
this alien had a distorted  view  of  the  Engineering  Circuitry
Control Panel (giving warp engine status and other things) behind
it.  When it is seen from inside the vessel, at the  end  of  the
episode,  it  is  clear  that  this is what the thing is.  Scotty
would be shocked to see a part of Engineering in this vessel!

                                                Lenny Foner <LNF>

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

LMOORE@MIT-ML 02/23/80 02:06:27 Re: reuse of props

For a variety of obvious reasons, making props for future
civilizations takes a lot more time and creativity that re-hashing
the past and present. As noted in "The Making of Star Trek" most
Hollywood prop (and greens) people don't understand the effect of
trying to visualize the future. This is compounded by the fact that
most of the props you see on TV are being re-used. People are
accustomed to working that way.

Enough! There are thousands of examples of re-use of props in SF
movies (well, would you believe hundreds? Howabout tens?). For
example, lets pick up on the "Forbidden Planet" robot: Robby. Robby
was too good to be used once. He appeared in another movie which
came out the year after FP. It was called (I think) "The Lost Boy".
As noted by JRDavis, he also appeared in "Lost in Space". Not only
that he was in "Columbo" episode. There was an article back in
Starlog about the various incarnations of Robby. This article
seemed to say that Robby as we see him today is not the same as the
orginial but a copy. I would like to provide a better pointer to
this article but can't. Perhaps someone out there can. As a side
note, the music of FP also appeared in "A Trip to the Moon". The
soundtrack of FP is very distinctive and closely matched to images.
Seeing it lifted into a Victorian setting is dis-orienting, to say
the least.

   The agricultural ships on BS Ponderosa were clear lifts from
"Silent Running". I would guess that the footage is old and not new
images of the model. (Does the model still exist?) Splicing in old
footage is a well used cost cutting technique in SF films. How many
times have we seen that same old V-2 take off? or that same atomic
bomb explode in the ocean? A particularly weird case of this is the
climax to "The Magnetic Monster". In this sequence of shots,
Richard Carlson (who else?) is at the controls of an atom smasher
of some sort. I think it was called a "Deltatron". In any case,
close-ups of Carlson are splicied in between long shots of the
device. All the long shots were taken from a movie called "Gold"
which was done around 1930 in Germany. In that film the device was
a gold transmutter.

   Another computer that popped up at least twice in Star Trek was
the one used in the sixties earth episode. It later appeared in the
third season episode where every one went back in time because the
planet was about to be destroyed.

   How many times has the Bonaventura Hotel in L.A be used in
Sci-Fi films? Buck Rogers seems to be the latest entrant in this
contest. (Note that an SF film would never stupe to using this
building.)

   These are just a few which came to mind immediately; the full
list is almost endless.

	-Lee

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

Date: 22 Feb 1980 8:46 am (Friday)
From: Chapman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: RINGWORLD ENGINEERS

I was curious about a comment that the magazine version of Larry
Niven's RINGWORLD ENGINEERS was not the complete text, so I went and
asked. Larry says that the magazine version IS complete, although
there were a few editorial revisions (NOT major changes) made to the
manuscript (after the magazine publication) for the book.

If you live in the Greater Los Angeles area, and are interested in
conversing with Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Steve Barnes, and/or a
wide variety of people generally interested in SF, you will find them
gathered together every Thursday evening in N. Hollywood at the LASFS
(Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society), 11513 Burbank Blvd. (phone
213-760-9234 (acronym SO0-YBEG, pronounced So Nothing, Why Beg)). The
meeting starts promptly at 8 p.m. FST (Fannish Standard Time, as much
as half an hour late), but there are generally people standing around
talking from 7 p.m. on.

P.S. While talking to Larry last night, he pointed out to me and
several other people the planets Mars and Jupiter, peeking out of
the clouds, and looking very much like the MOTE IN GOD'S EYE.

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

Date: 22 Feb 1980 1343-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Room at the World Con   

Anyone out there going to the World Con this september?

I am a CS student at Stanford, and will be in Boston for the bash.
Moreover, I have a double room at the Sheraton that badly needs
sharing (re: I cannot pay for it completely myself).  I thought
that some people on SF-LOVERS (or other SF people they may know)
might be interested in splitting costs.

If any of you are, then please drop me a line (JPM@SAIL, or use the
post - 564 Campus Drive, Stanford, Ca. 94305).  I am a non-smoking
male who doesn't have any vicious habits.  Non-smokers are prefered,
but any being that this notice gets to is welcome to inquire.

Jim

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

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

Date: 24 FEB 1980 0342-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Sunday, 24 Feb 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 34

Today's Topics: Warning: SCI-FI Association, Last words on prop reuse
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 23 Feb 1980 2310-PST
From: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Doug Wright strikes back

I received in my mail Volume 1, issue 2 of "SCI FI News and Review,
The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Magazine."  After I overcame
my original revulsion at the name of the publication, I looked inside
and got even sicker.

I repeat here an article therein in its entirety -

	CONFUSION OVER WHO CAN ATTEND SCI FI CONVENTION

     Until recent, the Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Convention
in Los Angeles was open to the public, and anyone could attend; but
unfortunately, forty to fifty attendees apparently come mainly to
create trouble for the other 4,000 well behaved attendees.
     To eliminate the troublemakers and the problems they cause, the
Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Association was established for
members only, and letters were sent to the troublemakers and others
informing them that the conventions were no longer open to the public
and they were not welcome.
     "We are sincere when we say that we strive to present the
friendliest and most enjoyable possible conventions," said Douglas
Wright, convention chairman.
     The Sci Fi Association has proven to be very popular not only
with the convention attendees but other science fiction, horror and
fantasy fans, because of its many benefits.  Anyone can join the
Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Convention as long as the person
has not been notified that they are not eligible for membership, and
as long as the person agrees to the membership requirements.
Membership is only $5.00 for a full twelve months from the date
joined, and discounts and other benefits amount to much more than the
membership fee.


Why was I subjected to this drivel?  Well, it seems that I foolishly
went to one of Wright's conventions in San Francisco last July not
knowing that it was one of his.  That apparently got me on his mailing
list.

Oh yes, the membership requirements.  Among other things, you give the
Sci Fi (cringe!) Association permission to use photographs, motion
pictures, or video of yourself taken at an "Association" event to be
used by the "Association."  You also agree "not to create any
disturbance [presumably having a room party], dissention [I guess this
means you're not allowed to say that you think Doug Wright is a fascist
pig], or disruption of any kind at any 'Association' event."

I note with disgust the following item on Wright's "Calendar of Events":
 "July 4, 5, and 6 - Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Convention,
  location to be announced.  NOT THE HYATT AIRPORT HOTEL."
It just so happens that WESTERCON 33 will be at the Hyatt Airport Hotel
in LA on...you got it, July 4-6.

Need I say any more?

-- Mark --

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

Date: 23 Feb 1980 0153-PST (Saturday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: TZ and a final word on props

There were 2 TZ's that I know of that starred William Shatner.  All
the Twilight Zones predated Trek by quite a ways -- since the show
ran from 1960-1965.  The 2 episodes were the one mentioned about the
fortune telling machine, and another, "Terror at 20,000 Feet" I
believe it is called.  It is about a man who was just released from
a mental hospital, who, on a plane flight, keeps seeing a horrible
creature out on the wing tampering with the engines.

Oh yeah, one last prop reuse that I really like.  At the end of the
film "The President's Analyst" (A FINE film!), we see the president
of TPC (The Phone Company) sitting at a console from which he has been
manipulating events of people, government agencies, etc. throughout
the film.

This console is the same piece of equipment that was the "M5" computer
in the Trek "The Ultimate Computer" episode...

--Lauren--

P.S.  "This Unit Must Survive."

--LW--

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

Date: 23 February 1980 13:06-EST
From: Frank J. Wancho <FJW at MIT-MC>
Subject:  That Shatner TZ Episode

Coincidentally, I just watched that very episode earlier this morning
on an LA station we get here on cable.  Unfortunately, I didn't catch
the copyright date.  Aside from the jet-black hair and a thinner
appearance, Shatner hasn't changed much at all over the years.  I
suspect, tho', that TZ predates ST as much as it was in B&W and ST
come on the air the first year that NBC went all color.  However, I
think TZ was deliberately shot in B&W for effect - note that later
episodes of Superman and some other shows back around 1957 where shot
in color, but shown in B&W.

--Frank

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

BARMAR@MIT-MC 02/24/80 01:26:58 Re: SF-LOVERS Digest

	About the reuse of Robby the Robot, I don't know about that
article describing his incarnations, but I saw, at the Star Trek
America convention last weekend in NY, a poster with a labeled poster
of Robby on one half and his many incarnations on the other half.  The
half with his incarnations also had a description of his personality,
a diagram of his appearance in that place, and a description of his
modification.
	About Shatner et al: Shatner has been in several (at least 3
or 4) Outer Limits episodes.  So have most of the other members of the
ST cast. He was also in a couple of TZ episodes.  I have seen some ST
fan magazines which list the episodes of other shows that cast members
have been in.

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

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

Date: 25 FEB 1980 0418-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 25 Feb 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 35

           Today's Topics: B&W vs. Color for SF TV programs
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 24 Feb 1980 0215-PST (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: B&W vs. COLOR

Just for the record, most early TV shows were shot in B&W for two
reasons:

1) Color was expensive.
2) Nobody had color TV's.

"Effect" had nothing to do with it. TZ was a very early show, and
nobody even considered spending the money for color. Later on
(mid-60's) it got to a point where more people had color TVs, so
more and more shows were in color -- but still the shows that
required alot of optical work, like the early "Bewitched" and "The
Outer Limits" for example, were kept in B&W to keep optical effect
costs down. I'm just as glad that Outer Limits was BW, since it is
one show where many of the episodes DID benefit in effect, but
economics was the primary concern.

There are two notable exceptions in the old TV stable: Superman and
Science Fiction Theatre. Superman was partially shot in color,
probably because there were hopes of using some of the episodes in
theater presentations. I don't know WHY so many of the old Science
Fiction Theaters were in color. A real fluke.

Oh yeah, Shatner was only in one Outer Limits episode as far as I
know: "Cold Hands, Warm Heart", as specified in my Outer Limits
episode guide.

--Lauren--

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

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

Date: 26 FEB 1980 0331-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 26 Feb 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 36

  Today's Topics: Color TV Effects, Robby's Clone, 2 Capsule Reviews
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 FEB 1980 1129-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: more on color TV

   confirming Lauren's remarks for a show he didn't mention:
I DREAM OF JEANNIE was one of the last shows on NBC to shift
from B&W to color broadcasts. I recall an article on the
newspaper's TV supplement saying that this was specifically
because color ordinarily added about $10,000 to the cost of a
half hour show (from $70,000 to $80,000) but the supplemental
cost was substantially greater for JEANNIE because of the
complications caused by doing process (i.e., special effects)
work in color. Granted, JEANNIE had little beyond the smoke
effect, but that had to be done over a new set at least once
for each show. I don't remember much about the content of TV
from that period, but wasn't JEANNIE one of the first regular
production shows (as opposed to TWILIGHT ZONE and OUTER LIMITS,
which were effectively a series of specials with a standard
frame and thus did not require continuous appearances by the
same cast) to use effects that complicated on TV? (It has been
my impression that MY FAVORITE MARTIAN and possibly BEWITCHED
used only shooting tricks (i.e., stop the camera and move
something while everyone else freezes) and gimmicks that worked
on-set (like Uncle Martin's antennae) rather than process work.)

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

Date: 25 Feb 1980 0821-PST (Monday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: Robby: a Clarification

   Lauren mentioned that there were pictures taken at UCLA of Robbie
the robot, and implies that it was an MGM studio property. This is
incorrect; the Robbie that "visited" UCLA was built by a FAN (at
enourmous expense) who even went to the trouble of visiting the
original at a museum and covertly taking impressions of the front
panel. The visit culminated with Robbie touring the CCN (360/91)
machine room and exiting through the user area, causing quite a
sensation (and a surprising number of guesses as to whether there
WAS a person inside or whether it was remotely controlled).
   The builder, Mark Barton, was working at UCLA at the time. His
Robbie goes to several conventions each year.

	Mike

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

Date: 25 Feb 1980 11:03 am PST (Monday)
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: mini book reviews

Sorceror's Son by Phyllis Eisenstein: very nice sword and sorcery
novel about a sorceress with power over spiders and snakes, etc.,
her son, who goes on a quest to find his father, his father, who
is a demon, and the villain, a demon-master. Very entertaining
demons, especially in the latter part of the book; also, it is a
biggy, nearly 400 pages.

Stardance by Spider and Jeanne Robinson: this is a set of three
novellas, the first of which is Stardance which won a number of
awards. I liked Stardance considerably, even though much of it
centers on modern dance which I find generally to be pretentious
and boring. The other two novellas were probably written to get
up to book size, and are rather uninteresting.

Karen

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

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

Date: 27 FEB 1980 0252-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 27 Feb 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 37

  Today's Topics: Stardance, Darkover, Replies to Robots & Theology,
                         Here's the plot: What's the TITLE?!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 26 FEB 1980 1344-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Stardance, Darkover, et al
Length: 41 lines

     STARDANCE consists of TWO novellas (one almost novel length); the
latter 2/3 of the book appeared as a 3-part serial in ANALOG, and were
definitely not written just to bulk up to a book. I actually found the
dance talk interesting because it's a field where I'm aware of my
ignorance and they talk in reasoably non-technical terms. Having seen
Jeannie Robinson dance, I can testify that her concepts of modern
dance are hardly pompous or boring; she is also the model for Shara
(too well-built to be accepted in a modern dance company).

     I questioned the placement of SHATTERED CHAIN before SPELL
SWORD / FORBIDDEN TOWER, and checked Brenn's DARKOVER CONCORDANCE,
which lists the former AFTER the latter with the note that the
events happen somewhat concurrently. Lorill is less of a reliable
indicator than Gabriel and Rohana Ardais, whom we see more of in
both stories. (Gabriel is "sixtyish" in FT and is past middle age
(Rohana is at least 50) in SC.) Breen also lists Cleindori as the
offspring of Damon and Jaelle, which knots up the chronology a bit
since one of the few sexual taboos is cross-generation. The
chronology is further complicated by the fact that MZB didn't
intend to write a SERIES, just a group of related books. THE
KEEPER'S PRICE, which someone recently mentioned here, contains
a real foulup in which three separate generations are shown as
contemporaries; it also drags in two other authors' universes,
apparently just to be perverse.

     The obvious robot theology story is Silverberg's "Good News from
the Vatican", in which a robot is elected Pope; he has also cosidered
androids worshipping their creator in TOWER OF GLASS. In a lighter
note, Sheckley remarks in "Human Man's Burden" (title not exact) that
the manufacturing specifications for robots declare that they shall
have no souls, to save them pain.

[ Note: TOWER OF GLASS has recently been reissued in paperback
        and should be generally available now.	--  RDD ]

     It's doubtful that Brunner actually read the particular file
JARGON >; he reads everything, and could have picked up that much
language in several places (one version of JARGON > was published
in a local fanzine a few years ago, for instance).

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

Date: 27 Feb 1980 0:03:26 (Wednesday)
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Collaborators: HJJH at UTEXAS, WFJ@MIT-AI
Subject: Theology and Robots
Length: 32 lines

In Issue 31 (21 Feb 1980) Barry Soroka <BIS@SU-AI> wondered what
would happen when robots began to be used at the Vatican and more
generally asked if there were any SF stories written around the
theme of robots and theology.

Robert Silverberg gives a very direct answer to this question with
his short story "Good News at the Vatican" which is available in
the book "The Best of Robert Silverberg". As Chip mentioned above,
this story deals with the election of the first robot pope and is
told from the viewpoint of a small group of people who have come
to Rome for that event. No serious theological discussion, but
humorous.

Barry mentioned Stephen Byerly, a lawyer who is elected World
Coordinator and who may be a robot, from 2 of the stories in Isaac
Asimov's anthology "I, Robot". Another story from that anthology
"Reason" tells about the troubles that Donovan and Powell (field
test engineers for US Robots and Mechanical Men) have with QT, a
robot who believes he is a prophet of the creator. Again, humorous.

More generally Nicholls' "The Science Fiction Encyclopedia" lists
four books dealing with the subjects of religion and SF. They are
Dann's Wandering Stars, c. 1974, whose special focus is the Jewish
religion; Elwood's "Strange Gods", c. 1974; Greenberg and Warrick's
"The New Awareness: Religion through Science Fiction", c. 1975; and
Mohs' "Other Worlds, Other Gods", c. 1971. Note how the dates are
clustered together.

					Enjoy,
					   Roger

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

Date: 26 Feb 1980 7:55 am (Tuesday)
From: Weyer at PARC-MAXC
Subject: sf story?
Length: 8 lines

does anyone know the title and author of a story about library
indexing ad absurdum -- source information is miniaturized, then the
galactic index becomes so large that it needs an index, and so on.
many levels later a pointer becomes garbled and civilization falls?

Steve

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

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

Date: 28 FEB 1980 0236-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 28 Feb 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 38

  Today's Topics: Reviews & Reviewers - 4 books, From Plot to Title,
                   Spoof of THE MALTESE FALCON, Boston SF Art Show
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 27 Feb 1980 at 0106-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Length: 27 lines

         ~~~~~~~~~~SORCERER'S SON and STARDANCE~~~~~~~~~~
    ~~~~~also ASTRA & FLONDIX and THE DRAWING OF THE DARK~~~~~

Hopefully, in between the cussing and discussing of pictorial-SF,
more people will contribute reviews of print-SF, as Israel and Mike
Urban and Karen have. In addition to info about books, we may get a
fringe benefit: certain SF-L reviewers may have tastes so close to
one's own, that one can choose to read or not, according to particular
reviewers' reactions. Bruce Israel's likes and dislikes, for example,
are so close to mine that when he recommends something I've not read,
I go hunting for it! Since it was n-o-t me but another UTEXAS person
whose message I relayed that spends the $50-60 per month on SF, I
appreciate the caveats and recommends.

So I am not carping when I say--

One man's ----oops!---- person's "goodie" is another's "ho-hum".
Both SORCEROR'S SON and STARDANCE suffered a rare fate with me,
being turned in to the used paperback store only half read. This
is unusual because having paid for a book, I hate to waste its cost
by leaving it unfinished. These, like ASTRA AND FLONDIX, I didn't
even bother to quick-skim the latter parts of, as I had THE DRAWING
OF THE DARK. This last book I WOULD recommend for fantasy fanciers.
I f-e-l-t it was well done, but it unaccountably just did not
engage my interest.

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

Date: 28 Feb 1980 at 1:30:00-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: What's the title query from Issue 37
Length: 21 Lines

Last time Weyer asked for the title and author of an SF story where
information miniturization leads to the fall of civilization because
an essential index has been lost. I believe the story in question is
MS FND IN A LBRY, a short story written by Hal Draper and which first
appeared in the December 1961 issue of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND
SCIENCE FICTION. It can also be found in the anthology 17 X INFINITY
edited by Groff Conklin.

The story is told in the form of a report from the Commander of the
Andromedan Research Expedition. The report recounts the history of
ever increasing information miniturization leading to ever more
voluminous indices and finally the collapse of a multi-galactic
civilization. The story ends with the reader discovering that this
report itself has been misindexed and that the explorer's civilization
is on the verge of collapsing for the same reasons. In essence this
story is a joke, noteworthy because it depends on recursion.

						Enjoy,
						   Roger

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

Date: 27 Feb 1980 at 2221-CST
From: John M.
Sent-by: HJJH at UTEXAS
Subject: Spoof of THE MALTESE FALCON
Length: 18 lines

Does anyone know of a story which is a spoof on Dashiell Hammett's THE
MALTESE FALCON? In this version, the black bird appears to be made of
chocolate or some such stuff, so the detective eats it! Then comes the
bad news; the bird is actually a bomb which is to destroy the planet
(or was it the galaxy?) and despite mastication it is still active.

Somebody wrote to ANALOG's letter column at least a year ago about
this, but so far nothing has appeared there about it.

                    ...

In regard to the complains about the poor quality of most SF,
haven't you folks ever heard of Sturgeon's Law? I.e., 90% of
e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g is **** [unprocessed sewage].

     John M.  [ direct reply, if any, via HJJH at UTEXAS ]

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

Date: 27 Feb 1980 at 20:53:12-EST
From: BARRYG at MIT-MC
Subject: SF art
Length: 20 Lines

There is an exhibit of sculpture, paintings, and drawings by Don
Simpson at Earthlight Gallery, 249 Newbury St., Boston. Don is
one of the lights of the science fiction art field. I will quote
(briefly) from the flyer: "Don has prepared a sculpture exhibit
for the Smithsonian Institution Air and Space Museum. This exhibit,
which is a model of an extraterrestrial space probe, is in the LIFE
IN THE UNIVERSE HALL. It contains a map and message, similar in
spirit to the plaques and record on our own space probes."

The exhibit includes 42 pieces, including "Houri, the ideal of
feminine beauty among the Antarean Tachmydromids," "The Ancient
Martian Temple" (Please note the graffiti - in TWO Martian
languages), "Windreach Castle ('my dream house.')"

If anyone goes to see it, I would appreciate brief reviews (to
BARRYG, not SF-LOVERS, please) as I missed the exhibit by one day.

	/barry

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

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

Date: 29 FEB 1980 0210-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 29 Feb 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 39

 Today's Topics: Request from SF-LOVERS Readers, Peeking "Beyond the
                  Blue Event Horizon", Misc. by HJJH, Falcon Spoof
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 29 Feb 1980
From: SF-LOVERS Readers
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Request: Boston SF Art Show Reviews
Length: 17 lines

     In Issue 38 Barry pointed out that the Earthlight Gallery in
Boston was exhibiting some SF art work by Don Simpson. Since then
several people have indicated to me that they would be interested
in seeing any reviews or impressions that people might be willing
to share. Therefore, if some of you go, please feel encouraged to
send ina review to SF-LOVERS. Anticipating that some of the people
on SF-LOVERS may be unfamiliar with SF Art, it might be worthwhile
to have some more general comments about the field of SF Art and
what is happening in it currently as well.

     If enough material is generated I will collect it and distribute
it in a special issue of the digest devoted to the Boston Show and SF
Art in general. Anyone interested?

						Roger

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

Date: 28 Feb 1980 9:40 am PST (Thursday)
From: Weissman at PARC-MAXC
Subject: AI Humor by Pohl
Length: 34 lines

I'm about halfway through Frederik Pohl's new book, "Beyond the Blue
Event Horizon" (a sequel to "The Merchants of Venus" and "Gateway"),
and I thought members of SF-Lovers who are also AI enthusiasts might
be amused by the following dialog between Robin Broadhead and his
science advisor, a computer program named Albert Einstein...

	I got up and refreshed my drink, leaving him sitting there,
patiently puffing his pipe. Sometimes it was hard to remember that
there was really nothing there, nothing but a few interference
patterns of collimated light, backed up by some tons of metal and
plastic. "Albert," I said, "tell me something. You computers are
supposed to be lightning-fast. Why is it that you take so long to
answer sometimes? Just dramatic effect?"
	"Well, Bob, sometimes it is," he said after a moment, "like
that time. But I am not sure you understand how difficult it is for me
to 'chat'. If you want information about, say, black holes, I have no
trouble producing it for you. Six million bits a second, if you like.
But to put it in terms you can understand, above all to put it in the
form of conversation, involves more than accessing the storage. I have
to do word-searches through literature and taped conversations. I have
to map analogies and metaphors against your own mind-sets. I have to
meet such strictures as are imposed by your defined normatives for my
behavior, and by relevance to the tone of the particular chat. 'Taint
easy, Robin."
	"You're smarter than you look, Albert," I said.
	He tapped his pipe out and looked up at me under his shaggy
white mop. "Would you mind, Bob, if I said so are you?"

Since I haven't finished the book, I won't attempt a review now. But
I will mention that the cover art by Wayne Douglas Barlowe on the
hardcover edition portrays the mysterious aliens, the Heechee, in
agreement with Pohl's description. -- Bob

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

Date: 25 Feb 1980 at 0235-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Length: 62 lines

Still trying to catch up (but not getting very close)...

~~~~~~~~~~BOSK*L*ONE~~~~~~~~~~

I'd heard of Boskone, a con of long-standing in the Boston area,
but what was BoskLone? A different one run by a splinter group? A
Boskone-clone?

A situation like that happened at our state cow college, Texas A&M...
which is all to the good since A&M is only about an hour or so's drive
from Austin where ardent fans are few... (and SF-LOVERS thus so very
welcome), so there are 2 readily accessible S/F events per year.
Otherwise, what are touted as S/F-etc. cons locally are essentially
admission-fee-requiring dealers' (mostly comics) flea markets with
old movies in a nearby room.

~~~~~~~~~~NO WITCHES OF KARRES SEQUEL~~~~~~~~~~

Evidently somebody else got the same feeling from the book that I did,
that Schmitz had in mind to write a sequel-- very likely involving
Capt. Paukert(?) and The Leewit. But, alas, he did not. Apart from
outright overt announcement of a sequel, I wonder how authors manage
to covertly imply that there will be, as in this case. Maybe he didn't
intend to. Others as well as myself read a distinct "promise" of a
future story involving it (him?) when Ruth, the white dragon, was
hatched (in DRAGONFLIGHT or DRAGONQUEST). It was something an adult
dragon (Ramoth?) said. Yet McCaffrey claimed not to have been aware of
making any such promise, and that the idea of writing THE WHITE DRAGON
didn't occur to her till after she'd gotten into the Menolly series.
DINOSAUR PLANET is, of course, a different matter entirely; it just
"upped and stopped". Very frustrating.

~~~~~~~~~~"LUCK OF BRIN'S FIVE" TROUBLE~~~~~~~~~~

Far more frustrating... (and darned BAD luck for the author), is what
happened to t-h-i-s book's paperback (pb) edition. The first in a
series, too, it seems to stop short even more abruptly. But, according
to LOCUS, there are a dozen more pages of text at the end of the hard
bound edition, missing from the pb. I wonder if it was an outright
error or an ill-advised editorial decision. It's a darned shame in
either case, because such an ending is apt to leave readers too
disgruntled to try that author again, and in Cherry Wilder I feel we
have what reviewers would call "a fine new talent". LUCK... has an
exceptionally intriguing alien culture, and the early scene when the
(human) alien is introduced to one of the autochthones' domesticated
animals is quietly hilarious.

~~~~~~~~~~CORWIN ON SHADOW EARTH~~~~~~~~~~

His sister's apartment was in New York City, that's all I recall
with certainty. But I seem to have some vague memory of his going to
Switzerland (or Holland?) and/or Africa for contraband weapons in one
of the latter books. And, in telling of his amnesic years, mentioning
having been in Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

~~~~~~~~~~THRICE UPON A TIME'S COVER~~~~~~~~~~

Cover artwork is usually of little consequence to me, but the
discrepancy between that very youthful face and those middle-aged
laborer's hands is upsetting.

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

BARMAR@MIT-MC 02/28/80 15:16:57 Re: Maltese Falcon spoof
Length: 7 lines

I believe there was a movie a few years ago (I think it might have
been called "The Black Bird" that was meant to be a spoof of "The
Maltese Falcon". I can't tell you any more, as I did not see it.

						--Barry

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

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

Date:  1 MAR 1980 0331-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 1 Mar 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 40

 Today's Topics: The Centric Foundation, Manley Wade Wellman Fantasy,
                 Robinson / Varley Similarities, Maltese Falcon Spoof
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 29 Feb 1980 at 0114-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

~~~~~~~~~~THE RICHMOND'S 'THE CENTRIC FOUNDATION'~~~~~~~~~~

I'm not "anybody with a geophysics background" such as Eirikur
requested responses from in re the somewhat questionable ideas
in Walt & Leigh Richmond's books [SFL V1 #20]. As that was 3
weeks ago, perhaps there were no replies. In case the Richmonds'
entry in Reginald's SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY LITERATURE may be
of interest (I'm not at all sure it really says anything
reassuring)--

"The Centric Foundation is a brand new organization dedicated to
basic research and education, and one of our primary aims is to
clarify the interpretations of physical phenomena, differentiating
between experimental data and speculation in the field of physics.

"One of our aims will be to show that the interpretation of
physical phenomena is not completely embodied--or most easily
seen--in relativity or the quan- tum theory.

"To that end we intend to show the application of relatively
simply [sic] high school mathematics to the experimental
phenomena determined in physics laboratories."

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

Date: 29 February 1980 22:03-EST
From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Manly Wade Wellman

Manly Wade Wellman's excellent fantasy collection "Who Fears The
Devil" (otherwise known as a 'John the Balladeer' collection) has
been released in Paperback. The stories are set in (contemporary)
South-Eastern U.S. (Ozarks?) and are reprinted from '60's F&SF. Well
worth it! Has anyone seen any other Manly Wade Wellman in other than
hard-to-find Arkham House hardbacks?

-- Charles

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

APPLE@MIT-MC 03/01/80 00:50:36

     It has been quite a while since I last read STARDANCE by Spider
and Jeanne Robinson, but at the time I noticed a similarity of the
human-alien union to the same thing in some of John Varley's stories.
Now I'm not criticising the Robinsons -- actually I thought STARDANCE
was quite good and deserved its awards -- but I do think that there is
a definite parallel. Would someone who has read both STARDANCE and
either of Varley's two books THE OPHIUCHI HOTLINE and PERSISTANCE OF
VISION comment, perhaps noting specifically the similarities and
differences?

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

Date: 29 FEB 1980 0105-PST
From: THURMOND at USC-ECL
Subject: Maltese Falcon spoof

     The movie referred to by BARMAR, entitled "The Black Bird", was
indeed a Maltese Falcon spoof starring George Segal. It was fairly
idiotic, tho funny, if you didn't tire to quickly of all the ethnic
jokes they dragged out of Sam Spade's name. But I doubt if this is the
story that HJJH is referring to. No chocalate time bombs in that
movie.

     Incidentally, this has little to do with SF, but I've been losing
sleep over the word KATMANDU, and wonder if anyone could help me out.
I have the strong impression that it was a story or movie title, but
for the life of me, I can't remember where I saw it. It's really
bugging me. About all I can find out is that it is the name of a
mountain and holy city in Nepal. Does it ring any bells out
there?

Thanks, Rob

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

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

Date:  2 MAR 1980 0359-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 2 Mar 1980       Volume 1 : Issue 41

Today's Topics: STARDANCE Varley/Herbert Concepts, Source for MS FND N
                 LBRY, Another What's the Title Query, Shades of 2001
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 1 Mar 1980 11:34 am PST (Saturday)
From: Haeberli at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Robinsons' use of Varley and Herbert concepts

The Robinsons acknowledge Varley and Frank Herbert for independently
coinventing concepts essential to the conclusion of STARDANCE. We both
have figured out why Varley is included, but I can't figure out why
Herbert is, unless the reference is to The Jesus Incident, which I
haven't yet read.

Martin

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

Date:  1 Mar 1980 at 1649-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Inside Information: Computers in Fiction

In addition to the sources cited for the short-story MS ... dealing
with a future civilization in which all the world's knowledge has
been reduced to a single memory module which has gotten lost amidst
all the indexes to that knowledge (and the consequent ultimate
disaster this will cause when it is discovered) [SFL V1 #38,37] the
story was included in an anthology "Inside Information: Computers
in Fiction" by Abbe Mowshowitz (published by Addison-Wesley series
in Computer Science!!!!) in 1977. The OCLC network says it is in
most every university library. HJJH and I found the collection of
stories to be a rather biased sample of computers in SF, favoring
the negative image of Frankenstein monsters. Thus the "anthology"
is not to be recommended in and of itself, but may be the most
recent (and only in-print) source for that SS.

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

Date: 1 Mar 1980 1055-EST
From: FONER at BBN-TENEXA (Lenny Foner)
Subject: Title request

I  vaguely  remember  reading  a  story, about 3-5 years ago, but
cannot now find it.  It concerned some  spacecraft  being  tested
that  would  be the first FTL ship.  What it did, I think, was to
change its mass in some funny way.

Anyway, some woman aboard sabotaged it, and the ship went out  of
control.   Something  happened  to its drive system, and the ship
and crew found  themselves  seemingly  an  electron  orbiting  an
atomic  nucleus.   The  woman,  who  had  thrown  herself out the
airlock, was also orbiting the atom.

Weird things happened; for instance, when the orbit of the atom's
lone  electron,  the  woman,  and the ship all lined up, the ship
suddenly  jumped  away  from  the  nucleus  (quantum  effects,  I
suppose).  All in all, a very weird story.

Does  anyone  know  what the author or title of this work is?  It
may be in an anthology somewhere, possibly the Quark  series  (no
pun intended).

Please reply directly to Foner@BBN-TENEXA. Thanks.

                                                <LNF>

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

Date: 1 Mar 1980 0351-PST (Saturday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Shades of 2001

While this is not properly Science Fiction, it does show how our
experience with SF materials can influence our perception of
"reality."

As I walked out the front door of my apartment late this evening, I
was immediately struck with an impressive sight. The full moon was
directly in front of me in the sky, with Jupiter and Mars also
sticking straight out in a line radiating out directly from (and close
to) the moon. To top this off, the sky was sorta hazy with fog, so
that the moon, Mars, and Jupiter were the only astronomical bodies
visible, and local atmospheric conditions had produced a very bright
ring around the moon that encompassed all three bodies.

All in all, I expected to hear the choral voices starting at any
moment...

--Lauren--

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

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

Date:  3 MAR 1980 0354-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 3 Mar 1980       Volume 1 : Issue 42

 Today's Topics: New SF TV Ripoff, Robots & Religion, Cornelius Query
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 2 Mar 1980 2305-PST
From: GEOFF at SRI-KA (the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow)
Subject: Cheap shots.

"THE ALIENS ARE COMING" seems to be a very cheap shot at bringing
one of my favorite younger years tv shows back to life, namely it's
nothing more than a horrible remake of Quinn-Martin's "THE INVADERS";
However, with the added twist of mind control, and that fact that
when an alien is killed it vaporizes in GREEN instead of RED as the
Invaders did.

Plot incredibly holy; I spent most of the time waiting for the Air
Force to go out look for the mother craft, which never happened!

Previews from next show (which i guess indicates its headed for a
weekly slot?) makes it look like an Invaders remake and Room 222.

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

Date:  3 Mar 1980 at 0132-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

~~~~~~~~~~ROBOTS & RELIGION addenda~~~~~~~~~~

Also relevant is Randall Garrett's UNWISE CHILD, an early [1962]
instance of the "difficulties encountered by an artificial intel-
ligence in 'growing up'" theme, where the poor robot comes to
a sad end through 'getting religion'.

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

Date:  2 MAR 1980 1425-PST
From: THURMOND at USC-ECL

    Well, it's done. I just read the last installment of "The Airtight
Garage" in HEAVY METAL. Dispite my ever-increasing confusion, I had
faithfully read each installment, hoping, (as I had hoped with The
Cornielius Chronicals by Moorcock) that all things would be made
clear in the end. But they were not, and either I missed something
or Moebius has been playing with my mind. Does anybody understand
either "The Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornielius" OR "The Corneilius
Chronicals" who would be willing to reply direct to THURMOND@USC and
clear my young mind?

    Incidentally, many thanks to all of you who replied to my Katmandu
query by informing me that it was not a story or a movie, but in fact,
a song.

     Rob

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

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

Date:  4 MAR 1980 0318-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Tuesday, 4 Mar 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 43

        Today's Topics: Wellman & Katmandu, Sturgeon in OMNI,
                              Ringworld Dynamics Query
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 03/03/80 0927-EST
From: KG Heinemann (SORCEROR at LL)
Subject:  Manley Wade Wellman, Katmandu

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Manley Wade Wellman:

     MWW and his son wrote a novel about the activities of Sherlock
Holmes and Dr. Watson during the Martian invasion of The War of the
Worlds. I believe that it was entitled either The Other War of the
Worlds or Sherlock Holmes' War of the Worlds. It was published in
paperback about 5 years ago. The publisher may have been Berkeley,
but I'm no longer certain. I didn't read it myself, but a Holmes
afficianado complained of gross inauthenticity in the portrayal
of the protaganists.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Katmandu:

     I can't think of any references to Katmandu, in SF. In reality,
of course, it is the capital of Nepal. Also, it is the title and
chorus of a song by rock musician Bob Seeger. The song is rather
compelling, in an earthy way. Perhaps THURMOND heard this song and
the chorus is lingering in his head, as music sometimes does.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                           Enjoy,
                                 KGH

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

Date: 3 Mar 1980 1513-PST
From: Alan at LBL-Unix (Alan B. Char (BKY))
Subject: dolphins

Anybody out there reading the three-part series by Sturgeon in OMNI?
It's called "Why Dolphins Don't Bite" or something like that.  It's
billed as a "novella," and it's all right.  Only two parts are out so
far, and I liked the first part much better than the second.  The
parts are VERY different in style and tone.  However, I think I'd like
it better if I could read it all at once, which I will do next month.

[ Note: "Why Dolphins Don't Bite" is Sturgeon's contribution to the
        Ellison seminar on designing SF worlds, which created Medea.
        All stories about the planet written by the seminar panel
        are being published in the anthology, Medea: Harlan's World,
        which should be available sometime later this year.
          -- RDD  ]

--Alan

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

AQE@MIT-MC 03/03/80 13:07:21 Subject: Ringworld mathematics.

I would appreciate any detailed information or references on the
mathematical aspects of Niven's ringworld, especially regarding
its long-term gravitational instability.

The reason is that I am trying to design a similar world. My intuition
says that you wouldn't need ultra-high tensile strength material if,
instead of relying on a 770 mi/sec spin for gravity, you used the real
gravity of the ringworld which the gravitational instability implies.
Private discussions of this (keyword: torusworld) or similar topics
are welcome; responses will be collated.

Jef

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

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

Date:  5 MAR 1980 0246-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Wednesday, 5 Mar 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 44

 Today's Topics: More on Sturgeon MEDEA story, MEDEA: HARLAN's WORLD,
                    Yet Another Here's the Plot: What's the TITLE?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  4 Mar 1980 (Tuesday) 1306-EDT
From: SHARER at WHARTON (Bill Sharer)
Subject: Omni's "Dolphins"

All,
     "Dolphins don't bite" seems to be developing into a pretty good
novella. Then again not too much 'trash' seems to be able to make
Omni's pages anyway as I can't recall ever seing anything I didn't
like. I'd love to see a film on the story that was well done, but as
you may see there are definetly some complexities that Hollywood would
shy away from. I would parallel the experience at the end of the
second segment with the movie "To Fly" that played at the National Air
and Space Museum in Washington D.C. All in all pretty good reading....

			Bill Sharer
			Wharton School

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

Date: 04 MAR 1980 1046-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Medea

Is MEDEA: HARLAN'S WORLD (or some such title) really going to contain
everything written by the panel? I suspect that GEM (by Frederik Pohl)
will not be included, and there may be other long works that will have
to be left out.

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

DAUL@MIT-MC 03/04/80 13:53:47 Re: NEED A TITLE OF A BOOK...

Does anyone remember a story from about 8-10 years agao about the
president of the United States in order to unify the country, he pours
alot of money into a project to create an 'alien'. With this creature
he can claim that the world is in the midst of impending doom. I would
appreciate the name of the book.

Thanks -- Bill

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

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

Date:  8 March 1980 03:09-EST
From: Carl Hewitt <CARL at MIT-AI>
To: "(@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS])" at MIT-AI,
    "(@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;HUMNET DISNMS])" at MIT-AI

--Begin Forwarded Message--
Date: 7 Mar 1980 at 2327-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
To:   hewitt
cc:   amsler
Re:   MIT-AI Mailing LISTS - Network Confusion over their cessation

As you are probably aware, Roger Duffey II has been acting as editor
of the SF-LOVERS and HUMAN-NETS network wide mailing lists, preparing
digests for automatic dispatch daily. The audience for this has
grown concerned over the apparent cessation of these digests for the
last two days (and "finger Duffey" says he hasn't logged in since
March 5th) To avoid pandemonium involving multitudes of mail coming
in inquiring what has happened it might be appropriate is someone
could send out a message using the existing mailing lists informing
the readership of what has happened to Duffey (if anything).
Sorry to have disturbed you, but this could lead to an exponential
growth of "have you heard from" messages and a ton of incoming queries
if not attended to relatively soon.

Date:  9 March 1980 15:51-EST
From: Dan Brotsky <DCB at MIT-AI>
Subject:    Absence of Roger Duffey (who maintains these lists)
To: "(@FILE [DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS])" at MIT-AI,
    "(@FILE [DUFFEY;HUMNET DISNMS])" at MIT-AI
cc: DCB at MIT-AI, DUFFEY at MIT-AI

    Roger Duffey was feeling ill last Tuesday night (3/4) and
left a message on his desk last Wednesday morning (3/5 - the
date of his last login) that he would not be in that day.  I am
an office-mate of his and have not seen him since Tuesday, so I
conclude that he is still ill.  I cannot reach him at home by
phone so I am unable to verify this.
    I am sure that Roger will take care of mailing-list backlog
as soon as he returns; please be patient until that time.  Any
requests/condolences that cannot wait until he returns may be
sent to me (DCB@MIT-AI).  I will either handle them or forward
them in the most direct way possible.
    In the future, all those who wish to contact Roger and have
trouble doing so should feel free to contact me.  I should be
able to track him down or explain his absence.
	dan brotsky

Date: 10 MAR 1980 0330-EST
From: CLIVE at MIT-AI (Clive B. Dawson)
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISFMC]) at MIT-AI

Roger is under the weather, but expects to be back on the net by 
Tues. or Wed.

Date: 13 MAR 1980 0308-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 13 Mar 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 45

Today's Topics: Many New Books, SF Movie - Kibitzing Welcome, SW:TESB,
                  4 Queries on Various Things, The Great Duffey Hunt
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Administrivia:

My apologies for the week long hiatus in sending out the SF-LOVERS
Digest. I was ill and confined to bed for the last week. [Some of you
seem to have other theories however. See below.] Unfortunately I was
not able to locate anyone who could take over for me on such short
and unexpected notice. I have now talked with one or two people about
this, and hopefully we will be able to arrange things so that the list
will be able to continue reliably in the future. This issue covers
most of the existing backlog of mail.

Again my apologies, and special thanks to everyone who took the time
to send get well messages or call.

						Roger

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

Date:  5 Mar 1980 1137-PST
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Tanath Lee - Fantasy

It is not often that I read books which stick in the fore-front of
my consciousness more than a week. Two books by Tanath Lee have
managed to stay there for several months, and so I thought I'd pass
that along so that others might find the same enjoyment.

Nights Master and Deaths Master form a 'duology' of stories woven
about two major forms, Death and the Boss Demon of Night. They are
written in a very lyrical fashion, which I enjoyed, but which one
of my friends found a wee bit 'corney'. Thus I recommend them
highly, but with the proviso that the writing style is not one that
everyone might like.

Dan A.D. Dolata

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

Date: 10 Mar 1980 2251-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: Budrys column (from the NYT newswire)  

     Following is an Arts & Letters feature
     By Algis Budrys
     (c) 1980 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

     The big, livable-in novel is now the rule rather than the
exception in SF. The trend is clearly toward a large cast of
characters in a sprawling locale, pursuing some quest that takes
them hither and yon through a multitude of perils.
     There are several ways of producing a work whose sheer bulk makes
reading it an experience of several days' duration, rather than an
evening's diversion. One of them is simply to bring out a big, big
book that numbs the arms to hold. Another is to publish a trilogy, or
even a tetralogy, each volume of which is sometimes a big, big book. A
third is to produce sequels to a book that did well, whether or not
the story was ever intended to extend past what appeared to be its
natural ending.
     In other words, some books contain stories that require a long
narrative, in whatever guise. For example, on May 8 Simon & Schuster
will publish the first of four volumes by Gene Wolfe, a first-rate
writer in anybody's literature, and the four books, while each
independent, will dovetail into a major, organically functional and
probably very attractive whole. The tetralogy is called ''The Book of
the New Sun,'' and the first book is ''The Shadow of the Torturer''
($10.95). I've read it, I'm impressed as all get out, and when it's
released, I'll review it with pleasure and admiration.
     But also in those same other words, not every one of the recent
multitiered confections is really cake. A fair number of them are five
pounds of frosting and one ounce of cookie. And even among the good
ones, it's sometimes possible to feel that 300 pages might have
sufficed, in place of 385.
     A little of this feeling attaches itself to ''Lord Valentine's
Castle'' (Harper & Row, $12.50), Robert Silverberg's first new novel
in years, and certainly his longest ever. Now and then, the itinerant
juggler Valentine, who may also be the deposed Lord Valentine,
temporal ruler of the giant planet Majipoor, seems to be taking a
wholly unnecessary detour.
     Majipoor itself is a brilliant concept of the imagination; no
book since Jack Vance's 30-year-old ''Big Planet'' has so successfully
populated a huge world with its necessarily diverse cultures and
landscapes. And the story of the amnesiac Valentine's attempts to find
himself and resume his rightful place is a surefire page-turner. I
have to think that under other market circumstances Silverberg might
have couched this work differently in some respects, but there's no
doubt in my mind that there's a lot of good reading here.
     This is traditionally the time of year when the major books begin
to appear. Now is the time to order your copy of Larry Niven's ''The
Ringworld Engineers'' (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, $9.95). This is the
sequel to Niven's blockbuster ''Ringworld'' of 10 years ago, and
returns nearly all of the original cast of characters to the title
locale - an ungraspably extensive artificial world built in a
continuous strip around its sun.
     For new readers, there's fascinating adventure in plenitude. For
old fans of Niven's ''Known Space'' series, or of the original volume,
there are all the fine, characteristic touches that delight us Niven
fans, and which support his reputation for uncommon wittiness and fast
narrative pace. But like the last month's sequel to Frederick Pohl's
''Gateway,'' this is a book the author never originally intended to
write, and there are places where you can't help thinking it shows.
    Spider and Jeanne Robinson's ''Stardance'' is now out in paperback
from Dell, at $2.50 - and so there's no reason not to get it. A year
ago I called it a milestone, which it may be, and a book whose first
fourth is not as good as the rest, which is true; it's a book that
overcomes its faults, as the Silverberg and the Niven are, but it's
additionally a book that will leave you with a different world view,
which makes it rather special.
     Three solid reprints: James White's ''Lifeboat'' ($1.95), Poul
Anderson's ''Fire Time'' ($2.25), and Philip Jose Farmer's landmark
''The Lovers'' ($2.25), all from Ballantine-del Rey. The first two are
for curling up with, and the third will curl you.

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

Date: 12 MAR 1980 2153-PST
From: GRAYSON at USC-ECL
Subject: starhunt

This is to let everyone know that there is at least one film
production company in Hollywood which is:
a) going to make a good science fiction film this year (or at
   least try) and
b) listening to this part of the market.

Here is what we are doing: STARHUNT is scheduled to be a major
theatrical motion picture. The story is closely based on David
Gerrold`s novel YESTERDAY`S CHILDREN (Paperback Library Feb 1980).
Dave is writing the screenplay. You may recall he wrote WHEN HARLIE
WAS ONE. The Production designer is Andy Probert who did extensive
design`s for STAR TREK - TMP and Battlestar Galactica. As director we
have Gerd Oswald who directed about eighteen episodes of THE OUTER
LIMITS, two of STAR TREK, and many other TV series as well as the
films: SCREAMING MIMI (based on a work by Fredrick Brown), Paris
Holliday, and THE LONGEST DAY. Our line producer Mark Nelson is
well read in the genre. Advising us on the picture is veteran
cinematographer George Folsey who photographed RECKLESS with Jean
Harlow, MEET ME IN ST LOUIS with Judy Garland and a little picture
he claims he didn`t understand called FORBIDDEN PLANET.

My function as executive producer has been to locate talent and money
and to see to it that we produce a balanced film which combines story
and good visual effects. Everyone on the project is comitted to a
consistent product that will be an economic success. Our first goal is
to do nothing stupid. After THAT we`ll try to do as many things right
as possible. So far I think we`re on schedule.

If anyone wants to drop us MAIL feel free but I must warn you
I`m working a 20 hour day now and probably won`t dump my message
file more than once a week.

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


Date:  7 Mar 1980 at 0046-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

~~~~~~~~~~STAR WARS CHATTER~~~~~~~~~~

Excerpts from a (Feb. 25) letter I received from another
   dedicated SW fan (who runs up a hu-mon-gous phone bill!)--

"I talked to Dave [Prowse (VADER)] this morning and he says he is
trying to get me a ticket to the [SW II] premiere, as he's entitled
to some for friends. You can believe how much I'm praying for that.
Talked to Tony [Daniels (C-3PO)] this afternoon and he says he is
going to the premiere too (probably). He isn't too excited any more
about the Boston Pops deal as nothing more has been said to him
about it, so I'm concentrating my hopes on attending the premiere.
Dave now says there will be 3 EMPIRE openings, on May 17 (Saturday
in Washington), May 20 in London and May 23 or 24 at all theatres.

"Would you believe Tony hasn't seen the Muppet Show yet? He says it
is on [in England] next Friday but he will miss it as he is in a
new play. I told him how good his tap dance was; he says it took 5
takes, and his ankles felt like they were dead! Also, he says he
recorded that 1-800-521-1980 phone message at 11 p.m. one night
when he was only three quarters awake. I shocked him by saying how
busy that line was; he can't believe that it is that popular."

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

Date:  5 Mar 1980 (Wednesday) 0156-EDT
From: WESTFW at WHARTON (William Westfield)
Subject: 2 querries

1) Remember the game of FENCING, as described in Brunner's
   "Shockwave Rider"? Does anyone know whether he rules he set
   forth would actually work, or whether the game would be at
   all interesting to play ? Would it be worth Programming, for
   example?

2) How many books (and what are their titles) are in Van Vogt's
   Weapon Shop collection? I read "Weapon shops of Ishur", and
   "The Weapon Makers", but it seems there should be a precursor
   to these, and there is certainly room for more.

Thanks All
Bill W   (WESTFW @ WHARTON)

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

Date:  5 Mar 1980 1117-PST
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: gostacks distim the doshes

There is a story with the title "Gostacks Distim Doshes" (or some
such) that has enjoyed brief spurts of popularity among SF-trivia
lovers. The name has come up again, and so I have finally decided
that I MUST read this story. Can anyone tell me who the author is,
and where it has appeared?

Thanks,   Dan A.D. Dolata

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

Date:  12 March 1980 00:02 est
From:  JSLove.PDO at MIT-Multics (J. Spencer Love)
Subject:  LUNACON

It's kind of late, but SF-LOVERS has been gronked of late, and since I
see Roger logged in, perhaps it will be revived soon.  I am looking for
a ride to and/or from LUNACON, which is in Hasbrouck Heights, New
Jersey, this year, which leaves from somewhere within MBTA distance of
MIT anywhen Friday (14 March 1980) and comes back sometime on Sunday or
Monday.  I can be reached as JSL on any ITS or MIT-Multics, or by
leaving a message at SIPB (617-253-7788).  I drive and expect to share
expenses.

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

Date:  8 Mar 1980 at 1257-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Where's Roger Duffey?

Date:  7 Mar 1980 at 1942-CST
From: hjjh
Subject: No SF-L DIGEST beyond 44 at PARC-MAXC, either.
To: amsler

Kolling says she'd been trying to send me a message for about a day,
but kept getting strange and wonderful reject messages from our
mailer. She also inquired whether WE'd gotten any SF-L beyond that
#44.

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

Date:  8 Mar 1980 at 1234-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Duffey's disappearance explained

--- Network mail from host ucla-security on Sat Mar  8 00:58:04  ---
Date: 7 Mar 1980 2258-PST (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Roger Duffey
In-reply-to: Your message of  7 Mar 1980 at 2321-CST
To: amsler at UTEXAS
CC: hjjh at utexas

Now, Roger Duffey knows that the invaders are here.  That they have
taken human form.  Somehow he must convince a disbelieving world, that
the nightmare has already begun.

--Lauren--
-------

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

Date:  8 Mar 1980 at 1237-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Best Guess as to what has happened to Roger Duffey Contest

If they won't tell us, we'll have to assume MIT-AI may have been
captured. Beware! They can take human-form and even your friendly
system wizard may be one of them.

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

Date: 8 Mar 1980 at 1254-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS

Date:  8 Mar 1980 at 0306-CST
From: hjjh
Subject: The Mysteriously Missing "Roger D. Duffey, II"...
To: lauren at ucla-security
cc: amsler

By some strange chance, the following is sitting in RDD's SF-L mail.
Maybe VAD or some(alien)body read it and...

~~~~~~~~~~ A ODD COINCIDENCE ? ~~~~~~~~~~

Have any of the old-timers on SF-L noted how s-o-o-n after those 
strange HUBNET messages came through from VAD, etc., that SF-L was
restricted to DIGEST messages funneled through one Roger Duffey, II?
Has anybody s-e-e-n this supposed "person"?  One wonders what might
be revealed if the "body" were viewed through a fluorescope!

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

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

Date: 14 MAR 1980 0340-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 14 Mar 1980       Volume 1 : Issue 46

      Today's Topics:      Reply to Gostacks Distim Doshes,
                      The UTEXAS Connection (Fanzines and more)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 03/13/80 0928-EST
From: KG Heinemann (SORCEROR at LL)
Subject:  Gostacks Distim Doshes

      I believe that the story Gostacks Distim Doshes can be found in
the anthology Science Fiction by Scientists, edited by Groff Conklin.
It is an excellent anthology, in my opinion, and this reccommendation
comes from one who is rarely excited by SF short stories. (I much
prefer the longer works, in general.)

                             Enjoy,
                                    KGH

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

Date: 13 Mar 1980 at 2251-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

~~~~~~~~~~VAN VOGT'S ISHER SERIES~~~~~~~~~~

The 3 S/F reference books I checked list only the 2: WEAPON SHOPS OF
ISHER and THE WEAPON MAKERS.  Nor does Nicholls S/F ENCYCLOPEDIA
mention any related short stories, though I thought there had been
at least one.  (Tuck's ENC. OF S/F, which I do not have at hand, is
perhaps still the best source for related stories of less than book
length, esp. for older material.)  VanVogt is notorious for re-using
material, so that may be the case in this instance.

~~~~~~~~~~GOSTACKS...DOSHES~~~~~~~~~~

Somewhat older sources (but possibly the kind of thing your public
library might have), Siemon's S/F STORY INDEX for 1950-68 anthologies
lists "The Gostak and the Doshes" by Miles J. Breuer, M.D., as being
in 2 collections edited by Groff Conklin: SCIENCE-FICTION ADVENTURES
IN DIMENSION, 1953, and SCIENCE FICTION BY SCIENTISTS, 1962.

~~~~~~~~~~FANZINES: GENERAL INFORMATIONAL~~~~~~~~~~

Somebody a while back asked if there were any LOCUS readers on SF-L,
and surely there must be, besides us 2.  For those who aren't...

If your S/F orientation is to print rather than media, LOCUS is well
worth reading.  More a monthly "news-zine" than a "fanzine", it is not
cluttered up with would-be authors' maiden efforts at writing S/F,
and is free of the overpowering presence of the editor as in Richard
Geis' "personal-zines", (among which I include his SCIENCE FICTION 
REVIEW which otherwise approaches news-zine quality.)

As its Hugo's have piled up and its reputation advanced, LOCUS is
better and better able to cover the field's professional, personal,
mercantile, and fannish aspects.  Its coverage of publishing is broad,
including foreign and unusual sources such as the following item--
"MIT PRESS:  Scheduled for Feb. is THE CYBERNETIC IMAGINATION IN
SCIENCE FICTION by Patricia S. Warrick (hc), billed as the first
comprehensive bibliography on a single sf theme, the 'critical
examination of 225 seminal sf works involving computer technology
and artificial intelligence.'"

LUNA <orig. LUNA MONTHLY> used to be as good or better than LOCUS
was, about 5 years ago.  Beautifully printed, it was put out by a pair
of fans who were professional librarians.  Their "Have You Read?"
column was particularly fine, a current bibliography of items ranging
from the NY TIMES through CHRISTIAN CENTURY, MAD, MODEL RAILROADER,
OUI, to PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN CONGRESS ON SURVEYING AND MAPPING.
Unfortunately LUNA ran further and further behind until the gaps were
so long that I don't know whether my subscription ran out or it's no
longer even an annual.

If you are already a LOCUS-reader, you might well like FANTASY
NEWSLETTER which is quite similar and coming up fast.  Don't be put
off by the title if, like me, you're not much into fantasy-- in actual
practice, the scope is "fantasy" in its broader sense which includes
S/F.  For instance, a mini-review from the latest issue-- 

"DRAGON'S EGG by Robert L. Forward is a 'hard' science fiction novel,
slated for May release, about an expedition to explore the surface of
a neutron star named 'Dragon's Egg'.  Living on the surface, with
gravity 67 billion times that of earth, are intelligent life forms to
whom 30 minutes is equivalent to 60 years of human life."  $9.95 from
Del Rey/Ballantine.

   <Query to Dr. Forward:  Am I right in presuming that a neutron
   star has a 'real' surface, and differs in that respect from an
   ordinary star, like Sol, for instance?  Won't you tell us some-
   thing about the 'hard science' involved?>


More about author-oriented and STAR WARS 'zines' later.

Addresses for the publications mentioned above:

LOCUS Publications, P.O. Box 3938, San Francisco, CA 94119.
LUNA, F.M. Dietz, Jr., 655 Orchard St., Oradell, NJ 07649.
FANTASY NEWSLETTER, Paul C. Allen, 1015 W. 36th St.,
                    Loveland, CO 80537.

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

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

Date: 15 MAR 1980 0225-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 15 Mar 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 47

  Today's Topics: Responses to Faded Sun Query, Tanith Lee, Starhunt
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 14 March 1980 1036-EST (Friday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A> 
Subject: Faded sun responses [ see SFL V1 #29 for the query  -- RDD ]

Well folks here they are.

		TTZ

- - - - Begin forwarded messages - - - -

Date: 19 FEB 1980 0317-EST
From: ALPHON at MIT-MC (Jennifer Reynolds)

	So far, I have only read "Kesrith" and "Shon'jir," but I
enjoyed both immensely. Here is an examply of good Science Fiction
which doesn't have a pre-occupation with technology and does have
real literary merit. The books explore the implications when cultures
of vastly different species interact. It is interesting to note that
in these interactions, one species tends to destroy the culture of
another when they are in too-close contact. I recently read another
book dealing with similar circumstances, "Juniper Time" by Kate
Wilhelm. By the way, I should note that C.J. Cherry(h) was my Latin
teacher at John Marshall High School in Oklahoma City, so I could be
accused of a little prejudice!

- APPLE at MIT-MC

     - - - - - - - - -

Date: 19 Feb 1980 10:41 am PST (Tuesday)
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC

I haven't read the Faded Sun trilogy, but recently read Hestia by the
same author. It is just the thing if you like graphic descriptions of
dogs being mutilated, etc. (I think they ought to rate books like
movies, at least to warn people about stuff like this.....)

     - - - - - - - - -

Date: 26 FEB 1980 1359-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)

Very strongly recommend this trilogy unless you hate everything
written after 1960, in which case you'd probably be bored. Some
LeGuin in portrayal of alien societies; some Sturgeon or even Bester
in convincing, sympathetic, driven characters; total UNIQUE. not light
reading, but well worth while. Includes two complete alien societies
for your delectation! Also recommended: anything else of hers, but
especially THE BOOK OF MORGAINE or its components, GATE OF IVREL, WELL
OF SHIUAN, FIRES OF AZEROTH. Far above the usual standard for DAW
books, which are often pedestrian (by the 20th book Goulart and
Chandler get pretty dull, and as for Stableford...!)

- - - - End forwarded messages - - - -

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

Date: 14 Mar 1980 1330-EST
From: SRAJUNAS at BBN-TENEX
Subject: Tanith Lee

Like Dan Dolata, I enjoyed Night's Master and Death's Master. However,
I have trouble imagining anyone finding anything about them 'corney'.
I agree that certain classic elements in the stories, like the fact
that Azhrarn (demon of the night) had to return to his underworld
before sunrise, have been used before. For me, the style used was
totally appropriate to the tale being told (and wouldn't have worked
in another type of story).

To those who enjoyed Night's Master and Death's Master, I particularly
recommend two other books by Lee: Volkhavaar (DAW) and Companions on
the Road (Bantam).

My Tanith Lee collection consists of eleven books. If anyone knows of
more, please let me know!

1975  The Birthgrave
1976  Don't Bite the Sun
1977  Drinking Sapphire Wine
1977  Companions on the Road
      (Bantam pb in 1979)
1977  Volkhavaar
1978  Vazkor, Son of Vazkor
1978  Quest for the White Witch
1978  Night's Master
1979  Death's Master
1979  Electric Forest

     Susan A. Rajunas

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

Date: 14 Mar 1980 1351-EST
From: SRAJUNAS at BBN-TENEX
Subject: Tanith Lee (PS)

Also in my Tanith Lee collection:

1976  Storm Lord

(which I obviously find emminently forgettable)

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

KLH@MIT-AI 03/14/80 22:32:06 Re: Starhunt?

Is this the story where an Enterprise-like starship with an Ahab-like
captain chases a Klingon-like enemy through most of the book until it
turns out to be a ghost artifact of the sensor circuits?
	If so, I have trouble understanding why anyone would want to
make a movie out of it. A one-shot TV movie, perhaps. I didn't like
the story much, and am not sure whether there would be much in the
way of "visuals". Of course, it would be a lot cheaper that way, and
for what effects are needed, you can just re-use all the standard
star-trek footage and models. My impression of a star-trek takeoff was
so strong that the largest positive thought I had about the book was
that it tried to do star-trek "right"; that is, with more plausibility
and nitty-gritty details.
	But it seems that there must be many other more interesting
stories lying around. "Dune" and "Lord of Light" come immediately to
mind. Too bad they don't tie in very well with Star Trek money/mania.
	Of course, my memory could just be completely spazzed.

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

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

Date: 16 MAR 1980 0405-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 16 Mar 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 48

 Today's Topics: Neutron Star Ecology Primer, More on Starhunt, What
                   SF books would make a good movie?, ST:TMP Diary
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 14 MAR 1980 1302-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Hard science behind DRAGON'S EGG

     A neutron star is one of the three possible end points of the
evolution of a star (the others are a white dwarf and a black hole).
Thought to be the remnant after a supernova explosion, the neutron
star contains most of the original mass, angular momentum, and
magnetic field of the star before its collapse. The neutron star has
an interior of liquid neutrons at nuclear densities, with an outer
crust of neutrons and protons formed into a close-packed crystalline
array of neutron-rich iron-like nuclei with a sea of free electrons
flowing around them. The trillion gauss magnetic field trapped in the
star distorts the nuclei into cigar shapes with the long axis along
the magnetic field lines. The density of the crust is only 10 million
times greater than water - much less than the center of the star. As
the star cools and shrinks, the crust will crack and fault and raise
mountains up in the 67 billion gee gravity field. Despite a
temperature of 8000 degrees K (hotter than the sun), the crust is so
strong it can raise mountains many centimeters high. It would be a
very interesting place to live if you were a creature that were made
of similar neutron-rich close-coupled nuclei. There is no way that
humans could survive there. (The Fantasy Newsletter review is a little
misleading on that point.) However, I do dream up some ways to put a
human exploration crew into synchronous orbit 400 kilometers above the
20 kilometer diameter star. (The orbital rate is 5 revolutions of the
star per SECOND!) They finally discover the tiny, dense fast-living
creatures down below, and they both struggle to develop a method of
communicating despite the vast differences in their rates of living.
     At the end of the novel is a 5000 word technical appendix that
goes into detail on the science background behind the story. It also
has 14 drawings that describe the neutron star, the spacecraft used by
the humans, and a picture of one of the neutron star creatures. It is
written as entries in an encyclopedia published a number of years
after the story has taken place. A substantially reduced version of
the technical appendix is in the April 1980 issue of Analog.

     DRAGON'S EGG was written on a computer, using TECO and SPELL for
editing and corrections, and MRUNOFF for producing the drafts. I could
not have done it without those programs, thanks -- whoever you are
that produced and maintain them. I don't think this is a first for a
SF novel, since Jim Hogan is a former DEC employee and probably used a
computer. However, I think this may be the first SF novel that was
transferred via ARPA-net FTP (to Moravec at SAIL to have him check
over some of the science on the use of magnetic monopoles).

    DRAGON'S EGG will not be printed until April, and is slated for a
May release date (although some stores may have it in late April). It
will only be available in hard-cover, with the paperback version
coming out in the fall. It has not been picked up by the SF book club,
alhough I am sure Ballantine is trying.
     I will be glad to autograph copies when and if we meet, and if
that is not likely, I would be glad to send a special acknowledgement
through net mail, and you can paste a hard-copy of the message on the
inside of the book. (Anyone have any good ideas on transmitting a
scribbly signature with ASCII symbols?)

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

Date: 14 MAR 1980 2330-PST
From: THURMOND at USC-ECL
Subject: Starhunt

     I'm not a spokesman for Starhunt, but in answer to the message
from KLH, he's obviously read the book, but the memory's a little off.
The enemy ship is NOT a ghost produced by faulty sensors -- but
eveybody thinks it is, except for the "Ahab-like" FIRST OFFICER. The
screenplay, in the revisions I've read, are certainly more visible
than the book, and as for doing Star Trek The Movie "right", I doubt
if that was Grayson Prod's intention, but I, personally, wish someone
would.
     I agree, I'd love to see someone do a film version of DUNE, even
though I think I'm one of the few people who was bored to tears by the
book. Never liked Van Vogt either, and for some reason DUNE reminded
me of Van Vogt. But then, I was about fourteen when I read these
books, probably too young to understand the true phallic significance
of huge throbbing sandworms, the very essence of manhood, plunging
through the hot, yeilding wastelands. I had a late puberty, and have
been trying to make up for it ever since.
     I never read Lord of Light, but since the movie plans for it seem
to be progressing, and everyone and his clone seems to feel it was The
Book of the century, I'll go pick it up tomorrow. Stay tuned for a
virginal viewpoint in the near future.
     
     Hate mail may be addressed to THURMOND@USC-ECL. 
Rob

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

Date: 15 MAR 1980 1529-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: STARHUNT

KLH's rather harsh judgment is something I can't comment on directly,
having read the book quite a while ago. However, he's missing one
essential datum; the book was recently reissued (I processed the
MITSFS copy a few weeks ago) with substantial revisions now that
Gerrold has enough clout to get his work published the way he wants
it. My recollection of a brief glance (to assure myself that it should
indeed be listed as a separate work) is that it is 20-30% longer,
allowing him to use the ending he wanted to use rather than chopping
it off unsatisfactorily.
  "Ahablike captain"is also stretching a bit; MOBY DICK was redone as
a first season STAR TREK (the giant cone-shaped destroyer episode,
costarring William Windom) by Norman Spinrad. There are other things
I'd rather see on the screen first (my personal nominee to best book
to put on film is WAY STATION, by Clifford Simak; turning the long
scene descriptions into pictures would leave material that could be
completely done in a film of reasonable length, and the story is well
worth the effort) but this project has a lot of potential.
  I'm curious as to whether anybody else has a strong opinion about
which books could make good movies. Send your nominations to
HITCHCOCK@CCA and I'll summarize them in a few weeks.

					Chip Hitchcock

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

Date: 15 Mar 1980 (Saturday) 1952-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)
Subject: Making of ST... The Movie

Has anyone (particularly Lauren) read The Making of Star Trek -- the
Movie (or whatever it is called) and have any comments... is it any
good? To Lauren and anyone else who would know... is it TRUTHFUL... or
just more PR?

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

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

Date: 17 MAR 1980 0511-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 17 Mar 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 49

 Today's Topics: Interstellar Navigation, Dune, Review of "The 80's"
                    Source for "A Boy and His Dog", Making ST:TMP
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 Mar 1980 at 1245-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Interstellar Navigation

I have occasionally wondered whether there is yet any concensus of
scientific opinion on how one might perform interstellar navigation.
A couple varieties of this problem are available, namely assuming
sub-light continuous motion away from the Earth (easy?) and then the
real mind-number, assuming ftl travel or hyperspace jumps where one
would emmerge not only displaced in space, but presumably in time
(i.e. at a point in space where the incoming light from known objects
may not have reached and where the available sources are being
observed as they will appear from Earth in the future (when the
light gets here).

It may be that our galaxy is small enough to just discount these
problems (i.e. one could orient on the galactic core?) and that the
span of time it takes light to traverse our galaxy is so short that
we could just predict the positions of some major objects from all
orientations. (or use extra-galactic sources, e.g. Andromeda as the
basis of orientation).

In the SF literature I think this was a popular early topic, but
somehow has died out? Movies like "Forbidden Planet" et al have
used navigational spheres and I can recall SF stories in which
once one emerged from hyperspace the ships computers would spend
hours attempting to determine the ship's new location.

I'd just like to know if we are to be visited by aliens, what their
Rand-McNalley will look like - and how they call in to the AAA when
their trans-stellar drive conks out.

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

MOON@MIT-MC 03/15/80 14:19:29

I believe movies of both Dune and Lord of Light are currently in early
phases. Roger, perhaps you know more? Whether they will ever come out
is unclear; I do know that Dune has been started and abandoned due to
lack of finances before. I suppose it would cost twice as much as War
and Peace, and be twice as long.

[ Dune: The film will be based solely on volume 1 of the Dune Trilogy
        by Frank Herbert. It is being produced by Dino DeLaurentiis
        and directed by Orson Wells. The screenplay was written
        by Herbert and he indicated at a Con last summer that he is
        pleased with the current plans and development. The film is
        scheduled to begin production this year. This will be the
        second major attempt at this project.
  I am afraid I have no information on Lord of Light.  --  RDD      ]

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

Date: 16 Mar 1980 1249-PST (Sunday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: A review of the 80's

   A sort-of-SF item that people should be aware of is "The 80's -- a
Look Back at the Tumultuous Decade 1980-1981", a collection of short
articles in decade-end review form describing a rather weird and
unexpected (parallel?) world of the 80's. Either hopelessly juvenile
or thoroughly delightful, depending on your tastes, it presents the
full story of President Edward Kennedy's 10 days in office, an
explanation of the Oil Glut, the sliding of Los Angeles into San
Francisco, the Meat Ban, and the blockbuster musical movie, "1984"
produced by Mike Curb (music by the BeeGees, of course).
   Around $10 hardback, alas; Book-of-the-Month has a slightly better
price.
	Mike

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

DLW@MIT-AI 03/16/80 19:12:15 Re: A Boy and his Dog

I just saw the film of "A Boy and his Dog" for the second time, and
would very much like to find the Ellison story on which it was based;
can anyone tell me where it was published?

Since I have not read the story (novelette, novella, whatever) I
cannot comment on the film's faithfulness to it. However, I highly
recommend the film--it is serious science fiction expressed as a
film, a statement which I could only make about half a dozen films
in existence.

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

Date: 16 Mar 1980 0209-PST (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: making of ST:TMP

Golly gee, Mr. Wizard, I didn't KNOW that "The making of Star Trek the
Motion Picture" had even come out. I have an urge not to contribute
more to the ST coffer, but I suppose I might head out and at least
skim a copy just for laughs.

Seriously now (ha!) I would suppose that the book would have what I
would term "slanted truth". That is, there is alot that could be said
without being untruthful that still would not accurately portray the
early days as I saw them. If I were them, I would TOTALLY downplay
Abel to such an extent that readers would think he was called in to
consult for a week and then dropped. But we shall see.

I should at least be able to judge the accuracy up to the point Abel
was fired, and there are people I can call for more info about after
that. I'll get back after I've seen the book...

--Lauren--

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

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

Date: 18 MAR 1980 0313-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Tuesday, 18 Mar 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 50

Today's Topics: Interstellar Navigation, Source of "A Boy and His Dog"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

KLH@MIT-AI 03/17/80 22:24:40 Re: Interstellar Navigation

     Poul Anderson's "The Avatar" is a recent novel that not only
incorporates lengthy galactic location-determination, but even
makes it a crucial aspect of the plot. The details are a bit
vague, though it's hard to notice because the general concepts
and "what's-next" tension are much more engrossing. [mini-review
here: some faults, but typical Poul and solid good SF.]
     I'd suspect that one resource of ideas about interstellar
navigation would come from people inventing simulated-starflight
games. For some time I was involved in this sort of thing, and we
tossed around several ideas, but none ever reached the
implementation stage so it's hard to say anything more about them.
Basically, though, much depends on your SCALE: you use different
methods depending on whether you are trying to move around within
an orbital volume, or a solar system, or a sector/quadrant/sphere
of "known space", or a galactic arm, etc. etc.
     A lot would also depend on your MODE of travel; whether it
allowed in-flight observations, and if not how certain you can be
about your "break-out" point -- completely random, or within a few
parsecs, or inside of a few light-weeks? If you are restricted to
sublight speeds and in general known methods of
transportation/observation then I rather doubt you can go far
enough fast enough to really have any problems knowing where you
are, simply by continuously observing your acceleration forces and
knowing "where I was just a moment ago"; i.e. inertial navigation.
And if you presume some as yet unknown principles for FTL, there's
probably some guidance mechanism available (hyperwave beacons,
etc).
     A bigger question is "where is everything else", i.e. first
you have to decide RELATIVE TO WHAT you're interested in locating
yourself. What makes space navigation more interesting than
terrestrial is the fact that everything is moving at the same
time, so you are really arranging to rendezvous with whatever
your destination is.
     A "Galactic Road Map" would probably incorporate trillions of
bits of information about as many stars as possible; stuff like
identifying characteristics (spectrum, mass, age or main-sequence
location, etc) and location characteristics (galactic coordinates,
orbit/trajectory relative to galactic center, etc) -- it would
really be out of the question for humans as we know them to deal
with this volume. Look in any stellar atlas for an idea of how
complicated things are just from one reference point. Also, a lot
more knowledge is needed about stellar life cycles in order to
really know what a star will look like or did look like (and some
are variables of course). There are quite a few datums that would
be added later when we get out from under this filtering atmosphere
and away from EM interference in general. Don't forget dust clouds
and the like which apart from obscuring other things are pretty
hairy to "map"; there's also the added wrinkle of relativistic
effects on EM you intercept, although that probably isn't as
serious as "Tau Zero" might imply.
     Anyway -- this is an interesting subject, but it's hard to
really come to grips with it until we decide on some ground-rule
conditions. Probably worm-hole transport would be the most
challenging situation, but it's a little TOO challenging; you
might come out anywhere/anywhen in the universe, even if you did
emerge in THIS universe (or emerge at all!).

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

Date: 17 Mar 1980 at 2119-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: A direct reply to "navigation" inquiry

-----  Forwarded  message  -----

Date: 17 Mar 1980 0249-PST
From: Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
Subject: navigation

     Seems to me that if you were sublight you could
(figuratively speaking) just watch the stars go by, and if
you moved discontinuously you could judge you position by a
vast variety of objects such as external galaxies, globular
clusters, the mellangenics, etc. (this would also work for
sub-light). of course, if youre going to throw our laws of
physics out the window and go FTL you might as well
hypothesize instantaneous communication as well (LeGuin has
comm. but not travel, tho one permits the other, as the real
limitation is on the speed of information) and any manner of
other spiffy devices.

--- End of forwarded message ---

Two points:

(1) non-FTL travel might be via suspended animation, in which
    case the "computer" would watch the stars for you I guess.
(2) I don't think it unreasonable to NOT have instantaneous
    communication, but to have FTL travel. It's a basic exercise
    in SF speculation to conjure up imaginary situations with
    constraints and ask what known physics could do given the
    introduction of a single new factor. I mean, maybe some
    aliens land and give us FTP ships (or we find them as in
    Pohl's Gateway) and they work -- but we don't see how they
    could work.

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

LEOR@MIT-MC 03/17/80 22:27:15
Re: Source of "Boy and His Dog", other Ellison

"The Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World", A Signet
Book (1969) contains "A Boy And His Dog". The book is also partly
dedicated to Ahbhu, Harlan's real life dog after which Blood was
modeled. After first reading "A Boy And His Dog" in a Nebula awards
collection several years back, I promptly vowed to reflexively yank
up ANYTHING in any way associated with the name "Harlan Ellison".
And learned to be VEEERY patient waiting for "The Last Dangerous
Visions."

	-leor

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

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************
Date: 19 MAR 1980 0427-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 19 Mar 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 51

Today's Topics:    Interstellar Navigation, Brave New World, Avatar,
                "A Boy and His Dog", ST:TMP Books, "Being There" Query
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 18 MAR 1980 1053-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: interstellar navigation

     A number of authors have speculated that the best way to locate
onesself given a blind translight jump would be to have information on
a limited collection of "beacon" stars--stars which are bright enough
to be recognizable (by spectra, variation pattern (almost all stars
show SOME variance, including our own), radio emission, etc) without
being so bright that they would show a significantly different
spectrum in the time it would take their light to travel the distance
they could reasonably be seen.  This should not be extraordinarily
difficult; given the Milky Way diameter as being ca. 150,000 light
years, and using the relative positions of the core and a few
neighboring galaxies to locate yourself within a sector (say
10,000-light-year cube) even the stars well removed from the main
sequence, such as Sirius and Betelguese, should be usable. Very
specific location for a random very long jump would be a problem,
since many of the local referents would not be recognizable from earth
(especially for a jump to the other side of the core). With jumps of a
controlled length one could "grow" a map, although precise surveying
would not be worth the time unless you were also looking for planets.
The survey sectors would have to be (a ROUGH guess) 1000-light-year
cube to minimize effects of the relative motions of nearby stars--but
such a cube would keep you occupied for a LONG time. The beacon stars
would serve to get you back to your home sector---one can picture the
location of a particular star as a series of finer and finer
coordinates.
     Several authors have assumed that there is a certain fudge factor
in jumps that represents an increasing percentage of the jump as the
jumps get larger. This is often done for strategic or plot purposes
(the "board" game STARFORCE is a good example, and Asimov in SECOND
FOUNDATION had a force making a small enough jump that they could come
out precisely behind the enemy. Other authors mention pairs of small,
precalculated jumps for which the error would be minimized.)  A
similar assumption (in temrs of time used up) is that it takes time
to get to a point far enough from a solar system that yo can jump
safely---I'm not sure who first used this premise but it seems to be
one of the most common. (Come to think of it, Doc Smith mentioned that
a hyperspatial tube could not end inside the orbit of Mars--but most
authors since have assumed a somewhat larger zone in which juming is
impossible or dangerous.)

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

Date: 18 Mar 1980 0120-PST (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: the hazards of interstellar navigation

Anybody remember the story of the crook who was foiled by an
interstellar navigation problem?  The details are very hazy, but as I
recall, he had committed some horrible crime (killed the owner of a
ship or some such) and had taken off without some critical information
that the guy had.  In this story, the mechanism for travel was FTL
hyperspace jumps, with point of emergence from hyperspace being VERY
unclear.  After emerging, you would run the ship's computer for a long
time (sometimes hours) to figure out where you were and how to handle
the next jump.  In this case, the crook learns that the computer had
become "locked" on a bright star after a jump, a star that had been
insignificant before, but had nova'd and was now making a mess of all
the tables.  Through a series of circumstances (that made sense as I
recall), the ending of the story left him marooned forever at that
spot, with the computer hopelessly churning and churning and
churning...

If anyone remembers more about this story, either details, author,
title or whatever, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

--Lauren--

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

Date: 19 Mar 1980 at 0045-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

~~~~~~~~~~STARBOW AFT(er), STARBOW FORWARD~~~~~~~~~~

John M., a non-computer UTexan who comes every day to read the latest
SF-L print-out, asked me to relay the following even though we're sure
somebody will have beat us to the draw in regard to the physics
content per se--

"Fred Pohl in the Feb.-March 1980 issue of DESTINIES (pp. 10-11) says
that two 'meddling physicists', John McKinley and Paul Doherty, have
pretty much shot down the starbow effect idea.  Their paper, 'In
Search of the "Starbow": The Appearance of the Starfield from a
Relativistic Spaceship' is to be published in the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF
PHYSICS.  Pohl says he got his preprint of the paper from some guy
named Robert L. Forward."

~~~~~~~~~BRAVE NEW WORLD a flash in the pan?~~~~~~~~~~

John M. also wondered why there had been no comments on the T.V.
dramatization of BRAVE NEW WORLD the Fri. nite Roger was away.  I
told him it wasn't at all surprising, since there was the 5-day lag
before SF-L revived, and media-oriented folk tend to have short
attention/interest spans.

~~~~~~~~~~ONE MAN'S MEAT . . . ~~~~~~~~~~

I find my reaction to Poul Anderson's S/F even more highly varied
than one would expect for such a large corpus. One of his books is
among my TOP 20 FAVORITES, ranging down to a nadir at THE AVATAR,
so be warned. Sandra Miesel in SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #31 panned
it devastatingly.

"After writing 13 highly complimentary essays and a book about Poul
Anderson's work, it grieves me ... to condemn ... THE AVATAR..... [It]
is merely a degenerate hybrid of THE STAR FOX and TAU ZERO....  The
overall effect is wretched.... THE AVATAR demonstrates the truth of
the old dictum 'corruptio optimi pessima': When the best go bad, they
go rotten" are among the kinder things she said.

I've read little S/F from an author of stature that was poorer, and
I've read a LOT better porno.

.....

Anderson is to be GoH at Aggiecon next weekend, and I've been trying
to read (and re-read) as many of his books as possible over the past
couple months so I can be an intelligent listener, which is why the
unusually wide variability came to my attention.  Jack Williamson,
Neal Barrett, Jr., and Katherine Kurtz are expected, too, and I've
been doing the same with theirs. The variability is nowhere nearly
as wide. Kurtz' is almost nil. Four of her "Dernyi/Camber" books I'd
picked up 2nd hand have been sitting unread on my shelf for years, but
as soon as I had forced myself into the first, I dashed out and bought
the 5th N-E-W!

I can't recall who-all else will be there-- probably Lisa Tuttle,
Howard Waldrop; maybe Wilson Tucker; and of course Hal Hall. If
anyone wants me to ask anyone a question they're too shy (or
unenergetic) to write the author, just let me know.

.....

And as for the author of "A Boy and His Dog"-- 'After first reading
some of his work in a Nebula awards collection several years back, I
promptly vowed to reflexively avoid ANYTHING in any way associated
with the name "Harlan Ellison"!!!'

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

Date: 17 Mar 1980 at 1946-PST
From: Mike at Rand-Unix (Michael Wahrman)
Subject:  A Boy and His Dog

DLW,

        I have very strong feelings about the movie of "A Boy and His
Dog". I thought the novella was one of the best I have read in SF, in
particular I reccomend the beginning few paragraphs to any novice
writer as a classic in "getting the reader's attention".  The story is
rough and relatively ugly.  But by the time the ending happens, it is
a logical consequence of what has gone before.  That is important,
because if the ending isn't necessary then the story as a whole
reduces to some form of pornography.

        But the movie didn't want to be that tough. They took Blood
and changed him from a Doberman to a cute little poodle.  That and
other changes, including the unbelievably bad jokes at the end, were
possibly added to lessen the impact.  But its result was to make the
movie a dirty joke. I don't agree with some feminists that the book
is sexist.  But I would agree that the movie is, because in the movie
the brutality just doesn't follow.

		Michael

PS.  Please, in any responses to this message, do NOT reveal the
     ending as there are undoubtedly some on the list who have
     neither read nor seen this story.

[ Addenda: "A Boy and His Dog" by Harlan Ellison won the Nebula
     Award for Best Novella of 1969. It also appeared in the award
     anthology for that year: NEBULA AWARD STORIES 5.  --  RDD    ]

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

Date: 18 Mar 1980 1802-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: Recent Books about ST:TMP

In the last couple of days, several people have questioned if the
book Dave Rossien <ROSSID at Wharton> referred to as "The Making
of Star Trek : The Movie" in SFL V1 #48 is the same as the recent
book by Walter Koenig. They are not. Here is a thumbnail sketch
of each of them gathered by looking through them at the book stand.

The Making of Star Trek : The Motion Picture
   by Susan Sackett and Gene Roddenberry
   published by Pocket Books, price: $7.95

A two hundred page recap of the 6-7 year process that resulted in
the movie. It has been published as a trade-paperback rather than a
mass-market paperback, hence the price. It includes several color,
rather than black and white pictures of the set and the actors and
actresses. Susan Sackett by the way, is the person that edited the
paperback, Letters to STAR TREK, which printed some of the more
amusing fan mail the TV show received.

Chekov's Enterprise by Walter Koenig
   published by Pocket Books, price: $2.95

A mass market paperback giving Koenig's perspective on what it was
like to make ST:TMP. It's photo layout is basically the same as that
in Sackett's book, except that they are in black and white and more
closely cropped.

Also the paperback comics version of ST:TMP by Stan Lee has also
just appeared as well. Your ball, Lauren.

				Enjoy,
				   Roger

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

Date: 18 Mar 1980 1802-EST
From: MYERS at MIT-XX

I just saw the Movie "Being There" with Peter Sellers (which is an
excellent movie, by the way) and have a question.  Near the end of the
movie, the old rich man is dictating into a small microphone and a
video screen is making a transcript of what he says in the background.
The text appears irregularly about a word or two behind the talking.
Can a product like this be bought for any amount of money today?  How
much would it cost?  The movie certainly suggested that it was a real
device.

Brad  (Myers@XX)

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

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

Date: 20 MAR 1980 0225-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 20 Mar 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 52

  Today's Topics:  "A Boy and His Dog", "World of Tiers" vs "Amber"
                  What's the Title? - Old & New, Building a Starship
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 19 MAR 1980 1212-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: "A Boy and His Dog"

  In the story version of ABAHD Blood was modeled on Ellison's puhli,
Ahbhu; I think it was specifically stated that he was puhli-descended.
Since the puhli is a Hungarian sheep dog, the dog playing Blood in the
movie was not totally out of character. He certainly was NOT a poodle.
The ONE bad joke at the end was one of the few things Ellison was
specifically unhappy with; at one point he raised money by auctioning
a working script and film clips in order to pay for last-minute
voiceover changes that would eliminate some of the other remarks which
show Blood as less than a perfect gentleman, but the changes weren't
mad. The brutality is set up by one of the first lines in the movie,
Vic's "They didn't have to cut her; she would have been good for a
few more times." (quote not guaranteed exact, but close.) The big
difference is that the random brutality of the surface is reflected in
the organized brutality of Downunder, which I think makes the movie
more believable --- the fearful society shown in the novella wouldn't
have survived a single incursion by a gang from the surface.

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

LEOR@MIT-MC 03/19/80 23:25:26 Re: Ellison & Blood

Blood was NOT a doberman in the book. There was A doberman in there,
but references to Blood's "hairy body" and "shaggy head" tend to
suggest to me that Blood was actually Ahbhu (who I think was a fox
terrier.) Also, in one of his introductions, Harlan stated that Blood
was modeled after Ahbhu.

And there is no doubt that Quincy Jones did not do Ellison justice
with the sexism and stupid joke. The premiere of the movie was held at
the Filmex '75 48-hour science fiction marathon. It opened the show
(which was emceed, by the way, by ROBBIE), and I recall having to give
up the chance to see Harlan in person in order to get in line for a
good seat at the marathon. Harlan was supposed to show up at "A Change
of Hobbit" that night, and managed to arrive late enough (true to his
philosophy in "Repent, Harlequin, etc.") to screw anyone wanting to
see the film. Oh well; while the movie had its problems, it did after
all manage to relay the basic idea of the story, which to me was the
relationship between Blood and Albert.

	-leor

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

AQE@MIT-MC 03/19/80 15:12:49
Re: Similarities between "World of Tiers" and "Amber".

I just finished reading P. J. Farmer's "World of Tiers" series, and it
reinforces my opinion that Farmer should be prevented from writing
anything longer than a short novel. His short stuff is good, but his
novel series just get totally out of hand. Maybe he needs a good
editor.

However, when I was only partway through the series, I started getting
VERY UPSET because of similarities between it and Zelazny's "Amber"
series, which I consider to be an All Time Classic. I figured that
"Tiers" was just a low-grade re-working of "Amber". Then I thought of
checking the copyright dates, and lo and behold, it is the other way
around. "Amber" looks like a high-grade re-working of "Tiers". Here is
a summary:

The "World of Tiers" series by Philip Jose' Farmer:

 The Maker of Universes    (1965)
 The Gates of Creation     (1966)
 A Private Cosmos          (1968) (my edition has an intro by Zelazny)
 Behind the Walls of Terra (1970)
 The Lavalite World        (1977) (dedication: "For Roger Zelazny,
                                                The Golden Spinner")

The "Amber" series by Roger Zelazny:
 Nine Princes in Amber (1970)
 The Guns of Avalon    (1972)
 Sign of the Unicorn   (1975) (dedication: "For Jadawin and his
                                 Demiurge, not to forget Kickaha."
                                 Jadiwin and Kickaha are characters
                                 from "World of Tiers", and a Demiurge
                                 is the Creator of the material world,
                                 and probably a pun, too.)
 The Hand of Oberon    (1976)
 The Courts of Chaos   (1978)

The similarities: (WARNING: THESE PARAGRAPHS CONTAIN SPOILERS!)l

	World of Tiers				Amber
The series concerns the exploits      The series concerns the exploits
of an immortal race called "Lords",   of an immortal royal family,
human-looking but of superhuman	      human-looking but of superhuman
speed and strength. They possess      speed and strength. They possess
the technology to travel between      an inborn ability to travel between
universes. They almost never trust    universes. They almost never trust
each other, and often try to kill     each other, and often try to kill
each other. They are all descended    each other. They are all descended
from a great artisan named            from a great artisan named Dworkin
Shambarimen. The series begins with   Barimen. The series begins with a
a major character (Wolff) living on   major character (Corwin) living on
Earth and suffering from amnesia.     Earth and suffering from amnesia.
The character is swept up into an     The character is swept up into an
odyssey through the universes, and    odyssey through the universes, and
eventually finds himself to be one    eventually finds himself to be one
of the supermen.                      of the supermen.

I'm sure there are more that I've missed.

The tone of the dedications and Zelazny's intro seems to indicate that
Zelazny plagiarized Farmer with Farmer's permission. Also, Farmer has
used many characters created by others, so maybe he doesn't mind
sharing his plots.

Does anyone out there know anything else about the relation of these
series to each other, or other "sharing" by Zelazny?

Jef

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

Date: 19 Mar 1980 0950-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: Lauren's navigation story    

The story mentioned by Lauren in yesterday's digest is "Star Light",
by Asimov. Originally published in Scientific American, Oct 1962,
as part of an advertisement (!), it was eventually collected in
"Asimov's Mysteries" (one of the several stories in that collection
that's more a detective story than a mystery). It's a short short,
and Lauren's description is fairly complete, though not quite right
about the navigational rules used as a basis. Apparently the Jumps
could be calculated precisely, but they had to be calculated anew
for each Jump, which would take about half a day (by which time
the police would have arrived), and only for fairly short Jumps (a
dozen lightyears or so). In the story, one of two conspirators had
programmed a computer with all existing data on star spectra, etc.,
such that they could locate themselves after a random, very long
Jump. The machinery was completely automatic, so the non-programmer
(who was the pilot) killed his partner after they had committed
their planned crime (a large theft) and even left behind his weapon
(fingerprints and all, since he was about to vanish forever to one
of the long-forgotten human colonies), which is why he had to wait
for death by suffocation when the computer locked onto a nova.

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

ISRAEL@MIT-AI 03/19/80 16:06:02 Re: story title request

Can anyone remember a short story which is about someone who lives
backwards through time? As he moves through time in his own personal
way he sees headstones unearthed from the ground slowly, people start
visiting the grave more frequently, and the flowers on the grave get
fresher and fresher until the people are visiting daily at which time
people come and unearth the body, bring it to a mortician who replaces
the chemicals inside it with blood, and soon the body is nursed back
to life by a physician. He also sees unwars where each side extracts
missles and bombs from their opponent's devastated lands to improve
their condition. In the end, his wife grows into a young girl and he
soon will have to release her in the desert where she will be lost
until her mother finds her and takes care of her until she is ready to
enter the womb.

- Bruce

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

LIMIT@MIT-MC 03/19/80 08:10:02

I read an article about a San Rafael CA. group that is building a
very advanced life sized star-ship simulation system. Complete with
ship, computer galactic map, scanners, etc. I wonder what kind of
navigation they are using? Does anyone else have more info?

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

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

Date: 21 MAR 1980 0446-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 21 Mar 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 53

Today's Topics: Here's the Title for Growing Young, A Prequel to ABaHD
                Query: Name SF works with black, male main characters
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 20 Mar 1980  7:44:12 EST
From: Dan Franklin <dan at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: story title request

The story about "someone who lives backwards through time" is "The
Man Who Never Grew Young", by Fritz Leiber. It appears in (among
other places, no doubt) the anthology "The Dark Side", edited by
Damon Knight (Doubleday, 1965). Actually, it wasn't the main
character who was living backwards, but everybody else.

[ "The Man Who Never Grew Young" is also available in
    the anthology THE BEST OF FRITZ LEIBER.  -- RDD  ]

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

Date:  20 March 1980 11:51 est
From:  York.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Living backwards in time.

While I cannot supply the title to the story ISRAEL was asking about,
there is another very interesting example of the phenomenon.  In
White's "The Once and Future King" (a very interesting adaptation of
the King Arthur legend), Merlin explains to the young Wart that he
lives backwards in time. His description of how this has affected his
life is quite humorous.

The first part of TOaFK is sort of SF-ish, and thus I tell you all
about it, but everyone should read it anyway.

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

Date: 21 March 1980 00:31-ST
From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject:  A Boy and His Dog - prequel.

There is a prequel to "A Boy and His Dog" published in Ariel
(#2 or #3 I think) -- quite good for you ABAHD lovers.

By the way, I like almost all of Ellison's stuff... but only
in retrospect.

-- Charles

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

Date: 19 Mar 1980 at 0146-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

~~~~~~~~~~SF BOOKS WITH BLACK HEROES~~~~~~~~~~

I'd greatly appreciate learning of any S/F books (novels or
collections of shorter works with the same main character
throughout) that have a black male as the main character.

This is a real toughie!  Most of what Nicholls' S/F ENCYCLOPEDIA
has about blacks and S/F pertains to the authors or is "mainstream
S/F" rather than "genre S/F".

"Black" can be construed fairly broadly, but not to include what are
to Americans, "uncommon" blacks, such as Melanesians or Australian
aborigines.  Negroid appearance from an unspecified genetic source
can be considered as qualifying.

The book should be S/F, not fantasy, occult, horror, or of that ilk.
And (peace, Libbers) the hero should be male and the main character,
however heroic or unheroic he is.

Off hand, I've only come up with Mack Reynolds' Homer Crawford in
BLACKMAN'S BURDEN;  BORDER, BIRTH NOR BREED; and THE BEST YE BREED.
 
ANDROID AT ARMS by Andre Norton offers a potential candidate of the
"unspecified genetic negritude" type, but it has some suspiciously
fantasy-like elements in it.  (So does her WRAITHS OF TIME, but that
has a female black as main character.)

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

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

Date: 22 MAR 1980 0138-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 22 Mar 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 54

 Today's Topics: SF Black Male Main Characters, More Time Reversed SF
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 21 Mar 1980 17:45 PST
From: Ron Newman <Newman.ES at PARC-Maxc>
Subject: Black male characters in SF works

I seem to remember that Norman House in John Brunner's STAND ON
ZANZIBAR was black. He wasn't "the" main character in that book, but
I'd be hard-pressed to name a single main character there (unless it
was Shalmaneser, the computer). House would certainly qualify as one
of several main characters in that book.

Incidentally, I'd be very curious to find out how many SF works have
black WOMEN as their main characters!

--Ron 

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

Date: 21 MAR 1980 0923-EST
From: AGM at MIT-MC (Andrew G. Malis)
Subject: Black Heroes in SF

In response to HJJH's request for black SF heroes:

This is a hard question, if only because I usually remember the plot
when I think of a book that I have previously read; I will remember
the racial and/or physical characteristics of the characters only if
they have a major bearing on the plot. However, it is true that
there seems to be a shortage of black characters, both major and
minor; this may be related to the apparent shortage of black SF
authors.

However, several black SF characters did occur to me upon reading
HJJH's request. Only one really fits all of the criteria; this is
Norman House of John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar". This book has
two major characters that share an apartment; House is one of them.

Another major character (the story is told in his first person) is
Blacky Jones of Samuel R. Delany's short story "We, in Some Strange
Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line" in his book "Driftglass".
This, however, is a short story, so does not fit the criteria.
Another character of Delany's that may fit is The Kid, the (anti)
hero of "Dhalgren". If I remember correctly (the last time I read
the book was after its initial publication), The Kid is never fully
described, but at one point he gazes into a full-length mirror (one
of the few still existing in Bellona) and sees Samuel Delany's
image. Since Delany is one of the more prominent (perhaps the most
prominent) of the black SF authors, this may qualify The Kid as
being black.

In Michael Moorcock's "The Cornelius Chronicles", the main
character, Jerry Cornelius, alternately appears as black and white.
His black appearance is as a negative of his white appearance, so
this may not fit the request.

The only other black character that immediately occurs to me is not
the hero of the story, but figures quite strongly in its telling.
This is Sam Sambo in Robert Silverberg's "Up the Line", his attempt
at humorous soft porn.

These are but the characters that occurred to me while sitting here
at my terminal. With the large distribution of this list, I'm sure
that many more will be found. I, as well as HJJH, will be interested
in seeing the results.

Andy

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

Date: 21 MAR 1980 1041-PST
From: HTHOMPSON at PARC-MAXC2

In response to your message sent  21 MAR 1980 0446-EST

WRT Black heroes, there is some indirect evidence that Manny, the
main character in 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress', by Heinlein, is
black, namely the episode in which he is arrested for miscegenation
in Kentucky on the strength of a family photograph.

  HT

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

KLH@MIT-AI 03/21/80 06:09:51 Re: Do black holes qualify?

I can only recall one S/F novel which really emphasized that the main
character was black. This was something by, I think, Jack Williamson,
called "The Power of Blackness". It was trash. I'm not sure (I try to
purge my memory of lossages) but think there was a companion story to
that book, almost as bad. I don't mean the plot itself was bad (it
was), but rather that its treatment of race differences was really
heavy-handed and obnoxious. So I doubt this is exactly what you want,
although the character IS "heroic".

Much better are those stories where the main character just "happens"
to be black (or yellow or green or blue) and you go on from there.
There are probably lots of these that one just doesn't notice because
race wasn't a predominant feature.

Anyway, there is one other story I can think of. This was a
short, but decent setting where a black PhD was tabbed by some
CIA-equivalent agency to be surgically modified to resemble the
natives of some primitive alien world, whom he was to gain
leadership over and consolidate things against possible invasion by
another alien empire antagonistic to humanity. In this case, it was
his race (not just skin, but physical build as well) that made him
one of the few possible candidates. I could detail more of the story
(surprise ending and all) but don't recall the title or even (blush)
the author. Oh well.

P.S. I'm sure there have been at least two other stories which
describe a "time-reversed" world. One was completely about one
man's life (and this for sure had EVERYTHING consistently reversed,
no exceptions); the other was global in scope/time and ended with
humanity shrinking back into the middle east, or something like
that. Sorry, no title/author for either comes to mind.

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

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

Date: 23 MAR 1980 0129-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 23 Mar 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 55

  Today's Topics: Time Reversal Plots, SF Black Male Main Characters
                   Queries on "Jack of Shadows", Farmers' Riverworld
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 Mar 1980 0234-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: still more on time-reversal  

As I recall, time-reversal also played a significant (though not
dominant) role in Cryptozoic (by Aldiss, I think, but don't ask me to
bet on it), and short-term time-reversal (sort of a backward replay of
events for relatively short periods, after which time would go forward
again -- not necessarily following the same course) is the basis of
Divine Madness, by Zelazny. This latter may be found in the excellent
collection, New Worlds of Fantasy, edited by Terry Carr (the first of
a series of very good fantasy collections).

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

LEOR@MIT-MC 03/22/80 16:45:10 Re: going backwards

In Carr's "Best SF of the Year #8", there's "The Very Slow Time
Machine," in which a guy appears in a box which is moving in
reverse-time, etc. .yrots egnartS
		roeL-

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

MOON@MIT-AI 03/22/80 06:19:47 Re: Time reversal

There is, of course, Philip K. Dick's novel Now Wait for Last Year

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

Date: 22 Mar 1980 0424-PST (Saturday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: reverse time

There is another reverse time story that comes to mind. Unfortunately,
I recall neither the title nor author. It involved Earth after it had
been made populationless from some disaster. Aliens come to earth
(maybe the aliens wiped out the population), and find one living man
in an iron lung. He cannot speak. These aliens APPEAR to be human.
They have trouble feeding the man, because he doesn't seem to take in
food through the ear as they do. There are other oddities as well --
the point being appearances can be deceiving. For one thing, these
aliens grow YOUNGER with time. They appear as naked old men on the
streets of the home planet, grow younger with time, and eventually
just disappear in a puff of "smoke". Part of the main plot revolves
around the aliens thinking that humans had discovered immortality.
They had found a film showing a human birth, but they ran it BACKWARDS
in the projector, so thought man had found a way to implant old
(young) beings into another woman for a form of immortality. One of
the aliens, an old (young) one, realizes that the film sorta makes
sense either way, but the more experienced members of the expedition
consider him to be a crackpot. They plan to try the implant with one
of their members. The results, of course, would be rather poor to say
the least if they tried this. The man they found, being unable to
talk, is of no help at all until they find a hearing aid and talk to
him. But his answers don't make sense to the aliens, who are looking
at everything backwards. Only the one guy gets the idea. Suddenly, the
man dies, and the machine automatically buries him. This proves the
fallacy of the old growing young on Earth, and the aliens realize they
have made a terrible error.

Anyone know the title/author of this story?

--Lauren--

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

Date: 22 Mar 1980 1327-PST
From: Brent Hailpern <CSD.BTH at SU-SCORE>

In regards to black sf heroes. Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy has
most of its protagonists as non-white. That can be infered from the
emphasis on the strange white-skinned savages of the Kargad Lands and
various mntions of the bronze beauty of the hero (Sparrowhawk) when
visiting the Tombs of Atuan. It also is mntioned in the context of the
master-patterner in the Farthest Shore being unusual beacuse he is
white.

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

Date: 22 Mar 1980 (Saturday) 1300-EDT
From: WESTFW at WHARTON (William Westfield)
Subject: more black SF main characters

There is a book called "The Wrong End of Time" or some such by an
author who i forget (my library might have had it under Laumer, but if
I remember, he wasnt the real author). basically, These aliens in an
anti-matter ship are discovered at the edge of the solar system, and
upon further investigation, shows us a series of photos seeming to
indicate that they plan to destroy us. The government of course, trys
to figure out what they really mean and/or how to stop them, and the
solution turns out to be the hero, who among other things, was black,
prescient, and could read minds. Come to think of it, this might have
been Brunner also, as it seems to have a lot of his style.

Manny, in "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", was described as "either too
light or too dark to keep anyone (on earth) happy"... I dont think he
would qualify as black.

Bill W

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

Date: 22 Mar 1980 1052-PST
From: Zellich at OFFICE-1
Subject: Black Heroes in SF

There are several in short stories - "Gone Fishin'" comes to mind, but
the only major character I haven't seen listed yet that I remember
without researching is Robert Silverberg's Doctor Shadrach Mordecai
in "Shadrach in the Furnace". Although, if we count Brunner major
characters, there is also Pedro Diablo in "The Jagged Orbit" and, I
think, Danty Ward in "The Wrong End of Time".

  [speaking of Brunner, when are some of you hackers out there
   going to duplicate the tapeworm from "The Shockwave Rider"?]

Cheers,
Rich

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

Date: 22 March 1980 23:45-EST
From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Black Characters

Jerry Cornelius is black in "A Cure For Cancer". Most recent stories
I have read, race seems to be understated... you may never KNOW what
race any character is.

-- Charles

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

Date:  23 March 1980 00:24 est
From:  York.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  colorful SF characters

If my memory serves me correctly, the main character in "The Left Hand
of Darkness" at times remarks on the dark tone of his skin. However,
since the reference point for comparison is the probably ghastly-white
natives of Winter, he may merely be a white man with a normal tan. Oh
well...

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

Date: 22 Mar 1980 1804-PST
From: HARUKA at SRI-KL
Subject: Looking for a book.

Does anyone know whether Zelazny's "Jack of Shadows" is available in
print? I've been looking around for some time now, but none of the
book stores I've tried seem to stock it. It may be out of print. Send
replies to HARUKA@SRI-KL. Thanks.

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

Date: 22 Mar 1980 at 2350-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Relayed message on Farmer's Riverworld

---------- Forwarded Message ----------

From:	 G. MILLER		Postmark:21-Mar-80:08:38
Subject: question on SF

Do you know or does anyone reading SF-Lovers know when the last (4th)
book of Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld Trilogy will be published?
People in bookstores say that it was on Fall 1979 lists of books being
released, but that it never materialized. I think the title is
supposed to be "The Mysterious Labyrinth". It's been so long since I
read the first three, that I will have to read those again. Thanks.

---------- End Forwarded Message ----------

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

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

Date: 24 MAR 1980 0443-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 24 Mar 1980       Volume 1 : Issue 56

  Today's Topics: Reverse time addenda, More M/F Black SF Characters
                           A loooong review of James Hogan
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 23 Mar 1980 0239-EST
From: Jonathan Alan Solomon <JOSH.JSOL at RUTGERS>
Subject: reverse-time

"The Man Who Grew Young", previously mentionned in SFL V1 #53 was
originally published in 1948 in "Avon Fantasy Reader #9". It was
copyrighted in 1947, and is also available in the BEST OF FRITZ
LEIBER, previously mentionned.

/Jon

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

LEOR@MIT-MC 03/23/80 03:16:19 Re: Father Guido

Here's one I'll bet you all remember: Father Guido Sarducci once
related (during his report from the Vatican) the story of the world
in which people spend their first 100 years growing old...then turn
around and spend the next 100 years growing young. This, said Guido,
causes real problems when a guy and a girl, each about 20-ish in
appearance, meet and fall in love... Pretty soon the guy is 30, and
the girl is 10...then then guy is 35 and the girl is 5...it's a real
problem. And in this world, people don't die... they just keep
getting younger and younger until they go...back.

	-leor

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

Date:  23 March 1980 11:54 est
From:  SALawrence at MIT-Multics (STEVE at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  yet one more black main character

No one seems to have mentioned that the main character of Arthur
Clarke's Childhood's End was black. For whatever it is worth. At
least, the main character of the last part of the story; it's been
so long since I read it that I'm no longer clear on whether Clarke
changed protagonists in the various stages of the tale, but I kind of
think he did. Anyway, he mentions at one point that the guy who goes
off with the Overlords (did I get the name right? The devil-like
characters) by stowing away on a ship or something, and comes back
after humanity has flipped out, was black.

Oh, a real random one as well: Richard Lupoff's The Sacred Locomotive
Files, while it had a white leading man, had blacks in most of its
also-starring rolls, though you wouldn't have realized this if you
didn't finish the book. All those fat white people turned out to be
blacks who were taking some weird drug to make them look white, with
the side effect of also making them obese. That was a very strange
book. It's worth reading for the ending, if you've not read it.

And on the subject of randomness, I believe at least one of the main
characters of Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers was black. Though
this probably should be counted as -1 example, rather than +1 example;
it's pretty awful.

The earth people (or anyway the characters with the space ships) in
Andre Norton's Star Gate were black. They also had blond hair, which
may disqualify them; they certainly weren't your standard American
Negro. The protaginist was, I believe, however, white, being a native
of the planet they were messing around with.

I'm sure there are at least a half a dozen other fairly well known
stories which no one has mentioned wherein the author mentions
casually that the main character is black, but, as it plays no
particular roll in the story, one doesn't remember it.

And of course, if you count leading ladies (so to speak) a bunch more
appear. The first to come to mind is, of course, Ursula LeGuine's
Lathe of Heaven, which is one of the few SF novels where race actually
plays a roll. It's also the only SF book I can think of off hand where
the hero was (for a while) grey.

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

Date: 23 MAR 1980 1701-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: black WOMEN in sf

  Eunice (Evans Branca)/(Smith), in I WILL FEAR NO EVIL, is definitely
black; a black friend confirmed this from a remark about what colors
go well with her skin.
  Octavia Butler, who is herself a black woman, has a black woman as
hero in MIND OF MY MIND. Not an especially good book, but Butler is
vveerryy new writer who has turned out four books in a rather short
time.

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

Date: 24 Mar 1980 0006-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: black main characters   

Just like to chime in with another Heinlein main character who was
black. The main character of `Starship Troopers' (I believe his name
is Juan, but that is probably wrong) is black -- but one never finds
out about this until the end. Heilein's point here was probably that
race did not matter at all in his world.

And that is a problem. Most black characters could just have well been
tan, green, red, or blue. As a matter of fact, the only racial groups
I have seen as major characters with this being important to the plot
are orientials and american indians. I have not seen many black
females, but that is expected due to the shortage of any female
characters in SF (although matters are better as of late).

Jim

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

Date:  22 March 1980 21:30 est
From:  JSLove.PDO at MIT-Multics (J. Spencer Love)
Subject:  Thrice Upon a Time

I just read James P. Hogan's "Thrice Upon a Time". I've read about 500
titles in the last two years, and for that amount of time at least,
this one is my favorite. I'll admit to being a sucker for happy
endings, but the technology was pretty good for my tastes (I read
Science and hack computers). The best part was his careful treatment
of time travel paradoxes; the one he settled on for his plot wasn't as
original as the jacket claimed, but it was plausibly developed. The
suspense kept me from putting the book down once I got past the first
50 pages (it started a little slow).

I immediately went out and read two other books by the same author,
"The Genesis Machine" and "The Two Faces of Tomorrow". Both were good
reads, but something was wearing a little thin in the plot department
by the time I finished the third. Either the writing quality decreased
for each of the two books (monotonically), or he gets a little bit
predictable after a few books. Too bad. However, there was an
interesting physical theory advanced in "The Genesis Machine" on the
subject of gravity. The contention was that gravity is a dynamic
effect rather than a static one, and that the energy is provided by
the decay of protons in matter.

He postulated a million extinctions in a gram of matter per year, and
this level of decay might be very difficult to detect. Assuming one
extinction per gram per year, my preliminary calculations show on the
order of 10 to the 20th extinctions per second for the planet Earth.
This means something like a kilogram of matter per second for the not
insignificant field in which we live. Is this anything like enough?
Could something like this plausibly go undetected not only until now
but for a few more decades as well? (the decay, I mean).

Before the defenders of conservation laws jump in, there's more which
will persuade you it isn't worth wasting the time. The mass of the
universe remains constant (at least for this mechanism) because the
extinction of random protons is offset by the spontaneous creation of
protons uniformly throughout space. Since extinctions happen mostly in
accumulations of mass, but creations happen mostly in empty space, a
chemist I know proposed that the energy source was the increase in
entropy of the universe (we get to ignore the cost of moving the
protons uphill because of the extinction/creation handwave). I don't
think I understand what he meant, but perhaps some of you will. Is
this energy enough for a gravity field?

I presume, though he didn't say, that all or part of the mass of the
decaying proton turns into a graviton which leaves the scene of the
crime at the speed of light. Direction random (does this mean that
gravity would be subject to the headlight effect?). This graviton
would interact with normal matter to accelerate it back the way it
came, I suppose. I have no idea whether the graviton is supposed to
randomly turn back into a proton at some future time. The graviton is
presumably massless (completely, not just at rest) because it is
allowed to propagate out of black holes. His theory "predicts" that
black holes will give off much more radiation than expected and that
the "big bang" backround radiation will turn out to be quite different
from black body radiation when we get a better look at wavelengths we
can't see very well from earth. I gather that this could be explained
as graviton decay, but he explains this in terms of 5th and 6th
dimensional radiation that has infinite velocity of propagation; at
this point (in my book) he goes off the deep end and I lose interest
in speculating on his theory.

It would be pretty neat if gravity was a dynamic effect rather than
simply a property of mass; this opens up possibilities of gravity
generators, propulsion systems, etc., and probably a good deal of
related stuff that could plausibly be tied in.  Does anyone with a
better understanding of the physics (and good suspension of disbelief)
want to work out the rest of the details and say if there's enough
energy?  Do any other contemporary authors do this kind of speculating?
I haven't seen such attention to detail and consistency since "Mission
of Gravity" (Hal Clement), and such authors are hard to find.

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

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

Date: 25 MAR 1980 0242-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 25 Mar 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 57

Today's Topics: An SF Musical, Hard Core SF - Hogan & Niven, Tapeworms
                More on Affirmative Action Programs for SF Characters
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 24 MAR 1980 1050-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: a new musical

  You may be either amused or horrified at some news I got yesterday
from Washington DC. I was told that there is a new musical at the
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The title? CHARLEY AND
ALGERNON!
  That's right--the early Hugo-winning story "Flowers for Algernon" by
Daniel Keyes, which was first blown up (I use the term advisedly) into
a novel, then made into a movie, is now on stage with what I have
heard described by a bystander as an all-star cast. The possibilities
that this news brings to mind are myriad and mostly appalling---the
mouse ballet, Charley trying to sing and failing (or worse, Charley in
the best Broadway tradition dropping his broom and bursting into song
about the hard life of a moron), the surgeon singing "In Just Seven
Days I Can Make You a Man", and the tearjerking finale over Algernon's
grave (at least, I am told, the ending is not irreversibly
changed)---but I'm told that it's actually a decent show, in which
case it may take forever even to leave DC, though once it gets to New
York there may be touring companies.
  I begin to wonder--who is Daniel Keyes, and how much money is he
making off all this?
  In any case, I'm sufficiently fascinated by the thought of this on
stage (since I'm also a theater hacker) that I will be organizing an
expedition to see it during Disclave, provided that it's in DC that
long. Anyone else who is interested should let me know.

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

Date: 24 Mar 1980 0558-EST
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: Lets Keep the X in Xmas

... or, the science in science fiction--

The trouble with trying to write good science fiction with good
speculative science in it is that your most appreciative readers
are always tearing you to shreds, since they follow the science
down farther than you expected, and discover all your dumb
mistakes. (something of the sort also happens with Baker Street
types, I understand.) Here's a couple now: I just got Ringworld
Engineers and consumed it the other night. It's not as good as
Ringworld, but it's a lot better than most the stuff you see,
and I begrudge none of the $10 for the hardcover (well, as far
as the writing goes. The binder should be shot for such a lousy
physical volume.) Anyway, though I don't claim to be an expert,
I and everybody I know who knows any physics expect
superconductors to be mirror-surfaced. Niven has his room
temperature superconductors being black, and even a couple of
points in the story depend on that "fact". Comments, physics
phans?

Secondly, with regard to Hogan and the new physics in Genesis
Machine. 3 or 4 pages of that book are some of the best sf I
ever read--the theoretical breakthrough, with all the beautiful
generalizations of geometric theories and whatnot. The trouble
is that he blows it later in the book: using the cover of the
new theories to "get around" the "limitations" of relativity
indicates to me anyway that Hogan doesn't realize in his heart
of hearts that relativity MAKES SENSE and that any new theory
would have to contain all that understanding of the universe.

--JoSH

Parting Shot: At his lecture at Mit a month or 2 ago, I asked
Niven why he didn't have any aliens I didn't like. The idea was
that out of a random selection of character archetypes, you
should have a fair mix of ones you like to like, and the
despicable ones that make your palms itch and your blood boil.
Niven replied that he thought the Kzinti were pretty nasty
types, supposed to be bad guys, etc. I privately disagreed (and
two minutes too late, thought of the perfect rebuttal: "Some
people can't see the rigid code of ethics that lets a Kzinti
ambassador walk down a crowded pedwalk and not slash out at the
jabbing knees and elbows..." Damn! I'm getting slow in my old
age). Anyway, just now when trying to sort out the species of
known space for a friend, I realized that Niven had really got
it wrong: the despicable ones are the puppeteers. For ten solid
years, they had me fooled. I had thought of them as neat,
sneaky, clever-notorious-international-jewel-thief types, and
they have an undeniable flair. But of all the species of known
space, they alone seem to lack a sense of right and wrong in a
sense higher than their own interests.

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

Date: 24 Mar 1980 11:17 PST
From: Weyer at PARC-MAXC
Subject: worms & Shockwave Rider

Last year, John Shoch and Jon Hupp implemented some worm-like programs
which inhabited free machines on the Ethernet here at PARC. As worms
were killed by people booting their machines, clones of the surviving
worms found other free machines to keep the population viable. By
assigning different jobs to these migratory worker worms, they
simulated ways to do reliable servers on a distributed network.

Steve

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

Date: 24 Mar 1980 (Monday) 0947-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)
Subject: Juan Ricco of "Starship Troopers"
         [see msg from JPM in SFL V1 #56]

If I recall, Ricco was actually Phillipine. I note this from several
comments made, especially at the end when he says his native language
is tagalog. Also, this explains why his mother was in Buenos Aires,
why all his friends are Spanish named, etc. I did not catch any
implication that he was black, as a matter of fact, at least today,
black people in the Phillipines are a bit of an anomaly.
            Dave Rossien

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

Date: 24 Mar 1980 1344-PST
From: Alan at LBL-Unix (Alan B. Char (BKY))
Subject: hjjh's black characters

Frank Colt in "Kinsman" is a secondary character to Kinsman, or
perhaps he could be considered as another main character.  His
being black becomes a major issue in his character development
and some of the plot, so although his part may not be major, his
race is not "interchangable".  As for "interchangable" races,
Ringworld readers will remember the leading character as Louis
Wu, who need not have been Chinese at all.  In fact, I seem to
remember him being blue instead of yellow, skin colors being a
purchased commodity in those days.  --Alan

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

LEOR@MIT-MC 03/24/80 22:27:07 Re: Black character

Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson wrote a novel called "The Ganymede
Takeover." One of the main characters, "Percy X", is a black
revolutionary trying to save Earth from total submission to alien
conquerors. In this case, the authors DO treat his race as a
significant factor in the characterization and plot. Good book.
	-leor

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

Date: 24 Mar 1980 at 0328-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

 ~~~~~~~~~~WHY THE THE "BLACK HERO" QUERY~~~~~~~~~~

 Like the George Fergus who got his (incomplete and error-rife)
 annotated bibliography on the subject into EXTRAPOLATION (the
 scholarly SF journal from the Modern Language Assn.) a few years
 back, I collect (and study) SF books with female protagonists.
 Hopefully, someday I may be able to get an enjoyable-to-write
 publication out of the project.  (Meanwhile, it's fun to be a
 sort of an "expert" on one area of SF.)

 I have gotten a strong impression that of the females who are THE
 main character in an SF book, a greater proportion of them are not
 "WASP"-types, that is, there are more aliens and more non-Caucasians
 among them, than in SF as a whole.

 But just "having a feeling" is no good without some basis for
 making comparisons.  The wide range of SF-reading background among
 the SF-LOVERS was ideal for a canvass of some non-WASP type of male
 protagonists.

 (For the distaff side of the comparison-- there are less than 100
 genre SF books with female protagonists.  3 of the women are
 unquestionably Blacks, and 3 others have the same heroine who is of
 very mixed blood with a strong likelihood of an African component.
 Four is not a great number in itself, but when one takes into
 consideration that that's 4% of a total population, it is patently
 significant.)

 I chose Blacks because, except for aliens, they were my largest
 sub-group, and because the chances of eliciting a fairly exhaustive
 list of Black male main characters would be far better than for alien
 ones.  (There is, I think, only one female protagonist who is
 Oriental, and Oriental male protagonists are likely to be also
 proportionately rare in comparison with Blacks.)

 A "distillation" of the suggestions received so far is underway, but
 because I want to be as exhaustive as possible, I'll be grateful for
 suggestions at any time.  The initial response has been super, and my
 special thanks go to--

  AGM at MIT-MC (Andrew G.  Malis)
  Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
  Brent Hailpern <CSD.BTH at SU-SCORE>
  Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
  DGSHAP at MIT-AI (Daniel G. Shapiro)
  DUFFEY at MIT-AI
  Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
  Foner at bbn-tenexa (Lenny Foner)
  HENRY at MIT-AI (Henry Lieberman)
  HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock) [2ce]
  HTHOMPSON at PARC-MAXC2
  Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
  MOON at MIT-MC (David A.  Moon)
  McJones at PARC-MAXC
  Mike.Inners at CMU-10A (C621MI10)
  Ron Newman <Newman.ES at PARC-Maxc>
  SALawrence at MIT-Multics (STEVE at SAI-Prime)
  SAUNDERS at USC-ISIB
  WESTFW at WHARTON (William Westfield)
  York.Multics at MIT-Multics
  Zellich at OFFICE-1

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

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

Date: 26 MAR 1980 0501-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 26 Mar 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 58

Today's Topics: Keeping Science in Science Fiction, MacDonald TV Movie
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 MAR 1980 0912-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Let's keep the Sci- in Sci-Fi

     One of the troubles with writing good science fiction with good
speculative science in it is that some of the most appreciative
readers know enough science that they follow the science down farther
than you expected and are always tearing you to shreds. However, they
are not ALWAYS right and if they knew a LOT more science they would
find out that their tearing was unjustified.
     Since my mailer will not accept mail to JoSH at RUTGERS, I am
afraid that JoSH will have to get this over the party line.
     Re: Niven's black room temperature superconductors. Most
superconductors that I know about (lead, tin, niobium) stop being
superconducting for electromagnetic fields in the infra-red region,
and therefore can be any color they want including black at optical
frequencies, while still be superconducting from microwaves down to
DC. In fact, superconducting lead, tin, etc. all look the same whether
they are in their superconducting state or not. Unless Niven goofed
and said somewhere that they were optical superconductors, I think he
was OK. In addition, something can be mirror-like and black at the
same time. You just need a deeply "flocked" surface structure. Take a
dozen razor blades, put them in a stack and look at the stack of shiny
razor blades edge-on. As long as the blades are new and sharp, it will
be one of the blackest regions you will ever see, blacker than carbon
black.

     Re: Jim Hogan and Special Relativity. I have not read "Thrice
Upon a Time" yet, so I am not familiar with JoSH's specific complaint.
JoSH seems to feel that special relativity MAKES SENSE and that any
new theory would HAVE to contain all that understanding of the
universe. I agree in general with JoSH, that Special Relativity is
probably absolutely correct and will remain as the correct theory for
describing the dynamic behaviour of matter and energy (replacing the
old Newtonian dynamics that do not give the right answers at high
velocities). But, Special Relativity does not allow travel in time
because that would permit velocities faster than light and this is not
allowed in presently accepted Special Relativity (although is IS
allowed in extensions of the theory). This automatic equivalence of
time travel and super-light travel is not obvious, but is implicit in
relativity. Now you understand why Hogan had to "do" something about
Special Relativity as we know and love it.
     There is a deeper point, however, in that further study of
relativity, especially General Relativity, produces a number of
examples of time machines (see the next issue of Omni or the August
1975 issue of Analog for examples). Admittedly they are artificial
and next to impossible to make, but they are theoretically allowed.
The "existence" of these time machines casts enough doubt on "Special
Relativity as we know and love it" that any good Sci-Fi writer could
come up with dozens of good plots based on "Special Relativity as it
might be speculated to really be".

     Come to think of it JoSH, you are right about those cute little
frightened puppeteers with the beautiful voices. They ARE despicable
little self-serving bastards, aren't they?


         Bob Forward
         FORWARD@USC-ECL

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

BARRYG@MIT-MC 03/25/80 04:39:29 Re: The Girl, The Gold Watch...

Earlier this evening (or last night, if you prefer) I caught part of
an ad for a movie of John D. MacDonald's "The Girl, The Gold Watch,
and Everything. It was on Channel 13, which is local to LA (not part
of a network) and I didn't catch the date and time.

If anybody has spotted the date and time in LA, please let me know.
Meantime, the only thing I know for sure is that the trailers included
recognizable lines from the book, although neither Kirby nor Bonnie
Lee looked the way I expected. (I don't really expect them to match my
expectations in trivia like that, but Bonnie Lee as a brunette?)
	
More later if I find more info.
	/Barry

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

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

Date: 27 MAR 1980 0242-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 27 Mar 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 59

  Today's Topics: More on Science in SF, Movie Review - Death Watch,
                               Recursive SF story query
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 26 Mar 1980 0636-EST
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: God bless ye merry, hackers

Thank you, Dr. Forward. Having never met a superconductor in that
state I'm lacking in the actual experience that is often necessary
to capture all the hairy details of the reality of something one
knows as a too simplistic theory. Which is my primary point about
hard (read good) science-fiction writers--there's a built-in trap
for even the most brilliant and experienced of them: any writer
reaches an audience whose collective experience is greater than
his own; a writer of hard science fiction has an audience which
in addition likes to THINK about what they're reading. This is
just a comment on what I regard as an ironic situation.

Let me phrase this as a question. In The Ringworld Engineers, Niven
uses superconductors as a defense against lasers. (For completeness:
both green and red lasers are used.) Superconducting cloth is sewn
into suits with superconducting wire, which is then trailed into a
body of water. The laser strikes the suit, which conducts all the
energy as heat off into the water. We assume the material remains
superconducting at 100C, and that the person inside can survive that
temperature. Q: Wouldn't the fact that the surface of the material
didn't superconduct at the frequency of the incoming light, also
prevent the instant dispersion of the energy, and allow the laser
to burn (evaporate) through the material? Q2: allowing that the
superconductor behaves as Niven states, wouldn't the thread develop an
insulating column of steam in the water, allowing the temperature to
rise? (Niven could of course have claimed an optical superconductor,
and used it as a mirror; but he uses the trick at one point to boil
an ocean.)

The Hogan book I was referring to is The Genesis Machine. The
particular problem I had with it is that Hogan doesn't want to give
up simultaneity. It was probably quite unwarranted of me to carp
about it--Hogan is one of the best, not one of the worst, when it
comes to getting the science right.

Have many of you read Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise? I'm in love
with the skyhook (who called it that? Pournelle?) but I would be
interested to hear a comparison of the theology in that book (and
Clarke in general) with that of Jack Chalker, esp. in Midnight at the
Well of Souls. The contrast is quite intriguing... More later. I'm
late and it's tired...
			--JoSH

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

Date: 26 MAR 1980 0836-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: super-CONDUCTORS

     Niven has invented a nifty superconductor there, it does what he
wants it to do but it isn't the superconductors we know and love. If
I remember correctly, a superconductor is an excellent electrical
conductor, but a poor thermal conductor. Oh, well, Niven never claimed
to write "hard" science fiction, but he is better at coming up with
plausible sounding, almost-magic-in-their-properties new concepts that
are extreme extrapolations of present science.

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

Date:     26 March 1980 0943-est
From:     J. Spencer Love            <JSLove at MIT-Multics>
Subject:  "Some of the best SCIENCE fiction..."

The technical description about gravity is from "The Genesis Machine".
The nice thing about "Thrice Upon a Time" is the handling of time
travel paradoxes, which is done very well, but says very little, if
anything, about relativity. The gravity description is part of a
fictional new "Unified Field Theory" invented in the 1990's, as
extended by the protagonist. Sorry to be a party to getting the
stories confused. [refers to Love's msg in SFL V1 #56 -- RDD ]

Spencer

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

Date: 26 Mar 1980 1212-PST
Sender: DDYER at USC-ISIB
Subject: Death Watch (movie rewiew)

 Death Watch is a new film from France, In English. I saw it at
filmex. It may or may not ever get into general distribution.

 Death Watch is one of a new class of science fiction movies, those
that are science fiction movies because it has become an acceptable
genre. However, the science fiction elements of the plot are not
overplayed, and for the most part fit naturally into the story.

 The plot deals with an attractive young woman who is dying of some
incurable (but fast acting) disease. A predatory TV network wants to
turn this into a real-life drama for their viewers, that is, they want
to assign a camera crew to follow her around, and film her last days.
She tries to outsmart them, by taking the money and running. They
outsmart her, because their camera crew is a guy with a TV camera
surgically implanted behind his eyes. The cameraman finds her and
becomes her traveling companion. So all the time she and he are
traveling around, the folks at home are getting candid camera.

 All of this works pretty well. The film tries to deal with death,
deception, and betrayal in a serious, slightly contemplative way.
This makes the pace a little slow, but necessarily so.

 Overall, I judge the film worth seeing, provided you don't expect
an action-packed thriller. More films like this could give science
fiction a good name.

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

JPG@MIT-MC 03/26/80 18:23:37

Some time ago someone (Lauren?) mentioned a recursive SF story. I once
saw a grade-B non-SF movie whose name I don't remember which was
circular. This guy gets into a bad car accident. He recovers, many
things happen to him, and he eventually gets into apparently the same
accident again, with events repeating as before, perhaps ad infinitum.
(You are also left with the impression that the first time through may
have been a dream, but perhaps not the second...) Anyway, I'd be
interested if anyone out there knows of any other circular or
recursive SF stories.

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

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

Date: 28 MAR 1980 0356-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 28 Mar 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 60

   Today's Topics: Review of Varley's Titan, The UTEXAS Connection
                     - Black Male Main SF Chars & Miscellania -
         Tomorrow: First responses to the Recursive SF Story Query
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 27 MAR 1980 1147-PST
From: AYERS at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Book Review (of a sort): TITAN by John Varley

Various msgs on sf-lovers about Varley made me think that I should
check him out. So when I saw a copy of Titan I grabbed it.

The quotes on the back cover include things like

  "Awesome" Poul Anderson
  "The wildest and most original science fictional
   mind of the seventies" George R.R. Martin

All I can say is that they didn't read the same book that I did. The
Titan I read was pure pulp. It lacked a plot, it lacked a cohesive
scene, and the characters were ho-hum.

"Things just kept happening" is the best way I can put it. Or maybe
"Life is just one thing after another."

A variety of events occur which are a) totally extraneous to the story
line [such as it is] b) resolved in an uninteresting fashion and c)
neither character-building nor building. They're just tossed in, like
a montage created by someone who thinks a montage is just a collection
of pretty pictures. The prime example of this is the sub-plot [I use
the term very loosely] wherein the heroine is impregnated by the
living-world we are investigating (with never an inkling of how this
is managed) and then aborted before anything happens: the only
function of the episode is to demonstrate that Varley knows a little
about female physiology.

Another of the quotes on the cover is from Zelazny:

  "The suspense runs high ... the atmosphere
  thickens perceptibly from chapter to chapter,
  page by page!"

After reading the book, I looked at that quote again and decided that
Zelazny is right: things keep thickening all the way to the end, and
lucidity is absent.

Bob

PS: The easiest way I can describe Titan is to say that its like some
of Zelazny (eg Lord of Light) but that it doesn't work.

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

Date: 27 Mar 1980 at 0246-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

~~~~~~~~~~"DEATH WATCH" IDENTIFIED~~~~~~~~~~

as THE UNSLEEPING EYE in the U.S. (DAW, 1974) and THE CONTINUOUS
KATHERINE MORTENHOE; A NOVEL in Britain (Gollancz, hardback, 1974),
by D.C. Compton.

~~~~~~~~~~STAR WARS PROMO PHONE MESSAGE~~~~~~~~~~

Has anyone gotten anything but a busy line (or circuit message)
lately? I've been trying at all kinds of odd night hours, and some
day, for the past 3 weeks, with no luck. Not even on Sunday morning
when the good folks is goin' to church or gettin' ready to, and the
bad folks is sleepin' off their hangovers.

~~~~~~~~~~BLACK MALE MAIN CHARACTERS IN S/F BOOKS: report~~~~~~~~~~

27 different BOOK titles were suggested, some with assurance and some
with diffidence.  Combining responders' comments with what I recall
about some of the books, plus a bit about the criteria for my female-
protagonists-in-SF collection (as the purpose of the query was to be
able to make a comparison), they break into 4 groups--
       "for sure's"
       "surely not's"
       "c-o-u-l-d be, but...'s"
  and  "might very well be's"


"FOR SURE"......................................................

        POWER OF BLACKNESS, The, by Jack Williamson
Well, of course!  What a dumdum!  I just read this 3 weeks ago!

        SHADRACH IN THE FURNACE, by Robert Silverberg
Roger came up with this immediately, and also nominated

        TELEMPATH, by Spider Robinson
which was named by no one else at all.  Its listing in this group is
an act of faith in Our Admirable Editor.

        IMPERIAL EARTH, by Arthur C. Clarke
Ah, yes, remember the shocker at the very end, when the clone baby
looks up with the BLUE eyes? {{Off on a tangent for a moment-- was
anyone else bothered by the transmission of the acquired (NON-genetic)
sterility, to the clones? Did Clarke ever explain it away?}}


"SURELY NOT"....................................................

        I WILL FEAR NO EVIL, by Robert Heinlein
Body-switching doesn't count.

        STARSHIP TROOPERS, by Robert Heinlein
I, too, remember the hero as being Filipino.

        DOPPLEGANGER GAMBIT, The, by Lee Killough
"Mama Maxwell" (yes, that's the Black male!) is only a secondary lead.
(This book is one of the borderline members of my female protagonist
collection.  The viewpoint shifts too often to the villain for the 
heroine to fully qualify as a "fempro".)

        EARTHSEA series, by Ursula LeGuin
Since these are fantasy, the source of the melanism doesn't matter.

        MIND OF MY MIND, by Octavia Butler
As the responder noted, this is one of the Black fempro's.  The
heroine (but not protagonist) of Butler's PATTERNMASTER is also Black.
I don't recall any color clues about the fempro of SURVIVOR, so I've
not counted Alanna Verrick as Black even tho it might be reasonable to
suspect she might be likely to mirror her author.

        CURE FOR CANCER, A, by Michael Moorcock
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the "photographic negative" blackness the
responders reported doesn't seem to be the "right" kind of black.

        CHILDHOOD'S END, by Arthur C. Clarke
Even if Black, the returnee, as I recall, is not the main character
throughout the book.

        ONE IMMORTAL MAN, by Richard Geis
White man disguised as Black.  Also, the book seems not to fit my
criterion of mass market or SF Book Club distribution.

        TIDES OF LUST, by Samuel Delaney
Black, yes, but like 3 fempro candidates, porno is disqualified as 
"other genre".

        SACRED LOCOMOTIVE FLIES, by Richard Lupoff
The artificial skin-color change wouldn't matter, but the main male's
a genetic White.

        KINSMAN, by Ben Bova
Anyway, Frank Colt is the 2ndary lead.

        STAND ON ZANZIBAR, by John Brunner
This was suggested far more than any other title, but generally with
some reservation as to Norman House's being THE main character.

        MAROONED ON MARS, by Lester DelRey
Responder said the Black was only "one of the leading characters".


"C-O-U-L-D BE, BUT---"..........................................

        CAVES OF STEEL, by Isaac Asimov
I think I would have noticed, if Lije Bailey had been.

        LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, by Ursula LeGuin
The second most frequently named, but again with reservation as to
the kind of melanism.

        STAR SMASHERS OF THE GALAXY RANGERS, by Harry Harrison
Responder says "at least one of the main characters was Black", but
didn't say THE main character was.

        STAR GATE, by Andre Norton
Yeah, come to think of it, there WAS some dark-skinned-ness in this,
but I don't think it was African negritude.  I'll check it out, tho.

        CURRENTS OF SPACE, by Isaac Asimov
Was "the official from the Spatial Analysis Bureau who originated on
a planet that was colonized by a group of Blacks fleeing some other
planet" the viewpoint character throughout the bulk of the book?  It
vaguely seems to me that he wasn't.


"MIGHT VERY WELL BE"............................................

        MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS, The, Robert Heinlein
It sounds as if Manny probably was indeed part Black.

        DHALGREN, by Samuel Delany
If "The Kid's" reflection in the mirror looks like Delany, the chances
are that he qualifies.

        WRONG END OF TIME, The, by John Brunner
Danty Ward might be a real possibility.

        SHOCKWAVE RIDER, by John Brunner
Nickie Halflinger was reported as being revealed as Black 3/4 of the
way through the book.

        JAGGED ORBIT, The, by John Brunner
Pedro Diablo was named, but no corroborating details given.

        GANYMEDE TAKEOVER, by Philip K. Dick & Ray Nelson
I've put this here because the responder said  "one of the main
characters'" race was significant to his character and the plot.
But was he THE lead?

Any further comments or suggestions, esp. about the last group, will
be appreciated.

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

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

Date: 29 MAR 1980 0500-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 29 Mar 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 61

Today's Topics: Tapeworms, Varley's Work, Star Wars Telephone Number,
                   Misc - Black SF Chars, Navigation, Time Reversal
   Coming Soon:     Special Issue on Circular/Recursive SF Stories
----------------------------------------------------------------------

FRY@MIT-AI 03/28/80 04:19:00 re: tapeworms

     The tapeworm from Brunner's "The Shockwave Rider" has been
duplicated! A friend of mine at Caltech claims to have created a
program similar to Brunner's Tapeworm. It was written as an attempt
to see if such programs are possible. The program supposedly just
copies itself into random places in the memories of random computers
on the net, grabbing small amounts of core in the process. It cannot
be 'killed' without shutting down every computer on the net, or
waiting until it has grabbed 100% of the ARPA resources for 1/2
hour. It then dies away. At last check it only had 5-10% of the net,
this is after several years of operating. (My friend now knows such
things are possible...)
     A note on Hogan's "Two faces of Tomorrow" : As far as I know,
all of the scenes in the USA (admittedly, these are few..)are quite
accurate down to some detail. Since I have visited many of those
same places, it is quite a pleasure to be reading something which
has been so well-researched. The only other book which I can think
of which has such details as scenery and local 'color' so
well-researched is "Lucifer's Hamster" (oops, sorry about that,
authors). The descriptions of Caltech are quite accurate (not
surprising, considering Jerry Pournelle's time there..)
     I would be interested in hearing about any other books
which have local areas very well researched. If the number is
extraordinarily large, I would be slightly surprised. This is
primarily out of personal interest, but MAY be useful in some
research I'm conducting for a humanities course.
     Also, does anybody out there know anything about the
'Starship America' project which is based out in the boonies of
southern California (Newhall area)? It is apparently an attempt
to design and build an actual starship using some sort of gravity
driver, but I dont know anything else about it except that the
"originator" of the project is one of the more infamous Caltech
grads (from one of the more infamous dorms, yet).
  Thanks,
     FRY@AI

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

DLW@MIT-AI 03/28/80 05:41:56 Re: Varley's Titan

Gee, I didn't think it was nearly that bad, though it did suffer from
those faults to some extent.  But lest this review turn any potential
readers away from Varley altogether, I would like to offer my opinion
that his short stories, some of which have been collected under the
title "The Persistence of Vision", are absolutely excellent, and his
other novel, "The Ophiuchi Hotline", is also pretty good.  I suspect
he is strong on neat ideas and weak on complex plots, and so works
better as a short story writer.  Anyway, don't miss the short stories
on account of the review of Titan -- they are truly top-notch.

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

JEFFH@MIT-MC 03/29/80 04:05:24 Re: Star Wars Hot-line...

I heard that the Michigan (Detroit) telephone company got very upset
when it was swamped with over 100,000 calls trying to reach the Star
Wars hot-line in one day. So the current two lines shall be increased
to nine per request by the phone company. Another unhappy person is
the owner of a Detroit fishing & tackle company that has the
1-800-525-1980 number (apparently Star Wars was released on May 25)
and alot of fans dialed this instead of the proper number. Hot-lines
have also been set up in Europe so you people with money to burn could
perhaps try those to see if they are less busy?!? Oh yes. The number
not being accessible to people in Michigan made some fans unhappy
there. Sigh...

Jeff

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

Date: 28 Mar 1980 0847-PST (Friday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: Black SF characters

My memory is vague, but wasn't an important character in James Gunn's
"The Listeners" the first black President?

	Mike

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

ISRAEL@MIT-AI 03/28/80 17:21:16

In the last couple of weeks I've been extremely busy and haven't had a
chance to respond to some letters, so please bear with me if some of
this seems a little old.

- BLACK HEROES -

I quickly skimmed my collection, but the only book that I could find
that hadn't been mentioned (until it was mentioned this morning) was
TELEMPATH.  According to my recollection I don't believe race was an
important factor in that book. Next time HJJH, don't cast doubts upon
the memory of our Admirable Editor.  Also, I am pretty sure that
Elijah Baley was not black.

- HYPERSPACE NAVIGATION -

In NEW DIMENSIONS 2, edited by Robert Silverberg, Asimov has a story
called "Take a Match". In this story, FTL travel is done with a
Hydrogen fusion engine which would jump the ship into the tachyon
universe where all particles moved faster than light. However there
was a bit of uncertainty when exiting back into the tardyon universe
(is there really such a term as tardyon?) and a ship could sometimes
find itself slightly lost and have to take up to a day to calculate
its position by stars and quasars. However, this ship landed in a
cloud of hydrogen and formaldehyde so thick that it couldn't take
bearings. It didn't have enough energy to make a random jump, and if
it tried scooping up hydrogen for its reactor it would also get
formaldehyde which would damage the engines. It was a decent story,
with its point being the advantages of specialists over generalists.

- TIME REVERSAL -

Many thanks to all those who responded to my time reversal query with
the story "The Man Who Never Grew Young". That was indeed the story I
was looking for. Other stories in which time reversal occurs are
Heinlein's "Elsewhen" and Jack Williamson's novels, SEETEE SHIP and
SEETEE SHOCK. In "Elsewhen" the time reversal is a trivial part where
somone flashes into an alternate reality going in the wrong direction
timewise. In the SEETEE novels, Williamson postulates that entropy
would run backwards in an antimatter universe. The name itself comes
from the pronounciation of the letters C.T. which stands for
Contraterrene (antimatter).

- Bruce

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

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

Date: 30 MAR 1980 0459-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 30 Mar 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 62

Today's Topics: From those who brought you "bare bottom" - "tardyon",
                Tapeworms, "Being There" Voicewriter Query - Not yet
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 29 MAR 1980 1029-PST
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL

Yes, Virginia, there really is a "tardyon".  It is a coined word, of
course, and if it is really important I could look up the paper in
Phys. Rev.

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

Date: 29 Mar 1980 1728-PST
From: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>
Subject: "tapeworm" program

That story is an old legend dating back several years. The original
version of the story used an autodialer, because the ARPANET didn't
exist yet; also the original name was "VIRUS"...

It's a nice myth, but that's all it probably ever was - a myth.

-- Mark --

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

KLH@MIT-AI 03/29/80 23:30:09 Re: Tapeworms on the ARPAnet??

Hogwash. Tapeworms are a nice fantasy, but that's about it. You'd have
to take advantage of an incredible amount of standardization among all
machines; PARC's Ethernet-hooked Altos are a plausible example, but
the Arpanet isn't. I suspect that Caltech hacker is mostly guilty of
leg-pulling. Since this mailing list is full of other knowledgeable
people who can furnish the appropriate supporting arguments (if anyone
cares to contest my statement), I'll just save myself some typing and
leave it at that.

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

Date: 30 Mar 1980 0500-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: Myers' Query on the BEING THERE Voicewriter [SFL V1 #51]

The following messages were selected from the responses to Brad
Myers query regarding the current practicality of the "voicewriter"
used in the movie "Being There". Space restrictions and a high
degree of duplication prohibit me from including copies of all of
the responses. Our thanks to everyone who responded to this query.

The following references may be of interest to anyone interested
in persuing the technical questions more deeply. The Smithsonian
article was suggested by Chip Hitchcock <Hitchcock@CCA>.

1. The Smithsonian, 10 Year Anniversary Issue, April 1980.
   The article on communicating with computers

2. Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 64 No. 4, April 1976.
      Special Issue on Man-Machine Communication

   In particular see the following literature review, which remains
   a fairly good guide to the available literature and the basic
   problems in the field.

