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SF-LOVERS Digest Volume 6, Issue 57 [message #7021] Tue, 31 July 2012 00:04
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:UNKNOWN:sf-lovers
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8765
Posted: Tue Oct 12 02:56:18 1982
Received: Sun Oct 17 03:13:52 1982

>From SFL@SRI-CSL Mon Oct 11 20:42:17 1982

SF-LOVERS Digest          11-Oct-82	       Volume 6 : Issue 57

Today's Topics:

    Piers Anthony, comments on SU-LOTS messages, Carter's WIZARD OF ZAO,
    Lem, next Star Trek movie (and possible spoilers)

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

Date:  8 September 1982 14:52 mst
From:  RMann.HDSA
Subject:  Piers Anthony oversight
Reply-to: RMann.HDSA%PCO-Multics at MIT-Multics

No mention of Piers Anthony in any of your lists of SF authors ? I find
it difficult to believe that anyone who has read Mr. Anthony could not
help but rate him with Ursula LeGuin, Robert Silverberg, Ray Bradbury
(BTW Martian Chronicles deserves an A+) and other SF greats.

Mr. Anthony is a master story teller who is able to charm the reader
with his wit, intelligence, and incredible(but not impossible)
imagination into staying up way past his bedtime reading "just one more
page".

For example, in "Viscous Circle" we are introduced to a a civilization
of Bands living in the boonies of the universe.  Now, the Bands are
metallic toruses (tori??) that communicate by refracting light through
the center of the torus and modulating it with information. They are
incapable of war and have no concept of property. They do not die,
instead they voluntarily disband and have their auras join the viscous
circle.

Intruding on this blissful and peaceful existence are monsters that are
bony creatures covered with fat and water which leave refuse wherever
they go called Solarians. The story involves the means by which this
anarchic and peaceful Band civilization overcomes the invasion by the
monsters.

This book is a part of the Cluster series which includes "Thousandstar",
"Cluster" and others. Also recommended are:"A Spell for Chameleon",
"Source of Magic", "Castle Roogna", "Centaur Aisle", "Split Infinity".

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

Date: 15 Sep 1982 09:22:32-EDT
From: csin!cjh at CCA-UNIX
To: sf-lovers at mit-ai
Subject: su-lots comments

   I suppose we had to have someone quoting Rottensteiner here at some
point. (It would be even more amusing to read what Farmer has to say about
this spirited exegesis.) Rottensteiner's problem is that he usually talks
about his opinions on what he's read, rather than addressing what he's read
directly; his opinions seem to be shaped by the same forces that made
Hawthorne, Poe, and Lovecraft the favorite American writers in Europe. I
wouldn't go so far as to call him a toadying lickspittle, but he is a
[socialist] who reserves his highest praise for [behind the Iron Curtain]
authors, such as Lem, whose criticisms of the various regimes are most
muffled, while being routinely abusive of the more sardonic authors such as
Mrozek. I dug through as much of his badly-illustrated book about SF as I
could stand; it's a great piece if you want to learn how to trash books but
don't expect to get much insight into SF from it.


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

Date: 15 Sep 1982 18:23 EDT
From: Heiny.Henr at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Wiz. of Zao?? (P.PARDNER at SU-LOTS)
To: SF-LOVERS@SRI-CSL
cc: Heiny.Henr

Yes "The Wizard of Zao" is the correct title.  It's by Lin Carter,
published by DAW books.

I don't know if there are any more in the series out, planned, or whatever. If
you find out, I would like to know, too.

Chris

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

Date:     15 Sep 82 15:54:49-EDT (Wed)
From:     Steve Platt 
To:       sf-lovers at Sri-Csl
Subject:  Wizard of Zao

 ...another book by Lin Carter, the one-plot author.

The book is definitely one of a proposed series, as you state, involving
one story on each planet in a solar system.  To my knowledge, none of
the other books in the series have been written. (Wizard was printed
by DAW; I doubt it is still in print; Carter's stuff tends to stay
available for around a year before fading away to used bookstores.)

I have found Carter amazing in how far one author can stretch a single
half-baked S&S plot -- at last count, he has written 
of the same book (let's see, a half-dozen Thongor, 5 Green Stars, around
5 World's End, a series I don't remember well, around a dozen assorted
"hidden city in the valley" books, 8 Jandar's....)...

If you want a quick plot synopsis of any and/or all, just string together

	Hero finds princess again and loses her
	Hero gets entrapped in some mortal danger

as often as you wish, or until boredom.

