Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8274
Posted: Fri Aug 13 05:03:18 1982
Received: Sun Aug 15 06:23:38 1982

>From SFL@SRI-CSL Fri Aug 13 04:54:40 1982

SF-LOVERS Digest         Tuesday, 10 Aug 1982      Volume 6 : Issue 38

Today's Topics:
             SF Books - Ursula LeGuin & Query Answered &
   Courtship Rite & Crystal Singer & The Robot Who Looked Like Me &
                Kingsbane & The Elfstones of Shannara,
                   SF Topics - Holographic Memory,
                   Humor - Genderless Video Games,
              Spoiler - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 10 Aug 82 19:51-PDT
From: mclure at SRI-UNIX
Subject: Ursula Le Guin alive?

Our local SF shop Future Fantasy says they haven't heard of any Le
Guin obit and one of their employees/friends lives in Portland where
Le Guin lives.

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

Date: 10 Aug 1982 16:45:46 EDT (Tuesday)
From: Winston B. Edmond 
Subject: Reply to Steve Alexander

Steve,
   Perhaps the book you are thinking about is A For Andromeda, by Fred
Hoyle.
 -WBE

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

Date: 11 Aug 1982 16:39:39-EDT
From: csin!cjh at CCA-UNIX
Subject: plot/title query

   This sounds somewhat like A FOR ANDROMEDA, except that they build
the computer (per instructions) almost immediately and spend the rest
of the book occasionally regretting it.

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

Date: 10 Aug 82 16:42-PDT
From: mclure at SRI-UNIX
Subject: sf column

                           SCIENCE FICTION
                          By Roland J. Green
           (c) 1982 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)

    In ''Courtship Rite'' (Timescape-Simon & Schuster, $17.50
hardcover, $8.95 trade paperback), Donald Kingsbury, a Canadian, has
worked on a grand scale and achieved impressive success. The book
combines imaginative world-building, fascinating characters, and an
absorbing if somewhat convoluted story, as well as grace, wit, and the
intelligent use of the English language.
    The world of the story is the harsh, metal-poor planet Geta. Its 
human colonists have survived over the centuries only by the use of 
advanced techniques of genetic engineering and the rigorous culling of
those with low kalothi - low genetic potential for survival - 
preferably before they can reproduce. Ritual suicide and cannibalism 
play large parts in this culling process.
    Three brothers who have formed a group marriage with two wives
seek a third wife. The most important leader of their clan desires
their first choice for himself, and sends them after another woman, a 
religious leader preaching a heretical opposition to cannibalism. The 
brothers decide to put the woman through a series of seven ordeals; if
she passes all of them, she will have proved her high kalothi and her
fitness to be their ''three-wife.'' This simple plan for courtship is
progressively complicated by the schemes and ambitions of the clan
leader, a seafaring clan using genetic engineering to back a plan of
conquest, and a cloned female assassin.
    Kingsbury has done his homework on just about everything he puts 
into the book. Particularly notable are his convincing and amusing 
portrait of the dynamics of a group marriage and his intelligent 
treatment of religion and the religious mentality. Science fiction has
too often been tolerant of ignorance or outright prejudice against
religion; Kingsbury cannot be faulted here. A nice satirical touch is
the Getan reaction to a newly discovered history of the wars of the
legendary planet Earth; they are horrified at leaders who killed more
enemies than they could eat before the corpses rotted!  (No,
''Courtship Rite'' is not for the squeamish.)
    Anne McCaffrey's ''Crystal Singer'' (Del Rey-Ballantine, $2.95 
paperback) has no dragons, but it has all of McCaffrey's gifts for 
world-building and characterization. Killashandra Ree, denied her 
hoped-for musical career, turns her talent to seeking crystal on the 
planet Ballybran. The crystal is vital to the galactic economy, and 
those who discover and test it with their singing are among the 
best-rewarded workers around. They also undergo irreversible 
physiological changes which bind them to crystal singing and the 
crystal planet for the rest of their lives.
    The novel suffers from one major problem, imposed on McCaffrey and
a host of other SF writers by the low rates paid for short science 
fiction. There is great financial pressure to assemble one's short 
pieces into novels whenever possible, and McCaffrey has done exactly 
that; ''Crystal Singer'' was originally four novellas published in a 
series of anthologies edited by Roger Elwood. As a result, McCaffrey 
winds up with four conflicts to resolve instead of just one, making 
some parts of the story, such as Killashandra's becoming the lover of 
the leader of the crystal singers, seem to happen too fast or too 
easily. She is much too good a writer for this to be other than an 
excellent book in spite of the seams, but they do show.
    BRIEF NOTES:
    ''The Robot Who Looked Like Me,'' by Robert Sheckley (Bantam, $2 
paperback) contains 13 short stories demonstrating Sheckley's unique 
brands of satire and sheer zaniness.
    ''Kingsbane,'' by John Morressy (Playboy Paperbacks, $2.50), is a 
well-told, straightforward fantasy-adventure quest novel, the 
conclusion of a trilogy but eminently readable on its own.  
Particularly recommended for readers just getting their feet wet in 
heroic fantasy.
    ''The Elfstones of Shannara,'' by Terry Brooks (Del ReyBallantine,
$15.95 hardcover, $7.95 trade paperback), is a gigantic fantasy novel,
sequel to Brooks' best-selling ''Sword of Shannara.'' It's certain to
be popular with people who liked the first one. Brooks still rambles,
but many scenes rise to great power.