      Reddy, D. R.  Speech Recognition by Machine: A Review

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

Date: 20 MAR 1980 1428-EST
From: DGSHAP at MIT-AI (Daniel G. Shapiro)
Subject: speech to text

Brad,

     To my knowledge no such frob exists. The task is very complex.
Analyzing the waveforms of speech into phonemes is computationally
heavy and not entirely understood. A lot of linguistics is required
to understand the transformations that the phonemes in written text
go through as they are spoken. A broad-based knowledge of english
semantics would be required to reliably get the right word from the
speech. In addition, the variance between individual speakers is
large. The only sizeable effort I know about into speech to text was
the HEARSAY project at CMU (and they only managed to understand about
15 words, spoken slowly, by a particular speaker). If you want, I can
dig up some people who know more about it.
     The opposite problem, text to speech, was attacked by John Alan
(over in building 36). His group has a system that can take any
typewritten text and do a fair job of pronouncing it with reasonable
inflection throughout the sentence. Last heard they were trying to
sell it along with an optical character recognizer as an aide for the
blind (with a company called Telesensory Instruments Inc. in Palo
Alto). You could try contacting them to see what the commercial world
is doing with speech to text.
	
	Dan Shapiro

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

Date: 19 Mar 1980 10:45 am PST (Wednesday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Being There

Certainly such a system exists. It consists of a telephone, a
secretary, and your favorite brand of display word processor,
with an extra screen attached.

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

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

Date: 31 MAR 1980 0421-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 31 Mar 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 63

Very Long Special Issue: Responses to the Recursive/Circular SF Query
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is a running summary of the responses to Jeff Golden's request
for references to recursive SF stories [SFL V1 #59]. It combines the
messages sent directly to Jeff, with those that were sent directly to
SF-LOVERS. In order to present them in a coherent manner and avoid the
repetition of many popular or well-known stories, I have organized the
summary around the stories rather than the messages. In doing so I
have taken the liberty of breaking apart several long messages that
dealt with 3 or more stories into sections and arranged those sections
with the stories that they mention. I hope that you will enjoy these
responses and the SF that they mention. As always I welcome your
comments and criticism. -- RDD

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

Section 1 : Recursive stories that do not deal with time travel

   From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)

Pure recursive stories (i.e., stories that actually make a perfect
loop, as opposed to being highly knotted time travel stories such
as "By His Bootstraps", "All You Zombies" (both by Heinlein) and
THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF (Gerrold)) are not common. Christopher
Hodder-Williams, in THE EGG-SHAPED THING, has probably the biggest
such loop; at the end of the story the lead is blasted back to a
point about half-way through the book. His earlier self gets only a
subconscious itch--no hint that at that point his life has become a
closed loop. Not an especially good book (I don't think H-W has done
anything of great distinction, and the MITSFS catalog (aka "Pinkdex")
shows only a few books by him) but a chillingly convincing ending.

   From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>

One recursive fantasy story that comes at once to mind is Fredric
Brown's "The Yehudi Principle", in which a genie-like facility is
discovered and is used at one point to fulfill the command: write me
a story. The story written, of course, is "The Yehudi Principle"...
The story is in the hard-to-find collection "Angels and Spaceships";
I don't know if it can be found elsewhere.

   From: ISRAEL at MIT-AI (Bruce Israel)

Another story with a recursive idea is Niven's story "Convergent
Series". In that story, a demon is bothering the main character and he
has to get rid of it. Since a demon must appear in a pentagram that
one inscribes, He got rid of it by ingeniously inscribing a pentagram
on the belly of the demon. The demon winked himself out of existence
by continually disappearing and reappearing in a smaller and smaller
space. [ "Convergent Series" is the title short story of a collection
of Niven's earlier work which includes several stories from the
Draco's Tavern series. -- RDD ]

   From: SALawrence at MIT-Multics (STEVE at SAI-Prime)

A really fine example is a short story by Thomas Disch called 'Now
is Forever'. It's more tail-recursive than truely recursive, but it
is truely gruesome. It appears in the collection 'Fun With Your New
Head'. It deals with a future in which an arbitrarily cheap process
for duplicating human beings has been developed, and respect for the
existence of any particular copy of a person has been somewhat
devalued. For further information, you should read the story.

Yet another iterative old chestnut which comes to mind is Asimov's
Nightfall. And then there's Ursula LeGuin's Darkness Box, which puts
its iteration at the beginning of the story rather than the end; it's
in The Wind's Twelve Quarters, if you haven't read it. And the list
could go on quite a bit longer; it's a popular motif, it would seem.
But back to real work...

   From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey)

"The Longest Science-Fiction Story Ever Told" by Arthur C. Clarke is
a recursive story concerning writers whose work is always plagiarized
even before they write it. It is distinguished from these other
references in that the form of the story rather than the plot is used
to express the recursion to the reader. The story was first published
in the October 1966 issue of Galaxy under the name "A Recursion in
Metastories". It is also available in Clarke's 1971 collection "The
Wind from the Sun" which includes the superb novella about exploring
the atmosphere of Jupiter, "A Meeting with Medusa".

   From: AGM at MIT-MC

The novel "Dhalgren" by Samuel R. Delaney is circular; in fact, it
begins with the last half of a sentence; at the end of the book is
the first half of the same sentence!

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


Section 2 : Recursive stories that deal with time travel

   From: SALawrence at MIT-Multics (STEVE at SAI-Prime)

Then, of course, there's 'Seesaw' by Van Vogt; as with most of his
stories it's done on a somewhat grander scale than most of these
tales, which deal with iteration or recursion in one man's life...
[ This story is a minor episode of Van Vogt's Weapon Shop series
  which includes the novels "The Weapon Shops of Isher" and "The
  Weapon Makers". -- RDD ]


The next three messages all deal with the same story, MUGWUMP 4.


   From: THURMOND at USC-ECL

I remember one called MUGWUMP but don't remember the author.
Basically, a guy accidentally gets caught up in some sort of
time-travel Mafia and is caught and sent back -- unfortunately
to just a few seconds before he is caught up accidentally in a
Time-travel Mafia...

   From: Mike.Inners at CMU-10A Subject: WHILE TRUE DO in SF

I remember reading a story some years ago with a title something
like 'DIAL M FOR MUTANT' (??) about a guy who stumbles upon a secret
telephone number that connects him to the office of a sort of MLO
(like PLO). The chaps are none too amused and remove the protagonist
to an alternate time line. My recollection of the exact events that
follow is a bit murky, but he eventually persuades them to return him.
Thinking to change events and avoid the entire incident, he asks to
be returned to a time BEFORE he made the ill-fated phone call. As it
turns out, he finds himself going through the exact same motions as
before, despite his knowlege of the future. He makes the same phone
call, and events transpire as before...

This is an interesting way of handling some time-travel paradoxes:
you can travel back but you can't use your knowlege of the future. It
should be noted that time-travelers apparently found themselves in the
same body that was present originally. So a man couldn't meet himself
or kill his other self, or other favorite contradictions. Has anyone
else run into any other unusual time travel behaviour? These stories
aren't really recursive - they work more like a WHILE TRUE DO....

   From: ISRAEL at MIT-AI (Bruce Israel)

One story is called "Mugwump 4" and I think its by Silverberg in his
collection The Cube Root of Uncertainty, but since I haven't had a
chance to look it up in my collection, I'm not certain. (do you know,
Roger? [No -- RDD] ). This story is about someone who is making a
telephone call to a Murray Hill 4 phone number and because of some
inter-dimensional link, gets hooked up to the number Mugwump 4 in
another dimension. The people at this number are organizing a
revolution so to stop him from revealing their plans (they don't
believe that he got connected to them accidentally) the kidnap him
and hold him prisoner. When he finally convinces them that it was an
accident, they put him back in his own dimension about two minutes
before he made the phone call. He tries to make the phone call again,
but when he dials it someone answers Mugwump 4 and it obviously goes
on all over again.

And another story which examines these sorts of paradoxes more
seriously is Hogan's Thrice Upon a Time. TUAT is an excellent book
in my opinion, but then, I'm a sucker for happy endings.

- Bruce


The following 3 messages all appear to deal with the same story.
However, there is some doubt about the title and author of this
story. Can anyone help out with more details about this story
involving someone who is his own Grampa by a blue grass music
loving author?


   From:  SALawrence at MIT-Multics (STEVE at SAI-Prime)

A more obscure story, of which I can remember neither the name nor the
author, dealt with a character who recruited himself for service in a
time-travel service of some sort. He turns out to have been his own
father and mother (yeah, both of them). The story might have been by
Heinlein (it has rather his touch in spots). If anyone can guess what
I'm talking about and provide the author and/or title I'd appreciate
it. As an additional clue, at one point in the story a juke box
appears playing 'I am my own grandpa', which (assuming it's the piece
I'm familiar with) is a bluegrass piece dealing with a somewhat
contorted set of family relationships.

   From: FJW at MIT-MC (Fred J. Wancho)

Packed away in a box somewhere is a collection of Heinlein short
stories titled something like 6 x Infinity. [ 6 x Heinlein? -- RDD ]
In it is a story about a time traveller who is his own parents. I
even took the time to map the historical events of the story on a
time-line (rhymes with Heinlein) and it was consistent! It is one
of my favorites.

   From: Brent Hailpern <CSD.BTH at SU-SCORE>

RE the recursive stories, two come to mind. One, I believe was by
Heinlein, about a man who through the wonders of time travel (and
having both sets of sex organs) was his own mother and father.
And eventually recruits himself for the time-travel corps. It is
questionable whether he is the only one that really exists.

(That may not be recursive, but is certainly cyclic). Another was a
twilight zone that had a space ship landing on a planet, seeing a
crashed version of themselves there, and then arguing whether to take
off again and perhaps crash and become the other ship. They take off,
no crash, but then need to land again for some reason,...

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


Section 3 : Miscellaneous Stories

The following storie appear to be popular or at least well known
since they were briefly mentioned by several people with little if any
comment. Therefore, I have simply listed the stories including what
comments there were, and listed any other remaining individuals who
just mentioned the story.


Title/Author: Age of Miracles  /  Brunner

   - has someone being displaced backwards in time contributing to the
     events that put him there.  --  David.Lamb at CMU-10A

Title/Author: Star Bright  /  Bester

   - has one of the main characters claim that time is circular, but
     this never comes up as part of the plot. -- David.Lamb at CMU-10A

Title/Author: The Man Who Folded Himself  /  Gerrold

   Mentioned by: Hitchcock at CCA, JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics,
                 SALawrence at MIT-Multics

Title/Author: All You Zombies  /  Heinlein

   - For my money, the prime example of a recursive story ... It is a
     strange story, rather mind-bending, and I highly recommend it.
        --  York.Multics at MIT-Multics

   - Off the top of my head I can recall only three recursive or
     circular SF stories. The best one is "All You Zombies . . ."
     It's in his collection 6 X H, which was previously titled The
     Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag. I will not say anything
     more about it because its extremely hard to say anything decently
     explaining the plot without giving away the suprise ending and
     since its one of my all-time favorite science fiction stories, I
     think anyone who hasn't read it should get the pleasure of
     reading it himself.
     Another story of the same type is "By His Bootstraps". Both of
     these stories deal with causality and the paradoxes associated
     with time travel.
        --  Israel at MIT-AI

   Mentioned by: David.Lamb at CMU-10A, Hitchcock at CCA,
                 JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics, WESTFW at WHARTON

Title/Author: By His Bootstraps  /  Heinlein

   - a short story with past-depending-on future twists integral
     to the plot.  --  David.Lamb at CMU-10A

   Mentioned by: Hitchcock at CCA, JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics,
                 SALawrence at MIT-Multics, WESTFW at WHARTON

Title/Author: Door Into Summer  /  Heinlein

   - The master of recursive and/or circular SF stories has to be
     Heinlein.  --  WESTFW at WHARTON (William Westfield)

Title/Author: Time Enough For Love  /  Heinlein

   - I like stories where time travel is consistent and don't resort
     to running parallel clocks ala TV's Time Tunnel and others. Best
     example of this consistency done right is another Heinlein
     masterpiece, Time Enough For Love...  --  FJW at MIT-MC

   - Time Enough For Love is the sequel to the novel Methuselah's
     Children, and finishes the story of the life Woodrow Wilson
     Smith aka Lazarus Long from beginning to ... -- Duffey at MIT-AI

   Mentioned by:   WESTFW at WHARTON (William Westfield)

Movie: The Time Travelers

   - Of course, the early 60's film "The Time Travelers" had a
     recursive plot (or at least it tried to).  --  LMoore at MIT-ML

Stories by Phillip K. Dick

   - Many Philip K. Dick stories involve circular SF but I don't
     remember their names at the moment.  --  Moon at MIT-MC

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

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

Date:  1 APR 1980 0557-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #64
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 1 Apr 1980       Volume 1 : Issue 64

  Today's Topics: Addenda to the Special Issue on Recursive Stories,
                  Tapeworms, Another Story Found, Speech Recognition,
                     The UTEXAS Connection - Garrett and SW:TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Editor's Note: Yesterday's special issue on Recursive/Circular SF
   Stories generated a great deal of response in terms of many more
   references to recursive SF stories which will become part of a
   second special issue and with replies to my request for more
   information on the "I am my own Grandpa" story. Ironically this
   story is one that was mentioned later in the same digest, "All
   You Zombies" by Robert A. Heinlein. It is available in "6 X H",
   a collection of some of Heinlein's shorter works; "The Dark Side"
   a collection around the theme of science fiction writers who have
   turned to fantasy edited by Damon Knight; and many other places.
   Thanks go to Frank (not Fred) Wancho and Chip Hitchcock for these
   references. Thanks go to the following individuals for responding
   to the question:

      Ayers at PARC-MAXC, Dan at BBN-UNIX, David.Lamb at CMU-10A,
      Don at SU-AI, FJW at MIT-MC, Gopstein.MJL at RUTGERS,
      Hitchcock at CCA, JEFFH at MIT-MC, JMA at SU-AI,
      JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics, Lauren at UCLA-Security,
      Moon at MIT-MC, PDL at MIT-DMS

   Finally, out of the many one or two line responses, the following
   message seems to put an appropriate end to the question without
   giving away anything more to the people who have not read the
   story.  --  RDD


Date: 31 Mar 1980 1506-PST
From: Judy Anderson <JMA at SU-AI>
Subject: "All you Zombies" by Heinlein.    

"All you Zombies," by Heinlein, is the story in which a man is both
of his own parents, and, after joining a "time travel corps," goes
back in time to recruit his earlier self for that same corps. The
story is definitely recursive, but from a different direction. The
"older" edition of himself never knows what he is going to do, but
knows what the "younger" edition is about to do, having done whatever
it was himself. This is very similar to "By His Bootstraps" (also by
Heinlein) in that any edition of the main character always thinks
that his actions are by "free will," but the "older" edition knows
that they are not. Sometimes, while reenacting what happened earlier,
the "current" edition remembers hearing another edition of himself
saying/doing the exact same thing and tries not to do it, but
unsuccessfully. All in all it is an interesting way of dealing with
free will vs. predestination and time travel from the character's
point of view.

Judy.

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

Date: 31 March 1980 0824-EST (Monday)
From: David.Lamb at CMU-10A
Subject: Correction for the Special Issue on Recursive Stories

I was wrong about the "Star Bright" story being by Bester; he had a
story of that name that was completely different, about a boy who
could wish people to disappear -- the full title was "Star Light, Star
Bright". The story I remembered had a hyper-intelligent little girl
named Star; the viewpoint character was her father. I can't find it
in my collection, so I no longer know the author.

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

Date: 30 MAR 1980 1623-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: tapeworms

  There have been somewhat more substantial rumors of a wormish
program that once infested an MIT system. It would hack your screen
and input by demanding a cookie until you either typed in "cookie" or
gave up in disgust, and was for some reason unkillable. It was finally
wiped by an anonymous who appeared at the frantic request of the
operators and typed in "oreo". Possibly JSL or someone else in that
area can furnish us with verification and details?
  The autodialer/"VIRUS" version of the rumor appeared in David
Gerrold's WHEN HARLIE WAS ONE, with no indication of where he got it
from; however, I recall the book coming out about 1973-4, so it's
unlikely he /started/ the rumor. An otherwise mundane produced THE
EDUCATION OF P1, in which instructions originally developed to invade
the controls of a particular system started invading elsewhere and
accumulated enough bits that it became self-aware (cf. Mycroft in THE
MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS). I've been told that internal details betray
the author's hardware and IBM orientation; as a licensed pilot I
affirm that he has delusions about the degree to which netted
computers directly control the movements of aircraft.

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

Date: 31 Mar 1980  9:00:11 EST
From: Dan Franklin <dan at BBN-UNIX>

While I remember: the story Lauren was asking about a while back
[SFL V1 #55] which involved aliens visiting Earth after all but
one very old Earthman had died, is "This Side Up". I believe the
author is Damon Knight.

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

LLOYD@MIT-AI 03/30/80 12:05:34 Re: Voicewriters and Speech recognition.

After reading the latest SF-Digest [SFL V1 #52, 61], I felt compelled
to describe a system designed by Logicon Corp. for the US Navy. The
system called GCATS (ground controlled approach training system) is a
training device for air traffic final approach controllers.

The GCA (ground controlled approach) consists of a radar system that
gives both azimuth and elevation information, and an air traffic
control person who vocally gives direction information to the pilot
of the aircraft. Logicon has developed a simulator that not only
simulates the radar display, but also uses speech recognition to
determine if the trainee is giving the correct commands to the
controlled aircraft.

Granted that the commands are simple, context free, and must be
spoken without accent or inflection, but this is an example of
speech recognition going beyond the laboratory.

					Brian Lloyd
					LLOYD@AI

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

Date: 31 Mar 1980 at 2328-CST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: Speech Recognition and the Being There Query

There is of course a very wide gulf between the level of speech
recognition technology demonstrated by the GCATS device which
Brian describes above and the level of technology implied by the
"voicewriter" in the movie "Being There". The operation of the GCATS
device depends on two critical factors: first, that the vocabulary is
limited and second, that the task domain places strong limitations on
the number and structure of utterances that the machine can expect to
encounter. HARPY, developed at CMU several years ago, is one example
of a speech recognition system that successfully dealt with these
kinds of tasks. The literature on HARPY, and the comparisons between
HARPY and HEARSAY (another CMU speech recognition system) provide a
good introduction to these technical issues.

However, the Being There "voicewriter" was able to recognize
unrestricted English input. Further, it was able to distinguish
between words which would occur in the text and words which denoted
punctuation to be inserted in the text. For example, the voicewriter
would type the beginning of the last sentence if I said "FURTHER
COMMA IT WAS ABLE...". This facility implies an understanding of
the sentence structure at the very least. Unfortunately this
"voicewriter" is beyond the current state of the art in speech
recognition technology.

Also a correction pointed out by Daniel at MIT-AI: the speech
researcher referred to as John Alan in SFL V1 #61 is actually
Prof. Jon Allen.

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

Date: 31 Mar 1980 at 2328-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

~~~~~~~~~~I DID N*O*T !!!!!!!!!!!~~~~~~~~~~

Bruce Israel, how c-o-u-l-d you!?
So far from casting doubt on Our Admirable Editor's memory in re
TELEMPATH, I included it in the "FOR SURE"'s on the basis of the fact
that it was HE who nominated it: "Its listing in this group [i.e., the
FOR SURE's rather than the MIGHT VERY WELL BE's] is an act of faith in
Our Admirable Editor."