(Not that I should knock it too badly; if you are in the mood for a real
pulp trash S&S book, he can't be beat...)

	-steve

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

Date: 15 Sep 1982 21:34:38 EDT (Wednesday)
From: John Redford 
Subject: Lem's "A Perfect Vacuum"
To: sf-lovers at sri-csl
Cc: vlsi at dec-marlboro

A few weeks ago someone asked about Stanislaw Lem's "A Perfect
Vacuum".  I too looked long and hard for it until I found it in the
MITSFS's library.  It came out in hardback in 1979.  Call me a fan;
I've been tempted to order it from the publisher (Harcourt Brace
Jovanovitch, 757 Third Avenue NY,NY 10017).  The book is a collection
of reviews of imaginary books.  It starts, of course, with a quite
unflattering review of itself.  And, as is also natural, most of the
books are about reality distortion.  In "Gruppenfuhrer Louis XIV"
a fleeing Nazi general sets up his own version of the French court
in the hinterland of Argentina; in "Being Inc." the mega-corporations
discover the ultimate in consumer satisfactions: arranging the circum-
stances of the customer's life to make him the hero or villain of
his own personally tailored drama.  The FTC, however, prevents the companies
from merging, so they must compete with one another when their client's
demands conflict.  By the time of the book's action, they secretly 
arrange every event in the United States.  Some of the reviews are
philosophical parodies, Eg. "Kultur als Fehler" (Civilization as Mistake),
where a stolid German proposes that culture arises when
sufficient misunderstandings about the world accumulate to form a closed
system of belief.
    The best two pieces, though, are the last, "Non
Serviam", and "The New Cosmogony".  "Non Serviam" was reprinted in
Hofstadter and Dennett's book "The Mind's I".  It is supposed to
be a paper by a researcher into "personetics", the science
of creating artificial personalities inside worlds inside the computer.
The researcher has absolute power over his creations; he can bring them
into existence, destroy them, and change their world at will.  He is
to these creatures as God would be to us.  His main interest in them,
therefore, is having them argue theology.  Most of the paper is a debate
among the personoids on what should be their proper attitude towards
their creator.  Their conclusion: "we shall not serve".  
    "The New Cosmogony" is the acceptance speech of a Nobel prize
winner in physics.  He describes his remarkable theory about the source
of physical laws.  The universe is more than ten billion years old.
Several generations of stars have come and gone.  Billions of years
have elapsed since the first civilizations could have arisen, so the
question becomes, where are they?  Why don't we see their names spelled
out with galaxies for pixels?  His answer is, they are there, in fact
they are everywhere, and the structure of physical law is their
handiwork.  Laws did not arise out of the inherent structure of
the universe; they are rules established by competing primordial
civilizations.  All the players are operating under game theory, so they
adopt certain conventions to prevent catastrophic upsets.  Thus,
physical laws are homogeneous throughout the universe because all the
players pick the same, optimal strategy.  There is no travel through time
because that would give an unfair advantage, and for the
same reason information cannot travel faster than light.  Relics of past
conflicts can be seen in quasars and in the microwave background radiation.
We haven't been visited by a dozen space-faring races because the big
boys suppress young cultures that get too uppity.  And the clincher is
that the "psychzoics" (how the hell does that get translated from Polish?)
have not yet finished with physics.  There are subtle little asymmetries
still to be worked out.  For instance,  left and right are indistinguishable
except in the beta decay of a certain kind of muon.  If we can see
these inconsistencies being smoothed out we can tell that the psychozoics
are still at work.
   Whoo-ee.  Eat your heart out, Niven.

John Redford

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

*** SPOILER, the following messages reveal plot details of the next Star ***
*** Trek movie. You may not wish to read further ***

Date:     15 Sep 82 16:22:07-EDT (Wed)
From:     Gene Spafford 
To:       sf-lovers at Mit-Ai
Subject:  Next Trek


The following is a collection of messages that were entered into a
hobbyist-type bulletin board service.  I thought these might be of
interest and/or amusement to the readers of this digest.  The discussion
on that BBS stopped about 2 weeks ago so I guess this is the end
of the matter there.  I have deleted a few extraneous comments and
the like; any changes I made to the entries have been indicated
by a comment in square brackets.  Enjoy.

# 346
>From : PHIL    To : TREKKERS
Subject : THE PLOT OF THE NEXT ST MOVIE    Date : Mon. 08/09/82 21:13
*******  S P O I L E R   W A R N I N G  *******
 
This is the plot of the next Star Trek movie, as pieced together by
yours truely. Those who want to be suprised should ^c this message.
 
