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SF-LOVERS Digest V5 #52 [message #5193] Sat, 28 July 2012 00:09
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!ucbvax!sf-lovers
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.7230
Posted: Tue May 18 09:41:27 1982
Received: Thu May 20 02:10:48 1982

>From JPM@Mit-Ai Tue May 18 08:49:37 1982

SF-LOVERS Digest         Monday, 17 May 1982       Volume 5 : Issue 52

Today's Topics:
              SF Fandom - Nebula Winners & Hugo Ballot,
        SF Movies - Conan The Barbarian & The Secret of NIMH &
         Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan & Revenge of the Jedi,
        SF TV - Battelstar Galactica,  Random Topics - Foonlys
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 05/17/82 1144-EDT
From: THOKAR at LL
Subject: Nebula Winners and Hugo Ballot

Having had my copy of Locus for almost a week now and not having seen
it in the digest yet, I feel obliged to send in both the Nebula
winners and the Hugo ballot.  So, here goes.

Nebula Winners:

Best Novel -- The Claw of the Conciliator (Gene Wolfe)
Best Novella -- "The Saturn Game" (Poul Anderson)
Best Novelette -- "The Quickening" (Michael Bishop)
Best Short Story -- "The Bone Flute" (Lisa Tuttle)

A Nebula citation (subject unknown) went to Ed Ferman of F&SF, also a
Nebula citation (again subject unknown) went to Stanley Schmidt of
Analog.  A third Nebula citation (and again subject unknown) went to
David G. Hartwell of Timescape Books.


1982 Hugo Nomination Ballot

Best Novel
__ Downbelow Station -- C.J. Cherryh (DAW)
__ Little, Big -- John Crowley (Bantam)
__ The Many-Colored Land -- Julian Man (Houghton Mifflin)
__ Project Pope -- Clifford D. Simak (Del Rey)
__ The Claw of the Conciliator -- Gene Wolfe (Simon & Schuster)
__ No Award

Best Novella
__ "The Saturn Game" -- Poul Anderson (Analog, Feb 2)
__ "In the Western Tradition" -- Phyllis Eisenstein (F&SF, Mar)
__ "Emergence" -- David R. Palmar (Analog, Jan)
__ "Blue Champagne" -- John Varley (New Voices 4)
__ "True Names" -- Vernor Vinge (Binary Star 5)  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
__ "With Thimbles, With Forks and Hope" -- Kate Wilhelm
    (Asimov's, Nov 23)
__  No Award

Best Novelette
__ "The Quickening" -- Michael Bishop (Universe 11)
__ "The Thermals of August" -- Ed Bryant (F&SF, May)
__ "The Fire When It Comes" -- Parke Godwin (F&SF, May)
__ "Guardians" -- George R. R. Martin (Analog, Oct 12)
__ "Unicorn Variation" -- Roger Zelazny (Asimov's, Apr 13)
__  No Award

Best Short Story
__ "The Quiet" -- George Florance-Guthridge (F&SF, July)
__ "Absent Thee from Felicity Awhile" -- Somtow Sucharitkul
    (Analog, Sept 14)
__ "The Pusher" -- John Varley (F&SF, Oct)
__ "The Woman the Unicorn Loved" -- Gene Wolfe (Asimov's, June 8)
__  No Award

Best Nonfiction Book
__ Anatomy of Wonder -- ed. Neil Barron (Bowker)
__ After Man  -- Dougal Dixon (Macmillan)
__ Danse Macabre -- Stephen King (Everest)
__ The Grand Tour -- Ron Miller and William K. Hartman (Workman)
__ The Art of Leo & Diane Dillon -- ed. Byron Preiss (Ballantine)
__ No Award

Best Professional Editor
__ Terry Carr
__ Edward L. Ferman
__ David G. Hartwell
__ Stanley Schmidt
__ George Scithers
__ No Award

Best Professional Artist
__ Vincent DiFate
__ Carl Lundgren
__ Don Maitz
__ Rowena Morrill
__ Michael Whelan
__ No Award

Best Dramatic Presentation
__ Dragonslayer
__ Excalibur
__ Outland
__ Raiders of the Lost Ark
__ Time Bandits
__ No Award

Best Fanzine
__ File 770 -- Michael Glyer
__ Locus -- Charles N. Brown
__ SF Chronicle -- Andrew Porter
__ SF Review -- Richard E. Geis
__ SF-LOVERS Digest -- Jim McGrath (Just kidding gang) [ Drat! - Jim ]
__ No Award