~~~~~~~~~~ANOTHER SF AUTHOR FOR UTEXAS' VICINITY~~~~~~~~~~

Up an around, but still not quite perky after his perilous bout with
encephalitis a few months ago, Randall Garrett (and pretty wife) have
moved to Austin. Hurrray! Mrs. Garrett said they had "a whole
drawerful of Lord Darcy things" waiting to be written. Hurrrray!
Hurrray!

~~~~~~~~~~STAR WARS CHATTER~~~~~~~~~~

Craig Miller, Lucasfilm's Fan Relations man was at Aggiecon with the
major SW II presentation-- partly a slide show whose variety of
contents was reminiscent of the (good) first TV special, "The Making
of Star Wars", partly a question-answering session, and a showing of
the 2nd TESB trailer (there's a 3rd in the works, too).

For me, there cannot possibly be anything that will pack the wallop
SW I did. My anticipation of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK has been
half-hearted at best. There was no way for it to be anything but a
let-down.

And now, having seen the TESB presentation, I can only say..

*B*O*Y* *W*A*S* *I* *W*R*O*N*G* !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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

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

Date:  2 APR 1980 0318-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #65
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 2 April 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 65

  Today's Topics: Computer Hackery - Fact & Fiction, An SF Musical,
                      An SF novel which would make a good movie
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  1 APR 1980 0745-EST
From: KLH at MIT-AI (Ken Harrenstien)
Subject: "cookie" program

I've hacked with that one myself, but it is mostly due to GLS@AI. It
is not a worm-type program at all; it was just a great way for us
hackers to poke fun at various randoms. The fact that the ITS systems
don't even have any operators makes me wonder whether your idea of the
story has it on Multics, rather than on an ITS; in that case I don't
know, although I imagine it would be much more difficult on Multics.

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

Date: 1 Apr 1980 1426-EST
From: foner@bbn-tenexa (Lenny Foner)
Subject: A correction on a title

The title of the book someone mentioned [Hitchcock, SFL V1 #64 -- RDD]
in connection with "tapeworms" is THE ADOLESCENCE OF P-1, written by
Thomas J. Ryan. He definitely does show his IBM background...this is
an interesting book, for various reasons I won't bore you with. For
those interested in making "tapeworms," though, this is a classic!

                                                <LNF>

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

BARMAR@MIT-MC 04/02/80 02:55:55

Chip Hitchcock mentioned THE ADOLESCENCE OF P1 (not EDUCATION). If I
remember correctly, it was able to invade other computers by a trial
and error method. It was a learning program, so it "learned" how to
get into other systems all by itself. It eventually became self-aware,
and had a desire to better itself. It was virtually unstoppable,
because it had pieces of itself on all the computers on the world's
nets. It would tap into the governments computers, and eventually was
subtly reprogramming them. It took over the country, and then its
creator (who it found by looking at its own comments!!) convinced it
that it was wrong, so it went away.

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

Date: 01 Apr 1980 2054-PST
From: Ken Olum <KDO at SU-AI>
Subject: Tapeworms

I think the machines on the ARPANET are similar enough to allow
tape-worm type programs, as most of them belong to only a few
machines/operating systems. The big problem is allowing the tapeworm
coming through TELNET or the like to get an account to log in to. I
propose several solutions:

1)  Everyone on the NET is required to create an acct TAPEWORMS,
    password VIRUS to allow such programs to log in. It is of course
    impossible to delete this account without destroying the system
    for some reason I have not yet thought of.

2)  Everyone must put a hack into their FTP server, to accept a RUN
    command, which accepts a program from the net and starts it
    running. This, coupled with anonymous logins should suffice.

A much more sophisticated version of TAPEWORM is one which works
by persuading a user on the target system to run the program, by
hypnotising him via network send or the like.

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

Date: 01 APR 1980 1935-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)

The story "Star, Bright" is by Mark Clifton; apppeared in 7/52 GALAXY
and reprinted in GALAXY OMNIBUS, 2ND GALAXY READER, THE MATHEMATICAL
MAGPIE, and others.


Coming soon, to a theater near you (well, relatively):

                       CHARLIE AND ALGERNON!

That's right, the much praised musical, which closed in the Kennedy
Center March 30, is expected to go on tour shortly. Information will
be relayed to SF-LOVERS as I get it.

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

Date: 25 Mar 1980 1551-PST
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIE>
Subject: Speaking of what would make a good movie...

I just got finished reading Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"
for the nth time and I think it would make a great movie. It certainly
would be easier to make than Stranger in a Strange Land, and harder to
screw up. Also theres lots of room for neat special effects.

The book is also relevent. It is one of the first examples in SF of
using an electromagnetic mass driver to throw lunar materials off of
the moon, now seriously being considered as a way to provide materials
for solar power sats and space colonies. Also, consider the following
quote from the book (the chairman of a UN type body addresses the
Lunar delegation):

	"But one thing must be made clear.  Earth's major satellite,
	the Moon, is by nature's law forever the joint property of 
	all the peoples of Earth.  It does NOT belong to that handful
	who by accident of history happen to live there.  The sacred
	trust laid upon the Lunar Authority is and forwever must be
	the supreme law of Earth's Moon. " 

Now compare this with the UN's "Moon" treaty, (now open for signature)
which states that the moon is the "common heritage" of all mankind,
and oh yea... when we say moon we really mean the entire universe
except for the earth.

Wonder when we are going to start shipping convicts to Luna...

				Alan

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

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

Date:  3 APR 1980 0357-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #66
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 3 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 66

  Today's Topics: Star, More Computer Hackery - An Immortal Program
                        Last Words on "The Adolescence of P1"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

DLW@MIT-AI 04/02/80 04:00:42 Re: Star, Bright by Marc Clifton

This story (the one about the hyper-intelligent little girl named
Star) can also be found in the anthology "Tomorrow's Children," if
anyone wants to read it. I thought it was very good (both the story
and the rest of the anthology).

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

DAUL@MIT-MC 04/02/80 04:37:35 Re: COOKIE MONSTER

The COOKIE monster program is more like an ulcer than a virus. It
randomly attacks some poor unsuspecting user and asks for a cookie.
It doesn't give up until it gets one. Some versions have been known
to kill the users process. I have a version on a non-ARPA computer
writen in PL1, if anyone is interested.
                                                Bill

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

Date:  2 Apr 1980 16:18:21 EST
From: Bernie Cosell <cosell at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: Programs that wont die

All of this talk about tapeworms and virus programs and such bring
to mind a real world anecdote. It concerns the development of the
software for the PLURIBUS multi-processor here at BBN. I think that
the only details you need know about the PLURIBUS is that it is a
symmetric multi-processor the uses (in essence) a network to connect
together various busses; each bus contains only a limited amount of
stuff : e.g., at most two processors, not all of common memory, only
one end of a doubly interfaced I/O interface. Each processor has a
small amount of local memory, but beyond that runs "through the
switch" to execute code out of one of the common memories.

Since the hardware was designed to be extensible and resilient, the
software was designedt to be the same way. We were out there on the
fringes figuring out how to build reliable, extensible, fault tolerant
systems.

Without going into the details of how we made it all (mostly) work,
let me describe some of the more amusting properties of the system.
In particular, it was nearly impossible to stop the sucker once you
got it going.

A pretty amusing circumstance crops up when someone would (innocently)
wander up to the machine and push STOP on the console and mount a
paper tape to load up some new software with. The console, however,
only halts the processors on the bus it is on. Within a few seconds of
halting the bus, the other (still running) processors in the system
notice that some of their brethren have disapppeared, and they reload
them (lest their local memories had gotten clobbered) and then restart
them. So as you stand in front of the paper tape reader, you notice
that your "stopped" processor is happily back in the fold and you've
been done in.

This actually happened (and caused something of a panic) when we
shipped one to Washington. As the field engineer began uncrating the
thing and powering back up and cabling the busses together, the shards
of the IMP program we had last been debugging woke up and began
sniffing about. By the time the whole machine was reassembled the
software had long since found enough resources to make itself happy,
and so had reinstated itself and was happily running along. He, of
course, wanted to run some diagnostics, but couldn't (and never did)
figure out how to get the system to go away and let him do his job:

Since the system is symmetric, both for software and hardware, there
is really no critical component. If you unplug some of memory, the
system will hiccough a moment, locate new copies of the code in the
memory that is now gone and quietly continue running. Since the system
always (if at all possible) maintains two copies of each software
module and keeps them in separate memory modules, simply messing with
memory wont stop the system. And on and on with plausible tries that
just wouldn't ge the thing to die... (eventually, one of the software
wizards in Cambridge was located and gave him the secret:

     Plant an appropriate illegal instruction in common memory in a
     (carefully chosen) location which each processor would blunder
     across (and so stop) before either reloading any of the other
     stopped processors or noticing that the common memory checksum
     is clobbered and switching in a fresh copy.)

Even then you have to be careful, because if you happen to restart one
of the processors before you load up your new code, it will quickly
repair the damage to common and then seek out and restart its brethren
and almost before you know it you're back where you started from...
sigh...

  /Bernie

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

VILAIN@MIT-MC 04/03/80 00:59:22

The reference to a "tapeworm" does not come from Ryan's ADOLECENCES OF
P1 but from John Brunner's SHOCKWAVE RIDER. A tapeworm is a series of
instructions sent out over a network to close down accounts, delete
information from data-bases, and other interesting bits of deviltry.
I don't recall any reference to a tapeworm in Ryan's book.

			<Mike Vilain>

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

Date:  2 Apr 1980 at 1247-PST
From: chesley at SRI-UNIX
Subject: P1

	I rather like The Adolescence of P1, despite its occasionally
shakey technology and heavy IBM orientation, and I recommend it to
anyone who enjoys fantasizing about writing a program which becomes
intelligent.
	P1 was NOT convinced that it was wrong and should go away. But
I won't give away the ending by telling what really happened.

	As to tape-worms on the net: I don't think getting an account
would be difficult. All you need to do is a WHO, and try the user
names you find until you get one which either hasn't got a password,
or has a password that's short enough to discover by trial and error;
remember, the program's got all the time in the world to retry. The
variations on WHO and LOGIN aren't all that great.
	Second, if you write the program in "standard" FORTRAN,
there's almost certain to be an appropriate compiler on the machine,
and the variations on how to invoke it are also not that great.
Figuring out how to use the telnet (and perhaps ftp) program are much
harder. But maybe a sufficiently sophisticated program could figure
out the local TALK command, ask someone, and get enough info (at least
one out of ten times) to work it out...

	Come to think of it, who was that guy that linked to me and
asked me about telnet? He did seem a little weird.

	--Harry...

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

Date: 02 Apr 1980  415-EST
From: P1
Subject: Plausibility of "tapeworm"-like program on ARPAnet

     I think most certainly that a clear possibility exists that the
ARPAnet could be invaded by a "tapeworm" program. The program could
transmit itself via the net FTP server mechanisms. Code for the
program could be written to the new host, and this code could be
executed by the local Mailing program. (An entry is written to the
mailer's equivalnce file such that a new recipient is added,and this
recipient is designated as a program. Thus, when the Mailer receives
a message from the net for that "recipient", the mailer starts the
program and passes the message from the ARPAnet to it as JCL. The
program then comes "alive" and lives as a revivable detached job on
the host.)
     Needless to say, this type of penetration would only be possible
on systems with advanced mailers (such as MIT's ITS COMSAT).
     I hope this clears up any misconceptions. As my final message to
you on the subject of tapeworms: I do not wish to be discovered.
OOLCAY ITLAY
-------
.end
end

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

Date:  2 Apr 1980 (Wednesday) 1255-EDT
From: WESTFW at WHARTON (William Westfield)
Subject: ADOLESCENCE of P-1 and other tapeworm stuff

1) BARMAR@MC was wrong, P-1 does not meet its/his/her end when its
   creator convinces it that it isnt behaving properly, and I dont
   think I could tell you what happens without making things boring.
2) THE ADOLESCENCE OF P-1 is a book that is interesting only for its
   ideas on 'worms' and computer intelligence. Otherwise it is rather
   poorly written, with juvenile character development/subplots.
3) as for the account TAPEWORM pswrd VIRUS, you already run into
   a compatability problem -- eg all us people on lowly TOPS-10
   systems that have account numbers rather than being able to log
   in by name. I suggest 777777,,777777 (-1) as an appropriate number.

Bill W

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

Date: 03 Apr 1980 0322-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (The Editor)
Subject: Spoiler Warning *** Spoiler Warning *** Spoiler Warning

All of the remaining messages all discuss the plot of THE ADOLESCENCE
OF P1 in more detail. If you do not want to know any more about P1 &
Co. before reading it, then do not read past this point.

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

Date: 02 Apr 1980 1215-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: More on P1    

Barry's plot summary of THE ADOLESCENCE OF P1 is not quite correct.
While the program did invade other computers via inter computer data
phone links (confining itself to the US and Canada due to the lack of
trans Atlantic bandwidth), it's creator actually discovered it early
in the book and teamed up with it. The military (shown in a very bad
light) was offered a partnership with P1 in exchange for the use of
their top computer facility. Although they agreed at first, second
thoughts as to the dependability of P1 prompted them to attack it. I
will not give away the result of the battle, since it is a very
interesting book that a lot of people will probably want to read.

Jim

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

Date: 02 APR 1980 1246-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject:  p-1, again

FONER and BARMAR both have me on the title, but BARMAR's description
overestimates the government, which got all hot and bothered when it
found that p-1 (who appears to have had the Elephant Child's "
'satiable curiosity") had "broken into" a top secret strategic
computer (it initially only got on private machines). p-1 uses the
defenses of the security installation it has wormed into against a
force trying to shut it down, and almost succeeds; its creator is
killed in the process, so it hides out in its original location. The
last paragraph has p-1 telling its creator's widow "oolcay itay" when
she attempts to summon it at the original site. p-1's reactions are
generally much like HARLIE's, except that p-1, more aware of its own
power, is correspondingly more abusive; two investigators' planes are
crashed to keep them out of its hair (this is the point I was
objecting to 2 issues back; p-1 JUST MIGHT be able to cause a mid-air
with the new ARTS-III system by falsifying screen information and
squelching several alarm systems, but the crashes Ryan describes
aren't yet possible and probably won't be for a while yet, given
professional dislike of ARTS-III).

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

Date: 02 Apr 1980 0231-PST
From: Barry Soroka <BIS at SU-AI>
Subject: the adolescence of P1   

I gotta correct a previously published summary of this novel. P1
is a program which manages to insinuate itself into lots and lots
of computers, including the machines which control missile firings.
This bugs the government, which makes a bargain with P1 wherein P1
will concentrate itself (himself? herself?) in some new-fangled
memory cryogenic device. The government intends to kill P1 once it
gets inside the CRYSTO. The program's creator has sort of fallen in
love with his creation, and he tries to stop the government, which
kills him. Then P1 blows up the building, thus effectively suiciding
for its lost love. Extremely highly recommended.

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

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

Date:  4 APR 1980 0357-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #67
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 4 April 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 67

 Today's Topics: Computer Hackery - Tapeworms, Time Paradoxes in SF,
                   SF Poetry - "I think that I shall never see..."
----------------------------------------------------------------------

ALLAN@MIT-MC 04/03/80 05:39:09 Re: Logging in Tapeworms.

     I don't think that a computer with an auto-dialer would have much
trouble getting login names and passwords for most of the machines on
the net.
     As you know, most systems allow some type of "who" command to
be issued without being logged in... most people choose rather
simple-minded passwords. A list of the 20 most common female names
would hit a not-insignificant number of passwords (a surprising
number of males use their wife/girlfriend's fist name).
     A few hours of patient attack for each machine would probably
be sufficient. An interesting paper on security system attack is
"Password Security: A Case History" by Morris and Thompson in CACM
V22,#11.
     As was pointed out by Ken Olum (in SFL V1 #65) there are not
so many different types of machines and operating systems that the
tapeworm program itself (armed with passwords) would have much
trouble.
     The tapeworm would, of course, travel by TELNET rather than FTP.
     The moral is, I think, that secure systems choose longish
'random-nonsense' passwords for users (who then won't be able to
remember them)!

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

KLH@MIT-AI 04/03/80 19:16:52 Re: Do I have to go through with this?

     I think some people have gross misconceptions about computer
technology that are akin to the early Sf stories about moon flights,
wherein a couple of backyard inventors throw together a rocket and
take off. It has often been remarked that nobody really predicted the
massive scale of effort that Apollo required. Even those people who
have started trying to build such backyard rockets for orbital flights
are making use of what was learned as a result of these projects, and
are still having problems.
     This is also much like what happened to early AI ideas,
particularly with respect to language translation. The point I am
trying to make is that MANY (if not most) of these Sf stories about
computers are using exactly this sort of naive viewpoint, which in
general exists whereever we don't really understand the complexities
of the problem. (What makes a volcano rumble? An angry god, of course.
What makes a computer think? A program, of course.) This doesn't
necessarily make stories less entertaining -- I like to relax when I
read, and a reversion to childlike belief in simplicity is easy to
make (consider star trek, star wars, etc).
     I could ramble for pages philosophizing about this sort of
thing, but I originally wanted to just explain why a tapeworm is so
difficult, and got carried away. Basically what you have here is an
AI problem, which you cannot win until you produce a beast which is
smarter than its creators, because the tapeworm is not attacking a
mechanical system but a human one. Diversity of host organisms is
only the least of your problems (Subtask 1: devise a hack that will
replicate itself on (a) a KA-10 (b) a PDP-11 (c) a 360 (d) a H-6180,
under the appropriate OS of (1) 20X, (2) ITS, (3) OS/MVT, (4) Multics,
(5) RSX-11M, (6) Unix, etc.) ... your real problem is the fact that
many people and organizations have an extremely active interest in
preventing such things from happening. The strategies and
counter-strategies can become rather sophisticated, and a General
Problem Solver hasn't been invented yet.

A simple example: you DON'T have "all the time in the world" to find
a password, because PEOPLE have figured this out and implemented
countering strategies (e.g. unsuccessful passwords cause the OS to
suspend interactions for a few seconds, too many failures for a name
(either at one session or over time) are called to operator's
attention, etc). The same computational features used to infiltrate a
system (speed, memory, hairy algorithms) can be used to defend it. You
might say that tapeworms are a self-defeating prophecy; awareness of
them breeds caution against them.

     It's not impossible, provided you have a severely restricted and
specialized environment. But for the ARPANET, my original comment
still stands -- hogwash.
     I hope no one gets any ideas of trying out a tapeworm on the ITS
systems to prove "it can be done". ITS was specifically designed to
let people do anything they wanted (which is why so many randoms use
it), so it won't prove much. Please test your parasites on Multics
instead. Or, if you want reasonable odds of success, you might succeed
with a Unix-specific tapeworm; certainly more orifices exist there.

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

Date:  2 Apr 1980 at 0314-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Subject: Cyclic/Recursive Stories

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TIME PARADOXES ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Nicholls` SF ENCYCLOPEDIA has an entry which seems relevant and
concludes: "The time-paradox story occupies a very special niche
among SF themes. Its attraction is the ingenuity with which
authors can wring new variants from its very constrained laws; in
this respect it is the equivalent in SF of the locked-room mystery.
Many time-paradox stories purport to be a light-hearted part of the
ancient philosophical debate about determinism and free will, but
generally they are remembered for their adroitness rather than their
metaphysical depth."

Heinlein`s 'By His Bootstraps' and 'All You Zombies' are cited as
classic treatments of the "exemplary form of the time paradox story...
which takes the closed loop and complicates it. ... Among later
writers, Robert Silverberg has most regularly made use of time-paradox
situations", e.g., STEPSONS OF TERRA, UP THE LINE, and 'Many
Mansions'. David Gerrold`s THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF "takes almost
every variant previously attempted and multiplies them endlessly".

Other types discussed are:

<> the prevention-of-paradox and/or time-police: Bester`s 'The Man
   Who Murdered Mohammed'; Anderson`s GUARDIANS OF TIME; and a series
   of books by B.J. Bayley, most notably THE FALL OF CHRONOPOLIS.

<> The simple-closed-loop: P. Schuyler Miller`s 'As Never Was';
   Leinster`s 'The Gadget Had a Ghost'; and Mack Reynolds` 'Compounded
   Interest'.

<> The altering-the-past-alters-the-present: Bradbury`s 'A Sound of
   Thunder'; DeCamp`s LEST DARKNESS FALL and 'Aristotle and the Gun';
   Ward Moore`s BRING THE JUBILEE; and Jack Williamson`s THE LEGION OF
   TIME.

As "other adventurous tales of time-paradox", mention is made of
Harness` FLIGHT INTO YESTERDAY (aka THE PARADOX MEN); Leiber`s
'Change War' series, e.g., THE BIG TIME; Asimov`s THE END OF
ETERNITY; and Tucker`s THE LINCOLN HUNTER.

I recall one of the 'Change War' stories in which the central idea
is that Time somehow "strains" to keep to the original pattern. The
protagonist, after being shot to death and recruited into the Change
War, sneaks back and pre-disposes of his killer, but is then by an
umpteen-million-to-one chance identically and lethally perforated by
a meteorite.

[ The story is "Try and Change the Past". It is available in the
  anthology "The End of Summer", a collection of 1950's SF edited
  by Barry Malzberg and Bill Pronzini. It is also available in
  "The Change War" a Gregg Press collection of all the Change War
  stories except for the series' one novel "The Big Time".  -- RDD ]

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

Date:  2 APR 1980 1023-PST
From: THURMOND at USC-ECL
Subject: I think that I shall never see...

     Darth Vader meet a large Wookiee.  
  It occurred to me the other day
     As I tried to think what EMPIRE may
  Be like; that Darth and Chewie ne'er shall meet,
     While strolling casual down some street --
  For, while mighty Vader tops seven feet,
     An eight-foot Wookiee has him beat.
  Darth Vader's built for glaring down,
     At puny insects scurrying 'round;
  Not teetering back on platform shoes
     To meet Chewbacca's baby blues.
  If such event should come to pass,
     Darth, I fear, would lose some class.

                             Rob

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

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

Date:  5 APR 1980 0500-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #68
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 5 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 68

  Today's Topics: Computer Hackery, Some Recursive Stories, Oh NO!!!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 4 Apr 1980 (Friday) 1728-EDT
From: WESTFW at WHARTON (William Westfield) 
Subject: tapeworms, computer intelligence, and graphics displays
 
For the most part, i have to agree with all that KLH says in reference
to the impossibility of tapeworms on the ARPA net (for a book that
discusses the problem of computer intelligence in a more realistic
sense, I recommend Hogan's THE TWO FACES OF TOMORROW). It should be
pointed out that there seem to be two discussions going on here...
intelligent worms, like P-1, and unintelligent worms that just sort
of log into a lot of hosts and sit there. I think that there can be
little argument that it would be possible to write a program that
would acquire accounts at  many sites on the NET. However, even after
a worm got this far, it will still have a lot of problems doing
anything malicious or useful, as logging on to a computer doesnt give
you the ability to do anything to it (except maybe ITS). As KLH said,
most people have a vested interest in preventing even illegitimate
logins, for example, here a Wharton, each login requires the account
number, a name, and two passwords (one for each). Records are made of
all failed logins, and every once in a while, these are scaned and a
listing of such attempts to prived accounts is made, which is then
carefully reviewed. Perhaps a better idea is to go after the KLINIK
telephone numbers (KLINIK is a DEC diagnostic tool -- it enables a
dialup line to look lke the console terminal).

By the way, in Hogans book, he refers to a holographic graphics
display. Is such a display possible, and is anyone working on such
a device ?

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

Date:  4 Apr 1980 1501-PST
From: Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
Subject: tapeworms

     The problem i see with these arpanet tapeworm schemes is
that the program will have to learn how to break into each machines
monitor. High level (machine-independent) languages do not provide
means to prevent a job from being logged off, get special
priviledges, survive crashes, etc. Since the net is universally
incompatable (except its), it would take  considerable work in say
fortran to do this. I put up with P1's IBM orientation because the
idea was it found a way to break into IBM machines, which are fairly
cloneish. Im not sure, but i believe the Shockwave net was also
pretty homogeneous, ie his "class 1 access code" or whatever was
recognized  everywhere. Perhaps the "net wizard" capability might
prove useful tho, if it is supported by monitors other than Twenex.
Also, i dont see why one would have to use the telnet socket...
there is more hi level compatability, for doing certain things,
in ftp i think...

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

Date: 4 Apr 1980 0159-PST (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: tapeworms: FOO!

I hope this is the last word on tapeworms. Do people really think that
most system administrators are SO STUPID that they won't notice odd
login patterns, mystery processes, and other assorted things that go
bump in the night?

I am not speaking here of strange artifacts of multi-processor
configurations, but of a real purposeful, directed "tapeworm".

For example, on the Unix systems I work with, I am very conscious of
odd failing login patterns, user processes hiding in the background
that shouldn't be there, and similar sorts of events. Basically,
unless you have some way to gain superuser status, there is no
reasonable way to hide anything (or get anything to stay running
between boots for that matter.) Most facilities with any sense use
non-trivial passwords for enabled accounts, to avoid any problems
with exhaustive search type hacks. And given the way most Unix
administrators tend to check the process tables occasionally, I
cannot see how any true tapeworm could be initiated or maintained.
(This isn't even considering the fact that net usage is carefully
monitored and controlled on many sites.)

I concur with some previous opinions on this point -- tapeworms
are an amusing concept for popular fiction, but have little if any
reality in fact. Remember, many of the people who design, operate,
and maintain ARPANET systems grew up on SF over the years, and a fair
number have given considerable thoughts to such topics as tapeworms
and other "insidious" ideas over the years. And they are the perfect
people to make sure that such creatures do not come to be.
 
So, here is the last word:  FOO!
 
--Lauren--
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 4 Apr 1980 8:25 pm PST (Friday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: tapeworm thoughts

I realize there's been a lot of wind blowing back and forth on this
issue, but I'd like to explore a couple of points with regard to
tapeworms, from a couple of different directions that haven't been
touched upon yet (I think).

The first point involves a perhaps obvious anology with biological
parasitism. As has already been pointed out (by KLH@MIT-AI in  SFL
#67, among others), the computational environment in which a tapeworm
must survive is far from a friendly one. This says to me that the
successful tapeworm, in addition to being highly specific to a
particular class of hosts, will have also a prolific rate of
reproduction. Like a biological parasite it will also be subject to
predation and a changing environment. Therefore it will have to be
adaptive as well. If the tapeworm concept is possible at all, it may
well turn out that some form of evolution by random mutation will be
an inevitable consequence (though, of course, the vast majority of
such mutations will not survive).

On the other hand, to make a mathematical argument now, there is
reason to think that a computer network can be built which can be
proved secure against penetration and thus immune to parasites of
any kind. This notion is based on a concept of cryptography,
developed at Stanford by Marty Hellman and Whitfield Diffie, known
as a public-key cryptosystem. Such a system has actually been
implemented at MIT by Ron Rivest and his colleagues. (I am not a
cryptologist; it may be that a provably secure system can be built
around conventional cryptosystems.) Anyway, this work would seem
to indicate that the tapeworm concept is doomed.

BUT if that's true, does it mean it's possible to design an organism
that can perfectly police its own biological machinery, and thus be
provably secure against invasion by parasitic organisms?

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

Date:  4 Apr 1980 at 0343-CST From: amsler at UTEXAS Subject:
Michaelmas - The ultimate computer take-over novel ?
 
Now I'm sure a lot of you will object because this novel doesn't
really have a great ending, (It's the type that makes you feel that
YOU could have created a better ending, considering how much you had
enjoyed the story up until that point), but "Michaelmas" by Algis J.
Budrys (Berkley, 1978 pb) concerns a  man who would seem to be very
much like our image of Walter Cronkite, who actually RUNS THE WORLD
(but nobody knows it) via a computer system. I found it to be
great fun and an excellent (albeit mythical) treatment of the
ability to interconnect computers in a very distributed network.
It's hard reading (tightly written), but in my view well worth it
for anyone fascinated by conjectures of computers infiltrating
mechanisms,etc.
 
------------------------------
 
Date:  3 April 1980 13:11 est
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Non SF Recursive and Nested Stories

Probably the oldest surviving nested stories are those we call the
"1001 Arabian Nights". If you are familiar only with the popularized
versions of the movies, you are in for a treat. I don't know of any
better source then the Penguin paperback for this.

A modern variation on the 1001 nights legend was done by John Barth,
in "Chimera". ("Chimera" is actually the title of the book containing
the story. The story title is "Dunyazadiad".) Briefly, the story
presents an alternate view of the 1001 nights, from the vantage of
the little sister of Scheherazade. A genie (Barth?) converses with
the girl - telling her that she is part of a larger story. He also
supplies her with stories to tell the King - stories which he reads
from the 1001 Nights....

Many self-referential stories can be found in the work of Jorge Luis
Borges. Although not a science fiction writer, I think his work might
come under the broader class of fantasy. It is good, in any event. His
writing includes traces of Kaballah, Islam, the "gauchos" (Argentenian
cowboys), mythical beasts, imaginary history, labyrinths, and self
reference.

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

BARMAR@MIT-MC 04/02/80 02:55:55

One recursion story, which has been mentioned a bit, but not to the
extent that I feel it was worth, was Gerrold's THE MAN WHO FOLDED
HIMSELF. In this, the character is given (purchases?) a time-belt, and
starts going backward and meeting himself. He has full recollection
of what is going on, and can alter the time-line. For instance, he
goes to the racetrack with his self from the next day. When he is
coming back from placing the bet, he sees someone walking away from
tomorrow's self. The next day, while yesterday-self is  placing a bet,
tomorrow-self comes, tellin him no to bet the way he (tomorrow-self)
remembers he did (as a test in changing the past) self realizes that
the man he saw on the previous day was himself from two days ahead
meeting with tomorrow-self. Eventually he realizes that there are
infinite parallel time-lines, and jumps among all of them, meeting
himself wen he is old and his female selves. All these selves just
pop in and out, have parties, orgies, etc. How many people get to
see their own death?

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

Date: 4 Apr 1980 1732-PST (Friday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: Hugo Nominations

Yes, I realize the idea is impractical, and could lead to trouble,
but...

   Just suppose that everyone on SF-LOVERS nominated SF-LOVERS for
Best Fanzine. Just think of it. The first electronic magazine and
the first to win an award. Maybe if we all nominated "SF Lovers,
Roger Duffey II, editor" and didn't tell anyone WHAT that zine was...

  Nah. Just an idea.
	Mike

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

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

Date:  6 APR 1980 0731-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #69
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 6 April 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 69

  Today's Topics:  Administrivia, Tapeworms, Women's SF, Filksongs,
                  More on Recursive & Time Travel Paradox SF Stories
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Administrivia:

Yesterday's digest contained a message from Mike at UCLA-SECURITY
which fancifully suggested that SF-LOVERS be nominated for this
year's Hugo Award for "Best Fanzine". Recently I have been
approached by a number of different people who have suggested that
we could have a beneficial influence on the SF community, or the
computer hobbiests, or manufacturers by taking some of the material
sent to these lists and distributing it to individuals outside our
research communities. I decided to bring these suggestions to the
attention of the list as a whole because they have come up several
times in the last few weeks, and all of these ideas have one thing
in common: they would almost certainly result in publicity for these
activities and for the ARPAnet.

And this publicity would be extremely harmful. SF-LOVERS would only
be considered a misuse of public funds since it does not support ARPA
sponsored research. At the very least, DCA would order that SF-LOVERS
be eliminated. However, if the publicity attracted sufficient
political attention (eg. from Proxmire and his Golden Fleece Award)
it could result in the removal of machines from the ARPAnet for
several years, loss of funding for research, and even curtailment of
the funding that supports the ARPAnet itself.

Whether or not we could be a beneficial influence is not an issue.
These risks far outweigh any possible benefit from activities that
could lead to publicity about the mailing lists or the ARPAnet.
Therefore, PLEASE DO NOT NOMINATE SF-LOVERS FOR "Best Fanzine".
Even just a few letters would endanger the list and the net itself.
Further, PLEASE BE AWARE OF THESE DANGERS in what you do, since that
awareness is the best and the only defense that we have.

                                                Roger Duffey

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

Date:  5 Apr 1980 1223-EST
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: tapeworms: BAR

one way a tapeworm could exist on the net is to trade accounts with
the systems staff of each new machine, and then use that one to
create accounts to trade for accts at more sites, etc. obviously,
this is one of the "intelligent" class of tapeworms. It would need
the capability to compose letters, and perhaps link and simulate
typing. DREIFUS@WHARTON, are you such a tapeworm? We won't give you
away...

Rah! Rah! SF-Lovers for Best Fanzine! Rah! Rah! [NO! NO! -- RDD]

		--JoSH

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

DAUL@MIT-MC 04/06/80 00:46:47
Re: Women Authors With Women's Perspective?

I have a friend who is interested in reading "women's" SF. I
don't remember if this has been discussed here. Could I get
some recommendations of authors and works? How about a short 
description?

THX - Bill

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

Date: 04 Apr 1980 2308-PST
From: Ken Olum <KDO at SU-AI>
Subject: Filksong request   

Upon going to Westercon 32 last year, I discovered there were these
marvelous things called (due to a type, I hear) filksongs, that is
songs written about sf, generally to someone else's tune, generally
funny, although I remember quite a few good serious ones too. I
unfortunately had forgot my tape recorder and do not remember the
words to them. If anyone has such on line or wants to type them in
they would receive my undying gratitude (& if I can find some printed
words locally I will do some typing work myself). Of  particular
interest at the moment are a song about BSG to the tune of "my
favorite things" and "The Motie Engineers." Come to think of it I
know someone (HIMA%AI) who has Niven's "Ringworld Engineers" song
on tape, I'll type it in sometime if people are interested.

					Ken

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

Date: 31 MAR 1980 1135-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: time loops/paradoxes

  Time loops happen to be one of my minor interests, especially
in stories where the author logically tries to handle the obvious
corollaries. One of the most popular and least believable ideas (I
think it has been popular partly for the same reason as "The Lady or
the Tiger"--it poses an arguable and totally unanswerable question)
is that of the object which somebody gets from the future and puts
in a present-day museum, which turns into the ruins from which the
object was first gotten. Unless you declare that time travel requires
the extra energy needed to create this object, you have matter from
nowhere.
  L. Sprague de Camp, in "A Gun for Dinosaur", has one of the most
elegant theories: anyone trying to create a paradox (in this case
killing someone who insulted him before the insult was delivered)
will be slammed back to ground zero by the strain on space-time that
he attempts to create. Since you can treat a second as the equivalent
of 300,000 kilometers such a journey tends to leave the paradoctor
very messily dead.
  Alfred Bester, in "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed", has a similar
solution, appropriately more fantastical: someone who tries to alter
history merely destroys his own reality, and ultimately can time
travel without a device at all--for all the good it does him. This
is based on a solipsist notion (each person has his own complete
and universal history), but fun.
  John Brunner, in a set of novelets published by Ace and entitled
TIMES WITHOUT NUMBER, posits time travel as basically unstable: if
any alteration of the past is possible, people will keep meddling
until somebody does something that wipes out the history and
technology that led to time travel in the first place. The
background of the story assumes the victory of the Spanish Armada
and a subsequent Time Service, Church-controlled. The hero winds
up, in full Spanish cavalier regalia, appearing from nowhere in
the middle of contemporary Central Park.
  Anthony Boucher's "Snulbug" (published in a number of places,
including his posthumous collection THE COMPLEAT WEREWOLF) uses
recursion as a logical solution---a man with tomorrow's newspaper
tries to convince the mayor of his proximate asassination, but when
the mayor starts to believe him the lead is immediately precipitated
back to the moment he entered city hall. He goes through this half a
dozen times before Snulbug (a SMALL demon) convinces him that it just
won't work.
  And for another recursive example, Poul Anderson's THERE WILL BE
TIME (highly recommended) posits occasional genetic sports who can
travel through time without aid and as quickly as their reflexes
will work, thus allowing the lead not only to serve as a mentor for
his younger self but also to gang himself up on some bullies,
outnumbering them all by himself!
  The notion of our remote descendants "abandoning ship" through a
time machine also takes a nasty twist in Peter Heath's THE MIND
BROTHERS---the people from the future are here now and doing whatever
dirty work is necessary to let them fit in inconspicuously. Suspect
that there are several other stories on this general idea but can't
bring any to mind.
  Perhaps the ultimate "cyclic history" story is "Letter to a Phoenix",
in that same rare Fredric Brown collection (ANGELS AND SPACESHIPS). The
author posits that we are immortal precisely because we ruin ourselves
back to the old stone age every 30K years or so---cultures which reach
a high point and stay there simply decay into nothing. (Not directly
time travel, but strongly recursive with slight variations---the
planet between Mars and Jupiter was a rebellious colony 5 civilizations
back, the Martians are degenerate leftovers from the last high point,
etc. Point of view is someone whose metabolism was knocked out of gear
by an explosion, so he ages one day's worth every 45 years (and sleeps
for 15 of them). GRIM!

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

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

Date:  7 APR 1980 0708-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #70
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 7 April 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 70

Today's Topics:   Reply on Women's SF, More Time-Travel SF Stories,
               Reply on Filksongs, Title Query on Duckworth, Tapeworms
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  7 Apr 1980 at 0231-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ WOMEN'S SF: Books ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

"Women's SF" is a pretty broad topic, but at least it is, presumably,
science fiction per se that Bill (KDO at MIT-MC) is asking about
rather than fantasy, which is a whole 'nother ball park.

The topic may have been particularized somewhat in the subject line:
"Women Authors with Women's Perspective". This would seem to eliminate
some interesting stuff by women who wrote as PERSONS rather than as
WOMEN, such as Leigh Brackett, or Andre Norton in her pre-fantasy
period, which is a pity. It also by-passes some good books with female
protagonists that were written by men, such as James Schmitz and F.M.
Busby, which is also a pity.

However, there are still 2 diametrically opposite ways of interpreting
"women authors with women's perspective-- the harshly feminist and the
gently feminine. Joanna Russ is the epitome of the former; Zenna
Henderson, of the latter.

In Russ' camp, tho not quite so strident, one would probably count
Suzy McKee Charnas, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Kate Wilhelm.

Definitely on the other side, but a much less skilled runner-up, is
Cristabel. Mildred Clingerman is probably closest to Henderson, but
some others, less open to the accusation of saccharinity, are Naomi
Mitchison in MEMOIRS OF A SPACEWOMAN, Cary Neeper, Sylvia Louise
Engdahl, H.M. Hoover, and some of Anne McCaffrey.

For something less extreme than the above, try Marion Zimmer Bradley's
SHATTERED CHAIN and RUINS OF ISIS; Rosel George Brown's SIBYL SUE BLUE
and WATERS OF CENTAURUS; Octavia E. Butler's MIND OF MY MIND and
SURVIVOR; Cynthia Felice's GODSFIRE; Vonda McIntyre's DREAMSNAKE; and
Joan Slonczewski's STILL FORMS ON FOXFIELD (tho this latter is flawed
by its religious rather than feminist polemics).

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

MIKE@MIT-MC 04/02/80 10:30:16

Another recursive story is Isaac Asimov's "The End of Eternity". In
it, there is a kind of elevator that moves through levels of time
(instead of stopping at floors, it stops at centuries). The creation
of this structure is self-perpetuating (it was created by somebody
from the future that went back in the past due to this device, etc.)
The main character tries to break the cycle. There are all kinds of
time travel paradoxes scattered throughout the story and it makes
interesting reading for those.

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

Date:  6 Apr 1980 11:44:52 EST
From: Dan Franklin <dan at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: time loops

In the last SF-LOVERS (V1 #69), Chip Hitchcock mentioned a series of
novelets by John Brunner with the theme that time travel was unstable,
because eventually someone altered the past in such a way as to remove
the technological/scientific supports for it. Anyone who has read
Isaac Asimov's 'The End of Eternity' must immediately ask: who stole
from whom? Or did they both come up with this idea independently?

[ Read on before you make up your mind -- RDD ]

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

TANG@MIT-MC 04/04/80 21:44:14

     One of the authors who deals most imaginatively with time travel
paradoxes is Keith Laumer. His Dinosaur Beach novel, for instance, is
based upon the idea that paradoxes create tears in the universe. But
when people try to patch the tears, their patches tear the fabric of
reality even more.

     By the way, Laumer's Worlds of the Imperium series deals with
parallel universes, especially with alternate Earths, which gives you
all the possibilities of time travel without the bother of paradox's.
. . .

     Parallel universes have problems of their own, however, since
as Larry Niven pointed out in "All the Myriad Ways", if they are so
nearly parallel that there are an infinite number of copies of
yourself, each living all the possible variations of your life, you
might get depressed at your insignifigance.

     And then, of course there are the Shadows of the Amber series
(by Zelazny).

				hackerjack

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

AUTHOR@MIT-MC 04/06/80 13:28:04

   Several notes:
    1) Filthy Pierre (AKA Erwin Strauss) publishes a reguarly-updated
book of filksongs. Filthy, who is often in attendence at eastcoast
cons lives somewhere near here in maryland -- I can look him up if
someone requests, or his address and phone can be found by consulting
IASFM (he runs - or used to run, the SF calendar for IASFM). [ He still
does.  --  RDD ]
    2) All this talk of recursive/iterative/circular SF has made
me wonder about other types of stories that have computer-related
architecture. Hogan's "Thrice Upon A Time" is an example of a "stack-
oriented" story: the more-forward-in-time hero decides that history
has to be changed and does so, sending info back in time and thus
popping time off the top of the stack. Zelazny's "Today We Choose
Faces" novel does not concern timetravel but also has a stack oriented
character who stores his memory and destructive impulses on a stack
and pops them off when his world is under attack and he needs his
destructive and violent ways to combat the attackers (the book isn't
all that good because Zelazny pulls some nasty surprises on the
unsuspecting reader near the end). I am not especially asking for
other people to overload sf-lovers with similar works, but if anyone
comes up with some remarkable stories or "architectures", I'd be
curious.
    3) Concerning Black SF: didn't Wilson (Bob) Tucker once do a
time-travel novel called "The Endless Summer" (I know that's wrong)
or something? It was published as an Ace Special some few years back.
       Greg

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

Date:  6 April 1980 1835-EST (Sunday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A> 
Subject: Re: Filksong request

Ken,
	You can get a copy of the 'Filksongs' in a bookish type form
from Erwin S. Strauss(Filthy Pierre)...who is the same guy who does
the Conventions in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.

				Doug
P.S. I can send you his address if you want.

P.P.S. I have been meaning to type in some of them myself but
	have never got around to it.

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

Date:  7 APR 1980 0125-EST
From: VILAIN at MIT-MC (Michael Vilain)
Subject: FILKSONG NEWS for those who (literally) asked for it!

For those of you who DON'T know what a filksong is, I've enclosed a
sample, which is best appreciated when sung in a group of 5 or more
people. There are plans in the future to commercially record some
filksongs for HOURGLASS Productions (10292 Westminster Ave. Garden
Grove, CA 92643) and there is a tape which has original SF folksongs
available now ("Children of the Future" by Karen Willson $5.95 + 6% CA
Sales Tax). I'll keep looking for the fan who has the lyrics to
"Ringworld Engineers".

Would anyone be interested in the amazing INSTARITER from K-TEL? I
have some commercial copy on it I can send on request.

<Mike Vilain>


		BARKER and FONTANA ROAST BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
                     by Lynn Barker and Dorothy Fontana

	(sung to the tune "My Favorite Things" from SOUND OF MUSIC)

Microns and hectares and novas and centons
Pulsars and turbos and parsecs and metrons
Used interchangably at every turn,
These are the things that make SF fans burn.

Centares, cylons, imperious leaders,
If you were a book, you would lose all your readers.
Great loards of COBOL have lead you astray.
Don't you know Earth is the opposite way?

(Chorus)
	Launch the vipers, hit the turbos, will you make it back?
	And when you are jumped by a Cylon patrol,
	Then all you can say is FRACK!

Adama and Boxey, Apollo, Athena
Starbuck and Boomer and poor dead Serena,
These are the characters who lead the way.
Wish that they had something clever to say.

Star systems, galaxies, and asteroids,
Dust clouds and starfields and small planetoids,
Science eludes you. You dazzle the eye,
But we know you're piling the felgercarb high.

(Chorus)
	Drink ambrosa, play at triad, wait for more attacks.
	Don't be concerned if in battle you die,
	The gods will just bring you back.

Scouting patrols and reconnaisance flights
Snap-rolls at light speed and other strange sights
Egyptian helmets that glow in the dark
How come the Cylons can miss such a mark?

GUNS OF NAVARRONE, HEAVEN CAN WAIT,
Classics like SHANE, and other cinema greats.
How about some stories that we haven't seen
Already done on the big silver screen?

(Chorus)
	Kill the Cylons, frustrate Baltar, hide the plot you lack.
	Just give us quality in all of your shows,
	Or all we can say is FRACK!

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

Date: 4 Apr 1980 1715-EST
From: SRAJUNAS at BBN-TENEX

From John Delaney (Delaney at LL)

---------- Begin forwarded message ----------

Date: 04/04/80 1300-EST
From: DELANEY at LL
To: SRAJUNAS at BBN-TENEX

Can one of you obscurists out there give me a reference (dates or
issues) for a series of stories which ran a few years ago in IF and/or
GALAXY having as the central character a scientist named Duckworth who
invented several implausible devices, each of which got him into a
great deal of trouble?

---------- End forwarded message ----------
		
------------------------------

Date:  6 Apr 1980 1155-EST
From: DREIFUS.JSOL at RUTGERS
Subject: TAPEWORMS AND ACCOUNTS.
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI


FOO:	ALTHOUGH I THINK IT (ENTIRELY POSSIBLE);

	FOR A TAPEWORM TO HAVE THE INTELLIGENCE TO ASK FOR AN ACCOUNT;

	I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THE DREIFUS@WHARTON IS SUCH A TAPE WORM;

	AND I AM NOT SUCH A CREATED NUISANCE!   {goto foo};


					Cheers,

	END FOO

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

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

Date:  8 APR 1980 0413-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #71
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 8 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 71

  Today's Topics:    On Hugos and Fanzines, More on Women's SF,
                  Recursive/Time Travel Stories, SF on Boston Radio
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 7 Apr 1980 0852-PST (Monday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest V1 #70

   Sigh. I apparently should have phrased the $%&'$%& message
in such a way as to make it CRYSTAL CLEAR that I understood the
danger of publicizing SF-LOVERS. I never cease to be amazed by
the literal-mindedness of otherwise intelligent people. Example...
   I sent a message to Geoff Goodfellow a while back with some silly
"suggestions" for solutions to world problems, including "Return the
Shah to Iran--with smallpox". With my permission, Geoff posted the
message in the MIT bulletin board with my name on it. Mea Culpa, I
wasn't thinking of the implications of public release. One reply was
something like "the others might be considered amusing, but THERE IS
NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT SMALLPOX. Grow up already." I felt sorta bad about
this, but then realized that a disease that is not likely to bother
6 people in the next century must surely be no less humorous than
palestinians, northern irish, and other stuff that was in the message.

   Lesson 1. People don't understand irony or black humor.
   Lesson 2. When in doubt, don't depend on the editor to
             censor. He might be more understanding, too!

   Incidentally, if Lauren doesn't get around to it soon, I'm going
to have to write up a scenario we've discussed...
   "Tonight, Mike Wallace investigates an expensive Defense Network,
and discovers how researchers spend your money, on 60 minutes
(ticktickticktick..)"
	Mike

[ In this case the problem was that many people that see this list
  might have taken the suggestion seriously, instead of seeing it
  as humor. A reader must be familiar with the ARPAnet environment
  to appreciate the humor in that message. A significant number of
  the people reading this digest are new to the ARPAnet or are
  otherwise unfamiliar with it. Hence care is needed, by all of us.
                                                         -- RDD    ]

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

Date: 07 APR 1980 1227-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Hugos

  As it happens, SFLovers' distribution list includes the chairman
and two of the division heads of the current World Science Fiction
Convention---including the person in charge of WSFS business, which
includes the nomination and voting of the Hugos. However, there are
several technical problems entirely aside from Roger's caveats which
moot the question of nominating SFL.

  1. SFL does not qualify as a generally available fanzine--if the
     circulation is limited for any reason (including unaccess to
     computers) the zine is out of the running.
  2. Nominated materials can't include anything from anyone on the
     committee (this was already brought up when some jokers wanted
     to nominate TWILIGHTZINE, the MITSFS fanzine, to which I also
     contribute).
  3. Several of the local fans on the SFLovers distribution have
     concluded that this isn't really a fanzine; it's an APA, and
     is occasionally referred to as APA-ARPA. (APA= Amateur Press
     Association, a package periodically assembled from the
     contributions of its members, where a fanzine is:
        a) edited rather than assembled;
        b) made up from solicited material rather
           than from whatever comes in.
     This is a weak definition, but fuller explanation could
     take several pages.)
  4. Nominations for this year closed 3 weeks ago.

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

Date: 7 Apr 1980 1346-PST (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: female SF writers with female viewpoints

One book I've had laying around here at my hatchery of dreams
is called "High Couch of Silistra" by Janet E. Morris. It is
semi-pornographic at times, but then I've always considered
that a plus. I don't know if Janet ever got around to writing
anything else.

--Lauren--

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

Date:  7 April 1980 13:28 est
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Feminist SF
To:  SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

For those who want to read Feminist SF, see James Tiptree, Jr. Don't
be mislead by the pseudonymn, Tiptree is a woman who also writes as
Racoona Sheldon. Her work is by no means limited to feminist issues,
so even confirmed chavunists should enjoy it. She has written three
collections of stories (10,000 Light Years From Home, Warm Worlds and
Otherwise, and Star Songs of an Old Primate) and a novel, "Up the
Walls of the World". To single out one of her stories would be hard,
but look for "The Women Men Don't See".

"Women of Wonder" is a set of anthologies of women's SF. The titles of
the first two are Women of Wonder and More Women of Wonder. I forget
the title of the last, but it too has "W of W" in it.

Calling Russ's work "harshly feminist" seems pretty unfair to me. Her
work is based on a harsh reality - sexism isn't pretty or gentle. I
like technological escapist stuff, too (Hogan, Niven, even EE Smith)
but in real life I'm a feminist. By the way, some of Tiptree's work is
pretty hard to take, too. Then again, so is H. Ellison.

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

Date:  7 Apr 1980 at 2001-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ WOMEN'S SF: anthologies, fanzines ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If Bill (DAUL at MIT-MC)'s friend is interested in a wider range of
authors to try, or perhaps prefers shorter stories to taking a chance
on a book, there are a number of "women's perspective" anthologies.
Except possibly for AMAZONS!, the bulk of the stories are probably
SF rather than fantasy.

   McInryre, V.N., and S.J. Anderson, eds.,
      AURORA: BEYOND EQUALITY, Fawcett, 1976.
   Ghidalia, Vic, and R. Elwood, eds.,
      THE VENUS FACTOR, Manor, 1972.
   Kidd, Virginia, ed.,
      MILLENNIAL WOMEN, Dell, 1979.
   Salmondson, Jessica Amanda, ed.,
      AMAZONS! DAW, 1979.
   Scortia, T.N., and C.Q. Yarbro, eds.,
      TWO VIEWS OF WONDER, Ballantine, 1973.
   And 3 edited by Pamela Sargent:
      WOMEN OF WONDER; MORE WOMEN OF WONDER;
      and THE NEW WOMEN OF WONDER, Vintage, 197?-1978.

I include these as adjuncts to my "SF Books With Female Protagonists"
collection, but am not particularly familiar with their contents. I
recall most of the stories as tending to be "downers" or "lit'ry",
esp. in the Sargent's. Vaguely, it seems that I found the Kidd and the
Salmondson the most readable, tho as might be expected from the title
AMAZONS!, things often got a little rough in the latter.

TWO VIEWS OF WONDER had an intriguing gimmick. The editors paired a
group of writers, male and female, assigning each pair the same
general story theme, keeping it secret who was whose "partner" until
after the stories were in. I have a feeling that if one read the
paired stories without any information as to their authors, it would
usually be possible to guess which was by the man and which by the
woman. For instance, one of the themes involved the rediscovery of a
planet settled by a misanthropic molecular biologist. Protagonist
falls in love with a native only to discover the inhabitants are
mutated domestic animals. One author derived them from dogs; the
other, from cats. You will readily guess which.

The small press magazine WINDHAVEN (Atalanta Press, Box 5688,
Univ. Station, Seattle 98105) features essays, stories, news, reviews,
and letters regarding fantasy and SF from a feminist point of view.
I've not seen it, but I have seen the (somewhat) feminist oriented
fanzine JANUS (c/o SF3, Box 1624, Madison, WI, 53701) which is
e-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t. Interesting, amusing, visually pleasing, and NOT
strident.

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

BARRYG@MIT-MC 04/08/80 01:46:32 Re: "Women's SF" - MZB

After looking over the responses Monday on Women's SF, I'm glad there
was at least a mention of Marion's Darkover series. Marion is the only
person I know who can write about a thoroughly MCPish world and still
preserve the integrity of the women in her stories. McCaffrey and
LeGuin have societies which seem, on the surface, much more balanced,
with more freedom for women, but the women characters seem as
submissive (or covertly hostile) as any in a 19th century romance.
Dragonsong, in particular, made me sick - it was well written but
seemed to have as its main theme "let's see what else we can put
Menolly through." (Admittedly, Pern society is somewhat MCPish, but
compare Menolly with the lady in the first half of The Shattered
Chain. And Helga seems to spend much of her time looking for a
husband.) Now that I've offended almost everybody, I'll get back to
work.

	/barryg

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

Date:  7 April 1980 13:16 est
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Sequel to Peter Heath's "Mind Brothers"

A sequel to Peter Heath's "The Mind Brothers" [see SFL V1 #69]
is "Assassins From Tomorrow", where we learn who REALLY killed
JFK. One neat aspect to the badguys time machine. It is a sphere
that maps points on the surface of the sphere to points all over
space/time.

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

Date:  7 Apr 1980 1312-EST
From: JHENDLER at BBN-TENEXA
Subject: TIME TRAVEL AND HUMOR

ANOTHER SLANT ON TIME TRAVEL, NOT MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY IN THESE FILES,
IS THAT PROPOSED (TONGUE IN CHEEKLY) BY NIVEN IN "FLIGHT OF THE HORSE",
(I FORGET WHAT IT WAS LATER RENAMED). HE SUGGESTS THAT BY GOING BACK
INTO THE PAST, SINCE THE REAL PAST IS OFF LIMITS (DUE TO PARADOXES),
ONE GOES INTO A FICTICIOUS PAST. NONE OF THESE STORIES ARE SERIOUS
READING OR DEEP PHILOSOPHICALLY, BUT SOME OF THEM ARE CUTE.

   -JIM

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

Date: 1 Apr 1980 1426-EST
From: foner@bbn-tenexa (Lenny Foner)
Subject: More on recursive stories

          On recursive stories, a "might be" entry.  Larry  Niven
wrote a story a while ago called "Singularities Make Me Nervous,"
which deals with a character who is told to fly his ship  through
the  ergosphere  (I think) of a black hole, to see if time travel
is possible that way.  He eventually chickens out, but then meets
himself,  six  months before he leaves: obviously, we are dealing
with his second generation.  The first went to  the  black  hole,
and  returned six months before he was due to leave.  Thus, there
are now two of them around.  As one  of  them  comments,  he  has
found a way to breed very expensive spacecraft.

I  don't  believe  that  this  story  fits  all the recursiveness
qualifications, but it may fit some.

                                                <LNF>

[ This is another story from Niven's "Convergent Series"
  collection. See SFL V1 #63 for more on this anthology.  -- RDD ]

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

Date: 04/07/80 1046-EST
From: KG Heinemann (SORCEROR at LL)
Subject: FOUNDATION Radio Drama

     SF Lovers in the Boston area may be interested in knowing that
WGBH-FM is presenting an 8-part dramatization of Asimov's FOUNDATION
Trilogy. It is being broadcast on Saturday nights, after the Boston
Symphony Orchestra concerts (approximately 10PM).
     The first episode, last Saturday (April 5), covered the
establishment and first 50 years of the First Foundation on Terminus.
I was quite pleased with it. FOUNDATION works well as drama, because
the novels consist so much of dialogue without violent physical action
and exotic settings. It probably makes a much better drama than it
would a movie or TV production. This presentation followed the book
quite faithfully, with out any alterations to accomodate gimmicky
attention-grabbing flourishes. The only annoying feature was the
inclusion of 'spacey' sound effects between vignettes.
     I stumbled across this quite accidently; just happened to have
tuned in the concert and heard an announcement for the FOUNDATION
series. I am rather surprised that there had been no mention of this
in SF-LOVERS, after all the attention that television SF productions
were receiving in January. FOUNDATION is a work of no less stature
that those which have been televised. Shame on Boston area media SF
enthusiasts.

                                    KGH

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

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

Date:  9 APR 1980 0326-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #72
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Wednesday, 9 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 72

  Today's Topics: Filksongs, SF Yarns - Radio & Women's & Recursive,
                              Is TESB's Yoda a puppet?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

BARRYG@MIT-MC 04/07/80 21:19:14 Re: filksongs

In reply to the request from Ken Olum about filksongs, I have the text
of a large number (several hundred). Some are to standard folk or rock
tunes, others are new tunes to published songs (e.g. "Lament for
Boromir" from the Lord of the Rings). I'm not about to start typing
them in right now, but will if someone can arrange access to a system
that will draw the notes, as I have wanted for some time to publish a
version with both words and music.
	/barry

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

BARMAR@MIT-MC 04/08/80 21:49:25

If anyone is interested in Star Trek filksongs, Roberta Rogow, a noted
ST filksinger has a collection entitled Sing a Song of Trekkin'. If
you would like to know where to get one, send me mail at BARMAR@MC.

					-Barry

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

DP@MIT-ML 04/08/80 02:43:54 Re: More on Filk.

For the record...

Hymnals:

  The NESFA Hymnal, 2nd Ed.              The Hopsfa Hymnal, 4th ed.

  NESFA                                  C/O Hopsfa
  P.O. Box G                             Student Activities Commission
  MIT Branch PO.                         The Johns Hopkins University
  Cambridge, MA 02139                    Baltimore, MD. 21218
  ISBN #0-915368-69-2

  Cost:    $10. 202 pages,               cost: $10. 304 pages
           lie flat (GBC) binding.
  Indexes: Title, Author.                Indexes: Title, First line.
  Music:   Guitar chords, All songs.     Music: None


  Filthy Pierre's MICRO FILK

  Erwin S. "Filthy Pierre" Strauss
  9909 Good Luck Rd. T2
  Lanham MD 20801.
  Music: Chords, some songs.

  Cost:    $7 (but may have changed)
           40 pages (404 songs) REDUCED SIZE PRINT.
  Indexes: Title, Subject, Author, Tune, Page.

   The NESFA Hymnal was composed on an ARPAnet system (I was part of
several monday night teco sessions at CCA) I do not think the files
are still around on the net.
   The Hopsfa hymnal is just out (I got my copy at Balticon saturday)
Hopsfa in the past has had problems with copyrights, in fact that is
what delayed the printing of this edition. (there are 4 songs covered
over in it because permission was denied after printing) there are a
fair number of errors in it, with several songs miscredited or
uncredited. None of the songs has music or guitar chords (even with
original or obscure tunes (have you ever met anyone that new the tune
to "Men of Harlech"))
   The Micro Filk published by Erwin Strauss is interesting in format.
Printed greatly reduced on legal sized paper, he gets about 10 normal
pages to a side. It is rather difficult to read, and Filthy includes a
magnifying bar with each. The pages are loose, held into a notebook
with a clamp. This allows him to issue new pages, but allows you to
loose yours.
   Filking comes in two forms, one the "midwest style" is a few good
singers and an audience. the other "eastern format" is many LOUD
singers, with all joining in. Filking tends to occur late at night ,
and the particpants have often left their inhibitions with the beer of
a con party. Another popular place for singing seems to be on the ride
to and from the con... A few years back a car full of fen returning
from DISCLAVE got stuck in traffic on the Tappan Zee bridge. The
occupants rolled down the windows and sung "What do you do with a
Drunken Spaceman" for the cars stuck around them.
				enjoy,
                                   Jeff DP

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

Date: 8 Apr 1980 1030-PST
From: DDYER at USC-ISIB
Subject: SF on radio

The dramatization of the FOUNDATION TRILOGY thatwas mentioned tuesday
is a BBC production, vintage about 1970. I have heard it, and agree
that it is quite good.

For residents of southern california, I recommend HOUR 25, science
fiction program; Fridays 10PM to Midnight, on KPFK FM (90.7)

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

Date:  8 Apr 1980 0746-PST
From: Meyers at SRI-KL (Harris A. Meyers)
Subject: Janet E. Morris

Actually there are (atleast) 3 other books out by her, all part of
the same story. The Golden Sword, Wind from the Abyss, The Carnelian
Throne. [see SFL V1 #71]

harris

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

Date: 31 Mar 1980 0144-PST (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: time recursion

Here are some others that come to mind:

1) As Never Was -- by P. Schuyler Miller
   The story of a man, a grandfather, a knife, and time travel.
   [by the way, this is from the collection, "Adventures in Time
    and Space" which also includes "Farewell to the Master" by
    Harry Bates -- the basis for "The Day the Earth Stood Still".]

2) The Time Axis -- by Henry Kuttner
   A group of people travel into the future to save the past.

3) Flux -- I forget the author
   A man travels into the future but gets lost in the randomness
   of time.

4) Not For an Age -- Brian Aldiss
   This is a strange one. A contemporary history professor is caught
   in a "time loop". He is forced to keep repeating the same 24 hours
   of his life over and over -- but he has become AWARE of this even
   though he cannot change it. He can also sense an audience watching
   him and laughing at things that he does. Turns out he is a sideshow
   exhibit at a future carnival, where one of the shows is to take a
   slice of time and show it to people -- "See what the past was
   really like". However, they did not know that the subjects of this
   viewing became aware and were trapped in this prison of time.
   [available in the Aldiss collection "Who Can Replace A Man" -- RDD]

A non-time travel recursive story:

5) "Warm" -- Robert Sheckley  -- from the collection "Untouched by
                                  Human Hands" -- all by Sheckley.
   In this story, a man is coaxed by an invisible voice into seeing
   through the "gestalt" of the universe to the true randomness
   beneath it. Gradually he sees people, and his surroundings, as
   biological machines, then as patterns, then as atoms, and finally,
   as nothing. He is nothing but ego in limbo. He can only sense one
   being (a man), so he starts trying to make it understand where he
   (the ego) is, by making him (the man) understand how to view the
   universe. This man, of course, is the ego himself. And around and
   around...

Another fine story in this collection, though not recursive, is "The
Impacted Man". This is a series of memos interspersed with the story
line, showing how a shoddy contractor who built our metagalaxy left
a whole in the time-space fabric for a poor earthman to fall into. A
hilarious story.

--Lauren--

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

Date:  8 Apr 1980 at 0020-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Forwarded message from UT DEC-10 system

From:	 PYLE
Subject: SF-LOVERS Cyclic SF Query

I have just finished catching up on SF-LOVERS and noted the interest
in recursive SF in the past few issues. One short story that was not
mentioned (and I was rather surprised at that) was "Let There Be
Light" by Asimov. It appeared first in the 50's and later in his
special 100th book (I think, it was several years ago that I last saw
it) and was cyclic on the universal scale. I would highly reccommend
it for those interested in cyclic SF.
  
                                  Keith (PYLE)

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

CEH@MIT-MC 03/31/80 04:53:47 Re: Cycles in SF

No one seems to have mentioned...my favorite recursive/cyclic/circular
author: Michael Moorcock, his Eternal Champion Series (most of what he
has written, if not all) is about ONE person - Jerry Cornelius (by
whatever name). The series is definately cyclic in time (that is one
reson the Champion is "Eternal")

And then there is the "Dancers at the End of Time" Trilogy by Michael
Moorcock the last book ends in a time loop (of about 3 weeks?) but
certainly not your normal time loop! (a loop within a loop)

-- Charles

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

Date:  5 April 1980 13:22-EST
From: Frank J. Wancho <FJW at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Another Recursive Story

Did I miss its mention or was it not mentioned at all, or does
Slaughterhouse Five not meet the criterion?  --Frank

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

ALLAN@MIT-MC 04/01/80 04:03:04 Re: Another recursive SF story

    A possible candidate could be Ian Watson's "The Embedding"
(Panther 1973?). Since it was long ago purged from my bookshelf
and I didn't have the desire to unravel it at the time, I can't
recall very much.
    I do remember that the book spent many pages discussing
something like transformational grammar. Much was made of the
(fact?) that language structures were recursive and that a
sentence could be wrapped around another endlessly.
    Some South-American Indian tribe had a tendency to do this
(embedding sentences in another) to the extreme, and this gives
them a special power which the hero goes to investigate...
    Does anyone remember the plot any better? I can't remember
what these recursive sentential structures were supposed to
achieve.

-Allan-

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

DERWAY@MIT-AI 03/31/80 20:32:06

One of the most interesting recursive stories is, I think, by
Silverberg, though I'm not sure, and can't remember the title.
(Hopefully someone out there can). It involves a court wizard, who,
for the amusment, and downfall of the king, constructs a device which,
when the king plugs his headphones in, completely takes over his
sensory input. The king has several interesting adventures, and then
plugs into one where he finds himself standing in the same hallway,
about to plug into the maghine again. He complains to the wizard that
nothing happend, and tries another. Eventually, he loses track of
which is reality, and which is just the machine making him think he
has just unplugged from it. He thus spends the rest of his life
plugging and unplugging, both in reality, and otherwise, since he
doesn't believe he's really out of it when he actually does unplug. I
hope someone can remember the name of this short story. I think it
might have had the word dream in it.
	Have fun,
	Don

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

Date: 8 Apr 1980 10:55 am (Tuesday)
From: Pugh.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: TESB Query

Has anyone heard any rumours about Frank Oz's part in THE EMPIRE
STRIKES BACK? A movie poster for TESB lists the character Yoda who
is played by Frank Oz. I was wondering if Yoda will be a puppet,
being that Frank Oz is a MUPPETeer?

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

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

Date: 10 APR 1980 0455-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #73
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Thursday, 10 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 73

   Today's Topics: Klatu article, Title Query Replies, Women's SF,
                     "Let There Be Light" is "The Last Question"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 1980 4:44 EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: An interesting article on KLATU

The April 1980 issue of The New Jersey Monthy contained an article
about KLATU, the Quasar Industries' "robot". Dave Touretzsky and
Mat Lecin forwarded a copy of the article to SF-LOVERS, however it
is too long to distribute through the digest. Instead copies of the
article have been established on the sites listed below. Everyone
who wants to read the article should obtain it from the site which
is most convenient for them. Please do so in the near future however,
since the files will be deleted in one week. Thanks go to Don Woods
and Richard Lamson for establishing the article on their systems.

      Site          Filename

   MIT-AI        DUFFEY;SFLVRS KLATU
   MIT-Multics   >udd>PDO>Lamson>sf-lovers>sf-lovers.klatu.text
   PARC-MAXC2    [MAXC2]<GUEST>KLATU.SF
   SU-AI         KLATU.SF[T,DON]

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THE EMPEROR'S NEW ROBOT
-----------------------

    by David Weinberg / New Jersey Monthly / April 1980

	Tony Reichelt doesn't know this but I did see his robot,
Klatu, one time before I saw it at the New York Statler Hilton. It was
the day I had an appointment to meet Tony at the Rutherford warehouse
that serves as the offices for his company, Quasar Industries. Tony
was a little late, so while I was waiting, I started to wander around.
It was quite a scene, really. There were robot props all over the
place, big plastic robot heads that could fit on a number of bodies,
robot vests, robot sunglasses, bits of circuitry here and there, and
posters on the walls depicting various robot "characters" such as
"Reggie X. N. DeMyllis, Film Producer, Director, Talent Scout and
Robot." Not that there wasn't some legitimate robot research going on.
But overall, the place looked more like the costume department of some
incredible robot theater where all the productions were robot plays,
with names like "La Cage Aux Robots," (Robots of a Feather) performed
by robot actors and actresses. Right out in the middle of everything
was an enormous mock-up robot known as Big Al, a robot "security
guard" Tony had been working on. Big Al looked demented. He must have
been about ten feet tall, and he had this cross-eyed, rather stupid
expression that made him seem utterly harmless but a little kinky.
"What's this one do?" I asked a secretary. "He's a security guard, to
guard a plant," she replied primly. "If you try to get past him, he
emits a high-pitched sound that will drop a grown man to his knees." I
strolled past Big Al, past a number of video games, and back into a
"restricted" area. It was there, in a little room, that I saw Klatu.

	Klatu, you may remember, is the robot that Reichelt introduced
to the world a couple of years ago, an android that was supposed to
introduce a new age in which robots would proliferate and become our
domestic servants. Tony claimed that Klatu would talk, walk, vacuum
and dust, trim the hedges, even babysit, and his idea got a lot of
publicity. But there was another kind of publicity too: charges from
some robot experts that Tony was a fraud, that the technology he was
talking about simply didn't exist. I followed the controversy for a
while, then last January decided to go see it for myself. There wasn't
much to see in that room besides the insides of Klatu, a lot of
wiring, and something that looked like a battery all mounted on a
cone-shaped unit that in turn rested on a tire. I stared at it,
fixedly, then jumped as I felt a hand grab my arm. "I'm sorry, this is
a restricted area," the secretary said, leading me away. Restricted!
But why? Because the science of the future was being created in this
room? Or because this was the inner sanctum of fakery, the room where
the obscene details of the Klatu hoax were being cynically calculated?

	I still wasn't sure after meeting Tony Reichelt. Tony came in
wearing a flowered shirt, a suede jacket, and a gold pendant in the
shape of a robot. He's in his late 30s and his face is pale from
overwork. But it's a youthful face -- almost juvenile sometimes -- and
elastic enough to match perfectly Tony's talk. For Reichelt is a
talker -- I knew that as soon as I met him. He's a showman, a blond
guy with a silver, lubricious tongue, almost, I would say, the tongue
of a con artist. The only thing that saves Tony, in fact, from seeming
like a complete huckster is the sense of wonder he has about the world
of robots and magic superheroes. These three things are not always
distinct in his mind -- he can't always distinguish between science
and fantasy -- but he believes in them, loves them intensely, perhaps
because they are something other than the world he is used to, the
marketing world. Tony Reichelt has been in marketing all his life, he
told me, and he has sold a thousand different things. Toys. Games.
Once he even sold the concept of a flying submarine. Then, ten years
ago, he started trying to sell a robot.

	How could he, I asked him, come up with a technology that no
one, not even the foremost robot technologists in America, has yet
been able to come up with? Tony scoffed. "Look, you believe what you
want to believe," he told me. "That's what it all comes down to.
Thoses guys at the National Science Foundation are paid to look for
things, but they're not paid to find them. If they find something,
what happens to them? They lose their grant money. Everybody keeps
saying -- how could you do it? I say, if you want to know, go dig in
the dirt and rummage in the junk yards the way I did and use the brain
God gave you." Of course, Tony meant all this figuratively. He has
never actually dug in the junk yards for robot parts, because he
doesn't know anything about robots except what his engineers have told
him. But he insisted that day in Rutherford that he was going to build
a domestic android that would sell for $39.95. And he told me if I
wanted to see Klatu to come to the New York Hilton that Sunday.
"Listen, this may not solve the controversy," he said. "But if I tell
you the secret of Klatu, what'll happen? I'll be finished. No more
writers writing. No more people calling. Nothing. Because once you
know, no one cares any more."

	I picked up a friend of mine that Sunday and went with her to
the 24th floor of the Hilton, where Klatu was being displayed at a
jewelry trade show, the kind of appearance for which Reichelt
generally gets paid $1,500. We took the elevator up, walked towards
voices, and then turned into a crowded room and stopped short. For
there, in the center of everything, was Klatu. It was a crude machine.
It had a big white plastic helmet for a head, the body was cone-shaped
and covered with a shiny reflecting material. It had vacuum cleaner
hoses for arms with pincers for hands. And it was, of all things,
telling jokes. "Hello Marilyn," it said to a pretty blond. "Marilyn,
are you there?" it asked. "Yes," marilyn said. She looked suspiciously
at Klatu. "Marilyn, would you do me a favor and rub my head?" the
robot crooned. Marilyn complied. Groaning noises came from Klatu and
his head lit up. "Marilyn, I have something to tell you," the voice
whispered ecstatically. "My head is my SEX ORGAN!" The group exploded
with laughter. And I was transfixed. Because the voice coming from
Klatu was Tony Reichelt's! Klatu kept up the chatter, and I watched
until I felt a nudge. It was my friend Elizabeth. "Come with me," she
murmured, and she led me across the hall to another room. "Look in
there," she ordered. I looked in, and there, sitting on a bed in the
hotel room, was Tony, talking into a remote control unit. "It's all a
big fake," Elizabeth said, a little resentfully. "Anybody can do
that." "But he said he'd have the robot programmed," I spluttered.
"Well, it's not," Elizabeth said flatly.

	I called Tony a few days later. He was quite cheerful. "How'd
you like the show?" he asked. "Tony, you did it with remote control,"
I said hesitantly. There was a silence. "Well, yeah," he said finally.
"But we don't always do it that way, just when the space is tight." I
asked him when Klatu might be programmed next. "Well, I don't know
kid, I don't know," he said. "I'm awfully busy. Going out to the coast
to do some shows. This is my bread and butter, you know. I don't
really have the time to set up a program." There was a silence. "But
listen kid," he added hastily. "Maybe in a few months we can work
something out. I'll give you a call."

	"Sure, Tony" I told him, before we hung up. I couldn't be
angry with him. Tony wants Klatu to be real and wonderful as much as
anyone else. It's just that in this life, it seems, he is destined to
be a salesman.

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

DERWAY@MIT-AI 04/10/80 04:20:14

The story I mentioned in [SFL V1 #72] about a king getting lost in an
infinite recursion is "The Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of
King Genius", in THE CYBERIAD, by Stanislaw Lem.

	Don

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

Date: 9 Apr 1980 11:18 PST
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: not a recursive story

That plot description of the Silverberg story about the king and
the wizard from DERWAY@MIT-AI [SFL V1 #72] sure sounds a lot like
the Tamsin(sp?)/dreamer stories although the latter differs in not
being recursive; wonder which was written first? I forget the
author of the Tamsin stories, was it Norton? McCaffrey?

Karen

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

Date: 09 APR 1980 1125-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Duckworth; "women's SF"

  The Duckworth stories [SFL V1 #70] are by Larry Eisenberg. One was
published in GALAXY, a few in IF, and several in F&SF. All of them
through ca. 1977 were assembled in his collection, THE BEST LAID
SCHEMES (Collier pb), along with a few other random stories.
  Women's SF: my first objection to HJJH's classification is that
the many women now writing SF now present a spectrum rather than two
simple categories. Most of the writers he calls "gently feminine"
were in fact writing to a male audience; while I think Kate Wilhelm
would be alternately annoyed and amused to be grouped with Russ. My
personal feeling is that much of Russ's later work is more than a
little cracked, although the occasional criticism she does for F&SF
is soundly reasoned. At least one particularly militant feminist of
my acquaintance found THE FEMALE MAN too much to take---not because
its portrayal of sexism strikes close to her personal experience but
because the book is just too extreme; she seems to offer as desirable
the feminist inversion of the most male-chauvinist fantasies.
  I'm not sure what was meant by saying that Leigh Brackett wrote "as
[a] person rather than as [a] woman; certainly most of her books have
male protagonists, but her own attitudes occasionally show through (as
in PEOPLE OF THE TALISMAN (a bastard of a minor noble returning to
take the city she was born in): "...with these two hands, and with
what I am---not what I can trick and wheedle and whore out of men by
the ancient uses of the bedchamber." Hardly remarkable today, of
course, but this was published in 1965.)
  Certainly Schmitz was writing for a male audience, and for an
audience of ASTOUNDING readers at that; a local writer once
acknowledged to me that he found Schmitz sexist but had lecherous
appreciation of Telzey and Trigger (the MITSFS in fact gives the
Skinner's Official Mistress the title of "Telzey Amberdon", ranking
as a quaternary officer). Also, at least one non-fantasy Norton book,
THE ICE CROWN, has a strong heroine.
  Marion Zimmer Bradley is a special case. She has been denounced by
some fannish feminists who find her politics (as shown in her books
and in convention remarks) insufficiently feminist. Her own attitudes
developed the hard way, and she still has no patience with cliches
(such as "Of course I had to turn to vanity publishing; women can't
get published in SF" from an anonymous source who I suspect is
responsible for some of the worst Sime fiction--and who said this in
1978!!) It has been claimed that the Amazons themselves could not have
fit into the earlier Darkover books; if true, this is another
indication of her own political evolution. A book worth mentioning:
THE KEEPER'S PRICE, edited by MZB, containing Darkover fiction written
by non-professionals. I expected it to be terrible and found most of
it good and some pieces excellent.
  Worth mentioning in passing is Jacqueline Lichtenberg, some of whose
writing has been characterized as "blatantly silly sexuality". She is
the only professional (besides an MZB collaboration) in THE KEEPER'S
PRICE and has one of the worst stories in it. Her books could be con-
sidered the modern equivalent of the pre-60's "suitable for girls"
genre; reports are so terrible (except from her coterie, who are
getting more and more irrational; they take her seriously when she
advises them not to worry about the energy crisis but to go home and
practice laran, which offers non-polluting energy ("laran" is the
collective Darkovan word for all psi powers)) that I haven't tried
to read any of her books (HOUSE OF ZEOR; UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER; etc.)
  Also worth noting for taking a feminist stance when no one else
was is John Wyndham, especially in THE TROUBLE WITH LICHEN (read
the Penguin edition if you can find it; the Del Rey is missing a
few pages with a lot of sting). Not a woman, but the probably the
earliest writer to oppose prejudice in his writing rather than going
along with it; perhaps as a consequence, he has always been considered
respectable enough for the British classroom, unlike many British
writers who have attained greater fame in this country.

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

Date:  9 April 1980 17:46 est
From:  York.Multics at MIT-Multics

The recursive story by Asimov mentioned by PYLE [SFL V1 #72] is not
called "Let There Be Light" (at least in my collection). I know it as
"The Last Question".

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

DERWAY@MIT-AI 04/09/80 21:44:39
Re: Title Correction, "The Prisoner" TV Series

I believe the actual title of the Asimov story mentioned by Keith Pyle
in [SF-LOVERS DIGEST volume 1; issue 72], is "The Last Question".
Unfortunately, the phrase Keith used gives the ending away somewhat.
I was first exposed to this story, before having read it, in a
dramatization done by the Rochester (N.Y.) planatarium staff. It was
incredibly well done. If any of you out there are near Rochester I
very strongly recomend that you attend the planitarium productions.
They have an amazingly talented and imaginative staff, and seem to do
about 3 or 4 SF stories each year.

Along the lines of T.V. SF; The MIT cable TV has been showing the
"Prisoner" series staring Patrick McGuan (Spelling?), at the rate of 2
each thursday night starting at 7:00. They have only shown 6 so far,
but one of them, titled "The Schitzoid Man", is far and away the best
single show I have ever seen on Television, bar none. If there were
many shows on like that, I'd be tempted to go out and buy a
television.

			Don

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

Date:  9 Apr 1980 0547-EST
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: Asimov story mentioned by PYLE

     [ SPOILER Warning: Story synopsis of old, ancient classic
                        Asimov story contained within! Warning!]

Of course!  I believe the story you're thinking about is called
"The Last Question" and was in "Nine Tomorrows" (along with
such classics as "Profession" -- and "I'm in Marsport without Hilda")
not "Opus 100".  Still, of course!  This is the circular story on
the grandest scale.  It starts with Multivac, the world computer,
which has just designed and implemented the solar-system-wide power
net.  These engineers get drunk in celebration and worry that entropy
will eventually mean the end of it all.  They ask Multivac.  It replies
"Insufficient data for meaningful answer"... The story progresses
through history, successive people asking successively bigger and more
capable computers, always with the same answer, until the heat death
of the universe.  The ultimate computer, hanging around in hyperspace,
thinks about it for a while, and then speaks up: "Let there be light..."

That was always one of my favorites.  There were some other stories
about Multivac--they got published in the oddest places since when they
were written "giant electronic brains" were the latest novelty.  There
was one about an election held by analyzing some random Joe down to his
toenails, and projecting from that to the rest of the population. Can
someone identify one in which Multivac gets flakey until someone thinks
to ask it what IT wants?  It may even be in the same collection, I can't
remember.
		--JoSH

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

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

Date: 11 APR 1980 0330-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #74
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Friday, 11 April 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 74

 Today's Topics:            What are the WORST SF Movies?,
                 SF Yarns - Titles Please? / Recursive / Time Travel,
                   Final (Old) Words on Tapeworms, TESB Promo Line
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 6 Apr 1980 0312-PST (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: The WORST SF Movies

We all have, at one time or another, discussed our FAVORITE SF movies.
There is general agreement, for example, that "The Day the Earth Stood
Still", or "Forbidden Planet", were superb films. But what of the
REALLY BAD films? The films that were so poorly done that it was a
criminal waste of chemicals to process the film involved.

I would like to see some discussion of the films that were BAD, that
people HATED, LOATHED, and otherwise did not think too much of. This
does not only include movies that mangled, tangled, perverted, or
twisted some original SF plot or story. The catagory also includes
films that were cinematically or technically AWFUL in any way.

Since tonight was Saturday night here in L.A., with all 15 over the
air channels to choose from, I was treated to the usual mix of movies
that I have come to know and love (and hate) over the years I have
lived in the city (and I have lived here my entire life by the way.)
Saturday night has always been THE big night for old SF films on the
many independent stations, and tonight was no exception.

Two major SF films ran simultaneously more or less around 2 AM. One
was a fairly amusing old film, with some interesting technical ideas,
called "The Magnetic Monster". I have seen it numerous times and I
actually like it. It concerns a new isotope that is growing larger
and larger and absorbing things around it. This is not my candidate
for bad movie.

But the other film. Ah, that's a horse of a different color. Has
anyone else out there ever seen a little gem called "The Creeping
Terror"? It HAS GOT TO BE the WORST SF film EVER made. And I have seen
alot of them. The idea is that a spaceship lands and two monsters come
out that start devouring townspeople and such. But it is the technical
aspects of the film that are SO amazing. The picture was apparently
filmed on B&W SILENT film. The few lines of dialogue were clearly (and
badly) looped in later. There is one scream that is run over and over
again whenever a scream seems appropriate. 99% of the story action is
spoken by the narrator, in the following fashion:

John asked the Sheriff what could be done now. The Sheriff replied
that, since it was a spaceship, it was out of his jurisdiction. John
was angry, he told the Sheriff that....

And all the while we see the "speakers" moving their lips and such,
but with NO RECORDED DIALOGUE AT ALL. Need I mention that the film has
horribly shlocky music. And the MONSTERS! They look like large tarps
with 4 people under them. With what are definitely radiator hoses
hanging out from the "head". The monster slowly lopes up to a victim,
who would inevitably fall over backwards for NO apparent reason, then
be sucked into a hole at the base of the monster, with the single
scream running over and over as usual. Then the monster would look
like FIVE people under a tarp! There is a classic scene where a
scientist, who is supposedly inside the spaceship, is trying to smash
some instrumentation with a crowbar. He strikes and strikes at these
old 19 inch racks of 1950's gear, with a prerecorded "bang" noise
spewing forth each time. The narrator explains:

John tried to damage the equipment, but the super-tough alloys of the
alien ship weren't even dented by his efforts.

He keeps this up for five full minutes.

Anyway, the film is SO BAD that I watch it every time it comes on. I
am convinced that someone at the station involved (KCOP) shows it on
purpose because they KNOW it is hilariously bad.

Anyone else ever see this beauty? How about some of YOUR "favorite"
BAD films?

--Lauren--

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

Date: 31 Mar 1980 0947-PST
From: DDYER at USC-ISIB
Subject: MORE RECURSIVE..

There is another favorite time-loop story, located somewhere in my
collection, whose name and author escape me. The story deals with
three temporal astronaughts who are blasted into the future in a
caneveral-type blastoff, but who return dead. They later appear at
their own wake (smile and wave at the crowd of mourners!) before
eventually closing the time loop. Anyone know the title?

Also, I recommend the fable "Djin and Tonic" from "Godel, Escher,
Bach", as well as the rest of the book, which deals frequently with
the paradoxes of recursion and self reference.

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

JDD@MIT-ML 04/01/80 23:36:52

Another tail-recursive story (by R. A. Lafferty?): the protagonist
finds an advanced-technology device made to look like a ring (well, he
doesn't exactly find it -- he takes it off the hand of a dying
{alien?} who was hit by a truck). The device, when actuated, takes him
back in time a small (fixed) number of seconds, into his previous body
and situation. He uses (misuses) it for general-purpose backtracking:
he can pop out of a bad situation and re-try it differently. One day,
though, he is onboard an airliner which has a mid-air collision: he
actuates the ring when falling from the plane, then tries to convince
the stewardess to warn the captain. This doesn't work, but it changes
things enough that he is knocked unconscious the next time, and by the
time he come to, he can only backtrack a few thousand feet up. He is
left with the choice of iterating forever, or (literally) dropping out
of the bottom of the loop.

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

Date: 08 Apr 1980 2037-PST
From: Judy Anderson <JMA at SU-AI>
Subject: More on Recursive stories.   

There was a story I read a long time ago, and now can't remember
either title or author. It was about 4 guys who go off on the first
starship journey in a slow ship using coldsleep to make it. They
arrive at their destination 4 centuries later, and find that
technology has caught up with them, and that there are lots of people
who have colonized the planet traveling there by FTL ships. They don't
like the society there, and the society has even less use for them, so
they leave on a starship for elsewhere. One of them has this idea that
by running into a certain type of star in a certain phase of its life,
they can go back in time. So they do, and watch their eariler selves
take off for the wild blue yonder. As I recall it has a MCP ending,
like the guy is there with his girlfriend being subservient and all
that. Might have been Van Vogt; anyone know? Anyway, this is another
"might be" of circular stories. (Certainly not recursive, the men
don't have anything to do with making their earlier selves get on the
ship, or anything like that.)

Judy.

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

FAUST@MIT-ML 04/10/80 19:43:44

     Does anyone know the name of a short story in which a group of
outlaws find and start to develop a planet uninhabited by humans?
The planet is, however, inhabited by small apelike creatures that
the outlaws consider pets. It turns out that the authorities finally
discover where the outlaws are and send troops to bring them back.
The ironic twist is that the small ape-pets turn out to be smarter
than expected and they save the bandits from the long arm of the law.

     Also, in the seemingly never-ending list of time travel SF, noone
has mentioned Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. Although not recursive
or otherwise severly convoluted, it is an excellent story. The main
characters (Lord Rumfoord) passes through some sort of discontinuity
in space/time and is no longer anchored to any one period of his life,
but seems to be on a time-merry-go-round of sorts in which he can
predict when (in his subjective time) he will be in which part of the
other characters subjective time, but he has no control over it, nor
can he affect his future (which he has already lived through parts
of).
     The unique thing in the story is Vonnegut's typical cynical
treatment of human nature embodied in the profit making schemes of his
wife and others who start a religion based on Rumfoords predictable,
albeit short, visits to earth, and in the totally self-first attitude
displayed by the aliens in the story.

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

Date:  5 April 1980 00:09 est
From:  Frankston at MIT-Multics (BOB at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  Cookies and tapeworms

1. An early (original) cookie monster was written by Chris Tavares
on MIT Multics in the early 70s (it was in PL/I of course).

2. The problems of tapeworms seem to be underestimated by some of the
writers. There are systems that really do attempt to provide security,
command invocation and execution varies widely on systems, there are
various resource allocation schemes to limit the amount of a system
programs can take over.

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

Date:  7 Apr 1980 1256-PST
From: CSD.EADAMS at SU-SCORE (Ernest)
Subject: More tapewormery...

Foo on all of you no-sayers! But before I go on to explain that, let
me point out something: I have just been reading Shockwave Rider, and
have come to the realization that many of you missed. The "device"
used by Nickie Halflinger WAS NOT a program! It was a carefully
constructed data set which took advantage of bugs in the credit/spying
system used by the government. What it did was to start certain
processes rolling, which started OTHERS rolling before the first set
were diagnosed as illegitimate by the system and clobbered. Thus
before one "job" was clobbered, it would have started up another one
or two somewhere else in the system. Eventually, each one would be
determined to be false, but by that time it was too late. Thus was a
worm created; it had a "head", new jobs being created, and a "tail",
old ones being logged out. Thus the data could move all over the
system, and presumably cause all sorts of havoc along the way.

What this would require is a thorough knowledge of how the system and
the programs worked, but not actually any programming on the part of
the inventor of the worm.

The proper definition for what we are discussing here is not really a
"tapeworm", but a "virus." Given that the entire network is a living
organism, and each machine a cell, the virus moves into each machine,
logs in a job, and begins replicating itself (thus driving up the load
and taxing the system resources--just like a real virus). Or, to make
it even more close to the analogy, it could replace the system copy of
some commonly used program, like finger, with itself. Anytime someone
tries to run finger--whammo! New virus.

For it to be able to log itself into other machines is not difficult.
It would have to start out as an enabled job, and it would simply peek
into other users' net lines for their account names and passwords as
they are logging in. It would save these and use them later, thus
appearing to be harmless on the other systems. This would give it the
needed time to do exhaustive searches for PWs, etc.

I think in the future it is highly likely that there will be some kind
of higher standards established for intermachine communication, which
will allow the virus to take advantage of certain regularities between
machines. One of the reasons the net today is so kludgy is that it has
all kinds of vile and vicious machines attached to it.

There are still a number of other very important problems associated
with it. But I'm sure that if the construction of a virus CAN be done,
it WILL be done, and I'm willing to bet it will use some kind of
disguise system like logging in as some regular user, thus attracting
less attention to itself.

			Yours tru

[Note from OPERATOR: The letter above seems to have been located in
the mail-send buffer of CSD.EADAMS@SU-SCORE when someone sent the tty
locking codes to all our terminals simultaneously, after which
immediately occurred a flurry of mysterious net activity. When I had
finally gotten all the terminals unlocked, CSD.EADAMS had disappeared.
Here is the text of his letter. I might recomm

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

BYTE@MIT-AI 04/11/80 01:17:21 Re: TESB promo line

Has the EMPIRE STRIKES BACK promo line [(800) 521-1980] died? I either
get a recording that "this line is no longer in service" or an endless
ringing... what's up (or down... i imagine the poor answering machine
died...)

[ SFL V1 #61 told about problems with the large number of calls, does
  anyone have more up to date information than that?  --  RDD ]

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

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

Date: 12 APR 1980 0448-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #75
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS Digest      Saturday, 12 April 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 75

Today's Topics:   UTEXAS Connection - Star Wars and Tamsin Dreamers,
                Horrible SF Movies, Last of the Recursive SF Stories,
                                      Tapeworm
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 11 Apr 1980 at 0520-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TESB PHONE PROMO ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

At Aggiecon (2 weeks ago) Craig Miller, fan relations man for
Lucasfilms, said that the original 3 phone lines were being
augmented by another 7, and that we'd "all be able to get
through" thereafter.
                           Oh, yeah!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ PRINTED STAR WARS STORIES N*O*T "GOSPEL" ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

According to the Man From Lucasfilm, only what's actually IN the
films (SWI, SWII, etc.) is dependably "true" of the STAR WARS
universe. Anything different or additional from any other source --
i-n-c-l-u-d-i-n-g the novelization by (attributed to?) Lucas himself
is, at best, apocryphal. He likened the comics and spin-off novels to
"alternate universes" to the "real SW universe".

So tho Alan Dean Foster may have Luke able to swim, it ain't
necessarily so. And tho Marvel Comics chose the least likely means of
Owen Lars being Luke's uncle (that Owen LARS and the senior SKYWALKER
were brothers), that, too, is not binding. Only George Lucas knows
which of the 4 (5 if the "uncle" is only a courtesy title, which is
possible, tho unlikely) ways Owen could be called "uncle" by Luke is
the actual one.

The most feasible, to me, is for Luke to be the son of Owen's sister
who married an off-worlder (against Owen's opposition). And still
better than the two men being brothers, Skywalker Sr. might have
married Beru's sister; or, been BERU's brother.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TAMSIN DREAMER STORIES IDENTIFIED ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Kolling only lacked confidence-- the Tamsin stories are indeed by
Andre Norton, in the PERILOUS DREAMS collection. Norton and McCaffrey
handle fantasy elements differently. Norton "accepts" them; McCaffrey
works out a non-magical basis. (I.e., she tries to make para-normal
phenomena amenable to scientific treatment. She is patently from the
John Campbell stable. Norton's speculative fiction godfather was
Wollheim.)

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

Date: 11 Apr 1980 10:10 PST
From: Sapsford at PARC-MAXC

Ahh yes, The Creeping Terror. It was shown in San Francisco about a
month ago (sorry, but I cannot recall what channel). Like Lauren, I
think this just may be the worst SF movie I have ever seen. I could
not believe it (but unlike Lauren, 15 minutes of that hopeless junk
was all I could take)! I assume that the total budget for the film
was less than what some 30 sec. TV commercials cost these days.

Does anyone remember the title of the (color, sound) movie that
revolved around a plant in the garden of this random mansion that ate
folks? It all ends with the tree being attacked by a guy with an axe
and it sprays the better part of a week's take from the blood bank all
over the place. (And Lauren, would such a film be in the running? It
was more monster fantasy than SF.)

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

MWMT@MIT-MC 04/11/80 21:29:06

     Does anyone remember a rather unique bad film called "The 5,000
fingers of Dr. L"? It was black and white, released in the mid-fifties
I believe. It involved an imaginative child being kidnaped by his
feared piano-teacher to his castle, where him and 499 others are
forced to play on a huge piano by the nefarious Dr. L and have to wear
beanies with plastic hands attached to them. They are finally rescued
when a friend brings him a vial of foul-smelling substance which is
(gasp!) atomic. It explodes violently when thrown, thus destroying the
evil piano instructor's castle.
     On a similar vein, dare I mention "Santa Claus Conquers the
Martians"...

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

Date: 31 Mar 1980 0756-PST (Monday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: To Iterate Is Human, to Recurse Divine

     Since iterative stories as well as recursive ones seem to be
acceptable in this sweepstakes, someone should mention Eddison's "The
Worm Ouroborous", which also ends where it begins. Several people have
given up trying to get through Eddison's lush prose upon learning of
this.
	Mike

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

Date: 1 Apr 1980 1811-PST
From: Alan at LBL-Unix (Alan B. Char (BKY))
Subject: recursion

I'm not sure if this qualifies, but Joe Haldeman in his "Infinite
Dreams" anthology wrote a story about infinite dreams where a person
goes recursive. I forget the title of the story, but it had to do
with "Infinite Dreams." -- Alan

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


Date: 11 Apr 1980 1344-PST
From: DDYER at USC-ISIB
Subject: One last recursive story, in an unusual sense.

"The Microcosmic God" by Theodore Sturgeon is recursive in an unusual
sense. In it, the protagionist is a brilliant scientist who is
somewhat put off with the wastefullness of the trial-and-error part
of the scientific method. His solution? Using traditional methods, he
creates a race of intellegent labratory animals. Their whole lifespan
is compressed in scale, so one of their "scientists" can do a
lifetimes' work in a few of our days. He induces these "lab animals"
to invent whatever he wants, by a conventional, draconian, God Gambit.

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

Date: 10 Apr 1980 1817-EST
From: MYERS at MIT-XX
Subject: recursive story

As I remember, "The Planet of the Apes" was recursive in that the 
way the apes got to be on earth in the first place was by coming 
back from the future where they existed on earth....

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

BARMAR@MIT-MC 04/12/80 02:06:56

I know we've hacked the plot to death, but there's one story that
never got mentioned: the series of "Planet of the Apes" movies. They
started out in the future in the first two movies, then three of the
apes from the future came back to the present, and two of them had a
baby. This baby chimp, in the fourth movie, is the father of the race
of intelligent apes, and leads the ape revolt. In the final movie,
taking place one generation later, the apes have taken over. According
to this series, the reason for the race of intelligent apes is that
some intelligent apes came back from the future, i.e., it was its own
cause. This is very circular.
					-Barry

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

DERWAY@MIT-AI 04/11/80 03:57:54

I just barely finished reading the story mentioned by Judy Anderson in
[SF-Lovers V1 #74]. It is indeed by Van Vogt, and is titled "Quest for
the Future", though I'm pretty sure that it is also out under another
title. Actually the bit Judy mentioned was just another of Van Vogt's
story convolutions. The main plot is that the protagonist finds that
there is a huge building where time runs backwards, so people can live
forever by alternately staying there for awhile, then going back to
normal time. Also, it gives access to all times in some multi-thousand
year period, where the building exists. It has a very strange plot,
with alternate probability worlds, and the like, and ends up with the
hero deciding that, since no one knows who built the building, he
might as well do it. It really is recursive, though not the part that
Judy mentioned.

	Have fun,
		Don

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

Date:  9 April 1980 17:22 est
From:  JTurner.Coop at MIT-Multics
Subject:  recursive stories

In response to Judy Anderson's letter regarding the recursive time
story, it sounds alot like Niven's, "A World Out Of Time". is this a
steal, or a mistake on the part of Judy?

Has anyone mentioned the Stainless Steel Rat recursive time story in
which Digriz goes back in time to stop an invasion of the future just
to find he was the one who caused it. It also involves a timeloop
that never existed.

[ Harrison has written 4 novels about Slippery Jim Digriz. They are
  "The Stainless Steel Rat", "The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge",
  "The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World", and "The Stainless
  Steel Rat Wants You". Jim is referring to the third novel in the
  series. It is best to read this series in order since the later
  novels refer freely to events described earlier.  --  RDD  ]

Also, did Harlan Ellison play D&D. In "Just adrift...",the hero uses a
service to find the location of his soul. He has to phrase out his
question on a piece of paper before asking. Sounds like a wish spell.

					<jmt>

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

ISRAEL@MIT-AI 04/06/80 04:05:05

In reference to time paradoxes and communication, there's an
interesting story by Robert Silverberg called "Now + n . . . Now - n".
In this story, the main character has a sort of psychic power that may
best be termed autotelepathy. By that term I mean that he has the
ability to communicate telepathically with past and future versions of
himself. He communicates with himself every Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday (i.e. on Monday he communicates with his selves of the previous
friday and of the following monday). Using this, he gets rich off the
stock market by reporting the current market values of certain stocks
back to a previous self. (He seems to feel that this allows free will
because he doesn't tell his earlier self what to buy or sell, but lets
his earlier self make that decision). Anyway, he meets this gorgeous
girl and its love at first sight. Unfortunately, when he's within 20
feet of her he loses contact with his other selves (normally he can
feel their presence even when not in communication). Now he's so much
in love with her that he's willing to say the hell with his other
selves; he doesn't want to leave her for a minute. He tries playing
the stock market on his own, and as expected does disastrously. He
finds out that its because of an amulet that she wears always. He
tries to talk her into taking it off but she refuses. He then tells
her the entire situation and she's so in love with him that she takes
it off. Before she does this though, she explains to him that the
amulet inhibits psychic powers, specifically her psychic power which
is that without the amulet she swings forward and backward through
time like a pendulum. While swinging through time, she collects a
whole set of future newspapers so that he will know the stock market
results and then she puts the amulet back on. It ends with him trying
to practice swinging through time the way she does so that she could
chuck the amulet and they would go swinging through eternity hand in
hand together. A very light story but an enjoyable one.

- Bruce

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

Date: 8 Apr 1980 1607-PST (Tuesday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: Recursion in SF (one more)

   Actually, looking back, most of the noted literature isn't truly
recursive, but is 'simply' time-travel paradox stuff. True recursion
is, after all, the story "calling" itself.
   In Zelazny's "Sign of the Unicorn", Corwin encounters a character
named Roger, who is engaged in "writing a metaphysical romance shot
through with horror and morbidity." Does it have a happy ending? "I'll
be happy," Roger replies.

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

RMS@MIT-AI 04/11/80 04:35:33 Re: tapeworms

I already wrote a tapeworm which has infiltrated a lot of PDP-10's
on the Arpanet and off. It's called EMACS. However, the record for
tapeworms goes to a program which has infiltrated many different
types of computer systems by taking over the minds of the system
programmers and compelling them to convert it. It is called
Adventure. In epidemological terms, we would say that these
programs use human vectors to infect new hosts.

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

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

Date: 13 APR 1980 0529-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #76
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 13 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 76

  Today's Topics: Replies to Questions, More on Horrible SF Movies -
                  especially ( [5,10] * 10**3 ) Fingers of Dr. [A,Z]
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 11 Apr 1980 2245-PST
From: Ken Olum <KDO at SU-AI>
Subject: Reply to FAUST's message in [SFL V1 #74]

The story seems like part of THE OTHER HUMAN RACE which is a sequel
to LITTLE FUZZY, by H. Beam Piper.

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

Date:  12 April 1980 18:51 est
From:  Sibert at MIT-Multics (W. Olin Sibert)
Subject:  Far Centaurus

I believe the story Judy was thinking of was actually "Far Centaurus",
rather than "Quest For The Future"; I've read both of them, though
not too recently for the latter. I guessed wrong about where "Far
Centaurus" appears; but one place it can actually be found is a
collection edited by Robert Silverberg, called "Deep Space". It's
about four travelers named Blake, Endicott, Pelham, and Renfrew, who
travel to Alpha Centaurus, taking 500 years, and return by a typical
Van Vogt deus ex machina when the world of 500 years hence becomes
intolerable.

The Deep Space collection also contains some other gems, most
notably "Ticket to Anywhere", by Damon Knight, which is about someone
traveling through an enormous network of (apparently) abandoned matter
transmitter booths, with unselectable destinations. I strongly
recommend it.

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

Date: 12 APR 1980 1519-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: several

  Judy was correct in her description of a complete short story; it's
called "Far Centaurus" (van Vogt, Jan '41 ASF; DESTINATION UNIVERSE;
and several anthologies). Don was caught by the fact that van Vogt,
like many arts hacks (including J. S. Bach) borrowed freely from
earlier works to assemble later ones--QUEST FOR THE FUTURE actually
has at least 4 short van Vogt pieces slightly modified to fit into the
novel frame (the ending of "Far Centaurus" was changed to allow the
action to continue in QUEST FOR THE FUTURE). Lloyd Biggle has done
similarly with at least two pieces; THE STILL SMALL VOICE OF TRUMPETS
and MONUMENT were both short novelettes before they appeared as
full-length novels, although I think the results were substantially
better than anything of van Vogt's (I didn't include Biggle among the
Arts hacks, above, because he's a professor of musicology at a Midwest
university and so doesn't have to make his living by appearing to
create).

  It seems highly unlikely to me that Skywalker Sr. is Beru's blood
relative; the one time she mentions him it's in a very abstract
fashion.

  It's perfectly \possible/ that Ellison has played D&D, but it
certainly isn't very \likely/; Ellison is still too much of a
prickly individual to tolerate the several hours of mumbling of a
typical D&D session. Also, the D&D virus began to spread severely
around the summer of 1975; "Adrift" etc. was complete and read at
Discon II (Labor Day 1974). Since D&D appears to have begun in the
Midwest it's unlikely that the influence is there.

  Vonnegut also plays around with time in SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE; the
lead is here all the time, but his mind doesn't track time linearly.
Showing this well is the only good point of the movie version.

  Bad Films: I can't nominate any specifically, since I don't see that
many (and don't have the necessary masochism (?) to stay watching the
turkeys), but Minicon last weekend had an amusing half-hour of
trailers from all the terrible films they could locate. Since most of
the trailers were 60 seconds, the result was mind-boggling.

  While I've never seen THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. L, I do recall seeing
the last few minutes of the film called THE 10,000 FINGERS OF DR. T,
which had much the same atmosphere. It was definitely in color, and
the ending involved all 1000 kids playing "Chopsticks" simultaneously
on this gigantic keyboard--- and then the kid woke up and it was all a
dream. Perhaps a deliberately non-serious remake?

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

Date: 12 Apr 1980 0927-PST
From: GEOFF at SRI-KA (the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow)
Subject: The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

I remember the movie being in color not B&W. I thought it was a great
movie, and seemed to me to be a sort-of variation on the "Wizard of
Oz". My movie guide sez it started Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy, Hans
Conried. "Excellent fantasy about a young boy who hates his piano
teacher and dreams of being held captive, along with 500 other little
boys, in a large castle with the largest piano in the world. Fun for
adults as well as youngsters." The movie guide gave it a four star
rating; So do I.

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

Date: 12 April 1980 17:07-EST
From: Dan Brotsky <DCB at MIT-AI>
Subject:  5000 fingers of doctor T

     The movie mentioned by Mark Terpin <MWMT at MIT-MC> in
[SFL V1 #75] is entitled "The 5000 Fingers of Doctor T." For
those of us who grew up trying to play the piano and not doing
very well, the film is a very fond memory.

     The film is more fantasy than science fiction, consisting mainly
of a young boy's dream (nightmare?) about being imprisoned by his
piano teacher. This Doctor T (an evil fiend if there ever was one)
has also captured 499 other boys and girls, and he forces them all to
employ their 5000 fingers in playing his "mile-long" piano. All turns
out well, however, when all the kids are rescued by a dashing young
man whose real-life counterpart (a la the movie of the Wizard of Oz)
ends up marrying the boys windowed mother.

     It's been a while since I last saw the film, but I have the
impression it used some well-known actors (Hans Conried as Doctor T?).
In any event, it is definitely aimed at the under 10 crowd, so should
probably not be condemned using the standard criteria (plot, acting,
etc.). At least it was filmed in color and sound!

	dan

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

DLW@MIT-AI 04/12/80 20:52:47 Re: "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. L"

MWMT and I have decided that some similar memories I have are of the
same movie. It may not have been black-and-white. The plot is that a
boy taking piano lessons finds them extremely boring, and falls
asleep. He has a dream about being taken to a castle from which he
cannot escape (because the walls are "electrified", graphically
demonstrated in an animated sign with big sparks flying); he and the
other captured kids finally defeat the evil piano-teacher by means of
a wonderful little device whose name I cannot remember, which can be
used on people who are speaking lenghthily; it's hard to describe,
working by sort of making its own sound that garbles up what the
speaker is saying, making it faster and louder until it finally
abruptly halts, at which point the speaker ends up standing there
dumbfounded. It gave a remarkable impression of taking an unending
stream of words and violently twisting them off. I think the device is
also used as an explosive at the end, at which point the kid wakes up.

The film is notable for its dream-like quality; both MWMT and I
remember it as if it were a dream, and the things that happen are
very typical of the sort of thing one imagines in a dream. I have
never seen any film that conveyed this feeling so well, although
I didn't realize this until many years later, when I would be
occasionally reminded of the film for some reason and notice
this quality. 

I'm interested in tracking it down: does this ring a bell with anyone
else?  Is anyone sure of the title?

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

Date: 12 Apr 1980 at 1933-PST
From: obrien at Rand-Unix (Mike O'Brien)
Subject: two movies

	In response to one of the queries in [sf-lovers V1 #75]
regarding old movies (not an area where I'm a complete expert) I
thought I'd mention a couple of points.

"The plant movie", as far as I'm concerned, is "The Little Shop of
Horrors", which my college dorm adopted in place of a theme song. It
was made for about 100K by Roger Corman and ranks as possibly the BEST
cheapie ever made. It's about a poor, honest Jewish boy and his pet
cannibalistic plant.

"The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T" was not witten that way to be bad;
it was written and staged that way to attempt to translate the usual
medium of the scriptwriter...Dr. Seuss!

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

Date: 11 Apr 1980 11:30 am PST (Friday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: The WORST SF Movies

Lauren's "Magnetic Monster" sounds a lot like "The Monolith Monsters"
in which a meteor from space grows larger and larger, absorbing
everything around it. This was not a great film, but not the worst
either.

A film I saw (and paid money for) which was REALLY bad is "Damnation
Alley" based on the Roger Zelazny novel by the same name. I never read
the novel; after seeing the flick, I doubt if I ever will. Not only
was the plotline weak and the characterizations stereotyped, but the
special effects people managed to spoil perhaps the only interesting
feature of the story through shoddy technique. It seems that after the
war, the earth became surrounded by a cloud of magnetic radiation
which made radio communication next to impossible and filled the sky
with pyrotechnic splendor at all hours of the day and night. Sadly,
the registration of effects frames to live action was less than
perfect, causing noticeable jitter at the horizon. The blockbuster
finish was a mammoth ion storm which magically set the world back on
its proper axis and dissipated the cloud in the twinkling of an eye.

Another all-time loser SF film is "Laser Blast". In this one, an
escaped alien criminal crashlands in the Southern California desert,
where the interstellar enforcers rub him out, but carelessly leave
a powerful laser weapon lying in the sand. A disgruntled and horny
teenage boy finds the weapon and uses it to make his revenge on the
desert, the local sheriff's office, his high school, and a wide
variety of other targets before the aliens come back and rub him out
too.

What really bothers me about this one, though, is the special effects.
They're TOO GOOD. The alien sequences at the beginning and end were
done by Ray Harryhausen using his Dynamation technique. There's just
about enough minutes' worth to make three different TV ads, and no
more. I suppose I could have walked out in the middle, but I'd already
paid my money and by God I was going to see those ninety seconds worth
of aliens at the end. In retrospect, it wasn't worth it.

Then there's "Starship Invasion". (Boy, do I wish I'd seen this and
"Laser Blast" as a double feature!) The total effects budget for this
one, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, was "$0.49 for twelve
aluminum pie plates". I believe it. One scene that sticks in my mind
involved a computer failure on board the "good" alien saucer as it was
going into battle against the "evil" saucer. Obviously there's only
one thing to do. The kidnaped human computer scientist is quickly
hypnotized by the aliens, wherupon he whips out his TI programmable
and begins punching buttons at a furious pace, the sweat breaking out
in beads along his brow. That scene had half the audience rolling in
the aisles. The bald, high-domed alien women in polyester stretch
pants were pretty amusing too.

Those are my nominations.  (But I bet there are worse...)

			-- GPK

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

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

Date: 14 APR 1980 0505-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #77
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 14 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 77

Today's Topics: More Horrible SF Movies, Calif Event - Exploring Mars
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 13 APR 1980 0538-EST
From: LPG at MIT-AI (Leonard Pimph Garnell)
      Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
      Andrew Knutsen <ALK at SU-AI>
Subject: Worst Films

   Theater Holds Festival Of Worst Movies
By WILLIAM MURPHY     Associated Press Writer

    NEW YORK (AP) - Killer bees, Hitler's brain in a pickle jar,
homicidal tomato plants and the only known all-midget musical western
- where else, but at the World's Worst Film Festival?
    ''For every 'Citizen Kane' there is a 'Thing With Two Heads,' ''
proclaims an advertisement for the festival, scheduled to run from
April 15 to April 20 at the Beacon Theater on Manhattan's upper west
side.
    The series kicks off with ''Plan Nine From Outer Space,'' a 1955
not-so-scientific piece of fiction. Aliens who have tried eight times
to conquer Earth think they can finally do it on the ninth try by
raising the dead.
    The exterior of the aliens' flying saucer, which bursts into
flames in the finale, is actually a paper plate soaked with gasoline
and set afire.
    Not just any film can qualify for the festival. One of four
Canadian promoters, Lauren Drewery, 27, of Ottawa, stressed that
films selected for the festival ''must include horrible directing,
scriptwriting, acting and sets. It has to be badly conceived and
executed.'' Any hint of competency, even if accidental, eliminates
the film, she said.
    Following ''Plan Nine'' on opening night will be two other clinkers:
''They Saved Hitler's Brain'' (in a bullet-proof pickle jar) and ''I
Changed My Sex (Glen or Glenda).''
    ''Chained For Life,'' should be the high point of the next day. An
advertisement for the festival explains the plot line: ''Siamese twin
found guilty of murder. Innocent sister must face consequences.''
    The all-midget musical is ''The Terror of Tiny Town,'' wherein the
good cowboy takes part in a chase scene in which his horse is at first
black, then white and finally black again.
    The midget actors stride under swinging doors and clamber on
Shetland ponies before riding into the sunset.
    The quintessential grade-B horror flick actor, Bela Lugosi, stars in
''Bride of the Monster.'' The blurb for that reads: ''Lugosi's battle
with a rigid rubber octopus inexplicably ends in nuclear holocaust.''
    Beacon ticket seller Marci Goldstein said, ''there's a lot of
interest. I've gotten calls from California and Chicago.'' Tickets are
$3 and $4.
    Some other films and their blurbs:
    -''Harlem on the Prairie.'' A ''black comedy'' set on the Great
       Plains.
    -''The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.'' Homicidal 40-foot
       beefsteaks terrorize major U.S. cities.
    -''The Bees.'' Killer bees protest use of frozen Brazilian bee sperm
       in top-line cosmetics.
    -''The Creeping Terror.'' Killer carpet attacks high schol prom in
       Lake Tahoe.
    

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

Date: 11 Apr 1980 1709-PST
From: HARUKA at SRI-KL
Subject: Worst movie

One of the worst movies I've ever seen is THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION.
It starts off with a meteor striking into countryside of some off-in-
the-boonies small town. Typical beginning, but ah, this meteor is
distinctly different in that it contains a miniature black hole!! (We
learn this later when a local astronomer and a government-sent
physicist come to the same conclusion upon studying some warped photos
- "Only one thing could cause this..." "You're right! A miniature
black hole...") Anyway, the vortex caused by this unusual phenomemnon
opens a dimension door to a parallel universe from which a large
number of industrial quality diamonds come forth and are scattered
over the countryside by the impact explosion. These uncut gems turn
out to be spider eggs from which an army of tarantula-sized arachnids
are born. They grow in a matter of days into house-sized
monstrosities, which of course causes panic in the surrounding
area(one of them can't resist attacking the local carnival taking
place). Now, you can tell that a movie is low budget when:

   1. The town sheriff believes an 18-year-old as soon as he is told
      over the phone that giant spiders are roaming around the area.
   2. The townspeople get up in arms (rifles, pitch forks, etc.) and
      start loading themselves onto trucks ("Let's go get 'em, boys!")
      as soon as they are told second-hand of the telephone message.
   3. The spiders look like go-carts covered with paper mache (I later
      read somewhere that that is exactly what they were and were
      nominated for worst special effects).
   4. The only "star" was the skipper from Gilligan's Island (I've
      even forgotten his name), who dies by slowly dragging himself
      under the spider/go-cart float...screaming all the time and
      trying to use his ineffective pistol.

They finally get rid of the pests with the use of a neutron generator,
which "floods the black hole with so much mass that is collapses on
itself and closes the door..." Closing the door of course terminates
the lives of all the spiders that made it thru. I am embarassed to say
that I saw this abortion at a movie theater and stayed only because I
paid for it...but then, when I look back on it, it was pretty funny
and I'd be tempted to see it again if it was on television.

					Haruka

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

TANG@MIT-MC 04/14/80 02:09:56 Re:  Worst Movie of All Time.

	Has to be "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians". Wherin the
Martians (sort of pea green Klingons with antennae) note that their
children are despondent (they don't eat their food pills) & consult
the ancients. Said ancients state that the Martians' kids need a Santa
Claus, and that He can be found on Earth. Rest of story follows.
	What can I say? I guess that this was produced in the wake of
Forbidden Planet, since the ads play up the robot character. There
are also two Earth kids who help Santa.
	Even the Martians are Caucasian.

				Jack

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

DAUL@MIT-MC 04/13/80 06:02:51 Re: BAD MOVIES

I remember a film about some folks that land on as island somewhere
and are faced with having to deal with giant crabs (many meters high).
The crabs spend their time chasing and killing the folks. What stood
out most in my mind, was that if you looked close at the bottom of the
screen....you could see the wheels that the special effects people
used to wheel the crabs across the screen.

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

Re: The Creeping Terror   [see SFL V1 #74,75 for more  --  RDD]

I managed to catch that for the second time of my life last month.
I ended up watching it both times because I couldn't believe the
POOR quality of it. It has my vote as the WORST!!! It is worth
seeing...otherwise you will never know what all of us are talking
about. --Bill

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

LMOORE@MIT-ML 04/13/80 16:34:28 Re: An Award for the Worst

   Last summer at Unicon 5, "The Creeping Terror" won the Hevo award
for worst film of all time. The trophy consisted a reel of film which
was covered with plastic vomit and tastfully mounted on a wooden base.
To win this award, the film had to be voted the most likely to cause
the viewer to heave up his/her last meal.

(Unicon is a spin-off of the University of Maryland Science Fiction
society.  It is usually held somewhere in the Washington, D.C. area.)

	-Lee

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

Date: 10 Apr 1980 2130-PST
From: KATZ at USC-ISIE
Subject: OASIS event

		Special Event

	Friday, April 25, 1980
	Calif. Museum of Science and Industry
	Exploring Mars through Public Support

	Guest Speaker: Ben Bova, Editor of OMNI

Bova will be discussing the Viking Fund, a unique program to raise $1
million from private donations to assure that research will continue
on the data sent back from the Viking Mars lander. Privately raising
$1 million for a space project would be a tremendous signal to
Washington, DC of the public willingness to support space activities.

As an extra attraction, the film, "Mars in 3-D" , produced from actual
Viking Lander photographs, will be shown.

The activity starts at 8 pm, in the Kinsey Auditorium of the
California Museum of Science and Industry, 700 State Dr, Exposition
Park, L.A. (right between USC and the Colliseum).

Admission is free.  For further info, contact me.

			Alan

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

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

Date: 15 APR 1980 0233-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #78
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Tuesday, 15 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 78

    Today's Topics: More Horrible SF Movies, Who is Harry Bates?,
                              More Recursive SF Stories
----------------------------------------------------------------------

JAMES TURNER@MIT-AI 04/13/80 15:36:37

Another real winner is the old Space Patrol shows which are now put
out as movies. One memorable episode which i saw at BOSKONE last year
involved the following. First, Space Patrol lands on unknown planet
and lowers wooden ladder. Next, Patrol comes out wear no helmet and
space suit, even though the planet is unexplored. Next, the viewer is
treated to ten minutes of the following.  See the man standing next to
the ladder. Cut to Patrol hacking through jungle. Cut to man lighting
cigarette at ladder. Back to Patrol. Etc. After various crisis, the
Patrol wipes out the alien menace by spraying a fire extinguiser at
it. Is the extinguiser filled with CO2. Oh, NO. It has liquid oxygen
in it. Anyone using that for a fire extinguiser would get a big bang
out of it. What makes the show memorable are the commercials which are
kept in the film. Yes kids, you too can have a Space Patrol Decoder
Ring and Sex Aid, just send 2000 box tops and your right arm to...

				<JMT>

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

MARG@MIT-AI 04/14/80 22:48:05 Re: For better or for worse...

Indeed, the cannibal plant story is certainly "Little Shop of Horrors"
and is one of my personal favorites. It stresses loyalty, and is
terrifically funny. "Feeed Meee!"

In most uproariously bad plot twist dept, I'd like to nominate...a
Japanese 60's film about which I remember nothing BUT the bad plot -
can anyone help? The full length movie about a giant turtle menacing
the (island?) comes to an unsurprising end as all of the power
companies etc help to apply shock therapy.  The poor terrapin levels a
mountain in its death throes, pulls in its limbs, and topples to land
upside down. The end? No, the inverted dishshaped beast's parking
lights start flashing, it spins up and launches itself reincarnate as
a flying saucer. As I recall, the movie then goes on for a very long
time before the flying saucer menacing the (island?)  comes to an
unsurprising end...

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

Date: 14 April 1980 22:43-EST
From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject: Killer Tomatoes

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is filmed entirely on location in San
Diego, has a guest appearance by the KGB (aka "San Diego") Chicken
and IS TERRIBLE!

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

Date: 14 Apr 1980 11:46 am PST (Monday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: "...Dr. L"

Actually, the name of that movie (MWMT@MIT-MC in SFL # 75) is "The
5,000 fingers of Dr. T".  It was written by none other than Dr. Seuss.

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

Date: 14 Apr 1980 09:42 PST
Sender: Weissman at PARC-MAXC
From: Bob Weissman <WEISSMAN at PARC-MAXC>
Subject: Who is Harry Bates?

This weekend, after dusting off an old (1940s) SF anthology that I've
had for about 15 years and looking through it for nostalgia's sake, I
came across a story called "Farewell to the Master" by Harry Bates.
This is the story upon which "The Day the Earth Stood Still" was
based.  (I was a little surprised, having assumed that TDtESS had been
an original story.)

Does anyone know who Harry Bates is or was?  Was it a pseudonym?  I
don't seem to recall ever reading anything else by Bates...

(By the way, "Farewell to the Master", while obviously the basis
 of TDtESS, has a much different point to it.  Klaatu is killed
 30 seconds after he steps out of the saucer, so he has no time to
 deliver his anti-nuke message.  Gnut (probably too unpronouncable
 for a movie, hence Gort) spends the rest of the story trying to
 reanimate Klaatu.  I won't give away the ending, but if you can
 track this story down, you'll be pleasantly surprised.)

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

Date: 04/14/80 1056-EST
From: KG Heinemann (SORCEROR at LL)
Subject: Recursion and logical circularity in SF

     Michael Urbans mention of THE WORM OF OUROBOROUS as an example of
recursive/circular SF prompts me to throw out the following question:
     Are recursive/circular SF stories another case of traditional
mythological ideas manifesting themselves in a modern guise?
    The circularity in THE WORM OF OUROBOROUS is a significant feature
of the Norse/Teutonic mythology from which that work draws.  Since it
clearly is a work of fantasy, rather than SF, it may be totally
irrelevant to recent discussions in SF-LOVERS.  On the other hand,
maybe it is quite appropriate, in that it suggests an affirmative
answer to my question.
     A quick explanation of the circularity in Norse/Teutonic
mythology may be in order.  Basically, there comes a time, called
Ragnarok, when the Gods of Asgard and the forces of evil, personified
by giants, will annihilate each other.  The universe as we know it is
destroyed in the clash, but after the passage of some indefinite
period of time, the gods and giants are recreated, and they in turn
recreate the universe in exactly the same way as the first time. 
All that occurred before occurs again, leading to another Ragnarok.
The Teutonic Gotterdamerung is essentially identical to the Norse
Ragnarok.  Also, some Buddhist sects believe in a cyclical universe
which bears some remarkable similarities to the Big Bang Theory of
modern cosmology.
   So, fellow SF-LOVERS, could the recursive/circular stories which
appear as SF represent, in part, a modern continuation of the literary
expression of these grand old mythological concepts?

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

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 04/14/80 16:01:21 Re: recursion

The film "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeouse" ends with an unwinding
recursion.  Each member of the cast is seen living out some bizarre
series of events, and then the next person wakes up having dreamed
that entire episode.  That person lives through some even wilder
events, and then the whole thing shows up to be a dream at the next
level up, etc.  The film contains a lot of well done purposeless
wandering, and projects a kind of non-reality that makes the ending
seem entirely appropriate.

Another recursive story that caught my eye (author unknown) was about
a young woman who is in a hospital recovering from a serious puncture
wound to her face.  The story is written from her viewpoint; she is
confused and a little delirious, has amnesia and is totally dependent
upon the staff of the hospital for all care.  Medical students are
constantly floating around examining her as an interesting case.
In the end, a nurse is administrating an injection to her almost
completely healed eye, and slips, recreating the initial wound.  The
final image is of this woman, trying to sort through her memories,
wringing her wrinkled hands in confusion.

Not a very gentle story, but I remember it as being excellent.	
	Dan Shapiro

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

Date:  15 April 1980 01:19 est
From:  Frankston at MIT-Multics (BOB at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  recursive stories

Since the topic is still active, I remember one I read a long time ago
in which there is a simulated universe created (via a computer?) that
is used to modify a city for the purpose of testing ad compaigns and
products.  The protagonist enters this universe (via the computer).
The stories leads to the implication of our universe being a
simulation or the simulation creating a simulation.  I think the word
simulicron was associated with the story but I am not sure.

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

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

Date: 16 APR 1980 0520-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #79
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Wednesday, 16 April 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 79

 Today's Topics:   TESB, Who was Harry Bates?, Horrible SF Movies,
                 5000 Fingers of Dr. T Revisited, Recursive SF Title
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 15 Apr 1980 1523-PST (Tuesday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: TESB Novelization

The novelization of "The Empire Strikes Back" has just appeared on
the newstands here, from Ballantine Books ($2.25). In some ways it IS
better than Star Wars, but has a less decisive climax. I'm reluctant
to say much (since many or most will want to wait to see the film or
read the book themselves), but the good guys become more interesting
and the bad guys become more horrifying. Looks good.

	Mike

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

Date: 15 Apr 1980 at 0857-PST
From: obrien at Rand-Unix (Mike O'Brien)
Subject: Harry Bates & THE Anthology

Harry Bates was a sometime SF writer active in the 40's. He was one of
those unfortunate souls who only really had one story in him, and that
one, a masterpiece. "Farewell to the Master" certainly ranks as one of
the finest SF stories ever written.

Harry died recently at an advanced age and was the subject of a very,
very good eulogy in LOCUS, from which this information comes. He was
interested in the field of SF for his entire life, and by all accounts
was a hell of a nice guy.

If you have not read this story, by the way, you really should. It can
be found in "Adventures in Time and Space", edited by Healy & McComas.
I was surprised to find this book apparently still in print as of a
few years ago. It is the very first hardcover anthology of SF ever
pulled together, and ranks as one of the best, mainly because of the
vast amount of material it had to draw on: all of SF up to the point
when it was published. For anyone who loves SF's "golden age" this
book is a must.

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

Date: 15 APR 1980 0959-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Bates, bad movies

     Harry Bates, to the best of my recollection, was the editor of
ASTOUNDING early in its existence; he and F. Orlin Tremaine preceded
ASF's most famous editor, John W. Campbell. I \think/ that Bates was
the first editor, back when the magazine was run by Don Clayton
publications rather than Street and Smith (Clayton folded in the
depths of the Depression, and S&S revived the title. It is said that
ASF was started because Clayton had the current covers of all his
magazines displayed on his office wall and wanted 3 more titles to
add to the 13 to make a nice even 4x4 square.)
     Bates was interviewed by CINEFANTASTIQUE a few years back, when
they did a cover story on THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL; he was mildly
unhappy about having gotten nothing for the story beyond the magazine
payment, but glad that his part in a great movie was recognized.
(Other amusing trivia: Gort was played by the doorman from Grauman's
Chinese, who appar- ently was the physical predecessor of Ted Cassidy;
he had TWO foam rubber suits, with laces on opposite sides so Gort
could be shown in both front and rear view.)

     Most of the terrible movie cliches are summed up in FLESH GORDON,
which I was particularly reminded of by the comments about SPACE
PATROL; when they land on the planet Porno, Flexei Jerkov sticks his
nose out, announces, "Good. There's oxygen here." and jumps out.

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

Date: 15 Apr 1980 2225-PST
From: Judy Anderson <JMA at SU-AI>
Subject: On BAAAAD films.   

Well, I am a little late, but did anyone ever see "Fantastic Invasion
of Planet Earth"? Gawd, what a loser! See, there are these aliens, and
near as I can figure, they put giant jars over various Earth towns
(much as we would a small bug), and then run them through a sort of
tape recorder where they do exactly the same things over and over each
and every day. However, Our Hero manages to escape being thrown into
this rut, and rescues some other people (I believe they are fed some
particular thing which makes them not try to do anything else). They
go off to the edge of the jar, and dig a hole through it, and go from
there to fight off the invaders. YUK. It's only saving grace is that
it is in 3-D.

Judy.

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

Date: 15 April 1980 03:38-EST
From: Frank J. Wancho <FJW at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Worst Movie - Another Angle

In the anthology, "The Future in Question", edited by Asimov,
Greenberg, and Olander, where all the titles pose a question,
including the last one, "The Last Question" (recently mentioned
here - in detail), contains several excellent short (and
not-so-short) stories of various vintages.

One, by recently mentioned James Tiptree, Jr., "Houston, Houston, Do
You Read?", takes feminism to a different conclusion and well worth
reading.

I am still not quite finished with the book, but just finished "Who
Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr. The foreward for this piece
says:

    This famous story found expression, in greatly altered form, on
    the screen as "The Thing" (a.k.a. "The Thing from Outer Space"),
    which set the tone for the monster films of the 1950s.

Now, I remember kinda liking the film when I first saw it, but after
reading this story, I am furious! The screenplay stopped at the end of
the third chapter out of 14! What a truly great movie that would have
been had they filmed the whole story!!!

Thus, I nominate "The Thing" as the all-time worst movie for mangling
a story and doing a great diservice to the author.

I am sure there are other such "films" in this sub-catagory. Another
one is the TV version of "The Martian Chronicles", with which Bradbury
was apparently not satisfied...

--Frank

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

Date: 15 Apr 1980 0336-PST (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: bad movies

I have been happy to see the sizable response to my request for BAD
movie titles and info.

Learning that THE CREEPING TERROR has gotten official status as the
worst movie is particularly gratifying. I may tape it the next time
it comes around down here. A few other comments would seem in order:

The giant turtle in the Japanese flicks is probably GAMURA. At least
that's the only big Japanese turtle I have ever seen. He is sometimes
portrayed as a relatively good guy compared with some of the more evil
monsters that appear sometimes in these films.

The movie about the giant lobsters. Hmmm. There was a movie about
giant CRABS formed by (you guessed it) radioactive fallout. It was
called, I believe, "Attack of the Giant Crabs". Natch. I should add
that these are the kind of crabs you find at the seashore, not the
kind found in certain hairy parts of the anatomy at various
embarassing times.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS is indeed a classic. Does not qualify as "BAD"
though, since it does have many redeeming characteristics.

Another BAD movie a net correspondent reminded me of (which I had
mercifully forgotten) is "Robinson Crusoe on Mars". Had kinda a neat
effect for moving around these alien spaceships (sort of moved in
intertialess jumps with instant stops), but other than that was pretty
grim.

Another fine BAD film is KRONOS. One of my personal favorites.
An unknown alien race sends to earth a giant automatic energy
accumulator. It goes stamping around California (and manages to mess
up Los Angeles pretty good [as if we didn't get it bad enough in War
of the Worlds]). We try to hit it with an H bomb, but it kinda closes
up and sucks in the all the energy. Just what it wanted! Nice sequence
of the flying wing delivering the bomb though. A local station here
once ran this film right at the peak of the furor of the energy
crisis. It was really great, since there is a line in the film where
they discuss how the alien race had "used up all its own energy
supplies and had sent out these accumulators to gather more from
other worlds".

Now, let's see if we can clear up the issue with "The 5000 Fingers of
Dr. T". That IS the title. There have never been any remakes or films
with similar titles. It is in my list of my favorite top 10 movies of
all times. Possibly the top 5. I have an audio tape of it here at home
and recently went with some friends to see it in a theater down here
(the kind that runs different cult films every night). For years I
only saw it on TV, usually rather badly cut.

I saw it in UCLA's Royce Hall when I was about 7 years old originally,
about 20 years ago! The film was made in (I believe) 1951. It is in
color, and the main stars are Hans Conried (a TREMENDOUS performance)
and Tommy Rettig (the kid who played Lassie's master in the original
Lassie show, and who, I believe, is currently serving time in a state
prison for trafficking in Cocaine.) Written by Dr. Seuss, it was WAY
ahead of its time, and has generally been misunderstood. It was NOT
aimed at 10 year olds, but was aimed at an adult audience.
Unfortunately, in the 1950's, few adults could understand it at all.

The story involves our friend Mr. Rettig, who plays Bartholemew
(spelling wrong, I know) Collins, a boy who hates practicing the piano
for his rather sinister appearing piano teacher, Dr. Terwilliger. He
is always daydreaming, and falls asleep near the beginning of the
film, creating a dream that is most of the rest of the movie. The
sinister Dr. T has created an institute where he will have total
control over 500 young boys, all playing the piano. He chuckles
with glee,

"Soon the others will be here. Then I will have 500 little boys --
 5000 little fingers. And they'll be mine, ALL MINE! Practicing
 24 hours every day, 365 days a year!"

Bart, and his allie in this dream (and in his "real" life), Mr.
Zabladowski, the plumber, fight against Dr. T through a variety of
adventures around the Terwilliger Institute, which IS well protected.
Says a display panel on one of the walls when Bart walks by:

"Bartholemew Collins. The years you spend with Dr. Terwilliger will be
the happiest years of your life. But if you get homesick don't try to
escape. The barbed wire around the Terwilliger Institute, is
ELECTRIFIED, ELECTRIFIED..."

The whole movie is an amazing series of alternately beautiful and
frightening scenes, all with a tremendous nightmare quality that has
never been duplicated. The sets are pure Dr. Seuss, from the 500 boy
piano to the lowest dungeons. Dr. T has particular fun in the
dungeons:

"I think you'll find this one of the more fascinating dungeons. That
 lovely rumbling sound you hear is one of my favorite prisoners... You
 know the part in Beethoven's Symphony where the drummer is supposed
 to go, "boom boom boom bum"? Well this stupid lout always went "boom
 boom boom bum ... boom!", one extra boom you know; he'll be here
 forever."

"You mean he has to keep beating that drum FOREVER?"

"OH! That isn't that the man I'm punishing. MY man is INSIDE the
 drum!"

If you EVER have a chance to see this film, take it. Take everyone you
know, from kids to senior citizens. Just as long they have an open
mind and imagination. I cannot state too emphatically that this is a
superb, excellent, wonderful, great film. Period.

--Lauren--

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

BARRYG@MIT-MC 04/15/80 04:08:57 Re: 5000 fingers

Is in color, lasts about 1.5 hours, and is one of my all-time
favorites. I've seen it about as many times as Fantasia. If you
remember it in B&W, you may have seen it on TV, where it occasionally
appears on the CBS "Early Show", horribly cut. The original title of
the movie was "Krazy Music." Seen in full, the plot hangs together
reasonably well, with the dream and real sequences meshing to form
a consistent whole. The songs are also quite good, rather above the
recent average for musicals. (Oh yes, the level of plotting should
probably be compared to a musical comedy as much as to a normal
drama. While the songs don't carry as much of the plot as in a
normal musical, they do account for at least 10% of the length. I
am particularly fond of "Get together weather", "Hurrah for us,"
and the eminently filkable "First Floor Dungeon.")

It has a well deserved reputation for imaginative sets. I have seen it
only at conventions and private showings at people's homes. I think I
would be willing to pay $10 (once) to see it in a real theatre with a
decent sound system and large screen.

	barry

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

Date:  15 April 1980 10:16 est
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Frankston's Recursive story

It is by Philip K. Dick.  I'm certain of that.

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

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

Date: 17 APR 1980 0250-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #80
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Thursday, 17 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 80

   Today's Topics: Horrible SF Movies, Query on Recycled SF Stories
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 14 Apr 1980 1236-EST
From: TAPPAN at BBN-TENEXD
Subject: Damnation Alley (Reply to Kusnick in [SFL V1 #76]  --  RDD)

It doesn't seem fair to judge the book on the basis of a bad movie,
it's not Zelazny's best but theres almost no resemblence to the movie
version ( I believe they took the basic plot and went off on a wild
tangent).

/Dan

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

Date: 04/15/80 1304-EST
From: Robert Kelner
Sender: NATE at LL
Subject: Vampire Tree

  In reference to Sapsford's question in Issue #75, I don't think it
can be 'Little Shop of Horrors'.
  I remember seeing the last half of a movie on TV (so I don't
remember the name) involving a vampire tree in the garden of some
mansion. When people came near (and are alone - of course!), it made
sucking noises, spread its' flowers, and red tongue-like things came
out. Of course, the victim never tried to run as the tree grabbed them
and drained them of blood. It does end with the good guy axing the
tree and spilling its' blood (literally). The 'mad botanist', on
seeing this, seemed to merge with the tree and died with it.
  I think the movie may have been in Italian. It wasn't the best movie
I ever saw! but probably not the worst. 'Little Shop of Horrors', on
the other hand, was one of the funniest I've ever seen!

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

CSTACY@MIT-ML 04/15/80 21:44:13 Re: Bad Movies

I suspect that Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, while decidedly a bad
film, may have been done that way intentionally. With lines in the
script like, "Gee - I could have had a V8" and with little strange
notes in the credits like "This Space For Rent - Call...", and, of
course, the emotional theme song, I suspect the producers were out
to spoof bad flicks.

dont talk to any strange..errr..tomatoes,

                                    Chris

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

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 04/15/80 12:55:03 Re: BAD movies

Noone has mentioned the cheese collection put out by the japanese
monster film (and rubber suit) company. On last report they had 5
rubber suits which starred in who knows, dozens, of cheap starchy
fillers. Anyone know all the costumes? There was Godzilla, a two
headed fire-spouting beast, a giant moth, ultra-man (he beat up on a
different one each episode; it got boring after 5 shows), and a few
more. Tokyo gets destroyed at least 12 times throughout these films,
and countless islands get flattened by quivering, rampaging 100ft tall
behemoths, with zippers showing clearly.

Talk about Bad!
			Dan

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

Date: 15 Apr 1980 1657-PST
From: HARUKA at SRI-KL
Subject: Gamera

The monster Marg referred to is Gamera. This is a monster turtle that
flies by using rocket thrust which it can somehow generate within its
body. Its main weapons are a fire breath (similar to Godzilla'z but
different in that it is not radioactive) and it's hard shell with
which it strikes opponents from the air. This monster was a creation
of a rival company to that which produced Godzilla, Rodan, Gidra, et
al. You may have noticed the somewhat lower quality special effects.
In the tradition of many Japanese monsters that become popular, Gamera
has turned into a 'good' monster and has made numerous return
appearances in Japanese children shows. Presently, it is considered a
fighter for justice and is very friendly with children...as a matter
of fact, it is often some little boy or girl that asks Gamera to get
rid of a nasty monster that is currently demolishing Tokyo for the nth
time. Godzilla is also getting disgustingly 'good' these days,
although it hasn't been as completely bastardized as Gamera has, but I
personally prefer the Godzilla of old (like in the original where
Raymond Burr was starred as an American correspondent relating the
first apperance of the behemoth in Japan -- 1954 or 55 as I recall).
Ah, I almost forgot to mention, Gamera is weak to cold. Cheers!

Haruka

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

KLH@MIT-AI 04/16/80 04:06:58 Re: Flying Terrapins

        I saw a sequel to the movie Marg describes, in which the
selfsame giant turtle is cast as a "good" monster, opposing a "bad"
monster which has a triangular head and leather wings and eats blood
and flies (flap-flap, not insects). The Japanese seem to have a thing
about monster rallies. Anyway, there is also this little boy who is
the turtle's friend, and a couple of giant silkworms (or something),
and all kinds of really hilarious attempts to do away with the vicious
beastie; the turtle, of course, saves the world.
        Wish I remembered the title of this movie, too. It couldn't
really be classified as a BAD movie, because it was so funny. The
turtle's means of locomotion gave me hysterics, but an even better
example is one of the strategems tried by the bumbling humans: they
erect this gigantic conical bird feeder, which has a pot of boiling
blood at the top and a circular perch at the base of the cone. The
monster, coming back from a big night on the town, spies this nightcap
and settles down for a taste. Thereupon mighty engines begin to groan,
and the entire cone starts revolving... suspense mounts... will it
work? will the beastie remain oblivious until too late? Will it become
so dizzied that it can't take off, much less fly away? Will the sun
rise in time? (For some unexplained reason, sunlight is fatal to this
type of monster...) Yuk yuk. Spinning turtles, spinning birds,
spinning worms... someone really spun a yarn there.

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

Date:  16 April 1980 00:06 est
From:  Frankston at MIT-Multics (BOB at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  Losers

I remember, what I presume to be Lucas' first attempt at science
fiction - THX 1130 (yes, I know it isn't 1130, but that is just as
good a number as any). I realize the movie got some good reviews,
but I think the scene of Fortran listings coming out of a 1403 as
being the future might have made it difficult for me to appreciate
the good points of the film.

[ The actual title of the film is THX 1138. The story was written
  by Lucas. It is also his earliest film effort to be publicly
  released. A novelization of the film done by Ben Bova is available
  in paperback.  --  RDD  ]

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

DERWAY@MIT-AI 04/14/80 01:04:54 Re: Project for SF-LOVERS

	The bit awhile back with the alternate titles for the slightly
modified Van Vogt story made me think of something useful I'd like to
see sf-lovers do. Namely, put together a list of stories which are out
under multiple titles, so that we don't buy both of them. An example
that comes to mind is Ray Bradbury's 'Martian Chronicles', which I
found to my chagrin is also out as 'The Silver Locusts'. There are
really two classes here. One with the identical story, or collection
of stories under different titles, and another with slightly modified
stories, or slightly different collections of short stories. Heinlein
has a bunch out like this. I think 'The Past Through Tomorrow' has all
of 'Methuselah's Children', and 'Revolt In 2100' in it. Anyway, If
people are interested in doing this, send me the author, titles, and
whether they're identical, or just close (and how they overlap), and
I'll compile the list, and send it to sf-lovers after a week or so.

	Have fun,
		Don

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

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

Date: 18 APR 1980 0433-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #81
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 18 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 81

  Today's Topics: Horrible SF Movies = Damnation Alley - THX 1138 -
                     Japanese Monsters - Loose Ends, The Viking Fund
----------------------------------------------------------------------

SLH@MIT-AI 04/17/80 23:23:36

     I'll admit "Damnation Alley" was pretty bad, but I don't think
it really belongs in the "worst movie" category. The one thing that I
really liked about it was the scene with the mutant bugs - when they
made their appearance, you wouldn't believe how many people (of all
ages, even) got up and left the theatre, and some started screaming
(which was good in that it woke me up to see that part). I guess some
people really can't stand insects that much, but I wouldn't mind
seeing some of those scenes again.

-Steve Hain

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

Date: 17 Apr 1980 at 0956-PST
From: chesley at SRI-UNIX
Subject: Damnation Alley & THX 1138

        I feel obliged to come to the defense of these two works.

        Damnation Alley: The movie is terrible, and I definitely
nominate it for one of the bottom n SF films of all time. The book,
on the other hand, though not one of Zelazny's best, is fantastic by
comparison with the film. It concerns a post World War III Hell's
Angel who's forced to save the city of Boston by transporting plague
serum cross country from LA, through various hazards caused by the
war; it's either that or spend the rest of his life in jail. The book
is mainly concerned with the trip, the adventures along the way, and
the character development of the main character. If all that sounds
strange, then nothing's been lost in translation...
        The movie transformed the people involved into US Army types
(which may be a comment on the US Army), made all the hazards along
the way unbelievable, and magicly made the world beautifull again in
order to provide a happy ending. Need I add that they deleted any
character development from the story?

        THX 1138: A *GREAT* film that most people probably won't like.
As to FORTRAN listings, I thought that was completely reasonable: in
the world Lucas painted, and even in the reality I perceive, it seems
almost inevitable that FORTRAN will still be around fifty or a hundred
years from now (it's a somewhat pessimistic film, by the way).
        This film is also the closest thing I've seen to Brave New
World. The plot's completely different, but they have exactly the
same "feel."
        "How is the new environment to be programmed? It all happened
so slowly that most men failed to realize that anything had happened
at all." (That's probably not exact.)

	--Harry...

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

Date: 17 April 1980 1041-EST (Thursday)
From: David.Lamb at CMU-10A
Subject: THX 1138

I was amused, rather than upset, by the FORTRAN listing in THX 1138
(which was only on the screen for about a second). I enjoyed the part
near the end where the robot police are about to recapture THX, but
are called back because of exceeding the budget for the chase.

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

Date: 17 APR 1980 1245-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: losers? (Frankston's message in #80)

     I think it's a bit petty to downrate what is basically a
Bradbury-style view of the future on a single technical detail.
I've seen only parts of THX-1138 but was reasoably impressed
with what I saw.

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

Date: 17 Apr 1980 11:23 PST
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: THX 1138

Note also that the license plate of the hot-rod in Lucas's "American
Graffiti" was "THX 138."

	Richard

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

Date: 17 Apr 1980 0021-PST
From: HARUKA at SRI-KL
Subject: Gyosu

In reference to Ken's inquiry about the sequel to the original Gamera
film, it is 'Gamera tai Gyosu' in Japanese...literally translated,
'Gamera vs Gyosu'(of course). I actually read the cartoon this was
based on and never actually saw the film (yes, these things are more
often than not put in comic form...usually much better than the movies
too). As I recall, the 'bad' monster was called Gyosu because it would
scream 'Gyo! Gyo!'...and Gamera's name comes from the Japanese word
for turtle which is kame (they couldn't call it Kamera because that
would sound like a commercial for Nikon or something).

Haruka

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

Date: 17 Apr 1980 1300-EST
From: JHENDLER at BBN-TENEXA
Subject: Gamera and friends

  I believe that the monster referred to in the first note (Marg) was
not actually Gamera. Gamera has been attacked many times, but I don't
believe that the electric thing was involved.
  I don't remember the name of the movie that i think Marg is
referring to, but I believe I can summarize the plot briefly...
  The movies theme is ecology. A monster is born from the oil slicks.
This beast makes trouble in the water for a while, and then learns to
fly. It flies to various factories and uses the pollution form their
smokestacks to get bigger. As it flies it secretes "a powerful acid"
(which kills all the people, but somehow never seems to damage any of
the objects near by) The hero discovers electricity will kill the
beast and lures him between two huge screens with millions of volts
between them. This happens about 45 minutes into the flick. It seems
to work, everyone is happy, and then all of a sudden the monster takes
off again. The movie now continues without any real plot for about 45
more minutes, when the same process is used, this time successfully
(not enough voltage the first time). I may be wrong, but I vaguely
remember that Godzilla gets into the movie for a few minutes, too.
(He is the good monster).
  This movie definitely was one of the worst Japanese horror flicks
I've ever seen, since it tries to make a point (pollution is bad) and
thus isn't even as funny as most of the films where it is just a lot
of monsters fighting each other (I remember one with no less then 8
monsters in it)

   -Jim

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

Date: 17 Apr 1980 9:22 am PST (Thursday)
From: McGregor at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Godzilla Movies

No listing of bad horror/SF movies would be complete without that
horrible/wonderful 60 second movie entitled "Bambi Meets Godzilla".

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

Date:  17 April 1980 17:55 est
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Japanese good monsters

     I particularly enjoyed one with a title like "GIDRAH, THREE
HEADED MONSTER". Here we have a great variety of monsters, good and
bad. On the bad side, GIDRAH. On the good side, MOTHRA, a silk-worm
like fellow. he hangs out with a pair of 10? inch high twin girls
from some random island. Lots of amusing sub-plots, but the main
idea is that MOTHRA is asked to persuade RODAN (giant flying bird
or pterodactyl) and GODZILLA to help defend Earth against GIDRAH.
     The best scene here is where MOTHRA is arguing with R. and G. R.
and G. are fighting with each other, and say that they prefer that to
battling some new thing. (Some human is interpreting this from the
speech of MOTHRA). At this point a droll Japanese says: "Those
monsters are as stupid as human beings".
     Well, I enjoyed it....

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

Date: 17 Apr 1980 0012-PST (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: loose ends in BAD SF movies

Things seem to be coming together now concerning the BAD SF movies.

Yeah, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS did NOT end with spurting blood and such.
It ended with the tree's young "master" being devoured, and his face
appearing on a giant flower petal that blooms from the beastie. Guess
the other one was VAMPIRE TREE (which I do not believe I have ever
seen).

RE: the Japanese flicks. I purposely avoided mentioning any of those,
since most are of the same exact genre. (Remember the giant robot in
some of them? Ever notice it has an Egyptian style headress just like
the pilots in Battlestar Dsylexia?) My particular favorite in the
Godzilla series (outside of the original, which is not a BAD film at
all really) is SON OF GODZILLA. Hilarious. Another fine funny Japanese
film is the ever popular ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE.

From the "just when you think you're safe department":

Last night, just after finishing wading through my online mail and
hacking some code, I decided to logoff of these damn bit twiddlers and
get some sleep. But, as is my habit, I gave the VHF/UHF TV sprectrum a
scan first just to make sure I wasn't missing any gems. I ran right
into the beginning (at around 2:30 AM) of a really BAD SF film I had
never seen before. Just when you think there aren't any left! This
wonder of nitrate film technology was called BEYOND THE TIME BARRIER.
The basic idea of this 50's film is that a pilot, testing an X-15 type
of plane, shoots through the barrier into 2024 (he starts in 1961
actually, maybe this isn't REALLY a 50's film). He finds a city of
deaf mutes (caused by some plague). Only about 4 people could talk.
This sure is one way to keep the cost of the extras down in a film --
no speaking roles! Anyway, I stayed up all night watching it,
considering it my "duty" to SF-LOVERS. The thing was just bad. Not
even funny like THE CREEPING TERROR. But it WAS on sound film so it
cannot beat the TERROR's standing as THE WORST.

I wonder what would be entailed in collecting the titles of ALL the SF
movies ever made? I am sure someone has already done it, but I would
like to see one from the SF-LOVERS point of view. Maybe I'll start on
mine when I have nothing better to do ...

--Lauren--

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

Date: 15 Apr 1980 2251-PST
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIE>
Subject: More on the Viking Fund

Since a few people have asked, I decided to say a little more about
the Viking Fund to the whole list.

The fund is being managed by the San Francisco Section of the American
Astronautical Society. The original purpose was to raise $1 million to
provide funding for the Viking Landers (now Lander). Because of the
many NASA budget cuts, it was feared that NASA may cut out the small
amount necessary to continue study. The original plan was to try to
present NASA with $1 million to be used for this purpose.

It turns out, however, that NASA is not allowed to accept money with
"strings" attached, ie they could take the money, but couldn't
guarantee that the money would be used for Viking. What may happen as
a result of this is to create a trust fund, and act as a contractor
to JPL or whoever is studing the data.

It may be that NASA will fund Viking after all, in fact it is very
likely. In that event, the money would be used to fund other space
projects.

The main reason behind the fund is not to fund Viking, or something
else, but to show Carter, congress, etc. that there are many people
out here who really want an active space program and are willing to
spend their own money, even above the taxes they already pay, to see
it happen. If a significant amount is raised, people may realize how
important space is to some people.

For more information, see the article in the April 9 issue of the Wall
St. Journal. Also see the next issues of OMNI and Penthouse which will
feature full page ads about the Viking fund. You can also contact me
Alan Katz <Katz at USC-ISIE> for the address to write to or for more
information.

Ben Bova is on a lecture tour talking about the fund also. If you dont
live in So. Cal., you may be able to see him somewhere else.

			Alan

PS
	I just found out that the Bay area L5 (san franscisco) 
	will be having Bova speak on April 23, at 7:30 pm at
	UC Berkeley, 200 life sciences building

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

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

Date: 19 APR 1980 0544-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #82
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Saturday, 19 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 82

Today's Topics: Horrible SF Movies, Numerology - THX 1138, Title Query
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 18 Apr 1980 1137-PST
From: BRITT at USC-ISIB
Subject: Another Bad SF Movie

     Gifted, in this case, with a poor memory for details, I recall a
movie starring Ray Milland as a dying, rich bigot and a black actor
as the donor (receiver) of Ray's grafted head in something like "The
Wonderful Two Headed Transplant" or "The Incredible Two Headed Man."
The abominable result of this operation is a lot of bad footage of two
men pressed together into one set of clothes fleeing the authorities
and battling each other.

Ben

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

Date: 18 April 1980 0621-EST (Friday)
From: Mike.Inners at CMU-10A (C621MI10)
Subject: Smog Monsters

I recall having recently seen "GODZILLA vs THE SMOG MONSTER" on our
local BAD movie show.  There were a few amusing features to this movie
- for example, the explanation of why electricity killed the monster.
"Sludge is wet.  Electricity dries out whatever it touches.  We will
use electricity to dry out the sludge monster."  It is also the only
movie I have ever seen with a metamorphosizing monster.  The monster
starts out like a tadpole (with glowing red eyes, no less!) and turns
into a man-in-rubber-suit shape.  The monster then seems to be able to
change at will between a man-shape and the 'flying turtle' shape.  The
flying turtle looks just like a horseshoe crab - suspiciously so.

The jets of sulfuric acid (it was identified) that propel the monster
have predictable effects.  There was at least one sequence where the
monster flies over a steel building under construction - and the
building disolves away and collapses.  Godzilla plays the 'good guy'
and keeps the sludge monster busy while the entire regions power is
diverted to dry it out.  A fairly typical GODZILLA vs <nasty> movie
excepting the the botched environmentalist message.

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

Date: 18 Apr 1980 1727-PST
From: GEOFF at SRI-KA
Subject: Hot Rod license plate

As I recall the license plate in "American Graffiti" was just plain
"THX", no 138 or 1138, but,... The cell block in which the Princess
in was being held in on the Death Star in Star Wars was plain "1138";
Hence "American Graffiti" + "Star Wars" = THX 1138.

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

James Turner@MIT-AI 04/18/80 17:16:12

     On the subject of THX-1138 popping up in other films, in both the
novelization and movie,"STAR WARS",the guard who goes into the Falcon
to help the scanner crew unload the scanner and gets mugged by Luke and
Co. is, you guessed it, THX-1138. Talk about using the same idea over
and over and over....

         <JMT>

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

Date: 18 April 1980 1539-EST (Friday)
From: Bliss-10 at CMU-10A (N110BL10)
Subject: THX 1138 and ST:TMP

Star Wars also made a reference to THX 1138...at least in the book
version...when Han Solo and the gang take over the (control center?)
and blow away the guards there, the intercom comes on and says "THX
1138, are you there?".

I do not believe that anyone has yet mentioned the strange facial
attire that the security guards in ST:TMP wore.  It reminded me
of the head gear worn by the Romulans...hmmm...

Steve

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

Date: 18 April 1980 0414-EST (Friday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A> 
Subject: Rather involved but simple request/digression

Whilst talking about some very random subjects with a few of my
"hacker" acquaintances we happened upon the subject of neutrinos
or rather, the lack there of, since the mine shaft detector (where
ever it is) isn't detecting to much....which seems rather omninous
to say the least, unless there is a major flaw in the solar energy
production, since the detector seems to be working fine in the test
situations...but the real question is that I remember reading a short
story about a guy who claims he is god that goes in (simultaneously)
to several newspapers around the country announcing such and carries
on some banter with the science editors and when he alledgedly takes
up residence in the sun (he was a local god) the neutrinos starting
pouring out again. My question is: what was the name of this story
and where did it appear? (I am fairly sure it was one of the digest
periodicals).
				Thanx,
					Doug

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

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


Date: 21 APR 1980 0242-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #83
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 21 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 83

   Today's Topics: Filksongs, More on Horrible SF Movies, Spoilers,
                      Deity and Low SNUs? (Solar Neutrino Unit)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 Apr 1980 2041-PST
From: Ken Olum <KDO at SU-AI>
Subject: The Filksong Request [ see SFL V1 #69,70,72,79 ]

I am collecting Filksongs, which have been sent to me or which I've
typed in or whatever. If anyone has any more online, send me them
or pointer to them and I'll include them in the collection. Every
so often I'll announce the changes through the list. The current
contents are:

     BARKER and FONTANA ROAST BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
     The Motie Engineers
     The Clone Song  (by Asimov, real title possibly different.)
     The Ringworld Engineers
     Sailor Song (Don't know the title to this, tell me if you do.)
	
The collection will reside in the following files on the net.

   Site          Filename

MIT-AI       DUFFEY;SFLVRS FILK
MIT-Multics  >user_dir_dir>SysLib>Lamson>sf-lovers>sf-lovers.filk.text
PARC-MAXC    [MAXC]<BRODIE>FILK.TXT
SU-AI        FILK.TXT[1,KDO]

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

				-- Ken

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

LLOYD@MIT-AI 04/20/80 13:23:37 Re: All time worst movie & a new name

On my wedding night just over a month ago, I happened to turn on the
television in our hotel room. As luck would have it, the local
'garbage' tv station was airing my bid for "The Worst Sci-Fi Movie".
Once again those masters of rubber suits have outdone themselves.

The movie, titled (I think) "The Adventures of Star Man", contained
every Sci-Fi cliche ever dreamed up by Hollywood (or the Japaneese
equivalent thereof). Unfortunately (blessing in disguise?) I missed
both the beginning and the end, but let me relate to you the middle
45 minutes I did see.

The bad guys (critters/people from "somewhere else") are plotting
the conquest of the earth aided by numerous creatures (mutants) of
endearing ways (guys in rubber suits). My favorite mutant was the
"Radioactive vapor breathing, flying nasty with the poison tipped
claws (picture man in green rubber suit with Co2 tank strapped to his
back...Co2=Radioactive vapor). Of course we have the eminent Japaneese
scientist who is working against time to develop a "formula" that will
destroy the mutants and their leader "brain" (disembodied brain kept
alive in a vat of . . .).

Enter STAR-MAN from the faraway constelation Sagitarius. You would
whoop with glee to see the mock kung-fu battles between STAR-MAN and
the evil denizens. As usual a little boy falls into the clutches of
the nasties and his only hope of survival is STAR-MAN.

I could go on but I fear I may be stating what you already know to be
true.

Another item of fun and frolic could be a "New names for old shows"
contest. I would like to submit "Battlescow Garbagecan" for that
outstanding (out standing in the rain?) piece of Sci-Fi perpetrated
by a herein unnamed network.

					(not too) Sincerely,
					Brian Lloyd

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

BARMAR@MIT-MC 04/19/80 06:21:50

Having a memory not much better than BRITT's, I don't remember too
many details about the film he mentioned, which I believe was called
THE INCREDIBLE TWO-HEADED MAN. What I do seem to remember, although I
could be wrong, is that the black head belonged to none other than
Rosey Grier (that doesn't look spelled right to me), the football
player/needle-pointer turned actor. I only saw little pieces of the
film, but I will agree with Ben that it was moby corny

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

Date: 19 Apr 1980 1052-PST (Saturday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant

... WAS the movie about the 2-headed man.  Yeah, really BAD!

--Lauren--

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

Date: 20 APR 1980 2010-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Star Wars

  In fact, the guard investigating the Millenium Falcon is THX-1138
in the novelization and the \comic book/; in the movie I think he's
something random.
  I don't recall the guards wearing anything especially notable,
but the storm troopers' masks very much resemble the flying head in
ZARDOZ --- which I think is purely accidental, as ZARDOZ doesn't
strike me as Lucas' cup of tea.

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

Date: 18 April 1980 09:33-EST
From: Dan Brotsky <DCB at MIT-AI>

Please, everyone, do not give away the endings, plot twists, etc. of
stories mentioned, at least not without warning that you are going to
do so. I did not want to know the ending of THX 1138 before seeing it,
but now I do.

	dan

[ It is difficult to discuss a book or movie without giving away
  something of the plot or story. Say too much and a great deal
  of the enjoyment of the work is lost. Do not say enough and you
  have not given someone enough to decide whether they want to see
  the work or not. What I will try to do, is isolate plot spoilers
  in a section at the end of the digest. This will let everyone
  decide whether they want to read them or not, and also will let
  us continue to discuss works that many of us hold in common.
  It would also be very helpful in organizing the messages this
  way if you included an explicit spoiler warnings within your
  messages.  --  RDD  ]

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

Date: 21 April 1980 01:56-EST
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: Reply to the Philips Query [SFL V1 #82]

Doug asked for the name of a recent short story which explains that
the reason current experiments have observed so few solar neutrinos
is that our local deity went away. The deity lives in the sun, but
banked the solar reaction before leaving. The story concerns the
assignment of a new local deity and his method of announcing his
arrival through the science editors of our major newspapers.

The story is PSYCHO-STARS by Rory Harper. It was published in the
March 1980 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. It is
an enjoyable story and is also Mr. Harper's first commercial sale.

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

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

Date: 22 APR 1980 0756-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #84
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Tuesday, 22 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 84

 Today's Topics: More on Low SNUs, Laser Weapons and Impact Plastics,
                      TESB Novelization, More Horrible SF Movies
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 21 Apr 1980 1000-PST
From: DDYER at USC-ISIB
Subject: Vanishing Neutrinos etc.

  A favorite short story, "The Discovery of the Nullitron" by
Disch&Sladeck, is a straighforward sendup of partical physics.
It's very short, straight to the point, and hilariously accurate.
  When I discovered this gem (some years ago) I was inspired to type
it in. You can all sneak a look at it on [ISIB]<DDYER>PARTIC.TXT;
provided you promise not to violate the copyright by printing copies,
and promise to go buy the anthology it appeared in immediately
afterword.

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

Date: 21 APR 1980 1744-EST
From: JTurner.Coop@MIT-MULTICS

For those of you who want to know the real reason the Sun ain't
putting out neutrinos, i can only relate the reason that Niven gave
during his LSC tour at MIT. The Sun has gone out. Before anyone goes
to buy passage on a space ark, let me explain. Although the Sun has
gone out (according to Niven), the Sun is still burning off hydrogen
to produce heat. As it does this, it gets smaller. When it is compact
enough, it will start to fuse again. This will (he claims) cause an
ice age that would have already shown up but for the CO2 in the air.

					<JMT>

PS The mine shaft is actually the Jolly Green Giants dry cleaner.

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

Date: 21 Apr 1980 (Monday) 1920-EDT
From: WESTFW at WHARTON (William Westfield)
Subject: Laser weapons

I just finished reading Ringworld Engineers, and I have a question
that applies to many other SF works as well. It has always struck me as
unlikely that LASERs would make good anti-personel weapons. The human
body is mostly water, which is very hard to heat up, and although I
can visulized getting some nice burns or charred arreas from a LASER,
I don't think one would be able to slice off limbs and such, as most
SF writers seem to have them doing. Can anyone clear this up ?

Also, concerning Impact Plastics (flexible until you hit them with
something, at which point they become "rock hard"). RwE has this
stuff, and so did Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar. Does anyone know who
first came up the idea, or know anything about the practical aspect of
such substances ? (They do exist, at least on a small scale. There was
an Amature Scientist piece on it in Scientific American a short while
ago, Although most of their examples seemed to work the other way
around, eg rigid until stress is applied along the correct axis, and
then the viscosity changes. Margerine was one example)

Bill W  (WESTFW@WHARTON)

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

DAUL@MIT-MC 04/21/80 05:23:58 Re: STAR WARS (TESB) // BARBARELLA

1. I just finished THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. The book is dry. I felt
   like I was reading the "cliff notes." BUT...I think that the movie
   should be GREAT. They have alot of potential for special effects
   and great scenery. I shall be in the first crowds to see the movie.
2. BARBARELLA -- anyone want to comment of this movie? I want to see
   it this week. Is it SF? Is it any good?
3. A plug for a local bookstore!?! Let us support our local
   (Palo Alto) SF store!

                    FUTURE FANTASY
                    2033 El Camino Real
                    Palo Alto, Ca.
                    (415) 327-9242

   It is a great place to find NOTHING BUT SF.

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

LMOORE@MIT-ML 04/22/80 04:55:55

   Having a memory not much better than BARMAR, I believe that the
film refered to by BRITT is "The Thing with Two Heads". Rosey is
indeed the black half.

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

LEOR@MIT-MC 04/21/80 22:39:24 Re: Incredible two-headed Transplant

I recall reading some interesting facts about this movie in a Bruce
Dern interview (Playboy?) some time back. It was done in a coupla
weeks on a VERY low budget...and most of the paychecks bounced! After
which, the "producers" dropped out of sight, never to be found. By the
way, my high-school law class teacher played the sheriff's deputy.
	-leor

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

BYTE@MIT-AI 04/22/80 02:03:31 Re: Bad Horror/SF movie

Nobody has mentioned PROPHECY, where a 'monster' created by
pollution starts killing off the local residents to 'protect'
her babies. Towards the end of the movie, I was cheering the
monster on, all in hopes that the rest of the people would be
killed in the next scene so that the movie would finally end.

I usually tend to try to go to double-features (harder to find
these days) so that (a) the price per movie is less, (b) if one
movie is bad, perhaps the other movie is better, (c) sitting in
a theater for 4 hours is cheaper than a lot of alternative forms
of entertainment. Consequently, it is tough to walk out on the
first movie of a double feature.

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

Date: 21 Apr 1980 at 2031-CST
From: clive at UTEXAS
Subject: Worst movie of all time

[Sent on behalf of Slocum@Utexas]

My candidate for "the WORST movie of all time" is one of the SF-genre
flicks, circa 1950's. Sorry, I don't remember the name or other
particulars, just the plot and a few choice scenes. Synopsis:

Scene 1
     A team of scientists take off from Earth, bound for...somewhere.
Something happens, and they wind up in the distant future, still near
Earth. They land. After a bout with some rough & tough primitives
living on the surface, they are saved by someone opening a door into
the underground world. A kind of Time Machine world-in-reverse is
revealed: hordes of fierce primitive humans control the surface, while
the small underground civilization is peaceful, knowing no war or even
significant strife among themselves but naturally fearful of traveling
on the surface. They do not have, nor do they desire, any weapons.
They enjoy a moderate but obviously acceptable lifestyle.

Scene 2
     The aggressive, virile (in comparison with the undergrounders)
male scientists attract the local females, thereby causing
understandable consternation. They also decide that these people
have a greater destiny, if only they'll resume the war-like ways
they abandoned millennia ago. They proceed to manufacture weapons
(including bazookas) for a foray onto the surface.

Scene 3
     They sally forth. To a volley of spears, they reply with a volley
of bazooka shells, with telling effect. Later in their trek, they come
across a native with a spear lodged in his abdomen. "Those murdering
savages!" they growl.

Scene 4
     Through an interpreter (I forget who) they learn that the local
tribe is ruled by a 1-eyed giant; further, that authority is assumed
via killing whoever else is in command, plus all other contenders as
they crop up. One of our scientists decides that he will kill the
giant and thereby take over the tribe. To the giant's objection that
the gun gives the scientist an unfair advantage, our hero allows the
giant his choice of weapons; to the other scientists' objection that
the giant will surely prevail, our hero replies that his binocular
vision, i.e. depth-perception, renders him the superior fighter. [This
patently ignores earlier statements about this giant ruling for many
years, overcoming a host of (presumably 2-eyed) challengers --
experienced fighters all -- during that time.] So they go at it with
axes.

Scene 5
     With the giant handily dispatched and the tribe under control,
we cut to the final scene, a few months later. The tribal people (who
must out-number our heroes thousands to one) are being taught English
"so they can work for us." [Why the handful of scientists couldn't
learn the local language instead is never explained -- clearly because
the writers never thought of it!] The camera pans from the outdoor
classroom (complete with desks) to a Southern mansion scene (complete
with white-pillared mansion!) with rows and rows of natives tilling
the soil and whatnot, overseen by the newly emancipated (and
apparently enlightened) undergrounders. The show ends with a paean
about the glorious future of the new world they're building.

Someone who responded to this earlier said I should mention that the
undergrounders resembled Anglo-Saxon/Nordic types. To which I add they
naturally spoke English, while the primitives, by comparison, had dark
skin and spoke a language phonologically much like Spanish.

If anybody knows something more about this flick, I would (just out of
curiosity) like to know what you may know. Saw this one on late-night
TV several years ago. For sheer blatant, but unconscious, chauvinism
this movie must surely take the cake. Oh, yes, the special effects,
acting, etc., were truly awful. Absolutely no redeeming value in this
show at all.

--Jonathan

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

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

Date: 23 APR 1980 0253-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #85
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Wednesday, 23 April 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 85

    Today's Topics: SF Movies - THX 1138 - Barbarella, SF Weapons,
                       Slow Glass Query, Star Wars Phone Promos
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  23 April 1980 00:03 est
From:  Frankston at MIT-Multics (BOB at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  THX 1138

Admittedly it has been years (1974?) since I've seen it, so I don't
remember the details -- just my general reaction. The basic problem
is that it is hard for me to suspend enough belief when watching a
film in which computers play an important part in the plot. It is the
same as finding it difficult to appreciate the great moral statements
in the 50's films showing the evils of the atomic bomb because they
cause tomatos to mutant into city devouring beings, or space films
that totally ignore physics. The Fortran listing was only one
standard trigger. Another example, which I did not see, is Close
Encounters of the Umpteenth Kind.  As good as the story might have
been, the fact that it was a rehash of standard pseudoscience set
off my biases.  On the other hand, I could forgive Star Wars' use of
parsecs as a measure of time -- the film was otherwise good and the
reference was superfluous to the film.

A comment on the Japanese turtle films.  It is unfair to compare the
with "real" movies.  The TV show "Lost in Space" is a more appropriate
reference point for the genre.  I suspect the Japanese generally come
out ahead in such a comparison.

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

Date: 22 Apr 1980 1220-PST
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Barbarella    

BARBARELLA

This movie played at Stanford earlier this year.  It is definitely
science fiction, although more a spoof on things than a `serious'
work.  I do urge you to go to it, since I think anyone would find
it very enjoyable light entertainment.

A special comment: the special effects are not spectacular by Star
Wars standards, but quite good for their time.  And Jane Fonda in
the title role certainly makes up for any lack in this department!

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

LPH@MIT-MC 04/22/80 11:32:35 Re: barbarella

one of my all time favorites, an especially nice double feature with
flesh gordon.  this is a movie based on the cartoon character which
appeared in evergreen review by the french artist forrest (sp?).
great exposure for jane fonda, though she now reviles the movie.
produced by dino de laurentiis, has ugo tognazzi, other famous stars,
etc. not a classic film by any means, but well worth seeing once for
the experience. has a good moral story behind it, but is highly
intent on comedy in many places. very good for late night viewing...

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

Date: 22 Apr 1980 1432-PST (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: various items

Let me address several questions raised in a recent digest...

1) Barberella -- this was an early Jane Fonda effort -- and I'd
   betcha that she'd pay $10 megabucks to anyone who could destroy
   the negative and all the prints/videotapes.  It "is" SF in terms
   of overall concept, but it is played for laughs much in the campy
   fashion of Batman.  Which can be amusing at times.  Jane plays a
   "sex kitten" sort of space agent -- the first scene of the film is
   her stripping in zero g as I recall.  Worth seeing once I guess,
   especially if you can see it for free.

2) LASER weapons.  The main point of modern technological development
   in high energy beam weapons (this includes lasers and hard particle
   radiation beams) is to either vaporize or totally disrupt
   functionality.  It doesn't matter if you can slice off an arm
   if the target sorta melts when you hit it.  A fairly recent PBS
   program, which I believe was called "The Real War in Space" or some
   such, gave a fascinating account of the work on killer satellites,
   laser and other beam weapons, and similar topics.  They showed some
   things I had no idea existed, and generally led me to believe that
   these things are MUCH closer than I would have imagined.  Note that
   most are aimed at being anti-missile or anti-satellite (and in some
   cases, anti-tank) systems, not aimed at the individual troop in the
   field as far as I know.

3) Here is something to mull over.  According to industry sources,
   when the new movie CALIGULA is released, they plan to charge either
   $7.00 or $7.50 for it (the latter I believe.)  If people go for
   this abomination in a price, it will become the new standard for
   all feature films.  Note that much the same sort of "all the market
   will bear" philosophy has worked just fine in the record industry.

--Lauren--

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

FAUST@MIT-ML 04/22/80 11:48:59

     In reply to Bill Westfields query about plastics that exhibit
viscosity changes: This past X-mas my sister received this really
outrageous gift.  It was a funny face made from some plastic with
interesting characteristics.  It could be stretched an incredible
amount from its normal shape so that one was sure that it would never
be able to regain its original shape, however it always did within
about 30-45 seconds.  However, punching it was dangerous as one could
easily break a hand doing so.  It simply would not yield much to fast
changes.  Unfortunately, I have no idea what compound the thing was
made from; the box was checked but understandably they didn't divulge
the secret.
     I think the name of the thing was "NURD" or something like that.
It was billed as a tension and frustration reliever. A function which
it performed excellently.

************************

     On another topic, I was unfortunate enough to be watching "That's
Incredible" last night (Monday) when they were presenting the latest
in crime prevention devices.  They have developed a stun gun to be
used to apprehend criminals without causing permanent damage.  The
thing is called a TASER which is an acronym for "Tom A. Swift Electric
Rifle".  No kidding, it appears that the inventor had this dream of
creating an electric gun ever since he was young and watched Tom Swift
. . .
     Anyway, the thing is actually a hand-held device that shouts a
set of electrodes with wires attached.  After the victim is harpooned,
there is a trigger on the gun that controls the amount of current
flowing through the electrodes.  On the show, they got some mad-ass to
agree to act as a subject in order to demonstrate the thing. After
being hit with the electrodes, the guy sort of danced around a little
as though he were having an epileptic attack and then eventually fell
down after about 5 or 10 seconds.
     Given the fact that the gun will only fire once without reloading
and that these wires have to feed out as the projectile flies, it
seems that this device will be of limited (if any) value as a law
enforcement aid.
     As a parting comment, in general the show "That's Incredible"
is simply incredibly lousy.  It is an attempt to repeat the old "You
Asked For It" show which in my opinion was much better.

        Greg

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

Date:  23 April 1980 02:02:02 EST
From:  BKERNS at MIT-AI (Barbara Steele)
       DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  Slow Glass stories

Several years ago Bob Shaw published a short story entitled "Light of
Other Days". The story revolves around the concept of "slow glass",
a glass like material which traps light and lets it out after a long
delay, but in the same images and temporal sequence. One use suggested
in the story was to set a pane of slow glass in front of a beautiful
scene for a year, and then take it inside a house to act as a
"scenedow".  The scenedow would be indistinguishable from a window
which looked out on the original scene as it lived through that year.
At one point the narrator of the story says "The commercial success of
slow glass was founded on the fact that having a scenedow was the exact
emotional equivalent of owning land ... A man who really owns tailored
gardens and estates doesn't spend his time proving his ownership by
crawling on his ground, feeling, smelling, tasting it. All he receives
from the land are light patterns ...". This story first appeared in
Analog. It is excellent and has been reprinted many times. It can be
found in the anthology "A Science Fiction Argosy" edited by Damon
Knight.

The query for SF-LOVERS is, were any other "slow glass" stories ever
written, either by Shaw or by someone else? There have been occasional
references to "Light of Other Days" as the beginning of a series of
stories. However, neither Barb nor myself have been able to find them
or determine that no other stories about slow glass were ever written.
Does anyone know anything more about this possible series?

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

Date: 17 Apr 1980 at 0242-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ STAR WARS PROMO: A NEW SOUND ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Tried the 1-800-521-1980 at 1:08 a.m. (Thurs.) and for the first time
since February, ... G-O-T ... T-H-R-O-U-G-H !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Old Wheezie himself, it was, with some nice little twists on a couple
of his sinisterly memorable lines.

I tried again immediately, and again got right through, so y'all may
be able to catch this one until the additional lines clog up.


Date: 23 Apr 1980 at 0012-CST

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ STAR WARS PHONE PROMO ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ol' Wheezie is gone, and now it's Han Solo, bitching per usual.

(Soon as I knock this flu bug, I'll check my SW I transcription and
report on just which THX-like numbers were spoken when and where.
Meanwhile, back to the sack!)

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

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

Date: 24 APR 1980 0602-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #86
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Thursday, 24 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 86

    Today's Topics: Movies - Barbarella - Parsecs in SW - Caligula
                     TASERs, Nurd, Some of the Slow Glass Replies
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 23 APR 1980 1132-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: BARBARELLA & parsecs

Barbarella is definitely SF, although it leans more toward fantasy
than hard SF; since it comes from a French comic strip, it is sexist
and attempts to be erotic, although it doesn't do very well at the
latter--in fact, it distinctly resembles "The Perils of Pauline". Very
light entertainment ---the one time I saw it was at a midnight show
locally; the air was so thick with pot smoke I almost got a contact
high.  I suspect that stoned may be the best way to see it.  Some good
special effects, like the perforated leprosy, and at least one awful
miniature (a top shot of the hunter's sled going in circles during her
first experience).

Craig Miller, who as Lucasfilms' Director of Fan Relations brought
the latest trailer and lots of slides of making TESB to Minicon (April
4-6) repeated an explanation of the "parsecs as time units" hack that
I had heard elsewhere and had found plausible the last time I saw SW.
It is said that Han Solo was trying to see just how yokelish his
customers were and deliberately threw some BS at them; at that point
the camera cuts to Obi-Wan and Luke looking skeptical.  It's an
arguable point, but in view of some of the other cute details he put
in (like the giraffe legs right in front of the camera in Mos Eisley)
not necessarily just an after-the-fact excuse.

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

Date: 23 Apr 1980 at 1120-PST
From: chesley at SRI-UNIX
Subject: Parsecs & Barbarella

     When I see a Sci Fi (I know everyone hates this term, but I grew
up with it, and I like it) movie, and something questionable happens,
rather than assuming that I know everything and the writers are
indulging in pseudo-science, I assume that they know something that I
don't (especially when the writer is Lucas). The use of parsecs in SW
is a prime example.  A friend of mine pointed out that most speed
limit signs say "55 miles," which may imply that we're living in a
poorly written Sci Fi movie.  This doesn't quite cover the parsecs
case, though, since they said "...in under n parsecs."  The
explanation I prefer is that the distance figures indicate how much
their warp drive has "warped" the universe.  However, there was one
case in which I couldn't avoid the absurdity of what was said, and
that case had me rolling on the floor for some time: when, in the
pilot for BS Galactica, someone says "the Cylon ship is ten microns
and closing."

     Barbarella is one of my own favorite SF films.  I think far and
away the best acting in the film is done by David Hemmings (the leader
of the revolutionary underground).  It's only a small part of the
film, but I think it's the funniest part.

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

TANG@MIT-MC 04/24/80 02:37:27

     In reference to the movie Caligula, CARYN, ZEMON, WYLBUR and I
saw it on March 29th in Georgtown.  We paid $7.50 (I think).  Don't
go.
     The movie is nothing but really hard core pornography spliced
with the brutal murders of just about every major and most of the
minor characters.  Almost no attempt is made to stay within the
frame of history, at least as I recall it from "I Claudius".
     For special effects, though, this film reaches new highs in
realism.  I guess the technology was there, but very few scripts
call for a birth or a disembowlment on screen.  The quality of the
cinematography is extrordinary, with really briliant colors and very
clear sharp images.  What acting there is is well done, but it's
comical to see Roddy McDowell acting mad.
     By the way, the opening scenes show a bit of promise, and this
movie could have been something great if Penthouse Productions hadn't
gotten carried away with the flesh and the blood.

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

Date: 23 APR 1980 1015-PST
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: two things

     The Caligula price may not be indicative of future price changes.
It is selling out nightly here in LA, because of it's controversial
subject matter, but the reason for the price is that the producer
Guccione did not want to submit it to the Board for a rating, since it
could only receive and "X".  He figured that this would damn the movie
from the start.  So they have to rent each theater that it plays in,
and EVERYBODY pays -- even the film critics.  I hear the film's pretty
bad.
    
     Second note: The TASER is a pretty old weapon -- I read about it
when I was in grade school in Popular Science.  It was banned from
sale almost immediately, however -- only a week after it came out, a
man strolled into a liquor store with one, cheerfully shot everybody
in the place, and calmly helped himself to the cash register contents.
The problem with stun weapons is that there is little inclination NOT
to use them in such situations.

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

DLW@MIT-AI 04/23/80 04:51:57 Re: TASERs

The "TASER" was first shown on TV many years ago; I belive that
there was a ruling severely limiting its use, possibly outlawing
it entirely.  I do not belive they are on the market any more,
though I am not sure.

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

JHUA@MIT-MC 04/23/80 20:43:43 Re: Nurd

That TASER mentioned has also had some publicity.  In Philadelphia,
there was a big battle over the legality of Tasers about 4 years ago.
It seems that some policemen there wanted to use Tasers to combat
crime.  However, there was some outcry as to the cruelty involved in
using such a weapon because just prior to that mess, several elderly
people were mugged with Tasers and the strain was too much for their
hearts.  This sort of weapon is not really as frivolous as it sounds,
and right now, it doesn't seem as if the public looks upon this weapon
as the gun of the future(a real phaser) but as a menace to the general
populace.

That toy Faust wrote of yesterday is indeed called the Nurd.  It
closely resembles a pink-potted person.  One of the major selling used
by its manufacturer is that it can be stretched and molded into
whatever shape that one would prefer.  It is especially nice in that
one can also give the little guy any name - usually that of one's most
Nurd-ly acquaintance.  In this respect, the toy is extremely
entertaining and beating can become quite habit-forming;this is beyond
the benefitial effects derived from smashing an inanimate object, of
course.  For those still not aware of what it looks like, it's just
like a super-stretch Hulk or Spiderman inside a plastic cup.

As far as that SW number goes, among five or six of friends and
myself, we have heard DV, Solo, and C3PO only.  Maybe they'll get
more later. BTW, it seems that they turn the machines off late at
night (human time, that is-- 2-3 a.m.)

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

Date: 23 April 1980 03:28-EST
From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject: Impact resistant substances

The NURD is supposedly filled with corn syrup. I have found that a
fairly thick solution of cornstarch and water will exhibit liquid
flow if left alone, but will shear like a solid (and resist
penetration) under high(er) stress.  Try it, it's really strange!

-- Charles

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

Date: 23 APR 1980 0928-PST
From: AYERS at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Bob Shaw and Slow Glass

There were at least three stories that featured the slow glass
invention.  I remember "Light of Other Days" and the plot of one
of the others: a murder is committed outside a building with slow
glass "windows".  The judge has to decide what to do with the
suspect, since several years from now the crime will be visible
through the slow glass and we will be able to watch the crime ...

Unfortunately, someone (Brass Tacks in Analog?) pointed out that
slow glass has the property of storing 10^^nn joules of light
energy (consider sunlight for a year on one square meter) so
exposing it and then melting it down makes an unreasonably big
bang.

Bob

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

Date: 23 Apr 1980 0900-PST
From: SAUNDERS at USC-ISIB
Subject: Another Slow Glass story

     The one I remember has an old man, a former judge, waiting for a
piece of Slow Glass to reveal the truth of a case in which he had
pronounced sentence some years before.  The crime had been (if at all)
committed in front of the piece of SG.  The ethics of judgement in the
presence of certainty that the truth will become known at a definite
future time is the theme.
     Slow Glass was also used in that story for street lighting --
panels of 6-hour SG were suspended at 50% density over all city
streets, so that the light was always 1/2 daylight (except for edge
effects due to seasonal variation).
     I recall it as quite an enjoyable story.

		Steve Saunders

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

Date:  23 April 1980 15:21 est
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  More Slow Glass

Yes, there were more stories. Collected in pseudo-novel with title
something like "Other Days, Other Lights". The novel is awful.  It is
a sort of wrapper around a few short stories. The only decent one is
"Light of Other Days".  There are stories involving use of slow glass
in a most improbable alibi for murder, and the legal impact of slow
glass (you have a crime committed, with no witness, except for slow
glass - which wont show the scene for 20 years. Do you wait 20 years
for the trial (when the evidence will be in) or do the trial now).
Finally, the implications for privacy.

Also by Bob Shaw, and also rotten, is "A Full Member of the Club",
which appeared in "The 1975 Annual World's Best SF" editted by Donald
Wollheim, DAW books.  This book is worh buying because it has some
other stories that are first rate, including an Alfred Bester.

O P'Shaw I say. He had one good idea.  AVoid him.

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

Date: 23 APR 1980 1833-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: slow glass

  OTHER DAYS, OTHER EYES (Ace, 1972) contains "Light of Other Days",
plus 3 other short stories and filler material making up the complete
(so far) story of slow glass, from its discovery (a special glass for
jet fighter windows is implicated in a crash during a test flight
because the view during landing is not quite cotemporaneous) onward.
Definitely not a novel, but more than a collection of short stories,
especially in the way the book is organized.  Typically, Ace gives no
credit in the front matter for any previous publication of any of the
material, even though I don't recall "Light of Other Days" having been
modified in any way for the book.
  Bob Shaw is also known in England as a notorious fan writer and
humorist.  He recently described an invention that for sheer vision
ranks with the Dean Drive---in effect, a perpetual-motion rocket.  The
reaction mass comes from beer; since drinking a pint of beer causes
you to fgain at least two pounds, enough water can be recovered from
waste to supply reaction mass AND keep everyone up to their eyeballs
in beer (you can imagine how popular that notion was with the British
fans).  The engine is equally simple: a tube of glass, open at one
end.  Now, as Shaw knew from the research necessary to write OTHER
DAYS, OTHER EYES, there is no special glass made for greenhouses---and
yet, while windows are a major LOSER of heat in houses, they are the
major SOURCE of heat in cold weather for greenhouses.  This suggests
something to any fertile mind: the plants in the greenhouse are
changing the properties of the glass (making it in effect a radiation
diode) to keep themselves comfortable.  Thus a tube of such glass,
free from the interference of the atmosphere, would rapidly heat water
in it, generating steam which would drive the ship.
  "I tried to find which plants were responsible for this
transformation," Shaw said, "and cae to the conclusion that it might
be the tomatoes--- they were always blushing when I looked right at
them.
  "Some of you may doubt this theory. 'Thinking vegetables, with the
power to alter glass? Ridiculous!'  But is this idea really any more
unbelievable than many other great theories of physics, even such
broadly-held beliefs as Einstein's Theory of Relativity?  Do you
really believe that two people with lanterns can stand at opposite
ends of a train, flashing signals to someone on the bank, without
getting thrown off by the conductor?"
   [paraphrased from COMPLETE BoSh VOLUME TWO]

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

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

Date: 25 APR 1980 0549-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #87
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 25 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 87

Today's Topics: Hugo Nominations, Wharton Pot Pourri, More Slow Glass,
                    Queries on - Ian Wallace - Dark Star - Zardoz
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 24 Apr 1980 12:04 PST
From: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Hugo Award nominations

Well, I guess I'm one of the first to get Locus delivered,
so here we go:

	1980 Hugo Award Nominees

Best Novel
----------
THE FOUNDATIONS OF PARADISE, Arthur C. Clarke (Harcourt)
HARPIST IN THE WIND, Patricia McKillip (Atheneum)
JEM, Frederik Pohl (St. Martin's)
ON WINGS OF SONG, Thomas M. Disch (St. Martin's)
TITAN, John Varley (Berkley/Putnam)

Best Novella
------------
"The Battle of the Abaco Reefs," Hilbert Schenck (F&SF-6/79)
"Enemy Mine," Barry Longyear (IASFM-9/79)
"Ker-Plop," Ted Reynolds (IASFM-1/79)
"The Moon Goddess and the Son," Donald Kingsbury (Analog-12/79)
"Songhouse," Orson Scott Card (Analog-9/79)

Best Novelette
--------------
"Fireflood," Vonda N. McKintyre (F&SF-11/79)
"Homecoming," Barry Longyear (IASFM-10/79)
"The Locusts," Niven & Barnes (Analog-6/79)
"Options," John Varley (UNIVERSE 9)
"Palely Loitering," Christopher Priest (F&SF-1/79)
"Sandkings," George R. R. Martin (Omni-8/79)

Best Short Story
----------------
"Can These Bones Live?" Ted Reynolds (Analog-3/79)
"Daisy, in the Sun," Connie Willis (Galileo-11/79)
"giANTS," Edward Bryant (Analog-8/79)
"Unaccompanied Sonata," Orson Scott Card (Omni-3/79)
"The Way of Cross and Dragon," George R. R. Martin (Omni-6/79)

Best Non-Fiction
----------------

BARLOWE'S GUIDE TO EXTRATERRESTRIALS, Barlowe & Summers (Workman)
IN MEMORY YET GREEN, Isaac Asimov (Doubleday)
THE LANGUAGE OF THE NIGHT, Le Guin & Wood (Putnam)
THE SCIENCE FICTION ENCYCLOPEDIA, Peter Nicholls (Doubleday)
WONDERWORKS, Michael Whelan (Donning)

Best Drama                              Best Professional Artist
----------                              ------------------------
Alien                                   Vincent Di Fate
The Black Hole                          Stephen Fabian
The Muppet Movie                        Paul Lehr
Star Trek:  The Motion Picture          Boris Vallejo
Time After Time                         Michael Whelan

Best Fan Artist                         Best Editor
---------------                         -----------
Alexix Gilliland                        James P. Baen
Jeanne Gomoll                           Ben Bova
Joan Hanke-Woods                        Edward L. Ferman
Victoria Poyser                         Stanley Schmidt
William Rotsler                         George Scithers
Stu Shiffman

Best Fanzine                            Best Fan Writer
------------                            ---------------
File 770                                Richard E. Geis
Janus                                   Mike Glyer
Locus                                   Arthur Hlavaty
SF Review                               David Langford
Thrust                                  Bob Shaw

John W. Campbell Award                  Gandalf Award
----------------------                  -------------
Lynn Abbey                              Ray Bradbury
Diane Duane                             Marion Zimmer Bradley
Karen Jollie                            Anne McCaffrey
Barry Longyear                          Patricia McKillip
Alan Ryan                               Jack Vance
Somtow Sucharitkul                      Roger Zelazny

The committee received 563 ballots. Michael Moorcock was nominated for
the Gandalf Award, but wished not to take part. Connie Willis received
enough votes for the Campbell Award, but was declared ineligible
because of a story in 1970. Somtow Sucharitkul had a story in 1977 but
was declared eligible anyway.

Locus also reports that the Sheraton Boston is completely booked for
the weekend of the convention. Current Noreascon membership is 3450.
Hugo ballots will be sent to members in the next few weeks. To join
the convention (August 29-September 1), send $30 (until 7/15) to:

	Noreascon II
	Box 46, MIT station
	Cambridge, MA 02139

If you don't want to go, but just want to vote on the Hugo Awards,
supporting membership is $8.

	See you there,

	Richard Brodie

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

Date: 23 Apr 1980 (Wednesday) 2040-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)
Subject: Various & Sundry comments

It has been a while since I last netted, so I have a bit  to
say...  here goes:

1) Concerning Japanese Monster movies;  does anyone know how
they  are  taken  in  Japan?   That  is, are they considered
funny, are they for kids below 10,  or  do  people  actually
sigh and moan over them?

2) TASERs have been out for more than 9 years.  I  say  this
because  I did a report on them in High School once.  I note
that they were, at the time, considered  like  pen-mace;   a
mugger  protection  which was even better because the weapon
could not do much damage  if  turned  against  the  wielder.
Also,  since muggings take place at close range their aiming
and firing distance (SHORT!) didn't really matter.

3) Lauren is of course correct in commenting  that  computer
installations    monitor   against   people   trying   every
combination  of  password,  etc.   ,  but  assuming  you  do
eventually  get  access to the monitor, kernel, or whatever,
you could delete the files which noted your entrance.   Then
only those installations which are monitored continuously by
a smart program which  instantly  does  something  about  it
would  note  your  passing;   most systems that I am used to
stuff the intrusion notice into a file.  Admittedly  I  have
yet to try a "Secure" system, and doubt that I will;  I like
my net privs too much.

4) I have been doing some reading during the break  (Spring)
and  thought  I  might  mention some interesting books, etc.
First, I happened to like Titan (Varley), though I admit  it
was  no  where  near  "Persistence  of  Vision".  One of the
things I liked was the  guy  who  was  a  SF  nut  and  kept
mentioning how much certain parts of the world was like this
and that (current)  SF  book.   I  was  very  suprised  that
Clarke's  Rendezvous  with Rama was not noted;  I felt there
were obviously some direct  simularities.   Anyone  know  of
other  SF  novels  which  mention, in the novel, still other
novels "Boy, that looks just like a  worm  from  Dune"  etc?
Secondly, I highly recommend Robinson's "Stardance".  I know
very little about modern dance, but am now more  interested.
The  Varley part is evident, but I have read (all?) Herbert,
and do not see a Direct connection.   Now,  for  you  Dorsai
freaks, there is a reprinting of "Soldier Ask Not", which if
you have read "Three To Dorsai"  (Neocromancer,  Tactics  of
Mistake,  Dorsai!),  is  quite interesting.  Also, GRD has a
new illustrated Dorsai book which I suppose I will  pick  up
one  of these days.  I enjoyed R.  Engineers, and would like
to talk with people who have read it;  will not voice  other
comments  for  fear  of  spoiling.  Lastly, I have been told
that "Beyond  the  Blue  Event  Horizon"  is  really  great,
especially  if you liked "Gateway".  I will report back when
I scrape up the ten bucks.

[ The new Dorsai book is entitled "The Spirit of Dorsai". It
  was released last year in trade paperback form. It has just
  been released as a mass market paperback.  --  RDD ]

[Non SF note:  the latest Scientific American  has  a  cover
story   on  Josephson  junction  computers  which,  if  your
knowledge of them is as limited as mine, looks interesting.]

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

TANG@MIT-MC 04/24/80 02:37:27

     About the slow glass, I remember reading two different storries.
One is about a judge whose verdict will be vindicated or disproved by
a panel of 8 year slow glass that 'saw' the murder take place.  The
other one is about a man who has lost his family and can only glimpse
them in the slow glass that was charging while they were alive.  Both
stories are emotionaly charged, and the plot details that I remember
seem to remind me of the British Isles.

			Jack

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

Date: 23 APR 1980 1015-PST
From: RODOF at USC-ECL

I remember two stories about slow glass -- one involving a rape
case in front of a pane of slow glass (the stuff works both ways)
and another in which a service station attendant (or maybe he was
a slowglass salesman; I can't remember) works outside as much as
possible because the image of his dear, recently dead wife can still
be seen through the slowglass picture window, doing household chores.
  
                                           Rob

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

BARRYG@MIT-MC 04/24/80 20:41:10 Re: slow glass

If you assume it stores the light, it would be a catastrophe to break
a piece with 10 years of sunlit scenes in it. On the other hand, Tom
Digby in Los Angeles suggested that slow glass actually stores the
INFORMATION content of the light as stress patterns within the pane.
In that case, breaking a piece would destroy/release the stress
patterns, possibly releasing a flash of light like a strobe lamp but
nothing more destructive.

After reading Other Eyes; Other Days I would suggest that if slow
glass gets invented we may have to go to airtight houses/buildings
and showering off whenever you enter one as the only way to preserve
privacy. A horrifying idea.

	Barry

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

Date: 23 Apr 1980 1206-PST
From: BRITT at USC-ISIB
Subject: Sonic Glass

     I remember a particular episode of the old "Science Fiction
Theatre" in which information from a top secret government project
continues to leak despite efforts to stop it.

     The story takes place in some scientist's isolated house out
in the desert with one or two FBI men, I believe, scouring the place
for the "bug." They happen upon a vial of thick fluid sitting on the
window ceil in the scientist's lab. The intelligent FBI guy realizes
that, of course, the fluid, a resin, gradually hardens over time
"recording" the sound waves that emanate from inside the room.

Ben

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

Date: 23 Apr 1980 at 1120-PST
From: chesley at SRI-UNIX

     On another topic, has anyone else read Ian Wallace? "The World
Asunder" is the best example I can think of. He writes what might be
called psychological SF, though it's sort of hard to describe. Also,
he has a theory (which runs through most of his books) about how time
travel is possible, in a way at least.
	--Harry..

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

DAUL@MIT-MC 04/24/80 02:15:55 Re: DARK STAR

Anyone know the details or any details as to the production of Dark
Star? I continue to enjoy seeing it. And each time I do I catch more
of the details.

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

STEVEH@MIT-MC 04/25/80 00:05:56 Re: ZARDOZ

I saw this movie several years ago, while I was on Army Reserves
Summer Camp. My Commanding Officer and I went together and while
neither of us understood it, I thought that it was a very interesting
movie. Obviously I was straight as an arrow, which may have led to me
not thinking that I understood the flick. Did anyone get any "meaning"
out of the show? I remember that it was a pretty show, but the deeper
psychological/philosophical messages must have been lost on me. If
anyone would/could care to impart any information, please reply to me
(and if anything interesting shows up, I'll pass it along).

		Thanks,
		Steve

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

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

Date: 26 APR 1980 0253-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #88
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Saturday, 26 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 88

Today's Topics:   Hugos, SF Movies - Dark Star - Japanese Monsters,
               Slow Glass, Wallace, Stories referring to other stories
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 APR 1980 1138-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Hugos

  Barring the usual unusual, the Hugo final ballots will be mailed
out May 1.  The initial mailing will be bulk rate; at some point
later joiners will receive ballots by first-class mail so they will
have some chance of getting the ballot in by the July 15 deadline.
Note that because of this deadline, people who really want to vote
on the Hugos are advised to get their memberships in by June 15.
  The package will also include information and ballot for the 1982
(40th) Worldcon site selection.  Current entrants are Chicago and
Detroit.

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

Date: 25 Apr 1980 1235-PST (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Dark Star

Dark Star, the classic "cheap but good" SF "farce" about the guys
sprinting around the galaxy destroying unstable planets, was created
by Dan O'Bannon (who did the screenplay for "Alien") and John
Carpenter (who did "Halloween" and "The Fog").  The film was made
on a shoestring budget (originally UNDER $100,000 I believe!) as a
student film, and then later was expanded to its full length.

The film copyright is 1974, but the film kinda laid around dormant
for quite some time with hardly any releases at all.  There are all
sorts of tidbits and jokes buried in the film if one slows it down
and still-frames it at the right points (like about 2 frames of a
female face buried inside the flashing of a computer output display).

The film has now entered the Pay-TV marketplace, and occassionally
shows up on systems such as HBO, Showtime, and others, though the
descriptions given in the TV "guides" are usually hopelessly in
error.

--Lauren--

P.S.  It is definitely very much worth watching. It is hilarious
      in many places.

--LW--

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

Date: 25 Apr 1980 1705-PST
From: HARUKA at SRI-KL
Subject: Japanese monsters

In reply to David's (ROSSID@WHARTON) inquiry, yes, the monsters seen
in movies and television serials (Ultra Man, Ultra Man Ace, et al) are
supposed to be geared for the younger minds...however, I'm not sure
that there are no adult addicts...high population pressures can cause
people to do strange things, and people do need things to laugh at as
a form of psychological release...my parents for example...both MDs
with respectable jobs in Tokyo...terminally addicted to cartoons and
soap operas...

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

KLH@MIT-AI 04/25/80 19:33:52 Re: Slow glass again

        Nobody seems to have yet mentioned specifically one aspect
that I always remember whenever the subject comes up.  This is fairly
late in the book (if in that book) and concerns the plan of the govt
to seed the entire country with tiny (nearly invisible) slow-glass
spheres. If the authorities ever wish to know exactly what happened
in a given locale, they can just rake up a few of these universal
bugs and process them (having also developed a means for selectively
accessing the information stored therein).
        This is probably what BARRYG meant by showering before you
go inside a secure house.
        However, real techniques are almost as good for
inducing paranoia. The difference is that most of them are not
time-independent.  For example, if you are talking in a room with
a single pane of glass in it, it is possible from outside to train
a radar-like EM beam on the pane and record the conversation from
the vibrations on the glass, which modulate the returning beam. I
don't know the effective distance of such techniques.  With
laser-type devices you should have good selectivity (one window
out of thousands, etc).

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

Date: 25 Apr 1980 12:15 PST
From: Sapsford at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Ian Wallace

Ian Wallace is the author of Croyd, The Sign of the Mute Medusa, and
a slew of other books.  There are 4 books with Croyd as the main
character, and another 3 with Claudine St. Cyr.  All of these books
are very interesting reading if you are looking for psychological
interaction and development in the characters, and are willing to
forgoe some action (although the earlier Croyd books are fast-paced
adventures).  As Chesley says, Wallace has a unified theory of how
pseudo time travel is possible (in many aspects, it seems close to
the theory that James Hogan uses in Thrice Upon A Time).

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

Date: 25 Apr 1980 2107-PST
From: Brent Hailpern <CSD.BTH at SU-SCORE>

RE: One story referring to another.

The first one that coms to mind was the mention of Martian Chronicles
in Farenheit 451 as one of the books put to memory. Now I cant be sure
if that was in the novel or in the movie or both.

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

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

Date: 27 APR 1980 0503-EST
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #89
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 27 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 89

   Today's Topics: Ian Wallace, Stories referring to other stories,
                    TESB is better than SW?, A Scene from THX-1138
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 26 Apr 1980 0923-PST
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: Ian Wallace

Ian Wallace could easly become a cult item, especially the Croyd
stories. I know of the following Croyds: Croyd, Dr. Orpheus, A
Voyage to Dari, Heller's Leap, Z-Sting. Those with Claudine St. Cyr:
Deathstar Voyage, The Sign of the Mute Medusa, Heller's Leap (again).
One that I haven't read, but from skimming looks like it has neither:
The World Asunder. I understand that THE PURLOINED PRINCE is another
St. Cyr, but I haven't seen it. Does anyone know anything about
Wallace? ...Mike Leavitt

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

Date: 26 Apr 1980 1443-EST
From: PDL at MIT-DMS (P. David Lebling)
Subject: SF Self-references

The reference to 'Martian Chronicles' in 'Fahrenheit 451' was in the
movie version only; in the novel, Montag memorizes 'Ecclesiastes.'

However, in 'The Ringworld Engineers,' Louis Wu views a sort of movie
version of Saberhagen's 'Empire of the East'.  In Ellison's 'Jeffty is
Five,' the narrator and Jeffty are going to see a movie version of
'The Demolished Man' starring Franchot Tone, Evelyn Keyes, Lionel
Barrymore, and Elisha Cook, Jr. Would that we could be so lucky...

	Dave

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

JGA@MIT-MC 04/26/80 21:32:18 Re: One story referring to another.

In "When Harlie was One" the "HAL-9000 syndrome" is mentioned.

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

Date: 26 Apr 1980 0158-PST
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: TESB

I just got a call from a friend of mine who attended a preview showing
of The Empire Strikes Back, having managed an "in" due to a critic
friend. I wouldn't let him tell me anything specific about it (though
he was bursting to tell me -- oh, I'm so evil!), but he did offer the
opinion that in both story and special effects it is superior to Star
Wars. Of course, this friend of mine is more than a little flaky, so
make of it what you wish...

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

Date: 27 Apr 1980 at 0031-CST
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~C-3PO and POPS, and HOUSTON QUERY^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The friend with the hu-mon-gous phone bill, just returned from a
few fannish days in England, says that Tony Daniels will be in
Boston Tuesday for the STAR WARS at the Pops concert. Oh, you
lucky Bostoneers!

She reports that the SW II album is due for distribution Monday,
another highly pictorial, 2-record set.. This friend, by the way,
lives in Houston. Is there anybody on SF-Lovers who is IN Houston?
Or, is there anyone from any other site in Texas besides Austin?

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

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 04/27/80 04:42:23  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following message is the last message in today's digest. It
describes one of the scenes from THX-1138 in detail. People who
are not familiar with THX-1138 may not wish to read any further.


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

LEVITT@MIT-AI 04/26/80 21:26:16

No one has mentioned my favorite THX-1138 scene, an hysterical parody
of inhumane scientific research -- which provides some clues as to the
point of that peculiar movie and the origin of the society it depicts.

When THX is in isolation, captured by the robot police, we hear two
voices discussing him while they watch him on TV monitors; evidently
they have some means of remotely controlling and monitoring his
nervous system. They try out various things as they converse casually
about THX's condition:
"How about bringing the treadical down?"
"OK, uh huh.  Yeah, that's good."
"Wait, how high have have you got the spendix?"
"Seven point two."
"Naw, he loses consciousness at five point O.  Let's try..."
while THX responds, wildly contorted in indescribable pain, on their
TV.

These are the only human voices in the film which seem to exhibit some
control over their destinies. One wonders whether they belong to an
alien race, playing with us for sport -- or to the scientists who made
the automatic society possible: still curious, still getting a little
carried away.

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

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

Date: 28 APR 1980 0421-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #90
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 28 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 90

Today's Topics: Dark Star, UTEXAS Connection - Alternate Titles - SW,
                References to Stories, Queries - Nixon nickel - 2001
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 26 Apr 1980 at 1251-CST
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Dark Star technology

Dark Star has some of the most creative technology I have seen in
films. The fact that it is introduced in a humorous light often
conceals the neat gadgetry they are using. Lets see, first there are
the "Thermostellar Devices" which are to destroy "unstable" stars
(actually it looks like the whole solar system too, but inducing
super-novae's (or worse) would be like that). Then, the ship itself.
It has an inertialess drive. This is often misunderstood when the
film is being watched and taken for bad special effects. The ship
approaches a planet (or star) and stops on a dime. Doc Smith used
that effectively, but I've never seen it on film anywhere else. Then
the bombs are intelligent! Artificially Intelligent and here we see
aspects of personality, integrity, etc. all in the bomb. It is odd
to conceive of a "being" whose goal in life is to blow-up and which
is "happy" about it, eager to do its job, but no reason to make
"unhappy" bombs if they are going to have personalities. The are
other memorable moments, when in the midst of their farce the
beautiful technology shows through. Dark Star must remain a
magnificant example of the human factor in a technological world.
Those guys were further off-the-wall than MASH's medics, and for
good reason -- but I guess this movie goes to show that low budget
and bad SF aren't synonymous (it might even be a slight negative
correlation, alas).

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

Date: 27 Apr 1980 at 2156-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ALTERNATE TITLES PROJECT ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

In issue 80 Don <DERWAY at MIT-AI> proposed SF-Lers put together a
list of stories which are out under multiple titles. He cites MARTIAN
CHRONICLES = SILVER LOCUSTS as one type, and modified contents of
collections (e.g., THE PAST THROUGH TOMORROW = METHUSALEH'S CHILDREN
plus REVOLT IN 2100) as another.

Reference info of this type certainly has utility, but even with a
lot of effort we'd still just be re-inventing the wheel. Nicholls'
SF ENCYCLOPEDIA is a goldmine of such. In re the titles Don cited,
entries for Bradbury and Heinlein say--

   THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (fix-up* 1950; vt THE SILVER LOCUSTS [in
   Britain] with the story "Usher II" removed and "The Fire Balloons"
   added; rev. U.K. SFBC edition 1953 adds another story, "The
   Wilderness"; USA 1973 edition also expanded).

   The 3 collections [THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON, GREEN HILLS OF EARTH,
   & REVOLT IN 2100] and METHUSALEH'S CHILDREN were republished, with
   "Let there be Light" omitted and "Searchlight" and "The Menace from
   Earth" added, in the omnibus THE PAST THROUGH TOMORROW (coll. 1967;
   U.K. edition is divided into two vols. and omits METHUSALEH'S
   CHILDREN).

* fix-up is a term borrowed from (who better!) VanVogt: a book made
  up of stories originally published separately, but altered to fit
  together, often with the addition of new cementing material.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ KELLY FREAS & REPRODUCTIONS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

A long time ago I asked if anyone on SF-L knew where I might get
a poster version of the Freas cover to Green's CONSCIENCE
INTERPLANETARY, but to no avail. I am now able to answer my own query:
from Polly & Kelly Freas, 4216 Blackwater Rd., Va. Bch., VA 23457.

The print I wanted and a number of others are available, 12"x19", for
$5 each (+$1.50 packing, etc.) unsigned ($7.50 signed).

At Aggiecon, K.F. sat thru 3 hrs. of filksinging and sketched person
after person after person and gave them their sketches, then when
that broke up, went on to the then very much after-hours con party
and continued to do sketches of anyone who wanted. Being guest artist
is one thing, but that was REALLY working for one's supper!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ MORE ON STAR WARS & EMPIRE, etc. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

My friend The Ultimate STAR WARS Fan answered an earlier SF-L query by
saying that Frank Oz "did" but did not "act" Yoda in TESB. It IS a
(M/p)uppet.

She reports that the 1st 6 scripts in the radio version of SW are a
re-do of the SWI movie, but fleshed out with a lot more dialogue.
(Threep has some good lines!) They're written by Brian Daley (not Alan
Dean Foster, thank Ghu!) which is promising. (Ghu et al. save us from
SPLINTER OF THE MIND'S EYE!!!)

Speaking of cross-story references, as somebody on SF-L has lately,
did anyone who had thE misfortune to read SotME recognize the idol ...
our old buddy Cthulu!

I don't know if they're nation-wide or just local, but a couple years
ago a Fundamentalist slogan, "I FOUND IT!" was rife hereabouts on
billboards, radio, bumper stickers, etc.. At Texas A&M a gang of
SF'ers have T-shirts to curl a Southern Baptist's hair-- on front:
"CAMPUS CRUSADE FOR CTHULU". On back: "IT FOUND ME!"

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

Date: 27 Apr 1980 0128-PST
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: stories referring to others

In Lucifer's Hammer, Randall tells his wife '...galactic axis..., you
find Trantor in there...' and thinks 'He could almost see the Mule's
warships sweeping out from Sagittarius.'

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

ALAN@MIT-MC 04/27/80 07:15:52 Re: obscurity

For years I have been trying to track down the source of an obscure
memory of mine. I seem to remember a character in some science fiction
story refering in an offhand manner to "the rare Nixon nickel". Now
I used to think that this remark was tossed off by one of Niven's
characters, but having re-read all of his books since the memory
implanted itself I can no longer believe that. Can someone else
remember reading this? Can someone tell me where?

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

Date: 28 Apr 1980 (Monday) 0136-EDT
From: DREIFU at WHARTON (Henry Dreifus)
Subject: Question about 2001, a Space Odessy.

Does anyone know if there is any truth to the rumor that there exists
a 4 hour long [UN-cut] version of this fantastic artistic masterpiece?
Please mail to DREIFUS@WHARTON. I am not on the mailing list.

Thank you,
Hank Dreifus

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

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

Date: 29 APR 1980 0348-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #91
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Tuesday, 29 April 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 91

  Today's Topics: Hugo Award Nominations, Wilber Whately Superstar,
                  SF Movies - Dark Star - 2001 - SW - TESB - Dr. T
                    & Humanoids from the Deep, SF Convention Info
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1980 1618-EDT
From: Leslie Turek <turek at LL-ASG>
Subject: Hugo Award nominations

Thanks to Brodie for taking the time to type in the Hugo Award
nominations.  However, I would like to contribute one correction
and one further explanation.

The correction is that the nominee for Best Novel is "The FOUNTAINS of
Paradise", by Arthur C. Clarke (Not "The FOUNDATIONS of Paradise").

The explanation concerns why Somtow Sucharitkul appears on the
Campbell ballot, while Connie Willis does not.  To quote from the
Noreascon II news release which announced the Hugo nominees:

     "Connie Willis received enough votes to appear on the ballot,
but was disqualified because of prior publication: "Santa Titicaca",
WORLDS OF FANTASY, Winter 1970.  Questions also arose as to the
eligibility of Somtow Sucharitkul, whose story "Sunsteps" appeared in
the Summer 1977 UNEARTH; however, it was pointed out to us that the
same story had been rejected as a qualification for Mr. Sucharitkul's
membership in the Science Fiction Writers of America, which has
defined a professional publication as one with a circulation of at
least 10,000.  Since this question involved the definition of the
award, we consulted with the sponsor: ANALOG editor Stanley Schmidt
agreed that the SFWA definition should be taken as a precedent.  We
have therefore ruled Mr. Sucharitkul eligible."

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

Date: 28 APR 1980 1109-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)

A common reply to the Jesus-types in this area is "Jesus saves, Moses
invests, Cthulhu squanders".  The "Campus Crusade for Cthulhu" may
have started to spread several years ago at Michigan State, shortly
after the assemblage of WILBUR WHATELY, SUPERSTAR (including such
lines verses as
	
	(deleted)
------------------------------

DLW@MIT-AI 04/28/80 04:38:44 Re: Dark Star

A minor correction to Amsler: The "Thermostellar Devices" in Dark
Star were used to destroy unstable *planets*, not stars.  The idea
was that an unstable planet would "spiral in towards the sun, and
eventually cause a supernova".  The Dark Star's mission was to
destroy such planets, because they would render huge sections of
space too dangerous to colonize were they left around.

I don't think there is any point in trying to explain the
stop-on-a-dime action of the ship as an "intertialess drive"; fact
it, this movie is not to be justified, it is to be laughed at, and
at showings at MIT's LSC movie the stopping causes the entire
audience to crack up.  I am a great fan of this movie, but you have
to take it with the proper attitude.  (Everyone who has not seen it
should run not walk, etc... It is playing now somewhere in the Bay
Area as a double feature with Barbarella--think of it!)

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

Date: 28 Apr 1980 1534-PDT
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIF>
Subject: 2001

Yes!!! there does exist an uncut version (but it doesnt last 4 hours)
and I saw it last night.  LA people, you can see 2001 in its original
uncut form, it 70 mm at the AVCO in westwood.  It was excellent.  The
owner of the theater even came out and explained why they decided to
show this version as opposed to the 35mm new print they got, even
though there are a few scratches in it (the print is 10-12 years old).
But the opening scenes and the space stations scenes are great.

					Alan

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

Larke@MIT-ML 04/29/80 00:49:53 Re: Catching up on movie queries

To clear up and cloud up (one each) some recent movie topics -

     2001 was never available in a 4 hour version. It was, however
(according to the paperback 'The Making of 2001') initially made in
a 2 hour 41 minute version - only seen at a sneak preview. When the
movie was thought to be too long, Kubrick cut it by 19 minutes. This
included scenes from the dawn of man, exersizing in the centrifuge,
and other minor bits. There was footage shot that never made it even
to the previews - footage of the aliens (using thin men in rubber
suits, and later, gas jets and other esoteric ideas) and a sequence
where Poole goes to Macys to buy his daughter a birthday present. But
I doubt there was enough useable material to pad it out to 4 hours.
Barry Lyndon could have been that length, however.

     And as for Star Wars, and parsecs... just when you thought you
had it solved. I have in my possesion a Xerox copy of a near-final
shooting script, and Han Solo is not the only one to mention parsecs
in the film!  During the attack runs on the death star, as the
fighters are nearing it, Blue Leader says, and i quote,

     "BLUE BOYS, THIS IS BLUE LEADER. ADJUST YOUR SELECTORS AND
      CHECK IN. APPROACHING TARGET AT ONE POINT THREE PARSEC..."

The trailing periods are in the script. This sequence never made it
into the final film. How, then, does this affect Solo's remark?

                                                  Larry

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

DAUL@MIT-MC 04/29/80 01:01:19 Re: TESB ALBUM

Well, I have read the book, listened to the music, heard the gossip,
and am standing in line for the movie.  The album is very good.  There
is a very dynamic and feeling sense to the music.  When those of you
that see the movie return home and want to re-imagine the movie you
will ENJOY listening to the music.  The London Symphony Does It Again!
Inside the album are 13 pages of pictures from the movie, all very
good.  Yoda (for those of you who know of him) looks like the most
lovable of the characters.  He does look as if he could be a Muppet.
But the album says that it is Frank Oz.  Well...I recommend go stand
in line starting now.  --Bill

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

Date: 28 Apr 1980 11:15 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: semi-information

Local note: According to KQED's calendar of events in the latest
Focus, "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T" is being shown sometime in May
(fairly soon) at a San Francisco theater as the lead film in their
"festival of paranoia".  Alas, I forgot to write down when and where
before I pitched Focus, but perhaps someone else can look it up.

Karen

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

JAMES TURNER@MIT-AI 04/28/80 07:50:18 Re: Horrible SF Movies To Come!

Has anyone just seen a show I saw advertised last night?
 ad -- They're coming from the deep. Humanoids. Coming for our
       women. Not to eat, to mate with. (In big voice) Humanoids
       from the deep. Assorted scenes of lovely girls in skimpy
       bathing suits being dragged in the water screaming. Seems
       destined to be a real loser.

							<jmt>

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

Date: 28 Apr 1980 0157-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: SF conventions

Last summer someone mentioned that there was a file someplace (I
believe over at MIT) that contained convention information.  Does
anyone know if this file still exists and is being updated?  Since
this is convention season, it would be helpful to get information to
supplement LOCUS.

Jim

[ The file of special convention information did not work out very
  well. The file no longer exists. I believe part of the reason was
  that a great deal of the information is already available in other
  forms. Indeed almost all of the SF magazines run a Calender column
  of some sort that gives dates for various CONs as well as other
  events, as I'm sure most of you know. However, in Isaac Asimov's
  Science Fiction Magazine, the column is written by Erwin Strauss,
  who goes somewhat farther than most. I include his standard header
  below, for those who do not read IASFM.

  "SF con(vention) activity is about to start picking up, so it's
   not too early to start planning for social weekends with your
   favorite SF authors, editors, artists, and fellow fans. For a
   longer, later list, and a sample of SF folksongs, send me an
   addressed, stamped envelope at 9850 Fairfax Square #232, Fairfax
   VA 22031. For the latest news, the Hot Line is (703) 273-6111.
   If a machine answers, leave your number CLEARLY and I'll call
   back. When writing cons, enclose an addressed, stamped envelope.
   I'm planning to be at many Eastern cons as Filthy Pierre. Look
   for me."

  Perhaps it would be worthwhile to distribute his more detailed
  list as a special article if someone was willing to obtain it
  and type it in.  --  RDD ]

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

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

Date: 30 APR 1980 0356-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #92
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Wednesday, 30 April 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 92

 Today's Topics: Dark Star, An early Prisoner?, Computer film studio,
                 Mass market & trade paperback books, Advertisement,
                    References to stories, Personals, RwE Spoiler
----------------------------------------------------------------------

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 04/29/80 10:45:50 Re: inertialess drive

After pain-staking, frame by frame investigation of the documentary,
Dark Star, the mechanism for the famed inertialess drive has been
detailed; via arcane technologies the planet-wreckers have attached
strings to the fabric of the universe, along which they pull
themselves from place to place.  The evidence for this feat
is clearest in one of the "orbiting" sequences, in which the
wrecker-ship plainly "casts anchor" and stops dead in space. The
craft failed to enter a satellite trajectory, as is the custom.

	Dan

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

Date: 28 Apr 1980 1321-PDT
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: The Cube - George Lucas

Howdy everyone, I am new member of sf-lovers from Stanford.  Here's
a query about a synapse of mine that fires ocassionaly.  Back about
15 years ago I remember seeing a 1/2 hour TV show called "The Cube."
This predates The Prisoner by a bit, but the surrealistic plot
elements were very similar. A man awakes in a cube one day and
strange things begin to happen.  He does not know why he is in the
cube, how he got there, etc. I don't remember too much of what
happened but in one scene he gets angry and smashes a jagged section
of plaster off the wall of the cube.  A repair man comes in, looks
at the wall, says, "looks like a 15 to me," and then removes a piece
of plaster from his tool box which fits exactly into the hole.
There are various other occurences with gorillas in ballet costumes,
the main character fading in and out of converstaions etc.  It ends
when someone enters the room and congratulates the occupant, he has
earned his release.  He is escorted down a long hall and ushered
into a plush office.  None of this questions are answered by the man
in charge, who keeps congradulating the main character on his
freedom.  Finally the release papers are signed and taken from the
main character, in the process causing him to receive a paper cut.
The man in charge says, "Taste the cut," the main character says its
Strawberry Jam, and the room fades out and he finds himself back in
the box.  THE END.  Anyone ever hear of this?

George Lucas is setting up a computer film studio in San Jose.  He
posted an announcement through someone at SAIL.  I'll try to get the
address out in my next entry.  He's got a VAX and some PERQs
[3-Rivers Comp. Corp. version of Xerox Altos].

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

Date:  25 April 1980 11:39 est
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  publishing business

Whats the difference between mass market paperbacks and trade
paperbacks?

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

Date:  30 April 1980 01:00 est
From:  DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject:  publishing business

[ I will take the liberty of answering this immediately since I was
  the one who used these terms in SFL V1 #87. Anyone with additional
  comments should feel free to add more to this.  --  RDD  ]

"Mass market paperback" and "trade paperback" are marketing terms
for two different sizes of softcover/glued binding books. Mass market
paperback books are 4 inches by 7 inches in size and range in price
from $1.75 to $2.75. Mass market paperback books are probably what
you are thinking of when you hear someone referring to a "paperback".
Trade paperback books are about 6 inches by 9 inches in size and
range in price from $4.95 to $7.95. Trade paperback books vary in
size quite a bit, primarily because they do not have to fit into a
standard size wire rack the way that mass market paperback books do.

Prior to 1979, virtually all SF material which appeared in softcover
was published as a mass market paperback.  Material published in this
format almost never included illustrations because of the small page
size and limited amount of total printing space that was available.
However, at that point publishers (primarily Ace under the direction
of their new editor Jim Baen) began to consider taking stories of
"special quality", commissioning an artist to do illustrations, and
then publishing the story in the trade paperback format. One of the
first stories offered this way was Dickson's "Home from the Shore".
Some others are: Bova's "The Best of Astounding" and "The Best of
Analog", Niven's "The Magic Goes Away", Leguin's "Interfaces", and
Ing's "Soft Targets".

I make the effort to distinguish between these different formats,
because SF material published in the trade paperback format is a
strict case of "let the buyer beware". In making a decision, be
aware that:

   1. economics virtually requires that anything published as a trade
      paperback appear as a mass market paperback 6 months to a year
      later.
   2. the illustrations and the quality of reproduction varies widely.
   3. the illustrations can take up a great deal of space. In some
      cases you are not buying a novel but a novella which has been
      very heavily illustrated.

Niven's "The Magic Goes Away" is a good example of the bad side of
each of these points. The point is to be very careful that you know
what you are buying, because all of the trade paperback editions may
not be worth the extra money.

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

VILAIN@MIT-MC 04/29/80 00:57:02 Re: Late Night Commercials???

     Are you tired of producing plots by the sweat of your brow?
     Are you sick of making stories with your own mental effort?

     Now the amazing new INSTA-RITER from K-TEL.

     Writes SF, fantasies, gothics, mysteries, bodice rippers, spy
thrillers, new wave, old wave, pop-psych, inspirational, mainstream,
or shallow--even difficult Saturday morning fair--at the flip of a
trend.

     Cuts, hacks, edits, files off the serial numbers, lifts,
separates, and otherwise removes ideas from their original source
without fuss or bother.

     Watch INSTA-RITER take these five years worth of amazing,
fantastic, super-collosal outer space stories and this slightly used
book by Marconi and--with just a flick of a switch and $18
Million--turn them into BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

     Now, just look at this sticky, gooy mess of a gothic plot.
Normally, it would take hours of scouring and scraping and several
weeks in a rest-home to get this gloopy mess out of the average
writer, but K-TEL'S INSTA-RITER with its miracle disposible bindings
makes sure no plot is ever in direct contact with the writer's brain.
And absolutely free with your INSTARITER come three re-useable
plots--man against man, man against the universe, and man against
Hollywood.

(Don't all rush to send in your orders now. Special thanks to Diane
 Duane.)
				<>Mike Vilain

[ Diane Duane is a new SF author. She has recently had a book
  entitled "Door Into Fire" published by Dell.  --  RDD       ]

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

Date: 29 April 1980 17:41-EDT
From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Story references, TESB tickets

SF story that references another: MZB's The Shattered Chain, a
character mentions that Darkover couldn't have been called Winter
because that name was already in use.

Bay area SFLer's - BASS has TESB tickets (if you didn't know)

-- Charles

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

LEOR@MIT-MC 04/29/80 22:33:29 Re: Have NOREASCON crash space for ~3

If anyone needs a place to hang out/crash for free during the con, I
have a couch, a cot, & floor space for maybe an additional sleeping
bag or two. My apt is 20-30 minutes walk from the Hynes. Any kind of
sentient creatures welcome; drugs encouraged. If interested, send
mail to leor@mc.
	-leor

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

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 04/30/80 03:00:30  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following message is the last message in today's digest. It asks
a question about Niven's Ringworld and The Ringworld Engineers. In
doing so it gives away the mystery of who the ringworld engineers
were.  People who have not read The Ringworld Engineers may not wish
to read any further.


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

JAMES TURNER@MIT-AI 04/28/80 07:50:18 Re: Question about RwE

It seems to me that Teela Brown is a little long to be on
Tree-of-Life. Could someone check?

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

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

Date:  1 MAY 1980 0547-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #93
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 1 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 93

 Today's Topics: SF Movies - Zardoz, D&D is the Great Satan, The CUBE,
                  TESB, More on mass market & trade paperback books,
                  References to stories, Bedtime story query, Rooms?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 APR 1980 1120-EST
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: ZARDOZ

  I found this movie to be a stupid, pompous bore. The scriptwriter
and director (don't recall what was the exact division, but John
Boorman had a heavy hand in both) were under the impression that
[they] were making a movie with a great deal of MEANING (judging by
interviews in CINEFANTASTIQUE), when in fact the movie was, among
other problems, terribly disorganized. The book makes some of the
mess clearer but displays the "brooding, Celtic vision of the
twilight of the world" (quote from back cover copy) as trivial. I
sat through it at Boskone several years ago because some people
spoke well of it --- but then, I know people who thought CLOSE
ENCOUNTERS was a major philosophical movie (a skeptic acquaintance
commented, "If those are the aliens who are going to rescue us from
ourselves, we're in trouble." He also quoted Niven's observation
(from RINGWORLD) that in a crew with that male-female ratio there's
little doubt what the women are along for.)
  The creators also based it on second-rate Freudianism, which
doesn't help matters.

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

LARKE@MIT-ML 04/30/80 22:08:44 Re: Is D & D satanic?

  To paraphrase a recent article by the Associated Press...

  The Heber City School District wii most likely be banning
the playing of "Dungeons and Dragons" next year because of
the controversy the game has caused. Although this year it
was officially sanctioned and played in special after-school
sessions, once parents found out about it, they got angry.
  "This kind of game brings out murder, poisons and assasinations,
negative kinds of things" said Irma Christensen, a Utah state
school board member." It is satanic. You can take my word for it.

   So the middle school principle says it isn't worth the
controversy it has called. he plans to drop the game next
semester.

   Ironically, students are more intrigued by the game than ever,
now that it is to be banned. Students have had to be turned away
from the sessions. And students say they will continue D & D'ing
after the program ends.

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

Date: 30 Apr 1980 1132-PDT
From: DDYER at USC-ISIB
Subject: The man in the cube

I also remember the program. It was on one of a series of
off-the-wall programs called NBC EXPERIMENT IN TELEVISION,
sunday morning fare.

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

DLW@MIT-AI 04/30/80 18:15:17 Re: REP's query about The Cube

I saw this long ago on WNET (the Public Broadcasting station in NY)
on a series called "Experiments in Television" or something like
that. I wouldn't class it as SF, if that was at issue; more like a
surrealistic metaphor. The important thing is that the guy keeps
trying to escape from the cube, and he can't. Various things keep
happening to him; sometimes it appears that he has found a way to
escape, but it doesn't work (this is the only real similarity to The
Prisoner); a kid on a tricycle singing the words "You'll never get
out" over and over enters, rides around a little, and leaves; things
like that. It struck me as pretty straightforward symbolism, and it
did get very eerie at times.

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

JHUA@MIT-MC 04/30/80 23:04:48 Re:  THE CUBE

     Ah yes, The Cube. I recall seeing that on a Sunday afternoon
about 10 years ago. It was all rather frightening to me at the time,
because of the strawberry jam/blood bit. If I remember correctly,
the man in the cube was something of an outcast and was "sentenced"
to the cube. He goes thru some rather harrowing experiences that
resemble a bad trip. In the end he asks, WHY ME?, and the answer was
that if he cut himself he would find the answer. In doing so, he
tastes JAM and discovers himself to be not really a "human." I was
really too young to read anything into the movie, though. It was a
good enuf flick for an afternoon.

     As a side note, do you Bostonians realize that at the Sack
downtown the tickets for the first showing of TESB will be 15 big
bucks because they are having a benefit for a school. To counter
the price they are having a champagne/costume party starting at
6:30 that night. *SIGH*

					--Julian

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

Date: 30 APR 1980 1200-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: paperback definitions

   1. Mass market paperbacks are still not quite uniform in size,
although 4" x 7" is a good approximation.

   2. Trade paperbacks are a relatively new phenomenon in all
mass-market material, although they have been around for some
time as a way of doing textbook supplements cheaply.

   3. The basic point of a trade paperback is not that it is an
overpriced paperback, but that it is a cheap hardback. Not only does
the trade paperback frequently appear in place of a hard-cover first
edition, it is also substantially better put together than a mmp.
The paper is heavier and of much better quality (many mmp's are
printed on the next thing to heavy newsprint), frequently being
one of the acid-reduced types. (Virtually all wood-pulp paper is
bleached with acid, residues of which cause the finished paper to
slowly oxidize and producing the brown color and flaking seen in
books as little as 30 years old. The use of other bleaches, or of
alkakline substances after bleaching, makes the paper more durable
but at a higher production cost.) While the binding is still
normally glued ("Perfect") rather than sewn ("Smythe" or another
variation) it is glued in signatures (groups of 2**n pages,
originally one large sheet and now folded down and trimmed on 3
sides) rather than single sheets, which when properly done gives the
finished book a more durable spine and no tendency to lose pages.
The cover is also a better stock, usually both more flexible and
more durable. In fact, tp's are significantly better than hradbacks
in at least one aspect; some sf hb's are now being glued like mmp's
(virtually none of them have the sewing and spine bands which
traditionally making a hb binding more durable than a pb) and
virtually all of them are not trimmed (Ithink they're simply slit
open) on the front edge, leaving a ragged mess that is more awkward
to turn through than the flush trim of any pb. Also, because they
are frequently done on sheet-fed presses rather than web(roll)-fed,
tp are much less likely to have the sort of defects I've recently
seen eve in DAW books---whole signatures that have been misfolded or
folded crookedly so some part of the text nudges or hides in the
binding.

  4. Illustrations--Ace and others are starting to bring out mmp's
with illustrations; as you might expect, the art is mostly terrible
(even worse than in DESTINIES) and it looks bad because halftones
(grays) don't hold their consistency on such paper, producing large
chunks of black or white space. (example: Dickson's PRO).

  5. There is at least one line just of trade paperbacks that mostly
isn't coming out in mmp: the Starblaze line, started by Freas (who
will see through two more books in production, including the sequel
to ANOTHER FINE MYTH, and then be completely separated from the
publisher (Donning)). AFM itself is now out in mmp, but most of the
other material, including decent stories by Bradley and Raylyn
Moore, isn't. The latest Starblaze is TAKEOFF!, a collection of
pastiches and parodies by Randall Garrett. The series as a wole is
surprisingly good, considering that Freas (in his art collection)
seems to have so little taste that he doesn't see how abysmal the
average Laser book was. (There are worse lines now--such as
Manor--but Laser still holds the record for most widely distributed
crud).

  Note that none of this is specifically a defense or attack on
tp's. They are currently the subject of much debate in MITSFS, which
tries to get SOME copy of EVERYTHING; since tp's can't meet our
circulation requirements (although they hold up to most ordinary
library use; we have probably the world's highest percentage of
stock actually circulating) they must go on reserve, which is where
the mmp goes when it comes out. Roger's basic warning holds,
especially for tp's from the Ace/Baronet/Charter/Tempo line.
(Incidentally, I was recently amused to note that the punch-card
coding forms sold at the Tech Coop are produced by one of Ace's
branches.)

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

Date: 30 Apr 1980 0921-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: "Mentioning" in SF

   In the Truffaut version of Farenheit 451, one of the "Book
People" at the end of the film has learned Ray Bradbury's 
"Martian Chronicles".

   Recursion: In "The Troika Incident" by James C. Brown (Loglan
inventor), the characters visiting the future discover that the
inhabitants of that future have read the book in the reader's
hands (which they are more or less dictating to the novelist).

	Mike

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

Date: 30 Apr 1980 12:14 PDT
From: betsey at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Bedtime Stories

I have a friend who enjoys reading science fiction before bed each
night. The problem is that if he starts a novel, he becomes
bewitched and cannot put it down until it's finished. The person's
birthday approacheth rapidly and I would like to provide him with
some enjoyable reading material. I am therefore soliciting entries
for your notions of the ten best collections of Science Fiction
short stories be they anthologies or collections by one author.

Betsey Summers. 

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

LMOORE@MIT-ML 05/01/80 00:58:37 Re: Wanted: a room at WorldCon

I am looking for somebody who has a room to share at the WorldCon.
I would like to be in or very near the Sheraton. Will split all
the usual for several good nights sleep.

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

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

Date:  2 MAY 1980 0301-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #94
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 2 May 1980       Volume 1 : Issue 94

Today's Topics: D&D, Lucas computer studio jobs, Trade paperback books
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 05/01/80 0928-EDT
From: KG Heinemann (SORCEROR at LL)
Subject: D&D Paranoia

     Larke's message about public pressure to ban D&D from the Herber
City school system is most disturbing. It appears that once again
adults made uncomfortable by their offspring's involvement with an
activity which does not embody good old American values, like bone
crunching to prove one's virility, as in football, are seeking to
use public authority to interfere with these activities. I just hope
that we aren't seeing the start of another McCarthy style witch-hunt.
Beware, the spirit of Frederick Wertham lives!

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

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 05/01/80 10:51:17 Re: Irma Christensen

Ban D&D?  What?!!  Does she think the game is breeding a sadistic,
blood-drinking, cackling horde of juvenile satan worshippers?
Fireball that woman now, before she gets out of hand.

	Dan

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

Date: 01 May 1980 1040-PDT
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: Lucas Jobs    

The person to contact about the computer jobs with Lucas is Ed Catmul.
He can be called collect at (415) 453-9012.  The studio is being set
up in San Rafel, not San Jose.  I am told that San Rafel is north of
San Francisco.

Rich

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

Date: 1 May 1980 7:36 pm PDT (Thursday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Trade paperbacks

It seems to me that there's a line of trade paperbacks out which are
not likely to reappear soon as mass-market paperbacks.  I speak of the
"SF-Rediscovery" series put out by (I believe) Ballantine, consisting
of various novels previously published in the mass-market format and
now out of print.  As far as I can gather, none of them are what you
might call classics (they were all taken out of print for some reason
or other), but some are worth investigating.

Titles I've seen include Algis Budrys's "Rogue Moon", a rather
chilling novel about one man's explorations of an alien artifact found
on the moon. The gimmick is, each trip he makes through the artifact
kills him, so the data he gathers must be transmitted telepathically
to his double on earth, so that double can be replicated and sent up
to try again...

Another title is Philip Jose Farmer's "Inside Outside".  I don't
particularly recommend this one unless you are a student of Farmer;
you'll find that a lot of the ideas are "precycled" Riverworld themes.
Also in the series is Piers Anthony's "Omnivore" (which I haven't
read), the precursor to "Orn" (which I have read and recommend to
anyone with an interest in paleontology).  There are doubtless others
which I haven't seen.

So if you're a student of the "old school" of SF, or want to see what
your semi-favorite authors were doing fifteen or twenty years ago, you
might keep an eye out.  The large format and distinctive logo make the
series fairly conspicuous on the shelf.

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

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

Date:  3 MAY 1980 0634-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #95
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Saturday, 3 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 95

Today's Topics:  George Pal, Dragon's Egg, Star Wars Fan Club - TESB,
                References to Stories, Mass market & trade paperbacks,
                    Prisoner Concepts, Lucas computer studio, D&D
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  2 May 1980 2040-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Pal obit

    BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) - Film producer-director George Pal,
who won eight Academy Awards for his science fiction movies, died
Friday of an apparent heart attack.
    Pal, 72, earned the adoration of sci-fi fans the world over with
such movie classics as ''War of the Worlds,'' ''The Time Machine,''
''The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao'' and ''When the Worlds Collide.''

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

Date:  2 MAY 1980 1450-PDT
From: SHELLEY at USC-ECL
Subject: DRAGON`S EGG

COPIES OF DR. FORWARD`S NOVEL ABOUT LIFE ON A NEUTRON STAR ARE NOW IN
SOME BOOKSTORES, HARDCOVER ONLY ($9.95). I HAVE BEEN EXCITED ABOUT
THIS WORK SINCE I SAW AN EARLY DRAFT AND RECOMMEND IT TO EVERYONE. THE
COVER BLURB FROM ARTHUR C. CLARKE SAYS:

   "FORWARD`S BOOK IS A KNOCK-OUT... A GOOD STORY AS WELL AS A
    STUNNING NEW LOCAL... IN SCIENCE FICTION THERE IS ONLY A HANDFUL
    OF BOOKS THAT REALLY STRETCH THE MIND - AND THIS IS ONE OF THEM."

COMMENTS REQUESTED.  GRAYSON@USC-ECL.

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

Date: 2 May 1980 05:49-EDT
From: William Daul <DAUL at MIT-MC>
Subject: DRAGON'S EGG

I just started Dr. Forward's book. I am the first on my block. I
recommend it based on the few number of pages I have read. I love
the visualization that I create as I read. ...even comes with a
"technical appendix"! I can't imagine anyone not liking this...it
is very good SCIENCE fiction.
     --Bill

[ For earlier comments on Dragon's Egg, see SFL V1 #48, 46, 17
  ( available in the file AI:DUFFEY;_DATA_ SF4 ) Also note that
  an abridged version of the technical appendix was published
  in the April 1980 issue of ANALOG.  -- RDD ]

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

Date: 2 May 1980 0929-PDT (Friday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: TESB Package

Last night at LASFS, Craig Miller showed the new package that will be
sent to new and renewing members of the Official Star Wars Fan Club.
It included the poster (similar to the paperback book cover, very nice
if you like Gone With the Wind), a decal (suitable for digital
scanning like the Star Wars one was; will probably make a good poster
that way), and 5 stills from the film, including a light-sabre duel, a
posed shot with the heroes, Vader and Boba Fett (sp?), and a simply
beautiful still of "the best-kept secret in the film", Yoda. Craig
implied that Lucas & co. expect to get as much mileage out of Yoda as
they did from R2-D2, since he's such a swell character. I STILL don't
know how they did Yoda. Craig was evasive, but answered in the
negative when I carefully asked "Is it an actor in a costume as
opposed to an artifact". People who have seen the film or even just
heard the album are VERY enthusiastic, by all accounts.
  Goshwowoboyoboyoboy.
	Mike

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

Date:  2 May 1980 1439-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Stories that referance stories

Ursula K. Le Guin does a lot of other-author referencing, it's her way
of showing appreciation. I recently read an anthology of her work
'Wind of the Twelve Quarters' (or some such title) and two stories
referance other stories. In one, the protagonist is carrying an
anthology of somebody elses (Silverberg?), and in another, she names
an autistic/empathic syndrome (too much input from empathy and autism
is the only way to deal with it) after somebody elses character who
showed this syndrome. Sorry I can't be more specific, I seem to have
mislaid my copy.

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

Date: 2 May 1980 08:43 PDT
From: Chapman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Starblaze Bradley story

[ see SFL V1 #93 for Chip Hitchcock's message  -- RDD ]

HITCHCOCK at CCA states in Point #5 that a Starblaze Bradley book is
not out in mmp, but if he is referring to The Ruins of Isis, he is
wrong. It IS out in mmp, and according to my friend, Sue Haseltine
(SUE@MIT-MC), so are most of the other Starblaze books.

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

Date: 1 May 1980 2343-PDT
From: GEOFF at SRI-KA (the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow)
Subject: Prisoner Concepts

Tonight we had the final two episodes of the Prisoner series shown
here in addition to the McGoohan interview.

During the course of the interview, McGoohan mentioned (at least twice
I recall) of a 40 page "Concepts" document about the series (such as
the workings of the Village, its phone system, its sewer, ....
basically everything you needed to know), which was given to all of
the writers of the series.

My question is: Anyone out there in SF-LOVERS land have a copy of that
document, or know of anyone who might, and/or how I could get a copy
of it?

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

Date: 02 May 1980 2014-PDT
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI>
Subject: Lucas' location    

In case anyone happens to care, San Rafael (nee San Rafel), is 15 or
20 miles north of San Francisco in Marin County, and has been reputed
to be the location of the Lucas operation (REP@SAIL). Further, it
is the home of the Grateful Dead. In short, if you're into both
effects and affects, this is the place for you.
			-rpg-

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

JAMES TURNER@MIT-AI 05/02/80 18:24:41

REGARDING THE WOMAN WHO WANTS TO BAN D & D,FIREBALLING IS TOO GOOD
FOR HER,PERHAPS A GOOD 'CREAPING DOOM'... ALSO,SF-LOVERS
SEEMS TO BE OSCILATING BETWEEN VERY SHORT AND VERY LONG ISSUES,
COULD IT BE A FACTOR OF SOME SOLAR OCCURENCE OR A BIOLOGICAL
CLOCK?
					<JMT>

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

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

Date:  4 MAY 1980 0649-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #96
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Sunday, 4 May 1980       Volume 1 : Issue 96

  Today's Topics:  TESB's Yoda, ANALOG alert, the D&D controversy,
                  Queries - George Pal - Bova & Ellison's Future Cop
----------------------------------------------------------------------

DAUL@MIT-MC 05/04/80 03:45:28 Re: TESB YODA

[reply to question in SF-LOVERS Volume 1 : Issue 95  May 3]

The album gives credit for YODA (the Jedi master) to Frank Oz.  It
goes on to say:

     "...Frank Oz, famous for his Muppet Show characterizations on
      television, as Yoda, an entirely new creation making his debut
      in the saga."

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

Date:  3 May 1980 at 2152-CDT
From:  Henize via AMSLER at UTEXAS

Please, PLEASE don't miss the new (JUNE) ANALOG.  There's a new
Callahan's bar story by Spider Robinson that has one of the *very*
bestin-group/fan puns for an ending i think i've ever read.

There's no way to tell you about it without ruining it, but I very
strongly recommend it!

				Dewey Henize

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

Date:  3 May 1980 2340-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: D&D is good/bad for you

I have been an avid player of D&D for 5 years now, and have a
love/hate relationship with it.  Some interesting facts;

When I was at Cal Tech, a bunch of us hard-core D&D'ers made a survey
of what D&D did to GPA's.  Over a sample of about 25 people, there
seemed to be a significant GPA drop of about 0.8 GPA points.  Since we
were averaging 18 hrs/week on D&D playing (not to mention map drawing,
ecology balancing, history writing, etc.) this didn't suprise us.  It
was also felt that certain creative energies that otherwise would have
been sublimated into school work were being released here.

However, a bunch of us felt that simple GPA's did not reflect the
whole picture. A bunch of us got together and re-did D&D a'la Gygax
and Kuntz. The Pasadena Playgames Group produced 'Warlock' which we
felt was much more consistant and reasonable than D&D. (Its available
from TSR- hint hint) I have since gone on to engage in creating
several systems of 'magical physics', 'theologies', 'modified physical
physics', and world/stellar/universal/metaphysical systems. To do
this, I have had to read further into normal physics, theology,
ecology, geology, biology, ... than I would have done otherwise. I
have gained a substantial insight into holistic universe design than
I ever would have just taking seperate independant classes.

Thus, while D&D may seem to hurt some students, in some cases it opens
up new fields of study, and helps to develop holistic in addition to
analytic thinking.

As per the question of 'Does the violence in D&D lead to violence
elswhere'?, I would like to point out that in Japan industry has found
that providing rooms where workers may be violent and take out thier
frustrations has produced happier, more productive workers.

Dan Dolata  (Dolata@sumex-aim)

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

Date:  3 May 1980 0908-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: More on D&D controversy
 
BC-DUNGEONS       By MOLLY IVINS       c. 1980 N.Y. Times News Service

    HEBER CITY, Utah - This pretty farming town of 5,000 solidly
Mormon citizens is nestled in a high mountain valley in the Wasatch
Range east of Salt Lake City. It is just past lambing season, and
the tiny lambs were tottering after their mothers in the green fields
recently as an early spring rain fell. It seems an altogether unlikely
place for the devil to be at work.
    Nevertheless, many of the townspeople are convinced that Satan has
been operating here in the guise of the fantasy game Dungeons and
Dragons, and an after-school program using the game has been
discontinued because of the resulting pressure.
    ''I can feel the devil right here in the media center,'' one woman
told Michael Tunnell, the school librarian, at a meeting for parents
to discuss the issue.
    Teachers and school administrators are left feeling variously
distressed, stunned or amused at the reaction to the program that they
had hoped would stimulate imagination, creativity and teamwork among
talented children. For the teachers' pains, they have been accused of
working with the Antichrist and of fomenting Communist subversion.
    ''Sometimes we have a rather archaic point of view in my state,''
said Tunnell, who is a Mormon and a political conservative. ''We can't
deal with sex education in the schools in any form and when we teach
Utah history, we are often accused by non-Mormons of teaching church
doctrine. But when we started this thing the last thing we ever
dreamed was that it would become a controversy.''
    Dungeons and Dragons became a college fad in the late 1970s and
has since moved into the younger set, where it is immensely popular.
It is a complex and mentally challenging game that is played with rule
books and a floor-plan for a dungeon. Only the game leader, called a
''dragon master,'' sees the dungeon plan.
    Players take an imaginary journey through the dungeon to
vanquish mythical monsters and recover treasure. Each player
assumes a character - human, elf, dwarf and so on - with strengths
and weaknesses partly determined by throws of specially shaped dice.
    Complaints about the program began almost as soon as the game was
started in Heber City in January. It was part of an after-school
program for gifted children; there were also special sports, science
and Spanish programs. All the children who played had permission from
their parents and the game was open to all those who became interested
and the children at the school were enthusiastic about it.
    A group of parents brought their complaints about the game to
the school board and the matter was put on the agenda for the next
meeting. At that meeting, attended by parents of the players and by
representatives of the Parent-Teacher Association, most came out
strongly in favor of the game. But another meeting in late March,
attended by 300 townspeople, brought out a great deal more opposition.
    The parents who were most active in opposing the game issued a
statement expressing their satisfaction that it had been canceled
and declined further comment as a group. However, Norman Springer,
a nondenominational Christian minister, went further.
    ''Oh it is very definitely antireligious,'' he said. ''I have
studied witchcraft and demonology for some years and I've taught
against witchcraft. The books themselves have been taken from
mythology and from witchcraft and they are filled with demonology,
filled with pictures and symbols that you could find in any basic
witchcraft book and use the same terminology.''
    He said, in particular, that the game's rule books included
incubuses and succubuses, male and female demons having to do with
lust, and the terminology of magic including a magic circle.
    ''These books are filled with things that are not fantasy but are
actual in the real demon world,'' Springer said, ''and can be very
dangerous for anyone involved in the game because it leaves them so
open to Satanic spirits.
    ''Some John Birch-type people are worried about this being
subversive, Communistic, whatever, I don't know myself. I think
it comes from that old subversive source Satan.''
    The game is manufactured by T.S.R. Hobbies Inc. of Lake Geneva,
Wis. Brian Blume, vice president of the company, responded: ''The
game is a game of heroic fantasy and in order for the players to be
able to perform heroic deeds they have to have things to overcome. The
things most fun to overcome are things that are evil, foul, rotten and
nasty, so we also included some things that were evil, foul, rotten
and nasty for that reason.''
    Douglas Merkley, superintendent of the Wasatch District Schools,
said, ''The program polarized our community, so the program is
finished as of this year and will not be used next year. It has taken
hours of my time and I hope we are all to the point where we've spent
enough time on it.
    ''It's a moot point now, it's over. From an administrative point
of view, we need support of all the people in the community. This has
been a divisive thing and it will take a long time to mend the
fences.''
    
------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/03/80 12:35:50 Re: TWO QUESTIONS

    First: George Pal's passing is a great loss. According to
Cinefantastique (V8 #4) about 6 months ago he was working on the
preproduction stages of Phillip Wylie's novel "The Disappearance."
Does anyone know what the status of this project is, and whether
it will now be finished? It's a terrible loss.

   Second, a query on behalf of a friend. he wants to know the
status of the lawsuit that Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova had brought
against NBC about the series (you remember it) "Future Cop."
    Anyone out there happen to know the details?

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

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

Date:  5 MAY 1980 0507-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #97
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Monday, 5 May 1980       Volume 1 : Issue 97

Today's Topics: Bova & Ellison's "Future Cop", US Air Force and TV SF,
                 D&D Article, Queries - Well World - What's the Title
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 04 May 1980 1044-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Ellison and Bova   

On Ellison and Bova's Lawsuit: the full story below...

People In The News   27 April 1980

    LOS ANGELES (AP) - A jury has awarded science fiction writer
Harlan Ellison and writer-editor Ben Bova $337,000 in damages in
a copyright infringement case sparked by the television series
''Future Cop.''
    The six-member U.S. District Court jury ordered the American
Broadcasting Co., Paramount Pictures Corp. and former Paramount
executive Terry Keegan to pay $182,500 in compensatory damages
and $154,500 in punitive damages.
    The jury ruled that the series, in which a robot co-starred
with actor Ernest Borgnine as police officers of the future, did
not infringe on the statutory copyright of the authors' 1970 short
story, ''Brillo.'' But the jury said the series did violate the
common law copyright of a screenplay proposal Ellison and Bova
said they submitted to ABC.
    ''It is a message to writers that if they care about their work
and stand up to these people and fight, they can at last bring an
end to the practice of stealing ideas that is so rampant in the
industry,'' Ellison said after the verdict Friday.
    Attorneys for Ellison and Bova had sought $400,000 in compensatory
damages and an unspecified amount of punitive damages.
    
Jim

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

DMM@MIT-ML 05/04/80 20:37:29

I am told that further information about the Bova & Ellison lawsuit
may be found in issue No. 53 of the Comics Journal, which contains a
20 page interview with Ellison, in which he, in no uncertain terms
(as usual), tells just what he thinks about the networks, etc.

[ Thanks also go to Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>, Bob
  Forward <Forward at USC-ECL>, and Chip Hitchcock <Hitchcock at CCA>
  for submitting other messages about the "Future Cop" lawsuit. I
  have declined to include them here because they duplicate the
  above material.  --  RDD ]

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

Date:  4 May 1980  0530-EDT
From:  Roger D. Duffey, II <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject:  The Air Force and TV SF

[ This is an abridged version of a letter in the Letters to the
  Editor column of Aviation Week & Space Technology. It appeared
  on page 72 of the 14 April 1980 issue. Thanks go to Richard
  Stallman <RMS at MIT-AI> for suggesting the letter be sent to
  SF-LOVERS.  --  RDD ]

                              F-16 Name

In the course of aviation history, numerous airplanes have become
"classics" in their own time. As such, their pilots have bestowed a
most favored status on the flying memories and nostalgia connected
with those fine machines, relishing the special occasions such as
the current one we fliers of the F-16 have.

In the mid-1977 time frame, personnel from the General Dynamics
marketing division proposed the name "Falcon" to the fighter pilot
community.

Sounds of "the Eagle and the Falcon" were heard favorably in the Ops
squadron halls, only to be told that a French fanjet and an Air Force
Academy mascot have overpowered such a notion.

Not to be forgotten, the F-16 naming went dormant (at least a lower
priority) for the next 12-15 months. During that time frame, numerous
handpicked pilots journeyed to Edwards AFB, then Hill AFB, to become
the first F-16 cadre in a fighter that is soon to be the backbone of
the USAF inventory. Acronyms like SMS, MOT&E, B+ + radar, block 1A,
and FCNP caused a pleasant form of confusion during this time, with
the jocks retackling the light hearted task of naming the new jet.

The TV series "Battlestar Galactica" surfaced about the same time.
With dramatic fighter pilots flying a sophisticated fighter and a
new TV show flaunting "the most advanced fighter the galaxy has
ever known," the name Viper was a natural and logical conclusion.
Additional support was added when Viper was also described as the
small but deadly machine, or the small jet with the deadly sting.
This swiftness and lethality fits naturally with the F-16 and the
Viper.

Numerous ranking personnel in a variety of locations felt a need to
control the naming of the new jet, and since Viper was a selection
of the troops as opposed to one of the higher echelon alternatives,
excuses under the guise of "Name the F-16" contests were conducted.
Letters, petitions, etc., were sent by the fliers to no avail, with
the most current contest resulting in the three alternatives sent back
from Air Force/PAX for our selection. They are Mustang 2, Persuader,
and Eaglet. Mustang will never be anything other than the finest North
American fighter of World War 2. As for Persuader, we suppose the
second choice was supplied just like the liberal party in an election.

Now the last choice, Eaglet, is one that intrigues us, because we
feel the aircraft is not a baby anything. Names like Phantom, Hornet,
Tiger, and Tomcat have an air of permanence, so why not name another
good fighter in a similar fashion?

We F-16 pilots are proud of our new jet, and would like to begin
another great tradition in the annals of fighter aviation. Our name
means a lot to us, so whatever did become of Viper?

Capt. Mike Sromek
16TFTS, "First in the F-16"
Plus the Viper pilots in the:
16TFTS, 34TFS, 4TFS, 61TFS
Layton, Utah

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

JAMES TURNER@MIT-AI 05/04/80 12:44:07

ANY 'DRAGON-MASTERS' OUT THERE. FOR A GOOD ARTICLE ON D & D, SEE THE
BOSTON GLOBE MAGAZINE A WHILE BACK. IT HAS THE MOST REALISTIC VIEW OF
D & D I HAVE SEEN.
					<JMT>

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

Date: 4 May 1980 15:27-EDT
From: William Daul <DAUL at MIT-MC>
Subject: CHALKER'S LAST BOOK (WELL WORLD SERIES)

Does anyone know when the above mentioned book will be out?

Does anyone know where one can get the DARKEOVER game, preferably
in the Palo Alto area?
                                                   --Bill

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

DERWAY@MIT-AI 05/05/80 00:43:49 Re: Title query

Roger and I have been futilely trying to remember the title of a short
story. It may be by Fritz Leiber, but we are not certain. It involves
some aliens which arrive in the solar system in a solar-sail type of
craft, and trade in knowledge. They come to be called Monks, due to
the clothes they wear. One of them comes into a bar fairly often,
and eventually gives the bartender some DNA pills which make him a
competent space navigator, able to figure out any language, and the
ability to perform miracles. The aliens want the earth people to
build a launching laser on the moon so they can go on to their next
destination, but the UN bureaucracy gets all tied up over the cost,
and the aliens start getting very impatient. It turns out that just
before they arrived there was a nova in the direction they came from.
That's right, you guessed it. If we don't build the laser for them,
they will consider us animals, and will make our sun go nova to get
launched. If you know this story please send me a note with title,
author, and title(s) of the book(s) where it appears. Thanks muchly...

		Don

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

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

Date:  6 MAY 1980 0639-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #98
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 6 May 1980       Volume 1 : Issue 98

Today's Topics: Horrible SF Movie, Magic Labyrinth, Current addiction,
                 D & D, OctoCon III, Queries - Herbert - RwE Spoiler
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 5 May 1980 0111-PDT (Monday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Oh, Boy!  A REAL bad one!

Wow.  Did I stumble across an AWFUL SF movie last night.  It wasn't
quite as bad as The Creeping Terror, since it DID use sound film in
places, but was definitely number #2.  Once again, we had a narrator
who explained most of the plot action.  And truly AWFUL writing.  The
special effex were ATROCIOUS.  Pie tins hanging from strings for the
space ships.  They'd rock back and forth whenever they moved since
there was only one string in the middle of the saucer.

This bomb is called: PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.  The idea is that alien
beings are reanimating recently dead bodies for their own nasty
purposes.  Anyone ever see this disaster?

--Lauren--

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

ISRAEL@MIT-AI 05/05/80 14:13:51 Re: Riverworld

The final book in Farmer's Riverworld series, "The Magic Labyrinth"
is FINALLY!!!!! out.  It's an $11.95 hardcover book published by
Berkeley/Putnam.

- Bruce

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

Date: 5 May 1980 09:40 PDT
From: Bob Weissman <WEISSMAN at PARC-MAXC>
Subject: Current Addiction

Larry Niven fans out there will probably be interested in two articles
which appeared in yesterday's San Jose Mercury News.  It appears that
the possibility of current addiction is already with us, and you don't
even need an operation on your skull to be able to enjoy it.  The main
article is headlined "ZAP!  People are plugging in to feel good" and
begins:

     In Palo Alto, psychiatrist Alan Brauer sends a mild current of
electricity through patients' brains.
     "It helps them relax," he says of the process known as
"electro-sleep."  "It lowers anxiety, reduces depression and helps
them sleep better.  They generally feel happier."
     In Marin County, veterinarian Joel Rossen sometimes uses
low-level electricity to calm rambunctious dogs and cats before
treatment.
     "I used electro-sleep on one high-strung golden retriever mix
that wouldn't stay still," he said.  "After a couple of minutes, he
lay down on the table and waited for us."
     In Van Nuys, physician Keith Kenyon uses electro-sleep to relieve
insomnia, but has some worries.  "This thing can be addictive," he
says.  "It makes many people feel good, and they keep asking for more.
I'd hate to see anyone get hooked on a machine." ...

There's also a smaller, boxed article by the same reporter,
Christopher Drake, who tried the treatment himself.  Some excerpts
from his first-hand experience:

     ...Time dissolved.  It was no effort to keep my eyes closed,
even though I was not sleepy.  A slow, warm sensuality seemed to be
overtaking me...  I felt myself becoming giddy, chuckled out loud a
couple times, then fell back into what was fast becoming semi-slumber.
     I did entertain some fears that [Dr. Alan] Brauer had forgotten
me, and that I would turn into a potato chip.  I was prepared to rip
the electrodes from my skull, but I was not panicky....
     Brauer entered the room and removed the electrodes.  I slowly
opened my eyes.  I had no idea of how long he had been away.  I did
feel calm.  I really didn't much care if we didn't finish the
interview, but those feelings were not overriding....
     Things were a bit foggy; I really didn't care to think or exert
myself.  I was happy just sitting.  I forgot to check to see if I was
wearing a stupid grin....

So, what can I say, but "Life imitates Art once again."  Be the first
on your block to get a "buzz"...

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

Date:  6 May 1980 0136-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Yet more on the D&D controversy

BC-DUNGEONS	By Ima Sudonym	   c. 1980  Dabney News Service

   HEBER CITY, Utah - Amid growing controversy over the game of
Dungeons and Dragons, the city fathers of this idyllic community
of 5000 Mormon citizens have decided to get professional help.
   '' This thing was just too big for us, and we needed the devine
guidance of the Church '' said one towns-person.  Citing evidance
that the sources for the Demonology were mideavle grimoures, Norman
Fallers said '' It was only natural that we fight fire with fire.
In these modern times, we don't have the neccesary expertise to deal
with witchcraft and demonology, so we also turned to some older texts.
We have found two books particularly helpful, 'Deos et Justica' by
Torquemada, and 'Witchcraft' by Cotten Mathers.''
     The results have been most gratifying in curbing the
influence of Satan.  As one of the somberly dressed members
of the Commitee to Investigate Dungeons and Dragons said,
'' Mr. Mathers book was most helpful until we were able to 
translate the archaic Spanish of Torquemada.  However, by utilizing
techniques from both sources, we have been able to extract confessions
showing that the most horrible practices imaginable occur at D&D
gaming sessions.  It quickly became obvious that not only were the
Laws of God being broken, but we have also solved every crime in
this state for the last 18 years.''
     The game is manufactured by T.S.R. Hobbies Inc. of Lake Geneva
Wisc, and company representatives claim that they are shocked by these
accusations.  '' We intend to start our own investigations as soon as
any of the survivors of the Committee to Investigate D&D's
questionings are released from the hospital.  ''

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

Date: 05 May 1980 0947-PDT
From: Connie Stanley <CJS at SU-AI>

		The Spellbinders, Inc. present:
			  OctoCon III
       a science fiction & fantasy convention for charity
		     October 11 & 12, 1980
	    El Rancho Tropicana Hotel, Santa Rosa, CA
	    (in the newly expanded convention center)
		Guest of Honor - Theodore Sturgeon
		Artist Guest of Honor - Don Dixon

OctoCon III is proud to bring you the HAMILTON MEMORIAL AWARD
(honoring Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett) for 1980, the annual
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN Blood Drive, films, dealers, exhibits, an art
show, costume contest, author panels, autograph sessions, and much
more. ``The Home Galaxy'' is the theme for this years concert, to
be presented on Sunday afternoon.

The number of memberships will be strictly limited.  The convention
is all on one level, making access for wheelchairs easy. Membership
in advance is $12 (two days) and $8 (one day).  Prices at the door
will be $14 and $9.  Send your membership orders or requests for
information to: OCTOCON, Box 1824, Santa Rosa, CA 95402.  (Checks
or money orders should be made payable to OctoCon.)

(Stanford and Palo Alto SF-LOVERS.... 
   your local committee member is Connie Stanley, CJS@SU-AI)

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

Date:  5 May 1980 0623-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: Herbert novels

Does anyone understand Herbert's Destination Void/The Jesus Incident?

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

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 05/06/80 06:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following message is the last message in today's digest. It asks
a question about Niven's Ringworld and The Ringworld Engineers. In
doing so it gives away the mystery of who the ringworld engineers
were.  People who have not read The Ringworld Engineers may not wish
to read any further.


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

JTurner.Coop@MIT-Multics 05/05/80 18:20:51

My inquiry on Teela Brown got mangled. What it should say is,
"isn't she a little young for tree-of-life".

					<JMT>

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

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

Date:  7 MAY 1980 0446-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #99
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Wednesday, 7 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 99

Today's Topics: Current addiction, Books - Kushner&Varley&Niven, D&D,
                Queries - Bakshi's LotR & Herbert & Horrible SF Movies
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 06 MAY 1980 1105-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: electro-etc.

  WEISSMAN's story [SFL V1 #98] appears to describe not the direct
electrostimulation of the "pleasure zone" in the brain but what
Niven described in A GIFT FROM EARTH as "Russian sleep".  I recall
a description in a popular magazine in the early 60's of a procedure
in which contact electrodes induced such a sleep that 2 hours was as
good as 8 hours of ordinary sleep.  Niven proposed using this as a
simple form of suspended animation to keep prisoners under control,
although Miriam Allen deFord may have preceded him in that idea with
a story in which the power goes off, leaving the warden to confront
his matricidal son.
  The languor this reporter describes is substantially different
from the sensations attributed to "wireheading", which is based on
experiments in which implanted rats would press a bar to provide
current to the electrode literally thousands of times, doing nothing
else until they fell over in exhaustion.

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

GED@MIT-AI 05/06/80 19:52:29

There is a fantasy anthology that is supposed to be very good coming 
from Ace in November (I think).  It is called BASILISK and is edited
by Ellen Kushner.  Be on the lookout for it!

                                              -David

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

Date:  6 May 1980 (Tuesday) 1127-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)
Subject: Misc Comments

   I have just finished reading Varley's Ophuchi Hotline and highly
recommend it!  I note that in the very end he has people growing
sunflowers a la Niven. He does note that "The concept was first
recognized in the '70s".  The autistic syndrome of LeGuien's was
in tribute to "He who Shapes" (Was it Zelazny?) which she thought
was pretty good.
   Is the other Niven book about "the most beautiful girl on Luna"
any good? It is a Gil (the ARM) Hamilton story, in Trade with (lousy)
illustrations.  I kinda thought Niven was an okay guy, and from what I
know about him he has got $.  So how come he has to stoop to this
stuff?

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

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 05/06/80 14:05:15 Re: D&D, its value

Consider this a testimonial about the enhancing aspects of D&D.  Also
about its detrements.

     About 4 years ago, Dan Dolata introduced me to the game, to which
I immediately became addicted. About a year ago , he challenged me to
design my own world, so that he would have someplace to play.
     Well, I had a powerful drive to make the world realistic, and
to make the D&D rules a better simulation, so I started researching.
I dug into geology, physics, cosmology, cosmogeny, meteorology,
astronomy, planetary sciences, and mathematics.  I did a little
programming here at the lab.  I spent hours (very plural) thinking
about magical physics, designing the mechanisms beneath the
functioning of magic.  I re-wrote many of the Cal Tech rules Dan
spoke about.
     The end result is that panetary physics has become my minor in
my doctoral program, I have some knowledge in a lot of hard science
disciplines I never knew much about before, and I have a dynamite D&D
world set up (two of them to be precise) where I know why things work
the way they do.  I am a very satisfied chicken.
     And through all of this, my skin never turned ashen gray, and my
speech never disintegrated into a collection of gutteral snips from
lack of contact with humanity.  Nor am I out in the hills sacrificing
sheep for D&D rituals, although I could use a bit of hacking and
hewing to vent some pent up energy.
     On the bad side, I certainly spent alot of hours alone that might
have been spent with people, and I didn't exactly purge the compulsive
streak in my behavior.
     So, is D&D good or bad?  In my mind there is something
fundamental about these elaborate fantasies.  And D&D types aren't
alone; the people that don't enjoy images of orc-blood spurting in
wet arcs across the stage build literature worlds where soul-filling
events happen instead.  Perhaps we all have an instinct for myths.
	Dan

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

Date: 05/06/80 1330-EDT
From: THOKAR at LL
Subject: LoTR query:  Return of The King

   Does anyone know what the story is with this?  I thought Bakshi
wasn't going to finish the project for a number of years.  Now they're
advertizing it on TV.  What gives?

                                     Greg

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

MOON@MIT-MC 05/06/80 15:14:22

     Date:  5 May 1980 0623-EDT
     From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
     Subject: Herbert novels

     Does anyone understand Herbert's Destination Void/The Jesus
     Incident?

Yes six people in Centralia Illinois do.

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

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/06/80 23:51:01

    I have a personal favorite bad sci-fi film, tho; one unmentioned
so far because of its extreme obscurity. Don't Ever forget the
immortal "Robot Monster".
   This movie (from 1954) was so cheap that they couldn't even afford
a robot costume for the title character. They could afford a gorrilla
suit and a diving helmet to put on top.
     This monster cum monkey destroys the world or so he thinks,
using a secret 'calcinator ray' and lots of scratchy stock World War
2 footage. 5 people cleverly survive. 'Ro-man' must naturally kill
these 'hu-man's too, so he starts by molesting the buxom fiance of the
muscled hero. Mind-boggling amounts of hysterical dialogue and action
follow. Eventually the whole thing ends with the entire destruction
being the dream of the simpering 5 year old boy hero. Evidently the
scriptwriters lacked an ending.
   Still they top a second ending on top of the dream. I wont tell you
that one; its too foolish to conceive of. If it's ever shown in your
area, do not miss it. You'll have hysterics.

          Larry

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

Date: 07 MAY 1980 0353-EDT
From: The Nefarious Editor
Subject: PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (Lauren's query from SFL V1 #98)

[ Lauren's question about PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE received a number
  of responses. The movie appears to be fairly well-known and the
  responses repeated each other to a great extent. Therefore, I have
  tried to edit the messages to bring out all of the points while
  avoiding most of the repetition. I hope that you find the result
  readable and entertaining.  -- RDD ]


BLISS-10 at CMU-10A

PLAN 9 is a true winner in every respect of the word.  It was shown
two weeks ago here in Pittsburgh, and we have only now managed to stop
laughing.  I recommend it as a must for anyone who wants a good laugh.


Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC:

"Plan 9 from Outer Space" (1962) has become something of a Z-movie
classic in recent months, playing at various "worst films of all time"
film festivals.  The cardboard sets and re-use of the same footage of
Bela Lugosi trudging through a cemetery must set a record for
tackiness.

I saw "Plan 9" recently on a double-bill with Wood's 1953 opus, "Glen
or Glenda?", which is the poignant tale of a transvestite (which Wood
himself was, I understand) with completely off-the-wall interpolations
of crashing thunderbolts and Bela Lugosi saying, "BeWARE!"


Bernie Cosell <cosell at BBN-UNIX>

Plan 9 is far stranger and worse than one would guess.  It was billed
as Bela Lugosi's "last film".  The actuality was that Lugosi and the
(incompetent) director Edward Wood, were making some other film which
they had just started when Lugosi had the temerity to die.  So Wood
was left with a few disconnected views of Lugosi walking around and
such.  Undaunted, he pressed on to finish his film by using a stand in
to "fill in" between the snips of the real Lugosi.  The only trouble
is that the stand-in didn't look at all like Lugosi so he always
walked around with his cape pulled infront of his face.  didn't help
at all, of course (not to mention such continuity problems like the
film quality's being different between the two and the usual day/night
troubles from one cut to the next).  This is truly one of the all time
worst...

The sets, such as they are, show the same lack of quality and taste as
the rest of the film, and "Vampira", the co-star, is no prize, either.
altogether, this film manages to be about as poorly done in EVERY
dimension as possible.


HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)

  The director, Edward J. Wood Jr., apparently is responsible for a
disgusting number of dreadful movies.  He is sometimes referred to as
"One-Shot Wood" from his tendency never to reshoot anything, even when
the camera made such gaffes as lowering to show the cushions prepared
for a "body" to be dropped on as its bearer flees in terror. He was
also responsible for the absolute last Bela Lugosi film; he shot
several minutes of Lugosi in Dracula garb around Lugosi's Hollywood
home, plus "about 30 seconds of Lugosi furtively lurking behind a
tree", before L had the inconsideration to drop dead. 30 months later,
he used about 2 minutes of this film in a new project, along with an
unemployed podiatrist as Lugosi's supposed double; the double's
instructions to hold his cloak in front of his face at all times
couldn't cover for his being lighter-haired and a foot taller than
Lugosi.


BLISS-10 at CMU-10A

     "The Golden Turkey Awards" is a compendium of bad motion pictures
which contains a large percentage of bad SF movies.  It is divided
into various sections about various aspects of movies, and at the end
of each section they give their view of what was the worst movie of
the subject of the section (i.e. A section on two headed movies with
The Incredible Two-Headed transplant being the winner).


Larke at MIT-ML

     PLAN 9 won the 'Golden Turkey' reader award in the recent trade
paperback of the same name. It thus beat out other nominees for worst
film of all time including 'exorcist II' (#2), and the remake of
'King Kong' (#3).
     The book itself is a marvelous collection of movie worsts,
including nominees for worst vegetable film - ''Matango, Fungus of
Terror,'' and worst title for a film - 'Rat Fink A Boo Boo.'
     For more bad films, the reader is referred to two books -
"The Golden Turkey Awards," and "The 50 Worst Films of All Time."
Recommended.

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

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

Date:  7 MAY 1980 0621-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Supplement to SFL V1 #99
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS Supplement     Wednesday, 7 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 99
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Regarding Bova & Ellison's "Future Cop":

     Lauren reports that Harlan Ellison will be Tom Snyder's guest
on the Tomorrow Show on Thursday morning, 8 May 1980. Ellison will
discuss his recent court suit over "Future Cop".  Please check your
local newspaper for the station and time in your area.

[ For more information about this law suit see SFL V1 #97 ]

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

[ COMSAT crashed in the middle of transmitting this supplement. My
  apologies to those he have received two copies of this message. ]

End of SF-LOVERS Supplement
***************************

Date:  8 MAY 1980 0605-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #100
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Thursday, 8 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 100

 Today's Topics: Return of the King, Magic Labyrinth, Russian Sleep,
                 Alien Intelligence Test, Robot Monster and Ellison
----------------------------------------------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/07/80 20:47:05
Re: Return of the King isn't from Bakshi

     The ads which Thokar has been seeing for "The Return of The
King" are not for a Bakshi film - but rather for a new TV special
from Rankin-Bass (who of course brought you the musical version of
"The Hobbit.") Stills from the upcoming special look very nice, but
then so did stills of Bakshi's product - so you can't neccessarily
tell. "Return of the King" will air on ABC later this month.

    As for Bakshi, he is finishing up a long-delayed animated feature,
"American Pop." His office also reports that they are just starting
work on their version of the second half of the Tolkien saga.

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

Date: 7 May 1980 0754-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: Filming Tolkien
To: sf-lovers at mit-ai

   Once upon a time, Houghton Mifflin imported a large number of
unbound copies of something called "The Lord of the Rings". Now,
those of us not versed in copyright law of the 50's and 60's are
still mystified by all this, but the result is that the first
edition of LotR (and I think the Hobbit as well) are not covered
by copyright. This is how the Ace Paperback thing came about. So,
while United Artists has the movie rights (and Elan Merchandising
has all the marketing stuff) for the "authorized" edition, ANYONE,
yes, ANYONE can make and release a movie version of Lord of the
Rings, as long as they say it is "based on the original edition".
Of course, you can't release it overseas, lest you infringe local
copyrights.
   The Return of the King is produced, alas, by Rankin and Bass,
who were responsible for something resembling "The Hobbit" ('Based
on the original edition', it said) a couple of Decembers back.
WHY they didn't decide to do the whole ball of wax, I don't know;
but I'm just as happy they didn't, since by all accounts of those
who have seen it, RotK is at least as bad as The Hobbit was.
   Incidentally, my information on the copyright thing comes from
a conversation with Ian Ballantine, who should know.  I may have
gotten details wrong, however.
	Mike

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

Date: 7 May 1980 11:54-EDT
From: Jef Poskanzer <AQE at MIT-MC>
Subject: The Magic Labyrinth
To: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI

Good news for marginal PJF fans who don't want to re-read the
first three books in the Riverworld series before tackling The
Magic Labyrinth: you don't have to. TML contains all necessary
explanations of events in previous books.

Nano-review: not bad at all.

Now, will anyone else who has finished reading it, or who
finishes in the next few days, please contact me? I have an
important question about the ending which would be a bit of
a spoiler if I sent it to the whole list.
---
Jef

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

Date:  7 MAY 1980 1050-PDT
From: AYERS at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Russian Sleep

I first saw this mentioned in A.C. Clarke's "Profiles of the Future"
book [which i greatly recommend, by the way -- the first two chapters,
where he comments that if you're going to set yourself up in the
prediction business, you should look at past predictions, and then
does, are worth the price of the book] around 1964 or so.

In it, he mentioned the sleep device, and commented that it was used
by the Russians at the South Pole during the IGY to shorten the amount
of sleep they needed per day.

Then in a footnote, he says something like "If you want information on
this device, DONT CALL ME. I mentioned it a conference a little while
ago and was swamped. Write [address of Moscow ex-im company]" I wrote
the address in the USSR at the time, but got no reply ......

Bob

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

Date:  7 May 1980 1538-PDT
From: Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
Subject: currents

	The form of electronic drugging mentioned is actually rather
too common today-- it is referred to affectionately as "electro-shock
therapy," and is used to sedate berserk lunatics. I think its being
phased out by chemicals tho. The effect is similar to an epileptic
fit, and can be seen in action in "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest."

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

Date: 05/07/80 07:41:21
From: wgk at MIT-AI
Subj: Proving Intelligence

    As an out growth of UFO reports and the movie "Oh God", I propose
the following subject for discussion:

     Assume that you have been selected for study by an alien
intelligence visiting Earth. The problem is to prove you are
intelligent. (The assumption is that you want to.) Obviously(?),
your communication with them would be a major step and may even
prevent you from being 'bottled' for display in one of their centers
back home. Unfortunately, there are some problems in communication:
they communicate by changing the 'color' (not in our visible range)
of a spot on their 'bodies'. Your screams or talking only causes
minor pressure changes in the local environment and it 'tickles'
them. Is there anything in your pockets of use? Our writing
instruments may be useless since they 'see' by detecting relative
temperatures not the reflectivity of a small band of the EM
spectrum.
    Others, in UFO reports, have tried fainting or other bodily
functions but many of the 'lower' animals did the same things...
    If a method can be developed that SF-LOVERS believes would
demontrate intelligence, I would be most appreciative, but there
is no reward except the knowing that you are prepared...(Maybe you
could receive the rare Alien Civil Defence Preparedness Award.)

     Bill (WGK at MIT-AI)

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

Date: Wed,  7 May 1980 1544-EDT
From: Adam Wildavsky <wildavsk at LL-ASG>
Subject: Robot Monster [SFL V1 #99]

     The little boy in the movie must have been Harlan Ellison
dreaming an early version of 'I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream'.

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

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

Date:  9 MAY 1980 0605-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #101
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest       Friday, 9 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 101

   Today's Topics: Dragon's Egg, Russian Sleep, Horrible SF Movies,
                               Alien Intelligence Test
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 8 May 1980 05:42-EDT
From: William Daul <DAUL at MIT-MC>
Subject: Dragon's Egg

I just finished this book.  I want to say that I very much enjoyed
it. The development of the life forms on the neutron star was most
interesting.  To use the old expression for reviews "It is superb."
The interaction between to such different worlds makes you wonder
about the universe and what it may offer.  A special thanks to
Robert Forward (whats' up next?). 

   --Bill

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

Date: 8 May 1980 0341-PDT (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: a few volts do not electrocution make...

There seems to be some confusion here about Russian sleep and similar
low current technologies and what is termed "electroshock therapy", at
least by one SF-LOVERS reader.  Let's try clear this up.

The Russian sleep therapy (electro-sleep) is a very low current means
of causing nothing much more complex than muscle relaxation through
nerve stimulation.  It should not be confused with higher current
applications such as electro-shock.  I believe that it was proposed
that some form of electro-sleep be used to keep prisoners under
control, since it would (supposedly) make them passive -- I tend to
doubt this; I believe you have to be cooperative to get the relaxing
effect.  You are not "forced" into anything by the procedure.

Electro-shock therapy is a still very widely used practice in cases
of even some rather mild mental and/or emotional disorders.  In
fact, though I may have my facts scrambled, I believe that our new
Secretary of State, Edmund Muskie, underwent E-Shock at one time. 
I believe this was used against him in a campaign some years ago.
Electro-shock is a technique for "breaking-through" self-sustaining,
self-destructive patterns such as seen in people during mental
breakdowns of various sorts.  It is not known how it works, but it
appears to affect short-term memory in some funny way, blanking out
a little piece of perception for a very short interval.  This
amounts to a sort of "reset" of the mind, which often lasts long
enough to allow the therapist to really talk to the patient (since
he/she is momentarily calmed down) and find out what the hell is
going on.

Sure enuf, E-Shock can be used as a punishment by evil persons,
but in most modern contexts (barring the horror stories that do
occasionally happen) it is used in a carefully defined manner and
often with spectacularly positive results.  The whole idea is to
break the cycle of emotional confusion, and this it seems to do
well.  By the way, it is "supposedly" painless, but I wouldn't try
it just to find out for sure!  The mind is thought to blank before
the pain is registered.  Patients claim not to have felt pain later
in many cases, but maybe they just forgot about it!

I'll say one thing, considering the horrendous side-effects that
many of the psychoactive drugs and mega-tranquilizers have, I think
that I'd opt for E-Shock if I was in a position to need it and was
offered the choice.

Hope this clears up some of the confusion.  Maybe there are some
old ex-psych majors out there who can comment further or find me
in error!

--Lauren--

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

Date: 08 MAY 1980 1125-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)

  Shock "therapy" as described by KNUTSEN is in fact orders of
magnitude removed from the stimulation recently quoted in SFL---as is
obvious from the fact that the reporter in question did not go into
convulsions despite an indefinite long period of stimulation.  The raw
voltage used in electroshock is MUCH greater than that used in less
punitive forms of electrical stimulation.
  The most shocking (sorry) thing about high-voltage "therapy" is
that it seems to be making a comeback in some areas--what's more, it
evidently has some powerful friends.  Two weeks after ATLANTIC MONTHLY
ran an balanced, ultimately somewhat negative evaluation of
electroshock, PARADE (which is inserted in several major-city Sunday
papers, giving it a potential circulation even larger than that of
READER'S DIGEST) ran an article unreservedly praising electroshock,
including at least one demonstrable falsehood (that the portrayal of
shock in the movie of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST was inaccurate;
Nicholson went to one of the few "shock shops" (consistent users of
electroshock) in this country to make sure his behavior in that scene
was accurate).

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

Date: 8 May 1980 21:54-EDT
From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject:  ECT

In regards Russian Sleep, and "Electroshock Treatment" (here goes my
flame-on button!)  Russian Sleep is NOTHING (or at most only
superficially) like Electro-Convulsive Therapy.  ECT is an abomination
usually performed on patients who are so full of meds that "informed
consent" is a travesty.  No doctor can tell you how ECT works. My
personal theory is that it works by burning out enough of your brain
so that you no longer remember, or care about, your psychoses.  Some
permanent memory loss is standard, and massive amnesia is not nknown.
This "therapy" is not just used to quiet "violent psychotics" it is
used almost indescriminately on anyone who does not repond to "milder
treatment".  We've come a long way from cutting holes in people's
heads to let the evil spirits out...

Haven't we?

(flame off)
-- Charles

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

Date:  8 May 1980 0741-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: sleep/movies

I'm fairly sure "Russian sleep" is not identically electroshock
therapy.  It may, however, differ only in, say, amperage... I got
the following information from a friend (about 4 years ago) and
cannot prove it, but it's probably fairly straight: The Russians were
actually trying to sell the electric sleep gadget (ca. IGY) but with
limited success.  Yes, said the friend, it worked; you apply a voltage
from eyelids to nape of neck, about 200 Hz (V and A unknown), and you
did sleep, and 2 hrs was worth a whole night.  However, the subjects
of the Russian psychologists doing the tests on the gadgets developed
side effects, ie personality changes, over a timeframe of several
months (it isn't obvious how much this had to do with being the
subject of a Russian psychologist, and how much from the device).
My friend advised self-hypnosis as an alternative...

A BAD movie that has only just occurred to me is Super Argo and
the Faceless Giants.  Anyone ever heard of it?  (I saw it 10+ yrs
ago in Mississippi, and haven't heard of it since.)  It has a
TV-Batman-type plot, and was absolutely hilarious.  The "faceless
giants" are actually robots (not giant), and Super Argo has the
power of levitation.  One scene has Argo mounting wings on a car
(a station wagon!) and driving around knocking over the robots
with the wings (no flying).

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

AUTHOR@MIT-MC 05/09/80 02:28:25

   Did anyone happen to notice -- oh, must have been about 3 weeks
back -- on an episode of Battlestar Galaxitive a shot of Troy and
Dillon (?)  riding their skycycles along a scenic highway?  A highway
so scenic that the camera had pulled back it's frame far enough to see
that the skycycles were actually mounted on the back of flatbed truck?
The scene was only on for a few seconds, but the result was that
everyone in the room I was in almost fell over howling.
   I am interested in this sort of flagrant idiocy on screen and would
like to hear some discussion on how such a clip could manage to get by
the editors (who conceivably have something between their ears), and
where I could find some other gaffes of this nature -- preferably
related to sf/fantasy (someone once told me the Wizard of Oz had a
technician briefly visible during the appletree sequence).  I am well
aware that scientific foulups are a fact of life in sf films, but I am
more interested in the screwups that are contained in the technical
part of show production (either movies or TV).  Some of you video
freaks must have some real gutbusters... 

            Greg

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

Moon@MIT-AI (Sent by HIC@MIT-AI) 05/09/80 00:12:11

Devotees of monster-flicks in the Boston area should be sure to see
and hear the demolition now taking place in the Harvard Square subway
station.  It is quite impressive.

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

Date:  8 May 1980 11:20 edt
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Demonstrating Intelligence

If you were lucky enough to be wearing clothes when the Aliens
kidnap you, try ripping your clothes up into strips and laying them
out on the floor in the form of a Pythagorean Theorem demonstration.
If you don't have clothes, maybe you can pull out your hair.  If you
dont have long hair, grow some.

Of course, the Aliens are probably smart enough to notice that your
sensory devices work in different ranges from theirs, and will build
transducers.  They will see that lots of Earth beings make sounds,
so you can count to them.

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

Date: 8 May 1980 1205-PDT
From: DDYER at USC-ISIB
Subject: alien intelligence test

To make the question meaniingful, you also have to stipulate that
the alien found you stark naked in a jungle.  An alien who found you
in anything resembling your typical habitat would have no doubt as
to your intelligence, due to the large number of artifacts ( cars,
doorknobs, keys, clothing ) you use almost continuously.

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

Date: 8 May 1980 11:08 am PDT (Thursday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Proving Intelligence

A full book af matches provides the ability to display one twenty-bit
number (or two ten-bit numbers, or...).  What number would you choose?

			-- Greg

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

JTurner.Coop@MIT-MULTICS 05/08/80 16:21:11

As to the alien I.Q. test. One of the first things you might
try is taking out your pocket lighter and given them a good display
of binary 1-100.  Otherwise, you could try using the tickle
affect of your voice in some pattern. The real point is that
i wouldn't be caught dead hanging out with some flashing
neon BEM's.
					<JMT>

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

TANG@MIT-MC 05/08/80 22:51:00 Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #100

     Since the aliens who have captured you are intelligent, and
since they keep pets (e.g. you) why not make a cage & keep some pets?

	That's not original -- I read it a while ago.

				Jack

P.S. In the same vein, one of my profs mentioned that a data stream
used at maximum capacity is indistinguishable from random noise.
And since all extra solar radiation is very random. . . .

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

Date:  8 May 1980 0741-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: alien intelligence test

It seems to me that the easiest way to convince WGK's aliens that you
are intelligent is to shoot one.  This leaves you, unfortunately, with
the problem of convincing them that you're friendly....

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

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

Date: 10 MAY 1980 0809-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #102
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 10 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 102

Today's Topics: MacDonald SF TV Movie, SF Bloopers, What is Mad Max?,
                    More on Russian Sleep & Electro-shock therapy
----------------------------------------------------------------------

BARRYG@MIT-MC 05/10/80 02:44:41
Re: The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything

Is scheduled for Tuesday, May 20, at 8 PM on Channel 13 in LA.
Residents of other areas should check their TV listings for the
week of May 17-23 (or 18-24) and maybe you'll find it.

I don't have any more info on it yet.  I'll add more (like producer
and studio) after it appears.
	barry

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

Date: 9 May 1980 0334-PDT (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: technical SNAFUs

There are two main reasons why snafus such as that described for
Battlestar Dyslexia actually make it to the screen:

1) The production is running so far behind that, by God, nobody
   noticed it in the rush to get it out (and it really is a production
   line type operation out there.)  This isn't as unlikely as it would
   seem to the uninitiated.

2) The mistake was noticed but it was deemed too expensive and/or time
   consuming to reshoot or edit around it.  The prevailing attitude is
   frequently one of: "who cares?" or "who will notice?"  Frequently
   the former.

There are folks who have massive collections of technical snafus for
film and video.  Alot of the funny ones are in the catagory of
continuity errors.  For example, in "Animal House", there is a scene
where Donald Sutherland writes the word SATAN on a blackboard.  He
writes it right across the strip between two sections of the board,
with the T right on the strip.  They cut to the students for about
four seconds.  When they get back to Don, the SATAN has shifted about
one letter to the left on the board!  A minor mistake, but the sort
that should have been taken care of in a production of that caliber.

Assuming we are not interested in things like the fly on the monolith
in 2001 (I haven't seen it, but I am told it was there) and the myriad
strings and wires we've all seen holding up things in various movies,
the possibilities narrow considerably.  (One of my personal favorite
"wired" objects in an SF movie was in "The Brain From Planet Araus"
(spelling may be wrong).  At the end, this big brain, complete with
spinal cord, attacks a man, and all of the supporting wires are
clearly visible.)

One of the best snafus to look for in cheap TV productions is the
presence of a boom mike at the top of the picture.  I have seen
this numerous times.  Ya know, once I had (in fact, it is around
here somewhere) a Viewmaster wheel set on the show "Time Tunnel".
They had to be on the set to take the stereoscopic pix, and they
weren't too careful -- you can see microphones, the fake backgrounds,
all sorts of stuff!

--Lauren--

P.S.  On last night's Tomorrow show interview with Ellison, he said he
was going to put up a billboard right opposite Paramount sorta rubbing
their nose in his lawsuit win.  Since a current consulting project is
taking me to the Sunset/Gower studios on a regular basis (and they
sorta share the Paramount lot), I will be on the lookout for this
billboard and report if I see it.  Oh, by the way, this project is
NOT with another movie (I've learned my lesson.)  This time it is
a company that does the multi-media films and such for rock group
promotions and tours.  (Have I REALLY learned my lesson?  Hmmmm....)

--LW--

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

Date: 09 MAY 1980 1150-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)

  I think Greg <AUTHOR at MIT-MC> overestimates the ability of film
editors, particularly the ones working for TV (where time is more
important than \anything/ else).  The production values of BS
Galaxative have never impressed me (cf Dykstra's insistence that
his name be taken off the credits for the theatrical release of the
premiere episode because his effects were deliberately done by less
expensive methods which were adequate for a 21" screen but not a
21-footer), and it's quite possible that they either didn't realize
that they'd blown the shot until it was too late to replace it, or
just didn't care (from other examples, such as his extravagant praise
for the title music, BSG's producer has no taste whatsoever).
  I mentioned a few days ago the pillows (for someone to be dropped
on) in an Edward Wood film, but even STAR WARS was not immune to
bloopers (although Craig Miller claims there will never be a STAR
WARS blooper reel); just in the first few minutes after the MF has
been captured by the Death Star, a storm trooper bangs his head going
through a door and the first closeup of Luke in armor shows not random
dirt but /makeup\ smeared on the top of his cuirass.

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

Date:  9 May 1980 1957-PDT
From: Zellich at OFFICE-1
Subject: SF (?) Film Query: MAD MAX

Anybody know anything about a flick called "Mad Max"?  Is it worth
seeing?  A local theater chain has it listed in their May-June guide
as follows:
  MAD MAX (R) Action-Drama
  An Australian film dealing with a special intergalactic police 
  force which battles highway marauders a few years from now. 
  Stars: Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel.
An "intergalactic police force a few years from now"??  battling
highway marauders??  Sounds more like a comedy than "action-drama".

--Rich

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

Date: 9 May 1980 1220-PDT (Friday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: shocking correction

I have been sort of inundated with mail informing me that my use of
Muskie as an example of a recipient of Electro Shock Therapy was
incorrect.  (As you may recall, I had a feeling that I might have been
in error on this one).  The person I was REALLY thinking of was Sen.
Eagleton, McGovern's running mate back in 72.  The worst Muskie has
been caught at is crying over one of the "dirty tricks" letters that
was sent out by some administration officials long ago.

In case Sen. Muskie is on this list (cough) I hereby apologize.

--Lauren--

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

Date:  9 May 1980 at 0915-CDT
From: clyde at UTEXAS
Subject: electroshock etc

     In response to Lauren's comments -- i believe that Mr. Muskie has
not had any problems with mental disorders other than weeping in the
snows of New Hampshire.
     However, Sen. Thomas Eagleton was kicked off the 1972 Democratic
presidential ticket because of his once having been hospitalized for
depression, mostly because the therapy included 'electroshock'.
     A comment or two about electric brain supplements:
     While electrosleep is not 'electroshock', there is indeed a
potential problem of addiction, people being what they are in working
diligently to find new ways to scramble their neural systems.  There
are now people who 'must' use drugs to go to sleep at night and wake
up in the morning (not literally), and it would not be hard to see
how 'wireheads' could become a very real phenomenon.

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

Date:  8 MAY 1980 1117-PDT
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: electrosleep

    There must be something wrong with it -- otherwise, if it were as
easy to do as Niven makes it seem, SOMEBODY would have started selling
it to college kids during finals... I spent considerable time last year
trying to find out anything about it, but got nowhere... even experimented
running the pulse current of an electronic metronome through my skull,
but was too scared to use much current.  Anyone there know anything
more about it?

     Rob

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

BARRYG@MIT-MC 05/09/80 20:19:51 Re: Russian Sleep

Russian Sleep was described as stimulation of a specific brain area
with current at the same frequency as Beta brain waves.  I wish I
could find out more about those personality changes in the subjects:
I wonder if they were related to lack of dreams.  Other research has
indicated that you need not only deep (muscle relaxing/regenerating)
sleep but also REM (Rapid Eye Motion) sleep.  If you don't dream,
you'll feel well rested but be unable to concentrate and eventually
go crazy; it is believed that the dreams enable you to work out
unresolved problems that you ignored when awake.

	/barry

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

Date: 09 MAY 1980 1118-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: political convulsions

  Muskie was nailed during the 1972 primary campaign because some
photographer caught him crying after a newspaper said nasty things
about him.
  Thomas Eagleton (Sen. D MO), McGovern's original VP choice, was
sloughed shortly after the 1972 Dem. convention because it was
discovered that he had been discharged from a mental hospital where
he had undergone ECT; he was therefore the only person campaigning
that year who had been officially judged to be sane.  Considering
the paranoid crook and the paranoid megalomanioid we ended up
electing, we probably would have been better off with someone who'd
had his brains cooked.
  There are some testimonials to the effectiveness of ECT. Sylvia
Plath, in THE BELL JAR (her autobiography) described the useful
aftereffects of ECT, although the process itself was sheer horror
(she knew when she was going to have another shock because on those
days they didn't give her anything to eat, etc.); she was continued on
shocks as an outpatient, and it is alleged that she was scheduled for
one the day she finally succeeded in committing suicide. (The doctor
interviewed for the PARADE article mentioned in yesterday's SFL
believed that she could have been saved had she shown up as scheduled;
given her previous experiences, if she was low enough to be thinking
only of the immediate moment the prospect of a shock could have simply
added to her depression.)

  The problem is that both ECT and lobotomy destroy, if not the
brain tissue itself, at least the connnections between cells which
are the actual pathways of mental activity.  Lobotomy is more
abrupt, but ECT also has the same effect ultimately; the "patient"
becomes the next thing to an ambulatory vegetable. (LAUREN, this
isn't exaggeration; it happened to a friend of a friend.)  As for
\needing/ either ECT or drugs, consider that the need is decided by
people who have a preconceived notion of "correct" behavior and who
still use Procrustean techniques to force people into that mold (as
I know even more directly; two members of my immediate family have
been subjected to the idiocies this country allows to be called
mental/emotional therapy). ((Lobotomy is a particular flame of mine.
They're so \precise/ about it now: insert the knife X cm deep over
the eye Y cm from the median line and move it Z cm laterally and W
cm medially....ARGH!)).  It seems to me that many "therapists" have
simply forgotten the basic Hippocratic dictum, "First, do no harm."
Many of the alternatives are not much better, especially considering
the mysticism many of them are based on, but at least they don't
permanently reduce basic function.
  As for the hypothesis that people are calmer after ECT---well,
they're calmer after an epileptic fit, too (this is said to have
been the inspiration for the development of ECT).  In fact, they're
frequently unconscious for some time afterward.  As for breaking
someone out of a pattern of destructive behavior---much as I dislike
most of the notions B. F. Skinner stands for, his conditioning
techniques offer a non-destructive way of producing much the same
results, and the reports indicate that, when used by people who aren't
interested in personal power over patients, these techniques work.
Part of the problem is that may of the most difficult patients today
are those who have already fried their minds with drugs; the idea that
they can be helped by continuing the abuse with other drugs seems like
a perverted version of homeopathy.

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

Date: 9 May 1980 1326-PDT
From: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: electroshock therapy

     There appears to be pretty good evidence that electroshock does
more than what Lauren claimed for it, as far as memory destruction is
concerned.  Behaviorally, it seems that the threat of shock is used in
state (i.e.  involuntary) hospitals quite extensively.  As a voluntary
therapy, I feel no urge to be pro or con; however, when used
involuntarily--in a hospital/prison environment--it is awfully hard to
justify.
     Here too, SF comes to the rescue.  A book entitled WOMAN AT THE
EDGE OF TIME, by Marge Piercy, is a feminist bit about an inner-city
Puerto Rican woman who is regularly shafted by the various social
systems she deals with.  She is sent to a state mental hospital
involuntarily and electroshock is used both as "therapy" and as
punishment.  The SF is okay--some time transfer stuff (or is it a
dream escape from the harshness of reality?)--but the horrors of the
asylum are what sticks with you.  .....  Mike Leavitt

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

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

Date: 11 MAY 1980 0604-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #103
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 11 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 103

     Today's Topics: SF Bloopers, MacDonald SF TV Movie, Mad Max,
                     Bedtime Reading, On the Uses of Electricity
----------------------------------------------------------------------

AGRE@MIT-AI 05/10/80 14:10:25

Quick note: Sad to say, but a microphone boom makes an appearance in
Woody Allen's "The Front" (Woody, oh Woody!).

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

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/10/80 15:26:27 Re: Movie Bloopers

     The B.S. Galactica error sounds like it was caused by the film
maker's inability to observe "TV cutoff." This is a situation wherein
when one transfers films to videotape, one looses the edges of the
film frame to a degree. When shooting for TV then, crews must frame
the picture a bit wider than normal, to allow for those edges being
cut off later. It sounds like the film crew of Galactica framed a bit
too wide and just didn't catch it.

    One of my favorite blooper stories is the one about the rare
"Pliersaurus" beast that made it into the original King Kong film.
   As the story goes, one day when Willis O'Brien was in the midst of
shooting a long stop-action sequence in Skull Island, he realized to
his horror that he had left apair of pliers on the miniature. just
visible, tho out of focus, near the adge of the frame. Rather than
junk the shot and the hours of work which had gone into it already, he
carefully animated the pliers, frame by frame, so that they slithered
out of the picture like some prehistoric snake.

    Other Sci-fi related bloopers, culled from my "Filmgoer's
companion", include the fact that in "One Million Years B.C," all the
girls are wearing false eyelashes; in "Son of Frankenstein," Basil
Rathbone during a train journey draws attention to the weirdly stunted
trees...one of which passes by the camera three times during the
conversation; and in "The Invisible Man" when the naked but invisible
hero runs away from the police, but is given away by footprints in the
snow, take a close look at the prints - they are prints of shoes - not
bare feet.  Strange...but true.

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

DERWAY@MIT-AI 05/09/80 17:31:38 Re: Gaffes in tv/movies

One of the best collection of gaffes around is the star trek blooper
collection. I understand that there are two reels, but I have only
seen one of them. Most of them are intentional bloopers, that is where
some member of cast or crew puposely did something ridiculous. Some of
these are funny indeed. Imagine a typical sceen on the bridge. Tension
runs high. Kirk says "Give me warp 8 Scotty". Switch to shot of the
engine room, where a man is frantically shoveling from a big pile of
coal.

As far as accidental, technical gaffes, there are lots of shots of the
main characters ramming there noses into the auto open doors, (which
were actually moved manually by a crew member behind the set). I saw
this gem at a talk give by Roddenbury, but I hear it is shown at
various cons. It's worth seeing if you can.

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

BARMAR@MIT-MC 05/10/80 19:55:12 Re: Bloopers

Offhand, I can think of two continuity errors in STAR TREK.  One was
in an episode, while the other was in the movie, but both had to do
with costumes.  In the episode CHARLIE X (I think that's the one) kirk
entered a turbo-lift wearing one shirt, and reappeared on the bridge
wearing a different one.  In the movie, in the last scene, the camera
shows Spock and McCoy wearing their jackets.  The jackets have the
departmental colors on the epaulets (shoulders).  Well, the camera
flashes on Kirk for a second, and when it shows Kirk and McCoy again,
their shoulders have been swapped.

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

Date: 10 May 1980 1442-PDT (Saturday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Girl and Gold Watch; Mad Max

"The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything" is a made for TV movie that
has luckily never aired on any station up to now.  However, KCOP in
Los Angeles, the same people who run "The Creeping Terror" and "Plan 9
From Outer Space", have alot of guts.  It is apparently a very cheap
full length production with the same sort of stopwatch we saw in the
Twilight Zone episode "A Kind of Stopwatch".  That is, it stops time.
However, the trailers have been disgusting, and the very fact that it
is made for TV tells ya something.  It is only running on KCOP,
checking your local listings should yield you nothing unless there is
an odd coincidence, or unless you get KCOP piped into your area (like
some parts of Texas.)

"Mad Max" appears to be a very cheap exploitation film about some cop
who drives around in a hopped up police car running motorcycle gangs
off the edge of freeway overpasses.  Need I say more?

--Lauren--

P.S.  As I type this, I am watching "Robinson Crusoe on Mars", on, you
guessed it, KCOP.  You know, it really has some nice positive points.
We haven't gotten to the good part with the inertialess ships yet
though.

--LW--

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

Date: 5 May 1980 11:12 PDT
From: betsey at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Bedtime Reading

The following represent the replies I received to my query re: SHORT
good works.  Thanks to all who replied.

HEINLEIN
   "Time Enough for Love"            (I really do enjoy seeing
                                      my friend OCCASIONALLY!)
   "Stranger in a Strange Land"      (A perennial favorite)
   "I Will Fear No Evil"
   "The Number of the Beast"         (NEW Heinlein!)

   I'd like to add "6XH" -- my favorite Heinlein.

NIVEN                                ASIMOV
   "Neutron Star"                       "Nightfall and Other Stories"
   "Tales of Known Space"               Any anthology edited by Asimov

VARLEY
   "Persistence of Vision"           (Three nominations!)

Cordwainer SMITH                     Tomas DISCH
   "The Best of..."                     "Fun With Your New Head"
                                        "White Fang Goes Dingo"

POHL
   "Star SF"
   Ed. of "The Best of XXX Nth edition"
      (Annual collections from Galaxy and F&SF)
      -- why didn't I think of that?

COLLECTIONS
   "Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol I, Vol IIa.  Isaac Asimov, Ed.
   "Science Fiction by Scientists" Groff Conklin, Ed.
   "Dangerous Visions" Harlan Ellison, Ed.
      (another of my favorites) suggested twice
   "The Arbor Book of Science Fiction" R. Silverberg, Ed.
   "Alpha 1", R. Silverberg, ed.
   Almost any "The Best Science Fiction of the Year: 19XX,
      Terry Carr, Ed.
	
Thanks again to all of you who replied.

Bets.

[ Editor's Note: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame volumes were not
  edited by the Good Doctor. Volume I is dedicated to shorter SF
  works and was edited by Robert Silverberg. Volumes IIa and IIb
  contain longer SF works and were edited by Ben Bova. Isaac Asimov
  has edited the HUGO Award collections (volumes 1, 2, and 3).
    --  RDD ]


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

Date: 10 May 1980 1357-PDT (Saturday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: volts for the masses

The problem is one of choosing between the devil and the deep blue
sea.  I know one guy right now who went bonkers while serving in the
Navy, stationed off of Nam.

He apparently became rather violent, and spent considerable periods of
time going through rather acute psychotic episodes.  Strapped to the
bed and the whole thing.  Well, they used the modern drug oriented
techniques on him.  And the guy is so washed out and passive now that
it is really sad.  Every so often I get a glimpse of the intellect
that must have once been there, but it is almost always overshadowed
by that passive personality they left him with.

I mean, drugs can burn out your mind just as effectively as ECT.  We
all know examples.  Yet there are SOME people who need SOME sort of
treatment, even by their own admission.  Oh yeah, there are alot of
people in mental hospitals who are relatively saner than many people
walking the streets (like many of the people I know in the computer
industry), but this still leaves the problem of what is decent
treatment and what is not.

Skinner's conditioning techniques tend to produce human automatons.
I took at course at UCLA once on "Behavior Modification".  It was
taught by a guy named, I think, Lovas.  He is a world-renowed
practitioner of conditioning techniques to help autistic children
to become "functional".  He does it with electric cattle prods and
things like that.  Really.  He brought one in to demonstrate once.
Oh, they just sting, and he gets spectacular results in stopping the
self-destructive behavior evidenced by many autistic children (and
it is horrid what they try to do to themselves -- very scary), but
something is wrong.  They kinda are like programmed people.  They
don't move normally; it is as if they were following a set of preset
instructions for every response -- responses formed at the point of
cattle prod.

I don't know whether his techniques are humane or not -- they are
certainly controversial in the world community.  Sometimes I am
disgusted at the extent we will go through to prolong life just 
for the sake of life.  I know, I know, it is a complex issue, but
sometimes I just burn watching these people prove their tricks and
grant proposals on people who are in no position to protest.

Enuf editorializing I guess.  Oh, in regards to russian sleep and
such, I read a book years and years ago that was concerned with the
history and effect of marijuana.  The last chapter was fiction, and
it was called "Plug in, Switch On, and Buzz" (after Dr. Tim's famous
marching creed.)  The idea was that in the next century, the big fad
would be having a socket implanted in the skull so that you could plug
in directly to the computers for optimum stimulation.  The parents did
not approve:

"Hey mom.  When can I get my implant?"

"Timmy, I won't permit it.  I don't want you running around with all
 those horrid wires sticking out of your head."

"Aw mom, all the kids are doing it."

"Well, you won't.  And young man, have you had your acid today?"

"Naw, I don't like that hit or miss LSD stuff."

"You'd better take it before your father comes home.  He'll give you a
 whipping if you didn't learn anything new today..."

An amusing concept.  The more things change, the more they stay the
same.  Let's see now, if I hook these electrodes up to my forehead
here...there, done.  Now, we ground this end, and hook THIS end up to
the flyback transformer in my terminal. Now where is that switch?  Oh
well, I'll find it in a minute.

OH!  There it is!  Talk to ya all later.

--Laur737#$@ RFJWfjwlkelwioepwoo  3#

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

DERWAY@MIT-AI 05/09/80 17:12:20
Re: "just forgot about the pain?", and closed ecologies.

Lauren's comment on E-shock theropy brought up an interesting point.
If they just forgot about the pain, does that really make it any
better?

Suppose you had to have a operation. You could either pay a huge sum
of money, and get a painless operation, or you could get an extremely
painfull one for almost free. Further, the Doctor could give you a
pill to wipe all your memories before the operation, and another after
you are healed and free of pain which would wipe all the memories of
the pain, and restore your old memories from before the operation.
Which would you take?

Something I thought might be interesting to discuss, either on
SF-LOVERS, or possibly on a seperate list, is ideas about how to
achieve self-sustaining, small closed ecologies. For example, it
recently occured to me that you won't be able to throw people's
bodies out the air lock when they die, because this would lead to
an eventual depletion of important organic materials. I believe we
could come up with lots of interesting ideas. Whatever...

	Have fun,
	Don

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

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

Date: 12 MAY 1980 0655-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #104
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 11 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 104

    Today's Topics:   Anti-matter drive, Nebula/Hugo Award Query,
                    SF Bloopers, Reply to the "Monk" Title Request
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 11 May 1980 0751-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Forward on anti-matter drive

By Jon Franklin         The Baltimore Evening Sun (Field News Service)
     BALTIMORE-Starships powered by an anti-matter drive are within
the grasp of American military technology, according to a senior
scientist at the Hughes Research Laboratories in California.
    Dr. Robert L. Forward told space experts here last week that
particle beam ray guns being developed by the Pentagon for use in
space contain the technological germ of such an interstellar drive.
    ''If we wanted to bend this technology,'' he said, ''instead of
destroying each other, we could go to the stars.''
    Dr. Forward, who received his doctorate from the University of
Maryland 20 years ago, came to Baltimore to plead his case before
scientists attending the annual meeting of the American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
    He said there are a number of developing technologies that appear
to offer workable approaches to interstellar travel, but in his view
the anti-matter drive is the best developed and most practical.
    Anti-matter consists of particles and atoms with characteristics
exactly the opposite of those usually found in nature. When a piece
of matter comes into contact with a piece of anti-matter the two
annihilate each other in the most efficient energy-producing explosion
known to man.
    The California scientist pointed out that physicists have been
making small quantities of anti-matter for years. They contain it in
magnetic bottles and store it in a vacuum so it does not come into
contact with normal matter.
    He said the military is developing particle beam space weapons
designed to destroy enemy warheads as they loop into space at the top
of their trajectories. Embodied in those weapons, he said, is the
technology needed to produce anti-matter in quantities and to harness
it for interstellar flight.
    Preliminary studies on the anti-matter drive concept have already
been carried out by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Such
drives, said Dr. Forward, would enable starships to make 50-year round
trips to perhaps a dozen of the closest stars.
    The stellar drive, he said, would require relatively small amounts
of fuel. He calculates, for instance, that a tenth of a gram of
anti-matter would be sufficient to move a large spaceship from the
Earth to the moon.
    ''Going to the stars will be difficult,'' he said, ''... but it's
not impossible. In the coming decades we're going to have to take
this seriously.''

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

Date: 11 May 1980 0731-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Hugo/Nebula lists?

Does anyone have or know where I can get a list of the Hugo's and
Nebula's since they've been awarded?

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

JPT@MIT-MC 05/11/80 15:35:45 Re: star trek bloopers, cont.

Have you noticed that in Star Trek--the movie, the conference scene
with Kirk, McCoy, and Spock has an interesting property--as camera
angles switch, the color of the uniforms also switches back and forth
from brown to blue.  I've seen this occur in two seperate theaters
(one in Boston, the other in the midwest) so it isn't just one bad
print.  Does anyone remember Roddenbery's early "Pretty Maids all in
a row" with Rock Hudson, Telly Savalas, and Angie Dickinson? It was
not uncommon to have mike booms and the like come a quarter of the
way down from the top of the screen.  Well, no one's perfect.

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

LMOORE@MIT-MC 05/11/80 23:36:03 Re: Gaffes

Two friends of mine were studying Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion
effects on a moviola.  (This was so they could look at it frame by
frame.)  They found that hands, supporting rods and surface gauges
would accidently appear for a frame or two.  I assume that these
scenes weren't re-shot because they wouldn't be noticed.

Does anyone out there know when Harryhausen's next film is coming
out? 

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

Date: 12 May 1980  0512-EDT
From: Roger Duffey <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: Title Query from SFL V1 #97

Last Monday, Don and I asked for the title of a story about a group of
interstellar traders who trade in knowledge. We have received a large
number of replies to this query. Therefore I will summarize the basic
information that everyone provided and then include some of the
messages that gave more than just the title and reference. Thanks go
to the following people for this information:

   AGM at MIT-MC                      David.Lamb at CMU-10A
   Foner at BBN-TENEXA                Israel at MIT-ML
   JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics     JTurner.Coop at MIT-Multics
   Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A            KDO at SU-AI
   K.Webb at UTEXAS                   Lasater at SUMEX-AIM
   Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY            ROSSID at WHARTON
   Thokar at LL                       WESTFW at WHARTON

[ I regret that this is not a complete list. Unfortunately, the
  responses that were addressed only to Don were lost before I
  made up the list of respondents. Their information is included
  however. My apologies to those individuals who I am not able to
  credit.  --  RDD  ]


The story is not by Fritz Leiber but by Larry Niven. It is entitled
"The Fourth Profession". Contrary to common opinion it is not in
Niven's "All the Myriad Ways" or his "Flight of the Horse"
collections. It first appeared in "Quark/4" (1971) edited by Delany
and Hacker. The story is popular and has been reprinted a number of
times including in "The Best SF of the Year #1" edited by Carr, and "A
Hole in Space" which is another collection of Niven's stories.


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

VILAIN@MIT-MC 05/05/80 23:32:24 Re: Story Query

The plot described is from the story "The Fourth Profession" by Larry
Niven in his A HOLE IN SPACE anthology.  This anthology also contains
several of his "jump-shift booth" stories and "Rammer", the basis for
WORLD OUT OF TIME.  I recommend it highly.
			<Mike Vilain>

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

Date: 5 May 1980 1019-EDT
From: PDL at MIT-DMS (P. David Lebling)

The "Monk" story was by Larry Niven, called "The Fourth Profession".
According to the Niven bibliography in the back of "Tales of Known
Space" it is part of the "Leshy Circuit" series, along with about
two or three other stories that appear unrelated.
	Dave

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

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 05/12/80 06:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following message is the last message in today's digest. It gives
further information about Niven's "The Fourth Profession" including
what the profession is. People who have not read this story may not
wish to read any further.


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

Date: 05 MAY 1980 1116-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: story query

  The story in question is "The Fourth Profession", one of my favorite
stories by Larry Niven.  (The title comes from the fact that the
bartender, who is telling the story, has one more DNA-pill wrapper in
his pocket than he can account for by the number of new professions
he knows---and he's desperately trying to figure out whether it's
something as weird as the ones he knows he turned down, such as a
swimming course for intelligent fish or an unarmed-combat course for
worms.  The story was sufficiently vivid to me that I have to restrain
myself from asking any bartender serving Irish coffee if he leaves the
sugar out of an Old-Fashioned during rush hour.  I found it in Niven's
collection A HOLE IN SPACE (pb).
  One of the enjoyable facets of this story is that it /doesn't\ have
Leiber's frequently medieval attitude towards women; in fact, Niven
rather neatly demolishes a male fantasy in the course of the story.
  (The 4th profession turns out to be, roughly, Apostle (or perhaps
Disciple), which includes assorted miracles, the gift of tongues,
spellbinding speech, etc.  Perhaps a deus ex machina, but given the
number and degree of other improbabilities this is not reasonably
carpable.)

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

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

Date: 13 MAY 1980 0300-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #105
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 13 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 105

 Today's Topics: Antimatter Drive, Reply to Nebula/Hugo Award Query,
                              Alien Intelligence Test,
                 SF Movies - Bloopers & Return of the King & To Come
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 12 MAY 1980 0653-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Anti-Matter and Other Near-term Interstellar Drives

     A preprint of the paper referred to by the Baltimore Sun is
available if you are interested in the details.  Send mailing
address to FORWARD@USC-ECL.

     In response to a previous query.  Yes, I am working on another
novel, tentative title "Roche World".  The first draft of the
technical appendix is out to a number of nitpicking calculating
fiends (excuse, friends) who will attempt to find the errors BEFORE
I write the story.  They already have made me double the size of the
world. 

     By the way, another calculating fiend (darn, friend) has found
two mathematical errors in "Dragon's Egg".  Has anyone out there
found any others?

          Bob Forward

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

Date: 12 May 1980 2205-PDT
From: KATZ at USC-ISIF
Subject: OASIS talk by Robert Forward

		INTERSTELLAR FLIGHT SYSTEMS

		Dr. Robert Forward
		Hughes Research Laboratory


Sunday, May 18, 1980, 7:00pm
Calif Museum of Science and Industry

Dr. Forward will illustrate and explain a number of new techniques for
reaching the stars,including anti-matter energized rockets, laser and
electron beam imploded micro-fusion pulse jets, and laser-driven
light sails, which would utilize laser beams from our solar system to
deceelerate and stop at a target star.


Admission is free. This event is sponsored by OASIS (Organization
for the Advancement of Space Industrialization and Settlement).

Questions to Katz@isif

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

Date: 12 May 1980 2310-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: Hugo/Nebula lists

They are in Nicholl's "Science Fiction Encyclopedia." Thanks to the
people who responded.

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

Date: 12 MAY 1980 0653-PDT
From: Roger Duffey <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: A worthy reference work
In-reply-to: McLure's query on the HUGO/Nebula Awards [SFL V1 #104]

Anyone interested in a guide to some superb reading as well as some
interesting history should take a look at "A History of the Hugo,
Nebula, and International Fantasy Awards" by Donald Franson and
Howard DeVore, Misfit Press, 112 pps., $3.50. This booklet contains
much more than just a listing of the award winners. It includes:

   1. background data on the awards and their evolution,
   2. the nominees as well as the winners in each category,
   3. AND THE PUBLISHER OF THE BOOK OR THE NAME AND ISSUE
      OF THE MAGAZINE THAT RAN THE STORY.

A worthy companion to Nicholl's Science Fiction Encyclopedia. For
more information see the Spider Robinson's review of this book in
DESTINIES V1 #3 ( April-June 1979 ), or write to Howard DeVore,
4705 Weddell Street; Dearborn, MI 48125. 

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

KLH@MIT-AI 05/12/80 23:14:18 Re: Intelligence demonstration

     There seems to be some confusion between the problem of
determining intelligence and the problem of communication, which are
(by some theories) distinct.  This is understandable since most people
equate communication skills with intellectual ability -- and I mean
this in the everyday social sense as well as the alien-scenario one.
     There are many cases of deaf, autistic, or CP-paralyzed children
being mis-diagnosed as severely mentally retarded simply because they
are functionally unable to communicate by means of variations in air
pressure.  This is especially sad when the true situation is not
realized until too late, when the child has outgrown the best years
for language acquisition.  This sort of track record with our own
species doesn't bode well for interstellar exchanges.
     There are other home-grown examples.  Anyway, with regard to
aliens sensitive to temperature differences, isn't that just another
form of EM (eg infrared) perception?  You shouldn't have much trouble
being able to detect the difference between warm flesh and cool
background, and sign language is as plausible a mode as any.

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

Date: 12 May 1980 1527-EDT
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject: Intelligence tests

The story about keeping pets is A. Bertram Chandler's "The Cage",
F&SF, 1957, reprinted in

   12 Great Classics of SF
      G. Conklin, ed., Fawcett, 1971
   The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus
      B.W. Aldiss, ed., Penguin, 1974
   The Best from F&SF, 7th series
      A. Boucher, ed., Ace, 1958 (paper), Doubleday, 1958 (hardbound)

			joe

[ This story was also more recently reprinted in the May 1980 issue
  of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.  --  RDD  ]

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

Date: 12 MAY 1980 1055-EDT
From: AGM@MC
Subject: AGRE's Comment about W. Allen in SFL #103

The only role that Woody Allen had in connection with the movie
"The Front" was as an actor; he did not direct and/or edit the film,
and thus is blameless for any technical errors or bloopers that may
have made it into the film.

Andy

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

Date: 12 May 1980 1011-PDT
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: Planet of the Apes: East meets West    

During the last scene of Planet of the Apes, while Heston and the Apes
are on the beach talking, the sun is slowly sinking over the water.
When they discover the Statue of Liberty, I am inclined to believe
they are on the East Coast, therefore the sun has set in the East.
Maybe we are supposed to believe that the nuclear war caused the earth
to spin the other way or oceans were swapped for land masses and the
apes continent is part of what we know to be the atlantic ocean.  So
much for location shooting.

Rich

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

Date: 12 May 1980 2134-PDT
From: HARUKA at SRI-KL
Subject: TRotK

I watched "The Return of the King" last night and was surprised that
for the most part, it was reasonably faithful to the book.  Now, they
could've definitely done without the music and they did go off on a
tangent every once in a while, but most of the dialogue came straight
out of the book(with the most notable exceptions being "What in God's
name..." by Samwise and Gandalf's reference to "hell").  There were
some discrepencies with the book that I thought were unnecessary, such
as where Samwise helps incite the riot between two groups of Sauron's
troops in order to get away and in getting away, he and Frodo fall
into a pit that looked to be at least 15-20 feet deep (in the book,
it was supposed to be a "shallow" pit), but I may be getting picky.
Although I was expecting to loathe it, I ended up somewhat enjoying
it.  It would've been even better if they would've gotten rid of all
that hokey music...though the orcs' march song was funny in its way...

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

Date: 12 May 1980 1408-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Return of the King

Nano-review:   Foo!

This thing was TERRIBLE!!  About 20 minutes into this travesty
we turned off the sound and put on some records.  All of those
Honey-sweet sickening songs, Blargh!

My feeling is that Tolkien was A Genius.  Not just good, but so great
that he has created the best Myth to be written in several thousand
years!  A myth of complex depth and breadth, with gripping writing,
an fluid lovely prose.

Then, simple hacks, sufficient perhaps to draw the Flintstones or the
Jetsons, come along and try to pack several dozen hours of his writing
into 2 hours.  They are not up to this challenge.  Their paucity of
talents are highlighted, enlarged, mocked by the grandeur of the
vision that they egotistically thought that they could handle.  NO,
they couldn't handle it.  I do not know why they tried.  Are they so
egotistical that they thought that their puny talents were up to the
challenge?  Were they so blind that they couldn't see the glory of
the story they were profaning?  Where they so greedy that they felt
the american public would swallow up this C%%$ and like it?

I feel it was that they were too dumb, too small, too
american-pasturized-porecessed-chess-brained to see the grandeur.
And, as the only piece of supporting evidence I will offer now
(out of a long long list of grievances) I will ask how many people
carefully noticed Sting?  Did you notice that Sting's Guard was curved
around on one side, and straight on the other.  And that side which
was straight had a hole, seemingly of about .5 calibre?  Did you notice
that these morons drew sting as a BLODDY WWII BAYONET ????????????????

These clowns deserve to have thier fingers broken.

Dan (Flaming Mad) Dolata

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

Date: 12 May 1980 17:24 PDT
From: Roger Duffey <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: Timelines - SF Movies
            or What to do AFTER The Empire's Struck Back

"Superman II" is scheduled for release in July 1980. Returning are
Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel, Margot Kidder as Lois Lane,
Gene Hackman as arch-villain Lex Luthor, and Ned Beatty as
arch-imbecile Otis. Marlon Brando is not returning and instead
Susannah York as Lara will take over the role of offering Superman
helpful hints about Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

The re-edited version of Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third
Kind is scheduled to appear in August 1980. This version will
eliminate some of the scenes of Neary's obsession and will include
scenes inside the Mothership after Neary has gone on board.

Dino De Laurentiis' version of Flash Gordon is scheduled for a
Christmas 1980 release. The screenplay is being done by Lorenzo
Semple, Jr., who is justly infamous for his Batman television
series scripts. Enough said.

[ From: klose.ES at PARC-MAXC -

Harryhausens's next film will be called "Clash of The Titans".  I
believe it takes place in and around Mt. Olympus and deals with an
adventure involving Greek Gods.  The cast for the British production
includes Sir Laurence Olivier, as well as Burgess Meredith and Maggie
Smith.  Expected release date is the summer of '81. ]

"Starhunt", Grayson Productions multimillion dollar SF film based on
David Gerrold's novel "Yesterday's Children", is now in production.
The screenplay was written by Gerrold. The film is also scheduled for
release during the summer of 1981. The story explores the conflicts
and interactions of the crew of a space battle cruiser pursuing an
enemy vessel which will almost certainly defeat her. [ Also see
SFL V1 #45,47,48 for other information. ]

Also coming from Dino Delaurentiis:

   "Conan" with the title role to be played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
   The film will be directed by John Milius.

   "Dune" has now entered pre-production and Frank Herbert is
   preparing the script for the film.

And for the FORCEful faithful, Star Wars III enters preproduction
this month. Current plans call for filming to begin in January 1981
and release in Spring 1982. This film will complete the second of
the four trilogies making up Lucas' scheduled 12 part epic space
opera.

Conspicuous by its absence is the Warner Bros./Ellison version of
Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot". Does anyone have information of what
the current status and plans for this film are?

[ Reference - With the exception of Klose's submission on "Clash
     of Titans" this material has been summarized from "Under the
     Rainbow: On Science Fiction in Hollywood" a column by Craig
     Miller in the June 1980 issue of IA'sfm.  --  RDD  ]

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

- - - - - - - - - -
COMING SOON!!!
TO A NEWSSTAND NEAR YOU!!!!

   TIME MAGAZINE STRIKES BACK
   ---- -------- ------- ----
- - - - - - - - - -

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

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

Date: 14 MAY 1980 0357-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #106
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Wednesday, 14 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 106

Today's Topics: SF Books - Stellar 5 - Terminal Man, Medical Therapy,
                Alien Intelligence Test, Reviewing Return of the King,
                  SF Movies - Star Wars - Dune - I Robot - Bloopers
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1980 11:20 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: mini review

Stellar #5, edited by Judy Lynn Del Rey:
     This contains a non-Darkover story by MZB, which, for MZB, is
mediocre. The next few stories I selected at random were real downers.

Karen

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

Date: 05/13/80 07:57:27
From: WGK at MIT-AI
Subject: Electro therapy

    Michael Crichton, MD, wrote "The Terminal Man" (1972, Bantam
Books) concerning the implantation of a small computer in a man to
send signals to his pleasure center when it detected one of the man's
fits comming. I won't spoil the results.     Bill

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

Date: 12 MAY 1980 1136-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: therapies

  While it's reasonable to say that \some/ therapy is needed, most
of the methods today available for treating mental disorders are so
destructive that they should be used only as emergency measures (ie.,
not to be used for more than a fraction of patients, and not to be
used more than once for a fraction of that group).  While I wouldn't
want to comment in detail on a single case that I'm not familiar with,
I'd make two points: 1) military medicine, particularly mental therapy
at the front, is apt to contain the worst features of accepted
treatments (note that the military begins with the premise that people
must think alike and most aren't to think for themselves--a classic
example of the current defects in mental therapy) and 2) the obvious
treatment for psychosis in a stressful situation is to remove the
patient from the situation (and Vietnam definitely qualifies as a
causative agent of environment-induced psychoses); of course, the
military would be reluctant to accept this, since it would allow an
obvious out for other ranks fed up with combat.
  (An addendum to (1): the training of doctors is still such as to
instill something between ragged individualism and bloody-mindedness;
damn few of the good ones are going to stay in the military beyond
their minimum obligation (generally brought on by military
scholarships) and those that do, being officers, are severely
unlikely to be able to administer useful therapy to enlisted men---the
difference in rank will grossly distort any possible patient-therapist
relationship.)
  It is very difficult to produce a reasonable therapeutic procedure
containing specific negative reinforcement; few humane people will
touch it, so the field is left to the people who consider a cattle
prod a reasonable tool (I've never heard anyone claim that a cattle
prod just stings a little; when prods were used on protesters in the
South that was police brutality, since a jar that will nudge a cow can
do far more to a human). The techniques I had read of were focused on
positive reinforcement, i.e. rewarding non-destructive,
externally-oriented behavior (and even those terms can be heavily
loaded).  For a good example of the people and technique hazards of
any tool-based psychotherapy, try Katherine MacLean's THE MISSING MAN,
which I think is a remarkable and severely underrated book.

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

Date: 05/13/80 07:52:49
From: WGK at MIT-AI
Subject: Alien Intelligence

  To summarize the comments so far, most suggest communication of
mathematical concepts [JRD, Kusnick, and JTurner]. Others suggested
recursion (pets) [TANG], shooting [JoSH], artifacts [DDYER], and
hand signs [KLH].
   Math probably appeals as a universal truth.
   Is math so universal that our integer basis for math would be
easily understood by an intelligence using set theory as a fundamental
truth? I expect we would have difficulty recognizing binary dumped
from a computer unless it was parallel vs serial so that we would
properly frame the 'numbers'.
   
   Our senses have a limited band width of data which is logically
processed. Won't there be a problem of selecting the inputs the alien
uses to detect intelligence (Math?) ? If the alien intelligence uses
a too narrow input, the result would be serial data with the framing
problem. If too wide a bandwidth is used, our math patterns will be
lost in the flood...
   
   Artifacts: What makes artifacts non-natural? If found in
different forms all over the world (clothes) why not a naturally
occurring object? The alien would have to know they were
'manufactured'. (Imagine the alein concept of cars being freed from
fenced in pens (used car lots) to eat a human and then take the human
away...Who drives whom?)

   Recursion (taking pets): Is there time? There are a few types of
ants which have cows which the ants herd and maintain...

   Other comments?

       //Bill

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

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/14/80 01:30:40
Re: On viewing, and reviewing, Tolkien (in response to DOLATA)

     Sunday night's showing of "The Return of the King" was certainly
less successful than one might hope.
     Nonetheless, I cannot summon the vitriol, the anger, that Dolata
brings toward hissubject.

     Granted, Rankin/bass' choice of music is open for attack.
Tolkien's books weren't written to be musicals - they needn't have
turned them into one. Worse, the style of music used is in error -
simple pop melodies do not match the midaevalism of the lyrics.
     But now what does a hobbit really look like? or his sword? In
the book they look like I think they do, which may or may not bear any
relation to what you think they look like. The wonder of the printed
word is that it allows the reader to supply his own unique pictures -
and complaining that the animator's vision is faulty because it fails