Ok. Remember, towards the end of ST:TWOK (The Wrath of Kahn), just
before Spock goes down to the engineering deck to fix the warp drive,
he stops at McCoy, and does a little touching with his fingers, and
says, "Remember..." ??? Well, bearing in mind that the average human
uses 10%-15% of his brain capacity (In McCoy's case 4%-6%), there's
lots of room left over. What Spock did was to take a "memory dump"
(sorry) and make a backup of his mind into the spare space of
McCoy's brain. (We have precidence for this. Remember the episode
with Sargon, the intelligence in the white sphere? In that one, Spock's
mind was transferred into the sphere, then into Nurse Chapel's brain,
where she carried it around until they got Spock's body back.)
 
Now, Spock's body has been dropped onto the surface of the planet
that was created by the Genesis effect. It would be reasonable to
expect that the body would be revived by the reminants of the
effect, but since the body has been dead for so long, the brain will
be blank. 
 
Also, since we would now have a new, revived Spock, here's a perfect
chance to get Leonard Nemoy out, and replace him with somebody
younger.
 
I'm sure that you can see the possibility here. For some reason, the
Enterprise goes back to the planet, they find Spock, and the memory
gets restored! Viola! 
 
now, this wouldn't be much of a story by itself, so here's some twists.
Remember, Mister Savvik is a Vulcan/Romulan half-breed. (I've got an
idea how that happened, too.) Would it be beyond the reach of
possibility that she will fall in love with the new, improved Spock?
 
I suspect that it might be possible to see the Romulans discover the
new planet, and pick up Spock. Then the enterprise goes after them,
with Mr. Savvik (I love that "Mister") leading the way.
 
Anybody got any more ideas?
 
                                          ...phil

# 349
>From : GENE SPAFFORD    To : PHIL REED
Subject : TREK    Date : Mon. 08/09/82 23:34
Pick up a copy of the book "..Kahn..." (etc.)  There is a lot of
background in there that wasn't in the movie, including the
origins of Saavik.  By the way, half Romulan, half Vulcan 
types are very sensitive about the fact...if they live.
Read the book.
 
As to your speculations....we have thought about all of what you
mentioned, but figured that they probably won't try something in
that vein since the first movie got into trouble by getting
a little too far-fetched.  However, the memory dump idea is
a real neat idea.  We must wait and see.  I, for one, think
that Spock is actually the one other hope of the Jedi, and
they're in *real* trouble now that he bought the farm.

# 354
>From : DAN DOSSIN    To : PHIL REED
Subject : MOVIE    Date : Tue. 08/10/82 06:13
Thanks Phil, really thanks.  You just saved me
about $15 dollars (including pop corn).
Perhaps you could give us the 6:00 news for the
next week or so.  With that information we could
decide iif it is worth while to get out of bed.
I would like some inside information on the stock
market.  Nothing big, just enough to make a couple
of million.  Thanks.
      The Mad Forester.

# 355
>From : JEFF GARBERS    To : TWIMC
Subject : THE *REAL* STORY    Date : Tue. 08/10/82 09:15
No, no, Phil, you've got it all wrong.  Few people know
 it, but I am employed as a creative consultant to the studio
 responsible for the Trek movies, and they gave me free
 rein for the next movie.  So here's the *real* story.
 
Captain Kirk, despondent over the loss of his pal Spock,
 quits Starfleet and opens a Taco Bell on Betelgeuse 3.
 The tranquility and grease soon get to him, and we feel
 pity for the Captain as we see him sticking two burritos
 onto a tostada, running around with the resulting model,
 and crying 'Zoooom! Nyaaaaaaow!  Pow! Pow! Take that,
 Klingons!  Nyaaaaaow!'  The Captain is relieved of his
 franchise when he is found stepping on Cinnamon Crispas
 "because I like the sound".
 
Meanwhile, the brain transferrence between Spock and McCoy
 (Phil guessed right on that one) is taking its toll 
 on the good doctor.  Spock's personality has begun
 to assert itself (as a result of some assertiveness
 training, no doubt) and McCoy is found attaching little
 Play-Doh points to his ears.  "I'm a doctor, dammit,
 *and* a computer technician," he shouts, much to the
 amusement of the lab animals in Sick Bay.
 
On the bridge, it is revealed that Mr. Saavik really *is*
 a mister, and he/she is kicked out of Starfleet for
 dressing too extravagantly and attempting to corrupt
 an ensign.
 