Best Fan Writer
__ Richard E. Geis
__ Michael Glyer
__ Arthur Hlavaty
__ Dave Langford
__ No Award

Best Fan Artist
__ Alexis Gilliland
__ Joan Hanke-Woods
__ Victoria Poyser
__ William Rotsler
__ Stu Shiffman
__ No Award

John W. Campbell Award
__ David Brin
__*Alexis Gilliland
__ Robert Stallman (deceased)
__ Michael Swanwick
__*Paul O. Williams
__ No Award

 * eligible again next year


If enough interest is expressed, I will collect and tally your votes
for the hugo winners.  (Maybe the digest can take out a membership in
the Worldcon and vote like NESFA (New England Science Fiction Society)
does each year.)  Votes will be kept confidential.  The FINAL deadline
will be JULY 15, which gives you almost two months.

Voting in done on an Australian Ballot system, i.e. rank by number
(1st choice, 2nd choice, etc) up to and including No Award.  Winners
will be announced sometime in August.

                                           Greg

[ Thanks Greg for typing this all in!  If anyone is interested in
  having a straw Hugo poll of the readership, please send mail to
  Greg.  If we have enough interested parties, we'll do something
  about it.  --  Jim ]

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

Date: 16 May 1982 1133-PDT
From: Phil Gerring 
Subject: Movie review: Conan The Barbarian


Pico-review: Made in Japan

Nano-review: Any resemblance to characters, living or dead, created by
Robert E. Howard (et al.) is purely coincidental.

Micro-review: If you're a Conan fan and expect to see him on the 
screen, expect some disappointment.  Otherwise, it's an OK (barely) 
swords and sorcery/samaurai movie without much in the way of sorcery.
Worth going to see, but the word is that The Sword and the Sorcerer 
(which I've not seen yet) has upstaged it considerably and is a better
movie.

Macro-review:  We kept expecting the dialogue to be in Japanese with 
subtitles; some of the scenes appear to be loosely based on Conan 
stories (e.g., The Thing in the Crypt, The Tower of the Elephant), but
many of the weapons, armor, fighting techniques, symbols, and overall
impressions had a strongly Japanese flavor.  The antagonist, Thulsa
Doom, was indeed a Howard character, but in the King Kull stories...
The general flavor of the movie is Conan et al. vs.  mostly human
antagonists, while that of the books is more Conan vs.  mostly
supernatural monsters.
     Many of the scenes were rather inexplicable--I kept wondering 
what the heck was going on.  The first part of the movie was mostly 
disconnected scenes with Conan being the only common point (which is 
to say, the plot is very weak).  After we manage to meet all of the 
good guys and bad guys, we finally have a quest to save a beautiful 
princess from the evil sorcerer, which starts to tie things together.
     The special effects were straightforward and well-done, with the 
best part being a fight with some kind of air elementals or demons or 
some such (it wasn't entirely clear just what was going on).  The 
first part managed to avoid being unnecessarily bloody, but this was 
rectified later (I DON'T recommend this for kids...).  One point 
worthy of mention is that this is the first movie of the genre to have
a female who handles weaponry with more than adequate skill.

Summary: Pretend the title is The Three Samaurai, ignore some of the 
disconnectedness, and it's definitely worth seeing once.

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

Date: 15 May 1982  16:49-EDT (Saturday)
From: Mijjil (Matthew J. Lecin) 
Reply-to: Lecin at RU-GREEN
Subject: The Secret of NIMH

Am I to assume that this "animated feature", "The Secret of NIMH" is 
that wonderful old book "Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of the NIMH?"

(It would be FANTASTIC if it was...) (TAKE THE KIDS.)

{Mijjil}

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

Date: 17 May 1982 1849-EDT
From: Thomas Galloway 
Subject: ST-TWOK ending (not a spoiler, but refers to one tangently)

There are always two ways to interpret the comment, "the audience
applauded the end of the movie"...
tom

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

Date: 17 May 1982 07:21-EDT
From: James M. Turner 
Subject: ROTJ is to VMS as...

Just to put it in perspective:

Waiting for ROTJ is-
     72 times worse than waiting for the next analog
     (36 times the time and twice the cliffhangers)

     150 times worse than waiting for the next Instant Message.
     (75 times the wait, and twice the cliffhangers)

     6 times worse than waiting for the next Elfquest
     (12 times the wait, but only 1/2 the cliffhangers)

     Equal with the Hugo winners
     (3 times the wait, but 1/3 the cliffhangers)

     1/2 as bad as waiting for a new VMS release
     (Twice the wait, but 1/4 the cliffhangers [remember,
      it's your JOB!])

     oo times as bad as waiting for a new Heinlein book
     (twice the wait, and who cares anyway)

     1/oo times as bad as waiting to see if Regan goes away (equal
     wait, but it's only a movie, we got Vadar in the White House!)