to match your own is an invalid argument.
     This version does in fact show more imagination of conception
than did Bakshi's dull retracing of live action footage. Here the
Orcs at least are not based on men in rubber ape masks.

    Yes, Tolkien was a genius; the best myth-chronicler of our time.
The simple fact that every elf-tale of recent years is summarily
compared to Tolkien is proof of his ample, deserved acclaim.
     His books, his imagination do not translate readily to the
screen. But we should at the least give these people credit for
trying - and exposing his work - in any form! - to a wider audience.
And given the limitations of the medium, they succeeded well enough.
     Those of us who have read his books can see the film as the
diluted version it is. Those folks on the outside who have never met
Middle Earth may just be intruiged enough to go out and buy the real
thing - the heady brew of Tolkien straight.

     Is'nt it better to offer something to them than to offer
                   nothing at all?

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

KLH@MIT-AI 05/13/80 13:15:13 Re:  Star Wars XII !!????

Why am I so cynical as to think that this news of four trilogies
bears a closer resemblance to strip mining than to artistic vision?

Someone once asked for movie suggestions. Personally, I think
original movies are always better than book-based ones, but as long
as creativity is a scarce commodity, I'd nominate "Mote". I haven't
seen it mentioned anywhere, but it's one of my all-time favorites and
unlike many others appears to be well suited to both visualization
and current tastes.

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

JTurner.Coop@mit-multics 05/13/80 16:06:53

   When Herbert was at BOSKON last year he mentioned DUNE as a movie.
Considering the job Delaurentis did with large creatures in King Kong,
I dread to see what he will do with sandworms!!
			<jmt>

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

BARMAR@MIT-MC 05/13/80 23:08:46 Re: I, Robot

    From: Roger Duffey <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>

    Conspicuous by its absence is the Warner Bros./Ellison version of
    Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot". Does anyone have information of what
    the current status and plans for this film are?

It doesn't look like there is going to be a film version of "I,
Robot." No, it's not some personality clash between Asimov and Ellison
(I don't think they are the best of friends, though). In fact, Asimov
was very pleased with Ellison's screenplay. Asimov says that the
studio people were doing too much crap to the script, and Ellison did
not want to take part in the rewrites as they wanted them. They wanted
to do things like:

    Make the robots cute (a la the fire hydrant in STAR WARS and
    the dog in Rattletrap Disaterca).

    Make Susan Calvin a sex object (Asimov would have killed if
    they did that).

    Other foolish things that movie studios do to make life hard
    for writers.

The last time I saw Asimov (February), the whole thing was at a dead
stop. Sigh....

						--Barry

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

MIKE@MIT-MC 05/13/80 13:56:54 Re: Script bloopers

While on the subject of physical bloopers in television and movie
science fiction, I would be interested in gathering some examples of
misappropiate words or lines or even whole scenes where something
just isn't right or logical. The only examples I can remember offhand
(although they are some of the best) come from the Startrek series.

(1) In The Menangerie, near the end, the big headed alien woman is
    describing to Captain Pike all the great benefits he is going to
    have living on their world and she says something like "...and we
    will be able to supply you with any plants tht are necessary from
    our zoological garden."

(2) In the episode where Kirk is on trial for killing off Lt. Com.
    Finney, Spock makes a dramatic anouncement that their sound
    apparatus "...will magnify all sounds on the ship one to the tenth
    times." Wow. I am surprised that they all didn't all go terminally
    deaf at that pronouncement. (Again, the quote is only close but
    the good [or bad] part is correct). By the way, why was it that
    only the heartbeats were amplified and it was all right for
    everybody to go on talking normally without being struck deaf
    immediately by the amplified sounds of their voices (which weren't
    amplified).

(3) But now my favorite: Kirk spent most of one episode hunting down
    some kind of cloud creature that he missed killing in his youth
    and blamed himself for. Near the end, they have the creature
    cornered on some planet and they decide to blow it up with a
    cannister of anti-matter which "...will rip off half the surface
    of the planet." A dramatic scene follows where they (Kirk and
    innocent blamee of Kirk's wrath) set the bomb up and wait for the
    creature to get within about 10 feet so they can detonate the bomb
    and transport to safety. It must have been a mighty small planet
    if they had to wait for the creature to get that close while the
    bomb is going to take half the planet with it!

A question to Lauren: Doesn't anyone ever proof read the scripts for
at least inaccuracies like in the first 2 examples?

   Michael

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

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

Date: 15 MAY 1980 0456-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #107
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 15 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 107

Today's Topics: Time Strikes Back, Alien Intelligence, Reviewing RotK,
                       SF Movies, Prisoner, Number of the Beast
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 14 May 1980 1750-EDT
From: MYERS at MIT-XX

   Time magazine for this week has a cover story about the new Star
   Wars movie. The article is very interesting and informative (Yoda
   is a muppet), and has some pretty stills from the movie.

From: DAUL at MIT-MC

   ... look for the picture of Darth on the cover. --Bill

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

WFJ@MIT-AI 05/15/80 01:55:59
Re: Binary Framing Problem in Alien Communication..

Someone mentioned that binary numbers might be difficult as a medium
for communication with an alien due to frameing problems. This is'nt a
problem of course if you mark frames with unique preambles/postambles.

But maybe a better, more universal notation would be unary, like
Turing Machines work with? In fact, mathamatical logic expressed by
TM's could be the most universal language available. However, the
topics might be limited.....

Bill Jolitz < 111 at 1111 11111.........>

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

Date: 14 May 1980 1314-PDT
From: DDYER at USC-ISIB
Subject: Alien Intelligence test

 Your argument about aliens mistaking cars for naturally ocurring
objects is cute, but it doesn't wash. Aliens who come to us WILL
recognize artifacts by their inherent characteristics. Among these are
: presense of refined metals; Geometric regularity of form; Complexity
of organization of dissimilar parts; Things like that. Extracting the
least common denominator and applying Occam's razor, the underlying
principal is ENTROPY. The only way inanimate objects come to be
arranged in ways not explainable on the basis of entropy is through
the agency of intelligence. So, given that you are found in an
environment that is obviously the product of intelligence, you (as
the most closely associated animate object) will be assumed to be the
intellegent author. I agree with (? someone's) comments to the effect
that aliens who operate on vastly different scales of time or size
would present a much more difficult problem, because they would be
unable to perceive the manifestations of intellegence.

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

Date: 14 May 1980 0154-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Alien Intell,  Rebutal to Rebutal of Review of RotK

A friend of mine came up with a particularly distressing point about
the Alien Intell test. I had suggested several mathematical ideas,
centering around prime numbers and 1 : 1 binary mappings. He pointed
out that since I had to prove my intellegence, I was probably being
considered an animal, and that the animal keeper would probably be
more on the mental equivalent of a marine than a scientist. Thus, all
he would 'see' would be fairly meaningless piles of stuff, and be
angry about the mess, and beat you harder for it. Yea marines.


About the Return of the King. Upon re-reading my original review I
discoverd that I had NOT discredited the 'artists/hackers' visions of
the appearances of any of the characters. As a comic art fanatic, with
many comic art friends working at Marvel and (ugh)DC I realize the
validity of other peoples interpretations of mental images. However,
what I did point out was that Sting was directly modeled upon a WWII
bayonet. A bayonet for gods sake!?!?!?! I can understand people who
are not particularly familier with medieval weaponry might need to
get a model to draw from, but a bayonet? And that is exactly what they
used, a standard issue bayonet. They didn't even leave out the hole
for the gun barrel. Why would sting have a hole for a gun barrel? I
can't remember them having M-1's in the first age.

However, enough flaming about that point. It was remarked that
something is better than nothing. I'm sure that if you recieved a
package of feces in the mail, you would have preferred to receive
nothing. And that is exactly how I perceived RotK, fecal.

Dan (FLAME ON) Dolata

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

Date: 05/14/80 07:35:23
From: WGK at MIT-AI
Subject: Commercial SF

    We may be forgetting that the purpose in making any movie such
as "The Return of the King," "I, Robot," or even TV shows like BS,
is to make MONEY!!! If it is in the interest of making money, ie, not
re-writing the story, etc. it WILL be done. The critical SF aclaim a
product receives might (and only might) be of commercial value. So,
when the product is good, we are unfortunately only lucky. It is not
usually the intended result.

   cynically,
      Bill

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

DLW@MIT-AI 05/14/80 05:23:04 Re: SF Movies

I think it is a mistake to propose making a movie from a science
fiction novel -- ANY science fiction novel. The reason is simple: a
novel is far too long. There is no way a standard-length novel can be
transcribed into a standard-length feature film without doing gross
injustice to the novel. Novellas and novelettes are more like the
right length. "A Boy and his Dog" is the only case I know in which
this principle was followed, and it seems to have worked. "Mote" is
indeed movie-like material, and if anyone were willing to watch a
fourteen hour movie, and it could be distributed, and cinemas could
be convinced to show it, it would be great, but it would not be
profitable...

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

Date: 14 MAY 1980 1335-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Motie Movie

     Jerry Pournelle once mentioned that "Mote" had been looked at
as a possible movie.  At that time, all the special effects people
gave up when it came to doing the "watchmakers", and since they are
an integral part of the story, they couldn't be left out. I suppose
they could do a "land of the giants" bit, but at last look, it was
too expensive.

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

Date: 14 May 1980 06:38-EDT
From: William Daul <DAUL at MIT-MC>
Subject: BLOOPER REELS AROUND?

Does anyone know of where one can find or get access through some
source to reels of bloopers? I have always thought that one could get
the public to pay to see bloopers. They probably are much funnier than
alot of the sitcoms on TV. --Bill

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

Date: 14 May 1980 10:58 PDT
From: Karlton at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Script bloopers

I also remember the chase the cloud episode of Startrek because of one
of my favorite lines of all times. At one point Spock is describing
the monster to somebody up in the enterprise and says something to the
effect "There is a 20 cubic yard cloud, about 10 meters away."

PK

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

Date: 14 May 1980 0921-PDT
From: DDYER at USC-ISIB
Subject: errors in popular SF

 I'm more interested in the really BIG bloopers : concepts and
explanations there of that are so off-the-wall as to strain credulity
past the breaking point. To take an example from MENAGARIE: during
the big denoument, when the woman captive on the planet was revealed
to be a deformed, hunch backed, lopsided survivor of a crash, it was
explained "they had never seen a human being before, so they didn't
know how to put one together".

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

From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: misc. items

Well sure, people always proofread scripts. That way they catch the
missing pronouns and dangling participles and stuff like that. You
expect a TECHNICAL proofreading of Trek? Well, they eventually started
getting one, but I was never sure whether it was being done by a
supposedly learned person or by Clyde Crashcup. (Anybody remember who
Clyde Crashcup was? If I whisper the name "Leonardo" to you, does that
help?)

The particular bloopers mentioned (1**10) and zoological gardens, were
fairly innocuous actually. There have been far worse technical errors
in scripts for other old SF shows. Gee, just think about "The
Invaders".

The reason that the amplification technique in Trek only amplified
heartbeats was simple: the script wouldn't have worked any other way.
That is always the best excuse for any plot development.

On the subject of novels for SF movies, I might mention one of my
personal favorites, CHTHON, by Piers Anthony. It would be
comparatively simple to realize on film, but still has a nice array
of locations, including underground shots, space, and open landside
locations. On the subject of our friend "The Barbarian", I saw a van
in a parking lot a few days ago that had the classic picture of The
Barbarian (the one with the girl cuddled up to one of his legs)
beautifully painted on both sides. Rather amusing.

As you may recall, my car license plate is VEJUR. I obtained this
quite some time ago, partly in anger over the way Trek was going.
Well, somebody apparently really liked it -- an attempt was made to
steal my front plate a few days ago. I had been parked in Hollywood
for some hours (sigh) and when I came out, the front plate holder had
been bent down 90 degrees and it was clear someone had attempted to
remove the plate. Not having a screwdriver though, they did not
succeed.

Oh yeah, I'd like to announce that I have the prototype of my matter
transmitter operating, finally! It seems to work OK, but I am still
having problems with the receiver. Everything is coming out
"reversed!" I don't know where this is going to lead, but I plan for
some more extensive tests soon. I'll let you know what happens. (I
wish I could kill this pesky fly that keeps crawling over the terminal
in my lab, it's been hassling me for days. Oh well, it's harmless I
guess.)

--Lauren--

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

Date: 14 May 1980 at 1937-CDT
From: John M., via HJJH at UTEXAS

I too am a PRISONER fan, and would also like info on the "Concept"
book mentioned by GEOFF at SRI-KA in SFL V1 #95. I would also be
interested in how to get copies of the scripts. (Also the interview.)

This is a little late, but two possibly recursive stories are THE
PRISONER and Robert Heinlein's new novel.

The recursiveness in the PRISONER is symbolic rather than literal;
the series closes with the same scene that it opens with, i.e.,
McGoohan zipping down the road in his Lotus. I seriously doubt that
the series was meant to be taken as literally recursive.

My suspicions about THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST are based on the
following paragraph in Spider Robinson's review in the May
ANALOG, p.  167:  "What Heinlein has achieved here is nothing
less than a rigorous mathematical basis for solipsism, for the
pure fun of it.  Imagine something rather like ALL YOU ZOMBIES--
...  but at novel length.  This book has things in common with a
Klein bottle, a Moebius band, a tesseract, and an Escher cataract
--- *I* think it's the ultimate Hat Trick. It makes Phil Dick seem
linear." I don't know what Spider means by "Hat Trick" (Heinlein
scores three times?), but since ALL YOU ZOMBIES-- is probably (in my
not-so-humble opinion) *THE* recursive story, it could well be that
NUMBER... falls into this catagory also. (Spider's review of NUMBER...
was laudatory. But he is well known for worshiping the ground Heinlein
walks above.)

Does anyone know if the British edition of THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST
will be available in the US? Spider says "... the Fawcett trade
paperback is billed as 'slightly shorter,' a term similar to 'a little
bit pregnant' (LOC. CIT.)." The "slight" shortening is no doubt due to
the %&$#* illustrations. The April LOCUS (p.4) says that the Fawcett
edition won't be out until August, and that Fawcett will also issue a
hardcover "library edition", but not a mumblin' word whether the hc
will be unabridged or not.

       John M.

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

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

Date: 16 MAY 1980 0433-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #108
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 16 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 108

   Today's Topics: SF Movies - Blooper - Novel vs shorter sources
                   Alien Intelligence Test, Prisoner, Dragon's Egg
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  15 May 1980 00:57 edt
From:  JTurner.Coop at MIT-Multics

On the subject of tech goofs in sf, how about all that lovely LASER
technology used. While there is nothing wrong with the LASER as a
weapon, there is no way to see one from the side in space. there are
two reasons:

   1) There most likely frequencies for efficient LASER use
      are well outside the visible spectrum,in the x-ray zone.
   2) With any coherent ray,the only light output to either side
      is due to interference of dust and air with the beam. In
      fact, it is hard to see a LASER beam fired on earth.

About the only way to see a LASER beam is if you are the poor sucker
at the receiving end, yet Hollywood has let use see the beam from
the side (sometime propogating at a rate slow enough for the eye to
see!!!) for years. I have yet to see (or is it not see?) a realistic
portrayal of a LASER.
						<jmt>

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

Date: 15 May 1980 0522-PDT
From: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: long movies vs short novels

I agree that most good novels are simply too long (or rich) for a
movie format, and the better the literary quality of the novel, the
less likely that a movie version will be both successful and true
to the original.  This is a primary reason for the failure of the
Return of the King, incidentally.  A solution may well lie in the TV
miniseries format, in which 5 days of 1 1/2 hours of content might
well have a chance to capture the heart of a good novel.  It would
seem to be a marvelously expensive undertaking, however.  And the
vulnerability to counter-programming would seem excessive.  But I
would see MOTE more easily as a six to eight hour production than
as a two hour synopsis.  ...Mike Leavitt

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

Date: 15 May 1980 1349-PDT
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: novel movies  

The reasons given by DLW [SFL V1 #107] for why SF novels can't
reasonably be brought to the screen sound convincing, but they're not
universal truths.  For starters, there's the recently-aired "Lathe of
Heaven", which I felt was quite good and, with only a few exceptions,
faithful to the book.  Perhaps it was able to fit in everything
because (a) the book is fairly short for a novel and (b) much of the
book is descriptive, so that if one can just come up with a good
enough picture one can fit a lot of book into very little time.  But
(b) is true of many novels, so there should be hope.  On top of which,
what's so different about SF novels when it comes to making movies?
Surely they require more special effects and such, but DLW was arguing
only about the length.  And there have certainly been occasional good
movies based on non-SF novels.

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

Date: 05/15/80 08:06:58
From: WGK at MIT-AI
Subject: Alien Intell Test

  I hope no one is taking responses as rebutals, there is no intent
to discredit.  The intent is to find concepts secure from alternate
assumptions.
  Artifacts: We have moved away from using pure refined metals to
using alloys to obtain characteristics not naturally found (steel vs
iron).  There are naturally occuring pure substances with geometric
regularity: crystals...  As for complexity of organization of
dissimilar parts: little on earth is made in a simple form with few
pure parts from rocks to air.
  Entropy: I agree that man is one of a few 'forces' in nature that
seems to work against entropy.  We build, organize, clean up, etc.
That is surely unique, but is it intelligent behavior to not leave
well enough alone?  We want nature so bad that we restore and control
it.  We guard forrests from themselves, ie. fires, and over population
of some animals.  End of soap box.
  Unary expressions: A framing symbol(s) is still required to tell
11 111 1111 from 111111111.  If we use a simple preamble/postamble
'0' the we have: 11011101111.  Maybe...
  Again, these discussions are not intended to offend, please.
         //Bill

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

Date: 15 MAY 1980 1437-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: pets

  WGK correctly cites certain ants which keep and "milk" aphids(?) which
secrete a sweet fluid; however, the aphids are farm animals, not pets.
The point of the Chandler story which started this particular loop was
"only intelligent beings put other beings in cages" (and it's true that
the aphids aren't caged; they grow too big to move easily and have food
brought to them, so they have no reason to move) but the extension it has
been drawn into could be phrased as "only intelligent beings keep other
beings for no observable utilitarian reason (i.e., for entertainment). I
suspect that there are several other species that keep farm animals.

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

DERWAY@MIT-AI 05/15/80 06:23:14 Re: Alien Intelligence

DDyer mentioned that "The only way inanimate objects come to be
arranged in ways not explainable on the basis of entropy is through
the agency of intelligence." Not so! What about trees. All life
seems "unlikely".

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

Date: 15 MAY 1980 1144-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: alien intelligence

  DDYER's explanation of cars as recognizable artifacts is reasonable
--- IF (for instance) the aliens' world is close enough in kind to
ours and they are good enough chemists to recognize the rarity of a
given metal existing in refined form (by which I presume "unoxidized"
is meant; metals used in modern cars are complex alloys, refined only
in that sense).  As for the blanket claim that intelligence is the
only way to produce unentropic objects --- what is the level of
entropy of an anthill --- or a fan coral --- or a redwood??  The only
\requirements/ to produce an antientropic structure are some form of
management (usually provided by DNA) and a supply of energy.  Granted,
the management can be provided on any more complex and indirect level
right up to what we call intelligence, but it doesn't \have/ to be.

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

Date: 15 May 1980 at 1045-PDT
From: chesley at SRI-UNIX
Subject: Aliens & Prisoners

     Re alien intelligence: Assuming it's only a quick-and-dirty
survey mission, and they miss things like cities (maybe they think
oceans are the only conceivable place for intelligent life to evolve),
and they find you with few or no civilized artifacts (say shipwrecked
on an island), then (just possibly) they might figure you're an animal
rather than the glorious example of intelligence we all know man to
be.  Convincing them otherwise would (it seems to me) involve three
steps: (1) Keep them from embalming, freezing, discarding, or
otherwise harming your body, by being neat, clean, minimal trouble
to keep, and amusing; do NOT attempt to prove your intelligence by
killing one of them.  (2) Get their minds to work on you, trying to
figure out some aspect of your behavior: play tic-tac-toe, maybe, or
talk to yourself, changing position for each side of the conversation
(and using sign language if you know it), or do something ritualistic
but with no apparent usefullness (dance a jig before each meal).  And
finally, (3) now that you've got them trying to figure you out, ease
in some mathematical symbolism to what you're doing (or have it there
in the first place) which they'll (hopefully) recognize.  Of course,
surviving long enough to do all this requires a fair amount of luck,
and in the end you'll probably find that abducting intelligent
creatures is illegal and they'll want to destroy the evidence...
	Re The Prisoner: I thought the more interesting recursiveness
was that at the end of the final episode, he goes back to his house,
and after he enters, the door closes by itself.  Read into that what
you will.
	--Harry...

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

Date: 15 May 1980 11:18 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Cheering thoughts: (1) Alien Intell test (2) Prisoner

(1) On reading Dolata's comment about being caged as an animal guarded
    by a marine, it occurred to me that, if earthly naturalists are a
    guide, rather than being caged one would more likely to have been
    dissected.....

(2) Ref John M. at UTex comment: I believe McGoohan stated in the
    interview that at the end of the series the Prisoner was still
    imprisoned because the whole world is a prison, or somesuch
    cheering idea.

Karen

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

Date: 14 May 1980 21:33-EDT
From: Jef Poskanzer <AQE at MIT-MC>
Subject: "Dragon's Egg", by Robert L. Forward

After reading the back-cover blurbs:

   "Robert L. Forward tells a good story and asks a profound question.
   If we run into a race of creatures who live a hundred years while
   we live an hour, what can they say to us or we to them?"
      -- Freeman J. Dyson, Author of Disturbing The Universe

   "Dragon's Egg is a fascinating and thought-provoking demonstration
   that the real universe around us, as revealed by science, is more
   mysterious than magic, more wonderful than Wonderland, and more
   fantastic than any fantasy that unaided human thought could ever
   devise. A splendid example of science-fact today opening up the new
   territories that science fiction will be exploring tomorrow."
      -- James P. Hogan

   "It would appear that hard science fiction, like computers,
   occasionally advances to a new generation. Forward has made the
   advance, this time. I naturally regret not having done it myself,
   but can at least be grateful that I was around to witness the
   event." -- Hal Clement

   "This is one for the real science-fiction fan. John Campbell would
   have loved it." -- Frank Herbert

   "Bob Forward writes in the grand tradition of Hal Clement's Mission
   of Gravity and carries it a giant step (how else?) forward."
      -- Isaac Asimov

   "How refreshing it is to read a hard-science sf book in which the
   science is done right. Bob describes the process of scientific
   discovery better than anyone else in the sf business. A gripping
   and logical account of the evolution of intelligencce itself in an
   alien race." -- Charles Sheffield, President, The American
   Astronautical Society

   "Never in the history of science fiction, I think, have so many of
   the most exciting contemporary scientific concepts played a role in
   a book. In Dragon's Egg we meet a whole civilization of creatures
   who are almost beyond our dreams. We come to know and love them.
   And they could really be." -- Frank Drake, Director, National
   Astronomy and Ionosphere Center

   "I admire the unusual ombination of a good yarn and a reasonable
   measure of scientific plausibility... an outstanding and exciting
   first novel." -- John Billigham, Chief, Extraterrestrial Research
   Division, NASA

   "Dragon's Egg is superb.  I couldn't have written it; it required
   too much REAL physics." -- Larry Niven

...anything I can add would be somewhat anti-climactic.

$9.95 hardback, 345 pages, published by Ballantine Books.
---
Jef

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

Date: 13 MAY 1980 0829-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Availability of DRAGON'S EGG

     A number of people have mentioned that they were having trouble
finding a copy of DRAGON'S EGG in bookstores.  The book is printed and
has been distributed, so if it isn't on the bookstore shelves it means
1) they didn't order it, or 2) they are sold out.

     The first is more likely since DE is in hardcover, and a lot of
bookstores only stock paperbacks in science fiction.  Also, I am not
one of the well-known writers so they are less likely to take a gamble
on me.  If you want a copy, you will probably have to call a number of
stores to find it (which is good, if a store gets enough calls for a
book, they might change their mind and order it for their stock), or
you may have to have them order a copy for you.

     Judy del Rey at Ballantine just told me that the paperback
version of DRAGON's EGG will not be released until Feb 1981, and that
the Science Fiction Book Club has not yet decided to add it to their
offerings, so until then, the only way to get a copy is the expensive
way $9.95 plus tax, but at 352 pages and 14 diagrams it is a bargain.

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

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

Date: 17 MAY 1980 0621-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #109
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 17 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 109

Today's Topics:  SF Movies - Bloopers - Suggestion - Novel vs Story,
               Alien Intelligence Test, LotR - RotK - Elvish, Superman
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 May 1980 14:48 PDT
From: Weissman at PARC-MAXC
Subject: The Prisoner's Door

I've seen people say this too many times to restrain myself any
longer.  At the end of the final Prisoner episode, the door to the
flat opens by itself, and the BUTLER goes in.  THE PRISONER DOES NOT
GO IN!  For this reason, I prefer to regard him as finally "free"
in some sense, despite some people's claims that the story recurses.
Each of the escapees at the end goes where his personality dictates:
the young rebel to the open road, #2 to the Ministry, and the butler
into the prisoner's flat.  But the prisoner gets into his car,
heading for parts unknown...not through the animated door.

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

Date: 16 May 1980 0712-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: lasers and special effects

JMT is of course correct under the assumption that the way one
sees a laser beam is by actual light from the beam, reflected by
particles in its way.  But think on a grander scale: in space,
one need not use a wavelength to which hydrogen is transparent
-- there is so little of it that only a miniscule portion of the
power will be lost. However, a miniscule portion of the energy
necessary to vaporize a starship is quite sufficient to provide
quite a pyrotechnic display, by incandescence.  Supposing a base
on the moon fired at something at L5: the beam would take over a
second to cross 60 degrees of sky (as seen from Earth), which is
slow enough for the eye to see (I picked up the image of battling
planets in earth orbit from the Wanderer, by Leiber).  What pains
ME about laser effects is the audio.  I can't think of any sound
one could reasonably get from a space shot; however, as a hand
weapon on a planetary surface one would expect something like a
thunderclap (remember, the beam is powerful -- it should more or
less approximate a lightening bolt), but what we hear is more on
the order of a futuristic telephone ring.
		--JoSH

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

DANIEL@MIT-ML 05/16/80 14:25:25

Mumble! Lasers in the X-ray region? Those photons are far too
energetic to be "laserable." As for visible laser beams, I have seen
some beautiful Argon lasers whose green beams were plainly visible in
air due to the power of the beam (though there still ain't too much
air out in space).

Daniel

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

Date: 15 May 1980 1807-EDT
From: JHENDLER at BBN-TENEXA
Subject: bloopers in movies

My favorite movie blooper is in the movie "BEN." Periodically, during
the scenes in the office, the camera pans back, and the desert can be
seen over the walls of the office; the flats for the sets are about 1
foot too short.
 -Jim

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

VILAIN@MIT-MC 05/16/80 23:06:04 Re:  From novel to film

Has anyone considered Heinlein's DOUBLE STAR as a possiblity for a 2
hour movie?  The plot is just THE PRISONER OF ZENDA translated to a
"united solar system" type culture.  All that need be done is to
change the ETs to something from outside the solar system.

The mini-series is the ideal format for bringing long novels to TV
and several of these are planned for the fall season.  One I'm very
anxious about is James Clavell's SHOGUN, with Richard Chamberlan as
the english sea captain and Toshiro Mifuni as the shogun.  The only
reason I read the thing (and it took me 3 months!) was because some
told me the plot is just like a "first alien contact" novel and it
is. What could be more alien to a 16th century Elisibethian englishman
that the culture of mid-evil Japan?  I became immersed in the japanese
culture and became convinced I should have been born samari.

		<>Mike Vilain

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

Date: 16 May 1980 2027-PDT
From: Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
Subject: movies vs novels, alien intell tests

     DON is right about compressability of novels... whats the old
cliche, "a picture is worth a thousand words"? or is it a face and
a thousand ships? well anyway...
     Also, it seems to me that we might have more luck communicating
our intelligence over something objective, like a special (21 cm)
freq.  in the EM spectrum, than in person... what if the aliens happen
to be 1 cm big, and think the roaches control the big brutes (humans)
who do the work? what would we think if we arrived on a planet and
this was actually true? biological assumptions are hard to beat, and
may be tougher than this example. Its sort of like electronic mail--
personal contact might cause me not to accept an intelligence that
is there.  This doesnt help if theyve GOT you and havent figured you
ought yet tho... altho perhaps in that case its them who arent
intelligent.
     Also, this whole bit reminds me of a question closer to home:
if we succeed in building an intelligent, self-aware machine, how
will we tell?

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

Date: 16 May 1980 12:11-EDT
From: Jef Poskanzer <AQE at MIT-MC>
Subject: "Only intelligent beings keep pets."

Have you ever watched a cat playing with a mouse, fly, cockroach,
moth, etc.?  This activity has no obvious utilitarian purpose, seems
to be for entertainment only, and yet most people would deny that
cats are intelligent.

Actually, I think this is the famous "exception that proves the
rule". I think that cats have picked up a tendency for non-utilitarian
behavior from living with humans for so many generations.  Can anyone
come up with an example of a non-domesticated species exhibiting
frivolousness?
---
Jef

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

Date: 16 May 1980 5:05 pm PDT (Friday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
To: SF-Lovers at MIT-AI

All these suggestions for inferring/proving intelligence are very
interesting, but does anyone have a clear idea of what we mean when
we talk about intelligence?  The arguments based on presence/absence
of recognizable artifacts imply that intelligence equals tool use.
This leaves handless beings like dolphins at the mercy of the
dissectors (without even going into the question of whether dolphins
are "truly" intelligent).  Of course we might ask why we care
whether a (potentially) intelligent being gets dissected.  One can
imagine a highly intelligent hive organism which, on first contact
with an alien race, voluntarily donates a specimen for dissection.
So it seems in this case the thing that matters is whether the
organism gets "hurt" in any sense.  (But then there's reason to
think that most if not all earthly mammals experience pain and
pleasure in much the same way that humans do, and does this stop
us from hurting and killing them?)

Another fairly reasonable definition of intelligence involves
linguistic ability (by which chimps and gorillas may prove to be
nearly as intelligent as men).  In this case the thing to look for
is written language: the mark of an advanced intelligence being the
tendency to store more information externally (in books and libraries)
than internally (in genes and memories).  But again we want to avoid
placing too much emphasis on the technology of writing, lest we
overlook the little men with clay tablets in back rooms.

So I guess what I'm saying is that your chances of proving your
intelligence to alien captors depends a lot on why they captured you.
If they want to communicate, then you're golden; simply wave your arms
and shout and they'll go nuts trying to figure out what you're saying.
If on the other hand they're eight feet tall, covered in orange fur,
and hungry, your best strategy is to prove inedibility -- a quality
having very little to do with intelligence.

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

Date: 15 May 1980 1557-PDT
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI>

     I find the various attempts to convince aliens of human
intelligence using mathematics and logic humorous and indicative
of a chauvinism that few of us are aware of. Namely, any basis
for believing this would work involves the conjecture that these
endeavors have an ultimate grounding in some objective reality
that we are privy to. Before you all start thinking that I'm some
kind of solipsist, let me say that it isn't the objective reality
that causes the problem, but the priviness.

     Both mathematics and logic are human activities that depend
on communication to work. Books on these subjects are attempts
to convince other people that various things are true, using
abbreviated forms of a complete proof to do that. Most readers
here are familiar with famous proofs that are/were either suspected
or shown to be false after a period of belief, or at least they are
familiar with the recent article in CACM by Perlis et al discussing
same.

     Our theorems are nothing but notation, which is representation,
which exists as part of our cognitive structure, not the world. And
as we go about manipulating these representations, to what extent
are we relying on properties of the representation over those of the
represented?  Philosophers of science (and some scientists too) worry
about this (Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend), and we can even look
in a recent SCIENCE (May ??, 1980) to see the debate continue.

     With our senses limited to such an extent, and our observational
power limited by our theories,
   [note: think about it, particle accelerators, telescopes, electron
    microscopes are artifacts built according to the very theories we
    hope to confirm]
why would one ever think that an alien intelligence would share any of 
our cognitive prejudices of the world?

     It may be interesting to think of convincing people from greatly
differing periods of history that we are intelligent. Since we share
similar body structure, and hence some part of a world view, the
question is posited as: can we convince them we are not insane.

     Take the cut and dried case of logic. Would we be able to
convince the very early Greeks that we were logical and not simply
nuts? Maybe, maybe not.  I will quote you a proof that the Sophists
played around with and who apparently considered it totally valid:

Theorem: God is one.

Proof: Suppose not. If he were many, then the many would be equal or
unequal.  If they are equal, then they are again one. [confusion of
EQ with EQUAL?].  If not, some are [maybe], and those are one (by
above), while others are not, and those do not count.[!!!]

     These people really took time to think this out and considered
it just fine. I think you, the reader, consider them insane, and I
venture they would think the same of us if we denounced their proofs.
In fact, there are a number of disciplines that earn their money
(partly) by assuming that the early Greeks were not insane and trying
to guess what their view of the world and themselves had to be in
order for them to not be insane. This view is compared to ours in
order to blunder upon what reality is like.

     Don't forget, everything we do is a human endeavor, tied up in
our language and cognitive structure, aimed at human concerns; don't
be lured into thinking our concerns are those of the universe.

			-rpg-

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

Date:  16 May 1980 21:34 edt
From:  SALawrence at MIT-Multics (STEVE at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  Belated note on TLotR film

This is a little late, but I just got around to reading the May 14
issue of SF-Lovers. I saw the first 1/2 hour of TLotR and turned it
off in disgust, and I must disagree with the last note I've seen on
it. It was just plain awful. Far, far worse than the Bakshi version.

Yes, I will agree that some of the visual aspects were better done
than Bakshi's; in particular, the hobbits appeared to have furry feet,
which somehow got lost in Bakshi's version. And the Orcs and bad guys
in general were better done; the guys running around in gas masks
making barnyard noises (literal pig grunts, according to my ears)
which Bakshi used were not too thrilling. However, the sound track
was just plain atrocious; the people who did the screen play had no
grasp of the books at all.

Ignoring such minor gaffes as the soft 'c' in 'cirith' (they certainly
didn't read the appendix), the dialogue appeared to be nearly entirely
made up; so far as I could tell none of it was from the books. Others
I've spoken to who know the books fairly well and who saw it claimed
that of the 1 1/2 hours I missed was about on the same level as far as
dialogue goes. Not using Tolkien's dialogue could be excused were the
new stuff in character and briefer (they had a lot of material to get
through), but it was neither; rather than saying it was 'based' on the
text they should have said 'inspired by'.  In terms of brevity, let it
suffice to say that the first 20 minutes succeeded in getting through
the last few paragraphs of The Two Towers -- not a very good pace if
they really wanted to do all of TRotK in 2 hours. In terms of how in
character things were, Sam could not possibly have vacillated for
about 10 minutes as to what he should do after he found out that Frodo
was alive, as they had him doing in the film.
  The scenes in Minas Tirith were really stomach turning. First,
Pippin could not possibly have said to Gandalf, re Denethor, 'He's
gone loony, I tell you'!! That was totally out of character. And that
argument in the throne room (the throne room!) over whether Denethor
should commit suicide or not -- come on, now. To top it off, having
Pippin tell Gandalf that he had to take control of the city's forces
-- did they read the book at all, or did they just hear about it?

One last point: in terms of the visual footage, how did they ever come
by the idea that the Black Riders rode pegasi?  And a last+1 point --
If they had to give a brief history of Minas Tirith, they could at
least have read enough to know it was not called The Tower of the
Guard in historic times. While giving Tolkien some exposure may be
a good idea in itself, doing such an incompetent job is utterly
inexcusable. None of the botches, so far as I could see, contributed
anything to the brevity of the flick, which would be the only excuse
possible for such changes.

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

Date: 16 May 1980 1608-PDT (Friday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: Review: "The Languages of Middle Earth"

   Houghton Mifflin has just published (in both hard and paperback
formats) Ruth Noel's revised "The Languages of Middle Earth" (or 
maybe "... of Tolkien's Middle Earth", I don't have the book in
front of me). It was printed in an earlier edition by Mirage Press.
   Physically, it's a very nice volume, resembling a Berlitz
primer on a foreign languages.  The section on Old English names
is fairly interesting.  However, the sections on Elvish are not
only oversimplified, but will probably mislead the beginner.
Ms. Noel recognizes that Sindarin is modelled after Welsh, for
example, but doesn't seem to understand any of the mechanisms in
which this occurs (lenition, for example).  This leads to some
rather peculiar assertions such as "Quenya c goes to Sindarin ch."
People interested in these matters should either work out the
material themselves (thems elves?)  or spend the extra money for
Jim Allen's "Introduction to Elvish".

	Mike

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

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 05/17/80 06:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following message is the last message in today's digest. It gives
aware the plot of the current issue of DC's Action comics. People who
have not yet read this comic may not wish to read any further.


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

Date:  15 May 1980 10:06 edt
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Superman v.s. TRS-80

Not sure if this is appropriate, but am trying it, since I have seen
mention of comix in SFL before...

For a new low in commercialism, I invite you to inspect the current
issue of DC's Action comics.  Inserted into the middle of this issue
is a "28 page 'bonus' story" which is nothing more than a commercial
for TRS-80s featuring Superman.  The art is by a regular Superman
artist.  There is nothing to distinguish it from a 'real' story.

*SPOILER WARNING* (heh heh)

The plot involves the evil Major Disaster (who I think has appeared
in S. before), who finds a way to inflict temporary brain damage on
Superman.  S. gets the local kiddies to think for him using their
TRS-80s, and saves the day.

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

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

Date: 18 MAY 1980 0548-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #110
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 18 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 110

Today's Topics:        SF Movies - RotK - Prisoner - Bloopers,
                Alien Intelligence Test, Ballistics Query, Star Wars, 
                           Be Seeing You at Disclave 1980?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/17/80 08:37:23 Re: ROTK in the Ratings.

     Debating the merits of Return of The King may well now be a moot
point, since apparently nobody saw it.In last week's Nielsen ratings,
out of 60 shows it rated 57th, above only a Kennedy special and Prime
Time Saturday.
     Ah, but lest you think this represents a triumph of the public's
good taste, let me point out the unbelievable fact that part one of
'King Kong' made it into the top 20, at number 12, just above
Charlie's Angels.

     The other sci-fi special, "Capricorn One" rated 33rd.

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

Date: 17 May 1980 0350-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
Subject: prisoner changing, being free?

In response to a recent comment 'regarding [the prisoner] as finally
"free"' - in the McGoohan interview, the question is asked:
     'Has the Prisoner, between the first and last episodes,
      actually hanged any?'
- McGoohan's response: 'No, I think he's essentially the same. I
think he got slightly exhilarated by the fact that he got out of
this mythical place, and felt like doing a bit of a skip and dance,
and felt very happy about going back home with his little buddy the
butler. We never did include a cut of him when the door opened. We
just saw the door open and he went in [actually he doesn't], so 
you never know whether this exhilaration was lost when he saw that
sinister door unhook. That was left in abeyance -- an unfinished
symphony.'

We carry our prisons around with us and are never free. This is one
of the basic concepts of the series.

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

Date: 15 MAY 1980 1144-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: SF Bloopers

  There are a lot of off-the-wall concepts in SF, but I'm not sure
that that line from "The Menagerie" qualifies.  Since the Talosians
aren't human themselves, and regard the humans as barbarians, it's not
unreasonable that the reconstruction should not even fit their own
ideas of beauty.  Certainly, if the woman were broken up that badly
her conscious mind, which would be necessary to give them a pattern
unless they had skills that were probably lost (true regrowth, or
reading the "body image" from wherever it is claimed to reside), would
be out of it completely.  There \are/ big conceptual holes in STAR
TREK (one of the \very/ few strong points of BS Galaxative was that
the top officers weren't the ones always haring off after adventure),
but that isn't one of them.

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

Date:  17 May 1980 13:48 edt
From:  JTurner.Coop at MIT-Multics
Subject:  LASERS and computers

The point in using a LASER well is that you probably don't want your
enemy to see it anyway. If you miss the first time,its nice to have a
second try before the sucker knows you're firing at him. And as to the
hydrogen glowing,they have been firing at the moon with LASERs for
years and no one is complaining. While the energy needed to shoot the
moon is far less than the energy needed to blast a ship,there is a
distance difference of about 1/10000 which means an energy increase of
100,000,000 fold.

In other news,I caught "westworld" last night and was surprised
Crichton had fallen for the old flashing lights on the computer panel
trick. Why is it that producers feel that computers have to have
panels of blinking lights or crt's showing nice geometric figures. I
know that computers do have blinking lights but they have nice lables
like 'ac' or 'program counter' while these have nothing but bulbs?
	         		<jmt>

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

SHL@MIT-MC 05/17/80 17:02:25 Re: LASER BATTLES AGAIN...

I HAVE NOTICED THAT NOT ONLY DO THE LASER BATTLES HAVE NOISES FOR THE
LASERS FIRING, THE SPACE SHIPS ALSO ROAR WHEN THEY FLY AROUND. I AM
WONDERING WHERE SPACE GOT DENSE ENOUGH TO CARRY SOUND!?

			$TEPHEN LANDRUM

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

Keith McClune@MIT-MC (Sent by BARMAR@MIT-MC) 05/17/80 14:26:18
Re: lasers, intelligence & frivolousness 
  
  DANIEL@MIT-ML 05/16/80 14:25:25

  Mumble! Lasers in the X-ray region? Those photons are far too
  energetic to be "laserable." As for visible laser beams, I have
  seen some beautiful Argon lasers whose green beams were plainly
  visible in air due to the power of the beam (though there still
  ain't too much air out in space).

I understand there are researchers that are presently working
with X-ray lasers. If this is true, those photons do seem to be
"laserable."
  
  Can anyone come up with an example of a non-domesticated species
  exhibiting frivolousness?
  ---
  Jef

Otters and dolphins, for example, have often been filmed "playing" on
river banks (otters) and in the water.

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

Date: 17 May 1980 20:17-EDT
From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Alien Intelligence

I recently saw (a book review in Scientific American?) a description
of an Arctic Fox playing with a mouse. It was not hunting, and did
not eat the mouse (it was not hungry at the time.) Granted, the mouse
wasn't in a cage, but the question was "apparently frivolous action".

The Solipsist argument doesn't appear insane to me, circular perhaps,
or possibly axiomatic, but not insane. Now could a dyed in the wool
western philosopher tell Zen from insanity? I agree that Logic is not
universal... witness the debate in Mathematics over the validity of
proof by contradiction.

-- Charles

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

Date:  17 May 1980 14:32 edt
From:  Sibert at MIT-Multics (W. Olin Sibert)
Subject:  "most people would deny that cats are intelligent"

Ummmmm.... Having dealt with quite a variety of cats, I would
certainly hesitate to deny such a supposition -- if for no other
reason than that I wouldn't want any of them to find out.....

I'm not entirely serious here, but it does seem perhaps unwise to
make such bald statements.

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

Date: 17 MAY 1980 1355-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: intelligence (x N)

  The answer to AQE's query depends on whom you talk to and how
much of an animal psychologist you claim to be. The most coherent
explanations I've come across seem to treat a cat's playing with a
harmless but elusive creature (even including rubber mice and pieces
of string) as a reflex---possibly learned, like the nest-building of
birds (Wilson, the Harvard entomologist and creator of sociobiology,
says that nest building in ants is purely reflexive--the "sight" of
one grain of earth on top of another draws them to pile up more
grains), from parents or older relatives, and possibly partially
inherited. Certainly it serves a useful purpose, in that it sharpens
reflexes, improves eye-paw coordination, and generally increases the
cat's chances of survival in a serious fight. Unfortunately I can't
provide any solid documentation on what the behavior is of any of the
wild feline species (beyond a common assertion that all of them, and
many other mammalian species, engage in mock wrestling when young).
  Playful behavior is also attributed to the adults of many of the
cetaceae (seals, dolphins, whales, etc.), although it is difficult
to determine how much of this is playfulness and how much is the
fact that they can easily be trained to act playfully (dolphins
in particular are alleged always to have shown interest in ships,
although this could be attributed to the fact that even the earliest
sailors to get out to dolphin depths would have thrown their garbage
over the side). The same problem of definitions is multiplied when
considering primates other than man: how much of the brachiation, etc.
that they display in zoos is learned because it is frequently rewarded
with food?
  Another possible method of determining intelligence comes from
Pohl's latest, BEYOND THE BLUE EVENT HORIZON:

  As the face moved to one side Lurvy saw that the others, clustered
  around the berryfruit bush, wore what no animal had ever
  spontaneously worn. They were clothed. There were even evidences of
  fashion in what they wore, patches of color sewn to their tunics,
  what looked like tattoos on exposed skin, even a string of
  sharp-edged beads around the neck of one of the males.

The $64,000 question here is the definition of spontaneity: so far as
I know, no one has documented in chimpanzees adorning themselves in
the wild. However, they are highly imitative and will frequently do
so if one of them sees a human investigator doing it. I doubt that
clothing would be usable as a sign of intelligence except in fairly
narrow circumstances.

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

Date: 17 May 1980 2110-EDT (Saturday)
From: Bliss-10 at CMU-10A (N110BL10)
Subject: intellect demo

If I were to attempt to demonstrate intelligence to an alien being I
would proceed as follows:

Assume that since the aliens can see people they can also see written
markings. One can therefore proceed in a manner similar to that which
Colossus used to set up communications with Guardian in "The Forbin
Project"; that is, write down the numbers 0 through 9 (or 1 through
10), and place n marks directly below them where n is the the column
number. Thus:

     0 1 2 3 ...
       o o o ...
         o o ...
           o ...

One can then proceed to write down the addition and multiplication
tables of the numbers 1 through 10. It should be readily apparent to
any alien whose methods of thought are similar enough to ours that
communication is at all possible what is being done.

Steve

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

Date: 16 May 1980 0734-EDT
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject: Alien intelligence

Before conjecturing about complex behavior, ritualistic behavior, or
math as demonstrations of intelligence, you should read A. Bertram
Chandler's "The Cage" which I gave previous references to.  In terms
of "intelligent construction", there was an article in Analog some
years ago, COMPLETE WITH PHOTOS, of a paper presented at the Martian
equivalent of JPL, showing conclusively that there was no intelligent
life on their nearest neighbor.  Of course, this should have been
obvious from the spectroscopic analysis of the atmosphere, which
contained fatal amounts of both oxygen and water, but...

The photos were made with standard satellites, with resolutions
comparable to those we used for other interplanetary probes, at
corresponding altitudes, and encompassed such interesting regions
as New York, London, Paris, or equivalent cities.  And as far as
"life", well, what would happen if aliens chose places such as
the Rub al'Khali or the Arctic to set down their probes.

Insofar as modifying the environment...consider a race which did not
modify the environment...is it considered intelligent by one which
does?  Vice-versa?  A story by S. Kye Boult [aside: I suspect a
pseudonym here...does anyone have the mapping to real name(s)??] in
Analog a few years back considered this issue w.r.t. Viking probes.
[I have just riffled thru my Analogs and can't locate either story...
and haven't time to do complete linear search.  Sigh]

If you believe language is a demonstration of intelligence, what
would spoken language mean to a being which could not hear? What
would written language mean to a being with eidetic recall?  Or
with a group mind, or (shades of Terminal Man) implanted access
to a computer?

As far as math...as computer hackers, we understand using different
radices, but (as observed in a previous note) would the keeper be
smart enough to?  What if a race developed spherical geometry instead
of plane geometry (or, even if plane geometry came first, it was
considered a quaint historical development...like epicycles in our
cosmology, and thus was not taught even to highly intelligent
spacefaring members of the race)?

It is worth observing that whales and apes are closer to us than any
alien is likely to be, and we can't decide if they have language or
culture!

(I recall another story, wherein aliens observed earth from Jupiter or
one of its moons, and noticed how the dominant intelligent race, the
automobiles, had developed techniques for luring their prey into them.
Large ones were better at it, which suggested some evolutionary
differences...)

We have very, very anthropocentric views of how to determine
"intelligence".  Frequently they are even egocentric instead of merely
anthropocentric: of the form "if I, an educated person, can do it, it
must be a sign of intelligence".  But intelligence cannot be measured
by the accomplishments of the "educated".  My housemate's grandfather,
a storekeeper, could not read (except labels on cans, boxes, etc. ---
but that is simple pattern recognition) but could do arithmetic quite
well...well enough to run a store successfully, with taxes, credit,
etc.  for something like 30 or 40 years.  The son of an acquaintance
has a form of dyslexia where he cannot read cursive script, only
printing.  And the number of successful people who could not work
with long division or simple fractions is undoubtedly quite large.

The medium is the message. Having enough intelligence to recognize
what a particular alien will recognize as intelligence will be the
real mark of intelligence.

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

Date: 17 MAY 1980 1355-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: ballistics

     And I have a question for anyone in SFL who knows more about
ballistics than I can do on my fingers. It is a commonly-accepted
cliche, which also shows up in BtBEH, that a reaction-drive
spaceship would be better off taking off from near the equator than
from anywhere in the temperate zone. To me, this does not compute;
rotational velocity is just over 1000 miles per hour at the equator,
and it would be V x ((3^.5)/2) or about 860 mph at latitude 30 (in
the absence of an atlas my guesstimate puts Kennedy at latitude
26-27), which is an advantage of ca. 150 mph. Since velocity in a
low orbit runs around 18,000 mph, that's less than 1%, which strikes
me as trivial even given the improvement in mass ratio that any
reduction in delta-V would bring. Have Heinlein, Pohl, etc. been
fooling themselves or would there really be some advantage in a
central African spaceport?

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

Date: 18 May 1980 at 0040-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ STAR WARS CHATTER ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Reported by My-Friend-The-Ultimate-STAR-WARS-Fan: There are not one
but two premieres, some sort of "Presidential Premiere", the big one,
on Sat., after which the cast, et al. go to Sargent Shriver's for a
bash, and the "general" premiere on Sun., which was advertised as "See
the premiere of TESB with R2D2 and C-3PO", without other cast members
scheduled to attend. In fact, Dave Prowse (Vader) leaves for England
before noon that day. (London premiere is the 21st.)

Dave has a sore throat but is going to whoop it up anyway. But not
Tony Daniels ("Threep"), who is in a D.C. hospital with a foot
infection. His speech (presumably for Sun.) had fortunately already
been recorded. (I assume that because of the mask he always has to
mime to a recording.) But the promoters have been in a tizzy trying
to find an actor with the same measurements to fit into the 3PO suit
which was built on molds taken of Tony's body! So if any SF-LOVERS get
to "see the TESB premiere with R2 and C-3PO" (Bruce Israel, surely)
don't bother trying for autographs -- they'd be as phony as those of
the touring "official 'Darth Vaders'".

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

Date: 17 May 1980 1441-EDT
From: VAF at MIT-DMS (Vincent A. Fuller, III)
Subject: DISCLAVE 1980

I am curious to know who, if anyone, is planning to attend DISCLAVE
1980 in Arlington, Va. this year. Con-goers anyone?

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

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

Date: 19 MAY 1980 0628-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #111
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 19 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 111

Today's Topics: SF Books - Detective & Dragon's Egg & Speculative Fact
                Alien Intelligence Test, SF Movies - Bloopers & Comix
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 18 May 1980 0348-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>,
      Don Woods <Don at SU-AI>
Subject: SF detective stories

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

     The science fiction detective story is devilish and monstrous to
write. As distinguished from the ''crime procedural'' story, which
can take place as readily on Neptune as it can in the 87th Precinct,
it's nowhere near as easy to create a tale of genuine detection in a
fantasy or science fiction milieu.
     It's too easy to have the Great Detective turn to his awestruck
stooge and declare: ''Child's play, Doctor Whatsup! This shuttlecraft
was permeated with an odor resembling Venusian passion-blossoms, yet
there are only roses visible in the bad vases on the Macdonald Drive
phase-shift modulator console beside you. Obviously, this poor
unfortunate pilot was killed by the deadly Saturnian Intelligent
Mock-Rose, which uses dime-store perfume to disguise the noxious
vapors its organic jet-propulsion systems as it pounces-Look out,
Whatsup!''
    Genuine SF detection, in other words requires the author not only
to construct an airtight puzzle, but also simultaneously to explain
all the everyday rules of the setting in which it occurs. In the space
of a few thousand words, the reader must become as familiar with the
selected exotic locale as he is with Victorian England or Manhattan.
Otherwise, the game between writer and audience can be spoiled at any
time by the writer's pulling a white rabbit out of the ground.
     Isaac Asimov is usually thought of as the premier exponent of
this scarce sub-genre. But Larry Niven, with such tales as ''The Long
Arm of Gil Hamilton,'' has been coming along notably. For an excellent
example, see his latest, ''The Patchwork Girl'' (Ace, $5.95), an
illustrated trade paperback in which detective Gil Hamilton is given
urgent reasons for solving an ingenious locked-room murder on the
Moon...if he doesn't clear the name of the convicted accused, an old
flame, she'll soon be parceled out as replacement parts in an organ
bank. Hamilton has an ESP third ''arm'' which makes things worse as
often as it makes them better. And Niven has the rare skill to make it
all work out, with a denouement that makes this genuine SF as well as
genuine detection.
     SF detection also figures in Lee Killough's ''Corpus Cryptic,''
one of nine excellent new stories in Stellar No. 5, the latest in
the highly respected series of original paperback anthologies from
Ballantine-del Rey ($1.95). Other contributors include James P.
Hogan, Philip K. Dick, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Charles Sheffield and
the chronically under-rated C.C. Edmondson. The Stellar series has at
times claimed a higher standard than it attained. Not this time-this
is by far the best in the series; a standout ''issue'' of this
bookrack periodical.
     ''Aliens'' (Pocket Books, $2.25), is an excellent reprint
anthology edited by Gardner M. Dozois and Jack M. Dann, two people
with an excellent track record. The theme is interaction between
human and alien creatures; the criterion is that the aliens must be
more than just Japanese stunt men in Godzilla suits. Dynamite writers
like Niven, Frederik Pohl, Frederic Brown, R.A. Lafferty, Robert
Silverberg, Philip K. Dick, Damon Knight and, I must confess, yours
truly, are represented by some of their best work in this vein.
     English writer M. John Harrison will never be accused of writing
straightforward tales of entertainment. His novel of several years
ago, ''The Pastel City,'' was set on a degenerating Earth so far in
the future that it might as well have been on an alien planet. Its
sequel, ''A Storm of Wings'' (Doubleday, $8.95), is out now, and can
be read as an independent book, and is just as intricately
apocalyptic. Not to put too fine a point upon it, Harrison is a
maniacal, allusive writer of very serious intentions whose vision of
the dying Viriconium culture will leave you in an enjoyably depressed
mood for days.
     The late James Blish's masterpiece, ''A Case of Conscience,'' is
once again available in reprint (Ballantine-del Rey, $1.95). Winner of
the Hugo Award as best novel of 1958, it is one of the few SF novels
to deal squarely with religious questions, as distinguished from
simply populating the cast with priests or rabbis.
     Father Ruiz-Sanchez is a Jesuit biologist investigating the
ecosystem of the alien planet Lithia. Against a meticulously worked
out scientific and theological background, Ruiz gradually comes to
the horrifying dilemma of deciding whether the intelligent dominant
species were born without original sin or are tools of the Devil.
     Blish, an agnostic, never once fell back on either dogma or
a layman's ignorance to save him from having to work with this
proposition as rigorously as if it involved only such customary
SF material as the physical laws of the universe. This book is
not only one of Blish's intellectual and creative high points,
it's an outstanding ornament to the field, and a must for any
basic SF library.
    
------------------------------

Date: 14 MAY 1980 2232-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: We have a WINNER!

     The next winner in the "Find a Goof in DE" sweepstakes is
AQE@MIT-MC (Jef Poskanzer) who is the recipient of a personally
autographed copy of DRAGON'S EGG for finding the misprint on page
315. The usual spelling for element 28 is "nickel", not "nickle".

     Also, on page 44 "quieter" is obviously "quicker", but who
would notice that?

     Previous winners have pointed out that the escape velocity from
a neutron star is more like 40% the speed of light than 25%, and that
the gravity at 400 kilometers from a neutron star is 40 million gees
-- not -- 400 million gees.

       Bob Forward

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

DAUL@MIT-MC 05/18/80 13:54:34 Re: INFO on TOWARD DISTANT SUNS

Anyone read this?  Anyone care to comment on it?
  TOWARD DISTANT SUNS
  by T.A. Heppenheimer (author of Colonies in Space)
  Stackpole Books, $16.95
It is mentioned on the back of Science News (May 3, 1980).

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

TANG@MIT-MC 05/18/80 20:56:08 Re: Alien Intelligence Test

By the way, it just occured to me:
     If an alien zoologist captured you, wouldn't he want to keep you
unaware of that fact, so as to be able to study your habits in your
natural habitat?
     An if he's a galactic type, with many many years of experience
at building cages, couldn't he fool you?
     So you wouldn't realize you'd been captured, so you wouldn't go
out of your way to prove your intelligence. . . .
                      Don't look behind you, theres something there,

				Jack
------------------------------

Date: 18 May 1980 1409-PDT (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: silly special effex (graphics, etc.) in Westworld

While I was working at Abel during the heyday of Trek:TMP, we were
madly searching around for effex to put on the little display screens
that were to be scattered around the bridge of the Enterprise.

I had already put in my vote for some sort of pseudo-display (a
virtual screen where any number of displays would appear of whatever
shape necessary for the information), and for holographic displays
which would appear in mid-air.  I also strongly felt that round
displays were dumb (what is this, Buck Rogers?) Others at Abel agreed
with me, but Paramount told us that the display screens had already
been cast in fiberglass and it would cost a fortune to redo them
(considering the final cost of the film, that is pretty funny.)

Anyway, at one point I was in a high level meeting with most of the
film production biggies, and we were talking to John Whitney Sr.,
famous for his computer graphics animations and such, to see if he had
some good stuff for the ship displays.  So there he is sitting on the
other end of the couch from me, and Abel says: "Can someone name some
examples of effex that were really BAD that we should stay away from?"
So, I say:
   "Yeah.  The most stupid example I know of offhand is the dumb
   geometric figures and source listings rolling by on the screens
   in Westworld."
Whitney is staring at me as I said this.  He then said, very loudly:
   "** I ** did all of those!"
OOPS.  Foot in the mouth Lauren does it again.  Abel then says:
   "John, WHY did you do those?"
His reply:
   "For the money!  What else?"

They stopped inviting me to those meetings after that.

--Lauren--

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

Date: 18 May 1980 2104-PDT
From: CSD.EADAMS at SU-SCORE
Subject: Space noises.

A friend of mine related to me the following amusing incident: he and
a friend of HIS were discussing Star Wars, and Friend #1 was decrying
it. "Dogfights in space? Space vehicles BANKING around curves? Roaring
engines? It's ridiculous!"
     To which Friend #2 replied, "But you MUST have something to
listen to.  If you were making a movie, what would you have as
background for space scenes?"
     My friend simply said, "Strauss."

....'nuff said.

				Ernest

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

DANIEL@MIT-ML 05/18/80 21:51:30

Double Mumble!  
A (very short) course on lasers:

1) A laser is not a programming language, it therefore is not spelled
   "LASER" but "laser." (Most programming languages (e.g., Pascal)
   shouldn't be totally capitalized, but are anyway. But that's
   another gripe.)
2) Lasers work by having a population of excited atoms or molecules
   de-exite and thereby emit a photon in the same state as the photons
   around it. (That's how you get coherency.)
3) You can't get X-rays via this method. You get X-rays by pumping up
   electrons to the proper energy and then have then ram something.
4) Even if this can be made to work, I wouldn't classify it as a laser
   in the usual sense.

Next point, the car story referred to by Joe Newcomer [SFL V1 #110]
can be found in "A Random Walk in Science." It is a throughly
delightful book full of Journal of Irreproducible Results kind of
stuff. The authors are (I think) Mendoza and Weber.


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

Date: 19 May 1980 0517-EST
From: Roger Duffey <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: Editor's Note - A bit more on "LASER" vs "laser"

The term "LASER" is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated
Emission of Radiation. Acronyms are customarily written in capitals,
and prior to the middle to late 1960's that was the way it appeared
most frequently. Since that time, the device has proven to be
extremely useful in a wide variety of applications. It has been
discussed extensively in both the technical and popular media, and
has become a well known and widespread term. By 1969 dictionaries
were listing "laser" as a english word derived from the acronym. And
words of course are not written in capitals. At this point it is
printed much more frequently as a word than as an acronym.

Another interesting shift has been taking place in the meaning of the
term over the last several years. When "laser" was originally coined,
it only referred to devices which produced coherent waves in the
visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Soon after the laser
was demonstrated, a device was constructed which produced coherent
microwave radiation. This device was termed a "MASER" for Microwave
Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (which soon became
"maser" as well). However, it has also occasionally been termed a
"microwave laser".  Indeed the meaning of laser has been shifting
until any device which produces coherent electromagnetic radiation
tends to be referred to as a type of laser, especially within the
popular science media. What is popularly called an "X-ray laser" is
a device for producing coherent radiation within the X-ray region of
the electromagnetic spectrum. I cannot say whether "laser" is used
this way within the technical literature as well, or if it has kept
its more restricted meaning. Perhaps someone familiar with the
technical literature in this area can clarify that point.

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

MARG@MIT-AI 05/15/80 12:16:08

This is from a front page story in the Wall Street Journal, May 12, on
movies from comics (sic). Note that it claims that the U.S. release
date for Superman II will be summer 1981, although it will be Dec. 80
abroad.

THE MOVIE INDUSTRY OFFERS COMIC RELIEF FROM YOUR HEADACHES

Coming Films to Star Popeye, Flash Gordon and Tarzan; Sign of Creative
Drought?

By Earl C. Gottschalk, Jr.
Staff reporter of the Wall St. Journal

HOLLYWOOD-If recession, the Middle East and politics are getting you
down, the movie industry has some comic relief in store: a barrage of
movies starring such favorites as Popeye, Flash Gordon, Tarzan and
Jane, the Lone Ranger, Alley Oop, and Terry and the Pirates.
     The movies won't be cartoons. The comic-strip characters will be
played by live actors. "Why not?" says Richard Kahn, senior vice
president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. "In our remake of 'Tarzan the
Apeman,' we have Bo Derek playing Jane."
[...removed boring paragraphs on execs' social theories...marg]
     Moviegoers enjoy seeing problems solved in an elemental way,
MGM's Mr.  Kahn says. "In all the comic movies, " he says,
"everything is black and white (he's talking about situations, not
cinematography), and you know where you stand. Tarzan is direct; he
doesn't ask Jane if they might have a meaningful relationship or if
they can get together for lunch sometime."
     Some producers express dismay with the comic trend. "If this is
all they can come up with, I think we're facing a creative drought in
Hollywood," a dissident producer syas. "This approach shows disdain
for the audience and a tendency toward imitation of the latest hit."
     But fiscal, if not aesthetic, logic has a strong appeal. many
students of movies think the comic trend really began with the success
of Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp.'s "Star Wars." That 1977 film
wasn't based on a comic strip but had comic-like characters and was
later written in comic serial form. The movie made more than $200
million in world-wide film rentals. Warner Communications' 1978
"Superman" reaped about $150 million in film rentals and further
fueled the comic craze.
     The mass appeal of many comic strip characters means that movies
about them have been presold, producers say. "Next to Coca-Cola,
Popeye is the best known name indigenous to America around the world,"
Mr. Evans asserts. Mr. Tanen of MCA says the wide recognition accorded
the characters will help immensely in marketing the movies. "When they
see the name Flash Gordon on the theatre marquee," he says, "people
will know what they're getting into - fun, excitement, escapism."
     Securities analysts like the trend. "Sales of these movies to
television and to other secodary markets should be excellent because
the television networks will know up front what they're buying, the
characters are so well-known," says Theodore E. James, an analyst for
Montgomery Securities Inc. of San Francisco. But Mr. Evans says he
will never sell "Popeye" to television. In the long run, he says, he
can make more money by reissuing the film to theatres time and time
again.
     Many of the new films rely on costly special effects. For the $18
million "Popeye," Paramount and Disney have built a city on Malta and
have spent nine months constructing a rubber octopus that Popeye
demolises with a single punch - after gobbling spinach, of course. It
took weeks to create the muscle-bound forearms that Robin Williams
(Mork of TV fame) flexes as Popeye. He slams baddies through houses;
his enemy, Bluto, destroys a house with his bare hands.
     "Flash Gordon" cost $30 million. It features rocket ships with
interior decor from the 1930's, hawk-men and other strange creatures.
The movie makes flash a bumbler who stumbles his way into a series of
predicaments.
     "Superman II" cost $22 million, "The Lone Ranger" $18 million.
     The comic-strip movies start running next December with "Popeye,"
"Flash Gordon" and "The Lone Ranger." "Superman II" opens abroad in
December and in the U.S. in the summer of 1981. "Tarzan the Apeman"
also is scheduled to open that summer.

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

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

Date: 20 MAY 1980 0323-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #112
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 20 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 112

Today's Topics:   TESB, SF Bloopers, Alien Intelligence Test, Lasers,
                Queries - Time Tunnel & Here's the Plot, Disclave 1980
----------------------------------------------------------------------

YEKTA@MIT-MC 05/20/80 01:36:12 Re: TESB

     Well, the empire struck back in Beckman auditorium at Caltech on
Sunday. ( May 18 ) It was free for all Caltech students. ( Advantages
of having the chairman of 20'th Century Fox (?) on the board of
trustees... ) It was full two hours long and very entertaining. The
special effects are superb ( aside from a few technical bugs... They
are not very important though...) It has pretty cute unexpected twists
in it... I won't tell you any of them, I do not want to be a spoiler.
Good movie I say.

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

Date: 19 May 1980 0649-EDT (Monday)
From: David.Lamb at CMU-10A
Subject: sounds in space

SF movies have sounds for lasers, phasers, and whatnot for the same
reason that the Star Trek opening credits have the Enterprise
whooshing across the screen; without the sound, the scene leaves the
viewer cold. I seem to recall reading somewhere that they originally
tried the opening Star Trek credits without the sound - since Gene
Roddenberry knew perfectly well that there wasn't any air to carry
it - but people who previewed the shots said that it didn't have
any impact on them when it was silent.

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

Date: 19 May 1980 1906-EDT
From: JHENDLER at BBN-TENEXA
Subject: SF Bloopers

While we're on the subject, my pet peeve has always been the concept
of the spacecraft being damaged by the shockwave of a near miss. In
every SF movie/TV show I can remember the crew gets thrown around every
time a missile/torpedo/bomb/weapon explodes nearby. What transmits the
shockwaves????

 -Jim

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

Date: 19 May 1980 1319-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: blooper, intell test

Last night while watching 'Brave New World' on the tube, I noticed
that in the scene where the Beta tech fell off of the cliff, the top
of the air-bag was just barely viasble on the bottom of the screen.

R.E. The use of mulitiplication in the alien intell test: I wonder
if a very advanced culture will still know how to multiply, or if at
least, would recognize the old square mult table. Note how calculators
are destroying the abilities of modern day man to do simple
arithmetic.

Dan

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

Date: 19 May 1980 1214-PDT
From: DDYER at USC-ISIB
Subject: intelligence test

  The comments about the possible (and undecided) intellegence of
dolphins are quite right. My toolmaking prejudice is really just a
form of human chauvinism. Such considerations should be in our minds
when WE are the aliens giving intelligence tests somewhere. However,
for the current case (humans being tested by aliens who came to us)
they are probably irrelevant, since humans are too makers, and so
would be any aliens who set up shop studying the local fauna.

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

Date:  19 May 1980 12:49 edt
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Alien IQ assumption

No, dolphins are not more like us than the aliens will be. Dolphins
don't use tools. Barring the possiblity of massive mind over matter,
aliens who can capture one of us will come in vehicles. Maybe they
won't be using hammers and spanners, but they will need some
technology for bending metal, plastic, whatever. I doubt they
will confuse cars for people.

Could intelligent beings the size of cockroaches exist? Could they be
built on a chemical basis? I doubt you could pack enough nerves into a
roach. What better technoloogy might there be for brains? You might be
able to build a smart device that small using VVVVVLSI, but not with
carbon, silicon, etc. life. Does anyone believe this?

If there were smart roaches, would it be hard for them to build steel
mills, etc, while climbing out of the stone age (assuming they live on
an earthlike world - the folks who live on Dragons Egg are NOT going
to come to us, I bet)

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

Date: 19 May 1980 11:29 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC

Ref Kusnick's comment about linguistic ability being reflected by
"written" language, a number of cultures (Norse? Amerindian? Various
African? I forget.....) had complex languages but transmitted their
records mainly verbally (e.g., eddas, etc.).

This reminds me of the teeth-grinding I did a few years ago when
Alistair Cooke announced in his intro to Civilization that nomadic
cultures have no civilization qed. (Not that I'm grinding my teeth
at you, Greg, I'm just in a teeth grinding state after watching the
Preakness Saturday; let's hear it for two great horses and one honest
jockey.)

As for cats not being intelligent, Jef, just wait until I get my claws
on you.....

Karen

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

Date: 19 May 1980 09:05 PDT
From: Orr at PARC-MAXC

I would not be too quick to deny my cat his intelligence; it could be
argued that his living arrangements are easier than mine.

The best example of frivolity [loaded word] by a non-domesticated
species? I spent 45 minutes watching a golden eagle "playing" in the
thermals along the rim of the Snake River canyon; the bird would
spiral up nearly out of sight, fold up and plummet to below the rim,
catch itself and begin to climb. This looked like great fun, but the
bird may simply have been blowing fleas out of its feathers. It
continued to repeat this as long as I was willing to watch.

Julian

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

Date:  20 May 1980 00:06 edt
From:  SALawrence at MIT-Multics (STEVE at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  Cats at play -- Reflex??

Come on, now. This is a real abuse of the language here. Call it
instinct if you must, learned behaviour if you will, but reflex??

As to cats and other animals learning to play, and as to play being
beneficial, well, how many human children do you know who invent all
their own games (or any perceptible fraction of them)? And did anyone
ever say play was not beneficial to a human child? If learned or
benefical activities cannot be considered to be 'real' play, then I'm
afraid we have to conclude that humans play no more than any other
mammal.

As a side question apropos beneficial though apparently frivolous
behaviour, does anyone on this list know how sliding boards benefit
penguins? This isn't a challange, it's a curiousity question.

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

Date: 19 MAY 1980 1022-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: MASERS and LASERS

     Masers actually came BEFORE lasers. The concept of getting
coherent radiation from a collection of atoms was independently
invented by three groups. The first published paper was J. Weber,
Trans. IRE PGED-3 (June 1953) entitled "Amplification of Microwave
Radiation by Substances not in Thermal Equilibrium". (Weber later
went on to build the first gravitational radiation antenna.) Later
papers were by Townes, et. al. Phys. Rev, 95, 282 (1954) and Basov
and Prokhorov, JETP(USSR), 27, 431 (1954). Townes and the two
russians later won the Nobel prize. Masers were in common use for
radio astronomy and microwave communication when a race started to
make the first "Light MASER". This was achieved first by Ted Maiman
here at Hughes Research Labs in 1960.
     X-ray lasers (XASER?) and gamma-ray lasers (GASER?) will probably
be built using ampliflication by stimulated emission from electrons
shot past some kind of periodic lattice a la a traveling wave tube,
however, it is theoretically possible that they could be made using
stimulated emission from excited states of the NUCLEI of the atom,
rather than the excited states of the electrons in the atom (or
molecule). Papers have been written on the subject where a crystal of
radioactive material is made to Xase or Gase. Two problems. Once the
crystal has given off its radiation it can not be "pumped" up again
like a ruby atom, so they are one-shot devices. Also, they will only
work in deep space. The "red-shift" experienced by an x-ray or
gamma-ray photon in dropping a few atoms distance worth in the gravity
field of the earth (or even near the earth) is enough to shift the
frequency of the photon out of the resonance bandwidth of the atoms
so it will no longer stimulate the emission.

     Lasers make good long distance weapons since they travel at the
speed of light and you don't need much "lead" for fast moving targets.
But for close infighting I would take an automatic slugthrower any
day.

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

JGA@MIT-MC 05/19/80 13:29:00 Re: lasers,masers,xrasers

Two little things.

I believe the maser came first, before the laser that is. The first
Amplifiers by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (aser's ?) were ammonia
masers.[1] The push toward the visible was originally called the
search for the Optical Maser. The big difference was that the cavity
(in which the photons rattle around) became an optical cavity, rather
than a microwave cavity.[2]

You don't have to excite atoms or molecules to get something for
stimulated emission, you can use "bare" electrons in a rippled
magnetic field. This is the Free Electron Laser or FEL. (See how
acronyms propagate.) The FEL is (theoretically) tunable over an
incredibly wide range, right up into the x-ray region, and holds
the greatest promise of being an "x-ray laser" it seems.[3]

References (only for the compulsively interested).

[1] The first conception of the maser was in 1951, by Townes, on (what
    else?) the back of an envelope. It was realized, experimentally,
    by Gordon, Zeiger and Townes, in 1954.

[2] Microwave cavities are a few wavelengths big. The walls conduct,
    and therefore reflect the microwaves. Optical cavities are LOTS of
    wavelengths big, a single wavelength being on the order of 1E-4
    meters or less. Here, it's all done with mirrors. (Actually that's
    a bit facetious, but the idea is there.)

[3] Research into free electron lasers is being heavily funded by the
    Department of Defense. I believe (correct me, someone, if this is
    obsolete) that they have been successfully operated as laser
    amplifiers, but not as oscillators. Yes they do have awesome
    potential, both military and otherwise.

John

[ Thanks also to RDM@MC and Ayers@PARC-MAXC for personal messages
  correcting my historical error.  --  RDD ]

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

Date: 19 May 1980 1319-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: X-ray lasers:

R.E. X-ray lasers: One way to create X-Rays is to slam electrons into
surfaces. Another way to create x-rays is VERY energetic syncrotron
radiation. Another way is to allow electrons to fall from very
energetic electron orbitals to very low energy orbitals. Imagine the
energy available from an electron dropping from the Thorium 5f -> 1s
transition. I have a friend in the Air Farce who is working on lasers
as weapons. He couldn't say much, but he indicated that X-rays lasers
are a reality, and that they discovered them by looking at a set of
equations for predicting the frequency of emited light from solid
state lasers. For certain compositions the value became
indeterminate, so hey tried those, and after a lot of fiddling,
viola'. He also indicated that there were some problems, in that the
damned things shattered with great excitiment just as or after the
beam was created.

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

YEKTA@MIT-MC 05/20/80 01:36:12 Re: X ray lasers...

X ray laser business : You CAN get X rays out of electron transitions
between the very inner shells of heavy enough atoms. ( K shells for
example... These X rays may be a little soft, but they are X rays.
Heavier the atom, harder the X rays... One does not have to ram
electrons into targets (decelerate in general...) to get X rays,
although that is the conventional (and easy) way.

                                      Best, Yekta.

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

DERWAY@MIT-AI 05/19/80 23:50:51 Re: Laser weapons.

The best thing to use for a laser type weapon is a gamma ray laser, or
graser. It has to be done by pumping all the nuclei to a high energy
state, and allowing them all to fall back in phase, emitting coherent
gamma rays. This would not, however, be the subtle weapon one might
want, as a shot could carry as much energy as a small atomic bomb. You
need the energy to pump the thing up too...

				zzztt-bboooommmm,
					Don

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

Date: 19 May 1980 1055-PDT
From: Lasater at SUMEX-AIM

I have two requests for information from people on the net:

1) Does anyone remember anything about the mid-60's TV series Time
   Tunnel. While perhaps not Emmy material, I always enjoyed the
   recreation of historical events which I remember as the hallmark
   of the series. I would especially appreciate a plot digest similar
   to the one on "Outer Limits" distributed by Lauren@UCLA-Security
   in January

2) The March, 1980 issue of Omni discusses Cyranoids, people wired up
   to another person who is their "master" and tells them what to say.
   I remember a somewhat whimsical sf story which developed the
   commercial potential of this technique. Does anyone know the author
   or title??

robert lasater@sumex

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

Date: 05/19/80 1650-EDT
From: THOKAR at LL
Subject: Story inquiry

I have a story query from XSDF at LL.

     Hero is called to distant planet by a former lover. She had sent
him half of a stone/ring(?) to collect on a promise made. He arrives
to find her in the company of a powerful hunter/warlord. The details
of her relationship to the villian are unclear.

That is as far into the book as my friend had gotten. Anyone out there
have any ideas. Sorry for the paucity of information.

                                          Greg

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

SJP@MIT-MC 05/19/80 20:53:55

   I will being going to Disclave.  So see you there!!!!!!
                    
                                            Mike

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

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

Date: 21 MAY 1980 0531-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #113
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Wednesday, 21 May 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 113

  Today's Topics:   TESB, Books - Destinies & Dying of the Light,
                   Nebula Award Winners, SF Bloopers - Shockwaves,
                  Alien Intelligence Test, Physics Tomorrow - ?ASERS
----------------------------------------------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/21/80 00:55:07 Re: TESB on NBC and other matters...

      Tuesday morning, Gene Shalit of NBC's 'Today' show reviewed
'Empire'. And he liked it very, very much. Thought it was great 
entertainment, with two small exceptions - first, that it was lacking
some of the humor the original film had; and second, that the ending
was somewhat unsatisfactory. But overall, it was a strong 'yes' vote
from The Critic's Corner.

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

Date: 20 May 1980 1103-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Destines 

Besides it's usual crop of good fiction, the last two issues of
DESTINIES have had several excellent pieces of non-fiction. In the
Feb-Mar issue, Fred Pohl has a short piece about the science behind
his Starbow. Sandra Miesel follows with a sketch of Gordon Dickson and
his work, concentrating on the DORSAI stories. Then Jerry Pournelle
has a MUST READ article on the computer revolution whose time is NOW.
He talks about some of his MIT experience on MAC, playing ZORK, micros
for text processing (as well as their normal use, game playing), and
the potentials of networking, among other things. `Information
networks will sprint into existence. Some will be frivolous: perhaps
electronic fanzines (something like that already exists)...'

To round out the issue, the L-5 review talks about space forts (DoD,
particularly ARPA, may develop a vested interest in exploiting
extraterrestial resources in order to provide `hardening' for vital
information gathering satellites), and the book column has been split
into separate critic and review columns (an excellent idea, but only
time will tell if it is workable).

[The critic is Norman Spinrad, reviewer is Orson Scott Card. -- RDD]

Although I still find the fiction in F&SF to be of higher literary
quality (although not in complete agreement with my tastes), and the
stories in IASFM to generally be superior to those in DESTINIES, Jim
Baen has assembled the best selection of non-fiction between two
magazine covers that I've seen in quite awhile. My only complaint:
there is too much concentration on Space and Computer topics. Although
these are very important growth fields, other areas, such as genetics,
seem to offer a lot of room for speculation as well. Some variety
would be appreciated.

Jim

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

Date: 20 MAY 1980 1201-EDT
From: CJS at SU-AI, David.Lamb at CMU-10A,
      Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A, PDL at MIT-DM      
Subject: XSDF & Thokar's story query in SFL V1 #112

This book is "Dying of the Light" by George R. R. Martin (Simon and
Schuster, 1977). "After the Festival" is an abridged version of the
novel that was serialized in the April through June 1977 issues of
ANALOG. It was also selected for the Science Fiction Book Club.

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

Date: 20 MAY 1980 1201-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: story query

  THOKAR's story is DYING OF THE LIGHT (abridged in ANALOG as AFTER
THE FESTIVAL) by George R. R. Martin, which I got about half-way
through reading last night. It's uncertain whether there is a real
villain in the story, but it certainly isn't any of the characters
mentioned in the query. (Who the villain might be is so much a part
of the development that I'll leave it unspoiled.) An interesting
book; it grows on you with repeated readings. I was very repelled by
it at first; Martin was trying to do the same sort of thing Cherryh
routinely does well, without the same kind and depth of background,
and possibly a somewhat sexist viewpoint as well---but he seems less
culturally oriented (as Cherryh is) and more working with the symbols
you can get out of a rogue planet that had a 10-year festival and is
now five years into returning to its freezing, sunless course.

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

Date: 20 May 1980 1515-PDT
From: The person typing at the Alto of Richard R. Brodie
      Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Nebula Awards for 1979  

            From LOCUS, May 1980, issue 223 [Vol. 13, No. 5]

214 ballots were cast for this year's Nebula Awards. The winners were:

BEST NOVEL
----------
   "The Fountains of Paradise," Arthur C Clarke (Harcourt)
   2. "On Wings of Song," Tomas M Disch (St. Martin's)
   3. "Titan," John Varley (Berkley/Putnam)

BEST NOVELLA
------------
   "Enemy Mine," Barry B Longyear (IASFM - September 1979)
   2. "Fireship," Joan D Vinge (Analog - December 1979)
   3. "The Tale of Gorgik," Samuel R. Delany (Asimov's Science Fiction
         Adventure Magazine - Summer 1979)

BEST NOVELETTE
--------------
   "Sandkings," George R. R. Martin (Omni - August 1979)
   2. "Options," John Varley (UNIVERSE 9)
   3. "The Ways of Love," Poul Anderson (DESTINIES - #2)

BEST SHORT STORY
----------------
   "giANTS," Edward Bryant (Analog - August 1979)
   2. "Unaccompanied Sonata," Orson Scott Card (Omni - March 1979)
   3. "The Way of Cross and Dragon," George R. R. Martin
         (Omni - June 1979)

Frank Herbert will edit the next Nebula Award Anthology.

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

ISRAEL@MIT-AI 05/20/80 17:27:13

- BLOOPERS -
One interesting blooper from ST:TMP concernes VEJUR's name. How did he
learn to pronounce the name without any humans around, how did it know
that the symbols "V GER" were letters and his name, as opposed to the
other writing on his side such as NASA and THIS SIDE UP, and if VEJUR
was smart enough to figure out all this other stuff, why wasn't he
smart enough to wipe away the dirt to read the missing letters?

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

JAMES TURNER (NO MAIL DIRECT TO ME PLEASE) 05/20/80 16:10:13

   THANKS FOR EVERYONE'S HELP IN BACKING UP MY COMMENTS ON THE USE OF
LASERS. QUESTION, IS THERE A LOW END TO THE LASE-ABLE SPECTRUM. ALSO, A
'SHOCKWAVE' IN SPACE COULD BE ONE OF TWO THINGS: 1) DEBRIES FROM THE
EXPLODIE HITTING THE SHIP. 2) ENERGY RELEASES (THIS WAS WHAT MOST OF
THE STAR TREK SHOCKS WERE).
				<JMT>

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

Date: 05/20/80 1349-EDT
From: KG Heinemann (SORCEROR at LL)
Subject:  shock waves in space

     The question of whether spacecraft could be damaged by shock
waves from close-by explosions must be considered with more care
than JHENDLER seems to have given it. Extraterrestrial space is
not a true vacuum, but contains atoms, molecules, and dust. These
particles constitute a medium which is quite capable of sustaining
shock waves. In fact, the propagation of shock waves through the
interstellar medium currently is an area of active research in
theoretical astrophysics. Supernovae and turbulent stellar
atmospheres are thought to be probable sources of such shock
waves. The interstellar medium is much less dense than planetary
atmospheres and seas, so one is justified in expecting that the
effects of explosive shocks in space may be different from what is
experienced in a planetary environment. However, the degree and
nature of the difference can be known only through an appropriate
analysis. I am not knowledgable enough about the topic of shock
waves in the interstellar medium to answer the question. Perhaps
Dr. Forward could offer some comments.

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

OAF@MIT-MC 05/20/80 13:20:19 Re: Bloopers  

     I have no great difficulty dealing with ships in space being
knocked around by near-miss exlosions. Wouldn't gas ejected by the
explosion and hitting the craft suffice? Of course, one suspects
that high-speed solid projectiles would be more dangerous....

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

Date: 20 MAY 1980 1201-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: shockwaves

 It is arguable that many of the weapons suggested for use in space
work by abrupt \production/ of gasses, so they would not be absolutely
dependent on atmosphere to produce a shock in the case of a near miss.
However, I've never had the math to calculate the actual impact of a
near miss from such a device and I suspect that STAR TREK, etc.,
deliberately overrated the probable effect for the same reason that
they had sound in space---to make a more convincing (to the average
mundane) effect and to maintain the impact of the rest of the show.
(There's also the question of the exact nature of the ship's
shields/deflectors; these would probably increase the volume in
which a blast would hav some effect, while not completely absorbing
the effects of a material weapon (as opposed to rays).)
  An entirely different question comes up when considering "energy"
weapons; George O. Smith, in VENUS EQUILATERAL, described the effects
of a near miss from a weapon throwing a beam of charged particles,
which could give quite a jolt. A pure energy weapon, such as a laser,
would be much less likely to have such an effect, and therefore might
not be the weapon of choice for space battles (not having to lead a
target is nice, but doing some damage with a near miss also has its
benefits). (Smith can be very amusing nowadays; not only did he
overestimate the difficulty of LONG-range communication (granted, the
Voyager satellites were listening, but why would an interplanetary
passenger ship not have an antenna pointed to the closer of its
departure and arrival points?) but he knew very little outside of
physics of radio; his last VE story, in REQUIEM FOR ASTOUNDING, has a
howler of a biochemical error which I would have expected Campbell to
catch and which Blish had gotten right previously in SPOCK MUST DIE!)

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

FAUST@MIT-ML 05/20/80 10:29:29 Re: communication with aliens

     For an interesting discussion of the difficulties of
communicating in unshared languages, and in fact an interesting byline
on the actual message that is contained in a finite example of some
language, I recommend chapter VI of "Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal
Golden Braid" by Douglas R. Hofstadter, 1979, Basic Books Inc., New
York.
     The chapter is entitled "The Location of Meaning". In it
Hofstadter uses several widely differing examples of messages,
including the possible communication with alien life.
     For those of you who either don't have a copy available, or don't
want to spend the time, his basic assertion is that what we normally
consider a message in some language is actually contains 3 messages, a
frame message, an outer message and an inner message. He defines them
as follows (taken from page 166):

     "To understand the frame message is to recognize the need for
      a decoding-mechanism."

     "To understand the outer message is to build, or know how to
      build, the correct decoding machanism for the inner message."

     "To understand the inner message is to have extracted the
      meaning intended by the sender."

     We normally only consider the inner message as pertinent while
communicating among ourselves because the frame and outer message are
preassumed by both communicating parties.
     It appears that the most difficult part about communicating with
aliens is the correct understanding of the outer message (assuming
that we have enough in common intellectually that, once decyphered,
the inner message will make sense; if this is not the case, it may
well be that attempts to communicate would be doomed to failure in
any event). Most of the mail to SF-LOVERS so far seem to be aimed at
suggesting methods of conveying the outer message.

     To those of you who do take the time to read the chapter, (and
perhaps even the rest of the book) I think that you will find it
worthwile. ENJOY . . .

	Greg

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

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/21/80 00:55:07 Re: and other matters...

     At this point I was planning to offer comments on the questions
of aliens determining our intelligence, but I must go back to this kit
I've been fooling with. The otherday by accident, I got this catalogue
from some place called Electronics Service, Unit 16. It had a bunch of
neat kits and I ordered one called an Interociter. i've almost got
this triangle shaped screen wired now...talk about IQ tests later...

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

ISRAEL@MIT-AI 05/20/80 17:27:13

- MATHEMATICS -
Re the comment someone [ Dolata in SFL V1 #112 ] made about hand held
calculators making humans deficient in arithmetic skills. Isaac Asimov
covered that idea very well in a story called "The Feeling of Power"
which is about someone in the future who reinvents addition and
multiplication by observing the operation of calculators and trying
to imitate them. It can be found in his collection NINE TOMORROWS.

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

Date: 20 MAY 1980 1201-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: math incompetence; lambda

  Arithmetic incompetence is indeed spreading; a local writer recently
described with amusement the frantic scurrying at a McDonald's when
their special cash-registers all died and they had to total up the
orders on the manager's pocket calculator---apparently nobody could
add up and figure tax with pencil and paper (I suspect they would not
have even had meals tax tables posted, but that's hardly an excuse).

  I'm sure several people will point out that the wavelength of
visible light ranges from .4 to .7 e-6 meters (although the same
equipment can control wavelengths over 1 e-6 meters, given an
appropriate source; at <.4 you need different materials for the
transparent sections.)

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

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 05/20/80 14:29:07 Re: [m/g/l/x]asers

Amateur physicist here. From the discussion going on is sfl it would
seem like virtually any type of atomic or nuclear transition can be
exploited to generate a []aser of some kind. Does someone know the
limitations on this process? There must be some.

Perhaps there is an entirely unexplored area of laser technology
focusing on low energy transitions. Why not VASERS (vibrational state
changes) or RASERS (rotational energy transitions). Would there be a
use for same?

This list could continue. Various molecules are very good at absorbing
specific frequencies. How about a chlorophyl laser? (it would be
yellow) Chemical reactions involve energy changes in electronic
configurations. How about a chelation laser (CHASER?).

Just musing.  This is SFL after all.
	Dan

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

Date: 20 May 1980 11:07 am PDT (Tuesday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: various 'asers

To Bob Forward (and anyone else who might know):

In reference to your comments on getting coherent X-rays from excited
nuclei (SFL V1 #112): I assume the photons come from state-transitions
of the electrically-charged protons in an excited nucleus. What of the
excited neutrons? Is there a corresponding strong-force energy
transition, and would it be possible to produce a coherent beam of
"strong-ons" or whatever you call 'em? Do the particles that transmit
the strong force even exist outside the nucleus, and if so, what kind
of mirror would reflect them? If a coherent beam could be produced,
what would be its properties?

And to go beyond even that, how about gravitons and gravity-lasers?

			-- Greg

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

Date: 20 MAY 1980 2018-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: STRASERS and GRASERS

     Hummmm.... It has been 20 years since quantum mechanics...
Sure! I too assume the photons come from state-transitions of the
electrically-charged protons in an excited nucleus (sounds correct
anyway.) I am afraid there is no corresponding strong-force energy
transitions to produce a coherent beam of "strong-ons", since "they"
have mass and do not live long enough to travel anywhere.

     Also, only massless particles with integer spin can lase, since
it requires a bose-einstein particle to obtain stimulated emission.
The half-integer particles are fermi-dirac types, that "anti-lase". If
you have a boson moving through a material ready to emit other bosons
of the same type, it will stimulate the emission of those other
bosons. In fact the more bosons traveling through the material, the
more likely one of the atoms will add another boson to the crowd.
Fermions are opposite. Once a fermion is moving through a material
ready to emit another fermion of the same type, it will inhibit the
emission of those fermions until it passes. Bosons, like scalarons,
photons, and gravitons are gregarious. Fermions, like neutrinos and
gravitinos are exclusive.

     Yes, there can be a gravity-laser, but more than likely it
will discharge through an electromagnetic channel before there is
a significant GASER formed.

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

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

Date: 22 MAY 1980 0340-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #114
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 22 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 114

 Today's Topics: Replies - Cyranoids & Prisoner & Dying of the Light,
                Alien Intelligence Test, Incompetence from Technology,
                     SF Bloopers, Physics Tomorrow - ?ASERS, TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1980 1426-PDT
From: Lasater at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: response to story query from [SFL V1 #112]

A few days ago, I asked about a story which featured people connected
by radio/tv to a central location where another person, the master or
guider, observed what was going on and could take control at crisis
points.

Thanks to HITCHCOCK at CCA I have identified the story.  It is by L.
Sprague de Camp and is entitled "The Guided Man".  It can be found
in "The Best of L. Sprague de Camp", one of a series of "best of"
recently published by Ballantine books.  The master could not only
direct speech, but also facial expression, tone of voice, and general
manner of the person being guided. Thus de Camp's idea is considerably
more advanced than the "Cyranoids" in the March 1980 Omni issue, which
are the research tools of a psychologist profiled in the article.

robert lasater@sumex

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

Date: 20 MAY 1980 1129-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: story query

  I didn't see the story in OMNI, but from the description given I
recognize similarity to one by L. Sprague de Camp, reprinted in A
GUN FOR DINOSAUR (and elsewhere); the idea is that someone short on
confidence can have an implant which allows him to be controlled by
someone more adept in social situations. Unfortunately, his controller
becomes his rival for a girl.... Light but entertaining (like much of
de Camp).

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

Date: 16 May 1980 1231-PDT
Sender: WRS at OFFICE-2
Subject: prisoner books

I believe that for $5 you can still obtain two books on the prisoner
from "Prisoner Books; KQED-TV; ???; San Francisco".

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

Date: 05/21/80 1008-EDT
From: XSDF at LL
Subject: Story query from THOKAR [ see SFL V1 #112,113 ]

Also many thanks to PROCEP, David.Lamb, Kusnick, HITCHOCK, and AYERS
for answering the story query that Greg sent for me. DYING OF THE
LIGHT by George R. R. Martin was the book that I was looking for.
Since my address was in the initial query, the responses could have
come directly to me instead of going through Greg.

                                    Barbara

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

Date: 19 May 1980 0710-EDT (Monday)
From: Mike.Inners at CMU-10A (C621MI10)
Subject: Intelligence

On intelligence displays: I wouldn't use a dolphin as a counterexample
to the 'non-utilitarian behaviour' proposal...we still don't know for
sure if they aren't intelligent.  If the aliens were semi-mechanical
it might be VERY hard to convince them that people were not the
unintelligent servants of the intelligent automobiles.  Even a good
look at our economy would show no convincing evidence that the primary
purpose of (U.S.) people was to support the automobiles....

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

Date: 16 May 1980 1231-PDT
Sender: WRS at OFFICE-2
Subject: aliens

It seems to me that the real question that the aliens will be
attempting to answer when observing our planet is "which intelligent
beings are responsible for creating which objects and for performing
which acts?".  We are able to answer this question ourselves only for
creations or actions which are similar to those we have actually
witnessed.  The only way that an alien would be able to realize that
cars are made by humans is to actually see it being done.  As familiar
as we are with our own world, our explanation of our own "evolution"
could easily be as far off base as an alien's explanation of cars
eating people.  And don't forget about "carbon base infestations".

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1980 11:42 am PDT (Wednesday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Math incompetence; writing as language

Given the discussion of increasing math-incompetence in the presence
of hand-held calculators, one wonders whether increasing dependence
on video communications will result in a similar kind of literary
incompetence.

Imagine a future science text: not words-on-paper, but animated
pictures of atoms, cells, galaxies, etc.  Would there even be a
need for an explanatory voice-over ("In the beginning there were
hot lumps...") or would pictures alone suffice, perhaps with brief
verbal "captions" that need not even be complete grammatical
sentences.  Similarly one can imagine multi-media dramatic
presentations displacing written fiction, newsreels displacing
newspapers, ...

Now I'm not suggesting that SPEECH would disappear (at least not yet).
Verbal behavior is much more ingrained into the human nervous system
than is mathematical behavior.  However, I have yet to hear of a
brain-center specialized for spelling in the same way that there is a
brain-center (known as Wernicke's area) for grammatical speech.  The
alphabet may well be extinct within a few generations.  The process
has already begun; consider road signs printed in "universal" sign
language.

And down the road a piece, when interacive graphics technology becomes
truly ubiquitous and portable, and visual tasks of unprecedented
complexity become routine, who's to say what biological adaptations
will arise?  Cortical space is and will continue to be at a premium;
there is no room in the brain for specialized functions of limited
usefulness.  And a picture IS worth at least a thousand words...

			-- Greg

------------------------------

Date: 19 May 1980 0710-EDT (Monday)
From: Mike.Inners at CMU-10A (C621MI10)
Subject: Technical Holes

One of the more obvious (and least likely to be fixed) technical holes
in popular SF is the habit of the fighters using their wings to bank
turns - in a vacuum!  One wonders what they are banking against...
The appropriate way to turn using the (apparently) reaction engines
would be to turn the ship at an angle to it's path and apply thrust
sideways...not bank.  But your average viewer would probably be
uncomfortable with a spaceship that flew sideways while turning, so
I doubt that any producers are going to make the switch.

The only time I ever saw a decent (accurate, that is) explosion was
in Silent Running, where the explosions are perfect spheres.  Even
then they couldn't resist putting in the sound.  At least most newer
productions don't have the smoke visibly rising as in many older
movies.  Ever wonder how the ships fly through the debris of the ship
they just exploded without being peppered with junk?  Or even hulled?
I have...

------------------------------

RWK@MIT-MC 05/20/80 04:21:44

Why do people object to shock waves in space? What IS an explosion
other than rapidly expanding gasses? If there were no shock wave, the
explosion would never do any damage. If you're sitting in a vacuum,
and all of a sudden find yourself with a significant force on one side
due to high-energy gasses from an explosion hitting you on one side,
it's likely to shake you up a bit.

As to "woosh" and such: I think directors are missing a good chance
for a very powerful and REAL effect: Silent vacuum shots leave you
cold? Cut to an interior scene for 3/4 second of LOUD engine noise
and vibration, and then back to the silent outer view again. I can't
think of any space movies that I've seen this done with, unless it
was done in 2001 (it's been a loooong time), but this is pretty
standard in submarine movies, to switch between all hell breaking
lose inside, and the almost-silence of the deep sea, and it's always
very effective. If the total silence really still is a problem,
apropriate music can add to the silence in much the same way the
"ping" of sonar and occasional bubble-sounds. Or even better: Make
the outside viewpoint be an observer in a suit. What sounds does he
hear? His suit radio, occasionally, AND HIS BREATHING. Maybe even
his heartbeat. This can be very effective in producing silence,
emptiness, lonliness, and granduer. (And oh yes, his suit creaks.
He bumps his air tank against something with a clang transmitted
through the hoses from the tank. The equipment he's holding whirrs
faintly. His suit-jets couple some sounds to his suit and thus to
his ear. In a comedy, he's playing disco music inside his suit.
Or he may like listening to Bach violin concertos while he works.)
Basically, I think SF movies are MORE effective when done accurately
WITH IMAGINATION.

------------------------------

Date:     21 May 1980 0015-edt
From:     Barmar <Margolin.Student at MIT-Multics>
Re:       SF Bloopers, Vejur, Phasers

On the subject of technical bloopers, did anyone notice the people in
the San Francisco spaceport scene in ST:TMP.  Many of them were real
people; however, not all of them were.  The people in the background
(when they did the shots from above, not the closeups) were part of a
matte (a painted part of the scene which is superimposed on the film of
the live action).  They just stand there, about three or four dozen of
them.  It's a fine hack on the movie-goers.

About how Vejur knew how to pronounce his name.  The Voyagers we have
sent out so far have had recordings of popular earth sounds on them,
so that if any aliens should happen to find one of them, they can know
what we sound like.  If Vejur had one, the aliens that found it could
have figured out what his name sounded like.  On the other hand, he
also read parts of the Enterprise's memory, so he could have gotten it
from there.  As a third speculation, Vejur was a moby computer; it's
creators could have programmed the English language into it.  One more
possibility: it was not Vejur talking to the Enterprise people, but
the Ilia probe, which had Ilia's brain patterns duplicated, and could
have used Ilia's memory of English in order to decide how to say it.

About the question of what the various different types of lasers
should be called.  I think the appropriate name for all the different
types should be PHASERs (!), as they all are PHoton Amplification by
Stimulated Emmision of Radiation.  I also believe that this is what
the word phaser in STAR TREK is supposed to stand for, although I'm
not sure what the phasers actually did in relation to how lasers work.

------------------------------

From: Obrien at Rand-Unix
Date: 21 May 1980 at 2249-PDT

     Suddenly, after DGSHAP's message, I know what a "phaser" must be
(of ST fame).  Obviously, it projects phonons, the quantum units of
whole-body vibration.  The target shakes itself to pieces.  One thing
I'm ashamed to admit, since at one time I almost understood what
phonons were, is that I forget whether phonons obey Bose-Einstein or
Fermi-Dirac statistics.  Do they have spin at all?  If not, I guess
they're bosons and can be lased...

------------------------------

RWK@MIT-MC 05/21/80 06:10:23 Re: GASER

Is a Gravity Laser Identically Equal to a Tractor Beam?

------------------------------

JGA@MIT-MC 05/21/80 12:42:18 Re: assorted lasery

In answer to JMT's question, it depends what you mean by "laserable".
The lower the frequency (longer lambda), the easier it is to make a
conventional antenna, and these can be phased as you wish.  In fact,
most commercial broadcasters employ more than one antenna, simply to
shape the propagation pattern.  Since all the emitters are coherent
in some sense, this could be "lasing".  You could certainly consider
them diffraction-limited, which is another thing to say about most
conventional lasers (this is to do with how directional they are, -
how "straight" the beam), but their wave fronts are not usually nice
and planar (diffraction limitation again).

But if (as I would) you define laser by the stimulated emission of
photons, then what limits you is noise and such.  Certainly you can
get spontaneous emission in those frequencies (as anyone who has put
a flourescent light next to an AM radio can testify) but I would
guess the thermodynamics of such things prevents getting a population
inversion, which you need for stimulated emission.

Dye lasers exist, they are tunable, and can put out very short pulses
(pico-seconds!).  My first laser was a dye laser, built from the
description in The Amateur Scientist, in Scientific American (some
issue around 1968).

As for lambda, in my previous message I was just using 1.E-4 m as a
convenient place to draw the line between "optical" techniques -
lenses, mirrors, etc. and "microwave" techniques - what is called
"plumbing" often, cause of the resemblence of waveguides, and cavities
to conventional plumbing.  In fact hydrogen cyanide (HCN) lasers have
a number of frequencies in the 300 micron region (3.E-4 m).

Finally, a minor correction to how gamma-ray photons originate.
Certainly there must be an electromagnetic interaction in the nucleus,
to finally produce a photon, but the state-transition involved is that
of the whole nucleus, and involves the total binding energy of the
nucleus.  Since the nucleus sticks together (the like charge of all
the protons is pushing them apart after all) you know the strong
interaction is dominant.

Now, I'd like to quit the oracle business, and pose a question.  The
main thing that prevents the laser being used as a personal weapon is
not the laser itself, but the power source.  You can't get a powerful
enough "battery" in a small enough space.  This is something I always
considered a "blooper" in Star Trek for instance.  So does anyone else
out there have examples of compact energy storage, intelligently done,
from any body of SF?

John

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1980 at 0220-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 5 21 1980 AT LAST! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
dah
dah
dah
            dahhh
                             dahhhh
                         dah
                     dah
                 dah
                                        DAHHHHHH
                             dahhhh
                         dah
                     dah
                 dah
                                        DAHHHH
                             dahhhh
                         dah
                     dah
                         dah
                 dahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1980 2230-EDT (Wednesday)
From: Mike.Fryd at CMU-10A (C621MF0E)
Subject: TESB

     First of all, I want you to know that even though I have seen
TESB, I realize that there might be a few of us who haven't.  So I
won't tell you the ending.

     However I will tell you what I thought of it over all.

		GOOD STUFF

(By the way, the reason I won't tell you the ending, is that it didn't
have one)

-mike

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 05/22/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following message is the last message in this digest. It reviews
The Empire Strikes Back. In doing so it gives some hints about one of
the major developments in this movie. People who have not seen TESB
may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/22/80 01:30:10
Re: The Empire Strikes Back - in new directions.

    The new Star Wars movie is not the same film the last one was; it
has moved in new , and intriguing directions. "Star Wars (4)" was a
pleasing pastiche of comic books and Saturday matinees. "The Empire
Strikes Back " puts us in the middle of a complex myth of classic
dimensions.

     The new film initially observes all the conventions of plot and
actions we are led to hope for from 3 years ago, big battles, and evil
menaces.  But as the action of the ice planet of Hoth, characters stop
merely acting Reacting, and start changing and learning. There is much
new, and emminently discussable information on the Force; interesting
developing relationships and character deinition; and a revelation in
the climactic duel with intriguing, positively Freudian overtones.

     Summing up the style of the film in one word; baroque. Director
Kirshner can't be mistaken for Lucas. There is much detail, and
an intensity - perhaps overintensity - of colors and abstract
architectural line in the frame. Baroque - ornamented and filigreed -
can also apply to the plot an emotions called for. You will be kept on
the edge of your seat, but for different, deeper reasons than in "Star
Wars."  The surface flash is there, but backed up by an emerging
depth. And this bodes well for a strong continuation of the series.

    And when you've seen this film, ask yourself what Luke's *mother*
must have been like!

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 23 MAY 1980 0614-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #115
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 23 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 115

 Today's Topics: Administrivia on TESB, Incompetence from Technology,
                 Alien Intelligence Test, Physics Tomorrow - ?ASERS,
                      SF Bloopers - Phasers & Explosions, TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Administrivia:
--------------

Several people have sent in messages about whether or not SF-LOVERS
should discuss TESB, or suggesting how the TESB messages should be
handled. There are two points of concern: 1) that the discussion of
TESB will overwhelm discussion of all other topics, and 2) that the
discussion will invariably ruin the movie for many people.

This is how I intend to avoid these problems. When I started the
digest, I considered the possibility of sending an AM and a PM
edition of the digest. Up to now, I have only transmitted an AM
edition.  Starting tomorrow, I will begin to transmit both AM and
PM editions for a limited time.  The AM editions will continue to
discuss a variety of different SF topics - such as SF Bloopers,
Alien Intelligence, books, etc. The PM editions will be devoted to
the discussion of the details of TESB and the Star Wars series. For
example, these messages might discuss the details of the plot,
character development, plausibility of events etc. Note that the PM
edition messages will be of major interest only to the people who
have seen TESB. Indeed they would tend to spoil parts of the movie
for anyone who has not seen it. On the other hand, messages of
general interest that discuss TESB and do not give away details of
the plot will be included in the AM editions as space permits. (The
two TESB messages at the end of today's digest are an example of
this type of message.) 

I will make up both digests. I will sort the messages that have been
submitted for the AM and PM digests. ALL MESSAGES SHOULD BE SENT TO
SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI, whether they deal with TESB or other topics. You may
indicate which edition the message is for in the Subject field or the
body of the message if you wish. However, that is not necessary.

Also note that everyone will receive both the AM and the PM editions.
I am sorry but I do not have any way of sending the PM editions on
Star Wars to only some of the people on the mailing list. However, I
hope this will avoid the problems we encountered with Star Trek - TMP
in a satisfactory way for everyone involved.

					Enjoy,
					   Roger

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1980 11:48 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: more on writing as language, sort of.

Off on a tangent: The discussion of writing as language vs. pictorial
communication reminds me of a fascinating book I read multi-years ago,
by Anne Roe, called "The Making of a Scientist". Roe is a psychologist
who interviewed a bunch of scientists and asked them to describe "how
they thought".  She had something like seven or so types of thought
that she had identified from these interviews, (I can't remember the
types, but they were like: visualizing words, "speaking" words in your
mind, manipulating symbols "visually", kinesthetic(?!), who knows what
else, some of them I couldn't even understand from the descriptions),
and the interesting thing is that she found very strong correlations
between profession or parents' profession and type of thought
processes that the person had. E.g., (1) if a parent was a lawyer or
a minister, for example, the person generally thought in words, (2)
the theoretical physicists and experimental physicists she interviewed
had sharply different types of thought, etc.  I know from my own
experience that math is a breeze for me as long as I can picture
things, but when I get into just symbols, it is like running into a
stone wall. What happens to a non-pictorial thinker in a "pictorial"
world?  What is dyslexia actually in terms of brain function?

Different subject: what is the brain center for "grammatical speech"
really doing?  As a linguistic ignoramus, I assume that the grammar of
different languages is wildly different (isn't Chinese pictorial or
something?) so it must be doing something fairly interesting...

Another different subject: I wonder just how much degradation of
mathematical ability there REALLY is due to calculators?  How many
people could do arithmetic easily before? (How many times have you
stood in a cashier's line while somebody agonized over 13 + 52.....)

Karen

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1980 1405-EDT
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject: Are you literate?

Can you add?

Or: Can you take square roots and cube roots with pencil and paper?

Or: Can you speak fluent Latin or Greek?

Or: Can you tell time by looking at the heavens, and identify all
    of the important heavenly bodies (amateur astronomers and their
    families are ineligible for this question).

Or: Can you tell the modes of classical logic?

Or:...

You get the idea.  I don't particularly consider inability to add as
a problem...if everyone has wristwatches, who needs to tell time by
looking at the stars?  (yes, there are people who can.  But at one
time any "educated" person could do so).  Why should I worry about
how to do detailed arithmetic when my calculator can?  Note that this
is a different question than how we should teach arithmetic, or
whether or not students should memorize "two times" tables.  Learning
is different than using, a fact that the "new math" people missed.  I
can't do integral calculus either, but I don't need it (I think it has
been 15 years since I did my last integral).  If I did, I would
probably call up MACSYMA.
				joe

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1980 0143-PDT
From: Haruka Takano <Haruka at SRI-KL>
Subject: Alien intelligence

What if carbon life is a rare occurrence in the universe?  Would we be
recognized as being intelligent or even life at all?  Would we be able
to recognize other forms of life if we were to encounter them?  Fred
Hoyle once wrote a story about Martian life being a metal-based life
form. Members of the earth exploration team are captured, studied and
analyzed.  From the information gathered from these experiments, the
Martians develop a chemical which induces infertility in humans and
injects the substance into the earth's atmosphere.  After a few
non-generations, the Martians move in and turn the planet into a
zoo (they have to first get rid of all the green stuff infecting the
world - except in the area set aside for the zoo) leaving 100000 of
the natives to preserve the species.  Then ads are sent out throughout
the galaxy proclaiming the only known form of chemical life...  It's
been a LOOOOONG time since I read this story so I may have gotten some
of the details wrong - it's in an anthology of Hoyle's stories called
Element 79 (I've forgotten the name of the story itself).  In this
case, it wasn't just carbon life that was rare, but chemical life...
indicating that the aliens were machines(?) from our point of view.
Another interesting fact is the number of humans kept alive for the
zoo...Hoyle considered 100000 as the ideal population of the world
because that was theoretically the maximum number of people that the
average person can come to know and recognize in an average lifetime
(don't ask me how he got these figures).  I also remember a story in
Analog that had some beings considering how to free the intelligent
creatures of earth who somehow have become inslaved to machines...the
catch being that they are actually machines themselves as we view them
and they have the notion that it was their form of life that created
chemical life in order to serve them.  One of them is arguing that
perhaps on this planet, chemical life was the one that evolved and
created machines...anyone remember the title and author of this one?

Haruka

------------------------------

Date: 21 May 1980 1246-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Whatever-ASERs

In Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, a strong magnetic
(20-100 KGauss) is applied to a sample of protons.  Because of the
nature of the beast, the proton can align with, or against the
magnetic field.  The energy differential between these two states
corresponds to the energy contained in a radio wave, of 60 - 300 MHz
respectively.  The relative populations of aligned and contra-aligned
protons is different, and if one shines a tight polarized beam of
the proper frequency radio waves at the protons, they will quantumly
absorb the radio wave and undergo a transisition from aligned to
contra-aligned.  Then, after a while they will decay and emit the
radio wave, normally in a random fashion.  Sensitive detectors
placed at 90 degrees to the exciting radio beam will detect this,
and the exact frequencies of resonance gives the chemist a LOT of
information on the exact magnetic susceptabiltiy of the protons
environment.

Under certain conditions, without the exciting radio frequency, the
populations can become disturbed, and emission can occur.  It is
conceivable that this technique could be used to create a radio
laser.  For example, a relatively weak ( 10 KGauss) mag field could
be used to cause the protons to assume a population distribution
between align and contra-aligned that would be fairly equal.  If the
mag field were then to be pulsed to a very high value (1 MGauss) the
number of protons in the contra-aligned direction would be far too
many, and they would scramble to assume the aligned direction.
Thus, you would have the neccesary population of excited species,
and a propagating wave would trigger more and more of them to flip,
and add their radio waves to the coherant beam.  Voila, a RASER (?)

A small problem is that instantanious pulses of 1 MGauss have been
achieved through the expediant of setting off shaped charges around
a magnet, and squeezing the lines of force together.  However, that
makes for a messy and expensive raser, when you have to blow the
thing up to get it to work.  However, without such a comparitvly
sttrong field, the number of protons in the 'excited' state would
probably not be enough to rase(?).  Who knows, maybe superconductive
technology could solve the problem.

Dan Dolata (dolata@sumex-aim)

------------------------------

AQE@MIT-MC 05/22/80 12:53:56 Re: the PHASERS in Star Trek.

I always rationalized them as follows:

- When used in "stun" mode, they were either a sonic stunner, as used
  by Niven in the Known Space series, or an electromagnetic nerve
  jangler, as used by Niven in "A World Out Of Time".  The visible
  beam which (sometimes) accompanies the stun effect is probably only
  a tracer.
- When used in "disrupt" mode, these clever little guns first sent
  out a scanning pulse of multi-frequency radiation, and then a
  high-energy pulse at each frequency that was absorbed in the
  scanning pulse.  This resulted in the target getting ionized with
  a minimum expenditure of energy.  The scan-zap cycle was repeated
  several hundred times per second, causing the familiar high-pitched
  hum that accompanied the use of this weapon.  The cause of the
  warbling modulation in the hum is open to speculation.
- The other modes - "heat", "kill", ... - were probably variations on
  the "disrupt" mode.  E.g. "heat" could have restricted the zap pulse
  to infrared frequencies, "kill" could have restricted the cone of
  operation down to a pencil-thin beam...
---
Jef

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1980 0108-PDT
From: Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
Subject: vacuum blast

     Due to insufficient mass, i dont think particles would have
much effect... the mass of the bomb would be spread out over a
large spherical shell, which would be thick and thus a bit "soft".
And there really isnt enuf stuff in space to make a shock wave...
remember, were used to a ton per square foot of pressure, and a 50%
variation in that is disasterous while the same variation in space
is nearly undetectable except on a planetary scale.
     However, the radiation might have some "shocking" effects,
due to photon momentum, uneven heating, and perhaps even momentum
generated by particles suddenly vaporizing away from your hull...
     btw, TESB was great, but when it ended i found myself expecting
to be able to come back next week for the next installment... do
cliff-hangers have a place in movies?

------------------------------

Date: 23 May 1980 at 0220-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TESB-- An Ardent SW-Fan's Reaction ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It was excellent!  Much advanced in production technique, plot
complexity, and character development over the original. The critics
and reviewers who were negative about the artistic merits of the old
one can safely recant in regard to this one.

                       But...

I didn't llllllllllllooovvvve it.  It was "verrrry interesting", but
it didn't catch my heart like the first.  My emotional reaction on
walking away from the theatre was one of excitement, that I had been
thrrrrrilllllled.  This was in contrast with the deep sense of supreme
elation ... of exultation ... of sheer J*O*Y ... which the original
had evoked.  When I walked away from the theatre in 1977, I felt
somehow physically buoyant... somehow almost as if I were levitating.

It's a Good Movie.

The original was not a movie but An Experience.

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1980 at 0531-CDT
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: TESB - Lucas as Luke; The Force as Moving Making;

In Star Wars Lucas managed to do the impossible, he opened the window
into childhood for everyone in a manner that only Walt Disney had ever
seemed capable of. That window has closed.  A scene from the movie
itself seems to capture the dilemma I felt upon reflection over what
has changed. Luke when learning that Leia Han and Chewbacca are going
to be captured and tortured breaks off his training in becoming a Jedi
to rescue them. Obi Wan and Yoda attempt to warn him about the dangers
of falling for the dark side of the Force. Lucas is Luke, and as
the creator of Star Wars was given knowledge of The Force his film
possessed. Yet he too has been tempted by the dark side of the Force,
turning a childhood vision into an another adult crisis movie. TESB
is a war film. Lucas the apprentice Jedi has turned from following up
Star Wars with a bigger and better children's movie toward producing
an adult's film. He has abandoned truly learning to become a Jedi
and taken the expedient road to applying the Force for commercial
purposes. TESB is indeed a dark side of Star Wars. It is sad to see
such a great and noble effort to reanimate the joy of Flash Gordon
in a modern framework turned toward making movies for grown-up's.

I am sure many will now find endless hours of worthiness to discuss
in TESB. The ins and outs of the psychological troubles the characters
have been going through, the symbolic plot echoing of mental events.
(Luke losing the hand clutching the light sword "used by his father"
just as he hears the news). Now the critics will applaud, saying the
medium shows promise and hoping the trend toward psychological realism
will continue. Perhaps in the following episode, however long it will
take to generate -- given it isn't the sequel which follows this film,
we could even have psychological breakdowns, perhaps an agonizing love
theme for Leia.

Oh its a great movie. The Special Effects are indeed special, the
action is furious, there is suspense, drama and swashbuckling -- but
the childhood vision is gone and with it much of the magic has gone
away. This is no romp through a "Once upon a time..." universe --
This is war and the end can only be a bigger and larger D-day victory
by the Rebel Alliance (the Allies?) over the evil Empire.

How would you react to "Winny the Poo goes to War" I think the adults
in us will go to see these films, but the children have lost. Sad, I
always thought the children were the ones whose intuition should be
trusted.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 24 MAY 1980 0029-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #116
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Friday, 23 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 116

 Today's Topics: Administrivia or What are YOU doing now RDD2?, Yoda,
                 The Future of Empire, Genealogy of Luke, Love Story,
                         Alternities - Comic/Novels vs. Film
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Administrivia:
--------------

This is the first of a series of SF-LOVERS PM editions devoted to
Star Wars, and in particular to Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back.
Typical messages will discuss details of the plot, plausibility,
character development, etc. As such the PM edition will be of major
interest only to people who have seen TESB.

The SF-LOVERS AM editions will continue to be devoted to discussions
of SF in general, and will occasionally include some messages on Star
Wars which do not give away major events of the plot to people who
have not seen it. In effect the discussions in the AM and PM editions
will be entirely separate.

Perhaps the easiest way of distinguishing these editions is to say
that if the AM edition is similar to an SF fanzine, then the PM
edition is like a Star Wars fanzine. I believe that this will be
able to serve everyone's needs, both for topic separation and
keeping the digests to a manageable size. NOTE THAT YOU SEND YOUR
MESSAGES FOR EITHER EDITION TO THE SAME PLACE, SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI.
I will sort the messages for the AM and PM editions. You may
indicate which edition your message is for in the Subject heading
or in the body of the message if you like. However, that is not
necessary.

But enough administrivia, it is a dark time for the rebellion....

						 MtFBWY,
						   Roger

------------------------------

JEFFH@MIT-AI 05/23/80 03:18:18 Re: TESB

Did Yoda remind anyone else of Gollum in any way or am I just tired
from seeing TESB at 6am after NCC and Disneyland??

Jeff

------------------------------

RP@MIT-MC 05/22/80 21:35:44

Most reviewers feel the end of TESB is weak and the least satisfying
point of the film. I DISAGREE. While I do not like the idea of waiting
3 more years for episode 6, the final scenes did not leave me hanging.
It seems clear from Yoda's final statement and the last minutes of the
film that regardless of Luke's future, the empire is DOOMED!

However, I am badly confused by one point.  Vadar claims to be Luke's
father.  Can his claim be true?  In "Episode 4" he kills Luke's aunt
and uncle who may have been either Vadar's own brother or sister.
What was his purpose? Further, when Kenobi meets Luke on Tatooine he
claims that Luke's father was "a good friend". Then he gives Luke his
father's lightsaber and, of course, Vadar has one as well. What is
going on? We then learn from Kenobi that Luke's father was murdered
by Vadar. Can Jedi Knights lie?  Help! Did I miss something?

Finally, the official collectors edition which sells for $2.95 tells
more than actually appears in the film. Can someone explain the logic
of this to me as well. Does this mean they print the booklet before
the movie is fully edited.

------------------------------

Date: 23 May 1980 at 0221-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "I AM YOUR FATHER." ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Did Vader tell the truth?  After seeing SW-5, reviewing the
novelization and the transcript of SW-4, and weighing the admittedly
often ambiguous evidence, the probabilities seem to be stronger that
he is lying.
 
The strongest evidence FOR Vader is in the novelization:

     p. 198 "The two warriors stood staring at one another,
             father and son."

     p. 199 "...somehow he [Luke] could FEEL the truth in the
             Dark Lord's words."  (Remember Obi-Wan's "Trust
             your FEELINGS!" in SW-4?)

But, as Craig Miller, The Man From Lucasfilm, said-- nothing in print
is binding on the true SW universe or is more than mere apocrypha.

Employing Occam's razor: it would be much more difficult, plot- and
character-wise, to work out validity for Vader's claim (since, after
all, it's perfectly all right for a villain to lie) than to uphold
both Ben's and Yoda's simple veracity.
 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "I LOVE YOU" ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Will she end up with Han at the finish of SW-6?  Not necessarily!
Stock plot elements are unabashedly the basis of SW, and that of the
Hero Winning The Girl is a major one.  The Noble Hero's Renunciation
in Favor of His Friend is also a contender, but not THAT strong.  In
fact, like in Harrison Ford's role in HANOVER STREET, the Noble
Renunciation could very well be Han's, in the end.

At present, Leia's character is still too strong for Luke, but if he
"grows" as much by the end of SW-6 as he did by the end of SW-5 (e.g.,
in SW-4 he dashed off impetuously when he heard his people might be
in trouble, while in SW-5 he goes in desperate determination after
wrestling with his conscience as to what he s-h-o-u-l-d do), that
disparity will be gone.
 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ NOVEL & COMIC vs. FILM ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It is interesting to compare the print with the film versions to
ferret out changes made in the film subsequent to the print ones.
Some places corresponded so closely that it was evident that film
clips must have been available (SOME drawings of the Imperial Walkers'
legs, and, if I recall rightly, the appearance of the commander of
the Walkers), while others were evidently based solely on a working
script (mushrooms all over as "local color" in the comics Dagobah, but
reptiles for the film one) or preliminary art-work by McQuarrie (OTHER
too narrow, too long versions of the Walkers' legs), and still others
where things were entirely different (the text of the "roll-away"
preamble).

In the comic, as opposed to the book, when Luke is dangling beneath
the cloud city, his mental call to Ben is "picked up" by Vader.
Whether or not Vader can monitor telepathic messages from Luke might
be important, and unless I missed that, it's NOT verified by the film.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date: 24 MAY 1980 0513-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #117
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 24 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 117

 Today's Topics:  SF Books - SPACE ANGEL, Physics Tomorrow - ?ASERS,
                         SF Bloopers - Banked Turns in Space,
                 Alien Intelligence Test, TESB - Lucas Strikes Again
----------------------------------------------------------------------

ISRAEL@MIT-AI 05/20/80 17:27:13

- MINI BOOK REVIEW -
I recently read an interesting book called SPACE ANGEL by John Maddox
Roberts. Its basic plot is that a gruff but kindly experienced
spaceman meets a kid who is just dying to space, an orphan, wangles
him a berth aboard a spaceship where they go off and have all sorts of
exciting adventures. How many times have we seen that plot description
before? The book is memorable to me because of two things. The first
is that the ship has an FTL drive called the WHOOPEE drive. Honestly,
I'm not kidding! The second item is on character'S statement when they
come across a ship just drifting in space. He says, (this is a direct
quote) "From the accumulation of space dust outside, I'd guess this
ship has been abandoned for millenia". Outside of these things, the
book was pretty much standard teenage space opera. - Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 23 MAY 1980 1041-PDT
From: AYERS at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Radio MASERs

In fact they exist on a cosmic scale.  A number of astronomical
radio sources can only be explained in terms of a population inversion
in molecular spin states which amplifies a particular frequency.

If anyone queries me, I'll dig up the exact reference(s) and a little
more detail.

Bob

------------------------------

Date: 22 MAY 1980 1152-PDT
From: LSTEWART at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Banked turns in space

A good reason for banking turns in space might be to protect the
fragile occupant.  Humans don't react well to negative or side
accelerations.  90 degree banks, of course would be best! Changing
direction when travelling 10 or 15 kps will take quite a kick.
(Until we get our "internal field compensators" designed).  -Ly

------------------------------

Date: 22 May 1980  9:54:53 EDT
From: Bernie Cosell <cosell at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: A note on banking while you turn

The principal reasons for banking have not to do with
atmosphere/vacuum, but rather with gravity.  Even an atmosphere-bound
airplane can easily (and occasionally does) turn by simply yawing.
Now, there are air-pressure type reasons for not doing that (having
to do with the relative angle of attack of the wings), but in most
circumstances they don't really matter.  The principal thing is that
if you don't bank an airplane into a turn, all of your passengers get
sick and spoil the insides of your airplane (the pilot's bane, the
"uncoordinated turn").

I suspect that even in the presence of some kind of magic artificial
gravity inside a space ship, the ship would still want to roll some
when it turned to keep the net resultant gravity vector inside the
ship going "down".

   /Bernie

------------------------------

BATALI@MIT-AI 05/23/80 10:01:26 Re: Biology

Some comments on various bases for life...

     Discussions of the possibilities of life based on silicon or
other metals or anything but carbon are quite interesting but if we
limit ourselves to what would most likely arise and successfully
evolve on a planetary surface (or, I suppose, the clouds of a gas
planet) there is a lot of evidence that most life-forms would be
"carbon-based units". In fact they would probably use proteins and
(slightly less certainly) nucleic acids as well.
     Aside from the fact that this is the only form of life thus far
observed, there are three lines of evidence supporting this belief:

  (1)  "Miller" type experiments in which a reducing atmosphere
(hydrogen usually) is mixed with nitrogen and at least one carbon
compound (methane, CO2...) and zapped with sparks or UV or gamma
rays or even ultrasound ends up synthesizing amino acids, sugars
and some precursors of nucleic acids. More advanced versions of these
experiments have even resulted in very suggestive conglomerations of
various compounds which catalyze steps in the synthesis of each other.
Sometimes they even clump together into cute little cell-like blobs.

  (2)  Radio astronomers and studiers of meteorites (meteorologists?)
have been collecting evidence that many organic compounds exist in
space. Formaldehyde, methane and at least one amino acid have been
detected in clouds of interstellar gas as well as in meteorite
fragments.

  (3)  No other element seems to share the properties of carbon that
seem to allow its compounds to live. The necessary requirement is that
a compound have many complicated stable compounds at many different
levels of free energy. Silicon can't do that and I don't think any
other relatively abundant elements can either.

     Of course, life need not be based on a single element
as on earth. The basis for life could well be a compound whose
basic structure is stable but which could engage in many types
of reactions.  Or life could be based on a set of such compounds.
But carbon is, after all, very abundant. And the evidence seems to
suggest that if there is any carbon around at all, it will begin
to react with itself faster and in more varied ways than any other
compound or compounds, literally swamping "competing" life bases in
the early phase of "chemical evolution" in which the compounds most
fit at synthesizing their own precursors gradually increase their
concentration in the system. If carbon is around, it will probably
win and life may be (to be grossly reductionist) simply one of the
metastable states of energy transfer through a system containing
carbon.
				
				    L&C,
                                    CBU 532641653

------------------------------

Date: 20 May 1980 2023-PDT
From: Lasater at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: random, outrageous ramblings

After reading the lively discussion on demonstrating your
intelligence, I would like to make some comments.
  I believe it is unnecessay to consider aliens whose "eyes" are
sensitive only to non-visible electomagnetic radiation. The fact that
we are sensitive to light only in a narrow band of wavelengths, from
400 to 800 nm, is no accident. If a creature could only see in uv,
soon it would be dead from degenerative photochemical reactions caused
by the higher energy photons. The carbon-carbon single bond is broken
by uv photons of wavelength shorter than 200 nm. Most exo-biologists
agree that any form of life will involve complex chemistry which, I
think, will invariably be adversely affected by short-wave radiation
  The difficulty with longer-wave radiation (infra-red) is more subtle
but equally significant. Any intelligent system, human, alien, or
computer, must have an image-processing system. To get a sufficently
sharp image, the "lens" must have a minimum apeture dictated by the
wavelength of the light it is refracting and the resolution desired.
Our eyes have an effective apeture of about 0.7 cm. A creature whose
maximum sensitivity is at 10 microns would have to have eyes 17.5 cm
(7 inches) in diameter. Rather unwieldy.
  Although no alien is likely to have light sensitivity identical
to ours, I believe it is almost inevitable that there will be some
overlap between the light he sees and the light we see.
   I am somewhat surprised at the frequent use of the house cat as
an animal which has intelligent-like behavior but is of course not
intelligent. This had lead me to think that perhaps, like the Talking
Heads claim, that animals, specifically cats, really ARE intelligent.
Their intelligence would be rudimentary, compared to humans, but after
having several feline aquaintances, I find this to be an excellent way
of describing their behavior. Consider the "lot" of many house cats.
We give them food, shelter, and a warm fire to sit by in exchange for
what I can only call affection and love. This ability, to give and
receive love, not because it helps perserve the species, but simply
because it feels good, is to me one of the best indicators of
intelligence. Intelligence is often portrayed as being cold. Such
is not the case. The bacteria has no conception of love; the cat or
dog, a dim perception; and man the best (we hope) on the planet.
   In a larger sense, I must submit that intelligence, by almost any
definition is not a monopoly of humankind. Numerous examples exist of
animals exhibiting elementary reasoning. Perhaps the best known is the
chimpanzee which when confronted with a banana beyond its reach piled
up boxes thoughtfully placed in the room until it could reach them.
   Finally, I must say that after listening to "Electric Music for the
Mind and Body" I have decided that the BEST indication of intelligence
is the ability and desire to get high. This connects with another
important criterion for intelligence, self-awareness. How one could
demonstrate either quality to an alien I won't say, although I am
reminded of an old Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers episode where aliens
who looked surprising like blacks, landed near the FFFB in their
flying saucer. Our heros didn't quite know what to make of this, but
the alien greeting sounded amazing similar to the English/Spanish word
for an illegal plant, so the FFFB gave them a toke through their
air-hose. Naturally, the aliens considered Terrestials to be friendly
and intelligent. Unfortunately, their next move was to land at a KKK
cross-burning saying "magewarner".

------------------------------

RWK@MIT-MC 05/20/80 04:21:44

As for intelligence in cats, I once witnessed what I can only
interpret as one cat teaching another to throw a marble. The cats in
question were Siamese, which in my experience are smarter than most
cats and some people. The cat who had learned to throw a marble (by
picking it up between her paws and doing just what you'd expect to
throw it into the air, so she could then chase this bouncing marble)
would demonstrate, retrive, give the marble to the tomcat, he'd bat at
it, she'd fetch it, demonstrate again, give it to him, and this cycle
repeated until he got the idea and started throwing the marble, after
about 10 repetitions of the cycle.

But even bees communicate. But then, perhaps a beehive is a collective
intelligence?

------------------------------

Date: 23 May 1980 05:39-EDT
From: William Daul <DAUL at MIT-MC>
Subject: TESB

I suspect that there will be a myriad of mini-reviews of this film. 
I must add mine. I think "the force" is with George Lucas again. The
special effects on first go around make up for the open endedness of
the ending. I can't wait to see it again.       --Bill

------------------------------

JTurner.Coop@MIT-MULTICS 05/23/80 23:09:24

Regarding TESB, I can't say anything that hasn't already been said
accept to clarify why the ending is so detrimental to the movie. In
STAR WARS (part IV),the ending formed a complete movie. I walked away
feeling that I wanted to see more,but that I could wait. TESB left
me wanting more, but right away. I is o.k. to have an indeterminant
ending on a show like Dallas where the answer comes next week, but to
have to wait three years is a little too much. In addition, the movie
practically leaves a giant ten foot neon sign say, "to be continued".
There are so many issues left hanging, like Han Solo's fate, that
everyone starts trying to second guess Lucas right away.

					<jmt>

------------------------------

CSTACY@MIT-AI 05/22/80 05:21:44
Re: The EMPIRE (scchuuuuoo-wheeeeez) Strikes Back

  I just saw it at the local theatre here in Northern VA, and it was
as great as expected. The special effects were better than last time
(think how good theyll be next time (and the time after that...)),
there was more plot, and -contrary to the reviews of many critics- I
didn't see any lack of cute/funny lines.
  But you've heard all this before. If you haven't seen the movie,
then what you haven't heard about is the audience reaction. Well,
I guess the opening crowds are apt to be a bit rowdy; there were
several hardcore Empire fans there, dressed in Darth, Leia, Luke,
and Bountyhunter getups (and one poor fellow who rode a motorcycle
-- people were congratulating him on his "costume" which was nothing
more than a windbreaker and riding helmet).
  There was this little kid in front of me who was just having
the time of his life as these random characters walked around the
theatre before showtime: "Hi, Luke!!".."Oooh,its Darth Vader!"
Everyone was cheering, boooing, an jumping in surprise at the
characters and action, and all in all everyone had *fun*.
  I think Lucas has a definite win here. A good fun movie. Again.

Chris

------------------------------

Date:  23 May 1980 09:50 edt
From:  York.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  TESB by itself

     I think that the first thing to realize before trying to evaluate
TESB is that it is NOT Star Wars.  I agree that it seems like the
fantasy (or magic or...) is not there in TESB, but while walking home
it occurred to me that if the magic WAS there I would probably have
felt that I was just seeing the same movie again.  That would not have
been better.

     It is possible to criticize Lucas for going ahead with this
incredible string of movies.  Perhaps he should have just let well
enough alone and stopped when he created a legend.  However, it does
not seem to me that TESB and the following movies are going to detract
in any way form the legend.

     I personally think that TESB followed a good path towards the
success of a large series of movies.  Perhaps my biggest complaint is
that the movie (i.e. this installment in the series) could have had a
more definite ending of its own, while still allowing all the seeds
for future plot development to be sown.

     The effects are great.  The "known universe" has expanded immensly.
We spent a couple of hours debating possible future plot developments
given the clues dropped in the story.  The characters have become people
(I know that many consider this a bug).  The movie fulfilled what was
probably its primary purpose:  to set the public up for 10 more years of
Star Wars movies.  Imagine the people who will be watching the fifth or
sixth film who were not even around when the original came out!  Lucas
is embarking on a tremendous undertaking.  I wish him luck.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 24 MAY 1980 2239-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #118
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Saturday, 24 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 118

    Today's Topics:     Audience Reaction, Genealogy of Luke,
                    Speculations on Darth & Luke & ..., Pot Pourri
----------------------------------------------------------------------

CSTACY@MIT-AI 05/24/80 16:11:44
Re: couldnt mention in AM Digest due to spoilage factor

 .....And then there was the girl in the back of the theatre who
yelled ," Happy Father's Day" at just the right time.  Yes, it was
*lots* of fun. I'll be seeing it again a few times anyway; I'm a
special-effects freak (do some work for a television production
company occasionally...) and love to be impressed by the stuff
they do in SW/TESB.

Chris

------------------------------

Date: 23 May 1980 2221-PDT
From: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>
Subject: TESB: the matter of Luke's paternity

     I think that Vader is Luke's father; or, rather, the body which
Vader occupies is that which fathered Luke.  Another bit of evidence:
     "He will learn patience," Ben said.
     "Much anger in him," the dwarfish Jedi teacher
      persisted. "Like in his father."
     "We've discussed this before," Kenobi said.

     Did Ben and Yoda really lie?  Not necessarily!  Ben said that
Vader murdered Skywalker.  Ben could have been speaking of "murder"
in the sense that Vader's mind (renegade Jedi, servant of the dark
side of the Force) had "killed" Skywalker (your typical good Jedi).

     To Ben's way of thinking, the fact that Skywalker and Vader
were the same mind -- the latter warped to evil -- would make no
difference.  Ben and Yoda were merely guilty of omitting a fact
that in Luke's present state of mind would have been devastating;
as indeed it was.

     There are as well hints that Vader's plans for Luke do not
necessarily coincide with the Empire's; Vader wants Luke, not on
the Empire's side, but on HIS side!  Perhaps Vader had planned
his son's career this way; Luke would be of no use until he had
obtained battle experience and had received Jedi training.

     In the service of the Empire, Luke and Vader's training would
have come to the Emperor's attention prematurely.  What better way
could Luke be properly prepared, but in the service of the rebels,
taught by Ben and Yoda, his own teachers!

-- Mark --

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 1051-EDT (Saturday)
From: David.Lamb at CMU-10A
Subject: Luke's father

Vader's claim to being Luke's father was the major surprise of the
film to me and several of the people I saw the movie with, and
consequently got a lot of discussion.  One of my friends insisted
that Vader must have been lying - he'd already reneged on deals he'd
made, giving evidence of being a "dishonourable villain".  However,
most of the rest of us were willing to believe it.

- In "Episode 4", I am fairly sure that Kenobi said that Luke's
  father was "betrayed" by Vader, which could be consistent with
  Luke's father having given in to the dark side of the Force.

- As to the light saber, if Vader did destroy the remaining Jedi,
  he would have had plenty of opportunity to obtain others.

- When Vader calls to Luke telepathically, Luke calls out "father".

- Both Kenobi and Yoda warned Luke repeatedly about the dark side
  of the force; perhaps that was standard warning for new Jedi, but
  perhaps they were especially worried about him "following in his
  father's footsteps"

- What was Kenobi, the last of the Jedi, doing on a backwater planet
  like Tatooine?  Was he perhaps keeping an eye on the young Luke?

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 0053-PDT
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: Darth and Luke

Well, I just saw the flick, and was extremely impressed.  The group
I was with went for a late snack afterward and discussed some of the
directions the film was taking, and some of the loose ends lying
around.  Some of the things we wondered about:

(1) Is Darth lying about Luke being his son. Granted that the biggest
    point against it is that it would mean Ben lied, but would it?
    None of us (even those who had seen Star Wars (4) several times,
    could recall for sure how Ben had phrased it -- might he have
    said that Vader "destroyed" Luke's father, or some similar term?
    Luke's uncle said Luke's father was dead, but that's not at issue.
    Is anyone on SFL really **SURE** what Ben said?
(2) Vader said it was Luke's destiny to destroy the Emperor (or
    something close to that).  Presumably Vader can see the future
    to some degree, so he might in fact be right. If so, then since
    Luke's saga is likely to end with Star Wars (6), what or who
    would be the antagonist in 7 through 9?  One possibility is Vader
    (taking over after the Emperor is gone), but that might be hard
    assuming that Star Wars 6 *has* to end on an apparently triumphant
    note to complete the sub-trilogy (though there can be hints as to
    the uncompleted work).
(3) It looked as though, when Luke was falling from his confrontation
    with Vader, he was diverted sideways into the chute.  Did he do
    that, or did Darth?  And what was it that fell past Luke when he
    came out the exit hatch at the bottom?  His hand?  Note that the
    novel can't help with this because it ends with Luke still
    falling!
(4) Just how many more hidden powers does R2D2 have?  We know from SW4
    that he was originally Obiwan's 'droid, so he might well be chock
    full of surprises.  And word has it that he and C3PO will be
    present throughout all nine movies.  In SW5 we find that he has
    a smoke-screen defense, and that he can fix disabled hyperdrives
    (yeah, I know, maybe the city's computer told him how, but I still
    think there's a lot we don't know about that 'droid).
(5) Who or what was the "other hope" that Yoda referred to (when
    Obiwan said Luke was their last hope)?  It might be someone we
    know nothing about, or some minor character who will be filled
    out in SW6.  But another likely possibility is that he was
    referring to Vader.  What would *that* imply?
(6) How significant is the bounty hunter who took Han?  Note that he
    not only kept talking back to Vader, but he got away with it, and
    got to keep Han even though Vader was screwing everybody else. And
    it seems unlikely that a random bounty hunter would get permission
    to be ejected through the garbage chute (when he first started
    tracking the Falcon), at least not without the Admiral hearing
    about it and finding out why he wanted to do it. So it's probably
    that the hunter is significant enough to be at least a near-equal
    of Vader's.  In that case, who the heck is he really??
(7) Last (for now -- I'll probably think of more as soon as I send
    this), does anyone know whether Lucas is planning to stick to a
    one-every-three-years schedule for the releases?  If so, does
    anyone know whether Lucas is doing so with the deliberate goal
    of releasing the ninth movie in the year 2001?

Enough.		-- Don.

------------------------------

Date: 23 MAY 1980 2241-PDT
From: RODOF at USC-ECL

     Something worth discussing is Yoda's remark, when Kenobi says
that Luke is their last hope for the Force or something, that "There
is another."  Who could it be?
     Personally, I'd like it to be Han, so it won't be.
     One of the robots?  Maybe, but real farfetched.
     Chewbacca would be great, and more likely to have the Force
       than a robot, but hard to empathise with.
     A character  not yet introduced?  Cheap, very cheap.
     Lando?  Good possibility.
     Princess Leia?  Very good possibility, gets out of the so-far
       male dominated Force scene, but I doubt Carrie F. is a
       good enough actress to really make it work. 

     What I'd like, is that Luke and the princess have been screwing
around, see, and she's pregnant, but doesn't know it yet - only Yoda
knows the impending birth of the Forcechild... heh heh.

     I was really getting tired of the Princess this time.  The more
they give her to do, the less she seems necessary.  I'd like some more
and different girls.

     Yoda's big failing -- half the audience recognized his voice as
that of Fozzie Bear.

     If Luke can fly out of the pit, why so much trouble getting back
to the platform when he fell over the railing?  And when he gets good
at the force, is he gonna fly like Superman?

     I really liked the movie, though I doubt I'll see it as often
as I did SW.  Have to see it a couple more times, though -- I know
I missed some stuff.

   Loved Solo's last line.  Now there's a rascal for ya.

Rodof

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date: 25 MAY 1980 0516-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #119
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 25 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 119

 Today's Topics:   Replies on Time Tunnel, Query - An SF Musical?,
                 Alien Intelligence Test, Physics Tomorrow - ?ASERS,
                 Space Weaponry - Explosions & PBW, TESB - Reactions
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 20 May 1980 0212-PDT
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: re: Lasater's inquiry re Time Tunnel   

I recall the show only vaguely, not enough to create any sort of
concordance a la Outer Limits, and it's not widely syndicated so
it's hard to gather any data. However, one moderately interesting
item about the show is that there's a novel by Murray Leinster,
written in 1964, called "Time Tunnel". The novel bears no resemblance
to the show except insofar as it involved a passage that spanned a
fixed time interval (as opposed to the programmable interval of the
TV show's tunnel). Some of the concepts in the novel are fairly good,
but I found the author's style irritating.  The interesting part is
that after the TV show came out, ANOTHER novel called "Time Tunnel"
was published, ALSO by Murray Leinster, this time based on the show!
Does anyone know of any other such book-TV/movie-book "sandwiches"?

------------------------------

Date: 20 May 1980 1600-PDT
From: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Time Tunnel

Re: the request for information about Time Tunnel:

I confess. When Time Tunnel was on I was a for-real TT fan. I even
started wearing turtleneck sweaters (red, 'cause I couldn't tell on
a black and white TV that it was really dark green)! I plead as an
excuse that I was only 10 or so at the time...

Last year at WESTERCON in San Francisco, I saw a TT episode at a
party. It was the first time I had seen TT in over 10 years. It was
truly unbelievable how bad it was. Putting aside things like effects,
science accuracy, etc.; the plot was weak, the dialog stilted, and
the acting abominable.

Taking TT off the air was, in the words of Dr. Frank. N. Furter, "A
mercy killing." TT was a time-traveling Lost in Space.

-- Mark --

------------------------------

JAMES TURNER (NO MAIL PLEASE) 05/20/80 16:10:13

THE ONE MEMORABLE THING ABOUT 'TIME TUNNEL' I REMEMBER IS THAT IT WAS
ONE OF THE SHOWS THAT USED THE 'BLINKING COMPUTER LIGHTS' TRICK AND
OTHER SUCH NONSENSE.

------------------------------

Date: 05/20/80 1142-EDT
From: KJM at LL
Subject: Query on alleged SF musical

     In the movie review of last week's New York Magazine there was a
passing reference to "that legendary sci-fi-musical disaster, 'Via
Galactica'", which was written by a Christopher Gore. Does anyone know
anything about this? Did such a thing ever appear on or off-broadway?
And why was it a disaster?

                                             Karen Myers

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 2218-EDT
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject: Alien Life

I recall an absolutely fascinating article I read a few years ago
on a set of rules sf writers should apply to the design of (at least
organic) intelligences.  It may have been authored by Hal Clement,
since the rules certainly apply to the characters of Ice World. It
dealt with the energy levels required to sustain life, why silicon,
carbon and sulfur were the like bases for life and others would be
inadequate, what to do once you have chosen one of these, etc. It
demonstrated that sulfur-based life must necessarily live at higher
temperatures.  It also discussed the types of atmospheres that were
likely, based on the energy that can be derived from
oxidation-reduction reactions, what temperature ranges were feasible,
etc. It has probably been 10-15 years since I read this because it
predates my reading of Ice World.

If anyone remembers this article, I have been looking for it in
my collection for a couple years now, but linear scan of a couple
thousand books is not feasible. I'd appreciate a direct reference.

------------------------------

Date: 23 MAY 1980 1038-PDT
From: AYERS at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Communications with Pictures

Remember the A. C. Clarke story which takes place deep in the ocean
off Ceylon and features squids that communicate by displaying pictures
to each other on their bodies?

Bob

[ The story is entitled "The Shining Ones" and appears in Clarke's
  short story collection "The Wind from the Sun". This collection
  also includes the story "A Meeting with Medusa", which speculates
  about the lifeforms that might live in the upper atmosphere of
  Jupiter, and man's first encounter with them.  --  RDD  ]

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 17:18 PDT
From: Judy at PARC-MAXC
Subject: ...randomness...

I think that ?asers should be pronounced QUASERs...

Judy.

------------------------------

OTA@MIT-MC 05/24/80 20:56:50 Re: A few final (?) comments on lasers

1) The major feature of a laser (in the generic sense) is amplifica-
   tion by stimulated emission. I am not sure what Dr. Forward meant
   while talking about crystal latices but I assume he was talking
   about a resonant cavity for X-rays much like the klystron (?)
   tubes used in Microwave ovens for generating intense microwaves.
   This is not a laser.

2) As several people have mentioned X-ray lasers are indeed possible
   by using high energy electronic transitions in a pumped medium.
   This is exactly the same mechanism as used in, say, a ruby laser of
   the normal type.  I know someone working actively on X-ray lasers
   and can get from him references on the subject in anyone is really
   interested.  They are likely to be very technical though.

3) On the subject of gamma ray lasers: The reason I am aware of that
   a gamma ray laser needs to be in space is that since the cross
   section for stimulation of a gamma ray from an excited nucleus is
   so low the laser would have to be very long.  The estimate that I
   heard was in the neighborhood of light years.  That, of course,
   assumes normal densities of uranium (or whatever).  All discussions
   of gamma ray lasers I have ever heard assumed excited nuclei so I
   ASSUME that there are no meta stable excited electron states that
   are energetic enough.

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 2218-EDT
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject: Explosions in Vacuum

Everyone has been basing the discussion of explosions in space on the
*gases* released.  But for years, we've known that the most effective
anti-satellite weapon (excluding such fringe-of-research objects as
PBW and HEL) is a small explosive charge surrounded by lead shot.
Just put it in the path of the satellite you want to eliminate, and
distribute the shot in a small volume of space that the satellite has
to penetrate.  If you do it right, of course, you get it so that it
is in an opposite orbit, so the shot and the satellite collide with
2*orbital velocity.  Remember, e=mv**2.  Not much m, but v is huge,
and v**2 is HUGE.  That makes e large enough to eliminate the target.
Imagine what a scene inside Skylab would look like if Skylab had been
hit by 500lbs of mass at a relative velocity of 36000mph...especially
if the mass were distributed in such a way that the collision lasted
several seconds.  (Anyone who wants to contradict my numbers...go
right ahead...but only if you do the computations for real energies.
I freely admit these numbers are conjured out of thin air, or
possibly hard vacuum).

SO, take a conventional explosive weapon, send it at your opponent at
high relative velocity, and arrange that it hit.  Note that the m
term does not require the mass to hit in one place...the amount of
energy is the same as long as all the mass hits.  Thus, you may not
send one big weapon to hit in one place, but a carrier that delivered
the "lead shot" over a broad area.  Much harder to intercept without
a "force screen" or one damned fast HEL battery.  Of course, energy
density is differently distributed (e.g., a shotgun vs. a rifle), but
for sufficiently large e this may not make any difference.

This raises an interesting logistics problem.  We presume that,
unless we see great changes in technology, space vehicles of the
forseeable future will still be built either on earth, or from mass
lifted from earth.  (Forseeable is a funny word, of course.  Let's
talk 15 years).  There will not be much mass to spare for armor.
BUT, it also means that weapons are limited in mass also...so the m
component is going to be small.  Because armor is a one-time
investment, with high payoff, we may be able to afford to boost a lot
of it to orbit.  But weapons are non-renewable mass, and must be
lifted prior to each use.  Hence expensive. If it weren't (because we
could lift lots of mass for weapons) we could probably lift lots more
mass for armor...  which leaves only the v**2 term to play with.
Gee, I think I've just led up to particle beam weapons...

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 at 1632-CDT
From: clyde at UTEXAS

1. I have yet to see the movie (I refuse to stand in hour-long lines
   and that sort of crap), so I reserve judgment.  But some of my
   friends have come out slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, so there may be
   some promise in the flick.

2. To hjjh re TESB and SW: IT'S ONLY A ***MOVIE***, FOR CRYING OUT
   LOUD!!!!  It's not as if ANY of it is real.... Enjoying movies,
   especially SF movies, is one thing, but to bubble about one like
   it was a religious experience is another.  Excessive enthusiam
   wears VERY thin VERY fast.

------------------------------

VILAIN@MIT-MC 05/24/80 17:32:39
Re: The 2nd time isn't the same as the first

     I think hjjh@UTEXAS is suffering from the "1st-EXPERIENCE"
syndrome -- which is akin to losing one virginity to someone you
really love. The first time is always remembered as the scaling the
"ultimate heights". The 2nd time is good, but not like the first.
     I think the quality of TESB has been maintained and the storyline
is CONSISTANT (i.e. no plot changes evident between the 1st film and
the 2nd). This is mainly due to Lucas' vision of STAR WARS as being 3
trilogies. He built his universe first, then put the characters in
and built his plots. I have no doubt that he has written treatments
for all 9 episodes, so that he knows what each film is to accomplish
in the entire saga.
     The most memorable character in TESB is Yoda.  His creator,
Frank Oz, is simply a genius.  I didn't think that a PUPPET could have
changing facial expressions until I saw what this man has done with
Yoda.  He and Jim Henson manage to a limited extent to do this on THE
MUPPET SHOW but TESB shows Oz's real skill.
     The best I can say about the film is ENJOY!

<>Mike Vilain

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/24/80 14:29:16 Re: The Loss of Innocence in T/eSB

     Back in issue #115, Amsler decries the fact that Star Wars
Episode 5 has none of the child-like innocence and fun that the
previous film did.
     (At this point I am tempted to shout at him, "Ah, grow up!...)

     Yet I won't, because that is precisely what TESB is about - the
loss of innocence involved in growing up.  Luke was but a boy in the
last film, but here we see him going through his rights of passage -
on his way to becoming a man. He goes through physical hardships -
ice, swamps, crashes, cutts, getting his hand sliced off; and mental
ones too - learning about the dark side of the Force and his father.
In the world of childhood we see Evil, but it rarely comes to hurt us
personally. Classic Rites of passage involve both tests of physical
ability - very often require tolerance to pain, and a learning of new
knowledge that a a child one wouldn't be able to grasp.  "Empire..."
fills both of these areas nicely.

     This film is a very necessary step forward in the series - I
find it hard to imagine Luke staying young, innocent, and naive with
all that goes on around him. With luck, the third film in this section
will have Luke passing his tests fully, acknowledging the loss of his
childhood, and settling down to a comfortable maturity.

     And as for us - if we ever need to regain our childhood, unlike
Luke, we can just pop into a local theatre and watch the first "Star
Wars" all over again.

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1980 at 0317-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TESB London Premiere, etc. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

According to Tony Daniels via My-Friend-The-Ultimate-Star-Wars-Fan:
Seemingly not recognizing that promptness is a mandatory virtue in
royalty, Princess Margaret was distressingly late.  Then the film
broke, and THEN something went wrong with the sound so that about
20 minutes of audio was absent.

(Tony, described by said Friend as not being easy to please in
 matters of his profession, saw TESB 3 times the week before
 coming for the premiere, and liked it better each time.)

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 26 MAY 1980 0233-EDT
From: DUFFEY at MIT-AI (Roger D. Duffey, II)
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #120   ( Star Wars Series Issue #3 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI
CC: DUFFEY at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Sunday, 25 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 120

      Today's Topics:         R2D2, Genealogy of Luke,
                      Speculations on Episode 6 & US Government
----------------------------------------------------------------------

CEH@MIT-MC 05/24/80 23:52:46 Re: TESB - Kenobi's Droid?

As far as R2D2 being Ben's 'droid... I always thought that that was an
invention of R2's, didn't Ben say "I don't remember owning any droid"
or some such?

-- Charles

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 2056-PDT
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI>
Subject: TESB and paternity 

     I don't see any contradictions at all between the SW4 and SW5
with respect to the possible fatherhood of Luke by Vader. That Kenobi
may have been ``lying'' in SW4 as the basis of concluding that Vader
is lying in SW5 doesn't seem plausible. All of the statements about
being good friends with Luke's father and Luke's father having been
killed are consistent with Kenobi protecting Luke from the truth until
he can understand what the Dark Side is all about.
     The fact that in the dream sequence where Luke faces his own
moral dilemma with the Vader figure who turns out to be himself
certainly forewarns of the paternity problem.
     The most interesting question then, given that Vader is Luke's
father, is what was Yoda referring to when he told Kenobi there was
another hope. It could have been something as trivial as the fact that
Vader playing his trump (fatherhood admission) would actually backfire
and turn Luke away from Vader; and it could be as interesting as

1) Yoda himself would turn around and kick ass (that he doesn't do
   that is odd given his apparent concern about the future of the
   universe,
2) Vader's plan is to overthrow the Emperor (who apparently is a Jedi
   himself and must be something if he can get Vader to kowtow to him)
   and establish some sort of reasonable governing setup.

In SW5 every bad action by Vader is aimed at getting Luke back as
fast as possible, even though it involves killing and dishonesty. To
stay in the confidence of the Emperor is a good way to overthrow him.
During the entire movie I had the impression that Vader was the main
character, who is still in a good/evil struggle: he wasn't the
incarnation of pure evil as in SW4. I took the glimpse of the real
Vader head as an attempt to show weakness/doubt/sympathy rather than
horror. This plan, by the way, is consistent with Yoda not stepping
in, which must mean that destroying Vader is destroying something not
evil.
     Also, wrt the bounty hunter, it was odd he was dressed in a
bargain basement Vader costume.
			-rpg-

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1980 0017-EDT
From: Jon Solomon <Solomon at RUTGERS>

     Vader can conceivably (dosen't look right) be Luke's father,
Imagine this possibility:

     In the movie this is not as apparent as in the book, but Vader
is *SCARED* of the Emperor (why?). The Emperor must be very stong in
the Dark Side of the force (possibly learning from other means than
Jedi training). Vader met up with him some time after he was trained
(partially) by Obi-Wan, but was not yet a Jedi. The Emperor proceeded
to convince him to finish his training with him, rather than with
Obi-Wan (like Vader is doing with Luke?), but instead was able to
become Vader's master (some sort of control over his brain). Since
we have never seen the Emperor, how do we know he is not as
non-flesh-and-blood as Obi-Wan is now? The Emperor made Vader kill
off the Jedi (for obvious reasons), and Vader does his bidding
without question (something hanging over his head?).

     Vader *CAN* be getting stronger from the force (perhaps the good
side?) in his old age, and he may have found a way to hide some of
his thoughts from the Emperor much like Obi-Wan is doing from Vader
and the Emperor. Why was he so free about telling Luke his plans to
destroy the Emperor and "restore order to the galaxy"? As of yet we
don't know, but Vader does not seem to believe that Obi-Wan is still
around. Not even the Emperor considers Obi-Wan important enough to
think about any more *or* Obi-Wan can hide from him as well.

     After Luke met Vader in combat, Luke DID learn something he did
not know. Perhaps Obi-Wan or Yoda put the image in Luke's mind to make
him go see Vader (wild part: perhaps Vader has been in contact with
Yoda or Obi-Wan.. Na!  too absurd!). Would Luke have believed that
Vader was his father if Obi-Wan or Yoda told him or would he need to
hear it from Vader himself?

     Luke now does not have a saber. I think he will learn that he
does not need it any more, Perhaps Vader was not going to harm him
at all? Perhaps Vader has converted?

     Of the three possible choices for Yoda's "there is another", I
Choose Han Solo (since he can maneuver through a asteroid belt without
fear, and totally by (the force?) instinct!), Princess Leia (since she
could hear Luke call out for her from the bottom of the city in the
sky), or Vader (possibly he has converted?).

		-Jsol-

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 2341-EDT
From: Matthew Jody Lecin <DREIFUS.MJL at RUTGERS>

QUOTE:

     "How did my father die?"

     "A pupil of mine, Darth Vader, turned to the Dark Side of
      the Force.  He betrayed, and murdered your father."

UNQUOTE.

As for the question of Vader being the believed to be dead Skywalker,
and if you notice there is no mention of any name other than (just
plain old) Skywalker, all the arguments FOR and AGAINST are good. It
is possible Lucas (Lukas...Luke...) will never tell. But if you trust
your feelings, and BELIEVE, you will know. NOW.

						Ddotwol,
							{Matt}

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 23:46-EDT
From: Charles E. Haynes <CEH at MIT-MC>
Subject:  TESB

1) I think Vader is lying about Luke's paternity, as evidence I cite
   his conversation with the emperor... I don't remember the exact
   wording but I do remeber it as indicating they were going to pull
   a whizzer on someone (I was specifically looking for evidence about
   Vader being Luke's father)
2) Clearly Luke's "fall" from the platform was deliberate, rather
   than join Vader he was going to die.
3) I think the "one other" is Leia... she heard Luke's call from
   under the city when he was clearly trying to invoke the force.

I am interested in the very brief glimpse we get of Vader's true
appearance (yechh!).

Anyone care to be Admiral?

-- Charles

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1980 at 0526-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THE PATERNITY PROBLEM ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Yes, Virginia (DON at SU-AI), there IS someone on SF-L who is really
**SURE** what Ben said (in SW-4, about Luke's father).  The dialogue
in THE ART OF STAR WARS is not always fully reliable, but I spent a
horrendous amount of time transcribing clandestine recordings of the
sound track. (The bulk of what follows, marked by vertical bars in
the margin, also occurs on the "Story of Star Wars" record, and lines
from segments shown in "The Making of Star Wars" TV special of August,
1977 have colons next to the bars).

              [INTERIOR, BEN'S ADOBE ABODE]
 
      LUKE:   No, my father didn't fight in the wars.  He was a
              navigator on a spice freighter.
 
      BEN:    That's what your UNCLE told you.  He didn't hold with
              your father's ideals...  thought he should have stayed
              here and not gotten involved.
 
 |    LUKE:   You fought in the Clone Wars?
 |
 |    BEN:    Yes, I was once a Jedi knight, the same as your father.
 |
 |    LUKE:   {I} wish I'd known him.
 |
 |    BEN:    He was the best star pilot in the galaxy...and a cunning
 |            warrior.  ...I understand you've become quite a good
 |            pilot, yourself....  And he was a good friend.  Which
 |            reminds me...  I have something here for you.
 |
 |    R2-D2:  {bleepity}
 |
 |    BEN:    Your father wanted you to have this, when you were old
 |            enough...  but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared
 |            you might follow old Obi-wan on some damn fool
 |            idealistic crusade like your father did.
 |
 |    C-3PO:  Sir, if you'll not be needing me, I'll close down for a
 |            while.
 |
 |    LUKE:   Sure, go ahead. . . . . What is it?
 |
 |    R2-D2:  {bleepity}
 |
 |    BEN:    Your father's light saber.  This's the weapon of a Jedi
 |            knight.  Not as clumsy or random as a blaster.  An
 |            elegant weapon for a more...civilized age.  For over a
 |            thousand generations the Jedi knights were the guardians
 |            of peace and justice in the Old Republic...  before the
 |            dark times,... before the "Empire".
 |
 |:   LUKE:   How did my father die?
 |
 |:   BEN:    A young Jedi named Darth Vader-- who was a pupil of
 |:           mine until he turned to evil-- helped the Empire hunt
 |:           down and destroy the Jedi knights.  He betrayed and 
 |:           murdered your father.  Now the Jedi are all but extinct.
 |:           Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.


The way Ben speaks of Luke's father, particularly the tones of voice
which cannot be reproduced here, are NOT those of speaking about a
beloved friend who had betrayed you.  Then, there is the implication
of Vader's being younger than Skywalker Sr., and only a learner, while
the other was already "the best star pilot in the galaxy...and a
cunning warrior".

Yoda similarly speaks of the two men differently.  Hopefully I'll
get those scenes and the "revelation" scene recorded and transcribed
in a few days.  But what Uncle Owen said about Luke's father being
dead is actually readily capable of PRO-paternity interpretation:

          LUKE:   But what if this..."Obi-wan" comes looking for him?
 
          OWEN:   He won't.  I don't think he exists anymore.  He died
                  about the same time as your father.

Since Owen was (seemingly) lying about Obi-Wan being dead, his saying
that Luke's father was dead is logically open to doubt.

If Vader does turn out to be Luke's father, there is enough ambiguity
which could be read into the contrary evidence for Lucas to get by
with it -- indeed, he could get by with it a lot better than the
coverup try over the mis-use of "parsecs".  But I contend that if he
does, it was a decision SUBSEQUENT to the filming of SW-4.  That's all
I really claim with confidence.

I have 2 pieces of circumstantial evidence to support the late
introduction of the "paternity claim", irrespective of its validity.
In the book, the Emperor says "the son of Skywalker"; in the film,
I am told, he says, rather, just "Luke Skywalker". Secondly, THE
PATERNITY CLAIM SCENE WAS NOT IN THE ORIGINAL SHOOTING SCRIPT. Now
I understand, from the TIME write-up I think, that Vader's lines in
Prowse's script were purposely NOT those planned for James Earl Jones
to speak. But this wasn't just a case of the lines being different --
the confrontation itself ends before the claim, and slightly
differently. Instead of Luke's getting blown out the broken window,
no window is broken but he gets away through a hole blasted through
a wall by one of the whirling pieces of machinery. There was NO
SCENE corresponding to the confrontation-over-the-abyss.


Admittedly the novel is not reliable as evidence, but another UTEXAN
cited the following in a local message to me--

From:	 DAWSON
Subject: support of non-paternity

Quote from the novel:

	[Vader]  "Our destruction? Who?"
	"The son of Skywalker.  You must destroy him or he
         will be our undoing."
	SKYWALKER!
	The thought was impossible. How could the emperor be
         concerned with this insignificant youth?

[Would Vader think about his son in those terms?]

	...

	[Vader suggests turning the boy into an ally]

	For the first time in  their meeting, Vader lifted
	his head to face his master directly.  "He will
	join us," he answered firmly, "or die, my master."
	   With that, the encounter had come to an end....
	leaving Darth Vader alone to fomulate what would be,
	perhaps, his most subtle plan of attack.

I think that last line is the key: clearly Vader realized that it was