The main conflict in the movie arises when the female 
 crewmembers mutiny, angrily demanding that they get
 their old mini-skirts from the TV show back.  They
 take over the Enterprise and re-decorate in pastels.
 Starfleet is perturbed and threatens to ban the
 Enterprise crew from playing video games during
 shore leave.  The situation is rectified.
 
But what of Uhura?
 
 /// JPG

# 357
>From : KATHERINE RIVES    To : LUNITICS, ETC.
Subject : UHURA???    Date : Tue. 08/10/82 11:32
 
Hi everyone. 
 
You folks don't know about Uhura???
Having discovered Kirk on B-3, Uhura takes over the ship with
McCoy/Spock &  Mr. Saavik. She then takes the now insane Kirk in tow
and sets out to retrieve Spock's  body. She then aranges a trade where
Spock enters Kirk's brain, straightens out Kirk and can't get out
again. So Kirk finds his way into Uhura's body, and Uhura, finding
things a bit crowded for her taste, vacates for Spock's old body
(which Spock understandable wants back). In the meantime, Saavik
has fallen in love with Spock not knowing that Uhura is in his body,
which iritates Uhura  to no end.
At this point Gene Rodenberry has a nervous breakdown and ST IV
is eagerly awaited.
 
      >>KAT<<  

# 360
>From : JEFF GARBERS    To : TWIMC
Subject : TREK III    Date : Tue. 08/10/82 19:17
Sample dialog from Trek III:
 
Chekov:  "Klingon destroyed, kyptin!"
 
Kirk:  "Ooh! What a difference photon torpedoes make!"
 
/// JPG

# 366
>From : PHIL REED    To : TREKKERS
Subject : SAVVIK'S PARENTS    Date : Wed. 08/11/82 09:10
Jeff, nice try. However, see if you can top this.
 
We all know that Savvik is half Vulcan, half Romulan. The question
that springs to mind is "How did this occur" (Besides the mechanics,
I mean)??
 
Curiously, we can answer this question with information from the ST
series. Remember, one of the second season episodes had the Romulans
owning a cloaking device that would make their ships undetectable.
As usual, Kirk & Co. decide to rescue the federation. They draw
lots and pick Spock as the person who could slip aboard without
being recognized, and Kirk as backup, after he gets a little plastic
surgery on his ears.
 
So, Spock beams aboard, and after some (mis)adventures, gets himself
captured. He is taken to the Romulan captain (a female, remember?)
who, very much taken with him, invites him to dinner. In fact, we
see them at dinner, *in* *her* *quarters*!! Who can guess what 
dessert was?
 
So, we see that >>>SAVVIK IS SPOCK'S DAUGHTER<<<
 
 
Top that.
                                  ...phil

# 381
>From : ROY GREEN    To : KAT & PHIL
Subject : CAT AND TREK    Date : Thu. 08/12/82 21:42

   [Some non-Trek-related comments deleted here. -- Spaf]
 
phil, your assessment of st3 sounds plausible, however.....
betsy (the human) and i jumped to the same conclusion about
mister savvik, however, since vulcans only go into heat (both male
and female) once every seven years, i find it unlikely that
such a clandestine affair could've occured.  (spock's parents
*were* married (or whatever they called it that era).)
  
later....
         
  r.green,esq.
    plot analyst for dean-witter

# 388
>From : KATHERINE RIVES    To : TREKKERS
Subject : SAAVIK    Date : Fri. 08/13/82 21:07
 
NO, NO, NO!! you have it all wrong.
 
First of all, there seems to be some confusion as to how the woman
spells her name. Once and for all, it is Saavik.
 
Secondly, you must read the novel form of ST-TWOK. Besides being reasonably
well written, it gives a lot of additional background that is not in
the movie. For instance, Saavik is indeed half Vulcan and half Romulan.
However, this came about on a planet where the Romulans were in charge of
things. It seems that one of their notions of fun is to rape captive
Vulcans and then force them to live to see the birth of the bastard
or give birth to it, as the case may be. Since the official Romulan
word was that mating between the species was impossible, these
children were abandoned when they vacated the planet. Certainly the
Romulan parents did not need them after they served their purpose
of humiliating their Vulcan parents.
 
This is where Saavik comes in. She was about 12, and a wild abandoned
child when Spock found her on this planet. He saw some potential in
her and saw that she got thru the Academy. Much of her upbringing,
not to mention her Romulan ancestry, shows up in her temper. And
being very proud, she refused the test that would positively identify
her Vulcan parent, not wishing to bring disgrace on the dead parent's
family.
 