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

Date: Tuesday, 10 August 1982 13:20-PDT
From: KDO at SRI-KL
Subject: More holograms


Holograms store information, and a lot of it is redundant. (you could
make a hologram which projects a different, unrelated image in each
direction, rather than a different view on the same scene.)  If you
cut out half the hologram, half the information is destroyed (for
example you can't move your head as far to look around things).  The
information is redundantly stored you can recover a lot, but this is
not the same as one piece information being stored distributed over
the whole image (I guess I am trying to distinguish between 
distributing the information and duplicating it).  When people say
that memory is holographic, I assume that does not mean the same thing
as highly redundant.

                                Ken

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

Date: 27 Jul 1982 1636-PDT
From: FEATHER at USC-ISIF (Martin S. Feather)
Subject: extraterrestial video games

What's the E.T. version of Pacman?  
sPACeman.

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

Date: 29 Jul 1982 1919-PDT
From: Henry W. Miller 
Subject: Pac Humour

        What do you get when you cross Ms. Pacman with Bo Derek?

        A Pac-Ten.

-HWM

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

Date: 29 July 1982 00:55-EDT
From: Charles F. Von Rospach 
Subject: genderless video games


If you are getting VERY tired of not-very-funny puns based on certain 
unnamed video games, do you tell the joke tellers to PAC it up?

*ugh*

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

Date: 29-JUL-1982 19:37
From: TSC::COORS::VICKREY
Reply-to: "TSC::COORS::VICKREY c/o" 
Subject: PacPuns


To all PacPunners:  I don't mind the puns, some of them are even good
(and Bog knows it's no where near as bad as the RotLA jokes last
summer!), but I do have one little complaint.


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!STOP APOLOGISING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If your going to pun, then PUN, and enjoy it!

susan

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

Date: 29 Jul 1982 2020-PDT
From: Henry W. Miller 
Subject: TIP-TAC's

        To whom ever sent that pun in:  that was very TACky of you.

-HWM

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

Date: 28 July 1982  09:58-PDT (Wednesday)
From: KING at KESTREL
Subject: untitled

        I haven't seen any Pacmen at the video arcades lately.

        I guess they're all playing Pacgammon.

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

Date: 4 August 1982  10:31-PDT (Wednesday)
From: KING at KESTREL
Subject: I can't seem to stop

        What is a giant PacMan who goes around knocking down trees in 
Africa?


        A PacHyderm

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

Date: 4 August 1982  17:13-EDT (Wednesday)
From: David H. Kaufman 
Subject: [MILLER: PAC humour]

        Date: Wednesday, 28 July 1982 20:38-EDT
        From: Henry W. Miller 
        Re:  PAC humour

                What does a PACMAN do in the great outdoors?  Why, he
        goes back-pacing...

        -HWM

And what does he sing while he does it?

        ``If somehow you could
          Pac up your sorrows ...''

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

Date: 4 August 1982  17:15-EDT (Wednesday)
From: David H. Kaufman 
Subject: Pac Humor

What're the pacpeople's favorite football teams?  The Pac-10, of
course!

        - Dave

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

Date: 05-Aug-1982
From: DAVE PORTER AT SMAUG
Reply-to: "DAVE PORTER AT SMAUG c/o" 
Subject: Pax

PACk it in, will you?

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

Date: 11 Aug 1982 1852-EDT
From: Hobbit 
Subject: Sigh

If you were to take a mess of those little white styrofoam frobs that 
they use for shipping material, paint them yellow with little black
wedges, what would you wind up with?

PACing peanuts.

Again: *Sigh*.

_H*

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

Date: Thursday, August 12, 1982 6:27AM
From: Jim McGrath (The Moderator) 
Subject: SPOILER WARNING!  SPOILER WARNING!

The last message in this digest discuss some plot details in the movie
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  Some readers may not wish to read
on.

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

Date: 10 August 1982 0834-PDT (Tuesday)
From: andrews at UCLA-Security (Richard Andrews)
Subject: "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan"  HUMOR and SPOILER



          Is anyone else out there tired of reading first-grade level
humor in this digest?  (I'm referring to "Genderless Video Game"
one-liners of the form:  "Does a Pac-man by his cigarettes by the
carton?  No, he buys them by the Pac.")

          Below, I've made an attempt at humor of a bit higher level
of sophistication:  the limerick.  These were inspired by some of the
spoilers I've read in this digest concerning Star Trek:  The Wrath of
Khan, so unfortunately these are spoilers also.  I've done a bit of
thinking about Spock's last mind-meld with McCoy and the theory that
his memory is being kept in the doctor's brain.


          Although we all saw Spock was dead,
          Along comes this theory instead-
               While his body rests easy
               His mind lies uneasy
          With the illogic in McCoy's head.

          I think this is quite a strange fate,
          But the good folks at Paramount debate:
               "Since Spock has no equal
               Bring him back for a sequel
          Or six, or seven, or eight."

          I wonder just what Bones would say
          When he learns of the role he must play.
               Quite often he'll find
               He's got Spock on his mind
          But it's never happened quite THIS way.

          It will most likely come as a shock
          To learn he's got something of Spock's.
               He'll probably say
               In his inimitable way,
          "I'm a doctor not a safe-deposit box!!!"


                                Rich Andrews
                                andrews@ucla-security

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End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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