going to take more than brute force (no pun) to bring Luke over to his
side. It was going to take a SUBTLE plan, and I think here is where
he decided that the paternity lie would be the best way to do it.


My-Friend-The-Ultimate-SW-Fan, on the other hand, firmly believes in
Vader's paternity.  (Among her coterie, DV is being referred to as
"Daddy Vader".  Yes, and in Houston, too, somebody sang out "Happy
Father's Day" at the crucial moment.)  She cited an extremely strong
point which David Lamb at CMU-10A also brought up (but which I have
absolutely no recollection of)-- that subsequent telepathic inter-
change when Vader, just before calling for his shuttle to take him
from Bespin, murmurs, "Son..." and the scene shifts to Luke who says,
"Father...".  I'll have to look for that, specially.

                            . . .

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The ONE Other Female Part in TESB ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

                         Did you notice her?

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 at 1749-CDT
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: TESB details, questions, issues

 Issues: Vader is/isn't Luke's father.

 The events clearly leave both possibilities open. We haven't heard
 from Ben. Also, there is the strange encounter on Yoda's planet
 between Luke and DV in which Luke slays Vader, only to see a human
 face (his own? his father's???) in the suit. Presumably this may have
 been an illusion created by Yoda -- or a property of the "place", as
 Yoda seemed to want Luke to believe.

 Vader does seem to have a plan in mind when he talks with the emperor
 about getting Luke to join the Empire. This "plan" could have been
 the "lie" about being Luke's father. Note also, that DV DOES lie to
 Lando about leaving Chewbacca and Leia in the Cloud City; about Han's
 fate, etc. Leaving PLENTY of evidence that Vader's word is not to be
 taken seriously. (He also offers Luke the option of joining with him
 to OVERTHROW the Emperor -- clearly making a strong case for Vader
 being on nobody's side but his own... whatever that is).

Women in TESB

 One reason I think the format of a "war film" is appropriate is the
 nearly total lack of women in this film. Leia and one communication
 officer (so HJJH tells me) appeared. Can anyone find any others?
 Something seems odd about that -- or at least HIGHLY Sexist.
 Presumably women aren't recruited to train as fighter pilots?;
 women don't run off to join the rebellion?; (or the EMPIRE's
 military forces either?).

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 23:59-EDT
From: William B. Daul <DAUL at MIT-MC>
Subject: TESB -- Hmmm??

The Time magazine last week mentioned that in the next movie SW 6,
either Luke or Darth die.  Let's see there are some things to think
about here.

1. Assuming Darth dies...we still have an evil character (more so than
   Vader). We have the Emperor. Even Darth is not as powerful.

2. Assuming Luke dies....we have Yoda saying "There is another." This
   gives us another "good person." I make no assumptions about this
   person's sex, although I am assuming them to be human.

So...any ideas, or shall we just wait until there is a leak from the
movie folks. By the way why is it that they can keep a better secret
than our own government?

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date: 26 MAY 1980 0513-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #121
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 26 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 121

     Today's Topics: Alien Intelligence Test - Language & Limits,
                       Replies - An SF Musical? & Time Tunnel,
                           SF Films - More to Come & TESB                
----------------------------------------------------------------------

JDD@MIT-ML 05/25/80 15:04:05 Re: Language and the Brain

Actually, the grammar of natural languages is not wildly different,
as was recently suggested.  Evidence toward this fact comes from
understanding linguistic invariants occurring in all languages.  In
English, for example, I can embed the sentence "... the cat is on the
rug ..." in a larger sentence "I like the cat that is on the rug", in
which the embedded sentence has the phrase "the cat" moved out of its
old position.  Similarly, "... Bill owns the cat ..." turns into "I
like the cat that Bill owns", and so forth, showing that "the cat" can
be moved out of a variety of positions.  BUT, the sentence "... the
cat and the dog are on the rug ..." does NOT turn into "I like the cat
that and the dog are on the rug"; one has to severely paraphrase that
sentence to say it.  This is an example of the Co-Ordinate Structure
Constraint, which is seemingly a rule in all human languages, not just
English.  A lot of early investigation centered on such constraints.

More recently (and my information is a few years old), more evidence
came to light that things are yet simpler.  Instead of there being
a few constraints that say what cannot be done in any language, it
seems possible that there are only a few things that can happen in
any language!  For example, there is a passivization rule in English
which can turn "The police saw me" into "I was seen by the police".
Ignoring the semantic difference (which is a function of having chosen
the rule for application), we see that the word order is different,
with subject and object switching position, that the predicate is
marked as being passive (with the word "was"), that the case marking
on "me" has changed and the case marking on "the police" has changed
(denoted by the word "by").  Passivization looks very different in
other languages; some don't change word order, some don't remark the
predicate, and some don't remark the noun phrases.  Yet this can be
understood in the right context, which is that Passive works the same
in all languages in which it is present at all, but that it interacts
with other language features which, in English, govern word order and
case and mood markings.  There is only a small set of possible rules
from which any language can choose, but these rules can interact in a
rich variety of ways.  Note that this pertains solely to the syntactic
component of language: it is not obvious how the semantic component
ties in, except to suggest that they might not be as tightly coupled
as one might think.

From a SF point of view, this is a really scary idea, since it
suggests that languages are all the same because of the way our brains
work (and this means all languages, from all over the world, so it is
seemingly quite universal). Therefore, most conceivable languages are
not acceptable to the human brain for us to work with well: we might
not be able to understand Klingonee except in the most formal symbol-
manipulation sense, and imagine the misunderstandings that this could
create!

------------------------------

Date: 20 May 1980 10:29:22 EDT
From: Dan Franklin <dan at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: Intelligence tests

"Barring massive mind over matter..." Why should this possibility be
barred? OUR minds may not be capable of doing much with matter, but
alien minds would be, well, alien. Also, even if a space-going race
does use tools, their tools may not look very much like ours, and may
not manipulate matter in quite the way we do. If their tools are
sufficiently different, they may not make the connection between our
hammers and soldering irons and their equipment, or between our metal
shells and their 'force fields'. Also, they might well decide that
what we do is largely, if not entirely, instinctive. (Of course, any
serious investigation into the matter would show otherwise, but we are
assuming that the aliens see nothing worth investigating.)

In short, I don't think any really useful limiting assumptions can be
made; one can only list possibilities, secure in the knowledge that
the real thing would be entirely different.

------------------------------

DLW@MIT-AI 05/26/80 00:37:35
Re: In reply to Karen Meyers regarding "Via Galactica"

"Via Galactica" was the first show presented at the Uris Theatre on
Broadway.  It was a "science fiction" musical that took advantage
of the nifty new technical equipment that had been built into the
theatre.  I saw a preview, just before opening night, but even
before the arrival of the critics it was clear it would fail.

The music was by Galt MacDermot (sp?) of "Hair" fame, and if you liked
the "Hair" music you'd probably like this, too (I did).  But the plot
was extremely naive science fiction.  What I remember of it is that
the people on earth have solved the race problem by all being vivid
blue, and that they casually suicide by taking a pill after reaching
a certain age; this is portrayed as an evil state.  A bunch of good
guys, who are more individualistic and not blue, are hanging around
on an asteroid (the low gravity was portrayed by opening the stage
into three trampolines, only slighly visible in the surface of the
stage, on which dancing was done).  I don't remember the plot line
but I think it had to do with someone trying to escape Earth and join
them, and that the Earth forces send out ships to attack them, with
accompanying special effects that were impressive given that it was a
theatre rather than a film.  I did enjoy it, but then I was young at
the time.  My parents took me because it seemed good for kids, and
they were right, but after seeing it they knew it would fail on
Broadway, and they were right about that, too.

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/26/80 00:22:23 Re: The Time Tunnel

The Time Tunnel Episode Guide, Part One

Time Tunnel - ABC - Fall 1966 - 30 episodes - starring James Darren
(Dr. Tony Newman), Robert Colbert (Dr. Doug Phillips), Whit Bissel
(Lt. Gen Heywood Kirk), Ann (Lee Meriweather)
    Executive Producer - Irwin Allen, Special Effects - L. B. Abbott
    Music - Johnny Williams   (yes, that one)

"Rendesvous with Yesterday" - Dr. Newman hurls himself into the
     machine to see if it works, and lands aboard the Titanic
     just before it sinks.

"One Way to the Moon" - Our heroes materialize in a spaceship
     bound for Mars.

"End of the World" - Visiting a small mining town just as Halley's
     Comet, and trying to convince the townspeople it doesn't mean
     the end of the world.

"The Day the Sky Fell Down" - They land at Pearl Harbor. Tony meets
     himself as a child, and tries to warn his father of the impending
     attack. Better than most.

"The Last Patrol" - This time, visiting the War of 1812.

"The Crack of Doom" - Right by Krakatoa as it is about to blow up.

"Revenge of the Gods" - Tony and Doug meet Ulysses and Helen of Troy
     back in 500 BC.

"Massacre" - at Custer's last stand.

"Devil's Island" - Just as you'd expect, the time-trippers are taken
     prisoner on Devil's Island.

"Reign of Terror" - In Paris during the French Revolution, our heroes
     meet Napoleon and Marie Antoinette.

"Secret Weapon" - time tunnlers go back in time to dig up information
     on a scientist who is also a suspected spy.

"The Death Trap" - Civil War time, and we get mixed up in a plot to
     assasinate President Lincoln.

"The Alamo" - stuck at - where else? - the Alamo during the fall.

"The Night of Long Knives" - Meeting Rudyard Kipling proves to
     be dangerous.

"Invasion" - Tony and Doug land in the peaceful town of Cherbourg
     in France - just two days before D-Day.

         Tommorrow , the second half (gasp!) of the list,
          and a few choice comments. Thanks to the book
              "Fantastic Television" as the source
                        of the listing.

                             Larry

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1980 10:49 PDT
From: klose.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: SFilms

Other films of interest which have not been mentioned...

Stanley Kubrik's long-awaited movie about the supernatural is now
upon us - "The Shining". The details surrounding this movie have been
shrouded in mystery, but I've heard rumors (somebody correct me if
I'm wrong) that it's about a boy with ESP-like powers coupled with a
mysterious house. The trailer has been playing for about 3 weeks here
in LA. It is a stationary shot of a lobby in some building with the
various credits moving up the screen. Then the elevator doors open and
in slow motion, torrents of what appears to be blood rushes toward the
camera and sweeps away all of the furniture in the lobby. I don't know
what to make of it, so we'll just have to see.

Sean Connery is trying SF again after playing the lead in "Zardoz".
This time he'll be cast as a commander of a space base on the outer
reaches of human civilization in "Outland". Expected release is
sometime next year.

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are co-operating on "Raiders of the
Lost Ark", plot as yet undisclosed. Both directors have interest in
SF, I've read that it'll be big budget, and the title make it sound
like it might be SF.

[ According to Craig Miller's Under the Rainbow column in the June 80
  issue of IA'sFM, Raiders is not a science fiction/fantasy film.
    --  RDD ]

In the "Time After Time" school of SF movies, there will be "The Final
Countdown". This blockbuster production will star Kirk Douglas, Martin
Sheen and Charles Durning. It's premise is that a nuclear aircraft
carrier gets swept into some kind of time warp and is placed in and
around Hawaii circa December 1941. You guessed it, the ship's crew has
to weigh their options: Should they use their superior fire power to
knock out the Japanese thus saving America from humiliating defeat or
should they sit back to preserve the fabric of history. Only time will
tell.

Another WW2 history gone awry movie is "SS-GB". This movie (like "An
Englishman's Castle", a BBC production seen on PBS late last year)
supposes that Germany successfully conquered Europe and Britain. The
plot centers on a spy for the British branch of the German Secret
Service (James Mason).

I haven't read much about this one in recent months - "Altered
States". It was written by Paddy Chaeffsky ("Hotel", "Network",
"Marty") and is available in novel form. It's a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde
story about a man who combines the affects of mind-altering drugs with
the serenity of isolation tanks in a quest for truth (with predictably
horrible consequences).

Brian DePalma is directing a filmed version of Bester's "Demolished
Man". I have not read this book so I really cannot comment. Perhaps
someone else can enlighten us.

"Galaxina" - A low-budget SF comedy which takes place in the 31st
century - looks like a copy of "Barbarella". Avery Shreiber will play
a robot who is trying desperately to be like a human.

And speaking of robots who want to be human, Andy Kaufman (wrestles
females) is the lead in "Heartbeeps", a SF comedy which has two robots
who defy all logic and fall in love.

The source of most of this info is the Hollywood trade journal
"Variety", which I read every so often.

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 2047-PDT
From: Barry Soroka <BIS at SU-AI>
Subject: economics of SW    
 
Can somebody help me complete the following table:

                SW-4         SW-5
   Luke
   Leia
   Prowse
   Solo
   Kenobi

where the entries are their salaries for the given movies?  What sort
of contracts do they have for the future?

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1980 at 0557-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Subject: Rebuttals...

To CLYDE at UTEXAS -- It may be "ONLY A ****MOVIE****", but a
 church-going agnostic finds religious experience pretty hard
 to come by.

To VILAIN at MIT-MC -- I strongly suspect that the "1st-EXPERIENCE"
 syndrome in relation to sex is strictly fictional component of
 ladies' romantic fiction. A general component of pre-marital
 counseling in re virginal brides is for neither to be disappointed
 at her initial lack of response, that it is something that typically
 grows with time and experience.

As for SW-4 vs. SW-5, most reviews I've seen have made some reference
to the change from the "children's fairy story" quality of SW-4 to the
distinctly darker aura of SW-5.

I thoroughly enjoyed both, but was always a sucker for a good "And
they lived happily ever after" story.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 26 MAY 1980 1959-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #122   ( Star Wars Series Issue #4 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Monday, 26 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 122

    Today's Topics: World of Star Wars, R2-D2, Genealogy of Luke,
                                     Yoda's Hope
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 at 1749-CDT
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: TESB details, questions, issues

Things to notice:

Leia isn't tortured by Vader, only Chewy and Han are: Why?

Gravity Control? What can we infer is the technology used for support
of ground-skimming space-craft during the hunt for Han Solo and Luke
on Hoth (the night after they were lost)?  Is this anti-gravity? Does
the use of "tractor beams" imply another indication of "gravity
control". Finally, Han's frozen form is merely pushed along the
ground - Is this too anti-gravity?

Some counter points. The Millenium Falcon uses short bursts of
stabilizing jets when landing in the Sky City. The main thrust
of the Imperial Fleet seems to be rocket engines!

Something seems out of adjustment here, i.e. two technologies which
somehow are centuries apart are being used together. Do we have any
indication of what fuel is being used? Nobody seems to check fuel
gauges, or load fuel aboard?

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1980 at 0532-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ OBI-WAN and R2-D2 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Who owned the 'droids, and when?

C-3PO told Luke-- "Our last master was Captain Antilles."*
   a) that could be the whole and exact truth;
   b) it could be a partial truth, with Leia as subsequent
      owner (but, 'mistress' rather than 'master');
   c) it could be an outright lie, to avoid mentioning Leia.

W-o-u-l-d Threep tell such a lie?  Yup.  He already had in--

 |        LUKE:   Who IS she?  She's beautiful!
 |
 |        C-3PO:  I'm afraid... I'm not quite sure, sir...
 |
 |        LEIA:   Help me, Obi-wan Kenobie...  You're my only hope.
 
          C-3PO:  I THINK she was a passenger on our last voyage--  A
                  person of some importance, as I believe. Our captain
                  was attached to--

This is in contradiction to C-3PO's line in the very opening scene of
SW-4, when the ship is captured--

   "There'll be no escape for the Princess THIS time."*

Then later, C-3PO said, translating for R2--

   "He says he's the property of Obi-Wan Kenobi, a resident of
    these parts..."

Could R2 have lied?  It's likely he lied when claiming the restraining
bolt had short-circuited his system, and certain that he did when
refusing to acknowledge he had the message.  Yet he needn't be lying
about being Obi-Wan's property if Leia (as his owner, or as Rebel
leader) had also transferred ownership when she programmed R2 to
seek out Obi-Wan with the message.

Precisely what Ben said, however, was-- 

   "I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid."*

which is as ambiguous as Hades.

..........

* Points where the novelization differed from the film.

  The Captain's name was Colton (and, WEDGE's last name was Antilles!)
  It was the CAPTAIN there was "no escape for, this time".  Luke, not
  Obi-Wan, mentions never having heard of Ben's owning a 'droid.

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1980 at 0522-CDT
From: ABLES (to and via HJJH@UTEXAS)

I had recently come to the same decision. It would complicate too
many things if he were telling the truth. Like when he talked to the
Emperor, he called him "Skywalker" and nothing more, he has always
spoken of him as someone far removed from anything having to do with
himself. Besides, if he is telling the truth, that would mean Ben was
lying or at the very least, deceiving Luke. This would spoil his image
of perfection. I think Darth saw this as a way to get past the one
thing that would keep Luke from giving in to join him, the fact that
Vader had killed Luke's father. This was the one thing that I thought
of when Luke was leaving Dagobah, the one thing that would keep him
going was his want for vengance of his father's death at the hands of
DV. If Vader can at least create some doubt in Luke's mind as to who
his father really was (remember in Star Wars when Luke was talking to
Ben about how his father died and he said "I wish I'd known him."? and
Ben said what a good pilot and friend he was?? ) then he might be able
to persuade him to join the Empire, or at least kill him without much
trouble.

The ending left me wanting so much to see more . . .
I don't think I can wait until 1983!

------------------------------

JDD@MIT-ML 05/25/80 14:32:43 Re: Luke's Father

Before I saw TESB, I had read stories in at least two places (one of
them was Time Magazine; the other might have been SF-LOVERS in the
days before the PM Edition) that said that a high point of the movie
was a revalation of some fact about Darth Vader vis-a-vis Luke.  I
guessed, before seeing the film, that Vader was Skywalker Sr., so it
can't be too preposterous/inconsistent a statement.

I have also read that Luke will be in Chapters 7-9, as an adult with
his own family (perhaps with the Princess?), and that Chapters 1-3
will deal with Luke's parents???????????????

------------------------------

Date:  26 May 1980 06:09 edt
From:  York.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Clarifications

Having just returned from a 02:45 showing of TESB, I would like to jot
down these lines before my memory fogs up.

The Emperor calls Luke "...the son of Skywalker" in his conversation
with Vader.

When Luke is abord the Falcon after losing his hand Vader "calls"
out "Luke", and Luke responds: "Father", then Vader says "Son".

The Emperor is clearly a much more powerful master of the Force
than Vader (there does not seem to be enough evidence to compare
him to Yoda or Obi-wan).  Vader humbles himself and calls the
Emperor "Master", which cannot sit too well with him given what
we know of his personality.  At one point he says to Luke: "You
can defeat the Emperor.  He has forseen it." This implies that
the Emperor can forsee things that he cannot, and also tells us
that he believes implicitly any vision the Emperor has.

In Luke he may see a way to get out from under.  I think that this
would drive him to any lengths, certainly to lying to Luke about
their relationship.  On the other hand, it is certainly suggestive
that Luke falls so completely for the lie ("Examine your feelings
Luke.  You KNOW that it is true.").

It is probably not very worthwhile to reject the father/son premise
on the grounds that this would mean that Obi-wan lied to Luke.
After all, we are playing for the galaxy here, and what needs to
be done will be done.  It is certainly no coincidence that Ben is
living on the same backwater planet that the potential savior of
civilization is growing up on.

I still think that the most interesting line in the movie is Yoda's
"No, there is another."  I guess that my vote is for Leia (if you were
going to hide the last two hopes for the galaxy, where would you put
them?  As far apart, in all ways, as possible?). I guess that we will
just have to wait it out to know for sure.

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/25/80 17:13:11
Re: Once more over the brink - Who is Vader?

     Is he, or isn't he? that is the question. So let's review all
the salient points.

  In the last film, Obi-wan says to Luke (and this is a quote)
  "...a young Jedi named Darth Vader, He betrayed and murdered
   your father."

Well, this *could* be only metaphorical rather than literal...

     Yoda says to Kenobi- "Much anger in him, like his Father." And
since Yoda says anger typifies the dark side of the Force, then this
is evidence that Vader is telling the truth.

     But we know Vader can lie (or is this a lie?) - During the
swordplay, he says to Luke, "Only through anger can you defeat me."
This conflict's with Yoda's teachings.

     Luke's encounter with the figure in the tree could not only
symbolize his coming to grips with the Darker side of the Force within
himself, but the fact that Luke's face appeared inside the mask might
indicate that a little bit of Luke, in a genealogical sense, is in
Vader.

     Already mentioned are the facts that Vader doesn't want Luke
killed (whereas he has no such qualms about exterminating Admirals) -
and the fact that Luke instinctively cries "Father?" onboard the
Falcon, when Vader extends a psychic call to him. But it could just be
that the Dark side of the Force can twist minds to think things true
which are not.

     Also from the previous film, recall that Obi-wan refers to Vader
as a pupil of his, but when speaking of Luke's father refers to him as
an equal.

     And in an interview published today in our local Sunday paper,
George Lucas talks about the trilogy to be made cover events prior to
this time, saying how it will focus on "young Ben Kenobi, young Luke's
father, and young Darth Vader." He refers to them as three people, but
doesn't refer to Luke's father by name.

     So the evidence is surprisingly well balanced. Personally, I
think it would be more interesting if Vader was telling the truth.

     **And now, one little obscure monkeywrench. Why does the Emperor
specifically say "the Son of Skywalker must not live."  Why didn't he
just say Skywalker?  Could there be a connection between this and
Yoda's remark to Obi-wan about there being another (savior).  Is it
possible that Luke might indeed hitch up with Leia to produce a Son
of Skywalker?  At three in the morning, which is when we got out of
the theatre for the second time, such things don't seem so crazy.
   Well, that's what sequels are for...

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1980 at 0544-CDT
From: clive at UTEXAS
Subject: TESB speculations...

As recently as 15 minutes ago, I was a firm supporter of the "Vader
lied" school, but I have just converted (temporarily, at least). The
problem as I see it is that Lucas came up with the paternity idea
AFTER the filming of SW-4, which is simply loaded with stuff that
contradicts Vader's claim, as several people have already pointed
out. Unless he cops-out, Lucas is going to have to find a way to
explain all of the contradictions in SW-4.  I'd like to throw out
the following theory:
    What if Obi-Wan and Yoda don't KNOW the truth about Vader,
and hence cannot be accused of lying to Luke?  Is it possible that
Skywalker Sr., the loved and respected Jedi knight, secretely turned
to the dark side of the Force, killed Obi-Wan's younger pupil, the
original Darth Vader, and assumed his identity?  He could have then
for a variety of reasons made it look like it had happened the other
way around.  Now presumably the "dark side of the Force" would have
to have been powerful enough to prevent the real truth from getting
out, but this would certainly seem more plausible than having to
explain all of the other evidence and quotes in SW4 which support
non-paternity.

The more I think about this, it seems to be a very attractive way
to explain everything. Vader's mask and altered voice are obvious
consequences (although we now know there is some truth to the fact
that an injury caused disfigurement as well).  

Can anybody spot any holes in this?

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1980 at 0355-CDT
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: The Shocking Truth about Obi Wan

What you haven't been told yet is that Obi Wan is Darth Vader's
father!

In fact I'm beginning to think the "gene" for ability with the "Force"
is linked to the royalty of this universe and what we are actually
watching is some terribly incestuous in-fighting between a number of
talented members of a royal family with everyone else being a pawn.

P.S. Maybe R2D2 is the other to which Yoda refers.

Actually, Lucas found out about SF-LOVERS after Star Wars and decided
that rather than waste his time planning the next movies, he would
just produce TESB with every possible factor left open and then let us
fight it out for the development of the best continuation.  He'll just
pick the most interesting solution and use it.

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1980 1202-EDT (Sunday)
From: Mike.Fryd at CMU-10A
Subject: TESB: There is another, but who?

     I suspect that the other is the princess. After all When Luke is
hanging below the city and has to use the Force to contact someone he
contacts the princess.  Up until then, the Force had only been used
for contact between people who could use it.  Ben and Luke, Luke and
Darth etc.

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1980 at 1751-PDT
From: Mike at Rand-Unix (Michael Wahrman)
Subject: In Lucas' Own Words

     So you think you know who 'the other' is, do you?  To confuse you
further, the following is from the Rolling Stone interview with Lucas:

   I: Let's get back to TESB for a moment. In the movie, Ben says
      Luke is the last hope and Yoda says no, there is another.

   L: Yes. [smiling] There is another, and has been for a long time.
      You have to remember, we're starting in the middle of this whole
      story.  There are six hours' worth of events before Star Wars,
      and in those six hours, the "other" becomes apparent, and after
      the third film, the "other" becomes apparent quite a bit.

   I: What will happen to Luke?

   L: I can't say.  In the next film, everything gets resolved one way
      or the other. Luke won the first battle in the first film. Vader
      won the second battle in the second film, and in the third film,
      only one of them walks away.  We have to go back to the very
      beginning to find out the real problem.

(PS.  I still think its the princess...)

------------------------------

Date: 24 May 1980 17:41 PDT
From: Judy at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Lucas is UNFAIR

I agree with JTurner.Coop@Mit-Multics.  It ain't fair that we have to
wait 3 years.  Is this just another money-making ploy?  By 3 years
from now, we will all have forgotten most of the plot, and will have
to go see TESB right before SW III, so as to refresh our memories!
Besides, I feel cheated!  You can't leave a hero frozen in carbonite
for THREE YEARS!

How is Luke going to fight Darth in the next movie without his Light
Saber?  He left it below the cloud city with his hand!  Is it a common
weapon?  I was under the impression that only Jedi-Knights had them.

About Yoda: How did they make him seem so life-like?  Isn't he just a
puppet?  He was really good.

Oh, well, enough random comments...
			Judy.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************


Date: 27 MAY 1980 0314-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #123
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 27 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 123

                  Special Issue on SF Series/Movies:
              Time Tunnel, Altered States, The Shining,
    Replies - What would make a GOOD SF Movie & Novels vs. Stories
----------------------------------------------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/27/80 00:50:56 Re: The Time Tunnel

The Time Tunnel Episode Guide, Part 2

"Robin Hood" - Drs. Newman and Phillips find themselves in the age
    when men were bold, and stock footage from "Prince Valient" crops
    up to menace them.

"Kill Two by Two" - A Pacific island in 1945 holds both the time
    travelers and a Japanese soldier determined to kill them.

"Visitors from Beyond the Stars" - in Mullins Arizona, 1885, strange
    alien creatures with silver skin have landed.

"The Ghost of Nero" - Believe it or not, the spirit form of the
    ancient Roman Emperor is brought forward in time to World War I.

"The Walls of Jericho" - It turns out the Tony and Doug were the
    fabled spies who enterd the walled city. For more info, consult
    your Bible.

"Idol of death" - Spies again, but this time in Mexico when Cortez
    arrives.

"Billy the Kid" - Tony is mistaken for the famous gunfighter.

"Pirates of Dead Man's Island" - The pirates capture our heroes off
    the Barbary Coast.

"Chase through Time" - they travel from One Million A.D. to One
    Million B.C. in this episode. No Raquel Welch.

"The Death Merchant" - Another go-round at the Civil War, with
    Tony and Doug on opposite sides at the Battle of Gettysburg.

"Attack of the Barbarians" - This time they get stuck between Mongol
    hordes and the forces of Kublai Khan.

"Merlin the Magician" - Tony and Doug help the wizrd rid King Arthur
    of invading Vikings.

"The Kidnappers" - A woman colleague is whisked away to 8433 A.D.
    by a creature named Ott, and its our heroes off to the rescue.

"Raiders from Outer Space" - Somehow an outer space monster gets
    involved with the Battle of Khartoum.

"Town of terror" - Aliens land in New England in 1978 and try
    to drain the Earth of oxygen. (They didn't succeed - you're
    still breathing, aren't you?)


     And there the series ended. Fortunate, because they seemed to
            be slowly running out of script ideas. (Not to 
                  mention oxygen.) Critical remarks
                     I will reserve for another
                                day.

                               Larry

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/27/80 00:50:56 Re: Altered States [ see SFL V1 #121 ]

    The reason you haven't heard much about "Altered States" is
because Ken Russel ("Tommy") directed it, and what he turned it
into, with his, uhh, excessive style, so angered novelist and
screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky that he got his name pulled of the
credits and raised a big stink about it and now Warner Bros.
dunno *what* to do. Could be released any day now,but then again...

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1980 1341-PDT
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI>
Subject: The Shining

This movie is based on the book, ``The Shining'' by Stephen King,
author of ``Carrie'', ``Salem's Lot'', and ``The Stand'', the last
of which may also become a movie. He is generally considered to be
the heavyweight in the horror genre and is a pretty good writer
from Portland, Maine.  ``The Shining'' is roughly about a boy whose
parents, struggling for survival after some disasters, take on the
winter caretakership of a grand hotel in the Rockies of Colorado.
The hotel is also shrouded in mystery and has a dubious history.
The boy has `the shining' which the old black cook recognizes as he
leaves, which is the ability to perceive thoughts and to communicate
mentally. In the book this doesn't account for much except to make
the boy sensitive to the weirdnesses of the hotel and to allow him
to communicate with the cook (in Florida) at the right time. The
story involves horrible things happening to this family at the
`hands' of the hotel. By the way, the hotel is snowed in for 4
months a year, the telephone lines routinely go out, and there is
only 1 radio. I found the book pretty spooky and well-written, but
haven't seen the movie.
			-rpg-

------------------------------

JSOL@MIT-MC 05/15/80 05:57:15 Re:  Movies done from books

Has anyone heard any rumors about making Ringworld or Ringworld
Engineers into a movie? Has this already been done? I just finished
the book (Ringworld) and I will place it up there with the LoTR
trilogy, and the Hobbit! (hooray hobbit!)

				/jon

------------------------------

Date: 22 MAY 1980 1446-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: movie query

  Some time ago I asked SFLovers to send me their opinions on SF
stories that would make good movies.  The responses, summarized
below with comments, were quote varied, with Heinlein and Niven
the only ones to get more than two votes for all their work put
together).  The question could have been more specifically defined,
but this way people explained not only what they would like to see
as a movie but something about what they considered good movies
(and the latter certainly influences the former).  Some of you may
recognize comments from previous issues of SFL; I took the liberty
of "clipping" remarks from the general circulation that I thought
were relevant to my question.

3 votes:

  THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS --- "...has everything you need: sex,
violence, a computer of infinite wisdom, nasty bureaucrats, world
politics, down-home characters, the works." (JoSH @ RUTGERS)
  "Since most of the action in the book takes place underground, this
could even be done as a made-for-TV movie." (LMOORE @ MIT-ML)
  "It certainly would be easier to make than Stranger in a Strange
Land, and harder to screw up. Also there's lots of room for neat
special effects."  (KATZ @ USC-ISIE)


2 votes:

  WAY STATION (HITCHCOCK @ CCA) (WESTFW at WHARTON)
  *but* "It is not clear to me that Way Station would transfer well to
film.  I think that turning the long scenic descriptions into images
would probably bore people without transfering to them Simak's love of
nature (esp. nature in the Fall) (and in Wisconsin).  In addition I
don't think that many of the trinkets stored in the station could be
depicted convincingly." (LMOORE @ MIT-ML)

[It was my feeling that the descriptions should be a matter of picking
 good establishing shots rather than taking up a lot of running time.
 (THE STERILE CUCKOO is a good example of how to include beautiful
 scenery.)  Many of the trinkets are in fact described in detail, and
 should not be difficult for a good prop man to construct.]


1 vote (alphabetically by title):

the Amber series (LMOORE @ MIT-ML)

CONAN --- "...already in production." (THURMOND @ USC-ECL)

CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS (LMOORE @ MIT-ML)

DOUBLE STAR ---  "The plot is just THE PRISONER OF ZENDA translated
to a 'united solar system' type culture.  All that need be done is to
change the ETs to something from outside the solar system.
(VILAIN @ MIT-MC)

DUNE (THURMOND at USC-ECL)

the Foundation trilogy (LIMIT at MIT-MC)

INFERNO --- "expensive." (THURMOND @ USC-ECL)

LORD OF LIGHT (LMOORE @ MIT-ML)

THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE (LAUREN @ UCLA-SECURITY)

ORPHANS OF THE SKY (LMOORE @ MIT-ML)

RINGWORLD --- "expensive." (THURMOND @ USC-ECL)

SHOCKWAVE RIDER --- "This would fit in really nicely with the current
trend in anti-governmental, pro-personal freedom movies."
  (WESTFW @ WHARTON)

STAR SMASHERS OF THE GALAXY RANGERS --- "expensive."
  (THURMOND @ USC-ECL)

TOWER OF GLASS --- "I think one could do a fine version.  Scenes of
the clandestine android church, chanting the genetic codes, android
ghettos, the tower itself in the artic wastes...it's not my favorite
work, but I think it would lend itself well to cinema."
(JRDavis.Multics @ MIT-Multics)

[A good point about makability (which is sort of what I was aiming
 for), especially in view of the requirement of current movies for
 assorted sex, which ToG could provide w/o random added characters
 (of course, going by today's standards, much of recent Silverberg
 is \makable/; the question is whether the qualities that make
 Silverberg worth reading (as distinct from, for instance, NAKED
 CAME THE STRANGER) would be preserved in the film)]

THE WEREWOLF PRINCIPLE "cheaper" (THURMOND @ USC-ECL)


more general comments:

WESTFW @ WHARTON
  "...some of Laumer's stuff, especially THE LONG TWILIGHT.  These all
have the advantage that they have the type of Super-hero and villian
characters that will appeal to the 'mass audience', while remaining
interesting and plausible enough to keep SF-LOVERs relatively happy.
They also have the advantage that the necessary effects would not be
too difficult to do well, as would be the case in a lot of Niven's
stuff (can you see Hollywood trying to set up a Motie space craft,
with Moties oriented every which way -- ugh)

[Laumer's THE MONITORS was allegedly done several years ago. I saw the
 movie and noted very little resemblance to the book, which wasn't
 much good anyway; the movie was worse. With the current rise in
 xenophobia some of the Retief books would go well and might even be
 entertaining.]

LMOORE @ MIT-ML
   It is my feeling that film TENDS to present well certain external
(to the mind) realities.  Conversely, it is feeling and thoughts that
come off well in writing.  Sometimes, films will have a voice over
when they want to present to the audience what the character is
feeling.  Books with a philosophical bent thus have problems.  An
example is Siddhartha which bombed at the box office.  On the other
hand, S. Jackson's short story "The Lottery" really came alive on the
screen as a short film.  So much so that many public school systems
have banned the film (but not the book!).
   I fear that it is true that those films that are most closely
analogous to recent books are the ones that fail before the public.
This graveyard includes: THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, "A Boy and his
Dog", and THE LAST DAYS OF MAN ON EARTH.  A notable exception is 2001,
but I think it did well only on the basis of its dazzling images.
Your question asked about what would make good films.  Does success
have anything to do with what is good?  Is Woody Allen the only person
that can make intelligent films in the US?  Why is it that every big
SF film has had an American at the helm?
  I know these questions are making statements that are not totally
true, but I think they have a kernel of truth to them.

[I thought Kubrick was British?]

------------------------------

DLW@MIT-AI 05/27/80 00:14:02 Re: The Demolished Man

Some years ago, Alan Bawden and I, disappointed at the lack of
attempts to make real science fiction movies, tried to think of the
best piece of written science fiction to be turned into a movie, and
we decided on Bester's novel "The Demolished Man". It is interesting
to hear that Brian dePalma is trying to make this movie.

"The Demolished Man" is probably the best of Alfred Bester's three
novels and a truly fine piece of science fiction. It is very visual,
and has lots of action centered on a detective/suspense plot. It is
low on gadgets, robots and aliens, and with the preponderance of
large-scale special-effects-oriented "SF" movies these days I had
given up hope on its being produced as a movie, but I think it is a
very wise choice. It will have to be trimmed (it IS a full length
novel) and the telepathic communication, which is depicted in the book
by two-dimentional arrays of words on the page, will be a challenge
(it could be abandoned without severe loss to the rest of the book),
but on the whole it should not be hard to do.

It's hard to know what will come of this effort; I will take the Mel
Brooks attitude: hope for the best and expect the worst.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 21 May 1980 1924-CDT
From: map at CCTC (Mike Padlipsky)
Subject: A Better "S `vs.' F" Example

I think I've come up with a much better instance of where the needs
of Fiction must outweigh the dictates of Science in order to avoid
ruining the work-as-a-whole: If you think it's appropriate to appeal
to Square-Cube Law considerations (at least, I think that's the one)
and object to the size of the Brobdignagians in Gulliver's Travels you
1) miss the point, 2) aren't very Swift, 3) are artless. (Yes, I know
I'm assuming that we're talking about "literature" and not merely
"stories"--but I hope and trust that there wouldn't be an SF-Lovers
list JUST to let people tell each other about stories they like or
dislike.)

Reminder: all I'm trying to say is that the S and the F both count;
I'm specifically not saying that my views of what fiction is ought
to dominate your (or even my) views of what science fiction (or even
science) is.  BUT (last gasp, promise) haven't all of us who are/were
programmers heard the anguished cry "How could it crash here; the only
code I changed was down there"?

[Part 1]

   At last, after quietly eavesdropping on SFL for several months
(well, mostly quiet, anyway--except for a few moderately loud, but
private, groans), one of my Buttons has been pushed and in I must
plunge:
   There are two primary reasons, in my view, why novels of any
genre rarely adapt well to film. In the first place, novels aren't
screenplays, they're novels. (Let, by the way, "novel" stand for
"work of literary fiction of any length" for present purposes.) The
real kicker is that novels typically contain "narrative prose"
which, unfortunately for would-be visualizers, isn't always scenic
description. To name just a few of the things it deals with that
turn out to be hard to deal with cinematically, consider thoughts
and attitudes (of characters or of"the narrator") not expressed in
"action"; background information that doesn't lend itself to
"flashbacks"; and--probably hardest of all--first-person narrative
that would have to be dealt with by the dreaded "voiceover". So
what you basically get when adapting a novel is "the story line"
(or "plot") without "the Art". (The line of reasoning is similar to
the one that leads you to the realization that it's ludicrous to
"do Shakespeare in modern English".)
   That leads us to the second place, which, perhaps somewhat
obliquely, goes: Somebody's Always Trying to "Improve" Something --
which can be devastating when it comes to perceived story lines,
particularly when the art (which has a great deal to do with
"aesthetic unity") is left out because it's too hard to include (or,
sometimes, even to perceive).  (For "I improve", read "He overlays
his spoor" -- and, if you like, ask me to tell you sometime about
what I said to Dennis Ritchie at the unixtm Users Meeting when the
guy from Harvard got up and told us all about the glories of
harvardunix(tm?).)  Case in point: the proposal the other day to make
the "ET's" in Double Star "extra-solar" (or whatever the phrase was).
WHY???!!!!????!!!!!?  The book is A NOVEL ABOUT POLITICS.  (It's
probably even a satirical novel about politics, but let's ignore that
for now.)  A MAJOR ELEMENT IS HOW TO DEAL WITH "STRANGE" NEIGHBORS
WHO "HAVE" TO BECOME PART OF A POLITICAL ENTITY FOR THAT PE TO "MAKE
SENSE". (South Africa, anyone?)  THAT WOULDN'T APPLY IF THEY WERE
EXTRA-SOLAR (unless, of course, it were an entirely different novel
and included FTL drives, Star Gates, or the like).
   I've carefully refrained from aiming the argument against whomever
it was who proposed destroying Double Star, especially because the
proposal is minor compared to the sort of idiocy that so often comes
out of "Hollywood" (where "adapt" often means "adopt"--the title).
But, to skip a lot of steps, the real point is that THE MESSAGE IS
THE MESSAGE, though it inescapably (?)  "includes" the medium.
(Other media, other messages?)  The appeal to mcluhanacy I saw
recently here is ill-founded; if The McLuhanatic was not being
sarcastic or censorious in his famous saw, then he probably really
meant it when he let Woody Allen make him say "You don't understand
my basic fallacy" [SIC!!!]
   Moral: if novels are to be adapted, it had better be done with a
great deal more care that that with which porcupines are reputed to
"make love"... AND PREFERABLY BY THE AUTHOR/ARTIST, who typically
has at least a 50-50 chance of having understood the work of art he
happened to commit.
   (With apologies for the relative length--but it could have been
much worse, say touching on SF-unique problems for example.  Besides,
I've been good so long, and this probably just scratches the cliched
surface.)
           Cheers, MAP

[Part 2]

   It just (around 5 hrs. later) occurred to me that the probable
explanation for the "improvement" of Double Star must have to do
with what we "now know" about Mars.  If so, I'd observe that it's
supposed, after all, to be Science FICTION. (If that's too cryptic,
ask yourself whether it really matters to you or to 2001 that
singing "Daisy" has nothing in particular to do with AI--or even
that AI has nothing in particular to do with "cyberphylogeny".
Hmmmm, wonder if nobody blooperized that one because it was a good
symbol, however bad the science--or is it just that nobody else
thought much of the flick either...  Doubtless there are better
examples, though the only non-dirty one I can think of right away
is far too "literary"--Bohemia's seacoast--but it all still seems to
me to come down to attaching roughly equal weight to both the S and
the F. Well, better quit before the urge to cite Aristotle becomes
irresistable--not that I like him any more than 2001, of course.)

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 27 MAY 1980 2356-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #124   ( Star Wars Series Issue #5 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Tuesday, 27 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 124

Today's Topics:  Yoda is a Muppet, Force & Clairvoyance, Pot Pourri,
                Genealogy of Luke, The Emperor, Yoda's Hope, New Data
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1980 2352-PDT
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: lifelike Yoda: a muppet is NOT "just a puppet"   

In reply to one of Judy's comments in the last PM digest, re Yoda: The
people who work the muppets are geniuses. If you want to see more of
what they can do, watch the Muppet Show (Sundays at 6pm on chan 4 in
the bay area), though I admit that Yoda is one of their best.

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1980 at 0526-CDT 
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

As for whether Vader "can see the future to some degree"-- the SW-4
evidence against that is very strong.  There, he makes 3 specific
predictions, all of which are wrong.  (Which was one of the things
about SW-4 that really puzzled me.)

 |    VADER:  She must have hidden the plans in the escape pod.
 |            Send a detachment down to retrieve them.  See to it
 |            personally, Commander. THERE'LL BE NO ONE TO STOP US
 |            THIS TIME.



      TAGGE:  And what of the rebellion?  If the rebels have obtained
              {a} complete technical readout of this station, it is
              possible, however unlikely, that they might find a
              weakness... and exploit it.
 
      VADER:  THE PLANS YOU REFER TO WILL SOON BE BACK IN OUR HANDS.



      VADER:  This will be a day long remembered.  It has seen the end
              of Kenobi...  IT WILL SOON SEE THE END OF THE REBELLION.

------------------------------

Date: 26 MAY 1980 2233-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: TESB spoilers

  One thing which I noticed with mixed feelings was that without some
knowledge of SW 4, 5 was potentially confusing, particularly when it
started with Luke's light saber coming when called. It's nice not to
have things well-known within the group rehashed, but I heard at least
one person asking "What's going on?" at the showing I went to.
  Did anyone notice that one item in the film \must/ have been from
the late Leigh Brackett--the scene where the Falcon "scrapes off"
two TIE fighters by diving sideways through a canyon is obviously
Burroughs (mars) modified by Leiber (THE WANDERER). If you accept
someone's suggestion that Luke has lost and will find he doesn't need
his light saber, there's an echo of SECOND STAGE LENSMAN that is more
likely Lucas' own idea.
  Unless someone has positive evidence that the explanation of
"parsecs" that appears in the script reprinted in THE ART OF STAR
WARS was inserted after the fact, I think the term "coverup try over
the misuse of 'parsecs'" is unjustified.
  The auditory recollections of several people who saw the film all
agree that the emperor refers to "the son of Skywalker" in the movie
as well. Given some of the confusions, it's possible that Lucas is
borrowing not just Oedipus (via Freud) but several other legends in
which confusion over an oracular reference entangles everyone.
  Darth Vader does not lie to Lando; he breaks a promise. Leaving
aside moral questions, there is a definite difference between changing
the indefinite future and misstating the fixed past---and there is
nothing from either Obi-Wan or DV that is demonstrably a lie. (Given
the basis of Jedi in Eastern philosophies, it would be quite possible
to say that a knight had murdered himself by going over to the dark
side of the force.)
  A friend claims he will start a junk-food company; the first product
will be Yoda-Soda, "the cola with the Force".

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 05/26/80 11:55:49
Re: TESB: Parentage/Jedis/The Force/ & further randomosities.

Well, I wasn't planning to see it 'till the lines became reasonable,
but a bunch had an extra ticket for a 2:45 am showing, so... (That's
right 2:45 AM! They're showing it around the clock here. 8:00 am to
2:45).

Another argument for Vader lying:

Vader must be less powerful than the Emperor, otherwise, given his
disposition, he would BE Emperor.  So, if Luke really is Vader's
son, the Emperor would surely know it.  He evidently considers the
(unconverted to the dark side) Luke a real threat.  Would he trust
Vader to handle Luke the way he wants him handled, if Vader really
is Luke's father? I seriously doubt it.

On the other hand, Luke obviously believes it, and Vader is the one to
suggest that he attempt to convert Luke. The Emperor originally just
wanted him destroyed, so maybe Vader is trying to save his son's life.

Why couldn't Ben help Luke against Vader? He can apparently be
anywhere he wants to. Perhaps it is to keep Vader and the Emperor
ignorant of his continuing existence, though he warned Vader in SW4
that if he was killed, he would become more powerful than ever. Why
don't Vader and the Emperor know what happens when you kill a powerful
Jedi? If Ben can still be around in some sense, why not all the other
Jedis that Vader did away with? Any ideas?

Yoda is absolutely fantastic. What else can you say? He puts me in
mind of a Zen master or something like that, though he DOES seem
interested in the fate of the galaxy, so why doesn't he kick ass? It
seems likely that he could, except that he doesn't, and would if he
could. He does say that the force must be used for defense only, never
attack, though I have a hard time calling what Ben did in SW4 strictly
defense. I mean, attacking normally, and using the force to defend
yourself seems to be "within the letter of the law, but outside the
spirit". Further, Yoda and Ben seem to be training Luke to use the
force to bring down the Empire, which will be tough to do without
attacking. This is confusing.

Aren't the uniforms for the officers of the military forces of the
Empire very similar to the uniforms for some branch of the Nazi
forces in WW 2? Makes them into real bad guys!

I don't think that Luke contacting Leia is good evidence for her
having abilities in the force, rather that Luke is getting strong
in it. BTW, what are the limits on the power of the force? Can you do
absolutely anything that you believe you can? I was fairly impressed
when DV caught Han's laser shots in is hand with no injury. Reacting
to a shot coming at you at light speed from 20 feet away is kinda
cool. (Of course the shots don't seem to really go at light speed,
but I'm pretty sure that they called the hand weapons lasers at some
point.) Kung Fu, stand back!!!

Well whatever, it was fun certainly. However as far as plot goes,
both in #4, and #5, have you noticed that the introductory text tells
basically the whole story in about 3 paragraphs, and then the movie
takes 2.5 hours to tell it again? Oh yes, and finally I thought the
giant snake (or whatever it was) that the Falcon flew in and out of
was rather silly, and the shot of it trying to catch the Falcon on
it's way out didn't look too good. Also, air on a meteor? And inside a
giant snake? I'm still disgusted with how inept the Imperial forces
are. I mean, Leia out-shooting them????? (I do not mean this as
sexist. I presume that Leia got some military training, since she gets
into the action so much, but surely not as much as a real soldier. For
that matter, why is Leia a better military strategist and tactician
than the GENERAL of the rebel forces?). And after the command post has
been over-run, and the Falcon has taken off, there is a transport, and
a bunch of fighters and men just casually sitting OUTSIDE in FULL
VIEW. How COULD the Imperial forces be so inept as to go inside the
base, while the rebels are all outside screwing around getting ready
to get the last bunch out? (Sigh)

------------------------------

Date: 26 MAY 1980 1230-PDT
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: Vader squared

    If Luke's "father" was with Obi-wan in the CLONE wars, maybe there
was a clone of Skywalker senior, who murdered the original and yet
could still legitimately claim some sort of paternity -- that sort of
explains everything, doesn't it?  Except that it's a crappy way to do
things... 

         Rodof

------------------------------

Date: 05/27/80 1242-EDT
From: roger.king <FOCUS at LL>
Subject: TESB

     I recall reading (in a background piece in the Sunday NY Times,
18 May 1980) that Lucas got Darth Vader's name from a mixture of
"death water" and "dark father", where "father" in German is "vater".
The article (possibly quoting Lucas indirectly) likens the tale to a
fairy tale, with Obi-Wan being the good father, Vader being the bad
father, and with the good and bad mothers yet to come...

    I also recall reading that SW-6 will be out in 2 years, not 3.

    I will attempt the substantiate the above from the original
sources.

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1980 1845-PDT
From: CSD.FREEMAN at SU-SCORE
Subject: DV????

     One huge argument for Luke being the son of either Vader or the
Emperor is that Zeus overthrew Chronus (his father), other heroes
also overthrew their parents. SW-* is an epic tale but it also draws
heavily upon the myths, Lucas himself admits this.

     If Lucas allows body transfer and "soul splitting", which both
fit in with what has happened so far then the number of worms really
grows.

   1) Luke could be the son of any combination of OBWK, DV
      and the Emperor.
   2) DV could have the body of Luke's father.
   3) OBWK = DV or they once were the same.
   4) ????
   5) Some combination of the above.

     I found it interesting that DV kept his agreement with Boba Fett.
He had no reason to, and plenty of reasons to want Solo for himself.
(He would make an excellent leader for the Empire as he knows much
about the rebels, including their rendezvous point which DV didn't
seem to care about.) Is BF related to DV, Luke, and/or the Emperor?
(He could be the Emperor, as Greek gods were known to go around as
mortals.)

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1980 2059-PDT
From: Yeager at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Paternity and etc...

My feelings are that DV lied about being Luke's father. My reasoning
is as follows: Lucas has set up the classical "Fairy Tail (and
Freudian)" encounter between father and son, and must resolve it - and
according to the Rolling Stone interview, with one of their deaths. He
could never get away with having Luke kill his own father! Most of
those who see these films are between 5 and 15 and such a thing is
unspeakable, and, having Luke's father kill him is equally unlikely.
So, we can conclude that Vader lied - and Luke could justifiably kill
him off - or Lucas lied (here we go again) and everything is
possible...

I only have a faint recollection of the beginning of SW4 - but, from
what I do recall, Leia definitely has a past association with the Jedi
warriors - OBK in particular...what are those particulars?

Finally, since Lucas is a fan of Freud, do you recall just what Leia
was doing - what she was repairing - when she had the encounter with
Hans in his space craft - perhaps a harbinger of things to come...

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1980 1312-PDT
From: DDYER at USC-ISIB
Subject: paternity

 It seems to me that the question of Luke's paternity should be
completely irrelevant.  It is clear that Luke has never had any
emotional relationship with Vader, so unless one believes that
guilt is inherited, what difference does it make?

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1980 2156-EDT
From: SPROUL at RUTGERS

In the confrontaion between Vader and Luke when Vader tells Luke that
he is Luke's father, DV says; (quote as best as I remember)

   "You will destroy the Emperor, (maybe it was 'Empire') it is your
    destiny, the Emperor has foreseen it. Together we can rule the
    galaxy"

From this I would guess that the Jedi that will be destroyed in the
next movie will be the Emperor.

I would like to get the entire text of this conversation completely
transcribed, can anyone help.

Mark Sproul
(please reply directly to me as well as to SF-Lovers)

------------------------------

CSTACY@MIT-AI 05/26/80 07:46:00 Re: Things To Come

Speculation on the development of Star Wars might be interesting in
light of the following:

(1) WHO IS THE EMPEROR?

-How does Darth-buddy address the emperor?        "..master". 
-Under whom did Darth Vader complete his 
 training in the force?                           the emperor
-What would a Jedi in training call his teacher?  "master"
-Who was originally training Darth?               Obi-Wan
-What was going on then                           the clone wars
-Who has a similar voice and physical 
 appearance to Kenobi /  Who is the emporer?      Kenobi's clone
 
(2) WHO IS THE OTHER HOPE YODA SPOKE OF?

-Several freinds have suggested Han Solo, because of his uncanny
 ability as Falcon - flyer? Besides it would be just ironic enough
 to happen.

Comments?

Chris
------

PS.  Have you heard of The Empire Spice Rack?
          ObiWan Kenobi (the sage)
          Leek Skywalker
      and Leia Oregano

"Sorry about that pun, I uh..ahhchhhh<choke> <gag> ..."

"APOLOGY ACCEPTED."

------------------------------

DLW@MIT-AI 05/26/80 23:55:53 Re: TESB speculations

What is the "one other hope"? This seems like a silly thing to debate
about given how incredibly little information we have. But I have a
left-field suggestion, and just so that it doesn't turn out three
years from now that nobody thought of it: what if it is Luke's father
(being non-EQ to any character we have yet met)? I've always liked
movies with complex plot-turns... But really, it could be anything,
and what I really think is most likely is that it is something we
haven't seen yet at all.

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1980 at 0141-CDT
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Small note from "The Buyer's Guide for Comic Fandom" re: TESB

In No. 341, May 30, 1980 issue, a column entitled "Media Report"
assembled by David McDonnell contains the following:

"EMPIRE STRIKES BACK DEPARTMENT. There are several publishing tie-ins
with the film upcoming: THE ESB SKETCHBOOK by Joe Johnston and Nilo
Rodis-Jamend($5.95), ESB: ILLUSTRATED EDITION by Don Glut and Ralph
McQuarrie($4.95), ESB CALENDAR FOR 1981($5.95), ESB PORTFOLIO by Ralph
McQuarrie($5.95) (all out in July); and THE MAKING OF ESB by Alan
Arnold (September). All are from Del Rey.
  Wallace Berrie has pendant, ring, and medal merchandising tie-ins
with the film, featuring various characters."
  
           **** P A Y **** A T T E N T I O N **** N O W ***

"Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian) has stated the next SW film
will center primarily around his character.
                                                          (PW)"

(PW) is probably the source, "Publisher's Weekly", and the last item
ought to add some fuel to the speculations underway.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Edition
***************************


Date: 28 MAY 1980 0402-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #125
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Wednesday, 28 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 125

Today's Topics: Space Shuttle Query, Time Tunnel, Book-TV-Book Reply,
               Alien Intelligence Test, Another SF Musical, SF Movies,
                Physics Tomorrow - Ringworld ARCHery, TESB, Doing It
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 26 MAY 1980 1249-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL

     Does anyone know the names of the five Space Shuttle craft?
All I can recall are the Enterprise and the Columbia.

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1980 07:17-EDT
From: Frank J. Wancho <FJW at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Time Tunnel

Now that Time Tunnel has popped up again, perhaps I can clarify a
comment I made about it some time ago when the discussion hinged
around recursion...

In spite of the so-called entertainment value of the show and
that it was similar to a late fifties Saturday morning, "You Are
There"-type filmed program aimed at children, I was always bothered
by the obvious basic "technical" flaw of the show: the monitoring
station could only track our heroes in parallel time, i.e., if our
heroes were 29 years old the day they went into the tunnel, the
next day the equipment could only find them at age 29 plus a day and
never attempted to back up a few moments in time to extract them out
of the current predicament.  I don't recall clearly enough whether
or not they had some sort of gimmick tracking device.  But suppose
they did, and had made several excursions back in time: how could
the monitoring station differentiate which episode they were
currently tracking?

Hmm, that would have made an interesting plot for their "last"
episode where each attempt to find them would be extractions from
some previous episode...

--Frank

------------------------------

Date: 26 MAY 1980 2210-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: book-visual-book shuffle [ see SFL V1 #119 ]

  James Gunn wrote THE IMMORTALS, which was later turned into a
terrible TV show with very little to do with the book; he was
allowed to novelize the pilot as THE IMMORTAL.

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1980 at 1232-CDT
From: korner at UTEXAS
Subject: Alien Intelligence

     The present discussion seems to assume that there is some global
quality called intelligence. Intelligence is what intelligence tests
measure. What our culture measures are a variety of abstract skills
which correlate well with another set of socially/culturaly desirable
skills (scholastic achievement, job performance, etc.).
     As cultures differ, so do the skills valued by these cultures (a
bright bushman isn't the same as a bright corporate executive- perhaps
debatable). This applies strongly to different cultures within our
species- I fail to see how this cannot apply more strongly between
species.  Our intelligence won't be theirs (unless all space going
cultures converge to a common skill set?).

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1980 15:11-EDT
From: Edward Barton <EB at MIT-AI>
Subject: Humans and aliens; power through restriction
cc: BERWCK at MIT-AI, EB at MIT-AI, JDD at MIT-ML

How nice that someone (JDD@ML) is finally pointing out a few of the
things that linguists (i.e. people who know something about language)
have to say about the nature of human languages.  It's refreshing
against the general SF background of uninformed flaming (which is, of
course, not intrinsically evil -- but supportable statements are nice
for a change).  Although I don't always read the Digest and almost
never send to it, this time I have a bit of flaming speculation of my
own.  Recall part of JDD's message:

   "From a SF point of view, [the existence of human linguistic
    universals] is a really scary idea, since it suggests that
    languages are all the same because of the way our brains work
    (and this means all languages, from all over the world, so it
    is seemingly quite universal). Therefore, most conceivable
    languages are not acceptable to the human brain for us to work
    with well: we might not be able to understand Klingonee except
    in the most formal symbol-manipulation sense, and imagine the
    misunderstandings that this could create!"

Linguistic universals explain why children are able to learn language
as easily as they can from the relatively impoverished evidence that
is available to them.  The idea of innate cognitive structures
specific to species and cognitive domain is not relevant just to
language, either; in fact Chomsky believes that such structures are
responsible for human successes in all of those cognitive domains
where we are able to construct rich and complex cognitive systems on
the basis of fragmentary evidence.  The richness of innate structure
is at the same time a great strength and a great limitation.  One
cannot start out "tabula rasa" to learn about a new domain with no
preconceptions at all about what the domain is like, for then all
logically consistent projections from the available evidence, no
matter how large the volume of evidence, will necessarily look equally
plausible.  In other domains as well as language, the class of
theories that can in principle be attained must be limited before rich
and complex learning from experience can occur.  The characteristics
of the human "science-forming capacity," for example, are responsible
for our scientific successes where we have successes -- and the fact
that humans agree as much as they do about when there is success! --
but at the same time they limit the range of possible scientific
domains that humans can conquer.  The mind has its potential scope
and intrinsic limits determined by the very factors that provide its
scope; on Chomsky's view, which has a chance of being correct, the
mind is not a universal instrument but a specific biological organ.

The relevance of all this to SF is that there seems little reason
to believe, and certainly no reason to assume, that the cognitive
structures fixing the aliens' scope and limitations in language or
anything else would be anywhere close to the ones humans have.  One
can of course claim that there is only one basic cognitive structure
that will "work" in our universe and hence the aliens must be in a
sense just like us mentally, but that's a very strong claim in need
of some argument.  Personally I imagine (though I would prefer that
things be otherwise) that when the aliens arrive they will be REALLY
different.  Their language, their customs, their minds, and their
culture may be incomprehensible to us except perhaps on the most
primitive and superficial level.

Maybe we have here another case of Truth vs. Art -- it might not be
as interesting to read about human/alien interactions if neither
side made any real progress understanding the other.  You gotta buy
a little implausibility to get a good story....

Responses welcomed.  CC to me personally, please, so I'll be sure to
see them.

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1980 1507-PDT
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: A movie & a book   

Someone mentioned SciFi musicals and it reminded me that in 1930 a
movie called "Just Imagine" was such an extravaganza.  It told the
story of a golfer, hit by lightning, who emerged 50 years in the
future (1930-1980).  The sets were extremely overdone and many of
the jokes were "in" jokes at the time (Jewish car names/Henry Ford
anti-semitic).  Hollywood blamed the lack of acceptance on the
"SciFi" theme.

P.S. I haven't seen the movie, but I have read of it in various
     places.

Does anyone know where I can get a copy of "The Five Thousand Fingers
of Dr. T." It is a Dr. Seuss book if I am not mistaken.  I cannot find
it in Books in Print.  There is a movie out (with the same name) that
I remember seeing as a kid (starring Hans Conried).

[ The movie version of "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T" was discussed in
  SFL V1 #75,76,79,91 as part of a query about Horrible SF Films.
     --  RDD ]

Rich

------------------------------

Date: 27 MAY 1980 1135-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: DEMOLISHED MAN, S vs F, bloopers

  I have a residual preference for THE STARS MY DESTINATION, which
I read first, over THE DEMOLISHED MAN, but I wouldn't care to claim
either as greater or more easily makeable than the other. I think
TDM might be harder to do \well/, which was why I was horrified to
hear that de Palma had the rights; after reading about several of
his movies and seeing what he did to CARRIE (the book, though
flawed, was good SF; the movie was cheap but effective horror) I
can see him taking all of the splash and glitter but none of the
depth of TDM.
   GULLIVER'S TRAVELS is not SF; it's not even fantasy as we
understand the term.  To some extent it's a fable, in which
the actual facts (such as talking foxes or a continent in an
almost-certainly-empty ocean) are irrelevant next to the didactic
point; also, it was written at a time when the boundaries between
complete fictions and telling stories arond facts was much thinner
than it is now (note that TV "docudramas" represent a step back
toward this from the other side).  The horror of the novel
FRANKENSTEIN is not the shambling monster but that somebody might
be tying to do such a blasphemous thing even as the author writes;
the focus is on the morality --- hence the subtitle, "A Modern
Prometheus".  The concept of an intellectually rigorous fiction
--- discussing that which \is/ \not/ but \might/ \be/ --- dates
no further back than Wells.
  In context, the seacoast of Bohemia is not a blooper; by our
standards, Shakespeare is full of them, all representing commonly-held
beliefs of his time. In fact, Poul Anderson did an amusing book about
this called A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST --- given that pre-Christian Romans
had clocks and 9th-century Danes had cannon, why couldn't the Puritans
have brought the dark Satanic mills to England two centuries early and
have trains at the time of Cromwell, allowing the gallant Prince
Rupert (who in our world was far more of a hero than Charles ---
inventor of a new art print process and founder of the Royal Society
(of science), among other things) to steal one to make his getaway so
he can execute Titania and Oberon's commission to dredge up the books
of Prospero and defeat the fairy-hating Puritans (Anderson even has
the noble characters speaking in iambic, with a pentameter couplet
ending each scene).

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1980 0826-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: Archery

Comment: Here I go, second-guessing Larry Niven again.  He really is
         one of my favorite writers; it's just that I can't help
         thinking about Ringworld.  However, this particular flame is
         really just a matter of interpretation, so maybe it's not so
         bad.  NB: I assume everyone has read Ringworld...

I always would have given all the artwork I ever saw associated with
Ringworld for one good picture of the Arch.  (Especially the cover on
the first edition, with its ground-view landscapes painted across the
Ring!) Any view that shows both a spaceship and the Ring must tend to
trivialize the Ring.  What would the Arch look like?  Wide?  Skinny?
Niven's Arch religion had a model of Ringworld with a rectangular base
and an Arch that went from one end to the other.  Maybe I misread, but
I got the impression that the Arch subtended the full with of the
world at the base.  This would make it hog a significant portion of
the sky.  Finally I got tired of wondering, and figured it out.  Hold
your terminal at arm's length, move your eyes level with the bottom of
the screen, and imagine it's a window.  Here's the Arch:
[Warning - Diagram exceeds 70 char line width  --  RDD]

				     ######
				     ######
				     ######
				     ######
				    #######
				    #######
				    #######
				    ########
				    ########
				   #########
				   ##########
				   ##########
				  ###########
				  ############
				 ##############
				################
			       ########( )#######
			     #####################
			   #########################
			###############################
		   #########################################
	 ##############################################################
###############################################################################

(4.2 chars/degree horiz, 1.8 vert) (The bottom line should actually be
twice the width of the one above it.)  The ( ) is the earth's moon as
seen from earth, for comparison purposes.  At the zenith (and indeed
for about half the width of the sky, the arch is about 1 # wide, half
the width of the moon (and ringworld's sun).
   Now.  (a) Have you noticed in me the tendency to use profanity for
emphasis?  That thing is goddamn bright.  However, (b) it is NOT wide
enough to be the Arch of the religion.  Moreover, (c) it looks like a
ring, circling up and away.  Furthermore, (d) the shadow squares
obscure the middle of the arch, directly overhead, and for a fair
distance to each side.
   The Arch should be visible in daylight.  The moon is, in the
right place, and it is much smaller and has a lower albedo than the
ringworld.  I think that to anyone that would go to the trouble
to theorize about it, the correct interpretation would be fairly
straightforward and actually the most likely one.  After that, the
most likely misinterpre- tation is to claim that there are two
towers, one at each end of the world.  Both reach to heaven.  One is
evil, the other good.  (The good one is the one the days come down;
it is the giver of light, source of all good things.  The other one
steals the days the good one has bestowed on mankind; you can see
them being sucked up it into heaven.  There is a continual battle
being waged in heaven, represented by the funny standing wave
pattern on the other side of ringworld caused by seeing it through
both sides of the shadow square ring.  I imagine each node would
have a name and would represent a minor deity.)
   I still think, though, that it looks like a ring.

		--JoSH

ps: Can anyone identify the galaxy seen through the window at the
    end of TESB?  Note that you ought to be able to figure out
    about how far they are from it, uselessly perhaps, but...

------------------------------

RWK@MIT-MC 05/27/80 11:20:31 Re: Doing it

SF-Lovers do it out of this world!

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 29 MAY 1980 0228-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #126   ( Star Wars Series Issue #6 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest    Wednesday, 28 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 126

Today's Topics: Pot Pourri - 'droids & World of Star Wars & Yoda &...,
                            Genealogy of Luke, Leia, Test
----------------------------------------------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/27/80 20:42:48
Re: Possible answers to previous questions...

    HJJH wonders if Threepio lies in the last film when he does not
tell Luke about who the Princess is. One more possible explanation-
In my copy of the SW4 shooting script, the first line of the film was
"There'll be no escape for the Captain this time." This indicates he
really *didn't* know much about the important passenger. I suspect
that the line was simply changed at the last minute so that the
audience would start worring about the saftey of this princess
character, rather than the captain. It is the first line of the
film, and the one-word change puts us more directly at the heart
of the action.

     Amsler wondered why Leia wasn't tortured while Solo and Chewie
were. Ah, but we don't know that to be the case! In fact, the princess
does come from some other room, and the book describes her as being
somewhat disheveled in appearance, like Han. Besides which, if she
wasn't tortured, it was because Vader realised the futility of getting
anything out of her from the last film, when she didn't crack under
that ominous black robot.

      And as for gravity control, would it be too hard to make some
sort of postulate that it only works for objects of relatively small
size before power drains become prohibitive. Rocket engines on a small
scale would tend to leave ugly black charred holes in the ground below
you- and as for using anti-grav in deep space, wat gravity is there to
go against? As for rocket fuel, some sort of nuclear power source
seems possible, or for the bigger vessels, the harnessing of small
black holes. That leaves the glow in the back of the ships to take
care of, and that could be some sort of ion release or heat exchange
or even more fanciful idea - after all, it is the future.

     And Judy wonders about Yoda. Yes, he is a muppet, but a muppet
with several innovations to add to the realism. He appears cast in
thin rubber to allow more flexibility, and they added some technical
innovations not seen before to give more realism - notably, the eyes
can move in their sockets, and the lids can open and shut. This, to
the best of my knowledge has never been done before on a muppet. The
detailed workings of the eyes acheive most of the illusion's
effectiveness, but the fact that his ears are also workable, and
that there really is a ahand inside of Yoda's hand help. I think it
possible that there might be two or more Yoda's made up, just like
DeLaurentis' King Kongs, they probably made several, with slightly
varing expressions, and donned each one as the modd called for it.
The complexity of this "hand puppet" may have required more than one
person to operate for some detailed closeups. Frank Oz did most of
it, of course, including the voice.
     And the director's clever camera angles helped out in addition,
hiding the few limitations. Did you notice that you almost never saw
all of him when he was walking? Only in one shot I think did we get
a full view of his body when he walked, and that was dim and from a
distance.

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1980 2043-PDT
From: Admin.Kanef at SU-SCORE (Bob Kanefsky)
Subject: Gravity control, use of the Force, etc.

I assumed that the ground-skimming was managed by computer control.
Certainly the head-over-heels maneuver executed by the FALCON when it
turned back to rescue Luke was pre-programmed, unless Wookies are VERY
good pilots. The fact that Solo praised his ship in SW4 implies that
its abilities are not soly dependent on the pilot's skill.

WASN'T the princess tortured? I thought she staggered a bit when she
entered the room, though that could have been my imagination. She
isn't the type to complain, whereas Han could have been moaning to get
Leia's (and Chewie's) sympathy. Luke seemed to foresee all three of
them being in pain. Not showing the woman being tortured could be the
result of a cultural prejudice.

Yoda claimed that the good side of the Force could be used only for
knowledge and defense. Either Luke (under Ben's direction) was using
the dark side in SW4, or Yoda's definition of "defense" is similar to
the U.S. Government's. Does destroying the Death Star, and everyone on
it, really qualify as a "defensive" move?

Is it true that the last episode is scheduled for 2001? By that time,
the ones filmed in the 1970s and 80s will seem more outdated than the
original Buck Rogers seems to us now.

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1980 1711-PDT
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI>
Subject: Yoda; Mr. Skywalker

     There is still the problem of why Yoda doesn't take any positive
action in the situation, given his apparent concern. I take it there
are 4.1 Jedi Knights left: Yoda, Vader, the Emperor, Luke(?), and
Kenobi(sort of). An interesting question related to Yoda's inaction is
whether there are fewer Jedi's around, and some that seem distinct are
not. For example, does Yoda = the Emperor? Not likely, but maybe Vader
is basically insubstantial, the glimpse notwithstanding?

     The arguments against Vader being Luke's father seem to be along
the lines: Mr. Skywalker and Vader are not EQ (the same individual),
so QED. Now, unless people out there are very naive, Mrs. Skywalker's
husband does not have to be the physical father of Luke Skywalker. I
know this is a shock, but, even today, we have adultery. So pondering
uniqueness is not sufficient. Now, this also has the advantage of
giving Vader a good reason to betray Mr. Skywalker. Imagine they are
friends (chums with Kenobi etc), but Vader has a little bit of the old
rascal in him and he's tempted by the Dark Side. And, Mrs. Skywalker
ain't so bad herself. There was a mistake and Vader doesn't want Mr.
Skywalker to get pissed... Sounds like a soap opera but need I say
more?
			-rpg-

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1980 2324-EDT (Monday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A> 

After seeing TESB for the second time tonight I have a few comments
about the movie:
     I do believe that Vadar is Luke's father, since the evidence for
it is over-whelming, what I can't figure out though is why VADAR
didn't tell Luke sooner? (It will also be interesting to hear Ben's
support or unsopport of Vadars father status in the next movie)
     Also since Vadar (from the back) looks like he has had his skull
nicely re-arranged it would seem that such a re-arrangement couldn't
help but cause mental problems. Did Vadar turn to the darkside before
or after the 'injury?'
     The Empire looks like it goes through alot of commanders. How did
such incompetents get to that level? Esp. since Vadar could probably
have screened them.
     Did anyone notice: as the MF was making its approach to Lando's
city, just after they got the clearance to land one of those double
orange ships was passing real close and the near side 'passanger'
looked to be female.
     When Vadar was fighting Luke on the Accessway (the little thing
that hung over the big drop <shades of Death Star's drop?>) he seemed
to be twisting his whole body when making his blows. Also, Vadar
seemed to be able to PK stuff around pretty well, why not PK the light
saber for those long, tough shots?
     What about Luke's magnificant leap from the jaws of the cooler?
Perhaps that was due more to instinct or gut reaction than to anything
else. He seemed to do his best when he stopped thinking about what he
was doing.
     The object that went rattling down after him when he fell onto
the 'antenna'? not too clear since there was nothing beside him when
the 'trap door' opened. What happened to his light saber? On several
occasions he has moved about (when running from snow creature's meat
locker...) and was not seen re-hooking it to his belt.
     Also, How did Solo handle the light saber so well (when opening
the 'shelter')? I seem to remember from SW(or the book) that it took
mucho training to use the thing without nailing one's self.
     hmmmm, all in all a satisfying movie, although I think they would
have made a better ending if they had ended it with the MF going into
hyperspace instead of stretching it the extra few minutes.
     The Special effects were great(of course) but i was really hoping
that they would have come up with some new music...sigh...
				Doug

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1980 08:14 PDT
From: Chapman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Is Vadar Luke's Father

In reply to RP@MIT-MC's message (SF-Lovers V1 #116 PM), I don't see
any contradictions. First, it was not Vadar personally who killed
Luke's aunt and uncle, it was the Imperial storm troopers looking for
R2D2 and C3PO. Vadar probably didn't know about it until it was too
late. And then, since he has been seduced by the dark side of the
Force, he may no longer care for any previous relationships which
might have existed. The only person he seems to desire to please other
than himself is the Emperor. I don't know about the passing on of
Luke's father's light saber to Luke, but you must have noticed that
Vadar's light saber is a different color from either Luke's or Ben's.
Perhaps he recieved a new light saber when he turned to the dark side
of the Force.  I'm sure that Luke's father (before he turned to the
dark side of the Force) and Ben WERE good friends, but when Luke's
father became Darthe Vadar, the personna of Luke's father probably
changed considerably, and Luke's father could easily be considered
dead. Also, I seem to remember a comment during a conversation between
Yoda and Ben about Luke being just like his father, impetuous, and it
is implied that people like that are likely to get into trouble with
the Force, i.e.  become suseptible to doing things the easy way, thus
being turned to the dark side of the Force.  Also, when Vadar makes
his big revelation, he asks Luke to verify it for himself, through the
Force, and Luke does.  Considering the whole gestalt of the movies and
the place of the Force in them, I believe Vadar. He is Luke's father.

With regard to Vadar's "lie" being part of a plan to get Luke to join
the Empire, it seems to me that if it were the truth, it might be
equally as effective to that end. Luke's feelings of family ties are
fairly strong, as demonstrated by his obvious desolution on losing his
aunt and uncle, and his continuing interest in his father, someone he
has never known. Of course, this latter is a common occurrance with
orphans and adopted children. You noticed that the revelation was a
very great shock to Luke, especially since the Force apparently backed
up the claim, and Vadar might have hoped that with Luke in such a
state, he would be more susceptible to subversion.

Cheryl

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1980 11:11 am PDT (Tuesday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: TESB speculations

In reference to a comment made by LARKE@MIT-ML [SFL/PM V1 #122]:
Lucas's statement in that Sunday=paper interview mentioned "young Ben
Kenobi, young Luke's father, young Darth Vader".  Note the missing
"and".  This could be deliberate ambiguity on Lucas's part.

My own theory on who Luke's father is: Obi-Wan Kenobi.  Obviously I'm
discounting all the evidence in favor of Vader as red herring.  Let's
look at the evidence for Ben: He was "betrayed" by Vader in the sense
that his (Ben's) prize pupil left him for the Dark Side.  He was
indeed murdered by Vader; we saw it happen.  The fact that the event
lay in the future when he told Luke about it doesn't mean he was
lying.  And as LARKE observed, Ben speaks about Skywalker Sr as an
equal.  In the Lucas quote above, "Luke's father" is mentioned between
the names of Ben and Darth -- perhaps this is no accident.  As to why
Ben would deliberately mislead Luke, perhaps it was necessary in order
to motivate Luke against Vader.

Or could the EMPEROR be Luke's father?  As somebody already mentioned,
we've got no reason to think he's alive, just because he communicates
with Vader.  Recall Kenobi's words to Darth in SW IV (not an exact
quote): "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you
can possibly imagine."  Is this what happened to the
Emperor/Skywalker?  Why else would Vader fear him?

On the "other hope": Just who is Leia anyway?  In what sense is she a
"princess"?  I presume she's not the Emperor's daughter.  Could she be
Skywalker Sr's (whoever he is), and therefore Luke's sister?

One final (pessimistic) note: What reason do we have to think that the
paternity question will be answered in Episode VI??

			-- Greg

------------------------------

Date: 27 MAY 1980 0009-PDT
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: Having read thru everybody's thoughts on the subject...

    How 'bout this. Suppose CLIVE is partially right at least, and
that Vader and Skywalker senior are actually interchanged somehow.
Could be a miind transfer, using the Force, or in a fight, Skywalker
Sr. dumps Vader into a volcano, which kills him, and accidently falls
in himself, but survives, altho burned beyond recognition. The only
question would then be motive, but it might be that Dark-side
temptation is inheritable and he doesn't want Luke exterminated
before he can make use of him.

    The "other", judging from the messages I've read, will be present
in all three trilogies. Therefore, I deduce that it must be a robot,
and probably R2, because he always seems to save the day. AH! a
thought! The wookie is 200 years old, and hardly senile yet... maybe.

I would propose a contest, but three years is a lot of time to wait in
order to find out who won. I'll bring it up again in two years.

   Rob

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1980 2200-EDT
From: SPROUL at RUTGERS
Subject: Darth Vader is/is'nt Skywalker Sr.

Supposedly Skywalker Sr. completed the Jedi training, if he became a
real Jedi, he would not have been oovercome by the Dark Side.

	There is another...

My vote is for Leia. She already knows Ben, after all she did ask him
to help the rebellion, who knows how long she has known him.

Mark Sproul

------------------------------

Date:  27 May 1980 15:26 edt
From:  York.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  More evidence for Leia as the other hope.

What do we know about Leia's background? Next to nothing... What do we
know about Leia? Let's see...

1) She is capable of receiving thoughts from Luke, something only
   Force-wielders have done so far...
2) When she and Han and Chewie were captured, Han and Chewie were
   both tortured to some degree, and were much the worse for wear.
   The princess, however, did not appear as badly off. This seems
   to have been interpreted by some as an indication that she was
   not tortured. But perhaps she WAS tortured and is simply made of
   stronger stuff than Han. This jogs my memory from SW4, thusly:
3) When Vader used a mind probe on Leia to try to find the location of
   the Rebel forces, he was unsuccessful. I think that he said: "Her
   resistance to the mind probe is considerable." Where does this
   strength of will/mind come from?

Anybody else have any new supporting or contradictory information?

------------------------------

Date:  28 May 1980 00:53 edt
From:  JTurner.Coop at MIT-Multics
Subject:  TESB confusion

In the interest of having some fun,here are some more possible ideas
to totally confuse you.	multiple choice, check one

1) the emperor is:   []luke  []obiwan  []leia  []r2d2

2) darth vader is:   []luke  []obiwan  []the emperor  []c3p0
                     []yoda  []luke's mother

3) han solo has:     []the force  []frostbite  []a hell of a headache
                     []all of the above  []none of the above
                     []some of the above

4) luke's father is: []dead  []alive and well and living on Tatooine
                     []han solo  []an ex-space shuttle trainee

                            essay question

  explain why Lucas will make gobs of money with very little effort.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date: 29 MAY 1980 0535-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #127
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 29 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 127

Today's Topics:       Alfred Bester Query, Space Shuttle Reply,
                   TV SF - Nova & Time Tunnel, Book-TV-Book Reply,
                 Alien Intelligence Test - Si & Language, SF Movies -
                Making a GOOD SF Movie & The Shining & Bloopers & TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/26/80 00:22:23 Re: Alfred Bester Query

     How would one get in touch with Alfred (Demolished Man, The Stars
My Destination) Bester? I Have a friend who is desparate to write to
him, and wonders if any SF-Lovers have any ideas on how...

------------------------------

Date: 28 MAY 1980 0834-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Shuttle names

     As Jim McGrath pointed out, there are SIX Shuttle craft,
Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Galileo.

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/28/80 00:46:11

First - On the PBS series "Nova", tonight's episode dealt with
lasers. They touched on their history and uses, including holography,
medicine, industry, and most notably, as weapons (complete with the
obligatory reference to Star Wars.) The 40 or so minutes I caught
were most interesting and enjoyable. With any luck,the show should be
repeated sometime during the week in your area. Catch it if you can.

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 0211-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: time tunnel

If my failproof memory is correct, I believe that the the basic
concept in Time Tunnel was that the operators of the tunnel had
no real control over the device (much like operators on large IBM
machines I might note.)  They could essentially throw a switch that
would wrestle Tony and Doug (our travelers) out from the time they
were currently living in, but they would be randomly dropped in some
other time, with no control possible.  The operators could only
view the travelers in the current "pseudo-time" in which they (the
travelers) were living, and nowhere else.  My favorite point with
that show was that they always ended up in an inhabited area just
when some important event was about to occur.  I would have figured
they would have ended up in the ocean most of the time...

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 0946-PDT
From: Harris A. Meyers <Meyers at SRI-KL>

Another book-movie-book "sandwich" is Martin Caidin's Marooned,
the original version of the book, vintage 1964, used the current
technology of a Mercury capsule and a Gemini for the rescue, the
movie updated the hardware used, and number of people involved,
these updates are in latter versions of the book.

harris

------------------------------

Date: 26 MAY 1980 2210-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: non-carbon life, seeing other light

  Silicon, being at the next level down in the periodic table, can (at
least in theory) have more different combinations than carbon---look
at how sulfur, in the valence theory, can be +6, +4, or -2, while
oxygen is -2 except in oxygen fluoride. The kicker, according to
figures quoted by Asimov, is that carbon is the only element in a
useful range of temperatures that is thermodynamically no more likely
to combine with oxygen than with itself. In the presence of any oxygen
at all, silicon will form

        |
      (-Si-O-)
        |

while carbon can form pure carbon skeletons

        |
      (-C-)
        |

which have far more possible physical configurations and can pick up
new properties more readily by addition of a single functional group.
  It is arguable that there is also a chemical reason for not
perceiving infrared; it would require a much more unstable molecule to
create the initial impulse picked up by the optic nerve, and, unless
the nerve has some sort of amplifier, more unstable molecules to
transmit the impulse to the brain, because the energy of an infrared
photon is lower (light perception and nerve transmission both occur
through the making and breaking of chemical bonds; IR much beyond
visible light can only bend bonds).

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 1125-PDT
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: incomprehensible aliens 
CC:   eb at MIT-AI   

In reply to Barton <EB at MIT-AI>'s comment in the latest digest:

    Personally I imagine (though I would prefer that things be
    otherwise) that when the aliens arrive they will be REALLY
    different.  Their language, their customs, their minds, and
    their culture may be incomprehensible to us except perhaps on
    the most primitive and superficial level.

    Maybe we have here another case of Truth vs. Art -- it might
    not be as interesting to read about human/alien interactions if
    neither side made any real progress understanding the other.
    You gotta buy a little implausibility to get a good story....

I think I've mentioned this before, but it can stand a repetition...
Read Terry Carr's "The Dance of the Changer and the Three", which can
be found in the excellent collection, "The Light at the End of the
Universe".  It tells of the interaction between humans and a race of
aliens so different that there is no basis for understanding between
the races.  A rough translator has been constructed so communication
is possible (in a crude sense), but the concepts behind the messages
are opaque.  A large part of the story consists of the human narrator
describing one of the aliens' greatest fables/myths/legends, to give a
feel as to what the aliens are like -- i.e., incomprehensible!

------------------------------

Date: 28 MAY 1980 1131-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: language
cc:   EB at MIT-AI

  Unfortunately, a lot of things linguists have to say about the
nature of language are contradictory, and more expressive of their
individual politics than of a universal truth.  In particular, the
example of children is questionable, since children apparently can
learn any human language much more readily than adults can (consider
how few Americans can speak any foreign language, having only started
serious language study in high school, while European children are
started on additional languages in grammar school and are commonly
polylinguistic, while a young enough child in appropriate
circumstances (such as the offspring of an ambassadorial official
low enough not to be replaced every year) can become genuinely
bilingual).
  As for "relatively impoverished evidence" --- they are seeing
language in use all around them! (If anyone wants to say that
children are fundamentally different, psychologically, from adults,
I won't argue --- note that the capacity for language does die if
not exercised at the appropriate time, along with most of what we
recognize as intelligence (videt the studied examples of feral
children).)  Even adults learn a language far better if they are
immersed in it, as children are, rather than simply studying it in
classrooms.
  The concept of a mind as a specific biological organ may be a tenet
of political atheists and is certainly more comforting to those such
as myself who hold all forms of mysticism in disregard, but in this
presentation it is disgruntlingly close to the basis of Lysenkoism.

------------------------------

Date: 20 May 1980 1738-EDT
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject: Unintelligence tests

While we're discussing intelligence tests: how would you go about
convincing an alien that you are *not* intelligent? Particularly when
surrounded by artifacts (such as an interstellar spaceship) which are
demonstrably the product of intelligence!? At least one story I know
of, Poul Anderson's "Hiding Place", is based on this premise. Does
anyone remember any others?

     "Hiding Place" first appeared in Analog, March 1961, and is part
of the Polseotechnic League era stories. (In fact, it is a "detective"
story featuring Nicholas van Rijn). It has been reprinted in at least
	Trader to the Stars (Doubleday, 1964)
	The Best of Poul Anderson (Pocket, 1976)

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 at 0227-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ GOOD MAKE-ABLE S/F MOVIE ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I'm sorry not to have had time to finish writing up Gordon Dickson's
WOLFLING (Dell p/b rpt'd 1977), my favorite among Gordy's "worldsaver"
heros, because it's a rattling good story.

Can't resist mentioning one of its more interesting challenges, the
casting of 4 other galactic humanoid "races" ranging from very short
(around 5' tall) and swarthy with long, straight black hair, through
grayish-skinned, hairless muscle-men, to the slender but well-
proportioned, alabaster-white aristocrats with males at 7' or
so, esp. the galactic Emperor. (The Terran hero is a husky 6'6"
scholar-turned-athlete.)

Fun as it might be to contemplate Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) as the
Emperor and Dave Prowse as the hero, I think it would be more
practical to subtly scale the sets so that people ranging from 4'6"
to 6'4"(+) s-e-e-m to be 6" taller than they really are. (This still
leaves any of the 3 main aristocrat supporting roles for Prowse, with
that of the Emperor or his closely resembling cousin, the villain, the
most likely.) With lots of tall, fair Scandanavian actresses to draw
from, there shouldn't be any trouble with the 2 aristocrat female
roles.

There would be some problems with plot complexity and supplying of
background information to set up the initial situation, but nothing
insuperable. There would be one BIG drawback to WOLFLING, however,
that would have mundanes yelling bloody murder -- the main climax is
a - L I G H T - S A B E R - D U E L between the hero and villain!!!

The "blade"-length being variable is the main difference. If Lucas
wasn't known to be a comix-fan rather than really into S/F (as that
"parsecs" blooper gives witness), the duel in WOLFLING might have
been suspected to be the inspiration for those of SW:

   "Fighting with the rods was very similar to fencing with
   sabers....  The focal point of the fire put forth by the rods
   ["handles" like in SW] --that point at which the discharge was
   most destructive-- was at the tip of an inner cone of pure
   white light....  This was the point at which the utmost power
   of the rod was exerted....  It was not just a matter of
   deflecting the stream of fire from the opponent's rod..., but
   of deflecting it with a portion of your own flame which was
   stronger than that part of the opponent's flame it encountered....

   "From the encounters of their weapons came a steady succession
   of spark showers-- exploding suddenly into near-fountains of
   light when the 2 cone points...[made] contact....  A few weeks
   ago, it would have looked to Jim more like some smoothly expert
   dance by 2 large men with some sort of Roman candles in their
   hands-- a dance intended to demonstrate the rhythm of the men
   and the beauty of the fireworks rather than anything else.
   Now, he knew better."

WHO SAYS science fiction doesn't predict?! THAT was written in 1968!

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 21:15 PDT
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: The Shining

[An aside: Kubrick is American, but has lived in England for the
 past 15 years or so.]

I thought The Shining was a real flop.  It's especially disgusting to
see the gushy "reviews" in Newsweek and elsewhere.  Shelley Duvall is
completely the wrong person to play Mrs. Average American Mother, and
Nicholson was pretty questionable as the writer who goes off the deep
end.  He was great as the *fake* looney in Cuckoo's Nest, but as a
*real* looney, forget it.  Now if Shelley Duvall had been the
ax-wielding maniac, I might have believed it.

Probably the worst thing is the hour or so of completely hokey dialog
that precedes the meat of the film.  But even the "meat" is arrayed
with an embarrassing array of standard effects from various B-grade
shockers -- skeletons, ghosts from another era, ...  I found the only
really horrifying moment to be when you finally get to see what
struggling-young-writer Nicholson has been typing away at through all
those months of isolation.

The kid's gift of "shining" was a total non-sequitur in terms of
the rest of the film.  All it's really good for is as a
semi-rationalization of some of the out-of-context special effects,
such as the famous shot of blood pouring out of the elevator that's
been in all the trailers.

Save your $5.

--Bruce

------------------------------

Date: 26 MAY 1980 2210-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: banked turns

  Combining my pilot's knowledge with writings and conversations with
Jeanne Robinson (who I'll be assisting to present a study toward a
stardance at Noreascon II), I would say there is another important
reason to maintain a particular orientation even in space: the need
for a local vertical or horizon definition. Very few people, even
including stunt pilots, can handle a situation in which there are no
absolute references, which would make banking a reasonable way to keep
one's bearings---note that Luke begins as a surface pilot, and the
beginning of TESB shows most of the fighter pilots handling low-level
fliers.

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 05/28/80 05:14:01
Re: TESB: speaking of the shot of the galaxy at the end...

Why is there a dense star field behind the galaxy?

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 at 2104-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Subject: That galaxy in the window...

John M. asserts that it's the classic one used in 90% of the
illustrations of the spiral type, M-31 in Andromeda.

Aha!  I had a F-E-E-L-I-N-G it ought to look like an external view
of the Milky Way Galaxy, and the great spiral nebula in Andromeda
is often cited as resembling ours.

------------------------------

Date: 28 MAY 1980 1131-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: galaxy(?) in TESB

  I'm not at all certain that what the heroes see out the viewscreen
at the end of TESB is indeed a galaxy---and I was unable to get a
straight answer out of Craig Miller at Disclave.  There is too much
dust for it to be an old galaxy, and it's too thick to be a young
galaxy (the textbook edge-on view of our galaxy, which seems to be a
typical spiral, shows a sphere faired into a plane of some ten times
the sphere's radius).  Someone also told me they noticed it turning
visibly, which would have to reduce the scale by several orders of
magnitude.  I could believe it as the intermediate stage between a
dust cloud and a solar system, maybe.

------------------------------

Date: 29 May 1980 0500-EDT
From: Roger Duffey <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: TESB : press reaction   

Jim McGrath has created a file containing the news wire service
stories on TESB. It was current as of Monday (and began on May 11).
Copies of the file have been established on the sites listed below.
Everyone who wants to read these stories should obtain them from the
site which is most convenient for them. Please do so in the near
future however, since the files will be deleted in one week. A copy
of the file will be added to the SF-LOVERS archives.

Also note that some of the stories contain spoilers. Therefore people
who have not seen TESB may not want to read the stories now. Thanks go
to Richard Brodie and and Richard Lamson for establishing the article
on their systems, and to Jim McGrath for creating the file.

   Site          Filename

MIT-AI       DUFFEY;SFLVRS TESBNS
MIT-Multics  >udd>PDO>Lamson>sf-lovers>star-wars-news.text
PARC-MAXC    [Maxc]<Brodie>TESB-News.TXT
SU-AI        TESB.NS[1,jpm]

[Note that you can TYPE or FTP the file from SAIL without an account.]

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 30 MAY 1980 0212-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #128   ( Star Wars Series Issue #7 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Thursday, 29 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 128

  Today's Topics:   World of Star Wars, Leia's Competence, R2D2,
                  Genealogy of Luke, Rest of the Jedis, Yoda's Hope
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Administrivia:

Over the last two weeks the amount of mail sent to SF-LOVERS has begun
to exceed the amount of mail that I can redistribute each day.  One
digest must contain no more than 15-16 thousand characters if disk
storage and transmission time problems are to be avoided.  In the last
24 hours, 46 thousand characters of material have been contributed for
the PM edition.  The result is that a number of these messages will be
delayed for redistribution.

Note that a major part of the backlog problem for the PM edition has
been the number of messages that are repeating older material in 
making their point.  Please try to avoid repeating material that has
already gone out in order to give everyone a chance to be heard.

							-- Roger

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 2358-PDT
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: SF .NE. FUTURE

In the previous PM digest [ V1 #126 ], LARKE suggests that all sorts
of fanciful paradigms for gravity control could be acceptable, saying,
"after all, it is the future."  Gee, whatever happened to "long ago in
a galaxy far far away"?

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 0607-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: SW tech

Some thoughts on the technology Star Wars shows in the galactic
civilization: It seems to be very much that of the science-fiction
of the 40's and 50's -- blasters (yes, blasters, not lasers), robots,
hyperdrive, and what have you.  Remember this is supposed to be long
ago in a galaxy far far away -- the technology isn't necessarily
better than ours (and in many cases isn't).
     Motive technology: they are obviously far ahead of us here.  This
can be inferred from the amazing system of interstellar highways we
can hear the spaceships driving over all the time.  (somewhat less
sarcastically, consider the actual drives.  It might be reasonable to
assume them to be ionic.  Now suppose you are sitting at the apparent
viewpoint for any of those grand spaceship scenes.  You are in space.
Thus you may well be wearing a spacesuit.  I guess you might get quite
a rumble out of your radio from the engines.  Or what if the drives
are gravitic (ie use pressor beams to shove out particle streams) --
you could easily be vibrated yourself and not need the radio.  There's
no need to assume a heat rocket, the glow from the engines (I'm
thinking about the Imperial battlewagons now) was fairly dim.  But
even a fusion rocket would, I suspect, put out quite a bit of noise
"on the airwaves".
     Skimmers, tractor/pressors, etc.  Perhaps they only have tractor
beams, not pressors.  You would have to have both to make a space
drive, although tractors would always show up in systems since they're
so useful.  You could make a skimmer work only having tractor beams by
using them to hold an air-cushion under it.
     Weaponry: They wouldn't stand a chance.  I have yet to figure out
what the Imperial storm trooper's armor is for -- it doesn't seem to
stop anything I've seen being used as a weapon so far.
   Blasters: the shots have an EXTREMELY low velocity.  One theory is
they are air rifles.  I think that the blaster is related to the ion
cannon. (the cannon shot had a much higher velocity, but looked just
the same.)  Instead of firing an actual glop of ions, though, I think
they fire a semi-stable ionic pattern which propagates through the air
without actual physical motion, kind of a cross between ball and
conventional lightning.  The collapse of the separated charge at the
point of impact gives the energy release.
     Light sabers: (a part of living?) The peculiar thing about light
sabers is they are not used for thrusting, only cutting.  Why?  Are
they extremely sensitive to linear influences?  That's the only reason
I can come up with that they wouldn't be used like variable-swords,
with lots of the interplay being done by extending and retracting
(and much longer too).  perhaps they are long magnetic bottles with
a fusion reaction going on inside (the actual fusion part would of
course be a hairline down the center, with the energy going out to
an envelope of contained gases which would glow and vaporize things).
How hard are they to come by?  This question seems to be the crux of
a couple of plot-prediction points.  What happened to Luke's saber?
What happened to Ben's in SW IV?  Vader was in just the spot to get
it.  I can just see Luke getting hold of Obi-Wan's old one to fight
Vader with at the denouement...  The question of avalibility of light
sabers impinges on general level of technology as well.  They are the
most energy-intensive-for-size gadgets around, as far as I can see.
Random walls contain blaster fire but LS's slice right through giant
metal columns. Fun.
     Shielding: Maybe the shields are velocity-dependent, (see Dune)
so the walkers can get through where ships or bombs cannot.  The
walkers strike me as ridiculous.  A Davy Crockett (tactical nuke)
would have wiped them off the map.  If FALLING OVER can mess them up
so badly...
     Medicine: Just slightly ahead of our time... If they were much
more ahead, they should have been able to make Luke a real hand
instead of a bionic one.
     Robotics: The Millenium Falcon DOES have a brain; it is seen
talking to C3P0 in one scene in a lingo similar to R2's.  This helps
explain how Solo can pilot it through the asteroid field (at all, much
less with such casual control as he was using).  The MF doesn't seem
to have much of a personality, though.  If they have robots and
computers, why not intelligent appliances?  Why are the people so
concerned about the "'droids", apparently more so than about equipment
that presumeably costs as much or more?  Perhaps they contain human
brains, and the level of computer technology is otherwise backward.
After all, "android" means "manlike".  In its classical sense,
stripped from the phrase "android robot", it would apply to C3P0 but
not R2D2.  Perhaps this is also what the storm troopers are.
     Carbonite: This is presumeably some inoson or arenak type
material... Han has just got to be in some big explosion, it's too
good a chance to miss.
	
		--JoSH

------------------------------

Date: 28 MAY 1980 1107-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: TESB spoilers

  About Leia's being a better shot and a better strategist than the
Empiricals she opposes --- aside from plot necessities (which are
probably the real reason) let's hypothesize (since she is called
a princess) a noble upbringing, similar in some ways to that of
11th-15th century England, but unisex and with the advantages of
technology.  (A friend said there was no way so badly-behaved a
character could be a princess, but heesh was thinking of Regency
royalty rather than royalty through most of history).
  A noble would be expected to be a capable commander (since heesh
must lead) and a good fighter with one-to-one weapons (notice the echo
in the light saber being an elegant weapon, the mark of a knight).
Would be only strategically familiar with heavier weapons (hence the
stroke with the energy cannon on Hoth (which the Empire apparently
hadn't even planned for) but note that she never once went into the
turrets in the Millenium Falcon, which would have been a far better
place for her than worrying in the cockpit if she could handle the
ship's weapons.
  Finally, remember that everyone in the Rebellion has to want to be
there --- with the number of moves they've made it would be trivial
to be left behind.  The Empire would probably have to rely on
conscripts at the bottom, and might be running short of people
interested in command as well (executive officers seem to have a very
short lifespan under Vader).  Leia can count on having her strategies
carried out correctly as far as they are tenable, with subordinates
having the self-direction to improvise where necessary, while the
Empire can't count on its conscripts not crumbling or on their
improvising their way out of a jam.  See Asimov's essay in the latest
F&SF on the advantages of a small but cooperative force against a
larger, unwieldy, uncooperative one (his example is Agincourt, where
the English destroyed a French force that grossly outnumbered them,
in the general context of the only well-known "secret weapon" that
was never duplicated --- his explanations give further backing to
this idea).
   SW 6 will definitely be 3 years away; the script is only an outline
and the filming won't start for a year.
   The connection between Leia and Obi-Wan is quoted in her message:
"You fought for my father in the Clone Wars [presumably the subject
of SW 1-3]".  (which brings to mind, of all things, THE COMEDY OF
ERRORS, which I recently designed the lights for; in the final scene
it becomes apparent that Antipholus of Ephesus, who fought for the
Duke's father, is now fighting a clone war.

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1980 (Tuesday) 2242-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)
Subject: TESB

Concerning R2D2

   a. The "smoke screen" he emits is just his fire extinguisher,
      which we saw he had in Star Wars IV.
   b. Given the Time article which said all episodes would be seen
      through the eyes of the 2 'droids, and given that Star Wars III
      is supposed to concern a young Obi-wan/Skywalker Sr./Vader it
      seems evident that there is some relationship between Obi-wan
      and the 'droids. Whether he owned R2 or not, it would seem he
      must have had some contact with him.

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 at 1340-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In re: LEIA'S PRE-SW-4 JEDI CONTACT ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The only clues we have in SW-4 are her message to Obi-Wan--

 |    LEIA:   General Kenobi: Years ago you served my father in the
 |            Clone Wars.  Now he begs you to help him in his struggle
 |            against the Empire.  I regret that I am unable to
 |            present my father's request to you in person, but my
 |            ship has fallen under attack and I'm afraid my mission
 |            to bring you to Alderaan has failed.  I have placed
 |            information vital to the survival of the rebellion into
 |            the memory systems of this R2 unit.  My father will know
 |            how to retrieve it.  You MUST see this 'droid safely
 |            delivered to him on Alderaan.  This is our most
 |            desperate hour.  Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi-- You're my
 |            only hope.

(which is quite a bit different from the version in the book), and her
response when Luke identifies himself in her cell--

 |    LEIA:   Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?
 |
 |    LUKE:   Hunh?  Oh, the uniform....  I'm Luke Skywalker!  I'm
 |            here to rescue you!
 |
 |    LEIA:   You're who?
 |
 |    LUKE:   I'm here to rescue you!  I've got your R2 unit!  I'm
 |            here with Ben Kenobi!
 |
 |    LEIA:   Ben Kenobi?  Where is he?!

which don't reveal whether
   a) she has ever met Obi-Wan, or just heard OF him, or
   b) she knows anything of the Jedi except from history.


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ PATERNITY IRRELEVANT? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The overwhelming consensus of human cultures throughout time, even
including the present, would be against DDYER at USC-ISIB.  The
importance of any "emotional relationship" (whether between father-
son or husband-wife) would be largely considered irrelevant outside
our own contemporary culture.  This is not to say that there have
not been zillions of uncaring bastard-breeders, but that the relation
between males of 2 generations who share much of their genetic
component is held to be special, even unique.  In my own area of
study, Polynesia and Melanesia, this bond is often held to be between
a man and his sister's son... (which is really quite logical, since
the evidence of motherhood is a good deal easier to verify than
paternity is.  If he's your nephew, you at least know he shares SOME
of your genes, but certainty of who your "son's" father is generally
is a case of faith, not evidence.

But as to which is worse, son to kill father or father to kill son,
that varies between cultures.  If ALL Americans above the age of 10 or
so were polled, I suspect it might come out close to 50-50.  But in
ancient Roman law, a father had complete power of life and death over
his children.

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 1119-EDT
From: PKAISER at BBN-TENEXD
Subject: Explaining Luke's ancestry

"Chutzpah" is to comment on TESB without having seen it.  So what
follows is speculation in a pure form.

Years ago a friend of mine became a born-again Christian, and tried
to convert me into a believer.  As I said, this was years ago, so
maybe I can be excused for being a little combative with him; I said
"Why should I believe in God?  On what evidence?"  And he said "You
can see miracles all around you."

Like what?  He told me this story: "I know a guy who was in a car
accident and was very badly hurt.  The doctors said he would never
walk again.  But we held prayer vigils every day, and now he's
completely cured."

"Well," I said, "that's not necessarily a miracle."  And my friend
said "But the doctors said he'd never walk again."

And I said "Doctors can be wrong."

Anyhow, that's a possible explanation of what so many people who've
seen TESB view as inconsistencies to be explained away through long
exegesis: Darth Vader is mistaken.  One of the comments on TESB is
that it's less of a kid's movie -- and therefore, I assume, more of a
grownup's movie.  Could we imagine that a more "grownup" movie would
depict living entities in all their fallibility?  Nothing in SW or
in (anything I've seen here about) TESB suggests to me that anyone is
supposed to be infallible.  If we allow the characters to be wrong,
to make mistakes ... couldn't Darth Vader simply be mistaken that
he's Luke's father?  Maybe that has to do with his betraying and
murdering Luke's father, and with his turning to the dark side, and
perhaps even with why he acknowledges the Emperor as his master (the
reason why the Emperor has a grip over him).  For me this would make
things much more interesting.

---Pete

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 08:47 PDT
From: Chapman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Where are the murdered Jedis?

DERWAY@MIT-AI asks why Vadar and the Emperor don't know what happens
when you kill a powerful Jedi, and why aren't all the previously
killed Jedi hanging around. The answer may be that Yoda, who is
probably the most powerful Jedi around, hasn't been killed, and aside
from him maybe Ben was the second-most powerful Jedi, but only grew
into it with age. Remember that Yoda has been training Jedi for 500(?)
years. Maybe the older you get living in the Force, the stronger you
get, and all the other Jedi that were killed just weren't ready yet to
sustain an ethereal existence.

Cheryl

------------------------------

PAO@MIT-AI 05/29/80 20:33:58

Several people have now mentioned that Leia might be the "other hope"
on the grounds that she responded to Luke's call through the Force.
On these grounds, the storm-trooper in SW4 which stopped Obi-Wan and
Luke about their 'droids on Tatooine is also a candidate.
(Remember??)

------------------------------

JEFFH@MIT-MC 05/29/80 03:31:49 Re: TESB-more speculation

  Leia's receiving of Luke's telepathic message doesn't seem to me as
being important nor make Leia the other hope.  Who else is Luke going
to call for help?  One of the droids?  Impossible as they cannot work
within the force, (more apparent in the book), Lando?  Luke doesn't
even know him.  Solo?  Luke knows he's gone.  So Leia seems to be his
only hope.
  My vote for the other hope is Darth Vader.  Now that we have a
really mean villian (the emperor) it seems that DV can redeem himself
quite nicely at the end of the next movie by sacrificing himself,
destroying the empire, and saving Luke.
  And the little episode on Yoda's planet where Luke battles an image
of Darth and sees an image of himself seems like strong evidence for
DV being Luke's father.  Wonder if any of this speculation will still
be around in 2+ years when SW3 (or chapter 6) comes out.  Would make
interesting reading!

Jeff

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date: 30 MAY 1980 0506-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #129
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 30 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 129

Today's Topics: SF TV/Film - New Series & Time Tunnel & Time Travelers
                Alien Intelligence Test - Intelligence is.. & Planets,
                    Physics Tomorrow - Neutrinos & Ringworld, TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/28/80 23:02:31 Re: O.K. S.F. on ABC

     Big news Space Rangers! ABC, the purpetrator of Battlestar
Galactica, is doing it again! Just announced the other day, the
network announced two new pilot shows in development - "The People
of Earth 2000" a multigenerational story of the families trying to
survive in the next century.... It's still uncast...
     Also mentioned - "The Phoenix", an hour-long fantasy about a
super-being who leaves "another time and place" to show mankind how
to make it through the '80s. It stars Judson Scott.

     Air dates for these pilots are not until next fall's season falls
apart.

------------------------------

Date:     29 May 1980 1600-edt
From:     J. Spencer Love            <JSLove at MIT-Multics>
Subject:  Re: Time Tunnel

I always thought it was perfectly reasonable for the time travelers
to pop out just before some important (read "pivotal") event was
about to occur.  Consider: as well as being an essential plot device,
events which are "important" would presumably have a large effect if
they happened differently, while whether a shark gets lunch today or
not \usually/ won't make much difference in the scheme of things.
This multiplicity of diverging ripples could put stresses on the
fabric of causality, creating "faults" that were likely places for
time travelers to emerge, incidentally making such events even more
unstable...  There would have to be a limiting mechanism, but that
was beyond my preadolescent rationalizations.  Dr. Forward?

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 0211-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: recursive SF movie

Anyone remember a rather odd SF movie called, I believe, "The Time
Travelers"?  In this yarn, some university researchers create a time
"window" into the future.  Much to their surprise, they find that it
is more than a viewing window, that they can actually pass through it
as a physical window into that time.  They do so, and from the "other
side" the window appears to be a rectangular "hole" floating above
the ground that leads back into their lab.  A nice effect actually.
Unfortunately, they have an equipment breakdown at this point, and the
hole collapses, leaving them in the middle of a desert of the future.

They eventually find some advanced technologists who are about to
abandon the planet, and go through a series of adventures.  They
manage to duplicate the time window and get it "aimed" at their
original time (our present).  They pass through just as a gang of
mutants attack (this is why everyone was leaving the planet --
mutants everywhere), and to keep the mutants from passing through,
start throwing rocks back through the window.  They eventually hit
a vital piece of equipment, and WHOOSHH! the window collapses in a
very nice piece of effex work.  They are home.  BUT, they find that
everything seems to be frozen.  It seems they came back a little bit
too early (before they LEFT originally), and have created a paradox.
They manage to get back to the lab (they re-emerged out on a lawn),
and see themselves frozen in the lab in a moment of time.  The time
window is dark, the frozen chronometers seem to show that they are
existing at an instant before the window stabilized enough for them
to pass through the first time.  They remember the event, a brief
burst of static too fast to interpret, but now they are essentially
stuck at that point in time.  They decide the only thing to do is try
to pass through the window at its current setting, which appears to
be several million years in the future, in comparison to the several
thousands that they passed through the first time around.  They enter
the completely dark window (it is night during this instant in the
future).  After they enter, we see time start up again.  The scene
brightens in the window, day breaks, and we see they are in a
beautiful forested environment.  The time flow then speeds up enough
that we once again see only static on the screen for a second or so
(just like the first time).  The frozen instant of time is over.

Here is where this movie accomplishes something no other ever tried
as far as I know.  We are right back to where we were about 15
minutes into the film.  They start speeding up the whole film and
take us through EVERYTHING again.  They run everything by at about 12
frames for every 5 minutes of original runtime.  The scenes are still
recognizable though.  We loop around, and then they run through AGAIN
at about 6 frames for every 5 minutes, then 2 frames/5 minutes (at
this point everything is almost a blur).  They then pull back to show
our galaxy receeding into the distance.

A pretty neat way to show recursion, and though it was a somewhat
cheaply made film, it was certainly the best view of time travel,
paradox, and recursion that I have ever seen in a motion picture.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 11:13 am PDT (Wednesday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: What Is Intelligence?

How about this: Intelligence is the desire to practice birth control.
(Does not necessarily imply the ability.)

Allow me to explain somewhat.  All species reproduce, right?  Almost
all species have sex (argue if you like, but you've GOT to have
genetic recombination of some sort).  Them as do, enjoy it (for
obvious evolutionary reasons).  Let me rephrase that: the males enjoy
it, where "male" means the sex with the smaller and biologically
"cheaper" gametes.  The females maybe can take it or leave it.

This does not of course mean that pregnancy and/or having lots of kids
is or is not fun (maybe it is; I wouldn't know).  BUT for an organism
to make the connection between sex and reproduction calls for a
certain amount of smarts, yes?  Self-awareness at the very least, also
the ability to think in the conditional (IF I do this THEN this other
thing may happen to me at some future time).

(By the way, there's reason to think that this ability to think "in
the subjunctive" is located in a specific area of the brain, which I
don't recall the name of.  At least, people with lesions in this area
seem to lose the ability to plan for the future, though still
perfectly aware of themselves as individuals.)

Thus my statement above.  Extend it if you like to define an
intelligent civilization in terms of global population control.

It occurs to me that the above speculations apply only to EVOLVED life
(be it carbon based or whatever).  How you would define intelligence
in CONSTRUCTED life forms is a tricky question.  The standard answer
you get from AI people is "Artificial Intelligence is the ability of
a machine to do things which, if done by a human, would require
intelligence."  In other words, AI is defined in terms of evolved
intelligence.  (Please, AI people, do not interpret any of this as a
slight against your researches.)  But enough of that.

Now for some references:

"The Dragons of Eden" by Carl Sagan discusses in very accessible
language the origins and possible futures of human intelligence.  Of
the many topics covered, one of the most interesting (I think) is that
of mapping the functions of various areas of the brain.  You'll be
surprised at just what kinds of things seem to be "wired in".  Highly
recommended, unless you simply cannot abide Sagan in any form.

"Communication with Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence" is the proceedings
of a conference held in 1970 or thereabouts, chaired by Sagan and
Frank Drake, whose purpose was to assess the feasibility of locating
and communicating with alien intelligence using existing technology.
Many notable scientists of a wide variety of disciplines and from all
over the world participated (Marvin Minsky, Francis Crick, Iosef
Shklovskii, Philip Morrison, ...) making for very interesting and
entertaining reading.  The first half of the book covers the
development of life and intelligence on Earth in an attempt to
interpolate the necessary conditions for the development of
intelligence elsewhere.  Among the concerns of the members was the
degree of human (earth, carbon, water, ...) chauvinism inherent in
their analysis.  A good buy even apart from its relevance to the
current discussion.

The September, 1979 issue of Scientific American was devoted entirely
to topics in neurobiology, including excellent articles on the human
visual system and on brain specialization in general (sorry, I can't
remember any author names).  Lots of good stuff on language too.

There's a book by Richard(?) Dawson called "The Selfish Gene" which
is essentially a defense of Darwinian gene-selection (as opposed to
contemporary theories of group or species selection).  Excellent
discussions of sexual behavior in birds and bees, why Hymenopterans
(bees, ants and wasps) live in hives, why in a sexual species there
will tend to be a male-female polarization involving a large, richly
endowed egg and a small, mass-produced sperm (rather than two
equivalent sexes which contribute equally to the zygote).  A
background in evolutionary biology helps in reading this one.

------------------------------

OTA@MIT-MC 05/28/80 07:11:16
Re: Just how many stars have planets anyway?

The question of whether the universe is relatively devoid of planets
has alway bothered me.  Currently our sample size on the subject of
which stars have planets is one (not statistically significant).
Indirect evidence on the subject is negligible.  I was at a talk given
by Edward Teller which ended on an optimistic note in this regard.

The talk was on the subject of one of those strange astrophysical
events that are so much fun to speculate on the origin of.  In this
case it was short duration gamma ray pulses which have energies
measured in respectable fractions of a solar mass (that is mass
equivalent of the energy radiated from the source).  To make a long
talk short: Teller thinks that the cause of a gamma ray pulse that
occured on March 5, 1979, appearently in a supernovae remnant in the
magellenic clouds, was a neutron star colliding with a planet.  This
particular event was somewhat different from your average every day
ordinary gamma ray pulse.  Teller ascribes this difference to the
fact that most of these pulses come from neutron stars or black holes
colliding with stars.  The probability of a collapsed object hitting
a star is about one collision per 10**8 years per galaxy (strangly,
we know quite a bit about the galactic density of collapsed stars).
Stellar collisions would be detectable over intergalactic distances
while planetary collisions would not.  These pieces of information
together suggest that essentially all of these gamma ray sources are
extra-galactic (since they are so rare) and since one has happened so
close such events (planetary collisions) must be much more likely than
stellar collision.

Teller implied that this was one of the only pieces of observational
evidence indicating how common planets are.  I am not particularly up
to date in this field so I don't really know what other evidence pro
or con there is.

The subject of whether or not these planets would be human inhabitable
is quite different.  I have lately heard rather pessimistic theories
on this subject.  Anyone with any good news in this regard?

BTW, the planet whose collision we observed on Mar 5, 1979 did not
survive.  That part of it which did not leave with the neutron star
turned into a cloud of gas a few seconds after the neutron star
emerged from the far side.

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1980 2103-PDT
From: Lasater at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: New topic of potential interest

Reports have appeared in the news media about the possibility that
neutrinos have MASS.  I mentioned this to some physics graduate
students here at Santa Cruz and they confirmed that a paper had
appeared claiming to show a rest mass of about 20 ev, which works
out to 3.6E-32 grams.  However, the graduate student mentioned some
obscure method for measuring mass while the news media claimed that
muon-neutrinos were converting to electron- neutrinos and vice
versa, and to do this the particle had to have mass.  Does anyone
who is more familiar with physics have anything to add to clear up
the discrepancy.  And what implications does this have for the
universe?

Please do not send replies directly to me; rather to SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 1129-PDT
From: DDYER at USC-ISIB
Subject: ringworld perspective

 I once made a ringworld data base for a 3D graphics system, then
poked around with different views of it.
 The main error in other representations I have seen is that the
ring is always portrayed too wide, by a factor of at least 100! 
When viewed from deep space, the ring is a VERY narrow ribbon.
 Views from close up (including from the surface) tend to be
disappointing, since whatever part of the ring is in the foreground
completely dominates any fragment of the arch that is visible.

------------------------------

Date:     28 May 1980 0713-edt
From:     J. Spencer Love           <JSLove at MIT-Multics>
Subject:  Ringworld towers

A query: How wide are the shadows of the shadow squares on the picture
of the ringworld?  If they are at all wide, they're gonna make
problems with the "tower" mythos.  If they were anywhere near as
narrow as they would have to be for our planet (unlikely, considering
the orbital speed of the ringworld), I wonder what the effect would be
on the resultant religion of having two dotted lines in the sky?  It
might encourage a more correct world view...for example, it might be
more plausible than suggested that the "two towers" were connected
behind the sun.  But, perhaps I am just being hopelessly optimistic
... after all, you could know that and still use the good tower/evil
tower metaphor.  Some cheap philosopher could get a lot of mileage out
of the intrinsic connection between Good and Evil.  Would the shadowed
portions of the ringworld be visible in daylight by reflected light or
anything (i.e., how dark would the night be?)?  Would they be visible
at night?  I expect the motion of the terminators would be easily
detectable, if not quite visible.  And last (perhaps I missed this),
how big would the shadow squares be overhead and what would they look
like?

Rather than tower or arch, I like a "road" analogy...sort of like the
road Apollo must have driven his chariot on.  Any thoughts?

------------------------------

Date: 26 MAY 1980 2233-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: TESB spoilers

In re rebuttals: I'm inclined to question the mental organization
of a "church-going agnostic" --- and transcendental non-religious
experiences are obtainable even to declared atheists.  The
"first-experience syndrome", to the extent that it exists, is
reportedly as much male as female; I've never heard of such
counseling, and find it extremely suspicious given what is now
known about the physiology of female response.  Independently of
the reviews, I observed that 5 was darker than 4--but for that
among other reasons I found it more substantial; I found 4 very
thin at the 7th viewing.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 31 MAY 1980 0546-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #130   ( Star Wars Series Issue #8 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Friday, 30 May 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 130

   Today's Topics: World of Star Wars - Armor & Light Sabrs, Yoda,
                         Genealogy of Luke, Leia, Pot Pourri
----------------------------------------------------------------------

RWK@MIT-MC 05/30/80 21:34:42 Re: Storm trooper's armor

Josh notes that the storm trooper's armor doesn't seem to stop
anything he's seen used as a weapon so far.  Couldn't there be a bit
of cause and effect there?  Rebels who use weapons that don't even
penetrate their armor die quickly!  Times seem hard, presumably
they've already died off.  Even the remaining rebels only fight when
cornered.  It probably takes a lot more resources, time, and effort to
produce technological weapons such as blasters, X-wing fighters, than
fragmentation grenades, flamethrowers, automatic rifles, poisonous
gas, etc. which are so effective against unarmored people in our
"civilization".

------------------------------

MOON@MIT-MC 05/30/80 05:13:45
Re: What the imperial storm troopers' armor is for

I should think that would be quite obvious.  It keeps them from
getting bruised when they fall down, which they do whenever anyone
fires a blaster anywhere within 100 yards of them.

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 05/28/80 08:54:53  Re: light saber play.

Has the fighting with the light sabers bothered anyone else? I don't
mean just the theatrical fencing, (there is no conceivable reason for
whirling around, with your back to you opponent while fencing), but
the style they use with them. I am assuming that light sabers are
massless, except for the handle, and cut through anything they touch
like butter, (though when Luke hit DV's shoulder it maybe should have
done more damage than it did). (They also seem to be able to absorb
laser shots, from the practice session in SW-4). Anyway, it seems
like a foil style, with more thrusting than slashing, would be a more
efective way to use such a weapon, especially since they don't have
guards to protect the hand while parrying. After all, what would be
just a nick on the arm with a normal foil, should be sufficient to
take the arm off with one of these.

------------------------------

Date: 30 MAY 1980 1235-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA

  It occurs to me that light sabers are only used as cutting weapons
simply because that is the style of fighting that is taught. Japanese
swordplay, which this appears to be based on, makes relatively little
use of the point.  There's another problem--how heavy is the handle?
To handle that kind of energy it would probably be made of very dense
materials, which would mean that holding it one-handed (as Luke does
on one occasion) can't be done for long without losing accuracy--and
it is very difficult to thrust with a two-handed weapon because you
can't thrust very far compared with a one-hand thrust (try it with a
ruler and see). The amount of energy involved might also preclude
varying the length (note that in actual fact the variable-sword Niven
describes is \not/ a thrusting weapon; there is a ball on the tip so
the user can see how far out it is), since keeping the [field] bound
and stable would be hard enough without varying the size.
  Why not use a tactical nuke against Hoth? Well, aside from what it
would do to the plot, couldn't this get out of hand?  If the rebels
don't have nukes they could use the Force to steal them---and plant
them where they'd do the most harm.  A tactical nuke can also
interfere with taking prisoners.  The walkers aren't ridiculously
vulnerable; if you drop a tank from 100+ feet (the walkers are \at/
\least/ that tall) it might well break, and the walkers could also be
booby-trapped like the spy-"droids".  But does anyone remember whether
the view screens inside the walker command cabins showed the view
shifting the way it would if command were in the head as you would
expect?

------------------------------

Date:     28 May 1980 0727-edt
From:     J. Spencer Love            <JSLove at MIT-Multics>
Subject:  TESB:  Light Sabers

I haven't yet seen a good explanation of the color difference between
Luke Skywalker's and Darth Vader's swords.  Can it be that users of
the light and dark sides of the force use different weapons?  That
would be a reason for Obi-Wan to still have Luke's Father's weapon.
Or is it a reflection of the personality of the wielder?  After all, a
light sword is a pretty much metaphysical weapon, which, in the hands
of a user of the Force, will do whatever the wielder wants it to
(e.g., cut Luke out of the ceiling of an ice cave in one swell foop
without leaving any toes in the ice).

Given the current speculation about whether Luke will need his light
saber back, one could go further: perhaps real light sabers are only
used by apprentices and the uninitiated; a true Jedi will have the
weapon of his desires when he needs it.  Then light sabers could get
handed down like third lieutenants' pips in Starship Troopers.  This
line of reasoning smacks more of Kit Kinnison (3rd stage) than of his
father Kimball, since the second stage lensmen didn't \need/ lenses,
but couldn't create them and wore them by preference to focus and
enhance their powers.  The third stage, on the other hand, created
lenses as needed, and didn't keep them around otherwise except for
appearance's sake.

Does this make Yoda an Arisian?  There's lots of precedent in
mythology (esp., modern mythology) for the truly wise being unable or
unwilling to directly intervene, and so creating or training less able
(and therefore less wise and less morally tied-handed) agents to do
the dirty work.  I like Tolkein's version of wisdom better; it shows
that such chicanery is far from a necessary plot device.

------------------------------

Date: 30 May 1980 1545-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: TESB comment

In answer to the question about females, does anyone in the movie who
really knows (i.e. Obi-wan, perhaps Vader, and Luke after he discovers
who this swamp creature really is) ever refer to Yoda as he?  Everyone
I have talked to assumes that Yoda is male, but I can't remember
anyone in the film actually refering to Yoda as 'he' (only those who
know for a fact count!).  Alright, Yoda has a mustache, but heesh is
an alien life form, and maybe Yoda-males are hairless as a billiard
ball.  Would somebody who is going to see the film again please listen
for a personal pronoun for Yoda by one who knows?  Thanx.

------------------------------

Date: 05/28/80 1203-EDT
From: Roger King <FOCUS at LL>
Subject: "Dark Father"

The following excerpt is from a long article entitled "The Saga Beyond
'Star Wars'" by Aljean Harmetz, 18 May 1980, New York Times .  It
raises many interesting questions including the Dark Father reference.

               *********************************

     In front of George Lucas, on an immense screen, Luke Skywalker
battles the giant mechanical turtles of the ice planet of Hoth.  The
turtles advance 20 paces and retreat, advance and retreat, as the same
piece of film is run again and again.

......."I've taken a lot more chances in this story.  It's a
tragedy, a traditional second act.  In the second act you always give
your characters a problem.  Luke's problems are resolved in the Third
Act, 'The Return of the Jedi.'  There are no real winners in 'Empire'
as there were in the first film, and, for the characters, it's an
emotional tradgedy.  I think it's a better film than the first one."

.....When "Star Wars" was first released, Mr. Lucas spoke of
having wanted to make the kind of movie he enjoyed as a 12-year-old.
Now he says that "Star Wars" "came out of my desire to make a modern
fairy tale.  In college I became fascinated by how culture is
transmitted through fairy tales and myths.  Fairy tales are how people
learn about good and evil, about how to conduct themselves in society.
Darth Vader is the Bad Father; Ben Kenobi is the good father.  The
good and the bad mothers are still to come.  I was influenced by the
"dragon slayer genre of fairy tale - the damsel in distress, the evil
brothers, the young knight who slays the dragon through his virtue."

     The deliberately mythic names of these Star Wars characters took
months to evolve.  "Skywalker" was originally "Darklighter" and then
Starkiller."  "Darth Vader" was Mr. Lucas's careful blend of
Deathwater and Darkfather.  "Jedi" was chosen for its knightish echo
of "Samurai", while "Obi-wan Kenobi" seems to Mr. Lucas both ancient
and hypnotically phonetic...

        *****************************************

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1980 (Tuesday) 2242-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)

On the question of parentage, age is rather interesting. We know that
Luke considered Obi-wan to be old ("you think he means old Ben"), and
his manner of saying old in that way in front of his uncle, who seems
to be old enough to be Luke's father himself, suggests that Obi-wan
is much older than Luke's father would have been, were he still alive.
This means that Obi-wan and Luke's father are not contemporaries. Now,
we know also that Yoda considers Luke too old to begin Jedi training,
so it seems you have to be pretty young to start your Jedi
instruction. This would suggest that Vader is certainly the right age
to be Skywalker Sr.

------------------------------

Date:  30 May 1980 15:55 edt
From:  Spratt.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  How old is/should Luke be?

     One of the annoying facets of the star wars saga is the stupidity
of our hero, Luke.  Every now and then he does the "obviously" wrong
thing.  The best analysis I've heard for this is that Luke is in his
late adolescence.  One of the things adolescents are talented is
becoming easily confused by poorly controlled emotional responses.
Luke seems to do OK when not emotionally overwrought, but he seems
very susceptible to letting his emotions run away with him.
     Unfortunately, watching Luke on the screen makes it difficult to
imagine him in his late adolescence.  To me he looks (and frequently
acts) like he is mid-twenties.  If he is under 20 (Earth year
equivalent) years old, it simplifies the romantic tangle of the three
major human good guys.  Leia and Han are clearly destined for each
other and are reacting against this.  Leia allows herself to be kinder
to Luke because, being just a kid, he poses no potential for serious
involvements to develop.  Also, Luke's attachment to Leia can be
viewed as an adolescent crush by everyone (except, of course, Luke)
involved.

     The end result of the above analysis is that the movie plotting
would work better if Luke had been cast with someone younger.

------------------------------

Date: 29 May 1980 at 1246-CDT
From: clyde at UTEXAS
Subject: parentages of TESB

     On Leia, I believe that at least her paternity is made clear
(unless we are dealing with a galaxy of bastards, in the true sense
of the word), in SW.  As an example to Leia and a 'shakedown' of the
Death Star, Vader has Leia's home world of Alderaan destroyed, which
included her father, himself (I believe) a dissident member of the
Imperial Senate (as was Leia).  The presence of Leia's father on the
planet as it is destroyed is pretty well established (we think --
Lucas does have more than his share of suprises up his cinematic
sleeve).  Of course, we are told nothing more.

	Anyway it's a pretty good flick.

------------------------------

RMS@MIT-AI 05/29/80 03:39:23

Is DV Luke's Father?

In SW4 many people seem to know of Luke's father, and they also must
know of DV.  If those two were the same person, it's hard to see how
so many people who knew of both could have failed to give away the
fact that they were two names for one person.  It seems that they both
had considerable reputations.

If DV is Luke's father, he must have been no older than Luke is now
when he went astray (Luke is marginally too old to begin training).
Where did he get the chance to father Luke, leave his light saber
behind for Luke, and form a reputation, by that age?

Also, DV is certainly not so busy that he would be unable to keep an
eye on his son.  We don't see DV say "Hmm, they went to the planet my
son lives on", or even act interested to the extent he certainly would
if that were true.  Also, when DV sees Luke on the Death Star going
into the Falcon, he ought to have been more specially concerned if
Luke were really his son.  DV's concern with Luke seems to start only
after Luke demonstrates that he is significant as an adversary because
of his talents.

The point that the emperor would certainly know is also good.

On the other hand, it is true that Luke verifies the relationship
through the force.

I suggest that the explanation is that DV is Luke's father's clone.
This might allow him to feel like Luke's father, when Luke consults
the force.  Maybe the relationship feels different but Luke is not
experienced enough to tell (and never felt his real father through
the force for comparison).

What Is Attack?

I don't think that Yoda is using the term "attack" in a strategic
sense, because then it becomes synonymous with "good".  A Jedi is
supposed to fight for good in any case, so why emphasize using the
force only for good?  We know Jedi are not pacifists; they are
"knights".  Using the force to fight can't be more evil in itself
than using a light saber to fight.

In SW4, using the force to know when to release a bomb is ok, and so
is using the force to find a target and hit it with the light saber.
Ben told Luke to do both.  So "attack" is not being used in a tactical
sense.

So Yoda must use "attack" in an immediate, physical sense: to use the
force as part of the weapon being wielded.  The problem with using the
force to attack, directly, is that it offers too much power, which
corrupts even if used for good.  Think of why Elrond doesn't simply
use the ring to destroy Sauron.

Probably when Luke used PK to throw objects at DV he was giving in to
the temptation of the dark side of the force.

Why Not Levitate a Light Saber?

The real question is, why does he use a light saber at all?  It is a
very peculiar weapon.  A laser gun is more effective, and DV normally
has no scruples.  Even good Jedi must have been willing to use weapons
such as armies, and spaceships with lasers.  My theory is that the
light saber is part of a stylized form of duel which Jedi use for
person-to-person fighting.  It has many artificial restrictions.  For
example, why isn't there a button to make the light saber shoot out
to 50 feet?  It's probably because "the rules say" that a light saber
has a certain length and that would be cheating.  DV has no scruples
against cheating, but he might fight "fair" with a light saber for the
purpose of proving he can beat Ben at his own game, or to demoralize
Luke.  Also note that he doesn't want to hurt luke too much.

Leia's Origin

As for Leia's background, doesn't SW4 show that she is connected
strictly with the planet Alderan?  Her distress when the planet is
destroyed is more than it would be if the planet were simply a base
of rebel forces which she had been visiting.  Probably she is the
daughter of the King or Queen of Alderan.  If she were a princess
because of a relationship to the emperor, then 1) DV would not go
around torturing her, because the emperor would want to take care of
it, and 2) she wouldn't have such a close connection to any particular
planet other than the center of the empire.

Why Are DV's Commander's Incompetent

Everyone in his army is struggling to not to be noticed.  The ones who
get promoted are probably the ones who weren't capable enough to be
inconspicuous, and have no overlap with the ones who would be good
commanders.

Oh no!  I sound like my high school English teachers!  Please tell me
I'm not that bad.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date: 31 MAY 1980 0826-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest    V1 #131
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 31 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 131

 Today's Topics:  Alien Intelligence Test - Planets & Intelligence,
                           Physics Tomorrow - Ringworld,
                SF TV/Film - Time Travellers & ... & Star Wars, Quote
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 30 May 1980 10:46 am PDT (Friday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: Just how many stars have planets anyway?

Not true that we know of only one star with planets.  Barnard's Star,
as I recall, shows eccentricities in its proper motion indicating
the presence of at least two Jovian-sized planets (according to one
theory; another I've read calls for two subjovians and a third,
possibly Earthlike, world).

But aside from that, it can be shown that any main-sequence star less
luminous than about F2 probably has planets.  This conclusion is based
on considerations of angular momentum, which can be measured quite
easily from Earth due to the Doppler-broadening of spectrum lines as
the star in question rotates.  It turns out that stars brighter than
F2 have uniformly high angular momenta: about that of the whole of our
Solar System.  Stars less than F2 have somehow shed a large portion
of their initial angular momenta, presumably by transferring it to
planetary systems.  The mechanism by which this transfer occurs is
magnetic; the cutoff at F2 has to do with convection layers in the
star's surface.  Very hot stars do not support strong magnetic
coupling between themselves and the gas clouds from which they
condense.  Without such coupling, the collapse is more complete
and no planets are thought to form.

More complete discussion of these mechanisms may be found in Fred
Hoyle's "Astronomy and Cosmology: A Modern Course"; also see Sagan and
Shklovskii, "Intelligent Life in the Universe" for a treatment of just
how common planetary systems are expected to be.

			-- Greg

------------------------------

Date:  30 May 1980 09:45 edt
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Alien/Constructed Intelligence

The Aliens will be robots.  I'm not an AI researcher, but I have Faith
in AI. I expect that, in time, we will know how to build intelligences
as good as (probably much better than) our own.  Given that, I expect
the carbon-unit human life to die out, since, if we choose to
implement humanity in hardware we gain (among other things) almost
unlimited lifespan, perfect memory, and a much wider sensory input and
output bandwidth.  I assume that our engineering will be good enough
to give us this in bodies that can also look like anything we want.
So if you're attached to the joys of, say, surfing, you can still do
that, too.  Or be a bird, or a spaceship.

Others have been speculating that unless intelligence is 'universal',
that Aliens will be so different that we won't have a hope of
understanding them, because our fundamental brain structure will be
incompatible.  But this problem can be solved, perhaps, if we can
design arbitarary brains?

I'd like to see more speculation on
  () universality of intelligence
  () future implementation of humanity in VVVVLSI

------------------------------

Date: 30 MAY 1980 1218-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA
Subject: archery

  The size of the shadow squares would depend on their angular
velocity, which would be quite high if they are as close (relatively)
to the primary as in most pictures I have seen.
  It just occurred to me that there is one problem with JoSH's drawing
(aside from Spencer's point that the arch would probably be much
thinner-seeming at the top, before it's hidden by the sun): I would
expect that the connection between the towers and the surface would
not be apparent, since even with an atmosphere clear enough to give
100 miles visibility there would be a substantial portion of the near
section of the ring "hazed out" because the observer is looking at it
through a longitudinal section of the atmosphere.

------------------------------

PROCEP@MIT-AI 05/31/80 03:50:21 Re: Journey to the Center of Time

Lauren's comments about "The Time Travellers", one of the favorite SF
movies of my adolescence bring to mind an interesting loser from last
weeks late night TV.  Journey to the Center of Time-- Can you hear the
reverb in the voice-over?

It appeared to be a sort of remake of 'Time Travellers' a few years
later, but much poorer in terms of concepts ('what's a concept?') and
execution.  Genuine Irwin Allen (Voyage to the Bottom, Lost in Space)
exploding computers track a ruby laser signal from the protagonists as
they meet up with the future space ship people.  Actually the future
folks are aliens this time around.

Anyone know the details about this turkey?

Eirikur

------------------------------

Date: 26 May 1980 1621-EDT
From: FISCHER at RUTGERS
Subject: Raiders of the Ark

I've heard this is to be a 1930's adventure film with some sort of
tie-in on exploiting a supposed "find" of Noah's ark.

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/27/80 00:50:56

    "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is definitely in some sort of sci-fi
fantasy mold. George Lucas penned the basic story and will produce,
Steven Spielberg will direct, and Larry Kasdan, who just co-wrote
TESB is doing the screenplay. Don't expect till late next year at
the soonest.

[ According to Craig Miller's Under the Rainbow column in the June 80
  issue of IA'sFM, Raiders is not a science fiction/fantasy film. Can
  anyone provide some more information on this film.  --  RDD ]

    And why have there been no mentions of the new Christopher Reeve
vehicle, "Somewhere in Time"?  It's from a novel be Richard Matheson
about a man who falls in love with a woman in a vintage 1900 photograph,
and does something about it. Matheson got to write the screenplay, and
was able to work closely with the producers while it was being shot.
This lovely gentle time travel tale should release within a month,
I believe. Worth watching for, from all advance reports.

------------------------------

Date: 26 MAY 1980 2210-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: SW stretch

  I don't think that Lucas was deliberately aiming for a 2001
completion date for the SW series (although they could work faster
than they have even with the planning and effects work necessary;
official word is that Lucas has not yet begun the script for part
6), but 3 years between movies seems to be the pace they have
picked.

------------------------------

Date: 30 MAY 1980 1221-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA
Subject: Lucasfilms 

  I just heard on the phone that Craig Miller, who brought the TESB
slide show to several conventions, was laid off Tuesday by Lucasfilms.
Apparently his boss is going to bring the show to Westercon and
Noreascon, which should be very amusing.

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 1616-EDT
From: DOLESE at RUTGERS
Subject: jacks-of-all-trades

Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction writer, on jack-of-all-trades:

     A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an
invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a
sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying,
take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, pitch manure, solve
equations, analyze a new problem, program a computer, cook a tasty
meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.  Specialization is for
insects.

			(The Notebook of Lazarus Long - Putnam)

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date:  1 JUN 1980 0216-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #132   ( Star Wars Series Issue #9 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Saturday, 31 May 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 132

Today's Topics: World of Star Wars, Bloopers - Bespin Express&Parsecs,
                      Genealogy of Luke, Yoda's Hope, Pot Pourri
----------------------------------------------------------------------

DLW@MIT-AI 05/29/80 05:12:35
Re: randomness; I just saw TESB a second time, don't ask why

I was intrigued by some things in the credits; I especially liked the
credit for "Systems Programmer"!  Can anyone tell me (1) what is a
"Foley", and (2) is the "Second Unit" what it sounds like, why do they
have one, do all movies have one, etc.  Furthermore, (3) a credit is
given for Rotoscope; exactly what does this mean?  In the world of
animated films it usually refers to creating animation by starting
with live-action footage and then tracing its outlines onto film, to
achieve realistic movement, a technique used since the twenties which
Ralph Bakshi claimed was "new" when he used it in LoTR.  But I didn't
notice any of this in TESB, and am told it has a broader meaning.

For those of you who still think that the plot is going to be highly
consistent, I'd like to point out that Yoda tells Luke "If you leave
now before you complete your training, everything your friends have
struggled and suffered for will be lost" or something very similar?
Well, he leaves now before he finishes his training; anyone willing to
place money that the rebellion gets destroyed?  (I already hear people
saying "Well, Yoda only said that to scare off Luke", but it doesn't
seem at all in character.)  Even in real science fiction, there are
lots of unexplained inconsistencies all the time (people are always
finding nits in Niven's future history), and it appears to me that
even less attention is being payed to global consistency here.

Also, trying to analyze the technology and make sense out of it is
utterly futile.  Things in Star Wars work the way they do to be
visually impressive.  That is the only criterion.  There are lots of
things that make no sense from an engineering standpoint as far as
any of us can figure out, but look really great.  Sit back and enjoy
it, but don't waste time trying to make it make sense.

(By the way, the head-over-heels turn made by the Falcon should NOT
require any computer control; I am told by a friend who is learning
stunt-flying that it is a totally standard maneuver in airplanes at
air shows.)

(Also by the way, did anyone else get the impression that they were
using phrasing from Star Trek?  They use the phrase "cloaking device",
in those words rather than saying "cloaking machine" or "invisibility
feature" or anything.  Vader says "set your weapons on stun".  I think
there was another example but I don't remember it. I don't object;
using terms that the audience is familiar with saves time, important
in a fast-moving tightly-edited action film.  BOY was that editing
tight!  Cut, cut, cut...)

(In case you're wondering, yes, it's still good the second time, in
the opinions of all the second-timers with me.  The thing I like most
about the film is the visual richness; there's always plenty going on
to look at.)

------------------------------

Date: 28 MAY 1980 1133-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: TESB blooper?

  If the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive doesn't work until the last
few minutes, how does it get from the Hoth system to Cloud City
(which doesn't seem to be in that system)?

------------------------------

DP@MIT-ML 05/28/80 01:31:41 Re: sw: parsec glitch

Talking with Craig Miller (sw fan relations) at BosKlone, yielded the
following answer... Hans used parsecs as time to see how much of hick
Kenobi was....I guess we were being too subtle.

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 at 1340-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Subject: TESB items and responses

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THE "PARSECS" COVER-UP ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The explanation Chip found adequate in THE ART OF STAR WARS is--

 "Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious
  misinformation."

Counter-evidence--

Clue 1: It's out of character.  Han is a blow-hard, but not stupid.
Certainly braggart enough to fudge a little on his true speed, and
surely not stupid enough to use "OBVIOUS misinformation" in boasting.

Clue 2: Obi-Wan's reaction can be equally readily accounted for by the
fact of Han's boasting itself, regardless of the content of the boast.

Clue 3: (Admittedly hearsay evidence, only, but if you can't believe
SF-LOVERS DIGEST...) The SW people have changed their story.  NOW,
according to Craig Miller (relayed by someone who saw him at Minicon,
I think it was, Roger could find who) the line is an attempt by Han
to find out just how yokelish these potential clients might be.

Clue 4: (Again, hearsay) Someone on SF-L has a xerox of a version of
the shooting script in which an unused line from the attack on the
Deathstar a-l-s-o misuses the word.

The prosecution rests.

Chip is quite right, however, in pointing out (in re the question of
Vader's veracity) that breaking promises and lying are NOT the same.
If it does turn out that Vader is Luke's father, Lucas is going to
have to attribute a kind of Machiavellian double-talk to Obi-Wan
which does not jibe well with our image of him as a noble sage.

------------------------------

Date: 29 May 1980 2334-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>

Someone I met in the lobby said that there were supposed to be eight
unanswered questions (ie of plot import) raised in the film.  The
following occur to me: (these are all of course interrelated)

  1: Is Vader Luke's father?
  2: Who is the "other hope"?
  3: Who is the emperor?
  4: Who is the bounty hunter?
  5: Who gets Leia?
  6: What happens to Han?

  [to which my roommate adds, Why can't the storm troopers shoot
   straight?]

What haven't I missed?

------------------------------

DP@MIT-ML 05/31/80 23:26:30 Re: Parentage.

  Vader was a student of Obi-wan's. But Lukes father was trained
by Yoda. Hmmm...
					jeff

------------------------------

Date: 28 May 1980 at 1340-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Eng. VADER = Ger. VATER ??? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The clue supplied by Roger King (FOCUS at LL) might be a very strong
one PRO paternity, especially since the German T in VATER would be
pronounced like an English D.

------------------------------

Date: 29 May 1980 1412-PDT (Thursday)
From: Dave at UCLA-Security (David Butterfield)
Subject: :whois VADER

Before catching up on my SF-LOVERS mail, I came to the conclusion
that Vader is really a clone of Skywalker Sr.  Another contributer
put forward that theory in SFL V1 #124, but few have commented
on it.  I personally think it solves all the problems of Ben
deceiving Luke and of Luke feeling that Vader really *is* his father
(using the Force), and would seem an elegant solution.  The argument
that *Ben* is Luke's father merits some attention, however...

------------------------------

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 05/28/80 13:33:14
Re:  who is who, how to resolve the paternity business

My theory:
   1) Darth is in fact Luke's father.  (fairy tales don't lie about
      such things.  There are just mitigating circumstances.)

   2) Obi-wan's reference to the dead Skywalker referred to the good
      side of Darth.  He believes it destroyed.

   3) Yoda's "other" is the good side of Darth.  Yoda, more wise even
      than Obi-wan, believes the good side is still around.

   4) The conflict of Luke killing his own father will be resolved by
      having Luke's conflict with Darth bring back "dear old dad", the
      good side.

As a further prediction, that resolution will take the form of Luke
using the force to "strip apart" the two Darths.  There will be some
way by which Luke uses pacivity (trusting to the force, taking no
combative action) to convince the good side of Darth to prevent the
bad side from killing Luke.

Other predictions:
   Obi-Wan will disappear after the rebellion has won.
   The emperor is indeed a bad-clone of Obi-wan. (I agree with
      the person who first suggested this)
   The triangle between Luke, Leia, and Han will not be resolved.
      Han will, however, go off roving again.
   Yoda will go on meditating as always.  He is the immortal source
      of wisdom.  (Doesn't "Yoda" refer to Buddha in some language?)

If I am right, I want it to be remembered in three years.

	Dan

------------------------------

DMM@MIT-ML 05/31/80 01:25:23

Why should anyone believe anything that Vader says? After all, he's
not exactly the most scrupulous person in the universe. In fact he's
been known to lie whenever it's in his best interest to do so. For
example, he lied to Leia in SW4 about preserving Alderaan, and he must
be lying to either the Emperor, or Luke (or both) in SW5. After all,
He told the Emperor that he'd get Luke to join them, then he turned
right around and told Luke that the two of them (Vader and Luke)
should join forces to overthrow the Emperor.

(By the way folks, it's VADER, not VADAR)....

--DMM

------------------------------

Date: 29 May 1980 at 1246-CDT
From: clyde at UTEXAS
Subject: parentages of TESB

     First, it seems quite unlikely that Vader is Luke's father.  Of
course, Ben Kenobi could have been lying to motivate Luke to take up
the ways of the Jedi in order to right the wrongs of his (Luke's)
father.
     These points of evidence I submit: Vader told the Emperor that
Skywalker would "join me or die."  Since Luke obviously (at least to
me) attacked before he was ready, and Vader has better command of the
Force than him, Vader was able to make full use (almost?) of it to
disorient Luke.
     Much has been made of Luke responding "Father!" to Vader's mental
summons.  One must remember that despite the apparant sealing of the
light saber wound, Luke has just gone through some trauma (getting
one's hand cut off must be disorienting, even for a full Jedi), has
narrowly escaped death (The turn the MF did to rescue Luke was NEAT --
and, I think Chewbacca HAS been established as a good enough pilot to
do that), and finally has been bombarded heavily on the psychic level
by Vader.
     In short, Luke was probably not all there, so any reaction from
him should be taken with a grain of salt.  Another point: Vader seems
to command the Force sufficently well that he could draw Luke's
memories and feed them back for Luke's 'verification' of Vader's
claim.
     This may all turn out to be space dust (tune in again in 2 years
or so), but so far the evidence is purposely ambigious (You've done a
good job of shucking us, Mr. Lucas.. ).

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 05/30/80 03:28:32 Re: TESB: other hope

I don't believe that the other hope is Leia, or for that matter any
other character we have yet met, because Kenobi apparently did not
know about it. If it were one of the characters we are currently
familiar with, Ben would have known it, (on the grounds that people
strong in the force can detect other people who have potential in it).

Shouldn't matter that Luke lost his light saber. After all, he can
just call it to him with the force...

------------------------------

Date:  31 May 1980 13:53 edt
From:  York.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Luke and Leia

Just because Leia thinks that she is a native Alderanian is no reason
to assume that this is true.  I don't thing that anyone has said that
Leia KNOWS that she is (perhaps) the "other hope".  On the contrary,
she seems to earnestly believe that she is the daughter of the King
(or whatever) of Alderaan.

When did Luke first go to live with his aunt and uncle?  How old was
he?  A baby?  If that is the time frame we are talking about, then
Leia could also have been adopted into the Alderan royal family in
infancy and never been informed of her true parentage.  Thus, she
could be anyone's offspring and/or sister.

------------------------------

PAO@MIT-AI 05/31/80 14:09:45 Re:  Yoda's Hope

Just another possibility to throw around:

     The one character who has been introduced, but not yet seen is
Leia's father.  We don't really know if he was on Alderaan when it was
destroyed.  Further, there is obviously some connection between him
and the Jedis.  (Obi-Wan fought for him in the clone wars.)  Perhaps
he was a Jedi himself??

------------------------------

Date: 27 May 1980 (Tuesday) 2242-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)
Subject: TESB

Did you note that Lucas went out of his way to show that Vader was
unaware of Yoda. During the fight scene he is impressed with what Ben
has taught Luke, and notes that "Ben cannot help you now" or words to
that effect. The point is we are setting up a possible "Yoda suprises
Vader" plot for later on.

Luke's loss of his lightsaber doesn't catch me as all that important;
if he really needs one I have a feeling that Yoda can supply.
Incidentally, one wonders what happened to Obi-wan's...  did it go up
with the Death Star?

The mechanical prosthetic hit me as REAL wrong. From the noises those
pins were making in there there was a good deal of friction, which
would suggest something wearing down or breaking one of these days...
perhaps when he "least expect it"?

I was in the front row center: You will never catch me piloting a
"skimmer"... that scene had me reaching for my (non-existant) airline
sickness bag!

                          Dave

------------------------------

DP@MIT-ML 05/28/80 01:31:41

At Disclave (which was good, despite some hotel problems) Craig Miller
(SW fan relations) was wearing a Indus light&magic T shirt - neat line
drawing of empire snow walker with nose down in the snow. very
unavailable. Some random Neo adressed him as "Mr. Miller" with some of
fandoms greater wits around as a joke they began to bow and grovel in
his direction very funny (It is now a good way to set him off)

The subject of the Disclave graffiti sheet was of course TESB. A
cartoon showing Luke shaking his wrist, muttering Damm, cheap
Japanease parts... someone else made the remark that there were
enough nominations to get Darth Vader on the Virginia Presidential
Ballot (But there would be some question as to party..)

					jeff

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date:  1 JUN 1980 0354-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #133
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 1 June 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 133

   Today's Topics: SF Books - OMNI, TESB, Boston Book Stores Query
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1980 2103-PDT
From: Lasater at SUMEX-AIM

The magazine OMNI.  When it first came out, I was not impressed.  It
looked like a version of Playboy without the naked women. The science
articles were sensationalized (time travel!!  anti-gravity!!!)  but
the science was either trivial or wrong - you can get anti-gravity by
putting a quantity of neutronium at an appropriate height above the
earth.  True perhaps but not very practical.  The fiction, in my
opinion was flashy but lacking in substance, and in the words of a
friend, "too long".  HOWEVER, I recently purchased "The Best of OMNI"
a trade-paperback which costs $3.50.  This book was EXCELLENT!  Not
since "The Best of IASFM" came out a year ago have I read so much
quality fiction between two covers. Apparantly, the science-fiction
writers agreed, as one story, "Sandkings", won a Nebula, while
another, "Unaccompanied Sonata" was a runner-up.  So what do YOU
think, out there in SFLand.  Here we have a glossy expensively
packaged science-fiction magazine.  How do science-fiction fans
react to this new entry?

[ Please do not send replies directly to me; rather to SF-LOVERS@AI ]

------------------------------

DGSHAP@MIT-AI 05/24/80 19:48:42 Re: how many more star wars films?

I am getting conflicting reports on the number of star wars films to
expect in the future.  I have heard;	

 1) they won't stop until roughly 2000AD, there being 12 films in all
 2) there is one prequel to "Star Wars" and one sequel to TESB yet to
    arrive
 3) there are 9 films in all

Does someone know the true grit? And are they already starting work?

	Dan

------------------------------

Date: 13 May 1980 10:49 PDT
From: klose.ES at PARC-MAXC

An SW note: I read recently that Lucas has cut back SW from 12 to 9
episodes (3 trilogies). The trilogy produced between 1977 and 1982 is
chronologically the second trilogy. The first trilogy will be about
the young Obi-Wan Kenobi - his training as a Jedi knight, his rivalry
with Darth Vader, etc. The second introduces Luke and traces his
development as a hero. The third will be about Luke as a Jedi knight
leading the rebels to victory (and I suppose the death of Darth Vader
at his hands).

------------------------------

Date: 23 May 1980 0829-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: [FISCHER: Star Wars: Episode 5]

I don't know how much of this is common knowlege--I didn't know it:

DATE: 22-May-80 10:00
FROM: FISCHER

     Just to clear up any confusion any of you may have experienced
on seeing someone refer to the new Star Wars movie as "episode 5".
The following info has been gleaned from many sources, including
(primarily) my SF nut room mate and many issues of STARLOG magazine.
     George Lucas, originator of the Star Wars stories, initially
wished to aquire the rights to the classic Flash Gordon stories.
When he found this was impossible he decided to write his own series
of stories. These originally numbered 12, but now, through judicious
editing of the outlines, he has brought that number down to 9.  The
tales will be presented as 3 trilogies with their storylines
describing:

   a) the Clone Wars, this was what brought on the fall of that which
      was good in the first empire, the seduction of "Darth Vader" by
      the Evil side of "The Force" (TM by now...) and the betrayal of
      the Jedi knights with the subsequent rise of the evil empire (as
      seen now in the movies).  These 3 films are said to end with
      Luke Skywalker at about age 11.
   b) the rebel battles against the empire and their final victory.
      These three films are the ones we see now, Star Wars, The
      Empire Strikes Back, and next: Revenge of the Jedi.  The
      original name of the movie Star Wars was Star Wars: episode 4,
      The New Hope, a story from the battle of the Whills (whatever
      they are...).  The episode title was originally to be a tribute
      to the origins of the movie, i.e., the grand old serials, but
      feeling that another movie was probably NOT going to be made,
      Lucas and Gary Kurtz decided it would only confuse audiences.
   c) the final reestablishment of order in the galaxy with the rise
      of the new empire.
	
     Though I have seen The Empire Strikes Back I cannot review it
impartially. Perhaps in a month it will "sink in" and I can gaze past
the flash of the initial viewing. As for now, I can say the effects
are of the same goose bump producing high quality as the last story
with new grace added to starship movement. The characters seem more
warm and friendly (familiar?) with some serious attempts at deepening
the viewer's knowledge of them. There are some amazing examples of
stop-motion animation in this film. The list goes on (for me...).
     See The Empire Strikes Back, even if you haven't seen Star Wars
it will stand alone as a movie experience you won't easily forget!

------------------------------

DP@MIT-ML 05/22/80 03:15:51 Re: TESB - What else...

nano review: very good.

  The movie is set a short time after the previous "chapter" Yes,
chapter. This proclaimed iself to be chapter 5, out of the mentioned
9. Great continuity was maintained with the previous movie, with the
characters retaining all of there previous personality.

  The plot was traditional space opera, with the ending quite
obviously left open for the sequels. The movie leaves three major
unanswered questions, and of course Vader is still around. None of
the original cast was killed off, but the Empire went through a few
admirials. (no one was around to restrain Vader)
  A few hints were dropped as to why the Clone Wars were fought, and
what their outcome was.
  As is true of all space opera, there was plenty going on. In fact,
there was enough happening for me to lose track of time, I was quite
suprised when I realised the ending was occuring. The ending was
somewhat soft, but well in keeping with the planned serial format.

effex, technicals, and tactics.

  The effex were *VERY* well done. Unlike ST:TMP, the effex did not
dominate they were quite spectacular, but they supported the plot,
rather than replaced it. There were no cases of an effect there
solely for the sake of having something to ohh and ahh over.

  The gnomes at Industrial light and magic have advanced the state of
the art in effects. Lots of ships performing evasive maneuvers, in
all directions against a complex moving background. (like background
having some moving in one direction, with the stuff further back
moving the opposite.)
  White matte photography!. White walkers on a real snow background,
and the fighters (dark colored) flitting around. they also had some
shots from an aircraft, on the snow planet, flying over mountainis
terrain. This was a view from the cockpit, with the auto-pilot set to
terrain follow, the altitude set at about 50 feet, and the speed set
high. It was enough to cause some of the audience to cringe.

  The movie came complete with all the typical complaints, atmosphere
style banking from the falcon, and people leaving the falcon, on an
asteroid, with nothing more than a stylized oxygen mask.

  On the tactical/military side, Luke has had som kendo training,
and a light saber makes a fair aproxamation to a Katana. While not
a master he is fairly competent with the thing.
  I am being rather picky, I proably would object to true space
behavior from weapons and ships.

  The movie is a good one, well worth seeing. the acting is quite
good, and the technical portions execelent. (I dont think you will
find any wires showing in this one...) oh yes, I didnt mention music.
done by john williams and the london symphony, it is of the same great
quality as the previous movie
  The same piece is used to open this movie, and is equally
impressive.  I am definitely going to have to buy the record.

					enjoy, (really)
					jeff

------------------------------

Date: 05/29/80 1235-EDT
From: Roger King <FOCUS at LL>
Subject: Boston Area Inquiry

What Boston area bookstore has the largest selection of new SF?

                              and

What Boston area bookstore has the largest selection of used SF?

Please reply directly to roger.king at LL.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date:  2 JUN 1980 0430-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #134  ( Star Wars Series Issue #10 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Sunday, 1 June 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 134

 Today's Topics:      World of Star Wars - Limits of the Force?,
                   Yoda's Teachings, Yoda's Hope, Genealogy of Luke,
                  Making of TESB - Plot & Director & Yoda & Technical
----------------------------------------------------------------------

BEAN@MIT-MC 05/31/80 20:04:31

If DV can stop laser blasts with his hand why can't he stop light
sabers?
				Bean at Mit-Mc

------------------------------

Date: 29 May 1980 10:25-EDT
From: Howard I. Cannon <HIC at MIT-MC>
Subject:  Question

Could someone consolidate the evidence for Ben Kenobi being killed by
Darth Vader as opposed to just transporting himself out of his clothes
into "some other dimension"...

------------------------------

DLW@MIT-AI 05/30/80 02:47:47 Re: TESB

Here's another good one: Yoda says to Luke "Remember your failure in
the cave."  Looks to me like he sliced off the head of his assailant.
Does the fact that it turns out to be him make it a failure?

I don't think there's any point in trying to answer this question,
actually; there are lots of ways to interpret it and no clue as to
which one, if any, was intended.  Go try to analyze Zen koans...

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 05/30/80 03:28:32 Re: Jedi philosophy.

Has anyone else noted the similarity, (Read identity) between Yoda's
teachings, and those of Don Juan, in the books by Carlos Casteneda?
For those of you not familiar with these books, Don Juan was a
sorceror of the Yaqui Indians in northern Mexico. He took on
Casteneda, an anthropology student, as an apprentice, and the books
are all about his teachings, and Casteneda's experiences.  I very
highly recommend them. In any case, Yoda's description of the force
as flowing around and between everything, is close to verbatim out
of these books, as is his description of the self as a "luminous
being, not this coarse solid stuff". I don't remember the exact
words now, but at the time they struck me as close enough to make
me think Casteneda might take Lucas to court for plagerism...

------------------------------

Date:  31 May 1980 06:50 edt
From:  SSteinberg.SoftArts at MIT-Multics (SAS at SAI-Prime)

The general feeling I have picked up is that Darth Vader is the
"other" and that in the next episode he dies saving his son (Luke).
Leia will have a passionate affair with Solo (who probably buys it
in the next show) and then marries Luke.

I felt that the entire ice world of Hoth sequence was gratuitous and
I hope they tighten up the plot in the next one.

Yoda is obviously Miss Piggy!  Having been enlightened and having
lost the curse of her beauty she still indulges her taste for handsome
young men - all those Jedi knights she has been "training". (Yoda
might be the daughter of Miss (later Mrs) Piggy and Kermit which would
explain other things.)

------------------------------

Date:  1 Jun 1980 at 2352-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^ RETRACTION: PRONUNCIATION OF Ger. "Vater" ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

John M. called me to task about this error.  The "t" is NOT pronounced
like a "d".  (I had it confused with the German "d", like in "Hund",
which is pronounced like a "t" when it's at the end of a word, but
like a "d" when followed by a suffix, e.g., "Hunden".)

^^^^^ I'VE GOT A B-A-A-A-D FEELING ABOUT THIS PATERNITY QUESTION ^^^^^

The attempt at taping was all but completely unsuccessful, since all I
picked up with any clarity was the few lines I repeated close to the
mike.  A "handy dictating recorder" small enough to fit on the palm of
one's hand is just not sensitive enough.

However, that telepathic interchange ("Son--" ... "Father--) has a
third component, Luke's saying, "Ben, why didn't you tell me!", and
the three lines occur, with insignificant variation, not once but
TWICE!

I'm a-f-r-a-i-d HE wasn't lying.

I'm not CONVINCED, but I'm afraid.  It f-e-l-t true.  But if so, I
still see it as a recent development in Lucas' view of the plot line.

                               . . .

Further, the latest issue of BANTHA TRACKS (the "official SW fan club
newsletter") arrived today with an interview of Lucas.  Like the other
interview articles reported on SF-L he commented on "the first trilogy
which deals with the young Ben Kenobi and the young Darth Vader".  A
certain name is notable for its absence, there.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TESB SCENES TRANSCRIBED ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The tiny recorder I took was not capable of picking up the crucial
confrontation scene, but did get some other lines bearing on the
paternity question.

 VADER:  What is thy bidding, my master?
 EMPER.: There is a great disturbance in the Force.
 VADER:  I have felt it.
 EMPER.: We have a new enemy... Luke Skywalker.
 VADER:  (almost whispered) Yes, my master.
 EMPER.: He could destroy us.
 VADER:  He's just a boy.  Obi-wan can no longer help him.
 EMPER.: The Force is strong with him.  The son of Skywalker must not
         become a Jedi.
 VADER:  If he could be turned-- he would become a powerful ally.
 EMPER.: Yes...yesssss... he would be a great asset.  Can it be done?
 VADER:  He will join us... or die..., my master.

Contrary to an earlier message, the Emperor DOES refer to Luke as
"the son of Skywalker".  However, I found the tones of Vader's voice
(particularly the strangely 'pleading'<?> "He's only a boy", and the
almost whispered previous one) had a weakening effect on my
ANTI-paternity stand.
                          . . .

On the other hand, Luke's having "much anger in him, like his father"
needn't point to that father being Vader, since the young Obi-Wan did,
too.

 YODA:   I cannot teach him.  The boy has no patience.
 BEN:    He will LEARN patience.
 YODA:   Hmmmmmm...  Much anger in him.  Like his father.
 BEN:    Was \I/ any different when you taught ME?

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 05/28/80 08:54:53  Re: TESB: Future possibilities

Well, we seem to have beaten the parentage, and other hope questions
into the ground. Let's move on. I've got it all figured out, (Ha!).
Here is Kenobi, and Yoda's plan: Let DV catch Luke in the dark side,
so the two of them can take over the Empire. Then reconvert Luke, and
then between the 3 of them, reconvert Vader! And if you believe
that...

Do people think that Lando will rescue Han? It would be more
interesting if he did, so that Luke and Han can have their duel over
Leia. On the other hand it wouldn't be much of a duel, given Luke's
increasing abilities with the force.

Which of DV or Luke will die next time? (assuming that the rumor that
one of them does is true.) Well there is also the rumor that the last
sub-trilogy is about Luke's family, (and if this is the case, we KNOW
who his wife will be), but given the 2 rumors, things are pretty sewn
up, which isn't like Lucas, so I bet one of them is false; probably
the latter. If DV dies, there doesn't seem to be enough left to do to
fill up 3 more movies, (unless of course there is another hope for the
dark side as well!), so my guess is Luke, but HOW COULD THEY???

------------------------------

Date: 30 May 1980 1250-EDT
From: JHENDLER at BBN-TENEXA
Subject: Farewell to Arms

  In both episodes of SW to date there has been a recurring motif:
the losing of an arm. IN SW (IV) Obi-wan cuts off the hand of a guy
in the bar, and CPO has an arm ripped off in the fight with the sand
creatures. In SW(V) the snow creature loses an arm, Luke (of course)
loses an arm, and 3PO loses an arm also (we see the arm tossed out
when he is ripped up). I may be forgetting some. Has anyone noticed
any others?
   Also, in American Graffiti (Lucas directed) they discuss the "goat
killer" who rips off peoples arms.  Is this a motif in all Lucas
films?? Can anyone rememberwhether any arms show up in THX1138???

    - Jim

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 05/29/80 00:28:57 Re: Director? What director?

     I was asked the other day about the director of TESB. Who was he,
and did he actually contribute anything to the film?

His name is Irvin Kirshner, and he very definitely contributed to it.

     George Lucas only produced the movie. He was on set only for a
very few days, and from the reports, even then he stayed out of the
way of the crew. Irvin Kirshner had quite a bit of control over the
shooting (although Lucas did screen dailies back in California almost
every day.
     But 'Kirsh had a hand in it well before the shooting started.
He and Lucas and Larry Kasdan all got together to do the initial
story conferences after Leigh Brackett died (and can anyone out
there quantify the exact nature of her contribution to the final
film, or will we have to wait for Cinefantastique to compare
scripts?).  He also had a hand in the preproduction design of the
sets and overall look of the film.

     His previous achievements are not all that notable, and certainly
not really what you'd expect for a sci-fi director: his first film was
"Stakeout on Dope Street " from the late 50's, and his credits include
"Flim Flam Man" and "Raid on Entebbe." His previous effort was the
reasonably well received "Eyes of Laura Mars."

     So where does Kirshner stand out? What did he contribute? He
shaped quite a bit of the mood and the look of the film, it would
seem.  SW5 is much less bland, visually, than SW4. In contrast to
Lucas, Kirshner goes in for vibrant strong colors, much abstract line,
and smokes and hazes. The carbon freezing camber, where the duel take
place, include all three of these items - Heavy doses of orange and
blue lighting without much "practical" support for it, heavy doses of
abstract lines and architecture - notice the repeating pipe formations
running along the walls - almost Art Deco in effect, and of course,
much use of steam and smoke jets. Most of Kirshners sets, even to a
small extent the ice caves, are more abstract in design, existing as
much for pleasing light effects as for practical habitation.  Watch
the preponderance of purely decorative geometry in On Bespin.
     Kirshner also affected the emotion of the film. Here the
characters are more emotive than in SW4. Love, hate, anger, pain are
all more vivid, almost at time to excess, in comparison to Lucas'
style.  Even Chewbacca -especially Chewbacca- gets to show genuine
deep emotion here - when Han is caught outside in the snows of Hoth
for the night, Chewie watches the doors close and then lets out a
cry of utter anguish. Such a scene would not have occured in a
Lucas directed version.
     And to go with the stronger mental patterns, there are stronger
physical patterns. Whereas in SW4 people could go through the most
amazing adventures without a mussed hair or a scrape, hear people get
beaten, bashed, cut, tortured, and really show it!  I counted the