For all you who hoped that Spock had gotten something from that
Romulan commander long ago...   sorry.
 
       >>KAT<<
 

# 392
>From : PHIL REED    To : WHOEVER
Subject : QUICK NOTES    Date : Sat. 08/14/82 23:33
Trek: I will point out that in the Trek movies, as with SW and TESB
(Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back), the ONLY thing you can count
on is the movie. G. Lucas has made a great deal of noise to speculators
that all speculation must NOT include any written sources, that only
the information in the movies must be considered. I understand that
the ST folks are the same way.
 
    [non-Trek-related stuff deleted here --Spaf]
 
                                             ...phil

# 393
>From : MARVIN YIZAR    To : JEFF
Subject : SPOCKS SPERM    Date : Sun. 08/15/82 01:41
SAAVIK IS SPOCK'S DAUGHTER!!! A VERY LOGICAL DEDUCTION!!
BOY ARE YOU GUYS UP THERE!! YOU ARE REALLY ON THE BALL!!
WE ARE STILL WONDERING HOW THAT BOY BECAME KIRK'S SON??
WHEN DID KIRK GET MARRIED?? 
   [Some comments concerning behind-the-scene activities
      deleted for lack of couth.  --Spaf]

# 395
>From : HOWARD MILLER    To : TREKKIES
Subject : KIRK'S PECCADILLOES    Date : Sun. 08/15/82 09:35
   Anyone who has watched Star Trek knows that there were many
scenes in which Kirk is seen putting his boots back on after
spending more than the required 5 minutes in his quarters
with some strange but beautiful woman.
    As for marriage, everyone knows his marriage certificate
says 'ENTERPRISE'.

# 404
>From : ROY GREEN    To : MARVIN YIZAR
Subject : SPOCK'S WILD OATS??    Date : Mon. 08/16/82 20:08
Once again, I reiterate....
   Spock is a Vulcan, no?  Vulcans have mating cycles of SEVEN
(Count 'em) years.  It is 'highly illogical' to assume that 
Spock would have wasted his 7-year itch on a Romulan female, since 
Spock himself seems to be a bit insecure of his own half-human
status.
    Kat's explanation (from the book) is much more plausible.
It would be a nice turn if Saavik were Spock's daughter, and
eventually married David.  However, I'm sure that someone on the
production team has nixed that as being too trite a situation.
I'm sure Saavik and David will be married.  And I think there will
be a not-so-silly way of bringing Spock back from the dead.
Since the Genesis matrix was so strong it could create from nothing,
it should be strong enough to revive Spock.  But that brings the 
focus to the 'remains' of Khan's merry band.  Might they also be 
revived??  And track Kirk down to thank him???
   and what becomes of uhura?

# 411
>From : PHIL REED    To : ALL
Subject : HELLO, I MUST BE GOING...    Date : Wed. 08/18/82 04:42
 
Roy: The difference between Spock and Kahn's crew was that they were
  caught by the initial burst of the Genesis effect, but Spock's
  body was stuck on the planet later.
 
                                  ...phil

# 413
>From : KATHERINE RIVES    To : ALL
Subject : ANY    Date : Wed. 08/18/82 20:55
       
Marvin and other Trekkers: Everyone knows that Kirk was married only
   once. The episode was entitled "The Paradise Syndrone" and his wife
   was the indian woman Mirrimani (sp?). As for Spock, I agree with 
   Roy (msg 404). Look up that and msg 388.
 
Phil: That's very interesting about the written sources not being
   officially sanctioned by the ST crew. I had thought otherwise.
   What is to prevent someone from distorting the story all out of
   proportion, once getting permission to write it??
 
Roy: Hi, you have a very good point about Spock. Even when he was 
   officially married to T'Pring, he was not interested in her
   (granted, he had just 'killed' his captain to get her). One
   wonders, though, what Amanda (Spock's mother) did in the seven
   year intervals... bet she was plenty bored.
 
                           >>KAT<<

# 427
>From : ROY GREEN    To : KATHERINE AND DAVE
Subject : AMANDA AND CAT HAIR    Date : Fri. 08/20/82 21:34
KAT,  IF AMANDA WAS ANYTHING LIKE MY EX-FIANCE, THEN SHE COULD
GO 14 YEARS WITHOUT BLINKING AN EYE. (WHICH IS WHY MY EX-FIANCE IS EX-)
MAYBE HER HUSBAND WAS A VULCAN VERSION OF A SUGAR DADDY?
  
   [non-Trek-related comments deleted here.
      But what of Uhuru?  --Spaf]


End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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