     And 1/oo^2 times as bad as waiting for the con that's next week,
     and your boss just dumped a ton of make-work on your desk, and
     the tape drive's dead and...


                                James

Note: Any political statements made are those of the author's evil
persona that creeps out a 6 am on out-of-phase days and causes
trouble. If you don't like it, fill in your favorite liberal and
elected office.

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

Date: 16 May 1982 0017-PDT (Sunday)
From: lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Battlestar Dyslexia

I don't remember all of those time/space units they used in that 
loser... but I do remember something that popped up in the first few 
minutes that definitely set the mood of the series for me.

The "good guys" were being chased by the Du Pont Crylons.  The baddies
were getting close.  One of our heroes ejaculated a line like: "We'd
better do something, they're only 4 microns behind us, and gaining!"

Yeah, I thought, they'd better do something REALLY fast.  Microns.
Cretins.

--Lauren--

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

Date: 17-May-82 12:12PM-EDT (Mon)
From: David Miller 
Subject: Battelstar Galactica Units

       In the TV series of Battelstar Galactica the following
       units were used to describe space and time:

                   BG       |      Terran equivalent:
                   ----------------------------------
                   micron   |      second
                   centon   |      minute
                   yarn     |      year

       No units for distance were ever used  except  for  one
       horrible reference  to  parsec,  where  they men A.U..
       Distances were handled in the manner  of  light  yarns
       and fighter  microns  (i.e.  the  distance  a  fighter
       travels in a micron) This is  the  reason  expressions
       like "Wait  just  one micron!"  and "Cylons are thirty
       microns away" This  last  line  always  caused  me  to
       envision a  Cylon  with  his blaster stuck firmly into
       the speakers back.

       The best reference to  Earth  units  is  in  the  late
       season   episodes  where  they  take  aboard  a  Space
       Shuttle.  After it escapes and  is  followed  back  to
       its home  planet  TERRA,  one  of  the occupants tells
       Starbuck to "hold on for a minute" whereupon  Starbuck
       looks around  for  something  to grab onto and replies
       "A what?"

       Personally the whole deal with  the  units  struck  me
       as a bunch of feldacarp.

                                    Dave
                                    (miller@yale)

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

Date: 15 May 1982 1402-PDT
From: Mark Crispin
Reply-to: Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE
Subject: Foonlys at Stanford

     There is only one Foonly at Stanford, an F2 at the CCRMA Lab (the
computer music folks).  The SU-AI processor is not, nor has it ever
been, a Foonly, prototype or otherwise.  In particular, it is not the
common prototype for a Foonly or DEC KL-10 that Phil Gerring
describes.  It is an early production model DEC KL-1080 model A CPU,
somewhere between revision level 8 and current KL's.  The differences
between it and modern KL's can be attributed to its older packaging,
not keeping it up to revision level, and modifications of dubious
value made to the hardware and microcode at Stanford.

     When the "super-Foonly" project folded at Stanford, some of the 
people involved went to DEC; and portions of the design of the super- 
Foonly became the base for the KL-10 design.  The DEC prints labelled
as being drawn by "S. Foonly" are not indicative of this; rather the
early KL prints were drawn without anything in the "drawn by" box.
Somebody lawyer or marketing person or something (I never got a
straight story on who) got all upset and said there had to be
SOMETHING there.  Nobody could remember who did what (remember they
were using SUDS, back in the days when CAD was a new idea) so as a
joke they put in "S. Foonly" in all the prints.

     Stanford's contribution to the KL-10 effort was recognized and 
rewarded by DEC, which is why we got one of the early KL-10s.  Other 
individuals in the super-Foonly group at Stanford got together after a
while and eventually did build Foonlys.  A KL-10 and a Foonly are two 
entirely different processors; the old super-Foonly designs at
Stanford were just a small (but important) part of the KL-10.

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

Date: 16 May 1982 1134-PDT
From: Phil Gerring 
Subject: Duplicate digests, Foonlys

Hey, SFL #50 broke a record for number of copies received: I got no
less than eleven (previous record was six).  I like SFL, but do you
realize how much it costs me to store eleven copies for even just a
day??!

MRC's comments on Foonlys and 10s are undoubtedly more accurate than
mine, mine being based on oral tradition and his on (apparently)
research and/or personal experience.  So much for oral tradition in
the technological world...

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

End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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