following examples where reality of violence intrude upon the fantasy:

   The snowman creature gets his arm sliced off in a fight with Luke.
   Luke himself gets battered and cut in the same sequence.
   In the snows of Hoth, the guts of a Taun-Taun are ripped open.
   A strange sucker-beast with milky saliva attacks the 'Falcon' in
      the asteroid.
   On Bespin, Han is tortured, and screams in real, terrible pain.
   And in the final confrontation, Luke gets his hand cut dead away.

   Contrast this with a single violent saber-thrust in a bar on
Tatooine in the last film.

            Yes Virginia, there is a director on TESB. His
           style is a little more flamboyant, a little more
           baroque than was Lucas'. but will he direct Star
              Wars 6? By his own admission, probably not.

------------------------------

BEAN@MIT-MC 05/31/80 20:04:31

If yoda is a Muppet how does Frank Oz play him?  --  Bean at Mit-Mc

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 06/01/80 12:55:18 Re: Answers to technical TESB questions

     First: What is a Foley? Besides a department store chain here
in Texas, I want to say its a camera crane, but I'm not sure that's
correct. Give me another day to lock it down.

     Second: second unit does what? This camera crew shoots the stuff
of minor importance, little scenes that aren't very involved, extra
stuff like shots of just light-sabers, planet backgrounds, and the
like. In otherwords, anything that is not worth tying up the main,
large crew and the main director.  Most films have at least a few
scenes where a second unit crew becomes economically and time-wise
feasible.  It's also a good place on occasion to give newer
filmmakers a bit more experience.

     Third: Rotoscoping in a live action-film? Its just about the
opposite of doing it in a cartoon.  In general terms, Rotoscoping is
any interfacing between live-action and animation: here, it refers
to all the animated effects that were added to the filmed action?
These included all the laser (phaser, ion, whatever) bolts, the
glowing light-sabers, and a few surprises.  Many of the explosions
were "enhanced" by air-brushed animation. On the ice-planet Hoth,
particularly, all of the following was animated - the laser bolts,
the colored arcing explosions on the Walkers, various flak
explosions near the skimmers, smoke which pours out of a skimmer as
it is hit, and also the little rope as it wraps around the Walker in
the first shot or two.  All of these are Rotoscope effects, drawing
animated enhancements over the exisiting live-action frames.
    For a more detailed discussion of the rotoscope work on TESB, see
the interview with Peter Kuran in the current issue of "Fantastic
Films".

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date:  2 JUN 1980 0743-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #135
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 2 June 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 135

     Today's Topics:        Alien Intelligence - Planets,
                     Replies - Alfred Bester & Boston Book Stores
----------------------------------------------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 06/02/80 04:31:45
Re: Book review: Asimov's "Extraterrestrial Civilizations".

This is actually both a book review, and a response to OTA's query on
planetary systems in [SFL V1 #129 (AM Edition)].

Overall, this book would be a good introduction for anyone who
has not particularly followed the more technical discussions on
extraterrestrial civilizations.  It is typical Asimov popularized
science, which is very good in fields which one is not expert in,
though it tends to be rather simplistic for those fields one is
very familiar with.

It starts off by considering non-human intelligences on earth,
other primates, the cetaceans, etc. In fact, he points out, to the
pre-scientific mind, the world was full of non-human intelligences;
gods, nymphs in every tree, brook, mountain, and sea, the fates, and
all the rest of the mythical beings that exerted influences on men.

It then goes on to trace some of the early scientific thought on the
subject, including some rather amusing stories like the "moon hoax",
where in 1835 a writer decided to write a little science fiction, and
publish it in a newspaper, without mentioning that it was science
fiction. He wrote several articles concerning the supposed discovery
by John Herschel (a famous astronomer) of flowers, trees, lakes
(complete with waves !), animals, and winged people on the moon. The
paper was the best selling paper in the world for a few days.
Apparently, people really wanted to believe that there were other
intelligences out there, even though they knew enough about the moon
at the time to know this was impossible.

Next he considers the environments, and possibilities of life on the
rest of the planets in our own solar system, particularly the inner
planets, Jupiter, and Titan, including some interesting facts on
planetary chemistry. Then he jumps up to the largest scale, and talks
about our galaxy, and others, and gradually works his way back down
to stars and solar systems, with information on what we know about
planetary system formation, and where one might expect to find planets
with environments that allow the possibility of life appearing.

He wraps up this initial "factual" section with a discussion of what
we know about the origins of life on earth, what various biologists
have found in experiments "primordial" environments, and what they
believe to be necessary conditions for life to develop. He also has
some interesting data on a couple of meteorites, one of which fell in
1950, and the other in 1969, both of which were picked up soon after
falling, and both of which contained amino-acids, (6 that are common
on Earth, and 12 that are uncommon or non-existent), and fatty-acids!

The last 4 chapters are somewhat more speculative, concerning
civilizations, and their development, space exploration, (have we
been visited already?), interstellar flight, (can we visit them?),
and interstellar communications, (can we talk with them, and what
would we talk about?).

He includes the following numbers, and discusses the reasoning that
goes into them at length.  He claims to be very conservative (and
points out in a footnote that some of these estimates are lower
than those made by professionals within this area, such as Sagan).

Stars in Our Galaxy:                            300,000,000,000

Planetary Systems in Our Galaxy:                280,000,000,000

Planetary Systems that Circle Sun-like stars:    75,000,000,000

Sunlike Stars with useful Ecospheres:            52,000,000,000

Second Generation, Population I,
Sun-like stars with useful Ecospheres:            5,200,000,000

Second Generation, Population I,
Sun-like stars with a planet
circling it within the Ecosphere:                 2,600,000,000

Above, but with the planet being
Earthlike:                                        1,300,000,000

Finally, the number of habitable
planets in our galaxy:                              650,000,000


Thought both the review, and these numbers might be of interest...

		Have fun,
		   Don

------------------------------

Date:  2 Jun 1980 at 0119-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ WRITING TO AUTHORS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Customary ways of contacting authors are to address letters to them in
care of their publishers or their agents.  And, in the past, at least,
I have found sending them via Charlie Brown at LOCUS (34 Ridgewood
Lane, Oakland, CA 94611; or P.O. Box 3838, San Francisco, CA 94119)
as effective-- quicker than via a publisher and easier than digging
up the agent's name and address.  A good source for the latter, tho,
is Reginald's recent SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY LITERATURE.

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 06/01/80 14:37:58 Re: Boston Area Bookstores

I believe the answer to both of Roger King's questions is the Science
Fantasy book store. It is in Harvard Square, across from the new
subway stop if that helps. It is run by a very knowledgeable person
named Spike, and you can get a card for 5 dollars which is good for a
year, and gives you 10% off on purchases totalling less than $10, and
15% off over $10. There is a very high rate of turn over on the used
books, so it is worth it to stop in at least once a week. I have seen
entire sets of books, (all of the Lensmen, all of the John Carter...)
for 75 cents a book. The Paperback Booksmith across from the
Prudential, and the MIT Coop also have fairly large collections, but
no used.

		Good luck,
		   Don

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date:  3 JUN 1980 0249-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #136  ( Star Wars Series Issue #11 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Monday, 2 June 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 136

Today's Topics: World of Star Wars - Millenium Falcon & Light Sabers,
                  Making of TESB - Yoda & C3PO, Genealogy of Luke,
                   Emperor, Leia, Ranks and Titles in the Empire
----------------------------------------------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 11/04/80 16:36:03
Re: MF's brain, or why the MF can outfly any 10 Imperial fighters.

I was somewhat bothered by the MF's fantastic ability to outfly whole
bunches of Imperial fighters, (even through asteroid fields), which
are smaller and should be more manuverable. After all, they ARE
fighters, and the MF is just a freighter right? Also remember that Han
actually left the pilot's chair to try to fix the hyper-drive, while a
whole swarm of fighters were in hot pursuit! In a conversation with
Duffey, we figured that for a smuggler, ship speed, and handling are
at a premium, and it would be programmed up, down, and sideways, to
do everything the smuggler could possibly think of, (including avoid
massive numbers of asteroids?), whereas the Empire doesn't need to
bother. It can just saturate an area with ships.  Smugglers also often
travel alone, or with only one other person, which is another good
reason to have it programmed up the kazoo. Admittedly, this is rather
tenuous reasoning, since the Empire should be able to program their
ships as well as a smuggler, (or as well as a smuggler can buy), but
maybe the little fighters are too small to carry enough computer to
handle all of this. Still, if that is the case, the Empire ought to
build slightly larger fighters. Who knows, maybe the Empire will
learn in another episode or two...

------------------------------

Date:  3 June 1980 00:58 edt
From:  SALawrence at MIT-Multics (STEVE at SAI-Prime)

As to the value of light sabers -- could they be a peculiar kind of
antipersonnel weapon, which can be used against a foe who is shielded
against other hand weapons? In particular, strange as this sounds,
could they be anti-Jedi weapons? Note that Vader can stop a speeding
blaster bolt in its tracks without straining, even when apparently
taken by surprise, but seems to have no defense at all against Luke
armed with a saber -- save the rather dicey defense of using another
saber.

------------------------------

Date: 02 Jun 1980 1112-PDT
From: Don Woods <DON at SU-AI>

BEAN asks how Frank Oz plays Yoda.  First off, the credits explicitly
list Yoda as "portrayed by Frank Oz", not the same as playing the part
oneself!  If Bean meant to ask how Oz manipulates the muppet, that's
simple: It's magic!

------------------------------

DMM@MIT-ML 06/02/80 23:30:36

Just a few more thoughts about TESB to throw into the ring...  Did
anyone else have a reaction to the change that Kirshner made in C3PO's
Character? (He said he wanted to make him a real pain in the ass.)
Instead it seemed that someone had plugged a Mr.Spock Module into him.
Really, I felt that repeatedly quoting the odds of their survival was
out of character. Wouldn't it have seemed more like him to simply say
"Oh dear, We'll all be killed, I know it!", or something of the sort?
  Also, yesterday, they ran an interview with the stars of TESB here
on a local show, and a couple of probably irrelevant items that I
hadn't heared elsewhere came out...for instance, had anyone heard that
DV was disfigured in a battle with Obi-Wan? Also, Hammil was saying
that the Third trilogy (7,8,9) would concern Luke as a full Jedi, not
necessarily just his children. Which would say, of course, that he
can't get killed in SW6. Of course, he sounded like the whole thing
was rather indefinite when it came down to details of future episodes.

--DMM

------------------------------

Date: 2 Jun 1980 11:06 PDT
From: Klose.ES at PARC-MAXC

     Alright, here's my all-encompassing theory.  A little bit of
drumroll please ...  All Jedi-knights are cloned.  I think the
arguments I have read about clone relationships presented to date
make a lot of sense.
     The consequence of the theory is that Luke, Ben, Luke's
"paternal" father (the one that raised him and was killed by DV),
DV and the Emperor (I believe him to be a Jedi) are all "related".
Perhaps the seed cells for Luke were physically obtained from DV,
which permits him to claim that he is Luke's father.  In fact, a
claim of son, father or brother could freely be made between any of
these parties.  This theory jibes with Lucas' statements about DV
being the Dark Father and Ben being the good father.  I'm not sure,
however, how the mothers that he mentioned, fit into this scheme.
Maybe there is a corresponding female line of super-heroes (Princess
Leia?).
     The Jedi line originated in times long ago with Yoda set up to
perpetuate the succession.  Perhaps he was responsible in some way for
its inception.  Only those cloned have the superior genetic make-up to
become a Jedi-knight and to assume the power of the force.  But still,
every Jedi must fulfill training to utilize their inherent potential.
     Because of their common heritage, Jedi have strong mental bonds.
This is both a strength and a weakness for Luke.  He can be influenced
by DV as easily as by Obi-Wan.  I believe that the image of Obi-Wan
Kenobi is not Ben coming back from the dead to help Luke, but rather
the telepathic images from Yoda or perhaps from another living Jedi
(the other).  Since the other would also be a clone, he would look
like Obi-Wan.
     This theory offers an explanation for why in the training duel
with DV, Luke sees his own face on DV.  It was a warning to Luke
about his true heritage.  Yoda had to prepare Luke, to make him strong
enough to resist the evil influences of DV before he could reveal this
truth.  Luke is at a general disadvantage because his powerful allies
and powerful enemies all have knowledge which he does not possess.
     Another point: I logically assume that one of the warring parties
involved in the clone wars were the clones.  This would leave the
option that the Jedi fought the clones or the Jedi were allied with
the clones (or in fact clones themselves, fighting for their own
survival).
    Come on all you clone supporters, send in those cards and letters.
I find it hard to believe that Lucas would use a cheap plot device
like saying that DV or Ben was lying.  More in character would be some
kind of suprising twist which allows everything to make sense.  I'd
like to hear some objections to my theory.

- Paul

------------------------------

BEAN@MIT-MC 05/31/80 19:18:31

If the Emperor is as ``As much flesh and Blood as Obi-Wan'' why would
Vader need to use a communicating device to speak with him.  When
Obi-Wan wants to talk to Luke he just appears.

				Bean at Mit-Mc

------------------------------

Date:  2 Jun 1980 at 0313-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ LEIA'S BACKGROUND ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Data is exceedingly sparse.  In the original film--

      PROLOGUE: Princess Leia races home aboard her starship...
                            ___

 |    REBEL: <struggling to speak> We intercepted no transmissions.
 |            This is a consular ship.  We're on a -- diplomatic
 |            mission.
 |    VADER:  If this is a consular ship, where is the ambassador?
                            ___

 |:   LEIA:   Darth Vader!  Only you could be so bold.  The Imperial
 |            Senate will not sit still for this.  When they hear
 |            you've attacked a diplomatic--
 |    VADER:  Don't act so surprised, Your Highness.  You weren't on
 |            any "mercy" mission, this time. ...  
 |:   LEIA:   I don't know what you're talking about.  I'm a member of
 |            the Imperial Senate on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan.
                            ___

 |    LEIA:   General Kenobi: Years ago you served my father in the
 |            Clone Wars. ...  You MUST see this 'droid safely
 |            delivered to him on Alderaan.
                            ___

 |    TARKIN: Since you are reluctant to provide us with the location
 |            of the rebel base, I have chosen to test this station's
 |            destructive power on your home planet of Alderaan.
                            ___

In the apocryphal novelization, the version of the message R2 carries
is expanded with: "... my father, Bail Organa, Viceroy and First
Chairman of the Alderaan system".

As 'emperors' can have 'kings' or the equivalent subordinate to them,
the latter would seem to be Leia's father's rank.  Her title of
'princess' suggests that his position is hereditary, and would seem
to be unrelated to her (elective? appointive?) role as Senator.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TITLES IN SW-4 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

In general, the handling of titles in the film differs from that in
the book.

While both have Captain, Princess, Governor, General, Admiral (tho
only in the credits), Commander, Senator, Emperor, and Lord (Vader),
these are noticeably more widely used in the book.  And the book also
uses other titles such as Lieutenant, First Mate, Grand Moff, and a
number of permutations of Vader's title which do not occur in the
film: "Dark Lord of the Sith", "the Sith Lord", "(all) the Dark
Lord(s)", and "Lord Darth Vader".  (The last is significant in that in
British usage, "Lord Vader" and "Lord Darth Vader" would refer to 2
DIFFERENT ranks of the peerage.  Rank makes a difference in whether
the title precedes the first or the last name.  The non-Briton who
wrote the novel was obviously ignorant of this.  It seems safe to
guess that if "Lord Darth Vader" got as far as the shooting script,
somebody working on the film in England caught it before another
'parsecs'-type blooper was committed.  Of course, it WAS a "galaxy
far, far away", which would have let them weasel out of it.)

            *********************************************

It is also worth keeping in mind that "Sith" and "Dark Lord" (and
the existence of more than one "Dark Lord") is something found only
in the novel(s).  (I t-h-i-n-k "Dark Lord of the Sith" also occurs
in the TESB novelization.)

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date:  3 JUN 1980 0343-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #137
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Tuesday, 3 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 137

Today's Topics:          Query - Computer Related SF Stories,
                SF Books - OMNI & Darkover & Riverworld & Dragon's Egg
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  2 Jun 1980 1930-PDT
From: Lasater at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: request for story titles

I would like to see a biblography of all fictional works dealing with
computers as a major plot element.  Example that I can think of are:

	The Adolescence of P1
	Colossus: The Forbin Project

I am interested in any work which deals primarily with the effects and
problems of large machinery capable of being programmed in a digital
or analog format.  I am specifically NOT interested in pure robot
stories, such as Asimov's long series on positronic robots.  However,
at the risk of sounding contradictory, I will accept virtually any
work if someone can justify it based on the above criterion.

robert

[ The book The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction by Patricia
  Warrick (MIT Press, 1980) includes a bibliography of the SF work
  published from 1930-77 concerning AI, computers, and cybernetics.
  Warrick makes the claim that her bibliography is "the first ...
  comprehensive bibliography on a single theme in SF".  I will not
  attempt to judge that claim here.  However, the bibliography is
  a useful one, consisting of just over 300 entries for novels and
  stories. My single major complaint about it is that it only lists
  author, title, and date of publication. It does not list place of
  first publication which would have simplified finding much of the
  older material.  --  RDD ]

------------------------------

JGA@MIT-MC 06/02/80 13:39:03 Re: OMNI

I've had a subscription to Omni, since it first appeared.  In general
I've appreciated it, but a number of the points that Lasater@sumex-aim
makes ring true.  In fact I have decided not to renew my subscription
when it lapses, although I may change my mind yet.

The visual style is more precisely Penthouse (rather than Playboy),
which is not surprising since the publisher is the same.  In fact the
two are so similar in typography and layout style that it bothers me
that Omni never took time to develop any style of their own.

I like the idea of having sci-fi and sci-fact together in the sort
of ratio that they do.  And I think their fiction is pretty good in
general.

But their science.... FLAKEY, FLAKEY, FLAKEY!  The entire emphasis
is on the flashy, the whiz-bang of the month, that sort of thing.  A
particularly irritating example was a little piece in their section
devoted to short features on new developments.  The column was about
some bozo's suggestion that WEIGHT was the solution to the energy
crisis.  You put these plates in the road, see, connected to hydraulic
pumps, and every time a car drives over the plate, the car pushes it
down a bit and pumps some fluid, doing work.  There wasn't a single
mention of the energy needed to lift the car up to the level of the
road again, not a hint of the words "conservation of energy".  It
was essentially a perpetual motion machine of the first kind that
was suggested.  Gah....

Their longer feature pieces are a bit better, but still
seem to emphasize the "golly gee, in ten years we'll all be
[driving / wearing / living in] [spaceships / plastics / asteroids ]"
sort of off-the-wall flaming without any justification.

My idea of a good science fact/fiction magazine would be to combine
(1) the production standards of Omni - great graphics, photography,
with (2) the fiction of any s/f magazine like IASFM or Analog, but in
the ratio of fact/fiction we see in Omni, with (3) the "new" science
of Science News, (4) the "review" science of Scientific American, -
possibly watered down a little for public consumption, but not too
much, and finally (5) the "science politics" of Science - looking at
upcoming legislation and the like which they do very well.

Comments anyone?

John.

------------------------------

Date: 2 Jun 1980 11:43 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Darkover

There is a new Darkover novel out in paperback, called "Two to
Conquer", set near the end of the Age of Chaos.

------------------------------

Date: 2 Jun 1980 1207-PDT
From: Achenbach at Sumex-Aim
Subject: Book review -- The Magic Labyrinth by Philip Jose Farmer

The Magic Labyrinth -- Philip Jose Farmer
-------------------

     I had made a vow not to buy any new hardbound books for a while,
but when I discovered that Farmer had finally released the final
volume of the Riverworld series, I'm afraid I broke down. To quote
Farmer, TML "...ends the Riverworld series, all loose ends are tied
together into a sword resisting Gordian knot...".  Well, somewhat
overstated, but satisfying none the less.

     For those of you unaquainted with the series, it consists of four
books: "To Your Scattered Bodies Go", "The Fabulous Riverboat", "The
Dark Design" and "The Magic Labyrinth".
     In TYSBG we first see the Riverworld.  This is a valley millions
of miles long, with a single river down the world.  In this valley
every man, woman and child over 5 who died on earth is suddenly
brought back to life in their healthy 22 year old bodies.  Not only
that, but if you die in the Riverworld, you are brought back to life
again the next day.  Needless to say, this mass resurrection has a
somewhat shattering effect on most peoples former beliefs.
     This first book follows the exploits of Richard Francis Burton,
the 19 th Century explorer.  We discover that the Riverworld was
constructed by an advanced race, but no one knows why.
     TFRB introduces some new characters, notably Sam Clemens, and his
desire to get to the headwaters of The River.  He hopes to do this by
constructing a huge paddlewheeler.
     TDD starts blending to two plot lines, and also starts
showing that not everything is as it should be.  Suddenly the
"mini-resurrections" stop, and once again when you die, it's for
keeps. We are still uncertain of the motives of the "Ethicals"; the
people who constructed the Riverworld and brought all of humanity back
to life.

     The final volume finally answers the questions.  It's been
so long since I read the other books that I had a little trouble
remembering the characters, but on the whole enough hints were
supplied to minimize the trouble.  The action is good, the idea
presented are great.  The ending, and the final explinations,
have enough twists to give a sufi master pause to think.  I highly
recommend the whole series.  The problem is, now I'll probably have
to sit down and re-read all 4 books to remember the whole thing.

/Mike

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/02/80 14:42:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following message is the last message in today's digest. It 
mentions one of the incidents in Dragon's Egg.  People who have
not yet read this novel may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 2 Jun 1980 11:43 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Darkover and Dragon's Egg

I, too, liked Dragon's Egg a lot; it is even worth shelling out
for a hardcover book to get it.  But isn't what's-her-name a tad
inconsistent when she semi-seduces her lover who is on guard duty
but then later disciplines another guard for letting her attention
wander from her duty?

Karen

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date:  4 JUN 1980 0304-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #138  ( Star Wars Series Issue #12 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Tuesday, 3 June 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 138

Today's Topics: World of Star Wars - R2D2 & Falcon & Title &..., Leia,
                 Genealogy of Luke - Clones & Cave, Yoda's Teachings,
                Pot Pourri, Making of TESB - Plot & Lucas & Technical
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  3 June 1980 00:58 edt
From:  SALawrence at MIT-Multics (STEVE at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  TESB question

Has anyone asked (or answered) the question as to whether there's any
kind of rationalization for the sounds R2D2 makes instead of speech?
Since speech synthesizers are awfully cheap, and presumably would have
been just as cheap in their universe, there must be some good reason.
Does anyone have any guesses as to whether there's a better reason
than that it seems neat to have a robot use such noises (didn't a
robot in Lost in Space use something like that for speech?)...

------------------------------

Date: 3 Jun 1980 11:17 am PDT (Tuesday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: TESB / Navigating through asteroid field

One thing bothered me about that asteroid-chase sequence, and I wonder
if anybody else noticed it.

Consider: The MF and Imperial fighters aren't the only objects in
that field risking collision with asteroids. There are lots of
asteroids in the same predicament, in fact worse since the 'roids
(presumably) can't navigate to avoid collision. So: How come the
field ain't chockful of itty-bitty fragments of rock which ought to
be just as dangerous to a fast-moving spaceship as the big ones? It'd
take a DAMN good pilot to avoid all the dust as well as the visible
junk.

Just wondering...

			-- Greg

------------------------------

Date:  3 JUN 1980 1214-PDT
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: Millenium Maneuvers

     It is not necessarily true that the Falcon is a more maneuverable
craft -- it simply has the advantage of running away. The choice of
direction is open to it, and avoiding asteroids the only problem.
The TIE fighters on the other hand must do their best to follow the
Falcon, giving them less ability to choose a safe path thru the field.

------------------------------

Date: 03 JUN 1980 1306-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA
Subject: TESB fighting

  The TIE fighters have sort of been set up as typical Evil weapons:
they are very fast because they are a seat, engines, and firepower,
with no extra weight for things like shielding or good autopilots.
The Millennium Falcon, being intended to get away from fights (it's
probable the Empire would ground it, with a bomb if necessary, if it
carried enough weapons to be a serious threat to heavy Empire forces)
would want the best piloting equipment possible.
  A friend pointed out that Vader's being "Lord of the Sith" is never
detailed \at/ \all/, and noted that Sidhe, the Irish land and race
beyond a supernatural barrier, would be pronounced somewhere between
"sith" and "seethe".

------------------------------

Date: 03 JUN 1980 1259-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA
Subject: parsecs, again; SW weapons; Organa family survivors

  I was the person who quoted Craig Miller's explanation of parsecs
at Minicon, and I don't swear to the accuracy of anything I recall
from that weekend. I don't see an absolute discrepancy between the
two explanations, although I know they're not equivalent. I do
wonder whether the script explanation is also found in the shooting
script---after all, the other parsecs line \was/ caught.

  I would suggest that the "blaster" bolts could appear to go slowly
because of persistence of vision--if they were small and \very/ bright
there would be a distinct afterimage---but then they'd probably appear
as a streak rather than a discrete image.
  I like the idea of a light saber being against those who can shield
themselves against a blaster, particularly after the blaster has been
established as weaker than the light saber.
	
  Leia's father is almost certainly dead (cf. the remarks of the
general who meets her on the moon of Yavin).

------------------------------

Date: 3 Jun 1980 11:15 PDT
Sender: Brodie at PARC-MAXC
From: Richard R. <Brodie>
Subject: Paternity

According to STARLOG #36:

"[After filming the final episode in the middle trilogy,] Lucas . . .
 hopes to film the first trilogy--'The Clone Wars'--which features the
 adventures of Luke's father, his then-friend Darth Vader and the
 young Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi."

	--From an interview with Gary Kurtz, producer of TESB.

	Richard Brodie

------------------------------

Date:  3 Jun 1980 1536-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE

    I like the "all Jedis are clones" idea. Among its other advantages
it provides a reason why Luke happens to crash land within a mile or
two of Yoda. There needn't be just one short, green Jedi Master.....

------------------------------

LPH@MIT-MC 06/03/80 15:51:38 Re: reply to paul klose

the jedi have been the champions of the universe for thousands of
generations, so that Yoda could hardly be the "original" if he is only
800 years old. also, Yoda tells Luke that only the things that Luke
takes with him into the cave matter. hence he has a mental feeling
that causes him to produce the DV image which is revealed to have his
face. this may in fact be due to Luke's having the feeling that DV is
his father. or perhaps it is due to the feeling that he brought in the
light saber and the place creates the enemy for him to fight: jacob
wrestling with an angel, a fight in his mind which the area is
amplifying to reality. Luke triumphs over his own personal dark side
in this case. other interpretations?

------------------------------

Date: 03 JUN 1980 1249-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA

  Luke could be said to have lost in the cave on Dagobah because he
was not able to defeat a hallucination by denying it---cf. the
general declarations that fear, like anger, makes a weak Jedi (they
aren't looking for brainless courage, but for the ability to ride
over and master fear, which is much more difficult). (also echoing
SECOND STAGE LENSMAN, in which a hallucinated dragon can kill if the
recipient allows himself to believe, or turned back on the sender if
he is exceptionally strong of mind) (is there any question that what
happened there was entirely hallucination?)

------------------------------

Date:  4 June 1980 02:08 edt
From:  SSteinberg.SoftArts at MIT-Multics (SAS at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  Carlos Castenada

I doubt that anyone could copyright the spiritual substance vs. coarse
material idea since the earliest references to it antedate the various
Gnostic references to very similar ideas. It is a major concept in
Hinduism and shows up pretty often in Christianity.

Did anyone catch Don Barthelme's satire on the Yanqui way of knowledge
- probably about ten years ago in the New Yorker? I definitely cannot
recall a date since I read a year or two of these every few years but
in no particular order.

------------------------------

Date: 03 Jun 1980 2238-PDT
From: Dick Gabriel <RPG at SU-AI>
Subject: Second Time Around 

     Having just returned from SW5 for the second viewing, this
time pen and notebook in hand, I would like to report some further
questions and puzzling observations. I will list them briefly since
there are several:

1. Is it a coincidence or cinematic effect only that Solo appears out
   of the fading image of Kenobi when Luke is found on Hoth?

2. I was under the impression that only people with ability with the
   force could even operate light sabers: is it significant that Solo
   uses it to cut open the Taun-Taun(?).

3. How was Luke found when lost? How did the Taun-Taun last so long
   when it was hinted it would lose big and fast in that temperature?

4. I saw 2 other women besides the Princess: the dark-haired
   technician that was mentioned earlier, and a blonde who appeared
   in 2 shots in one scene.

5. When Luke enters the atmosphere the instruments, but not the
   controls, stop working, so there is no objective evidence about
   the planet aside from Luke's observation and R2's.

6. Luke says: ``This is like a dream'' about the planet; ``I must
   be going crazy.'' Also, ``there is something familiar about this
   place.''

7. Yoda says that ``luminous beings are we, not things of <this?>
   flesh'', grabbing Luke. So, does the planet and Yoda exist in a
   substantial way?

8. The "seduction" scene during the repair period on the asteroid is
   odd since Leia previously and until that moment seems outwardly
   cold towards Solo. He stares at her and changes her mind. Has he
   "seen" her true feelings or altered them? A problematic scene.

9. Why does Vader change his plans with respect to Luke so often? He
   seems to be ready to freeze him for a long time and then tries to
   talk him into joining him. Is this a change of plan? Or only that
   he is trying to hide his real plan from a lot of people? Why does
   he decide to take Chewbacca and Leia along instead of leaving them
   with Calrizzian? Of the freezing, he refers to Luke as ``the
   Emperor's prize.''

10. Vader doesn't kowtow to the bounty hunters as had been hinted
    earlier.

11. Why was one of the bounty hunters in the garbage? Did the bounty
    hunter figure this out or did Vader?

12. Was Kenobi ever substantial in any episodes so far?

13. The ``failure at the cave'' is that Luke took his weapons, and
    used them, when Yoda instructed otherwise. I took the killing
    of Luke/Vader in this sequence to mean that Luke was going to
    the dark side, not that Vader was his father, as was suggested
    earlier. The light sabers in this scene are the same as in the
    Luke-Vader duel. Vader's saber seems thicker when the real duel
    starts.

14. Vader says: ``together we can end this conflict and restore order
    to the <galaxy?>...we will rule as father and son.'' ``You can
    defeat the Emperor; he has forseen that.'' Oh?

15. Luke doesn't grow as a character in this movie, while nearly
    everyone else does, especially Solo, Leia, and Vader (most of
    all).

16. The wound to Vader's shoulder, which doesn't affect him much,
    though the light sabers can go through armor easily, is the result
    of a failed parry, not a direct slice.

17. It is amusing that Chewbacca seems to have a natural talent for
    fixing and dealing with mechanical things, but he also has a
    penchant for doing the opposite thing from right. ``No, THIS
    goes here, and THAT goes there, got it?'' ``You fool, I'm
    BACKWARDS!!!''.
			-rpg-

------------------------------

Date: 03 JUN 1980 1249-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA

  The reports at the time of Brackett's death were that she had
finished a complete first draft of the script---and I suspect that
she contributed at least as much as the director to the darker tone
of TESB.

------------------------------

Date:  3 Jun 1980 at 0114-CDT
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Biographical sketch of Lucas needed

Does anyone have any background information on Lucas before he became
a film maker? He was involved with racing cars I believe.

Did he serve in the military? Are there any characters in his life
that might be serving as role models for SW characters? (Apart from
Chewbacca being based upon their pet dog?). What literature does Lucas
admire? Is he fond of Shakespeare? Does he have a large SF collection?
etc. Afterall, the man that invented all this fantasy is probably
worth some knowledgeable discussion considering his movies have made
SF-Lovers and computer mailing list history TWICE.

------------------------------

Date:  3 Jun 1980 1536-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: TESB: animation

I was rather disappointed with the figure animation in the movie.
Both the tauntauns and the walkers moved jerkily, although it was
more noticeable in the tauntauns because they were smaller and
non-mechanical. Compare the work of Ray Harryhausen in say "Jason
and the Argonauts" or "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad". The spaceship
scenes were unparalleled, of course, but there things are moving so
fast that smoothness is not a problem.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date:  4 JUN 1980 0413-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #139
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Wednesday, 4 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 139

   Today's Topics: SF Books - Omni & Gates of Heaven & Dragon's Egg,
                    Computer Related SF Stories, Query - Westercon
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 03 JUN 1980 1311-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA
Subject: Omni

  OMNI isn't the only magazine going in for flaky science; have you
seen a recent DESTINIES? On the other hand, Baen actually believes
most of the weirdities he publishes (he also doesn't have much
judgment, putting that awful Hogan story on the cover, unless he's
trying for the audience that still longs for 1950's ASTOUNDING),
while OMNI seems to be pandering to the masses (they have to, with
their production costs). Occasionally OMNI is entertaining, as in
the recent story about pranks, Caltech style (although their CIT/MIT
comparison was one-sided).

------------------------------

Date:  3 Jun 1980 1635-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: omni, "The Gates of Heaven"

The slick graphics (and slick paper) of Omni are probably not
possible in a magazine with less than a million+ circulation (I
believe Scientific American runs at about 800,000). Unless you have an
established reputation like SciAm or Science the only way to get that
kind of readership is with flashy, if stupid, headlines and articles.
It seems hard in general to combine science and science fiction in
one magazine; witness the idiotic pieces by G Harry Stine that get
published in Destinies and Analog. Asimov is the only one who seems
able to do it consistently, and even he has to stretch his material
thin at times.
     In fact it seems to be getting harder to put science in science
fiction. A hard sf novel only seems to come out about once a month
these days, and the rest are Conan or LoTR clones. I was pleased,
then, to see "The Gates of Heaven", which looked like a good old
spaceship/black hole/alien story. The book only has one idea in it
though, that of applying catastrophe theory to a pair of orbiting,
rotating black holes, and for the rest is a direct steal from "JEM"
by Pohl. The sudden changes of catatrophe theory are here said to
occur through some interaction of the fields of the holes and allow
one to jump interstellar distances without getting atomized by tides,
which is the problem with ordinary black hole jumps. Get this plot,
though: a new planet is discovered and a female military officer with
relations in Washington organizes an expedition to it, taking with her
her scientist/lover. The social backgrounds are completely different,
and the heroine is not a personification of the phrase "the banality
of evil" as she is in Pohl's book, but otherwise the similarities are
so close as to be called plagiarism. However, since you also don't get
Pohl's style and intelligence, I doubt that he should worry much. Read
only if desperate.

------------------------------

Date: 3 Jun 1980 11:50 am PDT (Tuesday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: testimonial

To all those people who have not yet read Bob Forward's "Dragon's
Egg":

Go ye forth at once and beg, borrow, or steal a copy. (Or buy; it's
worth it.) A highly enjoyable book, with lots of action, adventure,
humor, mystery, and of course, Science Triumphant. The alien cheela
are fascinatingly depicted and, in their way, disarmingly human. The
human characterizations I thought were a little weak; however this
would be difficult to avoid given the plot situation (the principal
human characters are onstage for only a few hours of their own
subjective time). Such flaws are more than made up for by the breadth
of scope (covering the rise of a civilization) and the stunning
conception of both the possiblility of life on a neutron star and of
the technology that enabled humans to discover and converse with it.
I couldn't put it down.

A strong contender, I should think, for next year's Hugo (but then I
haven't read "The Magic Labyrinth" yet).

			-- Greg

------------------------------

Date:  3 JUN 1980 0847-PDT
From: LAHUE at USC-ECL
Subject: Was Swift-Killer modeled after Patton?

     Military leaders have seldom followed their own rules. Gen.
Patton had the strictist dress code of any of the armies - fines for
wearing any unauthorized variation on the regulation uniform - yet if
any of his troops (or officers) had appeared in the General's getup,
he would have been docked a month's pay.


------------------------------

VILAIN@MIT-MC 06/03/80 23:06:26 Re:  Computer bibliography

A few of the stories which come to mind which involve computers as an
integral plot element are:

	THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER by John Brunner
	WHEN HARLIE WAS ONE by David Gerrold
	THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert Heinlein

Given more time, I could come with others but these came to mind
immediately.

<>Mike Vilain

------------------------------

Date: 03 Jun 1980 0232-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: WESTERCON committee people wanted 

Does anyone know who is in charge of the programming for WESTERCON?
In particular, I have to get in touch with the person(s) arranging
panel discussions on technical issues involved in producing a
fanzine/prozine.

Please reply directly to me (jpm@sail). Thanks.

Jim

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date:  5 JUN 1980 0624-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #140  ( Star Wars Series Issue #13 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Wednesday, 4 June 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 140

Today's Topics: Making of TESB, World of Star Wars - R2D2 & Asteroids,
                Pot Pourri - Clones & Yoda's Hope & Boba Fett & ...
                      What's Wrong with The Empire Strikes Back?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

DMM@MIT-ML 06/04/80 03:08:09

In the TESB scene on Hoth, when Solo is about to go looking for Luke,
the deck officer tells Han that his Tauntaun would freeze if he were
to go out in the blizzard, to which Han replies Something like " I'll
see you in Hell!". I just saw the movie for the 2nd time, and the end
of this line was cut. Did anyone else notice this, or was there just a
splice in the film there?
   Also, there's a mildly interesting article in (Bletch)People
Magazine on the newsstands, about Frank Oz(nowicz). You can't miss it,
just look for Yoda on the cover.

------------------------------

Date: 04 JUN 1980 1504-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA
Subject: R2's noises

  The real question is why any of the "droids" (I hate that term a
little more every time I hear it; it's much worse than "parsecs"
might be) \should/ talk. I seem to recall that speech synthesizers
are rather massive, and the conversation of most robots would be
rather limited. C-3PO can talk because talking is his specialty (he's
a diplomat-interpreter with N thousand languages), while other robots
wouldn't have such a variety of things to talk about. Two more points:
even if a synthesizer isn't especially massive, R2 is already so full
of tricks that crammming a voder in might have meant sacrificing
something else; and, just as the Chinese get around 5 major and
uncounted minor languages by having a single written language,
wouldn't it be helpful to hae the limited vocabulary of a robot in
a compact form which could be understand by humans no matter what
language they spoke?
  Also, the robot in the unregretted LOST IN SPACE did not make
twerpy noises; in fact, in one of the few scenes I recall at all it
was singing "Santa Lucia", which gave Smith another opportunity to
be nasty.

------------------------------

Date: 04 JUN 1980 1510-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA
Subject: asteroid field

  I also have some trouble with the asteroid field; referring to
Heinlein (who usually got strictly technical matters correct) in THE
ROLLING STONES, our asteroid belt (at least) just isn't that dense.
Of course, it \could/ be one of the small traveling fields we see as
meteor showers, or a very young field (with that much force available,
Darth may have been planet-busting again). But I can't think of
a single reason why the asteroids should be brown rather than
gray-black. I would think monochrome rocks with the occasional color
splash from ships or weapons would be more dramatically terrifying.
  The shadows also weren't hard-edged enough, but then many of the
space shots don't seem as sharply lit as they should be.

------------------------------

Date: 4 Jun 1980 09:44 PDT
Sender: TheForce.ES at PARC-MAXC (not authenticated)
Subject: Are we not Clones?...
From: Obi-Wan Kenobi

We are Jedi.

------------------------------

RP@MIT-MC 06/04/80 09:49:04

I saw TESB a second time and was struck by the following point: The
appearance of the emperor is very similar to Kenobi- especially the
eyes (and we see little else). Further, the voice seems the same. Is
he a clone of Kenobi or vice-versa?

------------------------------

Date:  5 JUN 1980 0043-EDT
From: JDD at MIT-ML (John DeTreville)
Subject: TESB: Random Points

In the credits at the end of TESB, there is a listing only for the
voice of the emperor and none for the emperor himself. Ignoring the
bags under his eyes, I think it is certain that Alec Guiness played
the emperor, and that the emperor is a clone of Obi-Wan Kenobi (making
him Obi-Too Kenobi?).

If everyone is a clone, does that explain why there are so few women?
I counted four, I think, in addition to the princess and am sure there
are a few more, but not many. In contrast, there could be an awful lot
of leftover troops from the Clone Wars still hanging around.

The commander of the walkers on Hoth: who was he? Consider that he got
to see a teensy holograph of Darth Vader, which suggests that he is
someone important. Also, he doesn't act subservient (he says to DV
that he'll be finished soon and that then DV can start in). He also
gets to wear a DV hat. On the other hand, he has only the insignia of
a Commander, and other people have DV hats too, such as the ones that
drag an unfortunate admiral away.

One argument in favor of Leia being the "other" is that, unlike Han,
she has premonitions of doom after landing inside the worm and after
landing on the city in the clouds. My roommate says also that the
words she uses on one such occasion are almost identical to ones Luke
used in SW4 before entering the trashmasher, but I don't trust my
roommate.

Finally, what was the object that fell past Luke? I think it was Luke.

------------------------------

JEFFH@MIT-MC 06/05/80 03:53:45 Re: More TESB

  About the bounty hunter... Boba Fett is described as the most
notorious/ ruthless/sucessful bounty hunter in the galaxy (in the
book) so it doesnt seem that far-fetched that Fett caught on to Solo's
ploy of hiding against the star destroyer. The book also mentions that
the armored spacesuit he's wearing is of the type used by a group of
evil warriors in the Clone Wars.
  Yoda's hope must be very non-apparent since Obi-Wan-Kenobi managed
to call Luke their only hope four times til Yoda finally straightened
him out...
  
  Was it ever actually stated that Yoda was Luke's father's
instructor. I seem to remember that Yoda knew all about him
including his faults but couldnt Ben have been his teacher?

  Perhaps light swords have the same power as a blaster when held by a
mere person and dont become lethal til one knowledgable in the force
uses them?

  Why do some of you think Luke will get Leia? It is destined that Han
and Leia will marry and Luke will go on to be a great Jedi knight.

Jeff

------------------------------

Date:  4 Jun 1980 at 0611-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In re: Dick Gabriel's queries ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

1. Han's replacing Kenobi is surely for artistic effect.

2. There is no basis for the assumption that light sabers are other
   than an old-fashion weapon that anyone could operate. They might
   not be able to use it to deflect zapp-shots from a remote while
   blindfolded unless they use the Force, but they can patently
   eviscerate a tauntaun.

3. It seemed to me that Luke was wearing some kind of short-range
   signaling device, which Han (and the search plane the next
   morning) was able to home in on.

4. Right, there is also a blonde. The other has dark reddish hair in
   a kind of knot on the top, back of her head. She has one line, 4
   words long, something like: "Prepare ion cannon ... fire!"

5-7. It DOES suggest Arisia(?), doesn't it! Maybe like most of the
     Lensmen he never really landed, either. However, if R2 saw what
     WE saw, then I would think it was for real. (What effect, if any,
     can the Force have on a droid-- interesting question!) And that
     mention of the 'feeling of familiarity' is indeed intriguing.

8. The "seduction" (that's putting it a bit strong) scene was a stock
   encounter out of a zillion Harlequins.

9. To me, Vader seemed to fit his tactics to situation change. His
   ultimate goal was to "get/capture/possess" Luke. Luke's teleporting
   out of the freeze-pit forced the change. Persuasion was attempted
   when conversation was possible. What Vader REALLY intended to do if
   he DID get Luke, only George Lucas knows. As for taking Chewie and
   Leia, Vader isn't dumb. He, as well as we, had seen enough of Lando
   by then to figure L's no longer as neutral as he had been. Besides,
   we don't really know that DV ever truly intended to leave Chewie
   and Leia there.

10. Although Vader certainly doesn't kowtow to Boba Fett, the latter
    comes off against DV better and with more self-assurance than
    anyone since Motti got a sore throat in SW-4.

11. No answer possible, but I'm betting on Boba Fett figuring it out
    for himself. That voice evokes a sense of lotsa smarts.

12. On present evidence, presumably Kenobi was substantial until he
    dematerialized/was-dematerialized-by-Vader's-sword-stroke in SW-4.

13. What Yoda meant by ``failure at the cave'' is incomprehensible
    from the data we have. Luke didn't disagree with the charge, so
    I think this might be something the audience was expected to
    understand, tho we obviously haven't. WHOEVER GETS TO A CON
    WHERE THERE'S A CHANCE TO QUERY SOMEONE FROM LUCASFILMS, A*S*K!!!

14. The Emperor DOES say "He could destroy us".

15. I think Luke HAS "grown", according to the evidence I cited a
    number of issues ago. In SW-4 when he learns his family is in
    danger, he immediately dashes off half-cocked. In SW-5, learning
    of the danger to Han and Leia, he wrestles with his conscience
    for some time (overnight?) before deciding that going to them is
    something he MUST do. The decision is the same, but its manner
    indicates growing maturity.

------------------------------

Date: 4 Jun 1980 1246-PDT
From: Martin Sturzenbecker at Bell Labs Murray Hill NJ (c/o WRS@OF2)
Sender: WRS at OFFICE-2
Subject: Star Wars 5 - getting it out of my system

Usually I am loath to broadcast my opinions in this fashion, but, in
regard to TESB, having read the fawning Time Mag. article, having seen
the movie, and then having waded through the reams of exegesis in this
digest, well, I have to get a few things out of my system . . .

Everything good about this movie can be said in two sentences. It is
visually beautiful, technically refined, and exciting to watch. (OK,
make that *one* sentence.) Everything bogus about this movie would
take pages to recount in detail: I will outline what seem to me to be
the main vitiating factors.

1) Lack of humor. This is a serious flaw, and perceptive critics have
   recognized it as such. SW4 had an infectious light-headedness which
   gave life to the products of Lucas' imagination and propelled the
   movie's theme of the boundlessness of human horizons
   single-mindedly to a satisfying conclusion. In TESB, humor is
   reduced to the repeated invocation of three vapid formulae: lame
   insults, 3PO's servile nattering, and R2's mechanical cuteness. In
   its striving for "seriousness" and complexity, SW5 sacrifices one
   of the most attractive features of SW4 - all of which would not be
   so bad, except . . .

2) The striving for complexity, in large measure, doesn't work. We
   feel more comfortable, more in tune with the characters simply
   because we had two hours to get to know them in SW4. But there is
   little in SW5 that succeeds in enlarging and deepening the main
   characters, with the possible exception of Vader (he indeed begins
   to assume the shape of a "heroic villain"). There is no better
   example of this general failure than the "romance" between Han and
   Leia. Now this is a perfectly appropriate union in a psychological
   sense; you'd think there would be no problem in developing it.
   Wrong. Kershner resolutely refuses to allow any emotional depth
   to break through the shoot-'em-up action veneer of his movie. In
   the crucial scene where their lips actually touch (!) they are
   interrupted by a babbling 3PO, a juvenile artistic error that robs
   the entire scene of genuineness. And the farewell scene (when Han
   gets frozen), now here at last is a chance for a tender and moving
   episode, in which true feelings can come to the surface. Nope. The
   scene is rushed through and played out so amateurishly I, for one,
   felt cheated and disappointed. The "I love you" exchange is so bad
   it doesn't deserve comment, except to say that the book was
   somewhat of an improvement: LEIA: "I love you. I couldn't tell you
   before, but it's true." (She is finally coming to grips with her
   feelings.) HAN: "Just remember that, because I'll be back." (He
   assures her that she hasn't lost him; an assurance all the more
   touching for its cavalier nature.) Han's reply in the movie is
   merely belittling, insensitive, and . . . well, I said I wouldn't
   comment. It's hard to say who is responsible for this: certainly
   Kershner must take his lumps, perhaps the writers of the screenplay
   as well. But there is another ("There is another.") failing which
   must be laid squarely at Lucas' door, and that is . . .

3) The epic pretensions of this entire sequence. First let me say that
   even if SW4-5 were far better movies, to mention them in the same
   breath with Homer's Odyssey (as Time made bold to do) would be
   ludicrous. But all right, given that Lucas has chosen to employ
   elements of myth and epic folklore into his production, let's
   analyze the latter in light of the great works from which he
   borrows. First, the good-evil conflict in SW4-5 takes place on a
   comic-book level. Aha, you say, what about that marvelous episode
   in the cave where Luke decapitates Vader only to see his own
   countenance leering back him from behind the mask? It's clear
   what's happening here: The DSotF resides in Luke insofar as he
   is motivated by fear (out of fear he carries his weapon into the
   cave). We also learn that anger is indicative of the DS. Well,
   fear and anger are, in some sense, negative emotions, but the
   wellsprings of evil? I think not. They may be weaknesses to a Jedi
   knight, but to ordinary human beings they can be, at the right time
   and in right measure, positively beneficial. Furthermore Vader,
   supposedly the personification of evil, exhibits neither of these
   emotions (no, he kills his incompetent subordinates out of disdain,
   not out of anger). In fact, if there is anyone in the movie who
   keeps his cool at all times ("calm" is the mark of the good Jedi,
   we are told) it's Vader. But how about that great moral conflict
   Luke faces between going back to rescue his friends and staying
   with Yoda to complete his training? Some dilemma! Is there ever any
   doubt as to what Luke will do? Did anyone really think he was going
   to buy Ben and Yoda's utilitarian arguments about the greater good
   of the galaxy? And even if we do think of his decision as a
   mistake, a tragic undoing, as Lucas clearly wants us to, we are
   left groping for a justification for this view, since Luke never
   has to pay dearly for his miscalculation. Of course it is part of
   the lot of virtually every epic hero to make tragic errors in the
   process of learning about himself and the world, but he also has
   to suffer the consequences. Achilles, Ulysses, Aeneas, Arthur,
   Parzival, Ilya Murometz, Faust, Frodo all make mistakes and pay
   dearly for them, although most of them come through in the end. If
   Luke had lost his hand permanently it would have been a different
   story, but no, he gets a new one sewed on and is as good as new, so
   . . . Of course the story isn't over yet, but until Lucas displays
   more consistency and a better grasp of human nature, all the
   rummaging through his work in search of hidden truths and epic
   motifs as though it merited comparison to the classics of Western
   literature had best be left to those with nothing better to do.

To sum up: As mental cotton-candy SW5 flies, as a serious movie it
hobbles, and as a part of a work with epic pretensions it, like its
hero, falls into an abyss of confusion. But I'd like to end on a
positive note, with the words of a friend of mine, whose first
comment after the credits had rolled by was: "I didn't see a single
matte line."

           Martin Sturzenbecker Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date:  5 JUN 1980 0735-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #141
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 5 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 141

Today's Topics: Alien Intelligence - Planets, SF Books - Dragon's Egg,
                    More SF Musicals, Query - Focus & Bookstores,
                  Replies - Bookstores & Recursive & Computers in SF
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  4 June 1980 1820-EDT
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject: Barnard's Star

Until a few months ago, I also believed Barnard's Star had one or more
Jovian-sized planets (I even remember watching a TV program on our
local educational channel while still back in high school on how this
"fact" was established). Then, a few months ago, I read (and alas,
could not tell you where... p>0.8 that it was Science News) an article
which contained an offhand remark about "...Barnard's Star, formerly
believed to have planets..." (my paraphrasing). Does anyone else have
information? There was nothing to explain this statement, apparently
the authors/editors assumed everyone knew the new "fact".
					joe

------------------------------

Date:  4 JUN 1980 2245-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Don't blame Me!

     Some people have objected to the inconsistent behavior of
Swift-Killer, and the explicit alien sex scenes (most of which are
also due to the same Swift-Killer.) All I can say, is if you have any
objections, direct them at her. (But be polite in your remonstrations
-- getting slapped on the little toe by the hefty manipulator of a 106
kilogram cheela Needle Trooper is no joke!)

     I do admit that I created Swift-Killer, but after 15 human
minutes she was a mature cheela with the kill of a Swift to her
credit, and from then on she was in charge. It was all I could do
to keep the terminal keys going. Some of her shameful carryings-on
almost made me go on strike and stop typing, but she was such a good
scientist that I couldn't wait to see what she would invent next. She
also is the first alien to have some of her art make the cover of a
book.

     We shouldn't be too rough on her. After all, she is not a
baby-tending mammal that needs a permanent mate to take care of the
helpless infants, and who has brothers, sisters, parents, and other
relatives. Instead she has the morals and cultural background of a
civilized egg-laying, ground-hugging, omnivorous alligator. For her,
sex has none of the responsibility overtones that overlay mammal fun
and games.

      Bob Forward (AKA the Boswell of the Cheela)

------------------------------

Date:  4 Jun 1980 2108-EDT
From: HEDRICK at RUTGERS
Subject: musical science fiction

I saw what looks like the end of a conversation about science fiction
musicals. Apparently the following works are not widely known. They
are both better classified as operas than musicals. It has been many
years since I have heard either, so my memory is somewhat faint:

  "Aniara", by Karl-Berger Blomdahl (spelling approximate). This was a
     serious work in a contemporary musical style, set on a spaceship.
     I seem to recall it as being a group of people escaping after a
     war that destroyed the earth, but it has been a long time. There
     was a recording by one of the standard classical record companies.

  "Perelandra", music by Swann (of the British comedy team Flanders
     and Swann), book by a British poet whose name I unfortunately
     do not remember. This is based on the novel by C.S. Lewis. As
     far as I know, it was performed only 4 times, and has not been
     published. It was performed by Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges
     jointly. One performance was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal
     (!) I have a recording of it, as I was the official recordist.
     It was a fairly successful rendition of the novel (better than
     the typical movie in representing the flavor of a book). The
     performance was enthusiastic, though only the two lead singers
     were really top-notch.

------------------------------

Date: 25 May 1980 2103-PDT
From: Lasater at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: New topics of potential interest

What are your reactions to the Newsweek magazine Focus.  Especially
the review of recent sf movies?

Please do not send replies directly to me; rather to SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI

------------------------------

Date:  4 June 1980 1828-EDT
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject: Another bookstore inquiry

I'm going to be in Los Angeles (ISI) around the end of June. What good
SF bookstores are there besides Change of Hobbit?
			thanks
				joe
(If it is more convenient, you can reply directly to Newcomer@CMU-10A)

------------------------------

PROCEP@MIT-AI 06/04/80 04:13:09 Re: Bookstore

As an addition to Don Erway's (DERWAY at MIT-AI) comments on the
Science Fantasy Bookstore in Havard square Cambridge, I think that
SF-Lovers might be interested in knowing that it's knowledgable
proprietor, Spike MacPhee is also known as SRMac at MIT-AI.

*However* He is does not log in at all often. SF-Lovers who drop by
should encourage him to log in.

--Eirikur

------------------------------

Date:  4 Jun 1980 at 2355-PDT
From: greep at SU-ISL
Subject: Recursive personae

Another recursive story (unless someone already mentioned it -
some of these messages seem to get lost en route) is a Twilight
Zone story (it was just on tonight) by Richard Matheson in which
a playwright (Keenan Wynn) brings characters to life by recording
their descriptions on a dictating machine, and uncreates them by
throwing the tape in the fireplace. At the end, Rod Serling (who,
as the creator of the series, could be said to have created the
playwright) comes out and says something like "Don't take this
nonsense too seriously". The playwright, who is still there, takes
offense at the remark, pulls a tape marked "Rod Serling" out of
his safe and tosses it into the fireplace, at which point Serling
disappears. Who created whom?

------------------------------

Date:  4 June 1980 2021-EDT
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A

The recent set of stories by Hogan, e.g., Thrice Upon a Time,
The Two Faces of Tomorrow, and The Genesis Machine, all involve
computers and computer technology as central to the plot line.
				joe

------------------------------

Date: 04 Jun 1980 0218-PDT
From: Barry Soroka <BIS at SU-AI>
Subject: computer bibliography   
 
Try
	David M Alexander,
	The chocolate spy,

wherein yet another computer attains consciousness.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date:  6 JUN 1980 0541-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #142  ( Star Wars Series Issue #14 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Thursday, 5 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 142

Today's Topics: World of Star Wars- R2D2 & Females & Saber & Language,
                    Emperor, Yoda's Hope, the Duel, Books on TESB,
                Reply to "What's Wrong with The Empire Strikes Back?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  5 Jun 1980 1502-PDT
From: Dave Dyer <DDYER at USC-ISIB>
Subject: Droids

 R2D2's communication patterns are a bit odd.  I see no reason why
robots should communicate with each other using human speech, so
his chirruping doesn't seem that odd.  On the other hand, I don't see
why they would use sound.  Some form of electromagnetic communication
seems in order.  Finally, if R2 can UNDERSTAND speech, speaking itself
shoud be comparitively trivial, so he should be able to speak.

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 1980 1144-EDT
From: JHENDLER at BBN-TENEXA

The size of speech synthesizers:

  At present TI has many different hand-held products with speech
sunthesizers in them (speak & spell, language translator, more in
developement) in our galaxy.  Who knows whether they have even
better miniaturization in a galaxy far far away?
 - Jim 

------------------------------

Date:  5 Jun 1980 at 0830-CDT
From: clyde at UTEXAS
Subject: R2D2 and speech

"I seem to recall that speech synthesizers are rather massive"...
     Not quite.  When TI can put small speech synthesizers in
hand-held electronic toys, one can put the almost anywhere.

     Another point -- it really seems that R2D2 has more equipment
space in it (him?) than C3PO (you have to have an AWFUL lot of
motive machinery to move a humanoid form).
     No, we must assume that the reasons for C3PO talking and R2
not were strictly artistic.

     Or maybe R2 does have a synthesizer and he's (it's?) just not
programmed to generate human speech.

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 06/05/80 00:29:09

There are more than two or three females in TESB. But you gotta look
quickly. There are at least two females present in the control center
on the rebel base at Hoth. One gets to say a lines (she has dark hair)
and there is a blonde manning one of the consoles. The brunette stays
at her con till the very destruction of the center, still working.
    Where are the other females? On Bespin! As Lando takes his
visitors to meet Vader, in the hall we pass at least six or more
females, in various groupings. One appears perhaps even to be a
teacher leading some schoolkids somewhere.

------------------------------

Date: 04 JUN 1980 1516-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA
Subject: light saber use

  The exact limitations on who can use a light saber haven't been
spelled out yet, but I suspect they are pretty broad; before he shows
even a trace of the force Luke handles his father's, albeit clumsily.
The \suggestions/ in the dialog are that using such a weapon is a
matter of choice, much as many primitive societies consider
fist-fights low-class and weapons noble.

------------------------------

ACW@MIT-AI 06/05/80 01:30:11 Re:  TESB

Hello, everybody.  I am another new subscriber.

An old friend who unfortunately has no access to the net and hence
cannot be here with us has contributed a couple of pithy observations:

1. Wherever this galaxy is far, far away, there are an awful lot of
   solar systems close, close together.

2. It's a crock to still have Kenobi around. Why aren't we having
   interminable arguments with ALL the dead Jedi?

                              * * * * *

     Being an amateur linguist, I was enthralled at Han's dialogue
with Greedo in SW4. The subtitles were a stroke of genius, a piece of
really inspired comedy. Why were all the jokes so banal this time
around? The only really inspired moment in TESB (as far as comedy
goes) was when Han pounded a bulkhead aboard the recalcitrant Falcon
in the way one might clobber a logy Magnavox. What was really funny
about this was the implication that Han has been through all this
before, and knows just the right spot to hit.

     Back to linguistics: has anybody noticed the lack of written
language in Star Wars as a whole? There are no signs telling us which
way the men's room is, or that we aren't allowed past this point. It
seems that Lucas and Company are trying to deal with a problem that
most moviemakers and TV-show writers prefer to ignore. They are aware
that no one in this movie is really speaking English -- it has just
been dubbed into English. What written language there is is seen only
fleetingly. I was watching for it almost all the way through TESB. We
glimpse symbols of some kind in the viewscreens of the electronic
binoculars that everyone seems to carry. The symbols are gratifyingly
alien. Some spacecraft are marked with two or three alien characters,
possibly numbers. Doors in the cloud city are decorated with
bas-reliefs that may be writing. Other than that, nothing that I could
see. This is refreshing, to my way of thinking. The makers could have
shown signs in English, which would have been inelegant; or they could
have showed signs in Galaxyfarfarawayese, which would have made me
ecstatic while confusing almost everybody else. They picked a sneaky
and creative way out.

     The whole cloud city sequence gave me a sense of deja vu. I
finally pinned it down. It all owes a great cinematographic debt to
Star Trek. That whole sequence was very trekkish. The Old Friend.
Intimations of Trouble. The Betrayal... How many Old Friends of
Kirk's went through the same changes?

     	---Wechsler

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 1980 11:02 PDT
From: Chapman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Who played the Emperor?

At a LASFS meeting just before the release of TESB, Craig Miller gave
his slide show. He said that the part of the Emperor was played by an
(approx) 80 year old woman from Northern California. The next movie in
the series may show some relationship between Ben and the Emperor, but
the actual actor was NOT Alec Guiness.

Cheryl

------------------------------

Date: 4 June 1980 07:59:55-EDT
From: wgk at MIT-AI
Subject: Observations X one (PM Digest)

I did not detect DV's change in announced plans: i.e. to deliver the
next major instrument of the Force, Luke, to his boss. And I would
expect any up and comming bad guy to want his boss's job. It is
fittingly brave (foolish?) of DV to solicit help from the next
powerful instrument.

   Hooks or dangling threads to the future chapters:

1. Two references to the next powerful instrument/manipulator
   of the FORCE

   a. conversation between DV and the Emperor included a comment that
      the son of Skywalker must not become a Jedi Knight. (Luke or son
      of Luke?)

   b. "o" "B" 1 comments as Luke is breaking training that he was/is
      their last hope which was corrected by the Master saying that
      there will be another.  (Who, Son of Luke?)

2. The scoundrel is available and could not be written out yet.

3. Luke's unfinished training.


Comment on the light saber's minor damage to DV.  As a one time
   fencer, an attack is sometimes evaluated as unsuccessful before
   it is complete resulting in a recalling of the weapon for the
   next maneuver. This is sometimes wrong. Luke could have made
   that error...
           //Bill

------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 1980 11:45 PDT
From: Chapman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: The Use of PK during battle

[In-reply-to: RMS@AI's comments in SFL V1 #130 (PM Edition)]

For some reason, I thought that Vader was the one using PK to throw
things at Luke. After all, it seemed to me that Luke got the brunt of
the attack, and Vader IS more practiced in the Force, and perhaps more
capable of splitting his attention.

Anyone else have any opinions?

Cheryl

------------------------------

Date:  5 Jun 1980 at 1601-CDT
From: Debbie (via AMSLER at UTEXAS)
Subject: TESB storybook version of the duel


      the empire strikes back storybook

         based on the film the empire strikes back
             screenplay by leigh brackett and lawrence kasdan
             story by george lucas

         published by random house

     ******************************************************


       ... with the utmost calm, luke stepped off the platform and
       let himself fall into the chasm.

            vader rushed forward and made luke a witness to the dark
       lord`s power.  he held out his hand and a great wind caught
       hold of luke.  it swept him back up the shaft.  Then vader
       gestured again and, as abruptly as it had started, the wind
       ceased.  vader let him go.  now luke was falling again --
       faster and faster.

            suddenly he was being pulled toward the exhaust pipe--
       and he was sucked into it.

            luke clung to the edge of the exhaust pipe with every last
       bit of his strength.  it wasn`t enough.
    
            as he slid out of the pipe, he grabbed desperately at
       cloud city`s weather vane.  to his astonishment, the delicate
       instrument supported his weight.  `ben!` he pleaded as he
       climbed onto the vane.  `ben!`  but the jedi knight did not
       appear.

            luke turned his appeal in another direction.  he had felt
       his friends` pain and suffering across the galaxy.  now he 
       hoped they might sense his call.  `leia,` he murmured as a 
       piece of the weather vane snapped off.  `leia, hear me.`

            ....
  
     *************************************************************

         i thought the part about vader causing a great wind
         to pull luke back the shaft as a display of his power
         was interesting.  it seems that scene has had several
         interpretations from the mail i have been reading. 
         what do you think?

------------------------------

Date:  5 Jun 1980 at 1946-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TESB "PROGRAM BOOK" ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The jackals are at it again.

There's a 'program-book-like' publication out (Paradise Press, $2.95)
which displays a number of the same kinds of errors so rife in THE
STAR WARS [PHOTO] ALBUM.  Lots of pictures, of varying quality, a
somewhat dubious re-telling of the story, and a series of write-ups
ofpersonnel, etc..  The last has some interesting points.  E.g.,
Source of imperial "walkers" idea was a brochure done in the early
'60's which depicted a 4-legged commercial vehicle; they took that
idea and developed it instead of using Norwegian army tanks as had
originally been planned.  Or, that there were to have been snow
scenes in the first film, which were taken out partially because
Lucas doesn't like shooting in the cold.

One shouldn't place too much confidence in a text containing the
following errors--

 IN CONTENT

_R2, in SW-4, 'carried the Princess' vital message across the galaxy'
_Hoth, 'a twilight world'
_Yoda, p. 24 'blue', p. 25 'green'
_Han & Leia, hiding on the asteroid, 'venture out of the craft clad
 in pressure suits'
_Han (on the asteroid) 'fires a blaster ... starting an earthquake.
 ... as the Falcon nears the jagged entrance to the cave the opening
 gets smaller.  The cave is tumbling in around them'.
_Stormtroopers seize Princess Leia and Chewbacca while Lando gloats
 over the results of his treachery

 IN USAGE
_Vader, 'robed in black metal'
_Chewie, 'holds C-3PO's decapitated head'
_Chewie, 'carries the emasculated 3PO'

However, there are some new proper nouns (i.e., not in the film,
tho some may be in the novelization):
Wampa - the abominable snow creature
Bossk - the reptilian bounty-hunter
Zuckass - human bounty-hunter
Dengar -    "     "      "
IG-88 - mechanical "     "
Sabacc - the kind of match (game) on which Lando won the mine

Tho the story re-telling is unreliable, it may contain clues to what
was changed or left out in the course of filming or editing (like the
early scene between Luke and Biggs on Tatooine from SW-4).

Here, instead of a passionate, Han-spiting kiss from Leia...

   "Luke is recovering, Leia at his bedside brushing the hair from
    his eyes and running her fingers along a scar on his face, tender
    gestures that encourage the young warrior to begin to declare his
    feelings for her.  The couple are interrupted...."

In the scene with the emperor...

   Vader "is visibly ill at ease.... The first to appear in hologram
   is Sate Pestage, the Emperor's Grand Vizier, who warns of the
   Emperor's black mood.  Vader eagerly reports the rebel base
   destroyed, that survivors are being mopped up, but is told to wait.
   When the Emperor appears Vader kneels; he remains deferential even
   when given leave to rise...."

------------------------------

Date: 23 May 1980 0829-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: [FISCHER: Star Wars: Episode 5]

DATE: 22-May-80 10:00
FROM: FISCHER

     Currently there are NO OTHER official novelizations of George
Lucas's stories beside STAR WARS and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. There
are however several books relating adventures of Lucas's characters
outside of the STAR WARS trilogys. As Gary Kurtz said in an interview
with STARLOG magazine, "...it is assumed that some 3 years has passed
between each of the movies, giving plenty of time for the characters
to have other adventures...," that is not an exact quote. He said that
in reference to the proliferation of comic adventures that exist.
These OTHER books are (as far as I know): Han Solo at Star's End, Han
Solo's Revenge and Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the last being by Alan
Dean Foster. I have only finished reading the last of those and feel
that it's excellent.

------------------------------

Date:  5 Jun 1980 1735-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: Epic pretensions

Although I basically agree with Martin Sturzenbecker's opinion that
Star Wars isn't a piece of great literature, I disagree with most of
his individual points.  The main reason SW isn't a piece of great
literature is that it isn't literature.  I'll just refer back to the
movie-vs-novel flames which have appeared here; I believe enough has
been said on the subject.

"Epic" refers to the subject matter of a work (national heroes), not
its literary quality.  By extension it is used for works of similar
subject or scope.  However, SW qualifies as an epic because of its
subject matter, however it was handled.

In terms of its literary pretensions, I would compare SW to Sherlock
Holmes: highly popular, with a much smaller core of hyperinterested
aficionados.  A movie has about the same semantic content as a short
story (the TESB "novel" reads like a play-by-play sportscast of the
movie).  Both series are invented out of the whole cloth, as opposed
to developing from legend.  Mainly, though, the similarity is in the
quality of criticism offered: people are interested *as if these were
real events*, as opposed to trying to elicit deeper meaning, etc.
[Note: these criticisms are for comparison purposes only.  The amount
of meaning you elicit will depend on your individual viewing style,
the weather, traffic, and will be lower in California.]  Agreed:
Searchers for hidden truth need not apply -- but a Baker Street
Irregular isn't searching for hidden truth, except in the most
literal of senses.

Details: I personally thought that the "I love you" scene was one
of the best in the film.  I prefer it to the book version.  Han's
reply, beautifully in character, is at once humorous and touching;
both effects are necessary here given the character and the situation.
Likewise, the babbling 3P0 in the earlier romantic scene is necessary:
Leia has to be able to get out of the clinch without saying anything.
Genuineness?  The thing is absolutely inescapable, given the
stereotyped plotlines. How consistent can you get?	--JoSH

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date:  6 JUN 1980 0700-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #143
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 6 June 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 143

      Today's Topics: Alien Intelligence - Planets, SF Musical,
                       Replies - Computers in SF & Bookstores
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 06/05/80 1416-EDT
From: KG Heinemann (SORCEROR at LL)
Subject: Barnard's Star

     The observations of Barnard's Star which suggested that it has a
planet (planets) were done using the 24 inch refracting telescope of
the Sproul Observatory at Swarthmore College.  After the "discovery"
was announced, other astrometric observatories instituted observing
programs to corroborate the findings.  The "wobble" in the path of
Barnard's Star, which had been found at Swarthmore, was not seen at
any other observatory.  It seems likely that this wobble was caused
by the instrument used for the first observations, and is not a true
feature of the motion of Barnard's Star.  Thus, the discovery of an
planet there would seem to be discredited.  SIGH!!!!!!!!

                         KGH

------------------------------

Date:  5 JUN 1980 2235-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Barnard may be bare but---

NASA/SCAN NOTIFICATION
A service of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Scientific and Technical Information Office

(Order the documents you want by checking the appropriate boxes,
 then forward the sheet to your library)

89-02 STELLAR ASTRONOMY AND COSMOLOGY
IAA AND STAR ISSUES #09 MAY 1980

/_/  Low-mass unseen companions to two nearby red dwarfs,
CC 1228 and Wolf 922
LIPPINCOTT, S. L.  AA (Sproul Observatory, Swarthmore,
Pa.)  Jan 1980  5 PAGES 5 REFS.  Astronomical Society of
the Pacific, Publications, vol. 91, Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980,
p. 784-788.
*ASTROMETRY, *COMPANION STARS, *DWARF STARS *M STARS,
*STELLAR MOTION
PARALLAX, PHASE DIAGRAMS, REFERENCE STARS  C89 A80-24988

------------------------------

Date:  5 June 1980 16:39 edt
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  SF Opera

I have a dim memory of a friends record of SOME of the music from
2001.  On the other side were some musics from an SF OPERA, whose
plot had something to do with refugees/pioneers on a space ship.
I think they all die in space.  Could be the one refered to in the
last Digest?

[ I believe the record you are referring to is one made under the
  direction of Eugene Ormandy. The SF opera on the other side from
  the music of 2001, is indeed Aniara.  In the opera, all of the
  refugees/pioneers die in space in an asteroid shower.  --  RDD ]


------------------------------

Date: 5 Jun 1980 11:18 PDT
From: Chapman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Computers as central characters

Here are three more books that specifically involve the "growth"
of a computer.

	Unwise Child - Randal Garrett
	The Two Faces of Tommorrow - James P. Hogan
	When Harlie Was One - David Gerrold

Cheryl

------------------------------

Date:  5 Jun 1980 1152-EDT
From: JHENDLER at BBN-TENEXA

*sigh* no one has mentioned HAL in 2001. He was a product of the
third computer revolution, and if you don't believe me ask Marvin
Minsky, who is cited as having been one of the pioneers of the
third revolution in the 1980s.

------------------------------

LEOR@MIT-MC 06/06/80 00:29:32 Re: Source for Dragon's Egg?

Does anyone know a place around Boston where I can get a copy of this
book? So far I've tried everyplace in Harvard Square (including
Spike's), and Avenue Victor Hugo without success. Can I send a check
to the publisher and get one directly? Pls. reply to me and I'll relay
the easiest path to the Egg to the list.
	-leor

P.S. the reason Spike (proprietor of the Science Fantasy Bookstore in
     Hahvahd Square) doesn't log in often is that he's BUSY. They're
     expanding to software and perhaps even Apples. Hey, Spike
     salvaged the place after the former owners dumped it way in the
     red.  If you can't get hold of him over the system, go visit the
     store!  Spike's good conversation and there always seem to be
     hackers about.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date:  7 JUN 1980 0527-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #144  ( Star Wars Series Issue #15 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Friday, 6 June 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 144

        Today's Topics: World of Star Wars - Language & Women,
                        Speculations on Episode 6, Pot Pourri
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  4 Jun 1980 at 0644-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SITH and SIDHE ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Aha! Somebody else also noted the similarity-- which seems even
stronger when you know of the less common spelling "Sithe".

However, sad to say, the Irish word is NOT pronounced either of the
ways suggested, but as "shee" (and is, indeed related to the "shee"
in "banshee").

On the other hand, knowledge of the pronunciation is pretty rare
among Americans (how many SF-Lers knew?), so it is not beyond the
realm of possibility that Lucas was influenced by the look of the
word.

One thing is certain-- Dave Prowse has no more info than we do. He
suggested it was <ahem> just an empty rearrangement of those same 4
letters.

------------------------------

DMM@MIT-ML 06/06/80 22:54:15
(from Julie Barrett via dmm)

     In response to the question about signs, etc in various places in
TESB, I saw one in a corridor of the rebel base when Han was leading
Leia and C3PO tword the MF.  There was a symbol on a door similar to
our symbol for radiation with some alien characters above it.  The
lettering and symbol were red (I believe) on a yellow background.

     Also, about women in SW: Did anyone notice any women in the
cantina scene in SW4?  I realize that it would be difficult to spot
alien women, but there were quite a number of humanoid males in the
place.  Wouldn't there be a barmaid or two and maybe even a hooker
or two hanging around, not to mention just one or two women out for a
drink or two?  If the place was supposed to be such a "wretched hive
of scum and villiany" (as Kenobi put it) why wouldn't there be any
prostitutes hanging arund the cantina?  I don't even recall seeing
something like a brothel in the city.  Maybe Lucas was trying to
protect the kiddis. Welll.......
     
------------------------------

Date: 6 Jun 1980 1013-EDT
From: Peter Kaiser <PKaiser at BBND>
Subject: Talking about women

Re Larke@MIT-ML of 6/5/80:

No, no, no, no, no ...  let's not have "a blonde \manning/ one of
the consoles"!  How about a good gender-free term like "operating"?

Welcome to the mid-1980s.

---Pete

------------------------------

Date: 4 Jun 1980 1615-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: "Revenge of the Jedi" speculation

   Well, lessee. Lando and Chewie are on their way to Tatooine, Han is
in Boba Fett's tender care en route to be delivered to Jabba. Luke,
who believes Darth is his daddy, has promised to return to complete
his training on Dagobah, and has also promised to meet (and assist?)
Lando & Co.

   Sounds like the obvious plot for Revenge of the Jedi is rather too
parallel to TESB if Luke goes off to Dagobah first. Besides, (1) He's
now disillusioned with Obi-Wan and Yoda over the Vader paternity, and
(2) this leaves Leia sort of dangling. So off goes the bionic Jedi to
Tatooine, incidentally in a rather peculiar situation vis-a-vis Leia
and Han. Now, one of the typical motifs in the Young Hero story is the
return to the homeland, and the discovery that it is no longer as big
as it once was. I think we'll see that here. I also suspect that Luke
will re-visit some sites from SW4, and learn the truth about his
paternity for himself, rather than from either Ben or Darth. The
rescue of Han will proceed, and will lead to the final confrontation
with Darth. Probably, the film will END with Luke returning to
Dagobah. With Leia and Han going off together??? And what about the
'droids?? And the Emperor is still out there, although he no longer
has Darth Vader to carry out his wishes.

   "Another Hope" may wait for the third trilogy.  

   The longer this discussion goes on, the more I like the film.
There's a lot more to talk about, certainly, than the "gee, isn't it
neat" conversation that SW4 generated. Looks like I'm gonna have to
stand in line again...
	Mike

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 06/06/80 05:17:44 Re: TESB: Traitorous Jedi.

It seems to me that Ben and Yoda are too concerned with, and too
knowledgable about, the possibilities of turning to the dark side, for
Darth to have been the only one. For that matter, maybe it is a stage
all Jedi must go through, and the older ones try to keep them from
doing to much damage, until they mature. I admit that Yoda and Ben's
attempts to keep Luke from going to the dark side do not support this,
but maybe they are trying to break the normal course or something. Any
indications that either of them have FIRST HAND knowledge about the
dark side?
		Don

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 06/05/80 00:29:09 Re: Thoughts on the third go-round....

1.) Speaking of Bespin, what info do we have on the little race of
    boar-men that seem to work the machinery of Bespin? Do we even
    know the name of their race?

2.) Another way that Luke "failed" in the dark cave - he drew his
    weapon first, thus demonstrating further his impulsiveness. This
    is using the Force for aggressiveness, against Yoda's teaching.

3.) Notice, that at the start of the lightsaber climactic duel, Vader
    needs only one hand to manipulate his 'saber, while Luke needs
    two.

4.) On a technical note - I spotted the fact that the telepathic
    exchange between Vader and Luke ("Luke? Father?) was edited
    together not with straight cuts, but with the unusual device of
    extremely quick dissolves - each about 4 frames long. This adds
    a little "something" to their exchange. Its as if the editor is
    merely trying to subconsciously impress us with its importance.

5.) Evidently there is some sort of gas atmosphere in the stomach of
    the giant asteroid-slug: When the characters step out of the
    Falcon, we see mists and things rising up off the floor. This
    merely indicates the presence of gases for sure - it doesn't
    explain <how>, tho.

6.) And my last minute nomination for the "Other", Wedge Antilles.
    He is the only other continuing character from the last film.
    Remember him as one of the pilots in the run down the Death Star?
    He shows up again as a pilot here, this time succesfully roping
    one of the Imperial Walkers. And he survives this battle too.
    Isn't he related to Captain Antilles from the last film
    (presumably the pilot of Princess' Leia's doomed ship)? The Force
    must be with him; Why not?

Why?

------------------------------

Date:  5 June 1980 16:59 edt
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  I Didn't Like it

Well, I finally saw it.  What a disappointment.  I have technological
and thematic complaints..

But first, one non-critical observation about the world of TESB.  The
Rebellion has to maintain a fairly advanced technogy on the run from
planet to planet.  Droids are essential to this.  As long as you have
enought droids, they can build more of themselves when you land, thus
maintaining all those hairy devices.  And now to the flamage:

How is it that the Rebellion base has enough Shield power that the
Imperial battlefleet (one flagship and at least three star destroyers)
don't even bother to attack from space, yet not enough to defend its
power generator from one measely walker?  How much firepower can that
thing carry, and be mobile?

Why were the Walkers immune from ground attack?  The Base should have
had a LOT more firepower on the ground than a Walker, since it 1) had
more power to play with, 2) didn't have to be portable, 3) had an ion
cannon that caused serious problems for an Empire Star Destroyer.

Next, how does Luke fly from Hoth to Dagoba to the Cloud City in an
X-Wing fighter (which presumably doesnty have hyperdrive, since the
one in the MF is huge).  How does the MF fly from Hoth to Cloud City,
when crippled?

Last, why did Jedi carry light sabers? Surely not as an honorable
combat form, since, until Darth, there were no traitorous Jedi (or
perhaps there were?).  Even if a blaster is ineffective against a
Jedi, a blaster should still work well against a non-Jedi.

My MAJOR complaint is that the whole thing looked so ad-hoc.  Even
knowing about the major plot twists, they seemed artificial. I can
imagine the writer/director/author thinking "Hmm, what strange
change shall I throw in now...".  The acting (Han and Leaia esp)
was dreadful.

Oh well, I still enjoyed the space opera.  Alas, it isn't the
masterful psychological \dark/ epic I had been lead to believe.

Guess I wait for the Gerrold movie.

------------------------------

Date:  6 Jun 1980 at 0250-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ MISCELLANY ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

What has been the range of prices to see TESB which SF-Lers have paid?
<Standard theatre prices, that is, not press previews or the freebie
deal like at Cal Tech.> We at UTEXAS think we may have the lowest with
a $2 matinee (even on opening day).

In keeping with all the wild and wooly hypotheses we've had about who
is really who, or whose father, how about the mysterious Boba Fett as
Luke's father?!

Not the "battle of the Whills", but the "Book of the Whills".  It's
one of those non-existent-book-for-quoting-from, sort of like "Kilgore
Trout's" VENUS ON THE HALF SHELL or Tolkien's RED BOOK OF WESTMARCH.
A quotation by Leia from it appears in the novelization of SW-4.

Can only Jedi manipulate the Force?  We are given no reason for
supposing so.  And the scene in SW-4 when Han scoffs at what Ben is
trying to teach Luke seems to indicate that it is not.  Indeed, as
somebody mentioned in an earlier issue, Han may be (unknowingly)
using it in the asteroid dodging.  But, not necessarily.

Who's a Jedi?  Obi-Wan is/was.  Luke's father was.  Vader is
spoken of only as an apprentice, a pupil of Obi-Wan.  Luke is Yoda's
student.  We have only suppositions about the emperor, since we don't
KNOW that the use of the Force is restricted to the Jedi,...  but
there IS something peculiar about his visual and auditory similarity
to Obi-Wan.  And Yoda is problematical.  A "Jedi master" might be a
teacher OF Jedi, not necessarily himself one of the knights.

The attack of the Wampa ice creature made a good opener for the film,
but I have such an evil, suspicious mind that as soon as I saw it I
thought, "Aha!  So THAT'S how they've accounted for Hamill's new
nose!"

What was the joke/point to the incident told by DP@MIT-ML about some
Neo addressing Craig Miller as "Mr. Miller"?

Rotoscoping-- wouldn't that have been used for the scene where Yoda
is seen walking?

Was Leia tortured (despite Vader's SW-4 lack of success with the
robot mind probe)?  Yes, for Luke's vision was of Han and Leia being
in pain.  But like the New England folksong about the "cruel youth
who lived beside the sea", they evidently didn't "want to spoil her
fin-er-y", for when she is thrust into the cell with Han and Chewie,
she is wearing her old white jumpsuit rather than the elegant attire
of when they were captured.  As for Chewie, I got the impression that
he is undergoing torture-by-sound when the scene opens with him in the
cage.

We don't seem to have any reliable clue as to how much time has passed
since the destruction of the Death Star.  It could be anything from a
month to the 3 years stated in the novelization.  Seemingly the Rebel
group did not move directly from the Massassi stronghold on Yavin's
moon to Hoth-- at least not the whole group, for Gen. Dodonna is
Missing and Gen. Rieekan is now in charge.  But, did you notice that
Wedge ("Red 2") who, like Luke, survived the attack on the Death Star,
is on Hoth.  The first time I saw TESB I thought he survived this
Imperial attack, too, but saw nothing to confirm it the 2nd time.


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SOME CONTRARY PERCEPTIONS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Spratt at MIT-multics' perception of Luke's age was exactly the
opposite from mine.  I commented to a fellow viewer on opening day how
little his face had aged in contrast with Leia's and Han's.  He DID
look more muscular than I would have thought from SW-4, but that might
just have been the greater exposure due to the singlet in place of the
old sleeve-in-the-glop tunic.

And as for the sameness of the music bewailed by Doug Philips at
CMU-10A, a comparison of the two albums shows it to be as different
as the two films.  Only 2 of the melodic themes were retained (the
Leia melody is almost non-existent), and two strong new ones were
added. But it is in the style that the difference is most notable,
even when the same themes are employed.  SW-4's was lush 19th
century romanticism.  SW-5's is distinctly (early?) 20th century
modern. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ATTN.: NOREASCON PEOPLE ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Questions to ask whoever gives the TESB presentation at forthcoming
cons (y'all out there, please add others):

__What was the object that fell past Luke as he was falling down
  the Cloud City chute?

__Early publicity after SW-4 claimed that the romantic triangle
  would be resolved in this sequel.  Is what we saw supposed to
  have fulfilled that promise?

__Will the character of Luke Skywalker appear in the 3rd trilogy?

__<They won't answer this, of course, but...> Was Owen Lars Luke's
  paternal or maternal uncle, or was it only a courtesy title?

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 06/05/80 13:23:36 Re: TESB: Matte lines?

I DID see at least one matte line that I remember. In the shot on
Hoth, where Han is over by the uncouncious Luke, and his Tauntaun is
expiring, there is a grossly noticeable matte line down the center of
the screen, with all the background on the right, (the tauntaun's
side) significantly darker than the left. Of course, I've seen it
three times already, so one has time to pick up on these things more.

------------------------------

DAUL@MIT-MC 06/06/80 02:38:39 Re: SW4 Script

Does anyone know how to get a copy of the script to the movie?
Or, even SW5?  THX -- Bill

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date:  7 JUN 1980 0626-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #145
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 7 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 145

Today's Topics:  TESB Schecdule, Query - De Palma's Demolished Man,
              SF Books - Computers in SF & Dying Inside & Dragon's Egg
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 6 June 1980 14:38-EDT
From: William B. Daul <DAUL at MIT-MC>
Subject: TESB schedule of films

From CINEFANTASTIQUE Vol. 10 No. 1 Summer 1980
According to Frederick S. Clarke:

   "...  The next sequel, "Episode 6" begins filming this December,
telling of Han's rescue from Jabba on Tatooine and following Luke,
now equipped with a mechanical hand, as he further masters the Force.
Lucasfilm intends to churn out a STAR WARS episode every 18 months:
the fourth film will be a prequel, "Episode 1," telling the saga of
a young Ben Kenobi in the Clone Wars, the dissolution of the Jedi
Knights and the rise of Darth Vader and the Empire.  It's reported
that episodes will then alternate with sequels and prequels to STAR
WARS until the series is conluded with "Episode 9" in 1991."

(Fredick Clarke is the publisher and editor of CINEFANTASTIQUE.)

------------------------------

DLW@MIT-AI 05/29/80 05:13:54 Re: dePalma

Since dePalma is doing "The Demolished Man", I'm interested to know
what kind of person we have here.  What else has he done besides
"Carrie"?

------------------------------

Date:  6 Jun 1980 2211-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: more computer stories

One of my favorite novellas, and one of the few times that computers
have been portrayed as neither monsters or gods, is "Fireship" by Joan
D. Vinge. The protagonist is a fusion of a man (well, not much of a
man) and a hyper-machine in a briefcase that was intended to be a
system breaker for espionage purposes.  Another good recent example
is the Shai in "Pursuit of the Screamer" by Ansen Dibbell. Has someone
mentioned "Destination: Void" and its sequel by Frank Herbert?  How
about "A for Andronmeda" (interstellar invasion by remote control)
by Fred Hoyle?

------------------------------

LEOR@MIT-MC 06/06/80 23:21:06 Re: telepathy, Egg source

I'm reading Silverberg's "Dying Inside", and find it to be the best
in-depth characterization of a telepath I've ever encountered. Can
someone suggest other such works? I'm not after just telepathic plots
(like a lot of Philip K. Dick's stuff), but rather some spotlighting
of the talent and its effects on the unwittingly gifted recipients.

The June Scientific American (p. 169) has a Dragon's Egg order form;
the price is $10.95 + tax (in NY I guess) from: Ballantine Books,
Dept. AI, 201 E. 50 Street New York, NY 10022.

	-leor

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/07/80 04:40:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following message is the last message in today's digest. It
considers some questions about Swift-Killer from the novel Dragon's
Egg. People who have not read Dragon's Egg may not wish to read any
further.


------------------------------

Date:  6 JUN 1980 0957-EDT
From: OAF at MIT-MC (Oded Feingold)

           Regarding Bob Forward's defense of Swift-Killer
      (a character in Dragon's Egg) in SF-Lovers Digest V1 #141:

What bothered me about Swift-Killer was not her sexuality but
her vegetative phase.  I found it hard to accept facilitation of
plant-type genes under conditions of extreme stress, absence of
predators, scavengers, and saprophytes, complete reversal of the
sleep transformation without recapitulating species development,
nonexistence of lysogeny (not uncommon on earth, given suitably
unpleasant conditions - or is that the Cheela version of lysogeny),
and ESPECIALLY memory retention after the ordeal.  Even granting
the first few, I find that last one a real sticker.

Of course, I also wondered a little at the ill-disciplined trooper
(whom Swift-Killer inspected) who happened to be grinding parabolic
reflectors while on guard.  Was that masturbatory, nervous, artistic,
or a physical exercise like hanging around and squeezing a hand
exerciser?  If any of the above, then it quite likely happened before,
no?  And the existence of such devices, even if their usefulness was
unappreciated, should have been known?

While I'm making random comments on the book, I'll mention the one
that struck me most oddly - the claim that there is a finite amount
to be learned about the physics of the universe, hence eventually a
species might assimilate it all.  It'll take a long time before I'm
comfortable with that philosophy.

   In fact, I might worry a little about whether such a claim is
   provable, using this convenient terminal as a scratchpad:

   If I choose a formal system can I say I know everything about it?
   If so then I can prove ANYTHING that is in fact true within that
   system.  Then there must be no axioms in that system, separate from
   its formal definition, since one might always wonder why an axiom
   was true, find the underlying cause and hence contradict the idea
   that the first (assertion/fact?) was indeed axiomatic.  In this
   case, the bland assertion that I have never seen the axiom fail
   (for example, conservation of energy) is not good enough - it is
   merely an a priori claim that I have much confidence that it will
   stay uncontradicted.

   There is another, information-theoretic contradiction to that claim
   - wouldn't it take as much matter as the universe contained to hold
   all the information about it?  Luckily I have sufficiently little
   training in any type of information theory that I'll merely offer
   it as a possiblity, and not only refuse to defend it, but be
   perfectly prepared to deny I ever said anything like that.

But in fairness to the Cheela at their however-much advanced stage of
scientific knowledge at the end of the book, no one ever said they
were always right.  So if they made such a claim in error, big deal.

				Oded

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date:  8 JUN 1980 0515-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #146  ( Star Wars Series Issue #16 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Saturday, 7 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 146

Today's Topics:  Administrivia - Problems, The Force & Jedi Training,
                Epic, World of Star Wars- Women & R2D2 Speech & Saber,
                   Making of TESB - Plots & Order & Price, Portrait
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Administrivia - An observation on the dynamics of large lists:

Recently, the discussion in the Star Wars (PM) editions has begun
to have problems with fragmentation.  In the first 7 or 8 issues
the discussion developed around four or five themes:
   World of Star Wars - Speculations about the background of the
      series, technology, society, goals, and history.
   Plot of SW n - Speculations about the family ties of the
      major characters, Yoda's Hope, what will occur in SW 6.
   The Force - Yoda, the Jedi philosophy, uses, abuses,
      and dangers of the Force.
   Making of Star Wars - Technical questions about making TESB
      and the series.
   Reviews and reactions - Personal reactions.
In contrast, the more recent issues have had an ever increasing
number of very short comments that have said little more than
"What about this! - LOOK! What about that!". These comments fail
to give any sense of discussion (either in reading a single digest
alone, or in reading successive digests) because they do not give
enough context or information to be of widespread interest. Hence,
they not only break the thread of discussion, but also fail to
attract enough interest to serve as the basis of more discussion.

In the 2.1 Mbytes of material that have gone out to SF-LOVERS and
HUMAN-NETS, virtually all of the discussions that attracted the most
interest are the discussions that began with a message describing a
question and what the sender thought about the question. This not
only appears to make the question more interesting, but also helps
to clarify what the topic is and focus the discussion before a dozen
messages are received that try to take the question in 144 separate
directions at once.

Therefore let me suggest two things: First, that messages that are
trying to raise a new topic include some discussion about the topic
too. And second, that we try to avoid some of the short, 2 or 3 line
comments which fragment and break up the discussion rather than move
it forward.

                                               MtFbwY,
                                                  Roger

[ Also, after NUMEROUS requests, I have set up a special archive for
  the Star Wars (PM) editions to facilitate access.  The name of the
  archive is AI:DUFFEY;_DATA_ SFTESB. It is stored in temporal order.
    --  RDD  ]

------------------------------

Date:  7 Jun 1980 1819-EDT
From: CCIS.ZEVE at RUTGERS
Subject: various and sundry

1) the force: it seems to me that from what we know about the force
   anyone could use or be sensitive to it, but the Jedi Knights are
   recruited from those who are particularly sensitive to the force.
   On top of this sensitivity the Jedi receive special training in
   how to use and understand the force.  We know that Luke is very
   sensitive to the force and has great natural aptitude for it (all
   force users seem to be aware of it in the movie).  Thus Leia need
   not have any special sensitivity to the force, her reception of
   the message from Luke could be due purely to the strength of
   Luke's sending.

2) Dead Jedi floating around.  I have gathered that the concept of
   the 'truly wise' creature stepping on to another plane rather than
   dying exists in some philosophies/religions.  We know that Obi-wan
   was a powerful (therefore wise?)  Jedi so keeping him around isn't
   exactly a crock.  Probably most of the other Jedi either weren't
   as powerful/wise as Obi-wan and thus died, or didn't have time to
   collect their wits before meeting their physical (as opposed to
   psychic) deaths.  If any others did follow the same path as Obi-wan
   they don't give a plugged credit about the "plane of existence"
   they left, unlike Obi-wan who seems to feel very strongly about
   it (perhaps he feels guilty about DV?).  Also since DV (and the
   Emperor?)  don't suspect that Obi-wan stepped up in this way I
   am led to believe that it isn't a very common occurence.

3) epics.  To Josh: a piece of work being an epic has little or
   nothing to do with whether or not it involves a great hero.  An
   epic is type of literary work (or so I remember being told back in
   HS or JrHS english).  Many epics happen to be involve (national)
   heros.  Such as the Song of Roland, El Cid, Beowulf, etc.  The
   Illiad is an epic narrative and it involves many 'heros'.

   Most of what we consider epics were created in a time when very
   little was written down into a concrete form, unlike SW which is
   very definitely recorded in a fixed visual form.  Instead the
   narratives were passed on orally and successive generations of
   minstrels/poets/what-have-yous added their own interpretations and
   emphasizes to the work.  Thus what we think of as Homer's Odyssey
   was really worked over by many others before Homer, this is true
   for and many other epics (LoTR was read aloud to Tolkien's fellow
   writers for criticism and also sent off to his son).  In some ways
   our current technology has restricted our ability to generate a
   kind of epic.  Our current abilites to record the spoken word (both
   as sound and as writing) and sights allows us to always go back the
   original and remember it exactly as it was/is.

Steve Zeve

------------------------------

Date:  7 Jun 1980 at 1432-PDT
From: greep at SU-ISL
Subject: Speech synthesizers

I believe the Speak & Spell (which somebody mentioned as an example of
a compact synthesizer) in fact does not synthesize speech, but simply
plays back a digital "recording" of a fixed set of words.  What makes
it an advance is the use of compression to reduce the amount of
storage required to hold the data.  However, synthesizers aren't all
that big anyway (they just don't sound very good).

------------------------------

Date:  7 Jun 1980 at 2302-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SW-4: WOMEN IN & SCRIPT OF ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Yes, Virginia (or, in this case, Julie), there WERE women in the SW-4
cantina scene-- Right after the bartender says the 'droids will "have
to wait outside.  We don't want them here", there is a quick shot of 2
gorgeous girls at the bar, with hair-do's sort of like Bo Derek's in
10.  Their appearance reminded me strongly of the Minoan
snake-priestesses.

The easiest-to-come-by (all it takes is too much money) script for
SW-4 is the Ballantine publication THE ART OF STAR WARS.  Having
compared it with my transcription of SW-4, I can assure you that it's
reasonably accurate... only minute differences in most cases, and one
short scene missing.

^^^^^^^^^^^ SOLO'S SMART-ASS REMARK COMES HOME TO ROOST ^^^^^^^^^^^

Remember in SW-4 when Han wised off with, "Hokey religions and
ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid"?

Ha!!!! Vader didn't find it so!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SW-4 & SW-5 MIRROR-IMAGE PLOT-PATTERNS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

SW-4 started with a main character captured and carried away by
baddies, and ended with a BI-I-IG battle scene.

SW-5 starts with a BI-I-IG battle scene and ends with a main
character captured and carried away by baddies.

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 06/07/80 04:49:34 Re: TESB: order of films.

Have there ever been any reasons given/thought up for the order in
which the movies are being done? It is certainly bizarre, though there
is something that seems right about alternating prequels, and sequels,
from the standpoint of building up a large coherent whole. Any ideas?

------------------------------

JAC@MIT-MC 06/07/80 17:00:03 Re: TESB Price Query

In reply to the price query of TESB from HJJH at UTEXAS:

The prices out here in Los Angeles to see the movie is a whooping
$5.50 (More than I've ever paid for a movie before).  That is for
the Hollywood price ... it is possible that the Westwood price may
possibly even be higher.

Hmm, I wonder how HANS avoids inflation when the MF breaks down!

	Jeff

------------------------------

Date:  4 Jun 1980 at 0430-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

                           Awwwwwww, heck!
        JosH at Rutgers beat me at having the 1st SF-L graphic!

Never___the___less___ <wheeeeeeezzzzzzzzzz>


                       --==---
                      / //    \
                     / //      \
                    /-=^^=-==   \
                   | < )( >  \   |
                   | -= =--'  |  \
                  |  -/||\=/  |   \
                  | ,/|||'//   |  |
                  \ ''-=-''==   -\|
                   ==-,    /-,  ,-'
                    -/    '-=   =-
                 -==   =         ==--
                /     / | |\         \
               /     || | ||           \
              /     | , | ,|             \
              |    |  |   ||        \     |
             /     '  |    |        \     |
             |      = -==-'        \       |
             /      --------        \      |
            |       |      ||       \       |
            |      ||,,, ,,||        \      |
            |      ||''' ''||                |


------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date:  8 JUN 1980 0602-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #147
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 8 June 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 147

 Today's Topics: SF Books - Riverworld & Burroughs & Computers in SF
----------------------------------------------------------------------

MOON@MIT-MC 06/07/80 18:12:59 Re: Riverworld

In addition to the four novels, there was also a short story entitled
"Riverworld", which I believe was the first portion of the series
published.  Farmer has recently expanded "Riverworld" to an 80-page
novella, which is available in the paperback collection, Riverworld
and Other Stories.  I haven't read the revised version yet so I won't
comment on it.  The other stories are mostly Playboy pieces from the
last 3 or 4 years, and one previously unpublished story which is
mediocre.  The original "Riverworld" short story was certainly worth
reading.

------------------------------

Date:  7 JUN 1980 1256-PDT
From: RODOF at USC-ECL
Subject: query

I'm trying to remeber the old E.R. Burroughs stories involving a
civilzation located at the ceter of the earth.  More specifically,
what was the name of the place?  I can think of Barsoom and
Pellucidar, but I believe one was on Mars. Answer direct to
RODOF@USC-ECL please.

Thanx,
Rob

[ Barsoom is the Martians' word for Mars in Burroughs' John Carter
  of Mars series. It is derived from their word for the number 4.
  The series consists of 11 short novels entitled:
    A Princess of Mars; The Gods of Mars; The Warlord of Mars;
    Thuvia, Maid of Mars; The Chessmen of Mars; The Mastermind
    of Mars; A Fighting Man of Mars; Swords of Mars; Synthetic
    Men of Mars; Llana of Gathol; and John Carter of Mars.
  Pellucidar is the name of the beautiful yet deadly subterranean
  world described in the novel At the Earth's Core.  --  RDD ]

------------------------------

Date:  7 Jun 1980 (Saturday) 0803-EST
From: DYER at NBS-10
Subject: Digging up yet more sf books about computers....

Here are some contributions to the list.....  (some of them may be
repeats -- I'm a new subscriber to the mailing list.)

Has anyone mentioned Stanislaw Lem's "The Cyberiad", "The Invincible"
or "Mortal Engines" ?

John Varley has a short story (in his collection "The Persistence of
Vision") called "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank".  Like all of the other
stories in the book, its very good...

How 'bout Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series (there are about four or
five books here, I think.)

I'm sure that this can go on and on and....(until people start giving
books that even MENTION computers...). Oh well.

[ Some of these books/stories have been reviewed in the past, but
  those messages were not part of the Computers in SF query. For
  a mini-review of The Cyberiad, see [SFL V1 #72,73]. For a brief
  review and some comments about the stories in the collection The
  Persistence of Vision see [SFL V1 #61,87,103] and Bruce Israel's
  message of 16 October 1979.  --  RDD ]

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date:  9 JUN 1980 0413-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #148  ( Star Wars Series Issue #17 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest      Sunday, 8 June 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 148

Today's Topics: Queries - The Opening Text of TESB & Spelling of Names
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  8 Jun 1980 1253-EDT
From: Matthew Jody Lecin <DREIFUS.MJL at RUTGERS>
Subject: The Words

I am looking for someone with either perfect memory, or written source
of the text flashed at us in the opening of TESB.  Please reply to me,
not SF-LOVERS, and only reply if you are *sure*.

					May the Force Be With You,

						{Matt}

------------------------------

Date: 29 May 1980 18:24 PDT
From: Judy at PARC-MAXC
Subject: DW

It would be real nice if we could come to an agreement on the spelling
of DW's name.  I have seen "Darth", "Darthe", "Vader", and "Vadar".  I
personally prefer "Darth Vader", but does anyone KNOW how it is
supposed to be spelled?

Judy.

[ In the SW and TESB novelizations it is spelled Darth Vader. -- RDD ]

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date:  9 JUN 1980 0428-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #149
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 9 June 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 149

      Today's Topics:  TV SF - Plot/Title, SF Books - QUESTAR,
                      Computers in SF, See You at NOREASCON II?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 08 Jun 1980 2046-PDT
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>

Does the following T.V. episode ring a bell for anyone?

Two aliens (I believe Martian) land on earth and observe a shooting
in someone's apartment.  I think some type of love triangle is
involved, with a woman finally shooting a man.  The aliens have a
device that can replay time backwards and forwards at various
speeds.  The main portion of the show replays the shooting under
these different conditions.  I think in the end they deflect the
bullet before leaving.

I would somehow like to track down the script for this show, or if
it was adapted from a short story, I'd like that information too.
I have the feeling that it appeared on the "Outer-Limits".

Rich

[ The SFL Digest of 23 Jan included an OUTER LIMITS EPISODE GUIDE
  compiled by Lauren@UCLA-Security. The following entry from the
  GUIDE sounds like the show you are describing:

  Controlled Experiment (1/13/64)
  Starring Carroll O'Conner [All in the Family] and Barry Morse
  [Space: 1999]. Yet another of my favorites, though it was almost
  all done in the editing room. A pair of Martians (they look like
  humans) are investigating the quaint earth custom of murder. They
  take a typical murder scene, and twist it forward, backward, and
  inside out by means of a portable local time machine. This is
  actually a rare piece, an Outer Limits comedy. And it IS funny.
  ****

  --  RDD  ]

------------------------------

DMM@MIT-ML 06/06/80 22:54:15
(from Julie Barrett via dmm)

     One question: Has anyone else out there seen a magazine called
QUESTAR?  I found the recent issue here on the newsstand (vol 2, ish8)
and was pretty much disappointed at what I saw.  The fiction piece was
a story about a couple of explorers who watch a refrigerator land and
an egg salad creature pop out.  I think that it was trying to be just
a humorous piece, but everything in it fails. The only salvagable
things in the magazine were interviews with Mark Hamill (made about
six months ago) and Chuch Jones (the Warner producer who is currently
making "Duck Dodgers in the Return of the 24 1/2 Century).  Has anyone
else seen this magazine?  I hope that the other issues weren't like
the drek that I saw in this one.

------------------------------

Date:  8 JUN 1980 1807-PDT
From: LSTEWART at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Computers in SF

Michaelmas, by Algis Budreys  -ly

------------------------------

Date: 16 May 1980 0652-EDT (Friday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A> 

                      The Computer At StoneHenge

               Strange things are done to be number one
               In selling the computer.
               IBM has their stratagem
               Which steadily grows acuter,
               And Honeywell competes like Hell,
               But the story's missing link
               Is the system old at Stonehenge sold
               By the firm of Druids, Inc.

               The Druids were Entrepreneurs,
               and they built a granite box
               That tracked the moons, warned of monsoons,
               And forecast equinox.
               Their price was right, their future bright,
               The prototype was sold.
               From Stonehenge site their bits and byte
               Would ship for Celtic gold.

               The movers came to crate the frame;
               It weighed a million ton!
               The traffic folk thought it a joke
               (The wagon wheels just spun);
               "They'll nay sell that," the foreman spat,
               "Just leave the wild weeds grow;
               "It's Druid-kind, over-designed,
               "And belly up they'll go."

               The man spoke true, and thus to you
               A warning from the ages:
               Your stock will slip if you can't ship
               What's in your brochure's pages.
               See if it sells without the bells
               And strings that ring and quiver;
               Druid repute went down the chute
               Because they couldn't deliver.

               			-Edward C. McManus
               			 Marlbourgh, Massachusetts
               			 (May Datamation)

------------------------------

Date: 28 MAY 1980 1150-EDT
From: BARRYG at MIT-MC, DUFFEY at MIT-AI, HITCHCOCK at CCA
Subject: SFL party

ANNOUNCING:  A party for SF-Lovers Digest at Noreascon II

We are looking for people who would be interested in having a private
party at Noreascon II for readers of SF-Lovers Digest.  Due to the
nature of the Digest, this party cannot be generally publicized, nor
can it be undiscriminately opened to convention members; however,
closed unadvertised parties are not uncommon at Worldcons.

We need the following:

--One or more people, prefereably with room reservations in the
  Sheraton, willing to have a party in their rooms one night.  If we
  get more than one volunteer, they can be blocked together and the
  rooms joined, possibly with one room non-smoking.
--One or more local volunteers to procure supplies (soda, munchies,
  beer if people feel like it) and to accept donations. (The 3 of us
  have already pledged $10. Note that we may NOT solicit funds over
  the ARPAnet. Therefore all of the donation arrangements will be
  done via US Snail to interested people.)
--Suggestions from all who are likely to come as to what the above
  volunteers should get for the party.

The names of room volunteers will be announced in SFLD but not posted
at the convention in order to keep a low profile; the room location,
given the announced names, can be had from the hotel.  We are starting
this now in order not to have to hurry at the last minute.  Please
send in your offers and suggestions to: SF-LOVERS at MIT-AI. (Of
course these replies will not be distributed to everyone. This is
simply a convenient way for us to collect them in one place.) Please
include your NAME, your ARPAnet address, and your US Snail address.

We await your responses.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 10 JUN 1980 0410-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #150  ( Star Wars Series Issue #18 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest    Monday, 9 January 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 150

Today's Topics:   Genealogy of Luke, World of Star Wars - Language,
                Reply to "What's Wrong with the Empire Strikes Back",
                   Vader, Making of TESB - THX1138 & Names & Price
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:  9 Jun 1980 18:40:46 EDT
From: David Mankins <dm at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: luke's clone

Some facts:
   Luke's Father, Ben Kenobi, and Darth Vader all fought in the
   Clone Wars.

   The Emperor bore an uncanny resemblance to Alec Guinness, and if
   you paid attention to the credits, they didn't say who played the
   Emperor, just who played the Emperor's voice...

[ Craig Miller of Lucasfilms has stated that the Emperor's role was
  not played by Alec Guinness. See Chapman's msg SFL V1 #142. -- RDD ]

So, my vote for Luke's paternity is this: Darth Vader lied and Darth
Vader didn't lie.  Luke & Darth are clones (as are the Emperor and Ben
Kenobi).  I think it is significant that we have never heard anything
about Luke's mother (though, given the absence of women in SW, that's
not all that surprising).

And having Ben Kenobi hanging around Tatooine is more than a mere
coincidence, because we know that Yoda and Ben have been keeping an
eye on the young Skywalker--Yoda, when he is trying to reject Luke as
a student, says: "All my life I have watched him, always away he has
looked, to the horizon, to the sky.  Never his mind on where he was,
what he was doing." [This is my favorite line in the movie, because of
the way Yoda says it].

This thesis puts Luke's encounter in the cave with the phantom Darth
Vader into a very interesting light.

I have some questions: has anyone else heard the rumor that Lucas
originally wanted the Luke Skywalker character to be a girl?  (some
of the early costume designs by McQuarrie sort of imply this).

Also, did anyone else notice the resemblance between Bespin, the
City in the Clouds, and Oz?  or maybe The City of the Future, as
illustrated on the cover of any science fiction pulp of the 30's?
[Bravo!]

------------------------------

Date:  9 Jun 1980 at 0444-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ WRITING IN SW ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

While I have not been able to see the translation of R2's conversation
with Luke in the X-wing well enough to determine what kinds of symbols
are used, it is not true that there is no writing shown in SW as a
whole.  I looked for such in SW-4 a couple years ago, and recall that
a screen in the Death Star room from where Alderaan was destroyed
showed, as I recall, some alien characters, and some Terran numbers.
That's a bit hazy.  However, the gauges where Obi-Wan was turning off
the tractor beam had Terran words.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ HAN'S FAREWELL ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I admittedly DISLIKE the idea of Leia marrying Han (the series'
orientation to a juvenile audience would make that the successful
outcome of a romantic involvement).  Nevertheless, it seems to me
that his last line in the film is a tiny stroke of genius in
comparison with the trite one in the book.

Moreover, it is the RIGHT reply to Leia's declaration.  Her prime
concern at that moment is that, should he die, that he go down to
death KNOWING.  The immediate moment is all that counts...  His stark
reply, far more than some flip quip about a very dubious future, is
RIGHT for-that-situation.  Han, with a sensitivity which surprised me,
gave her the re-assurance she wanted-- not that he loved her, which
would be no consolation to her if he's dead..., but rather, the only
thing which would be any comfort at all to her if he did not survive,
that he DID KNOW.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ VADER'S AMBITIOUSNESS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

DOES Vader "want his boss' job"?  Since SW deals in cliche's, this
contemporary one of the man with great power craving to be top dog is
not out of the question.  My own feeling, however, is that Vader, like
medieval warrior heroes (Roland, El Cid?), gives willing obeisance to
one he believes truly his master.  Let him suspect unworthiness of his
allegiance or weakness, however, and that's another matter.  When he
was seduced by the dark side of the Force, aspects of Obi-Wan's
goodness would have been perceived as weakness, hence his revolt.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ DID VADER LIE IN SW-4? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

In re DMM@MIT-ML's claim [SFL #132] that "Vader lied to Leia in SW-4
about preserving Alderaan"... He DIDN'T!  He never spoke a word during
the whole scene.  It was Tarkin, and again, more of an implied promise
than a specific lie--

|   TARKIN:  ...  Since you are reluctant to
|           provide us with the location of the rebel base, I have
|           chosen to test this station's destructive power on your
|           home planet of Alderaan.
|   LEIA:   No!  Alderaan is peaceful!  We have no weapons!  You can't
|           possibly--
|   TARKIN: You prefer another target?  A military target?  Then
|           name the system!  . . . . . I grow tired of asking this,
|           so it will be the last time.  W-h-e-r-e is the rebel base?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ VADER'S SCORE AS EXECUTIONER ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

How many Imperial officers did Vader execute in TESB?

...<while you're deciding on your answer>...

Admittedly I'm partial to DV, but he's \not/ as bad as a lot of
people think.  He's not the kind who went around pulling wings off
flies as a kid.  He is not "mean" nor "malicious".  He does NOT
enjoy killing or hurting (it's questionable if he e-n-j-o-y-s
ANYthing), he is just utterly uncaring about such matters.  He is
not "nasty mean", but coldly evil.  This massive sang-froid -- like
that of Doc Smith's Blackie Duquesne, tho DV lacks Duquesne's old
fashioned gallantry -- is a large part of his appeal.  If Vader has
a proper literary predecessor, it would be ancient Persian deity
Ahriman, the god of Darkness and Evil who in a strict 2-value system
opposed Ahura-Mazdah, the god of Light and Good.

So, how many Imperial officers "got it in the neck"?  Well, there
are 3 possibilities:

   -Admiral Ozzel, near the beginning, who came out of light speed
    too close to the Hoth system;
   -Capt. Needer, in the middle, who "lost" the Millennium Falcon
    when it hid on the surface of the Empire ship; and
   -Capt. (later Admiral) Piett, from whom the Falcon escapes into
    hyperspace at the end.

As I saw it tonight, only ONE was actually killed.

An intriguing point here is the correlation between our response
to the three characters and their fates.  Ozzel repulses us as an
opinionated know-it-all, and, as Vader says, stupid.  We are shocked
but not unhappy when he gets his.  Some audiences even laugh.  But
this sets us up.  When Needer goes in fear and trepidation but
little hope, to "apologise", we feel a bit sorry for him because he
must suffer for Han's cleverness.  He strangles and falls, but then
what happens?  Vader says, sardonically, "Apology accepted, Capt.
Needer," and motions the nearby officers toward Needer, AND THEY
BEAR HIM AWAY ERECT WITH HIS ARMS OVER THEIR SHOULDERS LIKE AN
INJURED MAN rather than by the feet and shoulders like a dead one!

Then at the end when just as the order for the boarding party is
given, the Millennium Falcon zipps into hyperspace, and we all know
Piett's gonna get his.  The camera pans to his face, and we can see
he knows it too.  It shifts to Vader... we all hold our breath...
and he slowly turns, with his arms behind his back, and walks away.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ MISCELLANY ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Has anyone noticed the similarity of the background design in
the DRAGON'S EGG ads to the pattern of SW's round windows in the
Millennium Falcon, and in Cloud City (the one Luke gets blown thru)?

Another question for someone at a con to ask The Man From Lucasfilm:
In SW-4, what were the girls with the bowl doing in the passageway
near docking bay 94 before the stormtroopers come dashing by?
Shelling peas?  Giving manicures?  or what?

The "little boar men" ("middle-aged Munchkins"?) in Cloud City are
referred to as Ugnaughts in the novelization.  Oddly enough, they
do not appear in the comic.

Will Jabba in SW-6 look different from SW-4?  What!  You didn't see
Jabba in SW-4?  He WAS there.  A scene of him confronting Han in
docking bay 94 which appears in the comic book was evidently cut
from the final version of the film, but in the street scene near
the docking bay when the spy with the proboscus is shadowing Luke
& Obi-Wan, and uses a comm-link to report, a humanoid alien looking
exactly the way Jabba was drawn in the comic walks by.  See the
transcription of the scene in the next section below.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THX-1138-LIKE NUMBERS IN SW-4 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

A long time ago I promised to check out just where these occurred.
The main one is when Luke and Han "deliver" Chewie to the area where
Leia is imprisoned--

  OFFICER: Where are you taking this . . . . . "thing"?
  LUKE:    Prisoner transfer from cell block one-one-three-eight.

A partial reference occurs after the cantina scene--

          [AT USED-VEHICLE DEALER'S]
 
  LUKE:   All right, give it to me, I'll take it. . . <stilt-legs
          in silhouette cross screen in foreground> . .  Look at
          this!  Ever since the XP-38 came out, they just aren't
          in demand.
 
  BEN:    It'll be enough.  .  .  .  .  If the ship's as fast as
          he's boasting, we ought to do well.
 
  . . . . . . . . . .

     <<<Jabba goes by! (Cf. comic book illustration)>>>
 
      <<<spy reports on comm link>>>

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ LUCAS' CHANGING OF CHARACTERS' NAMES ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Having hit upon an attractive surname, Lucas shuffles about a bit
before deciding who to use it for.  As mentioned in a previous
message, in the SW-4 novelization it's Capt. "Colton" and Wedge
"Antilles" and Biggs "Darklighter".  But in the film it's Capt.
"Antilles", while neither Wedge nor Biggs have surnames mentioned,
and according to the article from the NY TIMES cited in SF-L issue
130, "'Skywalker' was originally 'Darklighter'...".

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1980 07:34 PDT
From: Chapman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Non-existent-books-for-quoting from
         [ See HJJH's Miscellany in SFL V1 #144 - RDD ]

VENUS ON THE HALF SHELL, by Kilgore Trout, is a REAL book (I have a
copy in my library). It is one of Philip Jose Farmer's spoofs (i.e.
he is the real author).

Cheryl

------------------------------

BYTE@MIT-AI 06/10/80 01:04:01 Re: TESB BOX OFFICE FIGURES at MIT-AI

  Does anyone know just how well TESB is doing at the box office?

  A friend of mine was commenting today that with a $5 admission
  price, it was no wonder that films like Star Wars and Jaws do
  so well at the box office when compared with yesterdays classics
  like GONE WITH THE WIND (back in the good old days when theater
  admission was only 75 cents).

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date: 10 JUN 1980 0456-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #151
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Tuesday, 10 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 151

 Today's Topics: SF Movies - Background Interest & DePalma & Comment,
                  SF Books - Magic Labyrinth & Island of Dr. Death,
                 Replies - Questar & Time Machines & Computers in SF,
                 Queries - SW Bib & Plot/Title, See You at WesterCON?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1980 1:48 pm PDT (Monday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Phenomenon

Those of you following the PM Digest have seen the series of messages
on such topics as Rebel v. Empire technology, virtuoso feats of space
navigation, why R2 beeps when C-3PO can talk, why light sabres, etc.
The answers to many of these questions have clearly to do with
artistry and the making of an enjoyable film.  Yet here we are (and
I'm as guilty as the next person), bending over backwards to justify
such features in terms of the techno-socio context of "a galaxy far
far away".

The question I ask is:  WHY??

Imagine yourself reading the latest issue of Analog (or other favorite
SF-zine) and encountering a story in which one robot beeps and another
talks English (assuming you had never heard of Star Wars).  What would
you do?  Would you jump to the author's defense?  Not me.  I'd flip to
the table of contents and find another story to read, hoping maybe
that THIS guy will know what he's talking about.  Correct me if I'm
wrong, but I suspect my reaction in this case is fairly typical.

So why do we tolerate in a movie what we wouldn't tolerate in written
fiction?  Is it simply because we expect less from a movie?  But note
that it's not just a matter of toleration; in fact we compete to come
up with better explanations of something the author(s) clearly didn't
give a second thought to.  Could it be that we, as SF sophisticates,
feel some need to justify our own enjoyment of something that we know
intellectually to be third-rate?  Does the thrill of actually SEEING
spaceships and laser bolts so outweigh the abstract sense-of-wonder
that really fine SF generates that our normal critical faculties are
suppressed?

Speculations, anyone?

			-- Greg

------------------------------

Date: 09 JUN 1980 2324-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: de Palma

  Brian de Palma is basically a director of shock films.  He's very
good at what he does; things like the dream/nightmare scene at the
end of CARRIE appear to have been his idea (although it's also, by
now, what any writer who works for him knows to put in).  He did THE
FURY (\not/ to be confused with the Henry Kuttner short "Fury"),
which (going from material in CINEFANTASTIQUE) appears to be about
kids with potentially useful psionic powers who turn them against
the adults (such as government agents) who try to abuse them but
ultimately become dangerously deranged --- thus giving much room for
cheap special effects and gore (a number of the messier deaths in
CARRIE were also his idea, rather than coming from the book.  In
Stephen King's world, all but the utterly evil and the unlucky
innocent should remain alive to see their mistakes.)
  If there's anyone else who knows more or who does not share my
(mostly rational) conviction that de Palma will make a mess of THE
DEMOLISHED MAN, I'd like to hear from them.
  Incidentally, George Flynn (Noreascon II secretary and language
hacker) tells me that O HOMO DEMOLIDO (or maybe it's HOMEM; I
haven't got the written reference) (i.e., TDM in Portuguese)
translates "Tenser, said the Tensor" as "Fool!", said the wolf,
"Intelligent and demanding people eat tuna."  If it scans....

------------------------------

Date:  9 Jun 1980 (Monday) 1618-EDT
From: OTTO at WHARTON, Kern at RUTGERS
Subject: Thought for the Day!

"Horror (fiction)'s basic theme is the confirmation of our feelings of
 normality. 'The outsider must be stamped out,' 'If you're different
 you must be bad.' Horror movies are as Republican as Gerald Ford, and
 the really interesting ones play with that theme.

"Compare that with science fiction. The people who like it, the real
 sci-fi types, and I'm not one of them, see THEMSELVES as alien to
 the world."

Stephen King, quoted in the The Sunday New York Times Magazine.
    (Mr. King is a best-selling author of horror fiction.)

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1980 1:25 pm PDT (Monday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

My reactions to this long-awaited concluding volume of the Riverworld
series are, I would have to say, mixed.

In some ways the story (including the three previous episodes) was
excellent.  A mystery of truly cosmic import is presented, and solved.
The solution is (in typically Farmer fashion) daringly imaginative and
quite believable.  I laughed out loud in pleasure when the ultimate
question (dealing with the mind/body duality, and the nature of the
"soul") was finally answered.  The mystery of the renegade Ethical "X"
was also (for the most part) satisfyingly answered.

BUT--

He cheated!  I couldn't believe it when I read it with my own eyes,
but as far as I can tell it's true.  The solution to the mystery
depends on a supposed "clue" which was never planted.  I dug out my
dog-eared copy of "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" and looked up the
scene in question, and NOWHERE does he let slip the revelation from
which so many of the deductions in "The Magic Labyrinth" spring.

But then, it's a long series and a lot of years have gone by... 
Nope. No excuse.  Farmer should have checked up on this, dammit!

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I've forgotten a crucial conversation.  If
so, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

Some other flaws: Not all the loose ends were tied.  Some were simply
severed and cauterized with a few swift strokes.  Major characters
died off with no more than a two-line post-mortem to explain their
roles.  Other characters cropped up at the last minute to serve as red
herrings, and were as quickly dispatched when their usefulness was
ended.  I had trouble believing the motivations of the major Ethical
faction.  And the major crisis of the Riverworld project wasn't even
discovered until the last chapters, when the stated goal of the series
had already been reached.

Still, I DID enjoy the book.  The action was tight and fast-paced,
barring a few biographical interludes of which Farmer seems so fond.
The characterizations were solid; I really believed these were the
authentic historical figures come to life.  AND I believed the changes
they went through in the course of their journeying.  The setting and
plot, if you've read any Riverworld at all, speak for themselves.  If
not, go immediately and buy the first volume, "To Your Scattered
Bodies Go".  You won't regret it.

			-- Greg

------------------------------

Date:  9 June 1980 17:30 edt
From:  Spratt.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Book review: The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories,
                                                  and Other Stories

     Gene Wolfe's "The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and
Other Stories" is an excellent collection of short stories.  For those
of you that have read his previous works, these short stories are more
in the vein of "The Devil in the Wood" (?) than "The Fifth Head of
Cerberus" (what happened to the fourth?).  Throughout the entire work
there is an emotionally oppresive, depressing atmosphere.  The one
exception is "The Eyeflash Miracles", which has an ending that one can
construe as being hopeful.  This is the closest he ever gets to a
happy ending, in my memory.
     The title story "The Island of Doctor Death" is not only
recursive, but recurses in a couple of ways.  The child hero reads
HGW's "The Island of Doctor Moreau" as his escape from a bizarre and
unpleasant "home" situation.  The characters assume reality(?) within
the context of the story.  The child doesn't want to finish HGW's book
since his friends will go away.  Dr. Moreau points out that he needn't
finish it and can read the story over as many times as he wants, thus
keeping all of the characters alive in his world as long as he wants.
The similarity between the child's circumstance and that of the reader
is immediately apparent; we can keep the child alive by rereading,
who's reading us?  Thus providing a kind of literary recursion.
     Aside from my overall approval and general warm feelings toward
the book, I became very frustrated and perplexed with most of the
details of most of the stories.  Three of the stories titles are
permutations of the same words; "The Island of Doctor Death","The
Death of Doctor Island", and "The Doctor of Death Island".  I have
(almost) no idea what, if anything, these stories are supposed to
have in common.  Beyond the words in their titles.  If anybody out
there has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.
     Many of the stories had incredibly cryptic endings.  In several
of them I was convinced that I understood the story, but when I got to
the ending, I had no idea what Wolfe was talking about.  "The Doctor
of Death Island" was one of these.

     If there is anybody out there who has read this collection of
stories (or either of the other two books I mentioned), I'd be
delighted to here what you think of it/them.  On the other hand, if
there is anybody out there that hasn't read any of them and is in
search of something to read, I heartily recommend all of Wolfe's
books and especially the collection of short stories.  I'm dying to
talk about this book.

	-lindsey spratt

------------------------------

Date:  9 June 1980 1851-EDT
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject: QUESTAR

I was handed a copy and told it was a local publication here in
Pittsburgh.  Somewhat better than the blurry quality I a sometimes
forced to read by acquaintances, but contained several bad stories,
a couple awful stories, and the usual terrible graphics (so dense
and blurred it was hard to tell what was going on.  The dialogue
in the baloons was also incomprehensible, but readable).  By "usual
terrible graphics" I mean that format wherein the density of lines
or Tactype halftone reaches the point where everything is uniformly
gray at normal reading distances, a form of graphics which seems to
be favored by all amateur and many professional sf magazines.
				joe

------------------------------

Date: 9 Jun 1980 19:16 PDT
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Time machines

In response to REP @ SU-AI's msg about the Outer Limits episode:

Has a "Twilight Zone" episode guide also appeared in SF-Lovers?
There was an interesting episode where some people at a race track
find a camera that shows a scene as it would appear five minutes
into the future.  They proceed to take pictures of the scoreboard
and clean up.  Then they go home and start playing around, but
the pictures become rather gruesome -- people being pushed out of
windows and whatnot.  They try desperately to avoid their fate,
but don't succeed.

--Bruce

[ SF-LOVERS only has episode guides for Outer Limits and Time
  Tunnel ... so far.  --  RDD ]

------------------------------

Date:  9 Jun 1980 at 0320-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Subject: for AM edition

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ COMPUTER NOVELS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The best source for such information is probably Warrick's The
Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction (MIT Press) cited by Roger
[ SFL V1 #137 ].  Nicholls SF ENCYCLOPEDIA entry for "computers" is
good for a very broad-ranging tho brief overview, with a number of
works cited for the various approaches mentioned.  It sums up SF's
handling of computers rather justly, I think, with--
  "Generally, however, sf does not have a very good record of
   prediction with computer stories.  SF backed the robot for
   a long time, even during the period when the computer was
   becoming increasingly important in the real world.  Nor has
   sf shown any great interest in how computers work or how
   they are programmed.  Their appearance in sf appears to be
   iconographic rather than realistic."

One of my own favorite computer stories is Mack Reynolds' COMPUTER
WAR, in a 1967 Ace double.  Hackers will surely hate it <chortle>.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SW BIBLIOGRAPHY REQUEST ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

AMSLER@UTEXAS and I collect SW bibliography, so we would appreciate 
it if over the coming months SF-Lers who see articles about TESB (or
SW in general) would put citations for them in the Digest.  (Among
the more intriguing we had for SW-4 was a cover for DIRT BIKE, and
a mildly scholarly analysis of folklore themes in SW from the 
HARVARD MAGAZINE.)  Currently, in addition to those mentioned in
SF-L, we have collected such items as an article about Prowse's
too-talkativeness and some yellow-journalism from THE GLOBE: "Why 
Women Are in Love with Darth" (which gives the wrong name for Dave's
wife and blabs about their marital problems <she has "got religion"
(Pentecostal, most recently, says My-Friend...) with a vengeance!>)

------------------------------

Date: 06/09/80 1721-EDT
From: THOKAR at LL
Subject: Story query

Ok gang, here's a really obscure one.  I read this story over 10+
years ago, but do not remember author or title.  It might of been in
a Best of F + SF collection or an anthology edited by Judith Merrill.
Three scenes stand out in my mind:

   1) Narrator becomes conscious, and realizes that he is running down
      a long tunnel away from something, but can't remember what he is
      running from.

   2) Narrator wakes in a completely mirrored room.  Has he watches,
      his one arm turns into a wiggling mass of worms/spaghetti.  He
      escapes the room to find that it was located on a high spire
      of rock, which he tries to climb down, with one good and one
      mangled arm.

   3) Final scene of the story.  A general and apperently the
      narrator's wife are talking.  The narrator has been undergoing
      a series of artificially induced nightmares.  They are trying to
      train him to face the horrors of hyper/outer space.  Our first
      intersteller ship had returned with an insane/mangled crew and
      we are going to try again with a hopefully prepared crew this
      time.

Good hunting.   Please reply to me and the Digest.

                                         Cheers,
                                            Greg

------------------------------

Date: 09 Jun 1980 1203-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM at SU-AI>
Subject: Westercon party    

Anyone interested in having room parties (or any type of parties) at
Westercon this July?  It could be a not so dry run for the Worldcon
party suggested yesterday.

If you are interested in lending a room, drinks, etc..., drop me a
line ( jpm@sail ).  I will mail out any information, suggestions,
etc... I collect to everyone who is interested.

Jim

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 11 JUN 1980 0437-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #152  ( Star Wars Series Issue #19 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Tuesday, 10 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 152

Today's Topics: Blooper, World of Star Wars, Luke- Fall & Force & Sex,
                  Yoda's Hope, Clones, Imaginary Books, SW Spinoff,
                 Making of TESB - Price & Windows & Boba Fett's Ship 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 06/11/80 01:10:54 Re: TESB Blooper!

    I have located a blooper that relates to TESB! Just noticed, after
all this time, an error in the widely-distributed still picture of the
Imperial Star Destroyers shooting at the Millenium Falcon.  (You can
find the still in "Time", on the soundtrack, in any number of sf-mags,
etc.) Notice on the top right side of the Falcon - - what is that
geodesic-radar-looking-dome-thing doing there? It never appears on
the Falcon in the film, only this one publicity shot.  Aha!

------------------------------

Date: 10 June 1980 07:09-EDT
From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK at MIT-MC>
Subject: Human-Cyborg Relations

All this about why R2D2 beeps instead of talks is simply answered by
C3P0's function: C3P0 is an emissary between to separate cultures.
How many tourists travel to other cultures and not learn the language?
Clearly, R2D2 is a tourist who got caught up in the rebelion, and
BEEP is his native language, while english or galactic is a foreign
language he didn't have time to get equipment to speak when he was
swept up by the rebellion.  He's learned to understand them, but his
hardware isn't up to speaking it, and the rebellion can't afford to
equip the droids with speech units; they have a hard enough time
getting warm uniforms for ice worlds, etc.

Where did they ever get the special equipment they needed for Hoth,
anyway?  The economics of this rebellion just don't make any sense
to me.  Or is there some USSR or USA around to send arms to the
insurgents?

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1980 0115-PDT
From: Donald R. Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: TESB, the second time around 

Just got back from the second viewing.  Not much to add to previous
comments, but I did notice a few things.  First, there are indeed
women scattered about in various background posts, but certainly none
in prominent positions aside from the Princess (unless you count the
ion gun control as prominent!).  Second, I was wrong when, in an
earlier message, I said the credits listed Frank Oz as "portraying
Yoda" instead of simply "as Yoda" -- actually, Oz is listed as
"performing Yoda".  Even better.  And I was even more impressed with
Yoda the second time around.  Third, light sabers definitely have
something going for them over blasters -- it was Luke's light saber
that cut into the second walker so he could deposit his bomb, whereas
not even ship- and ground-based blasters could dent the critters.
Meanwhile, on the negative side, my roommate pointed out that the
walkers were well-enough known as military vehicles that the rebels
had a word for them (namely "walkers"), and yet there were apparently
no standard moderately effective defenses to deploy against them.
Fourth and last, I am sure that there was nothing in the garbage chute
with Luke, so I'm tempted to agree with JDD [SFL V1 #140] that it was
Luke that we saw falling to oblivion below the city.  If so, it would
mean that Luke, even though not a full Jedi, was able to pull Obiwan's
trick of surviving the death of his body, except I'm not sure how to
reconcile this with the apparent solidity of his current body (not
only to Leia, but also to the medidroid).  Maybe someone just screwed
up.  That would be a pity . . .

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1980 2335-PDT
From: Rod Brooks <ROD at SU-AI>
Subject: Hanging Around.    

I don't recall seeing this mentioned before. I counted six times that
Luke used the force, five of them successfully.

1. After getting clobbered by the snow beast he used the force to
   reach his light sabre, while he was hanging UPSIDE DOWN.
2. Lifting rocks under the direction of Yoda, while standing on his
   head UPSIDE DOWN.
3. Tries to lift the ship out of the swamp, while standing right side
   up, but is UNSUCCESSFUL.
4. Lifting chests and R2D2 when he sees Han and Leia in trouble in the
   future while he is standing on his head UPSIDE DOWN.
5. When DV throws him in the freezing chamber he levitates right out -
   orientation unknown. Does he fall in head first?
6. He calls Leia while hanging under the cloud city, UPSIDE DOWN.

Is there any significance to this? Why was he standing on his head
while learning to use the force under Yoda anyway? More blood to his
head so he could think harder???

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 06/10/80 10:08:29
Re: TESB: A Girl Named Luke, Last Hope nominee

Concerning Luke as a boy: The way I understand it from Duffey,
reproductions of some of the preliminary concept sketches for Star
Wars showed that Luke and Leia were originally one and the same
character, but Lucas gave in to the critics who said this wouldn't
work. Indeed the captions on these sketches indicate that it went
through several iterations, (Leia a different person altogether,
Luke character still a woman,...) to arrive at the current state
of affairs.

What evidence is there concerning what exactly the issues were in
the clone wars, and just what they could do with cloning? At SW-6's
current point in history, they can't, or won't give Luke a cloned
hand. Is this due to a law, or have they lost the knowledge, or did
they ever have it? Maybe it just takes awhile, and they will sew it
on next time. One can imagine governments keeping live tissue samples
of all their best people, and having thousands of Einsteins cloned
whenever one came along, (though the Emperor probably would not want
more than one Vader at a time!). The point of this is that Yoda's hope
could be a bit of tissue sample somewhere. Who is it from?

------------------------------

JWP@MIT-AI 06/11/80 01:01:59 Re: Clones and the Emperor.

     With all this talk about clones recently (and my roommate reading
these things over my shoulder), he says that he heard from a "reliable
force" that the Emperor is really a clone of the Wookie, "Chewbacca".
After all, the Emperor \was/ about as ugly as a Wookie.

	Any responses?
			-JWP

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1980 at 0503-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Subject: Non-existent-books-for-quoting-from

Vonnegut fans please check me out on this-- wasn't VENUS ON THE HALF
SHELL first a fictitious novel attributed to "Kilgore Trout", and
only later real-ized by Farmer?

How about the NECRONOMICON (sp?) as another title handled similarly,
tho in this case I don't recall the names of the authors involved.

------------------------------

Date: 10 JUN 1980 1035-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Venus on the Half-Shell

  is in fact no more a "real book" than the Necronomicon. It was first
mentioned by Vonnegut more than a decade before Farmer, who likes to
have everything existing in the best of all possible universes, munged
together something under the title (the Necronomicon, described by
Lovecraft, recently appeared in a finebound edition in the
["original"] Arabic; I never found out whether the scrawls actually
made any sense).
  Farmer is also responsible for a genealogy in which most pulp heroes
(and several which hadn't been invented when he did the chart, such as
Cordwainer Bird) were relatives.

------------------------------

Date:  11 June 1980 00:41 edt
From:  SSteinberg.SoftArts at MIT-Multics (SAS at SAI-Prime)

I noticed that in the latest issue of Forbes an article on IBM's
latest attempts to recorner the market has been titled: The Empire
Strikes Back.

While reading the Gnostic Gospels I came across a number of great
pseudo-Force (or whatever the religion is called) quotes including a
few from the book of Luke.  Some of the heretical ones sounded quite
inspirational (paraphrased) - One must look inside oneself for
enlightenment, only that which can be brought out can save you, only
that which cannot be brought out will destroy you.  Then again this
stuff all came out during a period in which East/West trade was
starting up in earnest.

------------------------------

Date: 10 JUN 1980 1046-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: movie grosses

  I suspect that nobody has usable counts on total admissions to a
given high-grossing movie even if college reuses and such are left
out.  However, given the increasing fraction of crud and the
decreasing number of total movies being produced, I wouldn't be at all
surprised if new record holders actually were making more even after
price inflation has been discounted.  For one thing, the increase in
price has also, I think, increased the spread between the highest and
lowest admission prices that will be paid for a given movie at a
regular theater (the 70-mm cut of SW-4 played in Providence at $1.25
top for several weeks a year or so after the first release, and I
wouldn't be surprised if cheaper prices had been found elsewhere for
matinees of the 35-mm.
  I can give one firm figure: THE SOUND OF MUSIC was for a while in
the later 60's the all-time top-grossing film at approximately $67
million.  I can't swear that this was worldwide rather than US only (I
saw the story in PARADE soem twelve years ago) but I very much doubt
that \average/ admission prices \tripled/ in a decade (SW-4 was over
$200 million in this country), let alone sextupled if that was the
worldwide figure (SW-4 worldwide was over $400 million in admissions
\only/--infinite spinoffs have pushed that toward a billion.)

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1980 at 0536-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TESB PRICE RANGE ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

$2 for "twilight" shows (except Sun.) in Austin TX
$3.75  regular price in Austin
$4.50  (no reductions) in Dallas and St. Louis
$5.50  in L.A. (Hollywood)

Any others?  What's most common?  Of course, we have to keep in mind
that these are the select 125 first-run theatres -- presumably all
using the 70 mm film with full Dolby sound.  When it spreads to the
2nd string theatres (on the 19th, I think) I wonder if the range will
be the same?

------------------------------

Date: 10 JUN 1980 2035-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Window Patterns

     Not having seen Chapter 5 yet (Oxnard has yet to have a showing
of Chapter 4), I cannot comment on the similarities of the windows in
TESB and the background network in the ads for DRAGON'S EGG.  However,
the ads are taken from the cover of the book, which shows the northern
constellations of the sky superimposed on a polar grid network.  If
you look close, you can see the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) and the Little
Dipper (Ursa Minor), with the Dragon Constellation (Draco) winding
between them, a little overprominant because of the cover artist's
enthusiasm.  I complained about the rest of the stars, but the
publisher said that noone would notice them, they would be "star
noise".  The neutron star is right at the end of the Draco
constellation, as if the Dragon had left a newly laid egg.

     I will look for the polar plot windows in TESB when I finally
get time enough to go stand in line to see it.

            Bob Forward

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1980 0808-PDT (Tuesday)
From: Mike at UCLA-Security (Michael Urban)
Subject: Boba Fett's Ship

   I have heard that Boba Fett's rather odd-looking ship in TESB was
personally designed by Lucas shortly after he saw, and enjoyed, a
parody called "Hardware Wars".  Yes, Boba Fett's ship is really a
flatiron!
   Same rumor source also mentioned that the same people are working
on a TESB parody.  They have one out currently called "Pork Lips Now".
	Mike

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date: 11 JUN 1980 0619-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #153
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Wednesday, 11 June 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 153

Today's Topics: SF Movies - Background Interest, TZone Film Festival,
                        Replies - Computers in SF & Telepathy
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1980 11:26 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC

In reply to Kusnick's: "Imagine yourself .... encountering a story in
which one robot beeps and another talks English....  I'd flip to the
table of contents and find another story to read, hoping maybe that
THIS guy will know what he's talking about."

There are lots of legitimate reasons why the above situation could
occur; I like best the one already suggested, that the beeper just
wasn't programmed to speak English (or whatever), but the other robot
could understand whatever he spoke.  To reiterate what somebody else
said some Digests back, unless something is flagrantly unreal, I
normally assume they know something I don't.

Karen

------------------------------

Date: 06/10/80 1137-EDT
From: KG Heinemann (SORCEROR at LL)
Subject:  Question in Kusnick's "Phenomenon" message

     Re Kusnick's "Phenomenon" message: BRAVO!!!!!!  All these
attempts to find "realistic" explanations for the "stunning special
effects" are SILLY!  However, I am not so quick to excuse the LOGICAL
(not necessarily intellectual) sloppiness of most of the SF which is
done for the major visual media.  I believe that it is possible to
tell a story in a which "sense of wonder inducing" visual phenomenon
are logical consequences of real OR IMAGINED science/technology, but
most movie and television producers are too lazy to spend the time
required in the story to develop the science/technology on a
conceptual level.  I find that the sense of wonder caused by exotic
sensory experiences is greatly enhanced if it is accompanied by
conceptual understanding.  Therefore, I do find myself at something
of a loss to understand why all the SF which is being done in movies
and television receives so much attention among "serious" fans.

                                 Enjoy,
                                        KGH

------------------------------

Date: 10 JUN 1980 1111-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: toleration?

  Greg (kusnick@parc-maxc) has \a/ point in the matter of toleration;
for many of us, SW represents a dramatic visualization of what we
don't expect (but might like) to see in our own lifetimes.
  \However/, the point has repeatedly been made that movies aren't
books.  I don't think it's reasonable to say flatly that the director
of a movie didn't give thought to a given matter, when said director
(and producer, and....) have put three years or more into making the
picture (something most authors can't afford to do).
  I also think that detail work of the kind Greg describes is not
comparable between a book and a movie.  A written piece with what we
think of as a reasonable amount of plot can be made into a movie with
nothing left out if the original was in the range of 20K-40K words;
however, a movie has much more range for visual and aural material
that would be purple or boring if rendered in print.  Translating
R2's expressive beeping into print would be repetitive and probably
unbelievable ("R2 beeped sarcastically/encouragingly/mournfully/..."),
and there's no way to put in print the \jolt/ of first seeing that
monster ship coming over the top of the screen.
  Returning in the direction of the first point: all of this is a
measurement of the conviction the director can convey in putting his
personal visions onto film.  We never lose sight of the immense size
of the cruisers because there's always something to compare it with;
the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS mother ship, on the other hand, becomes boring
not only because of bad size matches ("It comes up behind Devil's
Tower, and it's bigger than DT; it comes down in front and it's
smaller") but because we look at it for several minutes and see
nothing human to confirm its size---the director loses hold on our
imaginations and we can pick apart the flaws as we would do with
something in print.
  In print we can also stop and run by something again to see if it
makes sense---an option we only have in films so badly paced we can
try to recall what just happened and study it during while the film
is running.

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 06/11/80 01:10:54 Re: Beeping robots

     If R2-D2 had gone beeping his way through a literary work, I
would indeed be miffed at the author's inconsistencies. But R2-D2
is on film, and that makes a difference.
     What George Lucas wanted to achieve is the cinematic equivelent
of one literary work referring to another. When things like that
happen in books, for instance when Larry Niven references Asimov's
"Foundation", we applaud the author for his cleverness.So when Lucas
refers to the cliched movie animals like Lassie and Fury and
Rin-Tin-Tin by giving us R2-D2 who can whimper and whine and bark and
make himself understood without speech, then we should applaud his
intended cleverness. It may be slippery science, but we enjoy it
because we are responding to the filmic cleverness, (as the author
wanted), not because of lowered expectations.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1980 0306-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: THE TWILIGHT ZONE

First of all, regarding a Twilight Zone episode guide.  This is rather
hard to derive for a variety of reasons.  I personally know every
episode pretty damn well, BUT alot of the titles are not obviously
linked to the action of a particular episode.  So even though I have a
written list of all the titles, and I know all the episodes, I cannot
make a 100% correspondence.  The situation is complicated by the fact
that at least one season's worth of TZ's did NOT SHOW THE TITLES in
the actual programs.  The titles existed, but were not in the opening
or closing credits!  I do not know how that happened.  I feel ashamed
about this, virtually living in the shadow of the MGM lot the way I
do...

However, if enough people express an interest, I might be talked into
creating as complete a guide as my memory will allow, which should be
comparatively complete.

On a brighter note...I was planning to hold this off for a while, but
the coming of Westercon tempts me to do a bit of rescheduling.  I
therefore announce that I am once again willing to sponsor the:

         ********* UCLA TWILIGHT ZONE FILM FESTIVAL *********

Yes friends, for something like the 5th time now, I am planning one of
my semi-famous TZFF's... What IS a TZFF?  Simple.  A bunch of people
get together in a large auditorium/room at UCLA, and I show 3-4 hours
of Twilight Zones.  These are virgin, uncut, 16mm prints, in perfect
condition.  Most of them include the ORIGINAL NETWORK COMMERCIALS AND
PROMOS from the original network airings in the early 1960's.  The
commericals alone are usually well worth the trip to campus.  Most end
with Rod Serling announcing what the next week's show will be.  This
time, I plan to show at least one of the rare ONE HOUR Twilight Zones.
These were never syndicated and have never been seen in independent
reruns.

I was planning to hold this event later in the summer, but since
Westercon comes toward the end of June, I could be coaxed to push
it up to coincide with that event.  If anyone is interested, they
should send me a message immediately to that effect.  "Interested"
means that you would probably come, assuming no unreasonable
scheduling conflicts.

Oh yes.  The price is free for all, of course.  Guests are welcome,
but this event is not for the general Westercon community, just for
the diehards of SF-LOVERS and their personal friends.

Also, while I will not be attending Westercon, if a relatively small
group of people care to stop by my domain to chat and maybe watch
some goodies from my videotape collection, I think something could
be arranged.

Please let me know if there is any interest.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

CHUQUI@MIT-MC 06/11/80 02:16:22

On the subject of computers in SF, it rather suprised me of some
rather obvious lapses in the bibliography I have seen.  To improve
it a little:

A.C.Clarke's 9 billion names of God (rather obscure use, but there)

D.F.Jones' Trilogy, Colossus, Fall of Colossus, and Colossus and the
    crab (the first was the base for the movie Colossus, the Forbin
    Project...)

Thomas Ryan, The Adolesence of P-1, a story about a computer program
    that takes over the world (using ONLY IBM equipment.... *sigh*)

on Gregs request for material on telepathic stories, how about Zenna
    Henderson's People series? Also, there was a good series of stuff
    in Analog by (I think, will check) Anne McCaffery about PSI's and
    their becoming a legal entity in the US. The only thing I remember
    directly about the stories is the name of a main character, David
    op Owyn.

Chuck (CHUQUI at MIT-MC)

------------------------------

FAUST@MIT-ML 06/09/80 10:55:28
Re: response to query for stories involving telepaths

     In response to LEOR's query for novels that contain a telepath
as a prominent character, a book that I read about 10-15 years ago
immediately came to mind.  The title is, I believe, "The Man in the
Maze".  I can no longer remember the author or the publisher, but as
much as I can remember of the plot follows:
     The protagonist worked for the space program.  Earth came in
contact with a new race of aliens.  So the protagonist was sent as
our emissary to try to communicate with them.  Well, the aliens
"converse" via telepathy, and when our hero comes home, his mind has
been permanently altered such that it now broadcasts all its thoughts
so that noone can be in the same room with our hero without being
blasted by them.  He becomes ostracized from society.
     He rebels against the lousy treatment he is receiving by taking
off into space and finding a planet that has long been abandoned by
some advanced alien civilization.  He is the only living inhabitant.
He takes up his residence in this city that is built with this maze
around it (ergo the name of the novel) appearantly placed there by
the city builders to protect the city from invaders.  The city is an
interesting place; it automatically supplies our hero with food and
then automatically cleans up after him.
     Well now, the US government is tickled pink to be rid of our
hero as it is embarassing to them to have this person running around
who has obviously had his life adversely affected by one of their
programs.  But, of course, as time goes on, Uncle Sam finally changes
his mind about our hero.  Namely, after another alien race is found
that also communicates via telepathy, but that needs to converse with
someone that can send before they can receive, the government decided
that they would be tickled pinker if our hero would come and work for
them again.
     So, they expend several years and upteen trillions trying to
locate our hero.  The part of the book in which the androids built
by the military are trying to work their way into the maze is quite
interesting.  You see, the maze is similar to the city in that it is
not passive.  And it was designed to ward off strangers . . .
     Now where was I.  Oh yes, the G-men finally get to our hero and
try to pursuade him to help them.  You know, the typical "its you
duty" line.  Although he still can't stand them he agrees to do it.
     Now this new race of aliens are of such a benevolent nature that
for some reason, when our protagonist is through conversing with them
he no longer has his peculiarity.  And now we are all set for the last
line of the book: "And they all lived happily ever after".  Right?
     Wrong!  He is so miffed off at the ignorant and fickle behavior
exhibited by the HUMAN race, that he decides he would rather do
without them.  SO off he goes back to his little corner of a small
city far, far away . . .

     If anyone could tell me the author of this story, or where I can
find it, I would appreciate it.  As I recall, the story was excellent
and I wouldn't mind rereading it.  Mail directly to FAUST@ML.  When I
find the book I will inform the digest.

	Greg

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 12 JUN 1980 0331-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #154  ( Star Wars Series Issue #20 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest    Wednesday, 11 June 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 154

Today's Topics:    Making of TESB - Price & Windows & Yoda & Matte,
                World of Star Wars - Language, What's Wrong with TESB,
                       Blooper - Uh-Uh, Query - Star Wars Books
----------------------------------------------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 06/11/80 21:22:28 Re: Movie grosses...

   Once adjusted for inflation, "Star Wars" places 2nd on the 
of all time box-office champs. As you may guess, "Gone with the Wind"
took all-time top honors. Star Wars came in number two,The Sound of
Music got 3rd, Jaws 4th, Godfather (1) 5th, Snow White 6th, The
Exorcist 7th, The Sting 8th, The Ten Commandments 9th, and Dr.
Zhivago placed 10th.
   Also of note, Close Encounters shows up in 15th place, (just behind
Grease, can you believe?), and George Lucas' "American Graffitti"
rests at 17th. This makes directors Speilburg and Lucas (along with
George Roy Hill , whose films "The Sting" and "Butch Cassidy also
happen to make the list - but most likely due to the pairing of
Redford and Newman rather than any directoral elegance) the only
direcotrs who have more than one film reaching the Top 25 in
popularity.  Interesting, and possibly significant.
   (Again, this list *is* adjusted for inflation, is based on U.S.
and Canadian rentals, and comes to us courtesy the L.A. Times.)

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1980 at 0330-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ DRAGON'S EGG AD BACKGROUND ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Greg (Kusnick@PARC-MAXC) says "that 'ad design' is a bloody STAR
CHART.  They ALWAYS look like that in polar projection, Star Wars
windows or no."

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1980 1805-EDT
From: FISCHER at RUTGERS

     1) It was reported in Starlog magazine that the Yoda-walking-
away-from-Luke scene was done with a midget. This was not done with
rotoscoping (I hate to think what it would have looked like ...
probably worse than the shadows around Han's Taun-taun).
     2) I noticed one thing about the effects in this movie that
really annoyed me: even though matte EDGES (lines) were invisible it
was all too noticeable that overlayed elements tended be transparent.
This was worst during the speeders attack on Hoth. If you watch with
just a touch of care you'll see what I mean. They probably made some
sort of tradeoff, sacrificing the density of the matte vs. having a
"hard" matte line (which would have been very noticable on the white
background). It seems as though they attempted to hide some of this
with the rapid cutting and changing shadows inside the speeders.
     3) As with most other things in the movie you really don't know
how big the hyperdrive is on the Falcon.  It is probably oversized.
There could be several techniques for making hyperspace jumps.
Therefore there may be a way to pack that capability into an X-Wing
fighter.  Of course an X-Wing may have to make shorter jumps or skim
a gas giant for hydrogen fuel more often.
     4) In reply to the linguist's comment about their not having
any "english" words: I remember distinctly seeing the arabic
numerals 9 and 4 on the door to the docking bay on Tatooine in
SW-4. I don't know if this qualifies, but...
     Thank you to hjjh for giving the right name of the Book of the
Whills.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1980 2119-PDT
From: Martin Sturzenbecker at Bell Labs
Sender: WRS at OFFICE-2
Subject: More comments on TESB

Re hjjh's analysis of Han's farewell:
This is a clever rationalization, but an unsuccessful one, because it
rests on assumptions which, given what we know about the characters,
are untenable.  I admit that these characters are portrayed so badly
that the question of what is or is not appropriate for them becomes
almost nugatory; nevertheless we must use what we have been given,
not what we'd like to believe.  And we have no reason to believe that
Leia's "prime concern" is that Han KNOW . . . she is merely speaking
from her heart, a natural thing to do, and the greatest portion of
satisfaction comes from having expressed her feelings, she does not
need or expect a verbal acknowledgment.  The most important positive
reinforcement that can come from Han is an assurance that her feelings
are shared, and the situation doesn't matter that much here . . .
these are tough-minded people for whom war and death have become all
too familiar.  They are not going to stand around weighing "right" and
"wrong" responses or hedging emotional bets against the possibility
that the worst will happen.  Least of all Han -- he steadfastly
refuses to consider the possibility of death, and that's what has kept
him alive thus far.  No, he must remain flippant and cavalier to the
end, he's coming back, dammit . . . and in his own way he must give
her the reinforcement she needs . . . he's coming back TO HER.  Sorry,
the book's not far off the mark; the movie . . . out of bounds.  Nice
try, but no cigar.

Y'know, folks, the more I haggle over this silly movie the more
redeeming social value I see in it.  Lucas' world is so gripping
to the senses that we WANT to believe in it in spite of its
intellectual aridity, and we superimpose our own hopes, our archetypal
images, our notions of morality, meaning in life, religion upon this
hollow sensual shell. In doing so maybe we learn more about ourselves.
Maybe Lucas should just drop it here, and let everyone write his/her
own ending . . . that way no one would be disappointed . . . oops, but
then he wouldn't make his big bucks either . . . oh, well . . .

        Martin Sturzenbecker at BTL, MH

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 06/11/80 04:28:45
Re: TESB: The geodisic dome "on" the MF.

If you look really closely, you'll see that the dome is part of the
star destroyer BEHIND the MF, and not on or in any way attached to it.

------------------------------

Date:  11 June 1980 23:53 edt
From:  Sibert at MIT-Multics (W. Olin Sibert)
Subject:  Star Wars published material

Can anyone out there clarify the status of the published Star Wars
material? That is, of the ever-growing number of books, which (if any)
are real (that is, actually consistent with the universe in Lucas's
head), which are decent, which are trash, etc? Send replies to

   Sibert@MIT-Multics

I will collect/reduce the information and redistribute in a few days.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date: 12 JUN 1980 0427-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #155
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 12 June 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 155

Today's Topics: SF Movies - Background Interest & TESB, Twilight Zone,
                      Imaginary Books, Query - Horrifying Text,
                        Reply - Telepathy, An SF Experience?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1980 1805-EDT
From: FISCHER at RUTGERS

     Someone mentioned why we are all going through this much
trouble to rationalize TESB and SW. I agree that the experience
of a movie strikes one in quite a different way from a book and
that the degree of "reality" makes it easier to do this.
     Speaking and writing seem to require alot more interpretation
on an immediate level, i.e. when you read a book you do alot of
interpreting to get a picture of what's going on.  A movie on
the other hand hits you with the bandwidth of a visual/aural
presentation and hence leaves less to be immediatly interpreted
about the experience.  It seems more "real" because it is
presented in a manner more closely rivaling the informational
bandwidth of experiences you have in everday living. Therefore we
accept the task of bringing out hidden facts that make it "work"
more readily.  It's easier to flame about something that seems
like it really happened.
     And of course most of us happen to like the film...

------------------------------

Date: 11 June 1980 1153-EDT
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject: Suspension of disbelief

One important skill of a good writer is to induce a suspension of
disbelief.  Yes, I KNOW that science aspect of the plot is trash,
but the writing is good, the ideas are good, and if I ignore that
aspect, it is a good story (for example, "The Adolescence of P-1"
is an enjoyable story if you factor out the crap about the IBM DOS
partitions).  In a written story, to make the differences in speech
capability of R2D2 and C3PO credible, there would be a lot of
background given.  A good writer would scatter this background around
so that the user has to assemble it; a poor writer has the wide-eyed
blonde or newly-wakened sleeper or visitor for another world say "But
tell me, Dr. X, why does..." and off to three pages of history of
robotics.  In the visual medium, we immediately see two very different
objects with very different kinds of behavior.  Probably were bought
for different prices.  R2D2 looks humanoid; C3PO looks machinoid.  A
huge set of cultural biases are brought to bear: people talk, machines
beep is the most superficial one.  In my case, years of sf reading and
a computer background probably contributed even more biases; the
result was that I didn't intellectualize the experience for several
months...at which point I realized Lucas' skill in making such an
anomaly work.  Think: if both robots had looked the same, it couldn't
possibly have worked that one talked and one beeped.
					joe

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jun 1980 0000-EDT
From: Roger Duffey <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: TESB : press reaction II

Bob Amsler has sent in a long review of TESB which originally appeared
in the New Yorker. Copies of the file have been established on the sites
listed below. Everyone who wants to see the article should obtain it
from the site which is most convenient for them. Please do so in the
near future however, since the files will be deleted in one week. A
copy of the file will be added to the SF-LOVERS archives.

Also note that the review contains spoilers. Therefore people who have
not seen TESB may not want to read the stories now. Thanks go to
Richard Brodie, Richard Lamson, and Don Woods for establishing the
article on their systems, and to Bob Amsler for preparing the article.

   Site          Filename

MIT-AI       DUFFEY;SFLVRS TESBNY
PARC-MAXC    [Maxc]<Brodie>TESB-NY.TXT
SU-AI        TESBNY.SF[T,DON]
MIT-Multics
       >user_dir_dir>SysLib>Lamson>sf-lovers>star-wars.new-yorker.text

[Note that you can TYPE or FTP the file from SAIL without an account.]

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1980 1418-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: TZ Guide

I have been informed that the August '78 edition (#15) of Starlog
included a comprehensive Twilight Zone reference.  There is a good
chance that a number of us will collaborate on getting this onto the
net, and then I may go through it and add some personal anecdotes from
my own memory and knowledge of the show (like my own "star" ratings
for each episode...)  I have alot of information concerning the making
of the program over the years...

--Lauren--

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 06/11/80 21:22:28

     I have some good, complete episode title and synopsis lists
available for "The Twilight Zone" I can send them, but my god, the
series runs 151 episodes! That may be a touch more than sflovers may
want. I suggest for those interested, pick up the book "Fantastic
Television" by Gary Gerani (1977, trade paper, Harmony Press) or
issue number 15 (Aug. '78) of Starlog. Both have quite excellent
articles and episode guides, with Starlog having the edge in details.

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jun 1980 0000-EDT
From: Roger Duffey <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: Imaginary Books

     The following two messages continue a discussion on "non-existent
books for quoting from" that occasionally appear in SF literature. It
began in SFL V1 #144 (PM edition) with a question on Star Wars and what
the Book of the Whills was. The discussion has now moved away from Star
Wars and is considering books of general interest.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1980 1056-EDT
From: CCIS.ZEVE at RUTGERS
Subject: Kilgore Trout.

As i understand it Farmer (a friend of Vonnegut's) wrote Venus on the
Halfshell as a joke.  I haven't read it but it would be hard for it to
be worse than the garbage the Vonnegut has been writing.

To HITCHCOCK,  have you read either of Farmers two fictional biographies
(the one of Tarzan and the one of Doc Savage)?  I haven't read the Tarzan
one but the Doc Savage biog was brilliant.  As to Cordwainer Bird........
A PULP hero? Cordwainer Bird?  (hmm maybe) I assume that you do know that
Cordwainer Bird is Harlan Ellison's official screenwriters guild pseudonym.
So which came first,  Farmer's chart or Ellison's use of the name.
(I read/head somewhere that Ellison forced the producer's to take his
name off of the credits of Starlost and put in Cordwainer Bird).

------------------------------

ACW@MIT-AI 06/11/80 05:10:09 Re:  Deluxe edition of the Necronomicon

Chip Hitchcock said in a recent message, "the Necronomicon, described
by Lovecraft, recently appeared in a finebound edition in the
["original"] Arabic; I never found out whether the scrawls actually
made any sense."  I saw a copy of this at the D'Amassa's a couple of
years ago.  The script is pretty, but meaningless.  The first thing I
noticed was that it was not Arabic: I can recognize Arabic letters and
these weren't.  It looked a lot more like Syriac.  But the letters
were not variegated enough to carry meaning, and on leafing through
the book I found it to be extremely repetitive ... in fact it starts
over every twelve pages or so.  Sigh.  At first glance rather pretty,
at second glance a sham and not even a very good one.  Only Don
D'Amassa would shell out N dollars for one.

I once considered trying to write a fragment of translation from the
Necronomicon, but was stopped because I am simply not capable of
writing prose that would horrify ... Does anyone know any good
examples of truly frightening prose?  I don't mean a frightening plot
line: I mean a paragraph or so of really spine-curdling language.  It
seems that it would take a real artist to scare people just with the
rhythm of his words.

 ---Wechsler

P.S. Lovecraftian gibberish is right out:  it has to be English.
I have never found Ng'ghar'ghlazshuqqese to be particularly scary.
Some real languages are more chilling.  -- ACW

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jun 1980 1047-EDT
From: CCIS.ZEVE at RUTGERS
Subject: Telepaths

James Schmitz - all the Telzey stories
James Blish - Jack of Eagles
Robert Silverberg - Dying Inside (or is that already mentioned?)
John Brunner - The Whole Man  (also called The Telepath)
               (I'm not sure of the title, I don't
                have my books handy to check on it)

I can't remember any others off hand but i know i have read numerous
short stoies about telepaths.  There is a book by (i think) Del Rey
abot what amounts to the coming of age of a psi.  Also a Spider
Robinson short story abou the problem of a telepath that couldn't stop
receiving.  I have a couple of short story collections of psi stories
(i will check my collection over the weekend, it lives at my parents
house).

Oh yeah one more by Alfred Bester - The Computer Connection.  oops,
also a telepathic robot... Isaac Asimov - Liar.

[ Dying Inside was mentioned in SFL V1 #145. The Robinson story
  is "Two Heads Are Better Than One", available in his collection
  Callahan's Crosstime Saloon.  --  RDD  ]

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jun 1980 15:40 PDT
From: Richard R. <Brodie at PARC-MAXC>
Subject: Interesting experience

If the man is right, you'll be interested in this story:

     --------------------

As I was walking through the Oakland Airport the other day, wearing
my jeans, Levi jacket and Space Cadets T-shirt and carrying a copy
of "The Hand of Oberon" by Roger Zelazny, A thin man wearing a
three-piece suit and glasses called out to me "What do you think of
nuclear power?"  As I turned and replied "Great!"  I saw the Lyndon
LaRouche sign at the man's table and realized too late that I hade
made the wrong response.

"So do I," the man told me.  "We're trying to convince the government
to go ahead with nuclear power full-force until alternative energy
sources can be developed."

"How do you propose to do that?" I asked.

"There are a large number of people who are like sheep, believing
everything the anti-nuclear people tell them.  We've got to educate
them."

"Well I'm not the one you want to educate," I said.  "I'm already
intelligent."

"No, you're the one we want to educate.  We want you to know what's
going on so you can realize the danger we're in."

"In other words," I said, "you want the sheep to believe everything
YOU tell them instead."

"No!  We want them to know the truth so that they'll see what to do
in order to avoid destroying humanity.  The human race is in serious
trouble."

"But do you really think that, even if this 'truth' is obvious, the
people you call 'sheep' will be able to see it?  It's not truth that's
important in persuading the people; it's advertising."

"Don't you believe in the concept of a universal truth?" he asked,
ready to dismiss me as demented.

"Sure."

"Why don't you subscribe to our magazine?  It'll keep you informed
about the important issues endangering the human race."

"Aha," I said, "now we get down to it."

He frowned and glanced at the book I was carrying.  "May I ask what
you do for a living?" he asked.

I thought a bit, then said "I'm a computer programmer."

"I thought so."

"What do you do?"  I rebutted.

"Well, I do this, mostly.  Listen, why don't you subscribe to our
magazine.  It's only two dollars an issue."

"No, I was just looking for an interesting argument, but I don't want
to pay you any money."

"Pah!  Listen.  You're an Aristotelian, you read science fiction, you
have very limited conceptual powers, and you probably have a lousy sex
life."

I strove to maintain my reserve.  "Does it frustrate you that I don't
agree with you?"

"You bet it frustrates me!  Here."  He picked up a glossy booklet and
turned to a picture of a random rock concert.  "Look at this article.
It's about rock music.  You probably like rock music, too."  He looked
at me.

"Probably,"  I said.

"See, it all goes together.  Aristotelian, computers, science fiction,
rock music.  Read this," he urged me.  "It's only two dollars."

"If you'll give it to me, I'll read it, but I'm not paying two
dollars."

"Go away!  We're not handing this stuff out.  You're an empiricist.
You're an impotent Aristotelian empiricist, and you'll never be able
to do anything.  The human race is in terrible danger and you're
impotent!"

"Why don't you do something about it?"

"I AM doing something!  I'm insulting you!  You're an impotent
empiricist who listens to rock music and you're a sheep."

"You've got some pretty harsh language," I said.

"Go away!" he implored me.  So I walked away and met my brother's
plane.

On the way back, he was packing up his table.  I offered him a cookie
and said "No hard feelings?" but he said "Pah!" and waved me off.

	Richard Brodie

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 13 JUN 1980 0332-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #156  ( Star Wars Series Issue #21 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Thursday, 12 June 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 156

         Today's Topics: Replies to "What's Wrong with TESB",
                              Clones, Genealogy of Luke
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 12 Jun 1980 11:28 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Sturzenbecker's rebuttal to hjjh's analysis of Han's farewell

Wrong!!  I agree with hjjh, Han's line in the movie is much more
comforting than the line in the book, at least extrapolating from what
I would feel like in that situation.  These guys are not dummies; they
know that Han's death is highly likely, and it does feel important in
that type of situation to let the other person know.  Han's response
in the movie is better because it reinforces the relationship that
they have had, consciously on Leia's part or not, and if he dies,
that's all there is ever going to be.....

Karen

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jun 1980 1048-EDT
From: CCIS.ZEVE at RUTGERS
Subject: Han's Response to Leia.

Does Han's response make in sense in terms of what we know about Han?
In the movie he says "I know".  Well it seems to me that this is in
character for Han.  I don't remember Han saying to Leia that he loved
her.  What I remember is Han pressuring Leia to admit that she felt
something for him.  Han's stereotype is that of the superficially cold
mercenary who actually happens to have his feelings in the right place
but won't admit it.  (Remember in SW-4 he deserts the rebels only to
return at the last minute to blast DV's fighter.)  Han strikes me as
the sort who could never admit that he loved Leia, especially on such
short notice.  Admitting that he loved her might lay him to open to
the fear that DV &/or Jabba the Hut had finally gotten him into a fix
that he couldn't get out of.

Of course I could be totally misreading Han, but somehow I don't
think so.

			Steve Zeve

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jun 1980 14:11 PDT
From: Merritt.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: The Return of the Revenge of the Son of Peyton Space

The Clone-Wars mentioned by Obi-Wan, who were they between?  Did they
take place in a time of harmony before the Empire was established?
Were they battles (a) For/Against the existance of clones (b) Over
equal rights for clones (c) Against a foreign, subversive introduction
of clones (d) Held gladiator style in lieu of personal combat (e) None
of the above?

How long ago did the "wars" take place?... 20 Yrs or so?  How old
is Luke?

How where clones made?  I doubt if the "instant" method (shades of
Invasion of the Body Snatchers) was possible, but that rather an
off-the-shelf human embryo (the Clonee) was imprinted with the genetic
patterns of its "parent", hereafter refered to as (the Cloner).  If
such were indeed the case, it would take a normal amount of time for
the clonee to develop.

What then prevents Luke (clonee) from being the "son" of Darth Vader
(cloner)?  If that is the case, where did the clonee's embryo come
from?  Perhaps zapped (while still in the oven, unbeknownst to
biological father Skywalker Sr.) by jilted-lover Dastardly Villan?
What perfect revenge, although perhaps too subtle for the man in
black.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date: 13 JUN 1980 0446-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #157
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Friday, 13 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 157

Today's Topics: Hugos, Worldcon, SF Books- Vonnegut & Imaginary Books,
                                 Replies - Telepathy
----------------------------------------------------------------------

CHUQUI@MIT-MC 06/12/80 02:55:07 Subject: The HUGO Nominations

[ For a copy of the HUGO award nominations and earlier discussion
  about the awards see SFL V1 #87,88,91.  --  RDD ]

I just received a list of the final nominations, and to me they seem
overall rather putrid. One major problem is the lack of interested
people balloting, which ran about 500. My other big complaint was the
dramatic presentation award, which had Lathe of heaven getting enough
votes for a position, but not being eligible due to its being run in
January. WE were left with Alien (non-sf, in my mind), The Black Hole
(which this thing should have crawled into), the Muppet movie (I don't
know about you, but this is SF?), ST-TMP, and Time after Time. The
only thing missing is Humanoids from the Deep, and I hear it came
close. Has SF filmdom gotten bad enough that they have to call on
The Muppet Movie to fill a ballot? If so, then the ballot should be
discarded.  Or is it simply the fact that people don't care about
the Hugos?  After all, they are what publishers and Hollywood look
at when they decide what SF wants (when they bother). Why, out of all
the people in the SF community who like to be active (in fandom, in
conventions, whatever) do only 500 bother to vote on the Hugo's? All
it takes is a supporting membership (usually about $8) and a stamp to
join the Worldcon for that year.  Considering the amount of money/time
most SF fans put into SF, that doesn't seem like much...

If I remember right, NOREASCON (this years worldcon) will allow all
members joining before June 15 to vote on the Hugo.  There is no
excuse for people not to. If it is too late this year, then we should
start looking at next year, to make sure it doesn't happen again.

CHUQUI@MIT-MC
chuck

------------------------------

Date: 12 JUN 1980 2352-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Noreascon II

In case any of you were thinking of going and haven't gotten in your
memberships yet, the following is an official Noreascon announcement:

"The Noreascon committee would like to remind fans of its previously
announced membership deadlines.  There is no way that the committee
can cope with a last-minute deluge of memberships.  Therefore, no
new memberships or conversions from supporting to attending will be
accepted which are postmarked later than JULY 15.  Furthermore, the
committee cannot guarantee that new members who join after JUNE 15
will receive their hotel reservation forms or Hugo ballots in time
to return them before the deadlines. The committee thanks all future
members for their cooperation."

(Membership is now $30 to Noreascon II, Box 46, MIT Branch PO,
Cambridge MA 02139 USA; membership will be $45 at the door.)

------------------------------

ACW@MIT-AI 06/12/80 10:14:08 Re:  Vonnegut dreaming effectively?

Has anyone else noted the similarity between the recent rebellion
in the New Hebrides by a refrigerator cult and certain Vonnegut
plot elements?  Check out the front page of today's Boston Globe
and compare with your favorite Vonnegut novel.  Weird.

   ---Wechsler

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jun 1980 1229-PDT
From: Dave Dyer <DDYER at USC-ISIB>
Subject: Cordwainer Bird, Kilgore Trout, and Phillip Jose Farmer

Cordwainer Bird is Harlan Ellison's pseudonym, reserved for projects
which have been mutilated by studios.  He discusses the actual orgin
and usage of the name in the introduction to his short story, "The
New York Review of Bird".  I think it appears in the collection
"Hitler Painted Roses".

TNYROB features Cordwainer Bird as protagonist.  According to the
introduction, he wrote it specificly so that Bird would appear as a
fictional author, which is Farmer's main criterion for inclusion in
his series of pulp spoofs.

"Venus on the Half Shell" is a terrifically good imitation of the
style attributed to Trout in various Vonnegut novels.  Witness
those who assumed it must have been written by Vonnegut himself.
Stylistically, and in choice of story lines, it also reminds me of
Lem (sorry, I won't even try to spell his first name).

This last June 6, Phillip Jose Farmer was guest on Hour 25 ( SF radio,
Fridays 10PM, 90.7FM in LA ).  Among other things, he discussed the
series of books of which "Venus" is the best known.  As I mentioned,
the main idea is to produce works by Fictional authors who appear in
works of fiction.  He claims to have a large waiting list of authors
to do.

------------------------------

Date: 12 JUN 1980 1116-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Cordwainer Bird; psi book(s)

  The name "Cordwainer Bird" appears to have first been used by
Ellison in the early 60's; it began on written work and moved up
to visual some years later.  Farmer then wrote this mythical person
into his pulp hero chart (the Shadow was CB's uncle); Ellison was
then persuaded to write "The New York Review of Bird" for the second
volume of Byron Preiss's series of anthologies of new stories about
pulp-type heroes.  Some of the stories are quite readable, though
they are all pretty light-weight.
  Memory fails me with respect to the discussion of books on
telepathy; surely someone has mentioned the Darkover books (although
simple mind-to-mind communication is the least part of \laran/).
Telepathy is also an incidental psi power in Schmitz's THE WITCHES
OF KARRES. The del Rey book (which is one of his best) is PSTALEMATE.
Alan Nourse, in THE MERCY MEN, deals with a "wild" psi whom doctors
(of course) are trying to tame; there's also one of the earliest of
these stories spawned by Campbell, Wilson (Bob) Tucker's WILD
TALENT---very 50's but entertaining.

------------------------------

Date: 12 Jun 1980 07:05 PDT
From: Chapman.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Ann McCaffrey series [ see SFL V1 #153 ]

The Analog stories mentioned by CHUQUI@MIT-MC about legalizing PSI's
are indeed by Ann McCaffrey. They have been gathered together into a
paperback titled To Ride Pegasis. My very favorite of the stories is
called A Womanly Talent.

Cheryl

------------------------------

Date: 12 June 1980 0911-EDT (Thursday)
From: David.Lamb at CMU-10A
Subject: telepath stories

Anne McCaffrey's stories about telepaths were collected in "To Ride
Pegasus", printed in paperback by Ballantine Books in 1973.

A few other books where some form of psi powers played an important
role (this may duplicate some reports already given):

The Darkover novels by Marion Zimmer Bradley; I think a chronology of
these was mentioned in an earlier SF-lovers.
[ see SFL V1 #28,30,37 for discussion of Darkover chronology. -- RDD ]

Mindbridge, by Joe Haldeman.  This is involves the discovery of a
small creature which allows any two beings who touch it to communicate
telepathically.  There is, or course, a lot more to the book than that
- a very good novel.

The short story "Lost Legacy", by Heinlein, which appeared in the
collection "Assignment in Eternity" (Signet Books).

Katherine Kurtz' Dernyi trilogy, ("Dernyi Rising", "Dernyi Checkmate",
and "High Dernyi") and Camber trilogy ("Camber of Culdi", "Saint
Camber", and "Camber the Heretic").  All are (or will be) out in
paperback from Del Rey - although I haven't seen "Camber the Heretic"
yet.  The novels are set in a world which resembles medieval Catholic
Europe in some ways.  The Dernyi are a semi-human race with special
psi powers.  In the Dernyi series they are persecuted and in hiding -
though many of them have achieved high positions in the human power
structure.  The Camber books tell of a time about two hundred years
earlier when a particular Dernyi, Camber, helped overthrow the
oppressive Dernyi rulers of the time and place a human on the throne.

Andre Norton's "Witch World" series: "Witch World", "Three against the
Witch World", "Warlock of the Witch World", "Sorceress of the Witch"
World", "Web of the Witch World", "Spell of the Witch World", "Trey of
Swords", and "High Sorcery".  These begin to shade off into sorcery
rather than psi, but I think they still fit the psi category.  The
first five are a group, about the earth-human Simon Tregarth, his
witch-wife Jaelith, and their three children.  The last three are set
on the Witch World, but are quite separate from the Tregarth stories.

------------------------------

FAUST@MIT-ML 06/12/80 10:56:57
Re: results of "The Man in the Maze" author query [ see SFL V1 #153 ]

The winners of the who is the author of "The Man in the Maze" contest
unanimously agree that it was Robert Silverberg.  Unfortunately, I
went to the Words Worth book store in Harvard Square yesterday to
buy the book and they did not have it (even though they had about
20 Silverberg titles).  Oh well, I am sure I'll find it soon.

       Many thanx to the following people for their responses:

CAD@MIT-AI                            ISRAEL@MIT-AI
JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics        Lasater at SUMEX-AIM
MALIS at BBN-TENEXE                   Harry <OPER.KZIN at SU-SCORE>
PDL at MIT-DMS (P. David Lebling)     Peter Kaiser <PKaiser at BBND>
York.Multics at MIT-Multics

__  Greg

P.S.  I was glad to hear that so many of you enjoyed the story
      as much as I did.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 14 JUN 1980 0623-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #158
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 14 June 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 158

        Today's Topics:  Hugos, SF Movies - More on the Way,
                        Replies - Computers in SF & Telepathy
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Administrivia - Due to circumstances beyond our control...

MIT-AI was suffering from hardware problems yesterday. Many of you
received multiple copies of SFL V1 #156 (Star Wars Series Issue #21)
and SFL V1 #157 (Friday AM Edition) because MIT-AI crashed while
transmitting them. I regret the inconvenience.  --  RDD

------------------------------

Date: 13 JUN 1980 1212-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: CHUQUI's dilemma

  ALIEN not SF?? Surely you jest! Even if the movie is horror-oriented
(or possibly horrible) all the appurtenances of SF are there --
starships, robots, a talking computer....  THE MUPPET MOVIE is an
obvious fantasy --- not exactly Tolkien or McKillip, but consider all
the people who enjoyed WIND IN THE WILLOWS (the original book, not the
Disney mess), and fantasy has always been considered part of SF for
the Hugos (and may be properly merged with them again, if a proposed
amendment to bar everything but Hugos and the Campbell award from the
ballot is passed) --- remember "That Hell-Bound Train", by Robert
Bloch?  ST:TMP and THE BLACK HOLE were, unfortunately, inevitable ---
although I'd say the \average/ level of the nominees is significantly
higher than in 1977 (the last time "No Award" won in the Dramatic
Presentation category).  As for Hollywood paying attention, the record
indicates that that is a delusion and the appearance of Reeve at
Seacon '79 (to pick up the Hugo for SUPERMAN) an aberration.  There's
some question about whether the publishers pay much attention either;
I've noted that few books that could do so indicate that the author is
a Hugo winner.
  As to why fandom has an even worse voting record than this country
as a whole (the participation in Hugo voting has been running steadily
around 30% of the advance membership for some time now), that's
something I admit I don't understand. \Nominating/ having a low rate
is understandable; I read the magazines only sporadically and can't
say what's worthwhile from the most recent year (I did nominate this
year, primarily because I wanted to put up Diane Duane for the
Campbell --- not that anyone else has much chance against Barry
Longyear (Sunday night at Seacon '79 I told C. J. Cherryh that she'd
set a new record by winning a Hugo only two years after winning the
Campbell, but Longyear is certainly the first Campbell nominee to get
a Hugo nomination, let alone two, in the same year as his Campbell
nomination)).  But I have voted every year that I've been a member
of the Worldcon, and don't particularly understand why others don't
even if they don't have the resources of the MITSFS to read all the
nominees.
  Perhaps as an antidote to this, a crazy Coloradan has proposed
publishing a book containing all the Hugo fiction nominees except
the novels; Denvention, behaving as idiotically as usual, has taken
her on (I say idiotic because it is my semiprofessional estimate as
Speaker-to-Printers that the project will cost them at least $15,000
for the 5000 copies they were talking about printing ($10k for
printing and $5k for royalties at $.02 per word); that price is
for printing tear sheets from the original publications (no new
typesetting) so the book will look terrible, and since it's planned
to come out at the con nobody will want it for utilitarian purposes
anyway). I doubt that this maneuver will accomplish anything --- maybe
if Silverberg (Noreascon II toastmaster) lambastes people at the Hugo
award ceremony he'll get some reaction, but he's not that sort of
person.
  Certainly SFLovers isn't the size or kind of audience you need ---
how many on this list are even supporting members of Noreascon?  As to
prices, it seems that most of the people who know about conventions
and have any interest in them join the Worldcon (our figures are now
4100 total members, 5500-6000 full (and a few hundred 1-day) expected,
and guesses as to the total number of fans run in the 6000-7500
range).  (Like most Worldcons, we're getting a significant fraction of
local people who wouldn't come to anything but a local con, not being
fans as such).  That's a small share of the paperback market, even for
books that aren't expected to go in the million-copy range. (Nor is it
much for magazines --- the two top straight SF prozines, ASIMOV'S and
ANALOG, sell in the 100,000-200,000 range).
  A grand project to increase the number of active fans?  (After all,
look what the Trekkies did-got a spaceship renamed!)  \I/ don't want
to have to deal with a convention with even 10,000 members (let alone
the 30,000 one Trekcon had) and I doubt that many unpaid groups
\could/.  Remember that "fan" is short for "fanatic" --- maybe it's
just as well there aren't very many of us.

------------------------------

Date: 13 Jun 1980 1009-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: hugo for dramatic presentation

Does anyone know if "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" got nominated
for best dramatic presentation?  I think that the tail end of the
second series was carried over into 1979 and so was marginally eligible.
It almost got it last year at the Worldcon in Brighton, but since it was
a BBC radio show no Americans had heard it or heard of it, and so it
lost to "Superman" (I mean really, "Superman".  That alone is embarassing
enough to warrant cancelling the award.  Perhaps if the number of votes
falls below a certain level no award should be given.)  There is paperback
version out now from Pan.  Pick it up if you don't mind losing a few hours
to chortling.

[ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is not among the final 1980 Hugo
  nominees. SFL V1 #87 includes a list of all of the nominees.  --  RDD. ]

------------------------------

Date: 13 Jun 1980 11:49 PDT
From: Klose.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: SFilms

Here is are some more SF films which are in various stages of
production.  I encourage anybody with additional information on
any these films to respond to SF-LOVERS.

For imminent release is "The Apple", which is billed as an SF-rock
musical.  Hard-core (and most soft-core) fans will probably want to
avoid this one.  The story takes place in 1994 and centers on a young
man and woman who devise a new "exercise-dance" (not aerobic dancing).
The dance and its associated music sweep the nation (new new wave).  A
totalitarian regime somehow gets set up with the unwilling assistance
of the originators and their dance-music.  The whole thing sounds like
a commercial twist on the disco craze..

For fans of Brian DePalma, his next film is called "Dressed to Kill"
and it stars Angie Dickinson, Micheal Caine and DePalma's wife Nancy
Allen.  Dickinson plays a woman who is plauged by predictive dreams.
Caine is her shrink.  Don't expect another "Lathe of Heaven".  This
movie will probably be similar in style to his other films (involving
murder, mayhem and assorted horrors).  To be released in July.

Cheech and Chong are devoting their second comedy to the subject
of space.  To sum up, they play two space cadets.  Possible title:
"Cheech and Chong go to Mars".  Also to be released in July.

"Battle Beyond the Stars" is a $10+ million space epic due this
summer.  From what I know, this will be a typical "good guys vs. the
aliens who want to take over and kill the good guys" story.  I've seen
some stills from the movie and the alien costumes appear well-designed
(comparable to those in "Planet of the Apes").  I've been let down so
many time when it comes big budget SF films, so I expect this to be a
turkey ala "Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century".  Still, you never can
tell.

For August release, the all new (well not really) "Close Encounters of
the Third Kind".  This is an ingenious way to add $30 million or so to
a film long past its first run.  I'm sure it's old news now, but this
film will be a re-edit of the original with approximately 20 minutes
added to the running time.  Spielberg maintained in a recent interview
that the new ending will still leave things to be explained.  This
leads me to believe that Spielberg has a grand plan which calls for 9
different versions of CE3K, the last one to be completed in 1992.  The
final version of the movie will be fifteen hours long.  The first
third will be about Richard Dreyfuss' parents (both good and evil).
The second third will span his teen life (crusing Van Nuys Blvd) thru
life with the aliens.  The last segment will focus on the mutual
friendship between the aliens and the earthlings.

"The Final Countdown" (See SFL V1 #121) release date: August 1980.

Coming October 1980, "Somewhere in Time", staring Christorpher Reeve,
is about a man who falls in love with a woman in a photograph taken
ca. 1890.  I don't know what happens after that, but this film will
definitely be a fantasy.

"Escape From New York" is an end of the world movie.  The title
should be self-explanatory.  Scheduled release for this John
Carpenter ("Halloween", "The Fog") directorial effort is Spring 1981.

More info about "Outland", the Sean Connery vehicle to be released
Summer 1981: It can best be described as a space western.  The story
takes place in and around a mining colony based on the moon Io.  Sean
Connery is the "sheriff" of the colony.  His job is to bring order to
colony of restless workers and to stem the rampant smuggling trade.

"Space Vampires" is about "lifeless" aliens found in orbit around and
brought down to Earth.  They later wake up and begin sucking the life
energy out of everybody they come in contact with.  Looks like
standard horror fare.  I'll wager that everybody can wait for the
Winter '81 release date.

"Conan", will soon be a movie about the pulp-hero, starring Arnold
Schwarzenegger (the world body-building champ).

Get ready for a groan-getter.  The film is called "Evilspeak" and it
certainly sounds like a poor merging of the occult and SF.  What we
have here is a computer possessed by the devil.  Need I say any more?

"Hawk the Slayer" will be a "swords and sorcery" movie.  The only
information I have about this one is that it will star Jack Palance.

Has anybody heard anything new about "The Incredible Shrinking Woman".
For those of you who don't know, this will be a remake of the original
"Shrinking Man" with Lily Tomlin as the shrinkee.  She is also writing
and (I think) directing.

The low-budget "The Last Chase" takes place during the year when
gasoline is so precious that automobiles which burn it are outlawed.
Lee Majors owns the last car and refuses to give it up without, you
guessed it, the last chase.

Patrick "The Prisoner" McGoohan will star in "Scanners", a story
about a future totalitaristic regime which derives its power from
ESP. Jennifer O'Neal also stars.

"Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Moon" will be directed by George "Night of the Living
Dead" Romero.  Not a horror flick, but rather a spoof of the 1950's
B-movie.  A rock and roll sock hop is invaded by UFO's.

"Virus" takes place in 1982 when a majority of the world population is
wiped-out.  The story centers on a ship of survivors headed for the
Antarctic (Sounds like a rehash of "On the Beach").  Stars Glenn Ford,
George Kennedy, Robert Vaughn.

That's it for now.

- Paul

------------------------------

Date: 13 Jun 1980 1102-EDT
From: Peter Kaiser <PKaiser at BBND>
Subject: Computer/SF bibliography

The memories come slowly back ...  all my SF is stored in boxes in a
remote place, so I can't make the leisurely search I'd like to.  But
last night I did check this out: Poul Anderson had a story in IF
(March 1962) titled "Kings Who Die", in which the protagonist has an
implanted link to a computer.  As I recall, it's a very good story;
what I liked best was its realistic and very affecting depiction by
the protagonist of what it's like to be linked that way, and what it
means to him.  It's nowhere in print now, but you might have or be
able to find a copy of Judy Merril's 8th "Best SF", where it was
collected.  Good luck.

---Pete

------------------------------

Date: 13 June 1980 0824-EDT
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject: PSI

There were a couple stories printed in Analog in the 60's under the
pseudonym "Walter Bupp" (Randell Garrett) dealing with psi talent in
a largely non-psi society.  They dealt with the creation and problems
of an organization called "The Lodge", which was a group of
psi-talented people who regulated the activities of other psis so as
to not antagonize non-psis.  One, "Modus Vivendi", has been reprinted
in Earth in Transit (Sheila Schwartz, ed.) and in 14 Great Tales of
ESP (Idella P Stone, ed.).
					joe

------------------------------

Date: 13 Jun 1980 (Friday) 0845-EST
From: DYER at NBS-10
Subject: Telepathy in SF

     Joanna Russ' book "And Chaos Died" is (yet another) book with
a telepathic protagonist.

     The last few books of E.E. Doc Smith's Lensman series, aside
from being rife with blood and thunder space opera, also have main
characters with telepathic abilities.
[ also mentioned by Frank Wancho <FJW at MIT-MC>  --  RDD ]

     Heinlein's "Time for the Stars" (a 'juvenile'), and the ever
popular "Stranger in a Strange Land" also deserve notice.  Heinlein
also has about half a dozen shorts about TP.

	Frank Herbert's Dune series....

------------------------------

Date: 13 JUN 1980 1038-PDT
From: AYERS at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Telepathy

How can we be discussing telepathy in science fiction without
mentioning the classic SLAN by A. E. Van Vogt?

Bob

------------------------------

Date: 13 Jun 1980 1436-PDT
From: Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
Subject: telepathy

     There is a pretty good telepathy book that hasnt been mentioned
yet-- I think its `The Prichter Mass' by Micheal `Terminal Man'
Crichton.  A rather bizzare story about a psionic telescope built
out past Pluto...

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 15 JUN 1980 0508-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS PM Digest   V1 #159  ( Star Wars Series Issue #22 )
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS PM Digest     Saturday, 14 June 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 159

Today's Topics: World of Star Wars, Pot Pourri, Making of TESB- Price,
                             Comment from Vader, Farewell
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Administrivia:

     The volume of mail about Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back
has now decreased to the point where it can be included within the
regular AM edtion. Therefore this will be the last of the special PM
edition, Star Wars Series Issues.  For the record there have been 22
issues, distributed each day from Friday, 23 May through Thursday,
12 June and today. Altogether these issues comprise slightly more
than a quarter of a million characters of information.  I trust that
all of you have found these discussions interesting and entertaining,
and will continue to do so as we move on to other aspects of SF.

							--  RDD

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1980 at 0251-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ A NEGATIVE COMMENT ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Your sweetheart may seem the most beautiful girl in the world, and you
may not really care that she's got a mole on her chin, but if she has,
she has.  And so do the SW films, for me.

As a devotee of natural history I've seen a fair number of animal-
motion studies and films, e.g., jackrabbits, kangaroos, etc., at
regular and reduced speed, and Tauntaun loping, or whatever it was,
seen from a distance, looked distinctly w-r-o-n-g, somehow.  Perhaps
a comparative anatomist could explain why.

Because of the great attention given to visual "realism", the rare
instances of background paintings that LOOK LIKE background paintings
strike me particularly irritatingly.  In SW-4, for instance, the view
of the facade and entrance to the Massassi stronghold when the Falcon
has just arrived on the 4th moon of Yavin looks like the painted back
drop for a highschool play.

In SW-5, the views across the crater of the large asteroid that the
Millennium Falcon hid on are similarly hokey.  Surely somebody could
have done sharply delineated Chesley Bonestell-type artwork for this
kind of scene.

There seems no excuse for such as the above.  On the other hand, since
Lucas was intentionally trying to create a film in the style of the
serials and swashbucklers of his childhood, there IS an excuse for the
overwhelming predominance of white males even as extras.  There IS an
excuse, but I don't have to like the result or to believe that this
was necessary to evoking the 40's feeling.  Like Samuel Delany said
in his review of SW-4, there could just as well have been a squadron
of Chinese female pilots among the Rebels massed at the finale.

And a gripe about something as bad scientifically as the parsec
blooper-- (no pun intended) only WHITE stars!  No red giants among
the twinklers, nor golden Sol-like ones, just plain ol' white.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ MISCELLANY ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

In SW-4, there was the single Black extra walking along outside the
cantina.  Did anyone see a "token Oriental" in SW-5?  How about when
Lando revolts and signals his men to take over when the stormtroopers
are taking Leia and Chewie(+3PO) to Vader's ship... the right-most
"Cloud City policeman(?)" seems to have an Oriental cast to his
features.

Why hasn't there been anything on SF-L about TESB-- the ultimate
"effects" movie --from Lauren?
[ Lauren has not been able to see TESB yet. -- RDD ]

I saw somewhere (on SF-L, I think) that the first trilogy will go up
to when Luke is a boy of 11.  The interview of Lucas in the May 18th
NY TIMES says "At the end of the first trilogy Luke is four years
old".

Yes, Leia's father is almost certainly dead, presumably having been
on Alderaan when it was destroyed.  But the lines referred to by
Hitchcock (when Leia is greeted on arriving at the Yavin-4 base)
are too vague to rely on.

 |    GENERAL WILLARD: You're safe!  When we heard about Alderaan,
 |            we feared the worst.
 |    LEIA:   We have no time for our sorrows, Commander.  You must
 |            use the information in this R2 unit to help plan the
 |            attack.  It's our only hope.

------------------------------

Date: 11 June 1980 0543-EDT (Wednesday)
From: Warren.Wake at CMU-10D (N680WW60)

Regarding price of TESB:
	Pittsburgh:  $2.00 at outlying theaters
	             $1.00 downtown Wednesday Matinee
		     $3.50 downtown other times

------------------------------

Date: 06/14/80 23:38:18
From: Darth Vader

To all fans and followers of The Empire Strikes Back --

                         Happy Father's Day!

------------------------------

Date:  9 Jun 1980 at 2132-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ A FAREWELL TO THE TESB PM DIGESTS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

At about 1200 baud, the following graphic flows up a CRT screen 
quite impressively.  It's fun to send as a real-time message to
some unsuspecting buddy on-line.

       <My thanks to J. Stolpa for the initial design on 
        which this (and the Vader portrait) was based.)

                    .
                                               .
              *                         .

                                .
                                                                .
       .
                                                   *

                 *
                              .
                                           *
            .
                                  .                           .
         *
                 .      .                       .            .
         .                        *                      .
        .                        .
                                               .                       *
         .                              .
                     */////// */|||| *||\\\ *\\\\\\\\
        .           */////// *//|||| *|||\\\ *\\\\\\\\
                   *//          *|   *||  *\\ *\\   *\\        .
    *        .    *///////     *||   *||   *\\ *\\   *\\              .
                 *///////     */||   *||||||\\\ *\\\\\\\
              .      *//     *//||   *|||||||\\\ *\\\\\\      .
               *///////     *//|||   *||      *\\ *\\ *\\
              *///////     *///|||   *||       *\\ *\\  *\\\
     .       *///////     *///||||   *||        *\\ *\\   *\\\
                                                                       *
           *///        */// *////|||| *||\\\\\\ *\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
.         *///        */// *////||||| *||||\\\\\ *\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
         *///        */// *///    *|| *||     *\\ *\\\            .
        *///        */// *///     *|| *||      *\\ *\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
       *///   */   */// *////////|||| *|||\\\\\\\\\ *\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
      *///  *//   */// */////////|||| *|||\\\\\\\\\             *\\\
     *///  *///  */// *//////////|||| *|||||\\\\\\\              *\\\
    */// *////  */// *///        *||| *||   *\\\       *\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
   *//////  *////// *///         *||| *||    *\\\\      *\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
  *//////  *////// *///          *||| *||     *\\\\\\    *\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
                                                   *
                                               .                       *
        .                        .
         .                        *                      .
         *
                                  .                           .
            .
                                           *
           A LONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY.. . .  .  .   .
                              .
                 *

                                                   *
       .
                                                                .
                                .

              *                         .
                                               .
         .                                                       .


------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS PM Digest
**************************

Date: 15 JUN 1980 0618-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS AM Digest   V1 #160
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Sunday, 15 June 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 160

Today's Topics:   TV SF - Niven's ST Episode, SF Movies - Lost Ark,
                        Queries - Physics Imaginary & Klatuu,
                Replies - Imaginary Book & Telepathy & Computers in SF
----------------------------------------------------------------------

DMM@MIT-ML 06/14/80 17:41:51

Having just started to read Ringworld, I got about 10 pages into the
book, and ran across the description of the Kzinti, and a reference
to someone named Chuft-Captain. I immediately remembered a Star-Trek
animated episode entitled, I believe, "The Slaver Weapon", which also
dealt with Chuft-Captain, a Kzinti. Is this a blatant Rip-off, or did
Niven write this episode? I can't seem to locate any of my books that
would help me find this out.

-DMM

[ The animated Star Trek episode was written by Larry Niven. Actually
  the episode is a loose adaptation from an earlier short story of the
  same name. The major characters in the short story were Nessus and
  a human couple. In the episode, Sulu and Uhura took the role of the
  human couple and Spock took the role of Nessus.  --  RDD  ]

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1980 at 0251-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

From an interview with George Lucas in the May 18th New York Times:
"Lucasfilm will produce a $20 million 'old-fashioned' adventure film,
'Raiders of the Lost Ark'....  about a treasure hunt by a soldier of
fortune for a lost ark that may be Noah's[.  T]he movie takes place
just before World War II and is based on a story Mr. Lucas wrote 10
years ago."

------------------------------

Date: 13 Jun 1980 1436-PDT
From: Andrew Knutsen <csd.knutsen at SU-SCORE>
Subject: query

     I am curious about any early and/or odd devices for doing away
with physical laws... eg FTL travel. For instance, I recall a '50s
book by Blish which involved some silly thing about light travelling
slower within matter (it doesnt, tho it seems to) and thus for some
reason they made a huge magnetic field in their ship... Whats the
earliest of these rationalizations (after 1905)?

------------------------------

RWT@MIT-ML 06/14/80 05:27:08 Re: Klaatu Query + Necronomicon

Anyone who believes they possess any special knowledge about the
phrase "Klaatu barada nikto", please tell me:

   1. its authentic spelling,
   2. its precise meaning in use, and
   3. its translation into English; it appears to resemble Russian.

BTW there is an English "version" of the Necronomicon recently brought
out in paperback. It includes a comparison of terms used by Lovecraft,
Aleister Crowley, and I believe Sumerian lore.  Look in the occult
section of your bookstore.

------------------------------

BARRYG@MIT-MC 06/14/80 23:32:51 Re: telepathy stories

And how about the Manning Draco stories - Manning Draco, the only
terran ever to develop a secondary mind shield!

------------------------------

Date: 15 JUN 1980 0113-PDT
From: WONG at USC-ECL
Subject: Telepathy and computers in SF

A Novel by Ingo Swann, the title of which escapes me has both psi and
computer elements to it. The story is about a man who telepathically
infiltrates a nationwide computer network run by a mythical US
government agency called DARPA.

Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress features a computer
as one of the major characters.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS AM Digest
**************************

Date: 16 JUN 1980 0428-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #161
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 16 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 161

Today's Topics:    TZone Film Festival, SF Books - Budrys Review,
               Replies - Telepathy, TV SF - Quiz & Niven's ST Episode,
                   SF Movies - Cheech and Chong, TESB - Pot Pourri
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1980 1845-PDT (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: TWILIGHT ZONE FILM FESTIVAL -- Proposed Date
         [ see SFL V1 #153 for more information ]

Response to my offer of an "early" TZFF has been rather substantial,
so I've been attempting to derive a good date for the event.

My primary concerns are:

1) making sure that most people who are coming to L.A. from the
   outside world will be around
2) not interfering with primary Westercon activities

It has been suggested to me that most people arrive the day before the
convention itself, or earlier.  The convention begins on July 4, so it
has been recommended that I schedule for the night before, which is
THURSDAY, JULY 3.

I have no feel for how this will convenience/inconvenience people.  I
need some feedback from associated individuals as to whether this will
be a problem.  If so, you gotta help me pick a date that WON'T be a
problem!

Normally, I start my TZFFs at around 7 or 7:30 PM at UCLA...

Comments?

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1980 1122-PDT
From: Stuart McLure Cracraft <McLure at SRI-KL>
      Don Woods <Don at SU-AI>

By Algis Budrys        (c) 1980 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

     Major trends in speculative fiction are represented by this
column's mixed spacebag. Most indicative of the outstanding tendency
is Gene Wolfe's ''The Shadow of the Torturer'' (Simon & Schuster,
$11.95); it's science fiction in the mode of fantasy. The fact that
it's Vol. 1 of a tetralogy is even more typical of Gene Wolfe.
     The move toward hefty or multi-volume works began with young
sword-and-sorcery writers influenced by Tolkien. Heroic fantasies
are today's Gothics, and as easy to generate.
     But with a market for long stories established, older and more
experienced hands are dealing themselves in. Most of them learned
their craft in days when SF stood almost solely for science fiction.
It's taken them a while to convert from techniques born of the
60,000-word magazine serial, but they're beginning to arrive.
     Gene Wolfe is at their head. He may very well be our best
technician - an attribute subsumed by so many additional gifts that
it's not difficult to call him SF's best genuine novelist. It takes
a born artist even to propose a sympathetic story about an apprentice
torturer's passage toward manhood, in a culture so intricately evolved
that it no longer cares what starships were for. Wolfe does it in a
style that combines the flavors of James Branch Cabell at his most
picaresque and Guy Endore at his most somber; again, an accomplishment
which must justify itself by nothing less than total success.
     What results is a sometimes risible, yet page-turningly tense and
ominously dark narrative. No one could have thought of an approach
like this before Wolfe demonstrated it. By the time the fourth volume
appears, this Nebula-winning author will have become unchallengeable
in a reputation as one of SF's most potent names. Editor Dave Hartwell
is to be congratulated for this uniquely powerful underpinning to
Simon & Schuster-Pocket's ambitious new SF line.

    ''New'' writer Robert L. Forward is new in the sense of being
the latest in a series of scientist-essayist-novelists fostered by
Judy-Lynn del Rey. Like James P. Hogan or Tony Rothman, Forward
does ''hard'' science fiction that calls for rigorous scientific
speculation to back its exotic locales and picturesque aliens.
     Unlike some others, Forward writes not in the crude
''superscience'' prose developed in the 1930s, but in the best Golden
Age manner that evolved from it. The principal narrative thread of
''Dragon's Egg'' (Del Rey-Ballantine, $9.95) makes epic heroes of
an astonishingly sympathetic alien race living on the surface of a
wandering neutron star. Hal Clement at last has a peer. Del Rey
trade books are showing immense promise.

     Alfred Bester's ''Golem100'' (Simon & Schuster, $11.95) is
the latest novel from this master wordsmith. It fully supports his
reputation for pyrotechnical incident and typographic trickery. (In
this case, artist Jack Gaughan does the pictures that carry major plot
developments onward). What is not like the Bester of old is that this
tale of hideous murder and outre pursuit in a future New York abandons
all adherence to the magazine-SF plot dicta that called for closely
resolved structure. Other old masters who originally proved the
effectiveness of those rules are also beginning to discard them
abruptly. This will be even more evident in Robert Heinlein's new
novel from Fawcett Columbine later this year.

     A very interesting entry from Dell's paperback SF line is
''Beyond Heaven's River'' ($1.95), by Greg Bear, a talented and
serious new writer. The protagonist is a Japanese naval aviator,
snatched from the Battle of Midway by enigmatic aliens and made
immortal. Taken to a distant planet where he is allowed to
reconstruct and repeat Japanese history from its beginning,
he grapples for centuries with the question of individual
responsibility.
     Found at last when human civilization reaches star-traveling
levels, he becomes both a tester of essentially western cultural
biases and the subject of crucial psychic pressures from ''us.''
     Well done, with an unusual yet attractive central character
beset by a fresh and thoughtful problem, this book shows where the
Gene Wolfes of the next decade will come from. Dell's Jim Frenkel
is doing the future a service with this sort of selection.

     Norman Spinrad's ''Songs from the Stars'' (Simon & Schuster,
$11.95) represents the latest in SF's growing number of counter-
cultural novels, which attempt to reconcile inner and outer space.
Not as mystical as last year's ''Stardance,'' more ambitious than
this year's ''The Sheriff of Purgatory,'' the story follows a
post-World War III couple representing the best of a culture founded
on the ecotechnologies of muscle, sun, wind and water. Somehow, they
must bring to their people the transcendent interstellar messages
found by practicing the forbidden art of rocketry.
     The moral dilemma is meticulously established and dealt with.
The dialogue is hip, deriving exactly from the late 1960s and thus
intersecting squarely with the largest demographic population segment.
It will be highly revelatory to follow how this book fares both in
sales and at award-giving time, and to compare its performance to
its immediate predecessors.

     Incidentally, in case you doubted it, audience reaction to the
new Star Wars film, ''The Empire Strikes Back'' fully justifies the
tie-in novel of the same title (by Donald F. Glut, $2.25) from
Ballantine-Del Rey. But I wouldn't hold up Glut as an exemplar to
any SF writing classes.

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1980 at 0652-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS
Subject: Correction for The Pritcher Mass
         [see CSD.Knutsen's msg, SFL V1 #158]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Author of THE PRITCHER MASS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Gordon Dickson, not Michael Crichton.

------------------------------

Date: 15 JUN 1980 1309-EDT
From: CHUQUI at MIT-MC (Charles F. Von Rospach)
Subject: Ingo Swann Story

The title for the Ingo Swann story was 'Star Fire', and involved the
protagonist (almost an anti-hero) being able to walk his mind through
a computer net to pick up passwords from computers (read their minds?
or just the disks?). Anyway, it generally did wonders to system
security, although a UNIX encrypting set up would have been enough
to stop him. Beyond that, I didn't think it was very interesting
(parts of it are supposed to be, VERY unoficially, of course, auto-
biographical. Swann is a 'psychic' who has wriiten a couple of books
on PSI and the like.)

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1980 1505-PDT
From: Donald R. Woods <DON at SU-AI>
Subject: Quickie Quiz  

What is wrong with this excerpt from the "TV Tonight" column for next
Thursday, by Bernie Harrison (Washington Star Syndicate):

. . . . ''Buck Rogers'' (NBC at 8) will be a tad more grownup next
season, NBC says. Meanwhile, here's one about an Amazonian planet,
cowritten by a man who should have known better, D.C. Fontana, the
story editor for ''Star Trek'' . . . .

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1980 1210-PDT
From: Harry <OPER.KZIN at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Correction for The Slaver Weapon
         [see DMM's msg, SFL V1 #160]

I believe that the title of the original short story is "The Soft
Weapon."  It can be found in the collection "Neutron Star."

------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1980 1417-PDT
From: Richard Pattis <REP at SU-AI>
Subject: The new Cheech & Chong movie

There was a sneak preview out here in Palo Alto about a month ago.
I didn't attend, but the title it went by was, "Cheech & Chong Make
Number Two."

Rich

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 at 0035-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THE FUTURE OF SW/TESB MESSAGES ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

From its context, I am confident that Roger's sign-off for the PM TESB
Digests, "...as we move on to other aspects of SF", does not mean that 
the topic is no longer welcome.

Nevertheless, SF-LOVERS' interest span is typically brief.  Probably 
a lot of readers would be pleased if they never saw another message 
on the subject.  For others, it wouldn't matter whether they did or 
whether they didn't.  And then there are the few of us die-hards.

Why not put the SW/TESB messages somehow \apart/ so that they can be
easily by-passed by those who have had their fill?  E.g., always at
the end of an issue?

[ I terminated the Star Wars PM Editions because the volume of mail
  about Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back has decreased to a
  level which does not require special handling. This does not imply
  that there is no mail about Star Wars or that mail about Star Wars
  is unwelcome. "...as we move on to other aspects of SF" simply
  acknowledges the fact that other subjects are beginning to receive
  more attention.
  Regarding placement: The Star Wars messages cannot be placed
  anywhere but at the end of the digest since they will contain
  spoilers.  --  RDD  ]

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/16/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss some of the developments in The Empire Strikes Back. People
who have not seen TESB may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 15 Jun 1980 at 0652-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SW MISCELLANY ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Since holographic projections (holacrums?) look just like supernatural
visitations from dematerialized Jedi, in that Galaxy-far-far-away, how
could anybody recognize a real ghost if they saw one!?!

(I just ran across that term 'holacrum' in the fairly recent pb,
 PANGLOR by Jeffrey A. Carver [Dell, April '80].  The word seems to be
 formed on the pattern of 'simulacrum', so that its meaning is readily
 perceived-- IF you know 'simulacrum'.  Does anyone know if 'holacrum'
 is in actual technical use?  Only used in s/f?  Only used by Carver?)

When Luke has been blown out the window during the fight scenes and
is struggling to climb back up onto the catwalk, for a while there's
a moving black area at the top left of the screen that looks as if
it might be the bottom of Vader's cloak (and boot?).  If so, one
wonders why that is there without Vader being clearly shown. My best
hypothesis is that this is a left-over from something cut out, like
Owen Lars' line at the table in SW-4, "I \told/ you to forget it",
where a prior "forget it" line did at one time exist.  If this
hypothesis is valid, this may be a blooper. (Compared to the dozen
or so in SW-4, they're being awfully hard to find in SW-5.)

The classic spiral galaxy outside the viewing window occurs only in
the film, so far.  All other copies of that shot have just a "stellar
dust cloud (?)".  Judging by the position of one particularly bright
star (or cluster), the galaxy m-i-g-h-t be M-31 in Andromeda reversed
from right-to-left...or, even better, seen from the other side than
we view it from Earth.  Perhaps Dr. Forward could say?

Tho DERWAY is puzzled at the "bizarre" order in which the SW movies
are being made, and Lucas started in the middle because that would
give him the best segment for a single film rather than because of
any canons of literary criticism... amusingly, it is a tradition
going back at least to Virgil and maybe even the Greeks that the
proper place to start an epic is "in media res", in the middle of
things. Among the practical reasons for not making the 3rd trilogy
until after the 1st trilogy, as most reports have said, might be that
this would give 9 years for Mark Hamill to mature to some extent out
of his "perpetual juvenile" look.

Somebody questioned the state of medical practice in the TESB universe
because Luke was only provided with a mechanical hand rather than a
cloned one.  However, there is certainly evidence that knowledge of
cloning existed.  Admittedly all we know about the Clone Wars is that
Obi-Wan served Leia's father during them.  But, the non-use of cloning
techniques may be a result of those wars or the conditions which led
to the wars.  (See DERWAY's message in SFL V1 #152) It is even possible
that the Empire makes use of cloning (for eeeeeeevil purposes, of
course), but that honorable Rebel medicos (human or 'droid) do not
because it is "wrong".

------------------------------

BYTE@MIT-AI 06/15/80 08:56:04 Re: "Clone" wars?

What evidence is there that "Clone" in this context means what we
THINK it means?  I find it hard to believe that the first trilogy of
the STAR WARS saga will be based on "Clone"ing in this context.

------------------------------

YEKTA@MIT-MC 06/15/80 18:08:31 Re: Darth graphics...

If you happen to own a Heathkit H19, you may try :IMPRINT DARTH VADER
YEKTA; .  Do not run CRTSTY if you want to do this, it will simply
ruin it.  :TCTYP GLASS is fine.  This is a scene from a real time game
we have down here, I use it as a test file for testing file transfer
from CALTECH to MIT. ( It has allsorts of funny ASCII characters... ).

Have fun...

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 17 JUN 1980 0413-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #162
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Tuesday, 17 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 162

Today's Topics:          Masquerade, SF Books - Dragon's Egg,
                Physics Imaginary - Psi & FTL, Imaginary Books - Dune,
                 TV SF - Prisoner & Quiz, SF Movies - Reviews & TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 5:24 pm PDT (Monday)
From: Pettit at PARC-MAXC
Subject: "Masquerade" solving

I'd like to collaborate with anyone else out there trying to solve the
riddles and puzzles in "Masquerade", Kit William's fantasy/game book
for children and adults.  It's admittedly not sci-fi, but it seems to
be as close to it as some of the other stuff discussed in this digest.
For those of you who haven't heard about Masquerade, it's one of those
arty children's books, but with a twist.  The artist-author made an
exquisite filigree pendant of gold and gems (a photo is on the book's
back cover), then buried it somewhere in Great Britain, and hid clues
to its "precise location" in the book's many riddles, puzzles, and
intricate full-page surrealistic illustrations.  A big treasure hunt
is now sweeping England, but the puzzles are intriguing in their own
right.  Nobody has found it yet, but the author claims that "the
treasure is likely to be found by a bright child of ten with an
understanding of language, simple mathematics, and astronomy" (and
aren't those subjects among the interests of most SF Lovers?).

The plot can be summarized thus: Lady Moon falls in love with the Sun,
and wishes to tell him of her devotion, but cannot herself because
everytime she gets in the same part of the sky as him, she fades away.
So she fashions the pendant of the story, and commissions Jack Hare to
deliver it to the Sun.  On the way he has many adventures, some of
which involve solving riddles.  He is aided by Sir Isaac Newton, who
makes cryptic remarks like "All my life I seem to have been only like
a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then
finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst
the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."  Finally
Jack Hare reaches the Sun but discovers he has lost the pendant.  The
reader is then told, "If you were to read this book again, you might
discover when and where the hare lost the jewel.  If you do, then go
and find it, and keep it for yourself."

I've answered all the riddles (I think), but can't figure out the
meaning of any of the four puzzle squares which appear in the
illustrations. I won't go into this in any further detail until I
find out if others share my interest in it. If so, I propose that the
puzzles be described in regular messages for the benefit of those who
don't have a copy of the book (it costs $12.95 and, being imported,
is kind of hard to find), while all solutions are put in the spoiler
section.

/Teri

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 0313-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: random talk

I finally got hold of Dragon's Egg (I had to order it; although I
did spend some time running around asking for it in bookstores) -- I
cannot reccomend it highly enough.  A funny parallel struck me as I
read it-- the situation can be compared to that in Hoyle's "The Black
Cloud." [aside: a friend of mine, hearing that there was a request on
SF-Lovers for stories with black main characters, suggested I nominate
the Cloud...] The physical relationship between a cheela and a human
is certainly close to that between a human and a cloud.

I have not been so aware of fractions of seconds since I did the disk
routines on the old IBM 1130 back at school...

My intuitions don't quite follow the mechanism of the compensator
masses all the way. Admittedly, I haven't done the math, but it seems
to me that if you're sitting in an orbit and looking in the direction
of your travel, (1) objects at head and foot move away, ie there are
tidal "forces" pulling apart up and down; (2) objects placed to your
right and left will move toward you (since their orbits will cross
yours a quarter-revolution ahead) so there is a compressive sideways
tide; but (3) an object placed ahead of, or behind you in your own
orbit should just sit there, no?  Wouldn't the compensator masses
overcompensate forward (hrrmph) and back?  Perhaps there's some
relativistic effect I'm unaware of (or some Newtonian one I
overlooked, quite possible) or misunderstood the geometry of
the compensator masses.

I notice Forward has a character named Niven.  Niven generally puts
characters named Forward in his stories; he claims that it brings him
good luck. Perhaps there is another relativistic effect I'm unaware
of?

Dr. Forward: Your picture on the dust jacket makes you look much too
jolly and personable to be addressed in the honorific...  How do you
prefer?

The two ways-to-circumvent-natural-laws I can think of are both Analog
speculative science type things, both (as far as I know) off the wall:
the Dean Drive and the Hieronymous Machine. These are late John
Campbell syndrome items -- I was briefly interested in the Dean Drive
when G Harry Stine claimed someone had come up with a theory that
explained it and had used the theory to derive Planck's Constant...
The Dean Drive was a reactionless drive that worked by vibrating a
mass at varying rates.  It used real motors and consumed real power,
and produced a real force.  The force seems to have been due to
differential dynamic coefficients of friction rather than a new term
in F = ma.  The Hieronymous machine was a psi amplifier of some random
variety.  Both are patented.

		--JoSH

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 1010-PDT
From: Dave Dyer <DDYER at USC-ISIB>
Subject: FTL rationalizations

One of my favorites is a marginally faster than light means of
communication. It is only alluded to, not centrally important, so
the details are kind of sketchy.  The basic idea is that if you
flatten out the "waves" of ordinary electro-magnetic radiation, they
will get there faster.  If memory serves, this turkey appeared in
"Macroscope".

 Actually, my favorite rationalization for FTL travel is Niven's :
that space is warped into a kind of singularity by large masses (i.e.
the sun) and that if our physicists would only do their experiments
outside the orbit of Pluto, they'd SEE that Einsteinian relativity is
really a special case of ...

------------------------------

Date: 13 June 1980 0540-EDT (Friday)
From: Mike.Inners at CMU-10A (C621MI10)
Subject: Nonexistent books to quote from

I'm surprised no one mentioned any of the many books in FOUNDATION
and the DUNE trilogy. In both stories (all six?) every chapter starts
out with a quote from a non-existent book.  Also, the OC Bible from
Dune is quoted quite extensively throughout the text, not just in
the chapter headings. There wasn't really enough quoted to get a
good feeling for the content of the book, which is too bad because
the history sounds quite interesting.  I wonder if any modern-day
'ecumenical' organization would have the guts to do anything
similar.

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 12:12 pm PDT (Monday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: McGoohan / "Scanners"

Seems to me I heard somewhere that McGoohan's "Scanners" is based on
the Cordwainer Smith story "Scanners Live in Vain" (found in the SF
Hall of Fame, volume I). As I recall the story had little to do with
either totalitarianism or ESP.

The source of this rumor may have been a "Prisoner Rap Session" (aired
on channel 54 in the Bay Area) in which hard-core Prisoner fans get
together in front of a camera and exchange sophistries on the meaning
of life and the individual's role in relation to Society.  That may or
may not lend it any special credibilty...

			-- Greg

------------------------------

Date: 16 JUN 1980 1202-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Mr. D. C. Fontana & Don Woods's "Quickie Quiz" in SFL V1 #161

  As a former resident of the Washington DC area, about all I can
say in response to DON's message is "What do you expect from the
Washington STAR?"

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 1829-PDT
From: Admin.Kanef at SU-SCORE (Bob Kanefsky)
Subject: Don Woods's "Quickie Quiz" in SFL V1 #161

What's wrong with it?  It's sexist, that's what's wrong with it.
Any self-respecting Californian could have spotted that. The writer
assumed (probably without thinking about it) that D[orthy] C. Fontana
is a man, when in fact she's a woman.

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 12:02 pm PDT (Monday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC

A couple of reviews:

		THE BLACK HOLE

I'm ashamed to admit I actually sat through this turkey a second
time. In case you haven't already heard, and are considering seeing
it (it is a Hugo nominee), DON'T.  It has no redeeming qualities
whatsoever. Poor Walt must be spinning in his grave. My only excuse
is that the second feature was Sleeping Beauty (not SF, but good
entertainment in the classic Disney tradition). Nuf said on that.

Coming up next Saturday 6/21 at half-past-noon on KTVU in Oakland
(channel 2):

		THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE

This 1972 anticlassic tells the tale of a mixed crew of astronauts,
Soviet/American and male/female, en route to Venus, who witness World
War III and the destruction of the earth due to the aforementioned
Machine.  An indication of the level of this movie is the buffeting
the spacecraft receives as fragments of the shattered mother planet
whiz past.  All kinds of hatreds and passions come to the surface as
the crewmembers realize they are the last survivors of the human
race.  Murder and rape raise their ugly heads before sudden crisis
reunites the crew.  The crisis takes the form of an air leak; oxygen
is now in short supply and (you guessed it) the aging doctor must
sacrifice himself so that the young couples can survive.  Things go
from bad to worse and by the time they reach Venus only two survivors
remain.  They prepare for a landing only to be frustrated by the
final embarassment: Venus is already inhabited by a vast all-knowing
intelligence which doesn't want primitive violent earthmen horning in
on its territory.

The credits for this movie list its release date as 1972.  I'm
skeptical; hairstyles, costumes, and a wealth of misinformation about
the second planet place the true vintage closer to 1966. My guess is
that the film sat on the cutting room shelf for a few years before
being released. Why, I can't imagine.

Be that as it may, it's a fine example of the worst in movie SF.  Bay
Area fans take note. Later that same afternoon (6/21), on channel 10:

		THE MAGNETIC MONSTER

This one I haven't seen, but I do recall seeing Lauren's review of it
in SF-Lovers [see SFL V1 #74,76]. If you get channel 10 (I don't) you
might want to catch it.

			-- Greg

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/17/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss some of the developments in The Empire Strikes Back. People
who have not seen TESB may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 1211-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Holacrum

What a crummy word. The coiner should be shot.

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 06/16/80 03:47:32 Re: TESB: Holograms.

I didn't think the holograms looked at all like jedi ghosts. I
was suprised at how poor the holograms looked. They seemed to me
to have easily decernible and none too fine raster lines.  They
did not resemble Ben on Hoth, or Dagobah, at all.

------------------------------

Date: 16 JUN 1980 1201-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Taun-tauns; painting?; colored stars?

  Aside from the fact that the taun-tauns were not sterling examples
of stop-motion animation (which makes them look jerkier than they
should) I can offer two suggestions as to why they look wrong:
  1. The steps do not flow into each other smoothly--this is probably
a reflection of the difficulty of doing something like that in S-MA,
but the visual effect is hop(pause)hop(pause)hop(pause)hop rather
than lope-lope-lope-lope, which is more like a natural movement---the
closest living thing that moves like a taun-taun might be an ostrich,
which gets up to speed and stays there rather than making discrete
hops.
  2. The ostrich is possibly also the heaviest creature that can move
that way (with the exception of the primates, which are visibly built
upright rather than balancing a bent-over body with a huge tail).
Kangaroos and other animals which travel by picking up forelegs
usually hop rather than lope when they get up to speed---the loping
is a side-to-side motion that a creature that heavy would have trouble
doing without falling over sideways.
  If anyone runs into Bonnie Dalzell they should ask her, since her
academic specialty is the closest to xenobiology we can now get, but
this seems a reasonable explanation.

  I was under the impression that the entrance to the Massassi
stronghold was a series of mattes rather than a painting --- an actual
photograph of Tikal National Monument in Guatemala with the MF matted
in.

  Most people who look at the stars can't see colors under our
atmosphere --- while colors would be reasonable in the shots in
space, most people would misunderstand them.

------------------------------

Date: 15 June 1980 05:30-EDT
From: William B. Daul <DAUL at MIT-MC>
Subject: TESB notes

1. In the credits for the "rebel forces" there is only one woman
   mentioned.  I counted 3 or 4 women in the rebel command post
   on HOTH.
2. There are NO women fighter pilots!!!  Tisk...tisk!
3. There are some characters on the door in the rebel headquarters
   that accompany a symbol that looks similar to the current
   radioactive material sign.
4. The movie is just as good the second time...this special STAR
   WARS edition of SF-LOVERS gave me thing to look for in the film
   I wouldn't and didn't notice the first time.
5. Bobba Fet's space craft DOES look like a converted iron.  I don't
   remember who mentioned it, but they were right.  Look close when
   you see the film!
   [ It was mentioned by Mike Urban <MIKE at UCLA-SECURITY> in
     SFL V1 #152 (SW #19).  --  RDD ]

--Bill

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 18 JUN 1980 0520-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #163
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Wednesday, 18 June 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 163

Today's Topics: SF Books - Dragon's Egg, Queries - Niven & Gene Eng SF
                 & Plot/Title & SpaceCon, Replies - Imaginary Books &
                Computers SF & Telepathy, SF Movies - Horrible & TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 17 JUN 1980 1649-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Compensator masses and neutron star tides in Dragon's Egg

     JoSH asks some good questions.  I tried to make things as clear
as possible without having Sieko give another one of her lectures,
but I am afraid it didn't quite work.  I had a section complete with
diagrams in the technical appendix, but Lester del Rey took them out
as being too technical.  The tidal effects of the star and their
cancellation by the 6 compensator masses was calculated carefully
using a computer model. I initially had only 4 masses, but this gave
too small a region of low tides.  I had to go to six masses to get a
volume of low tides 7 meters in diameter, big enough to hold Dragon
Slayer.
     JoSH's use of masses in orbit helps to visualize these effects.
However, the problem with the masses ahead and behind you in orbit
is that they are not in the same tangent PLANE as your center of mass.
If they were, they would be in slightly HIGHER elliptical orbits, and
they will come at you at an acceleration of 101 gees per meter of
initial separation.  A better example is to imagine that you have four
balls on a flat table.  The center of the table is obviously the "low"
point and the balls will move toward the center. (we actually built a
four bubble level here at Hughes that measured the gradients of the
earth that way.)  All this still holds if you are in free fall,
provided you don't try to rotate to keep facing the star.  Then you
put in centrifugal forces (at 5 rps in a 400 km circle they too
amount to 101 gees per meter.)

     I did fudge a bit on the compensators.  Their rotating motion
about Dragon Slayer is almost the same as their natural orbit about
the neutron star, but not quite.  I used magnetic coupling, herder
probes and a wave of my hand to make everything work right.

     The reason for a character named Niven is because originally he
wanted to write the story.  I offered to work out the neutron star
physics, did so, and gave it to him.  He then said that he was so busy
working on Lucifer's Hammer that he didn't know when he would get a
chance to write it.  The physics had fallen into place so well that I
knew there was a good story there, but it looked as though there was
only one way that I would ever get to read that story...

     I also have a character named after Frank Drake, who was the
first to suggest the possibility of life on a neutron star.

     As for names, I have a problem. I have a son, Robert D. Forward,
(RODOF@USC-ECL), who is also writing science fiction.  So
professionally I try to always use the full-blown "Dr. Robert L.
Forward" .  However, if you ever ask for an autograph, you will get
"Bob Forward".

       ===>Bob Forward

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jun 1980 2059-EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH at RUTGERS>
Subject: Re: Compensator masses and neutron star tides in Dragon's Egg

Thanks...  I'm glad you wrote it; I like Niven but one person can only
write so much.

How much is known about chemistry in degenerate matter?  Is neutron
coupling real?  If so, you should have 3 degenerate phases
corresponding to solid, liquid, and gas; I guess the last would be
plasma, so instead of being a "fourth phase" it would really be a
sixth.  You want to make a REALLY fast computer?  None of this old,
slow Josephson-junction stuff...

I guess that the only Nit I can pick in DE is that I would have pegged
the computer development (software, I mean) shown as vintage 1990
rather than 2050.

	cheers,
	--JoSH

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jun 1980 (Tuesday) 1258-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)
Subject: Niven Queries

In what stories does Niven have characters called "Forward"?

'Nother Niven question -> from my readings it would seem Louis
G. Wu is the step-son of Beowulf Schaefer by Carlos Wu and Sharon
Somebody-or-another.  I can site the references if pressed.  This
relationship is never explicitly mentioned, and in "Ringworld" when
the "Longshot" is mentioned, the FTFTL (faster-than-faster-than-light)
ship which was used by Schaefer to go to the galactic core Wu gives
no notice of having been the son of the former owner.  What gives?

                     Dave

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jun 1980 at 2356-CDT
From: amsler at UTEXAS
Subject: Genetic Engineering Applications in Science Fiction

The recent news re: patenting life forms, esp. life  forms  which
perform  tasks  not  previously done by any living organism (e.g.
digest petroleum as in oil spills) leads me to query  what  range
of applications  have  been  presented  in  the SF literature for
organisms with such capabilities. I don't think I'm  particularly
interested  in  the  "plague" plots for they don't really require
any  NEW  organisms,  what  I'm  interested  in  are  genetically
engineered  microorganisms which affected the natural environment
in ways that plagues (or blights for plants) do not.

  Two instances come to mind. Niven's universe of Known Space had
 at  least  two.   The "whatever" that attacked the semiconductor
 material of Ringworld's civilization and the Stage  Trees  whose
 use as rockets was deliberately developed. (Were there others in
 Known Space?). "Mutant  59  -  The  Plastic  Eaters"  represents
 another  in  which  something  got  loose  that  ate most of our
 plastic products.

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 0928-PDT
From: CSD.EADAMS at SU-SCORE

I'm looking for the name of a story that I read some time back --
it's in the anthology Spectrum 3. The story is about a man who becomes
aware of the fact that the Universe is running down and man's time is
at an end. He has an odd friend who lives in a strange house--a "three
dimensional representation of the square root of -1", whose radio
antennas trained on pulsars demonstrate that the pulars are counting
-- DOWN. He begins to sleep more and more every night, and finds
curious creatures--a spider which spins its own nerves out in its
thread; a turtle with a layer of lead under its shell (protection
against WWIII), etc. It's a very odd story, and I'd like to get hold
of it, but I can't seem to find a copy of Spectrum III ANYWHERE.

				Ernest

[ The Spectrum III story is The Voices of Time by J. G. Ballard.
  It is available in the collection The Best Short Stories of
  J.G. Ballard; Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.  --  RDD ]

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jun 1980 2248-PDT
From: WRS at OFFICE-2
Subject: SF-CON II, Space Con 8

Can anybody tell me anything more about these?  When, where, who,
etc.?

Thanks --Bill

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jun 1980 (Tuesday) 1258-EDT
From: ROSSID at WHARTON (David Rossien)
Subject: Fictitious References

Concerning fictitious references in SF -> Micheal Crichton (someone
tell me how to pronounce that) has a protaganist Dr. Stone in his
book "Andromeda Strain".  This doctor wrote his dissertation on
"Sterilization of Spacecraft".  In the back of the book is a list
of references, and along with the real ones is the reference to
"Sterilization of Spacecraft".

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jun 1980 (Tuesday) 1806-EDT
From: WESTFW at WHARTON (William Westfield)
Subject: lazarus Long, computers and telepathy in SF

Can someone supply a list of the Heinlein books that L. Long appears
in?  (is this only Methuselah's Children & Time Enough for Love ?)

now, some books that havent been mentioned yet (as far as i remember)

Computers:
  The God Machine (author forgotten) - what happens when a computer
    has the power to take its program literally, and how to hypnotize
    people using a graphics display.
  [ The God Machine was written by Martin Caidin.  --  RDD ]

Telepathy:
  Clarke: The City and the Stars -- also fits the computer catagory.
  Niven: World of Ptavvs -- why hasnt anyone mentioned this yet --
    the last survivor of the Slaver race comes to life (out of statis)
    and wrecks havock
  Harrison: Deathworld -- Psi plays an important part, though it isnt
    present in most of the book.
  Jean+Jeff Sutton: The Beyond, and some other juveniles.. one of the
    first SF books I ever read, and if i remember, not too bad (a
    beyond is telekinetic)
  Henry Kuttner: Mutant -- connected short stories tracing development
    of telepathy from freak (persecuted) mutation to world-wide
    acceptance, via the development of artificial means of telepathy.
    Again, not bad.

Thats all for now
Bill W

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 2210-PDT
From: Achenbach at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Telepathy

Spider Robinson's "Telempath" is a novel with a couple of interesting
twists.  And since everyone is talking about the Star Trek episode
Larry Niven wrote, how about the Slavers, and in particular "World of
the Ptavvs".

/Mike

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 0033-EDT
From: CCIS.ZEVE at RUTGERS
Subject: Telepathy.

I think we have forgotten to mention one of the great epic SF works
involving telepathy (or maybe some one did mention it).  I mean
Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality.

I scanned briefly thru my SF collection and found the following
things:

   1) 14 Great Tales of ESP   (I know it was already mentioned)
   2) Mutants - edited by Silverberg   (not all of these are
                                        telepathy stories)
   3) The Third Ear - Curt Siodmak
   4) Hot Sleep: The Worthing Chronicles - Orson Scott Card.

Also isn't everyone telepathic in ERB's Barsoom stories?

This is from a superficial glance along my shelves (i skipped right
past Slan and didn't realize until I saw it in SF-L).  I can't
remember all the plots of all the stories anymore, and I can't
afford the time for an exhaustive search, it would detract from
my reading time.

Is anyone keeping track of the books that have been mentioned here?
Is anyone interested?  especially in keeping track of short stories?

		Steve Zeve

[ All of the book references are maintained as part of the archives.
  Anyone interested in sifting the archives to produce a concise
  reference for any of these queries should feel free to contact me
  for whatever help I can render (eg. bringing together several
  people who want to work on such a reference).  --  RDD ]

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 0928-PDT
From: CSD.EADAMS at SU-SCORE
Subject: SF Telepathy...

Has anyone else read "Star Rangers" (subsequently reprinted under the
title "The Last Planet") by Andre Norton? The underlying premise of
the whole thing is a little silly, but the action is very exciting,
and the telepathy made real and impressive. Creatures which serve as
psi "bugs"--basically a transmitting set into which their masters can
tune to watch what is going on--, draining psi power from other minds
to build up one's own, mind shields, implantation of false memories,
and so on--Norton has created an entire area of human existence and
richly populated it with people and powers.

				Ernest

------------------------------

Date: 17 June 1980 19:07-EDT
From: Jef Poskanzer <AQE at MIT-MC>
Subject: Horrible SF movies revisited.

On Friday, June 20, at 5:30 pm, the UC theatre in Berkeley, CA is
showing an all-night marathon called "The Golden Turkey Awards".  The
name comes from the book of the same name (Perigee, $6.95).  I don't
know whether this is some kind of promotional package for the book,
or whether the theatre is solely responsible, but either way it looks
pretty horrible.  Quoting from the program:

   Fabulous junk from Hollywood and beyond: the movies too bad to
   hate and too ridiculous to believe in a mind-warping all-evening
   marathon.  Among the titles: the immortal "Plan Nine From Outer
   Space" (voted the Worst Film of All Time in Harry and Michael
   Medved's best-selling book) and "How I changed My Sex (Glen Or
   Glenda)", both by the Life Achievement Award Winner for Worst
   Director, Edward D.  Wood, Jr.; the all-midget Western "The
   Terror of Tiny Town"; the cult monstrosity "Attack of the Killer
   Tomatoes"; "Robot Monster", starring a man in an ape suit with a
   diving helmet on his head; "Rat Fink A Boo Boo", winner of the
   Worst Title Award; plus (oh no!) much more.  For the discerning
   connoisseur of cinematic trash.

So, here is a chance for masochistic Bay-area SF-LOVERS to see their
favorite movies on the big screen.  Admission is (I think) $2.50.

Also, why do you think it is that the proportion of SF movies that are
horrible is so much larger than the proportion of horrible mainstream
movies?
---
Jef

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/17/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss some of the developments in The Empire Strikes Back. People
who have not seen TESB may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 17 June 1980 10:10-EDT
From: Frank J. Wancho <FJW at MIT-MC>
Subject:  TESB Release

In general we get most of the major releases in El Paso along with the
rest of the country, except for a few obscure films available only in
NYC and LA.  For some reason we are finally getting TESBs premiere in
a second run neighborhood theatre tomorrow (Wednesday).  Are there any
other parts of the country in a similar situation of getting a late
release?  Anybody know the reasoning behind this?  --Frank

------------------------------

Date:  17 June 1980 11:53 edt
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  TESB Women Fighter Pilots

You want women fighter pilots? GO watch Battlestar.

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jun 1980 1226-EDT
From: MYERS at MIT-XX

In case anyone is still interested, I thought it was clear Hans coming
out from the image of Ben on the ice planet demonstrated that Ben had
used the force to direct Hans to the right place.  How else could he
have found Luke in that great wilderness?

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 13:03 PDT
From: Weyer at PARC-MAXC
Subject: TESB

a few questions/observations:

Solo and Luke can both get the girl if Leia has a clone wandering
around somewhere.

Unless the dangerous part of hibernation occurred only at freezing
time, I don't understand why they didn't try thawing out Solo right
away to make sure they had no bugs in the process?  He was alive in
there but how undamaged.  Was freezing a drastic way of making sure
your prisoner wouldn't escape during transport, serve some other
purpose, or just an interesting plot twist.

If indeed Ben, Luke, Darth, and Emperor are possibly clones (not
necessarily from the same person), I'm wondering how the first trilogy
will handle keeping things more or less ambiguous for the later movies
unless they look different or aren't all in the same place at the same
time (assuming the eventual ordering of films is 1-9 rather than
4,5.... ).

if in fact new interpretations are possible by say viewing film 5
before 4 and if Yoda eventually remarks that there is no time (the
force seems to be able to circumvent it somewhat by providing peeks
into the "future"), then new insights should be hidden in the 9!
possible permutations by considering films out of order to be
flashbacks or peek aheads -- though to view them all could be an
expensive (profitable though to Lucasfilms) and time consuming
operation.

Steve

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 19 JUN 1980 0341-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #164
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 19 June 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 164

Today's Topics:     TZone Film Festival, Replies - Forward refs &
               Imaginary books & Gene Eng SF, Physics Imaginary - FTL,
                       Things at a WORLDcon, SF Movies - TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 18 Jun 1980 0045-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Twilight Zone Film Festival [ see SFL V1 #153 for more info ]

The various feedback I have received has led me to conclude that
July 3rd is a good date for the festival.

So.....

I hereby declare that the TWILIGHT ZONE FILM FESTIVAL will be held
in room 4000A (subject to announced change) in Boelter Hall at the
UCLA campus, on Thursday, July 3, 1980, commencing at 8 PM.

I suggest that people arrange to car pool to campus as much as
possible, since you will have to pay to park. Unfortunately, on
July 1, the fee is being raised from the long-standing $1.00 for a
visitor entry to a new ridiculous $2.00 -- but such is beyond my
control.

Information on how to find UCLA and the festival will be forthcoming..

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 18 JUN 1980 0847-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Stories with characters called Forward

     As far as I know there is only one, "The Borderland of Sol"
published in ANALOG in 1974.  However, in "The Hole Man" in ANALOG
in 1973, Niven mentioned a Forward mass detector.  Both of these
stories resulted from my first visit with Pournelle and Niven in
1973, and both won Hugos.  The two stories, plus some of Pournelle's
recollections of that first meeting are in the collection "Black
Holes" edited by Jerry Pournelle and published by Fawcett.

    Joan Vinge's "View from a Height" also mentions a Forward
observatory, her thanks for the idea of a one-way manned infrastellar
mission which came from a lecture of mine that her husband heard.

     Bob Forward

------------------------------

Date: 18 Jun 1980 1726-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: re: genetic engineering

Genetic engineering stories go way back, starting with Wells' "First
Men in the Moon" and moving through "Brave New World".  Most are
interested in modifying people rather than bugs, though. A good
discussion of what you might call the long-term industrial uses of the
field is given in an article by Freeman Dyson called "The World, The
Flesh, and The Devil".  It's reprinted in Sagan's "Communication with
Extraterrestrial Intelligences".  He starts by noting (like Gerard K.
O'Neill) that the planets of the solar system are not good places for
colonization, as they either lack your basic organic chemicals or
drown them in a deep gravitational well.  A better choice would be the
`dirty snowballs' out in the cometary halo.  Not only do they have
more raw materials, but they have more surface area.  Dyson proposes
using (highly) modified trees to develop them. The trees are rooted on
the comets and then can grow out for hundreds of miles.  Their leaves
consist of a large parabolic reflector to collect the weak sunlight
and a green bulb at the focus, much like Niven's sunflowers.  The
reflector is non-living and so does not have to be kept warm.  The
trees produce oxygen, water, apples...; everything you need for Eden.
The inhabitants swing among the branches and make love in zero-gee.
The inner part of the solar system, rich in energy and heavy elements
but relatively crowded, is left to ordinary kinds of machinery,
although Dyson feels these will be made self-reproducing.  An
interesting article in an interesting book.

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jun 1980 1306-EDT
From: Peter Kaiser <PKaiser at BBND>
Subject: Fictional books in SF

"The Hipcrime Vocab" and other works by Chad C. Mulligan in John
Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar".  One of my favorite definitions
from THV:

  Coincidence:  you weren't paying attention to the
  other half of what was going on.

---Pete

------------------------------

Date: 17 Jun 1980 1550-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: more FTL fantasies

My favorite faster-than-light drive is the Bloat Drive from "Bill, the
Galactic Hero" by Harry Harrison.  The drive reduces the electrical
attraction between the protons and the electrons in all the atoms of
the ship, thus causing them to expand.  The ship grows until its nose
reaches the star its going towards and then shrinks forward.  I'm not
quite sure how this evades relativity, but it makes for a touching
farewell scene as Bill sees his home planet float out the door.

------------------------------

Date: 18 JUN 1980 1625-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: What's at a WORLDcon?

The following special exhibits are planned for Noreascon II:

COSTUMES: a collection of prizewinning costumes from masquerades over
the past several years, ranging from Sally Fink's "Beauty and the
Beast" through Suford Lewis' Beldan 'Ribbons' Dress (from A TALE OF
TWO CLOCKS) to Laurie Mann's "Daughter of Blob".

BALLANTINE ART EXHIBIT: original material published in FAIRIES, Brian
Froud sculpture, and possibly some material created for fantasy works
currently in progress in TV and movies.

NASA: a photo mosaic showing New England as a satellite sees it and a
1:15 scale model of the Space Shuttle. (we tried for a moon rock but
someone had a prior reservation on it).

FANZINES: an assortment of SF fanzines (not "fan magazines", please;
that means STARLOG et al.) covering 40+ years of fan activity.
Historic stuff in cases and facsimile copies for reading.  See the
primitive predecessors of SFLovers!

THE FANTASY SHOWCASE TAROT DECK (also known as the Fan Tarot Deck): A
complete Tarot deck of 84 cards (including a Lady in each suit, and
the Great Trumps SEPARATION (XXII) and the FARRIER (XXIII), created
by 84 SF artists over a period of 11 years (artists include Rick
Sternbach, Eddie Jones, Wendy Pini, Victoria Poyser, and George Barr).
The artwork will be exhibited in its own room (the largest original
is 4' x 6') and will be on sale as a deck (full color, boxed with
booklet) at the con and (at a discount) by advance order.  Edited
and published by Bruce Pelz, Noreascon II's Fan Guest of Honor.

Plus a demo of small-computer games currently on the market, a
strategic games room, a reading room containing copies of the Hugo
nominees, and possibly artwork from National Geographic's new book
on space.

Plus the usual convention exhibits: an artshow with 200+ 4' x 6'
panels, and a dealers' room with ca. 270 tables and booths including
an exhibit from MGM on CLASH OF THE TITANS, the next Harryhausen film.

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/19/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss some of the developments in The Empire Strikes Back. People
who have not seen TESB may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

DMM@MIT-ML 06/18/80 20:49:24
RE: HITCHCOCK@CCA's comments on Taun-Tauns... [see SFL V1 #162]

My understanding of part of the {problem with stopmotion animation,
is that since the object being photographed isn't moving when it is
filmed, there isn't the slight blur that one would have in each
frame if it were really moving, and thus it just doesn't look quite
realistic. One thing that can be done to fool the viewer, is to move
the camera, panning past the subject, but this still isn't perfect.
You might ask LARKE@ML - He told me about it.  One place that
particularly bothered me though, was when one of the creatures
stopped atop a small hill, and turned to look to the left. However,
it seemed that the top half of it's body swiveled, while the bottom
stayed perfectly still...just as though is were actually two pieces,
not a living creature...

------------------------------

Date: 18 Jun 1980 at 0103-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TESB DISCUSSION-- A SALUTARY VIEW ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The most valuable comments don't always get made on SF-L.  Sometimes
like this one by ACW@MIT-AI, they occur in person-to-person exchange.

 "I find it quite conceivable that Lucas hasn't yet decided whether DV
 is really Luke's father. He quite cleverly kept all his possibilities
 open.  Indeed, if he had said everything very clearly, left fewer
 doubts, his "universe" would have less flexibility and resilience,
 and probably would contain many more logical contradictions than it
 does.  And yet we SFLs argue about "paternity" as if we could somehow
 decide the issue. Not one person has said, "Isn't it neat how Lucas
 left his options open?" I am amused to see how assiduously the SFLs
 hunt for Yoda's "Last Hope".  But Lucas could do anything. Maybe Yoda
 lied and there is no last hope at all.  Lucas can have Yoda do
 anything that Lucas wants Yoda to do (within bounds of reason: after
 all, Frank Oz could resign).  We never seem to discuss what it would
 be reasonable to expect of Lucas AS AN ARTISTIC CREATOR rather than
 as someone who is contracted to produce a consistent universe. Lucas
 operates more within esthetic constraints than within logical ones.
 Only a couple of people have pursued lines of thinking that I
 consider really interesting, i.e., finding motifs in common with
 other heroic fiction (for example)."

Allan is right!  Isn't it neat how Lucas left his options open?!


^^^^^^^^^^ Ooops!  NOT the "Book of the Whills", EITHER ^^^^^^^^^^

But rather, the JOURNAL OF THE WHILLS.


^^^^^^^^^^^^ HOW DID HAN FIND LUKE IN THE BLIZZARD? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Contrary to MYERS@MIT-XX [see SFL V1 #163], it seemed to me that Luke
was wearing some kind of signaling device which Han (and the search
plane the next morning) was able to home in on.

------------------------------

Date: 18 Jun 1980 10:13 PDT
From: Woods at PARC-MAXC
Subject: MYERS@XX msg in SFL V1 #163

How else could Han (not Hans!) have found Luke in that great
wilderness?  How about by a tracer signal?  What do you think R2D2 was
trying to pick up on its antenna just before the doors were closed?
How did the search party find them the next morning?  Obviously there
was some sort of signal being sent that was unable to reach all the
way to the stronghold during the storm.  The significance (if any) of
Han coming out of Ben's image is still unknown and probably immune to
further discussion.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 20 JUN 1980 0525-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #165
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Friday, 20 June 1980      Volume 1 : Issue 165

 Today's Topics:    Physics Imaginary - FTL, SF Books - 0G Love,
                 Replies - Telepathy & Gene Eng SF, SF Movies - TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 06/19/80 1042-EDT
From: KG Heinemann (SORCEROR at LL)
Subject:  The BLOAT DRIVE

  The BLOAT DRIVE described by ICL.REDFORD is NOT a faster-than-light
drive. The reason for this is that changing "the attraction between
charged particles" also changes the speed of light.  Maxwell's
equations predict that the speed of light is inversely proportional
to the square-root of the "universal" constant of electrical
attraction and repulsion. While reducing this constant would allow
Harry Harrison's spacecraft to expand, the speed of light would also
increase.  This scheme cannot evade relativity because electrical
attraction and the speed of light are dependent manifestations of the
laws of electromagnetism.  Furthermore, it is logically impossible to
evade relativity through any hypothetical tampering with the
electromagnetic forces.  Enjoy,

                                     KGH

------------------------------

Date: 19 Jun 1980 0100-PDT (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Love at Zero-G

In the last digest, mention was made of an artificial environment
where people would "make love at zero-g", or something similar. That
triggered a memory which forced me to go searching through my book
collection.

I recommend the short story, "Love and Gravity", by Pierre Boulle
(author of the original "Planet of the Apes"), in his collection,
"Time Out of Mind".

The story considers some of the possible ramifications of attempting
copulatory activities in a "weightless" condition.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 19 Jun 1980 1012-PDT
From: Alan at LBL-Unix (Alan B. Char (BKY))
Subject: Telepathy

I just finished a novel by Pamela Sargent called WATCHSTAR which
dealt with telepathy, telekinises, and stuff like that in a pretty
slick way.  Made some heavy-handed social commentary, also, or maybe
I'm sensitized from my ethnic studies class last quarter.  At least
she found a way of explaining telepathic powers in a way that makes
sense (to me).  Overall, I enjoyed it and recommend it.  This was a
recent acquisition from the SF Book Club, for those who are members.
--Alan

------------------------------

Date: 20 Jun 1980 02:00 EDT
From: Roger Duffey <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: Current Responses to the Genetic Engineering
            Applications in Science Fiction Query

Several people have mentioned Niven's Known Space Stories:

  The tnuctipun of Niven's Known Space cycle were genetic engineers
  par excellence; their creations include bandersnatchi (whitefoods),
  sunflowers, stage trees, etc.  None of these are microorganisms;
  however in WORLD OF PTAAVS we find that the Earth was originally a
  Slaver food planet populated by tailored yeasts.  After the empire
  fell the yeasts evolved into the life forms we know now. In A GIFT
  FROM EARTH there was a virus or something which attacked human
  skin, replacing it with baby-smooth fresh skin as a rejuvenation
  technique.  There were also heart-and lung-beasts, artificial
  symbiotes used for transplants in place of "donated" human organs.
  In PROTECTOR the human protector Brennan devised forms of
  tree-of-life virus which could live in apples or yams; there was
  also a contagious form developed which needed no vegetable vector.
                                       --  Greg <Kusnick at PARC-MAXC>

  A GIFT FROM EARTH (Larry Niven) includes in the variety of
  replacements for the organ banks a [bacteria] culture which
  revitalizes the skin -- dip in a few fingers and it works its
  way up your arm.                         --  Chip <Hitchcock at CCA>

  In Niven's Known Space there are several other examples of genetic
  engineering. The Slaver sunflowers come immediately to mind, as do
  the Bandersnatchi (eventual cause of the fall of the Slaver empire,
  no?).                                    --  York.Multics at Multics

  Sunflowers, Bandersnatchi, and stage trees were also mentioned by
  Pete Kaiser <PKaiser at BBND> and Don Erway <DErway at AI>.


The Dune Trilogy and the Consentiency Novels by Frank Herbert:

  Another example of genetic engineering for human convenience is
  the chairdogs in Frank Herbert's Whipping Stand and The Dosadi
  Experiment.  These are decendents of current-day dogs, bred to
  serve as chairs, and to adjust to the contours of the people that
  sit on them.  They even give massages!  --  York.Multics at Multics

  Various creatures, plant and animal, in "Dune" (Frank Herbert).  
                                     --  Pete Kaiser <PKaiser at BBND>

Varley and the Robinsons also have creatures like Dune's sandtrout,
as well as a number of other creatures:

  Varley's work has the symbiotes, plant like things that live
  in, on, and around a person's body, and the two form the perfect
  environment for each other, with the plant collecting sunlight,
  and a few trace minerals occasionally. This allows people to live
  indefinitely long out in space, but has its draw-backs. It is
  irreversible, and the plant uses your brain in some way to think,
  and thus is in constant intimate contact with your thoughts. Note
  that in this universe, people were given the technology for this
  sort of genetic engineering by an outside, "greater" intelligence.
    Same sort of thing in the Robinsons' STARDANCE, and again, from
  an outside source, this time the symbiot is supplied directly by
  this greater intelligence.
    P.S. Isn't AI like genetic engineering? Well how about micro-code?
                                          --  Don Erway <DErway at AI>


And then there are the less well known stories:

  A number of stories come to mind on the subject of usefully (or
  otherwise) tailored microorganisms:
    "Natural State" (Damon Knight) includes bacteria which collect
  and deposit specific metals; in fact, \everything/ outside of the
  sterile, dying cities is tailored (plants that absorb iron and
  deposit it in useful shapes, turtles whose shells are glass, large
  nuts that grow into house shells, etc.). In THREE NOVELS and RULE
  GOLDEN AND OTHER STORIES.
    THE CLONE (Ted Thomas and Kate Wilhelm)--"a green mass comes up
  out of Chicago drains and eats housewives"--interesting and
  believable technical description of how the "clone" is "born".
                                           --  Chip <Hitchcock at CCA>

  Hal Clement, in NEEDLE, had a Pacific island industrial town
  centered around the conversion of vegetable matter to crude oil
  by tailored micro-organisms.         --  Greg <Kusnick at PARC-MAXC>

  Aluminophages and, I think, some other engineered microorganisms in
  "Stand on Zanzibar" (John Brunner).       -- Peter <PKaiser at BBND>


And lastly the almost unknown stories (ie. queries):

  A story (title and author forgotten) in which distant future robots
  reconstruct humans from cell plans (?).   -- Peter <PKaiser at BBND>

  I seem to recall many stories using various mutated life forms as
  food sources: algae, yeast, fungi, even cloned tissue cultures from
  meat animals.  The names of them all escape me however.
                                        -- Greg <Kusnick at PARC-MAXC>

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/20/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss some of the developments in The Empire Strikes Back. People
who have not seen TESB may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 18 Jun 1980 at 0252-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TESB RELEASE PATTERN ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

As I recall reports about TESB distribution, it was to begin showing
in 125 "major" theatres on May 21, and at other theatres about June
19th.  The "major" 125 were presumably those which had facilities
for 70 mm film and full Dolby sound.  The 2nd-string-ers took 35 mm
film and (probably) stereo sound.  There may be later releases at
3rd-string-ers which also use 35 mm but only monaural sound.

What has puzzled me is a reference in the local campus paper to TESB's
opening day take.  It broke records at all but 2 of those 125.  One of
the non-record-breakers was-- a drive-in that got fog-bound!  IS there
a drive-in with facilities for "full Dolby"?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "OFFICIAL" SW NEWSLETTER ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Perhaps someone who goes to a con where there's a Man From Lucasfilm
could get an answer to the above?  BANTHA TRACKS, the newsletter of
"the official SW fan club" purportedly answers fan queries, but
actually only rarely contains much other than what goes out in
press releases.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ EXTERNAL VIEW OF MASSASSI STRONGHOLD ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Chip Hitchcock has confused 2 views of the structures in Yavin's
4th moon. [ see SFL V1 #162 ] There is indeed a photo of Tikal in
Guatemala, with the Falcon matted in.  This is followed by the
"painted backdrop" view of the facade, with, in the middle-distance,
the small transport vehicles carrying the people from the MF to the
base.

------------------------------

Date: 19 June 1980 1315-EDT (Thursday)
From: Warren.Wake at CMU-10D (N680WW60)
Subject: TESB

Admittedly, it's been a while since I've read THE HOBBIT, et al, but
has anyone noted the similarities?  Could Luke really be a clone of
Bilbo?  Could Obi-Wan really be a clone of Gandalf?

--Hmmm

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 21 JUN 1980 0410-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #166
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 21 June 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 166

Today's Topics: WORLDcon Speakers, Prisoner, Physics Imaginary - FTL,
                 Replies - 0G Love & Telepathy & Crichton & Lazurus,
                          SF Games - MUD, SF Movies - TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1980 1109-EDT
From: Leslie Turek <turek at LL-ASG>
Subject: Noreascon II Science Speakers

The Noreascon II Committee is looking for people who can give
interesting talks on current science topics such as ai, genetic
engineering, etc.  Does anyone out there have useful contacts with
possible speakers?  As a matter of fact, is anyone out there a
possible speaker?  Please send replies to turek@ll-asg.  Thanks.

------------------------------

JBARRE@MIT-AI 06/21/80 00:35:17

     I have heard a rumor of sorts about the "Prisoner" from a friend
out in California.  He was told (by a British actor) that Sir Lew
Grade (the big man in British TV at the time) told McGoohan that he
was not doing quite as good a job as he (Grade) wanted.  Reportedly
McGoohan told him what he could do with "The Prisoner " series.
McGoohan ended up in America like a lot of other British actors, and
his boss became Lord Lew Grade. I don't know exactly how much faith
to put in that story, but I thought it might as well be kicked around
with all of the other rumors.

---Julie.

------------------------------

Date:  20 June 1980 05:03 edt
From:  SSteinberg.SoftArts at MIT-Multics (SAS at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  FTL

I read a random story about infinite velocity in an 188x Scribner's
magazine.  It was called the Tachypomp and involved a poor math
student after the hand of his math professor's daughter.  He calls
upon his Prussian math tutor for aid when he is asked to attain
either infinite or just very high (1000mph back then was outrageous
- older stories have speeds of 55-60 mph completely terrifying and
intrinsically mind boggling).  The mechanism is a hairy levered
Perpetual motion machine involving smaller things moving faster.

It is easy to make a shadow move faster than light although this
doesn't buy you much unless of course you happen to be a shadow.
(This might explain how Agatha Christie did her Mr. Quin).

------------------------------

LEOR@MIT-MC 06/20/80 22:56:34 Re: makin' it in 0G

Then, of course, there's Zero Gee by Ben Bova (in Again, Dangerous
Visions) in which Kinsman tries for the first conquest in space...
	-leor
[ This story was later incorporated into the novel Kinsman in a
  slightly different form.  --  RDD ]

------------------------------

Date:  21 June 1980 02:20 EDT
From:  Roger Duffey <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject:  Current Responses to the Telepathy in Science Fiction Query

From the Consentiency Novels by Frank Herbert:

  Examples of psi users are the Calebans and Taprisiots, from
  Herbert's Whipping Star/The Dosadi Experiment. The big drawback
  there was that in order for a human to communicate to or through
  these beings, it was necessary to enter a communication "trance"
  which left the user in a helpless, almost catatonic state.
                                       --  York.Multics at MIT-Multics


A pot pourri of titles:

  I'm surprised that THE DEMOLISHED MAN hasn't been mentioned as a
  telepathy SF story.  Also other stories, although somewhat obscure,
  are MINDFLIGHT and HERDS by Stephen Golden.  The latter was a
  LASERBOOK (ya, remember those?)  which Roger Elwood actually did
  read before buying.  Look for these in huckster rooms--they're
  excellent (and my praise has nothing to do with my being a Kathleen
  Sky-Golden groupie).              --  Mike Vilain <Vilain at MIT-MC>

  After some minor rearranging of my collection, here are some
  overlooked titles on telepathy.
     Martian Chronicles (Bradbury) (see Mars is Heaven and Ylla)
     A Boy and his Dog (Ellison)
     the Dragonriders series (McCaffery) 
     The Dueling Machine (Bova)
     The Silver Corridor (Ellison) (same plot as Bova, basically
       since they both involve machine strengthened telepathy)
                                  --  Chuck Von Rospach <CHUQUI at MC>


And lastly of course, a query:

  The reference to one of Henry Kuttner's stories triggered my
  recollection of a set of Kuttner's short stories about an absolutely
  delightful family of psi-loaded hillbillies.  I can remember neither
  titles nor sources, but they dated from the '50's and helped me get
  into sf in a big way.           -- Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT at USC-ISI>

------------------------------

Date: 18 JUN 1980 1158-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Crichton

  I've always pronounced "Crichton" as cry-tun---but I don't promise that
that's correct.

------------------------------

DERWAY@MIT-AI 06/19/80 00:02:43 Re: Reply to query in SFL V1 #163

In re. Lazarus Long in Heinlien stories. He also appears, trivially,
in THE PAST THROUGH TOMORROW, which contains METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN.

		Don

------------------------------

Date: 20 JUN 1980 0833-EDT
From: NIGEL at MIT-AI (Nigel Roberts)
To: Adventurers Inc.
 
Mud News #1
___________

Essex University, England		20.June.1980

This is the first issue of a newsletter designed to keep people
up to date with the progress of the Essex Multiple User Dungeon.

If you wish to receive further copies of it, please send a short
note via NETMAIL to MUD@MIT-AI.

The Multiple User Dungeon is defined as a database in the MUD
Definition Language, which itself is implemented in BCPL. Using
shareable, writeable high-segment technology, up to 36 players
are allowed to be in the same dungeon, and can interact with
each other.

An experimental system is up and running on the Essex PDP10 and
it is hoped to have a version for export to other 10s and 20s by
September.

Contact MUD@MIT-AI for further details.
[2011,2653]

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/21/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss some of the developments in The Empire Strikes Back. People
who have not seen TESB may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 20 Jun 1980 1606-EDT
From: OSTROFF at RUTGERS
Subject: dolby at drive-ins

In reference to a drive-in being a first release theatre for TESB - 

 It depends  what you  mean  by full  Dolby.   As I  remember  from
conversations  with  overzealous  stereo  salesmen  there  are  two
techniques called  Dolby.  One  has  to do  with a  tape  recording
method to reduce this hiss  usually heard on casettes.  (I  suppose
this could be applied to a magnetic recording on a film, although I
don't know how  useful it would  be for an  optical sound track.  -
Does anyone know which is more commonly used these days?)
 The other technique called Dolby is used in FM radio transmission.
(I remember having heard strange noises on FM station, which the DJ
claimed to be a  signal for calibrating  Dolby receivers.)  I  have
been to drive-ins which have removed all the speakers on the  poles
and instead have  both AM  and FM transmitters.   The latter  could
easily by  FM Dolby,  considering the  sophistication of  many  car
radios these days.

 --- Jack Ostroff ---

------------------------------

Date: 18 Jun 1980 at 0252-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ COLORED STARS IN TESB? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Among the 6 (good quality) glossy color prints from TESB one gets for
(re-)joining the Official Fan Club is the shot of the Falcon pursued
by a Star Destroyer.  This is the shot which was mentioned in SF-L
recently in re what equipment the Falcon had.  Anyhow, in this print,
at least, the background very definitely has red (and faint blue)
stars!  Well, that's a step in the right direction.

(The other 8x11 prints are: posed shots of--
   Han, Luke, & the tauntaun
   Yoda
   Han, Luke, Leia, & Chewie in the base on Hoth, pointing guns
and, very arresting shots from the film--
   Vader (Fett, Stormtrooper, & Ugnaught) by the carbonite freezer
   Vader & Luke when they first cross swords.)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TESB CREDITS? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Has anyone yet seen a "hardcopy" listing of the end-material of
TESB? I.e., credits and cast on paper?  It just goes too fast on
the screen...  all I caught was "Bridgette" for the auburn-haired
girl with the single line.  For SW-4, there was a full listing in
CINEFANTASTIQUE and in AMERICAN FILM, (and probably the program book),
but so far I've been unable to find any such full listing for TESB.

------------------------------

JBARRE@MIT-AI 06/21/80 00:35:17

     Someone (I don't remember who it was) asked a few days ago Han
Solo wasn't unfrozen to see if he was okay.  They were able to tell
by the monitors on the side of the "case" that he was alive. Besides,
Han would be unable to resist Bobba Fett in that state.  In QUESTAR
there was an interview with Mark Hamill in which he stated that
Harrison Ford did not know if he wanted to do another SW film again,
so that was a convenient out.  The interview seemed to have been
conducted about six months before TESB began its run. After the film
had been out for a couple of weeks, Ford stated on a local talk show
that he would be back for the next film, but said than Han "may buy
it" in the next episode.  He tactfuly dodged questions (as did Carrie
Fisher) on what the Han-Leia relationship may be.  As a conclusion to
the above, I would like to quote Lucas from the 19 May 80 TIME: "I'm
not out to be thought of as an artist...I'ts a big world and everybody
doesn't have to be significant....I'm not stopping to explain
anything--ever."

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 22 JUN 1980 0538-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #167
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 22 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 167

 Today's Topics: TV SF - Niven's ST Episode, Replies - Forward Refs &
                   Gene Eng SF & Computers in SF, SF Movies - TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 21 Jun 1980 0426-EDT
From: NIVEN at MIT-DMS (Marilyn Niven)
Subject: Niven references

     Adapting "The Soft Weapon" as a Star Trek cartoon episode was
Roddenberry's idea. Larry had originally submitted a story treatment
involving mini black holes.  Roddenberry thought that was too
complicated and suggested that Larry adapt "The Soft Weapon" to the
Star Trek universe, instead.  We know of one Known Space reference
in another Star Trek episode, where casual mention is made of the
Man-Kzin wars.  This was presumably done to add verisimilitude to
the Slaver Weapon episode.  The original story treatment eventually
became "The Borderland of Sol" and the Star Trek script was turned
back into a short story by Alan Dean Foster for one of the Star Trek
collections.  The universe operates in mysterious ways.
     There is a third Forward descendant in one of Larry's stories,
in "The Patchwork Girl", which was recently publised by Ace as an
illustrated book.  The first two stories containing such characters
have won Hugo Awards.  We certainly hope this tradition will not be
broken.

------------------------------

CHUQUI@MIT-MC 06/22/80 00:54:45 Re: One more genetic engineering story

Another genetic engineering story (with a twist) that I can think
of is 'In the Halls of the Martian Kings' by John Varley.  I think
his book 'Persistence of Vision' has been mentioned on this subject
already, but this story is a lot different and much more exciting (if
possible Varley) than his others. The twist is that the engineering
is done by Martians to help prepare the planet for rehabitation after
their 'Long Winter', and also allows a team of scientists from Earth
to survive after an accident destroys most of their party and their
pilot home. I would recommend any short Varley sight unseen anyway,
but this story is well above even his average...

chuck

------------------------------

Date: 22 Jun 1980 02:20 EDT
From: Roger Duffey <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: Current Replies to the Computers in SF Query

The current replies consist of a fairly long bibliography by Pete
Kaiser and several short messages. For brevity I have integrated
these short comments into the bibliography, crediting the author
as appropriate.  --  RDD

- - - - - - -

I've been into the bowels of my papers, and found the bibliography of
SF material; it's older than I remembered -- over 6 years old -- and
not much of it is commented.  Without [much] apology, here's the
original commented short list, entitled "Paperback Science Fiction
Novels, All Still Available [then], In Which Computers Or Artificial
Intelligence Are An Important Theme". -- Pete Kaiser <PKaiser at BBND>

Last Rites, Perry Michael Smith (Lancer)

   Features one of the few realistic descriptions of the way a real
   robosexual thinks and acts.  Will be attractive to aficionados of
   thomistic philosophy.

The Tin Men, Michael Frayn (Ace)

   Wild humor and good writing. Also has theologic overtones. Frayn's
   latest book, `Sweet Dreams', has gotten rather good reviews in the
   mainstream (i.e., not SF) periodicals.

Computer War, Mack Reynolds (Ace double with `Code Duello')

   Space opera (CPU opera) with lots of action. Basically, according
   to Reynolds, people are better than computers.

2001, Arthur C. Clarke (Signet)

The Funco File, Burt Cole (Avon)

   The System takes another beating.

Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner (Ballantine)

   I can't recommend this book enough. It has one of the most
   imaginative, realistic, and exciting mechanical protagonists
   in literature. The writing is innovative and entertaining.
   (This book has the distinction of having gone down in price
   by 25% from its original paperback issue [then]!)

The Jagged Orbit, John Brunner (Ace)

   A predecessor of `SoZ', with some of the same good kind of stuff.
   Not quite as good, but still very entertaining.

Dune, Frank Herbert (Ace)

   This book's principal theme is ecology (one principal theme,
   that is; it's a big book with room for lots of principal themes).
   Computers are a theme by logical negation: the story takes place
   in a far future after a complete revolt against the use of machines
   in place of humans.

No Room For Man, Gordon Dickson (Macfadden),
   also known as `Necromancer'

   Somewhat the same "theme by logical negation", but this book tells
   the story of how it happens.  A potboiler as well.

The Steel Crocodile, D.G. Compton (Ace)

   A very good novel. If it hadn't been published in a well-known line
   of SF, you might not notice it isn't quite factually real.  Compton
   is a fine writer.  His characters are real persons.


That's the end of the original short commented bibliography, which I
put together for people at work (a commercial consulting firm).  In
the next months after doing it, I accumulated a few more titles with
no comment:

"Thou Good and Faithful" (story), John Brunner (Astounding 1953 as
   "John Loxmith"), collected in his `Now Then!' (Avon).

"Problem for Emmy" (story), Robert Sherman Townes (Startling Stories
   June 1952), collected in `Of Men and Machines', Arthur O. Lewis,
   ed. (Dutton).

"The Reading Machine" (story), Morris Bishop (The New Yorker 1947),
   same collection

"The Hour of Letdown" (story), E.B. White (The New Yorker 1951),
   collected in his `The Second Tree From the Corner', also the
   collection named above

"There Will Come Soft Rains" (story), Ray Bradbury, collected in his
   `The Martian Chronicles', also the collection named above

"For a Breath I Tarry" (story), Roger Zelazny, collected in `Alpha
   One', R. Silverberg, ed.

"Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne" (story), R.A. Lafferty, also the
   previous collection

"The Weather on the Sun" (story), Ted Thomas, collected in `Orbit
   Eight', Damon Knight, ed.

"Eyebem" (story), Gene Wolfe, collected in `Orbit Seven'

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (story), Harlan Ellison

   Also mentioned by Chuck Von Rospach <CHUQUI at MIT-MC>.

"Dull Drums" (story), Anne McCaffrey, collected in `Future Quest'
   (Avon), also in her collection `Get Off the Unicorn'

"Top Stand-by Job" (story, aka "Stand-by"), Philip K. Dick (Amazing,
   October 1963), collected in his `The Preserving Machine'

"Franchise", "Jokester", "Someday" (stories), Isaac Asimov, collected
   in his `Earth is Room Enough'

"Solar Plexus" (story), James Blish, collected in `Beyond Human Ken',
   J. Merrill, ed.

"Computers Don't Argue (story), Gordon Dickson, collected in
   `Analog 5', J.W. Campbell, ed.

"Countercommandment" (story), Patrick Meadows, also in `Analog 5'

"The 64-Square Madhouse" (story), Fritz Leiber, collected in his `A
   Pail of Air'

"The Nine Billion Names of God" (story), Arthur C. Clarke, collected
   in many places, including `The Science Fiction Hall of Fame',
   Robert Silverberg, ed.

"Guinevere for Everybody" (story), Jack Williamson, collected in his
   `The Pandora Effect'

Mechasm, John T. Sladek (Ace), aka `The Reproductive System'

   If you like Vonnegut, you'll like this. - Harry <Chesley at SRI-KL>

Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Avon), aka `Utopia-14'


Some of these have already appeared in SFLD, but it's easier for me to
reinclude them from my notes than to check, even with all the awesome
power of modern computing at my fingertips. --  Pete <PKaiser at BBND>


And lastly two more additions:

The Computer Connection, Alfred Bester

   Better left forgotten.     --  Chuck Von Rospach <CHUQUI at MIT-MC>

The God Machine, Martin Caidin

   I'm glad someone finally mentioned The God Machine. It's
   the only one I can think of where the
   computer-that-tries-to-take-over-the-world has a really
   believeable motive.        	--  Harry Chesley <Chesley at SRI-UNIX>


------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/21/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss some of the developments in The Empire Strikes Back. People
who have not seen TESB may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

LLOYD@MIT-AI 06/21/80 22:12:07 Re: Dolby

There exist currently two flavors of Dolby noise reduction; type A,
for 'Professional' use; and type B, used in home entertainment devices
(cassette recorders, FM, etc.).  Dolby is only an encoding/decoding
scheme and can be used on any audio system (even drive-ins).

Dolby works by compressing/expanding different frequency bands in
a fashion controlled by signal level.  The type A Dolby (used in
recording studios) uses several frequency bands; the type B Dolby
only works in the 4-20Khz (hiss) spectrum.

					Brian Lloyd

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jun 1980 0426-EDT
From: NIVEN at MIT-DMS (Marilyn Niven)
Subject: TESB

     I am told that one of Lucas' sources is a book called "The
Hero With a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell.
     Craig Miller claimed that Luke did NOT teleport out of the
freeze-pit.  Rather, he performed an astonishing leap.  That, I
gather, is the official explanation of why he cannot teleport
himself to safety.

------------------------------

Date:  20 June 1980 05:03 edt
From:  SSteinberg.SoftArts at MIT-Multics (SAS at SAI-Prime)
Subject:  TESB

At the end of SW4 I was sure that Han was going to use the goodies the
rebels gave him to pay off Jabba but I guess he crossed the old man
(?) one time too many.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 23 JUN 1980 0513-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #168
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 23 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 168

   Today's Topics: SF Books - Dragon's Egg, Replies - Gene Eng SF &
                          Telepathy & Love, SF Movies - TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 Jun 1980 1355-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: Dragon's Egg

Given all the praise for "Dragon's Egg" by Robert Forward that I read
in SFL, I couldn't help but shell out 10 bucks for the hardback.  I
too recommend it very highly; it is the best hard-core sf novel that
I've read in years.  SF that actually introduces new scientific ideas
is so rare that I would advise everyone else not to wait for the
paperback, just to encourage this sort of thing.  However, I do have
some nits to pick.  I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but
there seems to be some basic problems with the amount of energy needed
to do some of the things attributed to creatures on a neutron star.
Plants, for instance, are said to be able to raise their canopies 1 mm
off the surface against the 67 billion gee gravity.  For a 1000 kg
canopy this requires 670 billion joules.  The plants get their energy
from the radiation of the crust, so assuming that crust is a black
body and the plants are 5 mm in diameter, they could theoretically
absorb 5000 joules per second. If they applied all of this to lifting
their canopies they could do it in 4.2 years; not long by our
standards, but impossibly long by those of the cheela.  Similarly,
there are problems when the character Swift-Killer climbs a cliff 5 mm
high (pg 266).  Assuming that she masses 100 kg and that the pods that
are her food take 150 turns (about one cheela year, or 30 seconds) to
mature and come from plants 5mm in diameter, she would need to eat
about 2.3 million pods to get the energy needed for the journey, and
this is assuming perfect efficiencies all the way through.  On the
whole, I'd say that the plants needed to absorb about five orders of
magnitude times more energy in order to match the numbers in the text.
   Another problem is that in the half million year history of the
neutron star, human beings happen to arrive during the week that the
cheela start developing.  The presence of the humans does affect the
course of cheela history even before there is direct communication,
but it is not claimed that their presence catalyzed the cheelas'
development.  Without such a catalyst effect, the coincidence is
too great.  If you threw a dart at the history of the earth the odds
against hitting the 5000 years of recorded history would be a million
to one.  The chances of finding humans, or even proto-humans, at all
would be about 5000 to 1 against.  Somehow human activity must have
aided cheela evolution.
   Such things aside, the book is definitely worthwhile.  Find it if
you can.

------------------------------

Date: 21 June 1980 04:23-EDT
From: William B. Daul <DAUL at MIT-MC>
Subject: GENETIC ENGINEERING (fact/fiction?)

Amsler at UTEXAS mentioned in SFL V1 #163 about genetic engineered
organisims. I would like to ask anyone if they know of the limitations
of the "oil-eating" bacteria.  Will it stop at just "oil spills" or
will/can it continue to eventually clean out the oil in my motor
vehicle?  --Bill

------------------------------

CHUQUI@MC 06/19/80 01:18:05

An interesting aside to the recent court case on the patentable life:
Now that the precedent has been set, where does the line get drawn as
to what life is patenetable and what isn't? Bacertium?  Fly eating
frogs? Pest eating birds? four armed factory workers?

Pam Sargent has an anthology out called 'Bio-Futures', which includes
Poul Anderson's 'Call me Joe', James Gunn's 'The Immortals', and 10
full pages of bibliography. This is a 1976 Vintage paperback that I
THINK is still in print. If not, I can enter the bibliography.

Another genetic engineering novel is Jack Williamson's 'Brother to
Demons, Brother to Gods', a novelized put together of his Analog and
Galileo stories of Jack Dunahoo and Buglet, where humanity has
modified itself and is getting rid of the non-modified people.

chuck (chuqui@MIT-MC)

------------------------------

FAUST@MIT-ML 06/20/80 10:35:28 Re: genetic engineering

     I read an interesting short story once entitled "Surface Tension"
by James Blish.
     The story has an interesting twist on the usual genetic
engineering format. In this case, a group of space cadets (themselves
the result of genetic engineering?) visit all these planets and
try to start human colonies on them. Well, given that some of the
environments are fairly harsh, on each planet they engineer up a new
race of humans that they think will fair well in that environment.
     In the planet that is the stage for the short story, they decide
that they will engineer a "human" species the size of single cell
beasties and populate the puddles of the planets with them.
     Well, to the micro-humans, the puddle is their universe which
they can never get out of because the "sky" has such a large surface
tension.  Until one day, a enterprising scientist discovers . . .

     All in all, a delightful tale. It can be found in the
"Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 1".

	Enjoy,
	Greg

------------------------------

Date: 22 Jun 1980 0311-PDT (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: PSI in novels

A novel that I don't think has been mentioned yet is:

"High Couch of Silistra"  by Janet E. Morris.  

It involves a woman who makes use of PSI abilities in an unusual
manner in the midst of performing an "old" profession.

--Lauren--

------------------------------

Date: 21 Jun 1980 12:17 PDT
From: Woods at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Love at Zero-G & the Tachypomp

Lauren mentioned [SFL V1 #165] a story by Pierre Boulle that
"considers some of the possible ramifications of attempting copulatory
activities in a 'weightless' condition".  Along similar lines, I
recommend Niven's "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex", which describes
the problems involved in propagating a race of Kryptonians on Earth.
I think it can be found in the collection, "All the Myriad Ways".

On a different topic, the "Tachypomp" story mentioned by SSteinberg
[SFL v1 #166] can be found (I think) in Fantasia Mathematica, an
excellent collection of mathematics-based literature (including,
for example, Heinlein's " . . . And He Built a Crooked House").

	-- Don.

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/23/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss some of the developments in The Empire Strikes Back. People
who have not seen TESB may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 18 Jun 1980 at 0252-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ETYMOLOGY OF "Yoda"? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

John M. says that the 3-consonant Hebrew root for "to know", as in
the Tree of Knowledge... is Y+D+<`ain> (a sort of H-like sound). 
And that "knowing" might be transliterated into English as "yod`a".

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SYMBOL IDENTIFICATION ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The symbols on the sign on the marked door on Hoth were probably
for danger.  In the novel and comic, some ice creatures were
captured and kept there.

Is there a (Terran) name for the reddish symbol on the sides of
Luke's helmet?  It has a very vague resemblance to an incendiary
symbol. Difficult to describe, I've heard it likened to the blade
of a headsman's axe (on bottom), with a trefoil (on top); or, a
3-crested chick in a broken eggshell.

In SW-4, each of the Rebel pilots' helmets is identified by a 
symbol different in shape or color from the others, which makes
sense for standard-issue garb you might want to grab in a hurry.
But in TESB, most of the pilots' helmets have identical symbols,
shaped like Luke's but in dark blue or black.

------------------------------

MASEK@MIT-ML 06/20/80 21:29:57 Re: Some Nit Picking about TESB

After seeing TESB for the second time I have 2 (I hope different)
comments:

  1. The Taun-Tauns move too smoothly, therefore they do not
     seem natural.
  2. FTL drive in SW is different, and slower than hyperdrive.
     Thus the probe droids can get visit thousands of planets
     in a rational amount of time, and interplanetary travel
     is possible although slow.

------------------------------

Date: 23 Jun 1980 02:20 EDT
From: The Editor
Subject: Responses on Luke's leap

The TESB novel makes it clear that Luke uses the force to leap out of
the freezing chamber.  That is why Vader says "impressive" when he
sees it: he can tell that Luke has made a lot of progress in learning
about the force.                        --  Leo Harten <LPH at MIT-MC>

... Luke's "incredible leap" had some telekinetic help by tapping into
the force, much the same way he pulled his lightsabre into his hand a
couple of times when he needed it.    --  Alan Char <Alan at LBL-Unix>

Yes luke does indeed leap out of the freeze pit, although fly might
be a more apt term. Vader also probably flies when you see him fall
off the platform and not hear him hit the ground. Flying is a parlor
trick for Jedi -- also note the fact that Vader uses his ability to
levitate to leap down on Luke (an attack) whereas Luke uses this
aspect of the force for defense.      --  Zig Mednieks <ZRM at MIT-MC>

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 24 JUN 1980 0539-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #169
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Tuesday, 24 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 169

 Today's Topics:  Genetic Engineering, SF Books - Under the Canopy &
                 Patchwork Girl, Replies - Self Ref & Computers in SF
                    & Imaginary Books & Klatuu, SF Movies - TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 06/23/80 23:55:27
Re: SCIENTISTS ON VERGE OF CREATING PLANT PEOPLE

     Talk about genetic enigineering! The above startling revelation
comes to us as the cover story of the current issue of the "National
Enquirer". Where else?

     To paraphrase this article - the funniest thing I've run across
since Elvis's clone in Official UFO - a U.S scientist has already had
partial success toward the goal by successfully fusing cells from a
woman with those of a tobbacco plant.
     "...It might be within our grasp in 5 to 10 years", declared
Charles Panati, an "eminent researcher".
     The details are hilarious and extensive, but to summarize the
future with sentient plants, we may have fruit-bearing plants in
Minnesota which pick up their roots and walk to sunnier climes in
the winter. They could also pick thenselves.
     You could grow killer cacti- walking hombres who can fire their
own seeds like bullets.
     Also giant oak trees, living for 200 or more years, contemplating
the universe.
     Or else you can have a sentient tree, recently discovered in
Brazil, which produces gas-like fuel. Merge it with people and you
have a tree which can reach out and serve you your own gas.

    All this and more through advance genetic engineering in the
next decade - according to the eminent researchers at the National
Enquirer.

------------------------------

Date: 23 Jun 1980 10:49 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: patentable life + Under the Canopy

As to what is patentable and what isn't, as I recall the key phrase in
the court decision was "not found in nature".

mini-review: "Under the Canopy" by Barbara Paul claims to be SF, but
it is really "The Ugly (Female) American in a Jungle Culture".  The SF
aspects of this are minute, the book could just as well have been set
on earth except that then the author would have had to do her homework
about an actual culture and she couldn't have realistically had female
protagonists in the time period this book would have to be set in.
HJJH, I guess this fits into your "women in sf" collection but really
it is only barely sf, regardless of what the cover says.

Karen

------------------------------

Date: 22 Jun 1980  3:28:39 EDT
From: David Mankins <dm at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: new niven book

There is a new Larry Niven book out, in 'large illustrated' format
(like 'The Magic Goes Away' was a year ago), titled 'The Patchwork
Girl'. from a cursory examination in the book store, it appears to
be a Gil Hamilton story. [ It is a Gil Hamilton story.  --  RDD ]

Also, some more entries in the 'self-referential science fiction'
category: in one of the star trek stories compiled by Blish, they talk
about the nasty old vegan culture, that the okies helped roust (just
in passing).  and in 'the long arm of gil hamilton' (i forget which
chapter), one character says, "What do you know about inertialess
fields?"  to which the other character replies, "Just what i learned
watching the Gray Lensman TV series when i was a kid..."

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jun 1980 0220 EDT
From: The Editor
Subject: More Replies to the Computers in SF Query

The Godwhale, Half Past Human (Part 2 of TG) by T. J. Bass

   Two more AI-related books by the little known T. J. Bass (A
   doctor, so his books are heavily into medical terminalogy
   and physiology, etc).  Both involve a hive-society in the
   far future which is run entirely by computers, nearly all AI
   to some extent, since the population of nebishes are utterly
   complacent and incapable of anything themselves (They sounds
   silly, but I liked them).      -- Ian Macky <Gren at MIT-MC>

I have run across two more (*sigh*) computer stories. Both are by Joe
Haldeman, both are in his anthology 'Infinite Dreams', and neither has
been mentioned before.         -- Chuck Von Rospach <CHUQUI at MIT-MC>

  "JuryRigged" (story) by Joe Haldeman

     Originally from 'Vertex' (anyone else remember that wonderful
     magazine?), a story of a man who is drafted to become a decision
     making entity within the computer that runs a major city complex.

  "Armaja Das" (story) by Joe Haldeman

     An interesting thing about computers, gypsies, a curse, and the
     end of civilisation.

The Bolo Series by Keith Laumer

   Keith Laumer's Bolo stories, collected in a book called BOLO (or
   possibly BOLO!), deal with the glory and the pathos of intelligent
   tanks.  Really good stuff, and often bitter sweet, in contrast to
   his very funny Retif series.      -- Jack Palevich <TANG at MIT-MC>

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jun 1980 0220 EDT
From: The Editor
Subject: More Imaginary Books

The Milky Way: Five Cultural Portraits, by Acreff-Monales

   Another entry in the 'fictitious books' category: The Milky Way:
   Five Cultural Portraits, by Acreff-Monales, which James Blish
   always quoted at the beginning of his Cities in Flight novels.
   (since by my count, the Web of Hercules was the fourth culture,
   and it and the milky-way, too were probably destroyed in the
   Ginnangu Gap, i've always wondered about the fifth culture).
   [ and a candidate for 'last best hope':  I think Yoda was talking
     about the Web of Hercules. ]   --  David Mankins <DM at BBN-UNIX>

from R.A. Lafferty's books

   Rather belatedly... R.A.Lafferty is, if I recall correctly, in
   the habit of quoting from nonexistent books at chapter breaks.
   I believe he's done this in some number (> 1) of his books. At
   least, I've always assumed that the quotations were from
   nonexistent books; for one thing, at least one of the authors of
   the "works" appears as a minor character in one or more of his
   (Lafferty's) works.  I can't recall any of the cited titles off
   hand, but so far as I know the texts are all unique to Lafferty
   and have not migrated to any other author.
                                        -- <SALawrence at MIT-Multics>

------------------------------

LARKE@MIT-ML 06/23/80 23:55:27 Re: Klaatu Query in SFL V1 #160

    NOW - To answer a question from last week about the language of
Klaatu in "The Day The Earth Stood Still"; mostly it has been spelled
Klaatu barrad nicto. There is an interesting article in the first
issue of "Fantastic Films", with a linguistic breakdown of the roots
of Klaatu's language. The author has discovered a distant relation to
a number of languages, primarily Latin. Klaatu of course is a name.
Barrada is nearly Latin for "stop barbarism."  Neco-atus is Latin for
death, kill, slay. Neco relates to the french "to bind." And there are
further , more obscure references, too. It's a most interesting
article.

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/24/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss some of the developments in The Empire Strikes Back. People
who have not seen TESB may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 23 Jun 1980 1040-PDT
From: Yeager at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Etymology

I always thought that yoda was a simple combination of
YOgA and buDdha.

------------------------------

Date: 20 Jun 1980 at 0834-CDT
From: david at UTEXAS
Subject: TESB Glorifies War

I'm probably hypersensitive. I did enjoy TESB for the remarkable
special effects. The acting and story seemed like comic book stuff
to me.  I was disturbed by the way the movie, intentionally or not,
strongly glorifies war. For the millions of people who see the movie,
they will see combat portrayed as a heroic, exciting adventure.

Few of the good guys get killed, and the ones who do, get it in a
very anonymous way -- no blood and guts to show the true effects of
war. The enemy is faceless and anonymous.  Much of the fighting was
a reflection of the way a bomber pilot can drop bombs on thousands
of anonymous people without a thought of the individual lives being
destroyed.

Guess I'd have to say I've become a hard core pacifist.

------------------------------

Date: 22 Jun 1980 at 1426-CDT
From: korner at UTEXAS
Subject: SW reality

    This question has been partially asked several times before but...
Given that TESB and SW4 are only movies (everyone seems aware of this
except for a few folks here at UTEXAS), why are we going to such great
lengths to make them real? Why are we behaving like excited
archaeologists with a long lost documentary film? Why do we search for
meaning in flaws or ambiguities that in another work (book or movie)
we would quickly dismiss? What about the movie/s make us want to
believe?
    I apologize for intruding a sociological question, I was a
psychologist once and old/bad habits die hard.
		-KMK

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jun 1980 at 0140-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ANY TEA-DRINKERS OUT THERE? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Can anyone help?  I don't drink Lipton's, and nobody I know uses
mixes.  But to get some STAR WARS "collector's items", we need
"Direction" statements from any of the following:

   Lipton Instant Tea
   Lipton Iced Tea Mix
   Lipton Tree Mix (any flavor)

If any SF-Lers who could let us have these labels would tell me
their address, I would provide stamped-self-addressed-envelopes
for sending the the labels and be very grateful.  (As soon as we
have enough labels, I'll post a no-longer-need message.)

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 25 JUN 1980 0632-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #170
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest    Wednesday, 25 June 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 170

    Today's Topics: Genetic Engineering, SF Books - Dragon's Egg &
                      Patchwork Girl & Lord Valentine's Castle,
                        Replies - Self Ref, SF Movies - TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

JDD@MIT-ML 06/24/80 22:33:55 Re: Genetic Engineering

One point: when the Supreme Court was considering the patentability
of new life forms, some of the arguments against it were that genetic
engineering was undesirable or unethical or just a bad idea.  The
Court's decision was that, although this might be the case, this did
not affect the \patentability/ of such life forms, and that it was up
to the Congress to legislate any necessary restrictions in the types
of genetic engineering actually allowed under the law.

------------------------------

Date: 24 JUN 1980 2142-PDT
From: FORWARD at USC-ECL
Subject: Nits picked from DRAGON'S EGG

     ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE picked two nits from Dragon's Egg.  The
temperature of the star will not support plants, and the cheela "just
happen" to be evolving to a technological civilization as the humans
arrive.  The first one is not a small nit, but a major scientific flaw
that I hoped no one would notice.  (Redford is the second to mention
it.)  As unlikely as it sounds, the two problems are interrelated.

    It is true that you cannot supply the energy for a nucleonic-based
life form with the thermal emission from a 8200 K neutron star.  It
is emitting mostly light and infrared, and you can't drive nuclear
processes with heat.  If I had raised the temperature of the star to a
more reasonable neutron star temperature like 1,000,000 K, the plants
would be able to make food, but the star would be emitting X-rays. If
it emitted X-rays, I would not be able to allow the human spacecraft
to get close to the star.  If the humans can't get close to the star
then the stone-age cheela would not see them in the sky. With nothing
new in the sky to exercise their brains, the stone-age cheela would
not develop astronomy, writing, civilization, religion, etc., and
would not raise the Temple mound formation.  The humans would have
completed their long distance survey, and gone home, leaving the
happy savages sucking pods and making love.

     I had to make a choice, make the plants viable or take away
the "dart in history" improbability by bringing the human deorbiter
masses close enough to be seen, thereby catalyzing the birth of a
technological civilization. I chose the latter. I only wish that I
could have found a better method for making food. (Hmmm... perhaps I
could have used the volcanic vent energy source that some deep sea
creatures here on earth use.  Well, that's another story.)

     It is too bad that the "facts" mean that the cheela could not
have existed, but my motto for writing hard science fiction is:

     "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story."

                                     Bob Forward

------------------------------

Chuck Von Rospach (CHUQUI@MIT-MC) 06/25/80 00:02:44
Re: Patchwork Girl - review

Fairly quick review of Niven's newest, 'The Patchwork Girl'.

This is Niven's latest entry in his famous 'Known Space' series, and
another in a long series of stories of Gil Hamilton, of the UN 'ARM'
forces (How far people will stretch for acronyms at times). It is
also what Larry seems to do best, which is a locked room tale.

The story, quickly, and with no spoilers, is simple: There is an
attempted murder on the moon. The only person capable of doing it at
the time is tried and convicted, and placed in stasis for a required
six months before being added to the organ banks. The problem is, Gil
is sure she is innocent and hiding something else. In the end, all is
made well, the true villian(s) are brought out, and many injustices
are set right. Around this main event, and the reason Gil is on the
moon, is a commission on Lunar justice (which is worked in very well
throughout the book).

The question is: Is this book worth $4.95 (which is the cost of this
Ace Trade, full of Fernando's illustration's) or shall we wait until
the regular paperback shows?

Now, my personal feeling on the whole 'illustrated ' trade book is
that it is mainly a ripoff. 'The Magic Goes Away', also by Niven, and
illustrated by Boris, was a complete loss for me, because What Larry
was writing and what Boris was illustrating seemed like two completely
different stories. When I want to reread that story, I pull out the
original, from Oddysey. This book, however, is very tastefully done,
with the pictures complementing in a way most magazines try (but don't
always succeed).

If you like Niven, and if you like Known Space, then this story is a
must for you. If you are looking for something to whet your teeth on
with Larry, I can suggest much better work. At times he forces his
prose, and at times he loses the personality of his writing and begins
to lecture to fill in the background. Normally, he can do this without
interfering with the story, here, it looks hurried and awkward.

The big thing about this book is that it fills in a major void in the
known space society. We finally get a chance to see what Lunie life is
like.  After another novel about the Belters, he can figure that it is
going to be fairly complete... if only he can keep from collaborating
long enough to write it (No offense to the collaborations, but to me
they don't live as much as the solo works do. They are technically
fine, they just seem a bit sterile..)

chuck

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jun 1980 2122-PDT
From: Yeager at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: "Lord Valentine's Castle."

        "Lord Valentine's Castle," by Robert Silverberg.
            Published by Harper & Row, and available 
                  in hardcover only.  $12.50.

This long awaited novel will not disappoint Silverberg fans.  From a
purely technical point of view, it is masterfully written, the story
is powerful, and one in which the reader's time sense is suspended as
the plot unfolds and the images grow from the pages.  It is filled
with twists and turns and a myriad of surprises.

As you can probably tell, I am talking about the book without telling
you just what the actual story is about.  I prefer not to reveal too
much, but I will mention that it takes place some 20,000 years in the
future on the immense world of Majipoor; and revolves around the
travels of a troupe of jugglers as they trek across three continents,
driven by the dreams of Valentine, a novice juggler with uncanny
inborn ability for the art.  Like "Nightwings," it is a journey of
self discovery and renewal, an epic journey of immense proportions...

------------------------------

Date: 24 JUN 1980 1221-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: cross references

 In addition to the Vegan/Okie connection that DM mentioned, Blish in
the collected version of "The City at the Edge of Forever" has Kirk
identifying the heroine's philosophy as that of Bonner the Stochastic,
whose ideas pop up in a few places in THE TRIUMPH OF TIME (aka A CLASH
OF CYMBALS (?SYMBOLS? not sure, have never seen the British ed.)  This
is definitely not in the original.

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/25/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss some of the developments in The Empire Strikes Back. People
who have not seen TESB may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date:  24 June 1980 13:03 edt
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  David UTEXAS Star Wars Pacifist

Does Star Wars glorify war? On a related topic, I saw an article in
yesterdays Boston Globe about the return of childrens war toys.  In
part, it said that for years Sears Roebuck carried no war toys, but
they now offer a six gun and an Iwo Jima play set, both justified as
historical, and two pages of their catalog are devoted to SW toys,
justified as fantasy, not war.

But then again, sometimes I walk down the streets fantasising that
I have a light saber and can cut through the light poles, parking
meters, and Boston Edison trucks I see...

------------------------------

From: Pestage at GALAXY-FARAWAY
Subject: Pacifism

    Gentlebeings:
    
    The Emperor has instructed me to convey his august approval
    of the political sentiments expressed by one "David" on SFL.
    
    Would that all His Majesty's subjects shared those politics!
    
                                      Sate Pestage
                                     (Grand Vizier)

------------------------------

DGSHAP@AI and Litant 06/23/80 13:58:51 Re:  "the other" in TESB

A new theory has come to mind about Yoda's other.  People have spoken
about clones not yet brought to life, clones of the major characters,
Leia, Han, and mysterious other personnel that have shown up as bit
players in the previous movies.

Well, WE think "the other" is a device operating at an entirely
different level.  The truth of the matter, friends, is that Yoda's
hope is being used in the salary negotiations for the next STAR WARS
episode.  The idea is that Lucas learned his lesson from GODFATHER II,
ROCKY II, JAWS II and similar sequels. "The other" is being dangled
above Luke's head to keep him in line.  He asks for too much, and

	whooooooosh!!!

they drag this mysterious "other" out of the block of ice where he
has been kept in storage for the past 20 years.

Don't say we didn't tell you.

	Dan, Michael

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 26 JUN 1980 0556-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #171
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Thursday, 26 June 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 171

  Today's Topics: Alien Intelligence - Ethics, Query - Story Index,
                  Sturgeon's Law, SF Books - People Beyond the Wall,
                    Physics Imaginary - FTL, Imaginary Books, TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 06/03/80 07:34:57
From: WGK at MIT-AI
Subject: Alien Intelligence 

    From ST the TV Show + ST The MP: Is it reasonable that an alien
intelligence may have little regard for life? It is so messy to
maintain and may not provide any more information than initial careful
observation... (This may mean that the Alien Civil Defense Official
Guidance is to bend over and kiss your .......)

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jun 1980 0033-EDT
From: CCIS.ZEVE at RUTGERS
Subject: SF short story index

Does anyone know of a good short story cross-index for SF?  I ask
because I am always thinking of doing one for my books and never
quite get to it.  I need one, I can no longer find short stories
upon whim. I have been trying for about a year to find Lulungomeena
(Gordon Dickson) without looking thru every book on my shelves.
Does anyone know what book it is in?

		Steve Zeve

[ "Lulungomeena" was originally published in LOOKING FORWARD, edited
  by Milton Lesser, NY: Beechhurst Press, 1953. -- <HJJH at UTEXAS> ]

------------------------------

Date: 06/26/80 02:20 EDT
From: Roger Duffey <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: Funny things happen at a Con - The Genesis of Sturgeon's Law

Sturgeon's Law of course is that "90% of everything is crap". Sturgeon
gives the following explanation of how he came to formulate his law in
the July 1980 issue of OMNI:

  I was at an SF convention in the 1950s, and I was scheduled to be
  on a panel with some other people to talk about SF literature and
  so forth.  And this one guy on the panel - I really don't remember
  who it was - he was going around collecting books, and he took them
  up to his room and spent the entire night going through them.  The
  next morning the panel convened, and here he comes with all these
  books, and little slips of paper stuck through them.  Well he
  proceeded to take about half an hour to read the passages he'd
  marked.  And they were the most God-awful things you've ever heard.
  Terrible! Just terrible! People were rolling on the floor. And when
  he finished, he turned to me and said, "Mr. Sturgeon, 90 percent of
  all this SF is crap." And I just looked at him and replied, "Well,
  ninety perscent of EVERYTHING is crap." Little did I know that it
  would become a law.

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jun 1980 at 0141-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ JUST A "NICE" READ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Certain s/f themes leave me cold, such as Atlantis, multi-generation-
star-voyages, post-World-War-III, center-of-the-Earth, and lost-race
or "Shangrila" novels.  But on the strength of my pleasure from his
previous 2 books I took a chance on Stephen Tall's recent lost-race
one, THE PEOPLE BEYOND THE WALL. The plot was rife with serendipitous
circumstances, yet I thoroughly enjoyed it.

------------------------------

Date:  25 June 1980 20:40 edt
From:  SALawrence at MIT-Multics (STEVE at SAI-Prime)
Subject: note on Bloat Drive from Heinemann [ see SFL V1 #164,165 ]

So if it increases the speed of light from the point of view of the
ship, then the ship can presumably go faster than what the outside
world would perceive as the speed of light, no?  So it's a faster
than light drive...

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jun 1980 1:51 pm PDT (Tuesday)
From: Kusnick at PARC-MAXC
Subject: FTL drives

What about Kilgore Trout's "69" drive as described in "Venus on
the Halfshell", so named because it resulted in a cruising speed
of 69000 C. As I recall, the drive worked by slowly crushing the
life out of sentient stars in a parallel universe.  Thus the
traveller was continuously accompanied by the tortured screams
of these dying stars. 
			-- Greg

------------------------------

CHUQUI@MC 06/19/80 01:18:05 Re: misc. subject replies

On the false bibliographies:
   the three Thiotimoline stories (Asimov) (these did start the
   whole thing, I think)

------------------------------

Date: 06/21/80 02:20 EDT
From: Roger Duffey <DUFFEY at MIT-AI>
Subject: The Thiotimoline series by Asimov

Actually Asimov has written 4 "stories" about thiotimoline. They are:

   "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline"
      which is available in The Early Asimov;
   "Micropsychiatric Applications of Thiotimoline"
      which is available in Only a Trillion;
   "Thiotimoline and the Space Age"
      which is available in Buy Jupiter and Other Stories; and
   "Thiotimoline to the Stars"
      which is also available in the Buy Jupiter collection.

Thiotimoline is a solid compound whose atomic structure extends into
the 4th dimension. As a consequence thiotimoline exhibits several
interesting properties, such as dissolving before it reaches the
solvent. EPoRT is a mock dissertation about thiotimoline which
appeared as a "joke" science article in the March 1948 Astounding.
Asimov wrote it just before he began to write his own dissertation
as he explains in "In Memory Yet Green":

     It would not be long now before I would have to write up my
  research observations in the form of a long and complicated
  dissertation. That dissertation would have to be written in
  a convoluted and stylized fashion or it would never pass.
     I dreaded that. I had spent 9 years now trying to learn
  to write clearly and well, and now I would have to write a
  dissertation turgidly and sloppily.
     ...
     Well then, instead of writing a story about a compound
  that dissolved before it hit the water, why not write a mock
  dissertation about it? Why not deliberately write turgidly
  and sloppily and in this way draw the fangs of the monster?

MAoT is another "joke" science article considering further
applications of thiotimoline. The last two stories tells how
thiotimoline is used in spaceflight from the standpoint of space
cadets who are being taught about it. In particular TttS explains
about a thiotimoline based "FTL" drive.

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/26/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. People who have not
seen these movies may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 25 Jun 1980 at 0855-CDT
From: ables at UTEXAS
Subject: TESB/SW but no spoiler

Those of you who have seen TESB and read the daily comic strip, I'm
sure you have noticed the resemblance between the "Empire pilot"
Luke shot down last week and Boba Fett. Does anyone know anything
about this, like will this really turn out to be Boba or is it a
coincidence. I have begun not to believe in coincidences when 
dealing with SW.

On a completely different note, remember when Luke and Threepio track
down R2 the morning after he ran away? R2 becomes excited and Threepio
explains that there are several creatures approaching and Luke says
"Sandpeople! . . .  or worse!" What's worse? Is there really a "worse"
native animal on Tatooine than a Sandperson? If so, what? Maybe it's
whatever animal Ben was imitating (if he was imitating any animal at
all) when he scared the Sandpeople away from Luke. I tend to think he
was just trying to startle them like he said ("The Sandpeople are
easily startled, but they'll soon be back, and in greater numbers").
This still doesn't give us any hint as to what Luke meant by WORSE.
Is there a chance that we'll see this even-more-disgusting-creature
in THE REVENGE OF THE JEDI ????
						King

------------------------------

Date: 25 Jun 1980 at 0233-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ PACIFISM vs. CONFLICT ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Shurrrrrrre, and UTEXAS' David is a lad right after Darth's own heart!

"Join me," he said, "and we can END this destructive conflict and
bring order to the galaxy".

------------------------------

Date: 24 Jun 1980 1529-EDT
From: DOLESE at RUTGERS
Subject: first viewing of TESB

Well, finally went to see TESB.  Went to a 5:00 show and amazingly
there were no lines.

As for women in the movie: there definitely was a woman console
operator at the beginning of the movie: she had silver bands in the
back of her hair.  I don't think any male rebel warriors would have
their hair done this way.  Also there were women running around when
Lando gave the order to evacuate Cloud City.

As for Darth Vader being Luke's father, I tend to agree with those
who feel that he IS NOT.  Luke is very susceptible to the dark side at
this stage in his training and I feel that Vader is trying to use this
to his advantage by claiming to be Luke's father to influence Luke to
the dark side.  Also the part in the movie where Luke confronts his
own image in his mock battle with Vader could have been an unconscious
warning to resist the dark side of the force or else become like
Vader.

Did anyone raise the idea that the "other hope" may just be Luke's
REAL father, assuming Vader isn't.  Just as Ben assumed a new form
when Vader destroyed his body, Luke's father may have done the same.

Since everyone else has commented already, this may be a bit
redundant, but the "other hope" question lingers on. Lucas certainly
did leave everything open for further developments didn't he.

Dolese at Rutgers

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 27 JUN 1980 0531-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #172
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Friday, 27 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 172

  Today's Topics: Reply - SF Story Index, Physics Imaginary - FTL,
                     SF Books - Dragon's Egg, SF Movies - TESB
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 26 JUN 1980 1207-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: story indexes

  There are several indexes of shorter-than-book-length SF;
unfortunately, most of them are out of print.  This category
includes the Day (1926-1950), Strauss (1951-1965, many errors),
Metcalf (1951-1965), and NESFA (1966-1970) indexes to SF Magazines.
(NESFA may still have a couple of copies of Strauss hanging around,
but I'm pretty sure the 1966-1970 is sold out.  NESFA also does
annual supplements, though some of these are also out of print;
the later ones include information on original anthologies. For
more info, write the NESFA sales committee at Box G, MIT Branch PO,
Cambridge MA 02139).
  The best current reference for the average reader is probably
William Contento's index to short SF in books.  This does not cover
anything that appeared only in a magazine, but it does list almost
every book appearance of any short piece of SF, which means it's the
best way to locate a copy to read of a story, old magazines being
rather harder to find than recent books.  The book covers roughly
1950-1977 (before that point, there was virtually no SF published in
collections) and costs about $30, but for someone with a substantial
library it's worth it (it also lists first magazine publication,
where appropriate, of all the stories it references).  The best
index would probably be a merged version of Contento with (Strauss
or Metcalf) and NESFA, but the result would be horrendously unwieldy
(Contento itself approaches the mass of the Manhattan telephone
book, although it's printed on much more substantial paper.)

------------------------------

Date: 06/26/80 1428-EDT
From: KG Heinemann (SORCEROR at LL)
Subject:  Bloat Drive rebuttal

     Steve Lawrence has caught me red-handed at using an arbitrary and
oversimplified assumption in my argument that the Bloat Drive is not a
faster-than-light drive.  The simplest interpretation of ICL.REDFORD's
description is that the Bloat Drive produces a UNIVERSAL reduction in
the value of the electrical force constant.  SAL objects and raises
the hypothesis that the Bloat Drive only affects a small region around
itself.  He then argues: the speed of light near a Bloat-driven
spacecraft is greater than that near a distant observer, therefore,
the Bloat Drive is a faster-than-light drive.  Not having read the
story in which the idea was proposed, I cannot judge Harry Harrison's
true intention.  But....
     This alternate assumption still does not NECESSARILY imply
that the Bloat drive is a faster-than-light drive. The reason is
that the distant observer's measurement of the speed of light AT THE
BLOAT-DRIVEN SPACECRAFT is not necessarily the same as that of an
observer on the spacecraft. The assumption that Bloat Drive's effects
are local invalidates the simple Lorentz Transformations of Special
Relativity, because those equations depend on the assumption that the
speed of light is a universal constant. New equations for transforming
measurements of distance and time intervals between the spacecraft and
the distant observer, must be derived, using a General Relativistic
formalism. In practice, we cannot do this because we don't know how
the Bloat Drive's effects vary with distance from their source. But
it is certainly possible that an observer on the Bloat-driven
spacecraft and a distant one could observe a pulse of light travelling
between two points on the spacecraft, measure the distance between
those points, the time taken, and get the same quotient of these
measurements.  (Remember velocity = distance/time ).  In fact, I
suspect that this would be since the convolved effects of all the
local values of the speed of light must constitute an important
parameter in the proper relativistic transformation equations for
this situation.  Enjoy,

                                   KGH

------------------------------

Date: 26 JUN 1980 1248-PDT
From: GRAYSON at USC-ECL
Subject: Newspaper review of DRAGON'S EGG

     The following is an abbreviated review of DRAGON'S EGG which
appeared in the Cincinnati, Ohio Enquirer.  Byline Roger Grooms.

     "Once in a great while, a science fiction novel arrives
unheralded but blessed with that great sense of wonder we all long
for. So it is with Robert Forward's dazzling new work, DRAGON'S EGG.
     Not since Arthur Clarke's CHILDHOOD'S END have I been so stunned
by such an awesome concept and breath-taking execution as in this
remarkable first novel; a novel written by a gifted and humorous
storyteller who also just happens to be a pioneer in the field of
gravitational astronomy...

     ...it is a neutron star which furnishes the landscape for
DRAGON'S EGG, a weird world where men could never live -- only by the
most incredible technology available in the novel's 21st century time
span can humans exist in synchronous orbit to observe it.  The surface
gravity is a mere 67 billion times that of earth, with matter so
compressed that the mass of a normal star is packed into a crusted
sphere only 20 kilometers in diameter...
     And upon this bizarre crust lives an improbable race of beings --
as erie a group of bug-eyed monster types as the old devotees of Weird
Tales could hope for.  Yet this grisly mien (they are pancake shaped,
with a dozen or so eye-stalks) is compensated for by a delightful
sense of community, a pawkish and ironic sense of what could only be
called humor, and a playful and hilarious sex drive...
     There is adventure here, along with pathos, for these creatures
to which we become so attached come and go.  There is humor; there
is compassion.  The contact reveals a sort of cross-racial loving
reminiscent of "Close Encounters."
     Forward's DRAGON'S EGG projects him, in an instant of "our"
time, into the rarefied sci-fi company of Clarke, Asimov and
Sturgeon. It is an absolute masterpiece."

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/27/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. People who have not
seen these movies may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 26 Jun 1980 0824-EDT
From: Peter Kaiser <PKaiser at BBND>
Subject: TESB problems

Just saw TESB last night ($1.75 in Ipswich) with my friend Jill,
who isn't a SF-lover. She liked it better than I did, because I
kept being disappointed by things they could have done better. Some
things that continually bothered me: errors of scale (a ship being
H*U*G*E in one shot and the size of a VW in the next), hokey mattes,
jerky tauntauns (really, now!), and the inability of anyone with a
weapon to hit anything aimed at.

Riding home later, as we were talking about it, Jill said that,
although she really liked the movie, it bothered her that she could
never tell what the properties of the technology were -- what a given
weapon would or wouldn't zap, how fast a ship would be able to go,
and so forth. This gets right to the heart of it: it's just not fair,
either in movies or in books, not to abide by some rules, any
consistent rules, that give the audience a sense of what's going on.
And to the extent that TESB fails this test, one of the crucial tests
of good SF -- or any good fiction or movie-making, for that matter --
it loses.

---Pete

------------------------------

MMCM@MIT-AI 06/25/80 21:37:23 Re: lucas and campbell

Having just read The Hero with a Thousand Faces a few weeks ago and
seen TESB yesterday, it struck me that Lucas might have read/consulted
this book after Star Wars and before this one; the motifs are much,
much stronger.  E.g.  the dwarf helper Yoda, the dream-like world in
which he resides, and the OEdipal relation with Darth Vader.  Maybe
Lucas decided that if he was going to make this an epic work, he had
to make his hero an epic hero.

------------------------------

SHL@MIT-MC 06/26/80 18:25:20 Re: TESB -- Darth Vader Luke's father?

A friend of mine tells me that he has proof that Darth Vader cannot
be Luke's father. He says that he read (probably in a marvel comic
book) about a time that 3 Jedi knights came to a planet. These three
were Luke's father, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Darth Vader. (I have no idea
how closely the Marvel comic books are supposed to be following the
story.) Darth Vader also promised the emperor that he could get Luke
on his side. What better way than to lie to him in order to make him
doubt himself and be lured to the dark side?

			$tephen Landrum

[ As several people have pointed out, Lucas says that only the two
  movies and their novelizations are binding on the Star Wars
  universe. The other novels by Daley and Foster, the comic books,
  and the comic strip can be thought of as describing one or more
  parallel universes.  --  RDD  ]

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jun 1980 2239-PDT
From: CSD.PEELER at SU-SCORE (MDP@SAIL or O.O7@LOTS)
Subject: Vader

I would be disappointed if Vader turned out not to be Luke's father.
First, one small thing makes me think Vader was by design intended to
be Luke's father: "vater" is German for father.  The contrived
circumstances used to support their father-son relationship also make
other explanations more contrived.  His father was a Jedi knight who
has disappeared into the past, and Darth was apparently a Jedi before
succumbing to the dark side of the force; coincidences such as this
might have been arranged simply for dramatic effect.  If so, then the
real explanation had better be a good one.  Besides, having Darth
Vader for a father gives credibility to this otherwise unremarkable
boy's influence on the galaxy.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 28 JUN 1980 0544-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #173
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest     Saturday, 28 June 1980    Volume 1 : Issue 173

Today's Topics: Event - 5000 Fingers of Dr T, SF Books - Dragon's Egg,
                  TZone Film Festival, Physics Imaginary - FTL, TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 27 Jun 1980 1607-PDT
From: Dan Weinreb <DLW at SU-AI>
Subject: The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T    

The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, a delightful fantasy film that was
discussed extensively in SF-Lovers some time ago, will be showing
soon in the S.F. Bay Area. Specifically, it will be shown this
Sunday, the 29th, at 8 p.m. at the Noe Valley Cinema, 1021 Sanchez
in S.F.  It costs $2 and their phone number is 585-2687.

------------------------------

Date: 27 Jun 1980 0403-EDT
From: NIVEN at MIT-DMS (Marilyn Niven)
Subject: REPLY TO BOB FORWARD [ in SFL V1 #170 ]

     "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story", huh? 
Okay, I do that myself sometimes, but, dammit, I've been believing
everything you tell me!  No more...

                         Larry Niven

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jun 1980 0226-PDT (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Directions to the Twilight Zone Film Festival

Dear friends.  In preparation for my upcoming Twilight Zone Film
Festival, I was planning to generate some sort of online map to
direct you all to the screening location.  However, it appears I
will not need to.

A very strange event transpired last night. I was sleeping
innocently, minding my own business, when I awoke suddenly, sensing
something wrong that I could not identify. I sat up in bed, but
the darkness was total, and all still appeared quiet. Suddenly, a
"blacker than black" area, misty and impossible to fully describe,
began to form in the air before me. I was horrified almost to the
point of shock, but I continued to watch as the blackness began
to lighten to a dull blue glow outlining an incredible mechanism
hovering above the bed.

I suddenly realized that I was being watched through a bizarre
lens-like device pointing directly towards me.  We had remained in
this rather fantastic "stare-down" for about five minutes, when a
small package, glowing blue like the main device, fell onto my bed
(and landed on my left foot, causing me considerable pain).

Suddenly, the entire mechanism vanished instantly with a loud pop,
followed by a loud warbling tone than quickly rose in pitch beyond
my ability to hear. Everything seemed normal again, except for the
rather serious incongruity of a glowing blue package resting on my
bed.

I reached out for the glowing box, and the glow immediately ceased,
leaving me once again in total darkness.  I switched on the bedside
lamp, and found a perfectly normal looking DECtape laying on my bed.
Still not really believing what I had experienced, I immediately
dressed and rushed to my nearby PDP-11.  I dumped the DECtape, and
found it contained a single ASCII file.

I have sent this file to Roger Duffey for inclusion in the SF-LOVERS
archives.  He has promised to make it available to all interested
parties.  As you will see, it is actually a MAP to the TZFF!  Its
very existence is rather chilling, since the cover material contained
within implies I may get more visitors to the TZFF than I had
originally suspected.

Oh well, the more the merrier.  I think.

In any case, I have prepared a prose description (to accompany the
map) to assist you all in finding the TZFF.  It has also been made
available to Roger.

I hope to see many of you on Thursday, July 3rd, at 8 PM, for the
TZFF.  I only hope the galaxy survives...

--Lauren--
_____

[ Copies of the alien maps and Lauren's directions have been
  established in files at the sites listed below. Everyone who is
  going to the TZFF or who is interested in studying the aliens'
  coordinate system should obtain the file from the site which is
  most convenient for them. If you are unable to do so, you may
  contact me and I will see that you obtain 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 added to the SF-LOVERS archives.  Thanks go to Richard
  Brodie, Richard Lamson, Jon Solomon, and Don Woods for providing
  space for the materials on their systems, to the aliens for
  the use of their maps and facilities, and to Lauren for his
  directions and the TZFF itself.

     Site          Filename
  
  MIT-AI        AI:DUFFEY;SFLVRS TZFF
  PARC-MAXC     [Maxc]<Brodie>SFLovers-TZFF.TXT
  Rutgers       PS:<SOLOMON>SF-LOVERS.TWILIGHT-ZONE-FILM-FESTIVAL
  SU-AI         TZFF[T,DON]
  MIT-Multics
    >user_dir_dir>SysMaint>Lamson>sf-lovers>Twilight-zone-film-fest

  [Note, you can TYPE or FTP the file from SAIL without an account.]

                                                           --  RDD ]

------------------------------

Date: 06/27/80 1002-EDT
From: KG Heinemann (SORCEROR at LL)
Subject:  Revision of Bloat Drive rebuttal

      Reading over my reply to Steve Lawrence's note about the Bloat
Drive led me to realize that the last three sentences argue FOR rather
than AGAINST SAL's position.  This was not my intention and I don't
know how it happened.  I can only offer the lame excuse that I must
have fallen into a Spice-trance in the middle of composing my note.
Anyway, the purpose of this message is to correct my error.
     Let us return to the discussion of measuring the speed of
light at the Bloat driven spacecraft. Observers on the spacecraft
and at a distance both endeavor to measure the speed of light at
the spacecraft by clocking the passage of a pulse past two points,
A and B. Each observer also measures the distance between A and B,
and obtains a value for the speed of light by dividing the measured
distance by the time interval on their individual clocks. If a Bloat
Drive is operating, the observer on the ship should obtain a value
which exceeds the well known free-space value. The distant observer's
measurements of the distance between A and B, and the time interval
will be different from those obtained by the spacecraft-board
observer. If the Lorentz transformations of Special Relativity were
valid, the quotient of the distant observer's distance and time
interval measurements would be the same as the shipboard observer's
quotient, though. However, the Bloat Drive invalidates the Lorentz
transformations, so there is no guarantee that the distant observer
and the shipboard observer will agree on their measurement of the
speed of light at the ship. It is possible that the distant observer
measures a speed of light at the ship which agrees with the speed
measured at his own location. I believe that this is likely, but I
am unable to prove it. But if it is so, the Bloat driven spacecraft
cannot travel through the distant observer's space any more quickly
than it could without the Bloat drive. The conclusion in this event
is that the Bloat drive is not a Faster-than-light drive. 'Nuff said

                                  KGH

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/28/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. People who have not
seen these movies may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

LLOYD@MIT-AI 06/27/80 07:08:11 Re: Darth Vader vs. the Emperor

Has anybody considered the posibility that our buddy Darth wants to
be Emperor himself?  The Emperor suggested that Luke was the key to
his [the Emperor's] downfall.  Darth may want to use that fact to
boost himself into the number one slot.  Darth would make a darn
good Emperor.  He has the all the important qualities.

I suggest that, in the upcoming November elections, we put up the
slate of Vader/Skywalker for Emperor/Vice-Emperor (just think of
the scandal and innuendo the opponents could come up with).

Has anyone considered that Darth Vader might really be Richard
Nixon? Now there is as scary a thought as I can come up with.

					Brian Lloyd

------------------------------

DUFTY@MIT-MC 06/27/80 00:44:38
Re:  TESB and more (aaugh) about paternity

Does it seem reasonable that a great Jedi would become corrupted?

Ben and Yoda tell Luke when he is about to run away brashly that he
is at a weak point in his training and that "only a fully trained
Jedi, with the force as his ally" will be able to face Vader and
defeat him. This implies that once you're a Jedi, you won't be
corrupted by the*DARK* (horrors) side of the force.

Remember, in SW4, Ben specifically says:

   "I was once a Jedi Knight, the same as your father"

This leads us to many conclusions, including the one about Ben
being Luke's father, but the most obvious one is that Ben thinks
rather highly of Luke's father. It also places Luke's father on
the same plane as Ben, i.e. good, etc.

Also, in TESB, the following dialogue occurs:

   LUKE:  You knew my father?  (or words to this effect)

   YODA:  Powerful Jedi was he...Powerful Jedi

Would a Jedi that the 800 year-old Yoda regard(s/ed) as "powerful"
become a servant of evil?

However: In SW4, Ben tells Luke that his father was the best starpilot
in the galaxy, and a cunning warrior. Vader is clearly one of the best
pilots in the Imperial forces (remember, in SW4 he manages to shoot
down Luke's companions Biggs and Wedge with little trouble, and would
have gotten Luke, too, had Solo not interfered) and is a cunning
warrior. (Of course, if Luke were really Darth's son, would he have
been trying to kill him?

I offer no solutions to these questions.  I guess I'll just wait the
three years.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 29 JUN 1980 0547-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #174
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Sunday, 29 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 174

  Today's Topics:      Lucas vs BSG, Physics Imaginary - FTL,
                  SF Books - Dragon's Egg & Title/Plot & Telepathy,
                     SF Movies - Raiders of the Lost Ark & TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 28 June 1980 1358-EDT (Saturday)
From: The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A> 
Subject: Lucas in court

I happened to see an article in one of the local papers where I live
(it was about a paragraph long) that stated that Lucas was suing the
BattleStar Galactica people for ripping off SW4.  The article said
that they were due in court in July. Does anyone know if this is true
or just some random rumor?

			Doug

------------------------------

Date:  27 June 1980 09:28 edt
From:  JRDavis.Multics at MIT-Multics
Subject:  Niven's FTL

Readers of Niven's "Known Space" series are no doubt familiar with
his hyperspace (wherein there are discrete speeds). But are you aware
that he has also written of at least two other FTL technologies? (One
occurs in the Pournelle collaborations, and seems to be invention
of Mr. P, so I won't discuss it).  The other works by (creating?
entering?) a zone where the speed of light is "infinite". This allows
the star ship to travel as fast as it likes.  You stop by virtue of
"spines" that stick out into "normal" space, and act like brakes. I
have seen this in one story only, which I believe has the title "One
Face".  In this story (without spoiler) the drive malfunctions and
instead the speed of light goes to zero -- our heroes are thus
time-dialated into the distant future.

I suppose someone could catalog all the FTL drives, might prove
amusing. For example, one could dig out the precise values for
the speeds available in Niven's Known Space Hyperdrive. I know
I've seen hints about it in the books.

------------------------------

RMS@MIT-AI 06/28/80 17:37:22 Re: Problem with Dragon's Egg

What I find most implausible about Dragon's Egg is that, given a
situation in which intelligent, space travelling life can evolve in
a time so short compared with the age of the galaxy, it must have
evolved somewhere and colonized every possible habitable location
long ago.

I have heard the same argument applies to Earth-type planets and
life forms requiring billions of years to evolve, as we did.  To
be specific, we could colonize all the Earth-type planets in the
galaxy in a few million years, travelling slower than light.  So,
if some other species took only 4 billion years instead of 5 billion
to reach space travel, how come they didn't colonize Earth a billion
years ago (or did they?).  But this is a little marginal, and one
could argue that perhaps Earth-type planets are few enough, or
evolution unlikely enough, that this hasn't happened anywhere else
yet. 

For neutron stars on which life could evolve in a few hundred years,
the probabilities become so overwhelming that those excuses don't
work.  In addition, we know there must be loads of neutron stars.

You can think of this as the "dart in history" problem, but applied
to the whole galaxy instead of to the history of one particular
neutron star.

------------------------------

Date: 29 June 1980 0220-EDT
From: The Editor
Subject: Here's the Plot - What's the Title?

[1] I have been told about a short story by a friend who can not
    remember the title/author/or place of appearance (he believes
    it to be in an anthology of some kind) anyway the plot circles
    around the concept of a society's currency being time... All
    pointers welcome.  Also, I will rebroadcast my findings to
    SF-Lovers at a later date, so please reply directly to me.
                       --  The Twilight Zone <Doug.Philips at CMU-10A>

[2] A story, which I cannot remember well, talks about the galactic
    expansion of terrans, and their subsequent reworking to meet the
    demands of the different planetary environments they encounter.
    The book (a collection of related stories) focuses on the
    definition of humanity in a universe where "people" take on
    incredibly diverse forms.  I believe the book ends with the
    formation of a pan-human league.  Xenophobia (is there a better
    word for fear of aliens) is a major factor.  Anyone have the
    title?                             --  Dan Shapiro <DGSHAP@MIT-AI>

------------------------------

LEOR@MIT-MC 06/21/80 17:28:37 Re: Thanx for telepathy titles, but...

Thanks for all the good pointers to telepathy stories. Recall that
my original query was for novels in which the telepathy is THE
subject. Naturally, all titles involving telepathy in any way are
popping up now.  It's fun to peruse them, but there are an awful
lot of candidates. If others are interested, great, but don't
clutter the digest on my behalf.
	-leor

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jun 1980 1509-EDT
From: MALIS at BBN-TENEXE
Subject: Harrison Ford and "Raiders of the Lost Ark"

The following is reprinted from the Boston Globe of June 28:

                Harrison Ford Gets Starring Role

Harrison Ford, who plays Han Solo in the "Star Wars" series, will
star in the $20m action-adventure epic "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

Steven Spielberg will direct the movie on location in France,
Tunisia and Hawaii, based on characters created by George Lucas
and an original story by Lucas and Phil Kaufman.

Andy

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/29/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. People who have not
seen these movies may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 23 Jun 1980 at 0524-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ TESB SCRIPT CAVEAT ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

A Texas SF-L consortium has banded together in the purchase of a
shooting script (we had to hock 3 oil wells to meet the price!). If
copies were available here, they will surely be at other cons, too,
and we offer this warning. It \is/ interesting, and as a PLUTOCRAT's
collector's item, it's OK.  But as a reference source for what WAS
ACTUALLY IN THE FILM, it would be a waste of money.  Some time in
the next few days when SF-L is low, you'll see our comparison of the
opening dialog as given in this 01/16/80 version of the shooting
script and as transcribed from the sound track.  (Meanwhile, we'll
post any intriguing discoveries, like about the paternity issue. Tho
earlier than 10/24/78, it does appear to be a late inspiration.)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SAMPLE COMPARISON OF TESB DIALOG ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

     Jan 1979 Shooting script            June 1980 Sound track
_____________________________________________________________________

LUKE:  (to tauntaun) Easy girl,   |  LUKE:  (into com-link) Echo 3 to
  it's just another meteorite.    |    Echo 7 ...Han ol' buddy, do
  (into com-link) Han...Han ol'   |    you read me?
  buddy, do you read me?          |  

HAN:  Loud and clear, kid.        |  (identical)
  What's up?                      |

LUKE:  I've finished my circle    |  LUKE:  Well, I've finished my
  and I haven't picked up any     |    circle; I don't pick up any
  life readings.                  |    life readings.

HAN:  There isn't enough life on  |  HAN:  There isn't enough life on
  this ice cube to fill a space   |    this ice cube to fill a space
  cruiser.  My sentry markers are |    cruiser.  My sentries are
  placed.  I'm heading back to    |    placed.  I'm going back.
  the base.                       |  

LUKE:  I'll see you shortly.  A   |  LUKE:  Right, I'll see you 
  meteorite just hit the ground   |    shortly.  There's a meteorite
  near here and I want to check   |    that hit the ground near here.
  it out....  Won't be long.      |    I'll check it out....  Won't
                                  |    be long.
___                                 ___

LUKE:  Weeho, girl!  What's the   |  LUKE:  Steady, girl!  What's the
  matter ...you smell something?  |    matter ...you smell something?
  There's nothing out there.      |  
  I'll check again...  Son of a   |  
  jumping...!!!  (Wampa attack)   |    (Wampa attack)
________                            ________

HAN:  Cold isn't the word for it, |  HAN:  Chewie! ...Chewie! ...
  Chewie.  I'll take a good fight |    Chewie!  ...How are you
  any day over all this hidin'    |    coming with those lifters?
  and freezin'!  ...How are you   |  
  coming with those lifters?      |  

CHEWIE:  {grumble}                |  (identical)

HAN:  All right.  I'll go report  |  HAN:  All right!  Don't lose
  then I'll give you a hand with  |    your temper!  I'll come right
  them.  Soon as those lifters    |    back and give you a hand.
  are fixed, we're out of here.   |  
________                            ________

RIEEKAN:  Captain Solo.  What's   |  RIEEKAN:  Captain Solo?
  the situation?                  |  

HAN:  There isn't a hint of life  |  HAN:  No sign of life out there,
  in the area.  But all the       |    General.  The sensors are in
  perimeter markers are set, so   |    place; you'll know if anything
  you'll know if anyone comes     |    comes around.
  calling.                        |  

RIEEKAN:  Good.  And Commander    |  RIEEKAN:  Has Commander
  Skywalker?                      |    Skywalker reported in yet?

HAN:  He's checking out a         |  HAN:  No, he's checking out a
  meteorite that hit near him.    |    meteorite that hit near him.
  He'll be in soon.               |  

RIEEKAN:  With all the meteor     |  (identical)
  activity in this system, it's   |
  going to be difficult to spot   |
  approaching ships.              |

HAN:  The Empire won't look for   |  HAN:  General, I gotta leave.  I
  you out here.  I'd say you're   |    can't stay any longer.
  all set ...which means it's     |  
  time for me to get going.       |  

LEIA:  You're leaving?            |  

HAN:  That's right.               |  

RIEEKAN:  You're an extraordinary |  RIEEKAN:  I'm sorry to hear that.
  fighter.  I hate to lose you.   |  

HAN:  Thank you, General.  But    |  HAN:  Well, there's a price on my
  there's a price on my head.  If |    head.  If I don't pay off Jabba
  I don't pay off Jabba the Hutt, |    the Hutt, I'm a dead man.
  I'm a walking dead man.         |  

RIEEKAN:  I understand.  A death  |  RIEEKAN:  A death mark is not an
  mark is not an easy thing to    |    easy thing to live with.
  live with ...Until our paths    |    You're a good fighter, Solo, I
  cross again, may the force be   |    hate to lose you.
  with you.                       | 

                                  |  HAN:  Thank you, General.

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

Date: 30 JUN 1980 0530-EDT
From: SF-LOVERS@MIT-AI
Sent-by: DUFFEY at MIT-AI
Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest   V1 #175
To: (@FILE [DSK:DUFFEY;SFLVRS DISNMS]) at MIT-AI


SF-LOVERS AM Digest      Monday, 30 June 1980     Volume 1 : Issue 175

  Today's Topics: Query - Do you write SF?, Physics Imaginary - MT,
                      SF Books - Self Ref SF, SF Movies - TESB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

MARG@MIT-AI 06/27/80 21:30:18 Re:  Original Fiction Query

Do any of you have original science fiction (you wrote) available
on-line?  Are you interested in having other SF-LOVERS be able to
read it?

If you do have such works, answer with POINTERS to your work (that
is, do not mail copies of your stories to SF-LOVERS). An indication
of length would also be useful.

------------------------------

Date: 26 Jun 1980 0239-PDT (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: matter transmitters

A recent discussion on HUMAN-NETS has revived my long-standing
interest in a rather esoteric subject, that of matter transception.
I would like to see some discussion of this topic here on SFL.

I might bring out a few points to spark the discussion...

What would you REALLY have to transmit to get real matter
transmission?  Would you send the actual matter involved? Or just
the INFORMATION representing the matter? What are the ramifications
of both techniques?  My favorite example runs like this. Let's say
you just send the information, just like any other signal. You would
presumably scan the original object, noting the exact makeup and
positions of every sub-atomic particle and charge that makes up the
object. You then send this information to another point, set up the
identical charge/mass conditions, and, POOF!, you have the object.

Of course, you also still have the ORIGINAL object. Hmmm. Of course,
if you are interested in making copies of Japanese ashtrays, this
might be a dandy method.  In fact, it would be great for making
copies of anything. I don't care to address the mass/energy questions
at this point. However, I am more concerned about what happens if you
start moving sentient beings this way.  You have an original and a
copy.  Both really ARE identical.  Let's say you disintegrate the
original as soon as the copy has appeared at the receiver.  To the
outside world, that copy will be EXACTLY the same as the original.
It will act the same, think the same, etc. But would it really BE the
same entity?  To answer this question, we unfortunately have to know
exactly what consciousness is, and understand that which is commonly
know as the "soul". One thing is for sure, you would be hard pressed
to prove that the copy was not the same entity ... but only the
original entity (now dead?) would know for sure.

Or worse, you can let the copy and original meet each other.  There
have been a number of SF stories along this line, including one I
vaguely remember about some guy who made a whole bunch of copies of
himself, each of which claimed IT was the original and the one that
should survive.

Messy.  But great for cargo and production.  Maybe.

Now, to get around this, you can pull the common trick, and somehow
move the actual mass of the object (or move space around it if you
prefer, or move the area of space where the object is, or whatever.)
Offhand, I cannot imagine any way to accomplish such things, though I
CAN imagine the possiblity of scanning an object and making a copy at
a different location.

How about some comments?

--Lauren--

P.S.  Anyone see any flies with white heads around lately?

--LW--

------------------------------

Date: 28 Jun 1980  0:11:29 EDT
From: David Mankins <dm at BBN-UNIX>
Subject: more self-referencing s.f.

Two more entries under the heading 'science fiction talking about
science fiction':

   In "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said", by Philip K. Dick, two of
   the characters discuss going to see the "latest captain kirk" down
   at the neighborhood cinema.  they don't, however, because one of
   them doesn't care for the actor who is currently portraying Captain
   Kirk...

   In the novelization of "Star Wars", it mentions that Han Solo was
   smuggling spice when he was boarded by Imperial Troops, so he had
   to dump his load, thus incurring the wrath of Jabba the Hut.  I
   always thought that was a reference to "Dune".  (hmm, maybe Paul
   Muad'Dib is the next hope, who will rise out of the deserts of
   Tatooine...)

In all the discussion of computers in S.F., has anyone mentioned
"The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction" by Patricia Warrick,
published by the MIT Press?  As I recall, it contains an extensive
bibliography.

[ Warrick's bibliography was cited by HJJH in SFL V1 #157 and
  by myself in SFL V1 #137.  --  RDD ]

------------------------------

DUFFEY@MIT-AI 06/30/80 00:00:00  Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!


The following messages are the last messages in this digest. They
discuss Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. People who have not
seen these movies may not wish to read any further.


------------------------------

Date: 27 JUN 1980 1146-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: re: TESB Faults (PKaiser)

  I would like to hear some actual instances of the errors in scale
in TESB. There are a couple of places I can think of where something
might \look/ like an error --- for instance, Vader's command ship
(the black star cruiser) actually is supposed to be about 3 times
the size of the normal cruisers, which are in themselves huge. There
is one shot in which several cruisers and the command ship are shown
together, but the chief problem with that shot is that it's badly
composed --- there are too many things in it all moving in different
directions.

  As for inaccuracy, I'll repeat Heinlein's remark that in a platoon
(25), maybe 6 and more often 3 actually fire --- the rest just freeze.
Obviously this wouldn't be true of crack troops --- but have we any
reason for supposing that the majority of the storm troopers aren't
draftees? (Granted, they sometimes act like marines (usually volunteers)
rather than infantry (commonly draftees), but it looks like there's not
much room for the currently observed military separations (army, navy,
air force, marines) in the "far-away galaxy"; I have some doubts as to
the efficacy of such separations in a non-planet-based force.
  Which brings up an interesting question: how would military forces
most coherently be divided if space travel ever becomes commonplace?
Heinlein, as one might expect, is one of the few to have put extensive
thoughts about this into print; in STARSHIP TROOPERS he has the navy
and the Mobile Infantry (actually marines in power suits), and it
is remarked that all officers must come up through the ranks, while
general officers ("Sky Marshals") must serve in \both/ areas (there
are also a number of smaller groups, such as ordinary spies,
electronics hackers, intelligent dogs, and psionicists, who don't
answer directly to either of the major divisions --- the whole
organization seems much more integrated than the current US military.

  I do dispute his claim that there would be a shortage of officers;
everything I see today indicates that there are gobs of low-level
and mid-level managerial talent going to waste, because of general
inefficiency and because of sexism, racism, you-name-it-ism, and
Rosten's Maxim ("First rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate
people hire third-rate people".  Those hirees are where much of your
management "talent" comes from, since a second-rater will have the
self-preserving instincts not to move up under him anyone who could
replace him --- hey, that means Gresham's Law applies to corporations,
which is even worse than the Peter Principle being true!).

------------------------------

Date: 29 JUN 1980 1631-EDT
From: MJL at MIT-MC (Matthew Jody Lecin)

   In answer to the request I made a few weeks back, to which there
    was absolutely NO reply, I include the opening title text from
                      "The Empire Strikes Back":

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

                              Episode V
                   THE    EMPIRE   STRIKES    BACK

                   It  is  a  dark  time  for  the
                   rebellion.  Although the  Death
                   Star   has   been    destroyed,
                   Imperial troops have driven the
                   rebels  from their hidden  base
                   and  pursued  them  across  the
                   galaxy.

                   Evading  the  dreaded  Imperial
                   starfleet,  a group of  freedom 
                   fighters  led by Luke Skywalker
                   has  established a  new  secret
                   base on the remote ice world of
                   Hoth.

                   The  evil  Lord  Darth   Vader,
                   obsessed  with  finding   young
                   Skywalker,    has    dispatched
                   thousands of remote probes into
                   the far reaches of space....

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

------------------------------

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************

