From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!npois!ucbvax!sf-lovers Newsgroups: fa.sf-lovers Title: SF-LOVERS Digest V6 #24 Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8135 Posted: Wed Jul 28 06:37:05 1982 Received: Thu Jul 29 05:16:59 1982 >From JPM@MIT-AI Wed Jul 28 06:23:09 1982 SF-LOVERS Digest Saturday, 24 Jul 1982 Volume 6 : Issue 24 Today's Topics: SF Books - "True Names" & "Nightflyer" & Heavenly Breakfast & Star Colony & Roderick & The Jade Enchantress & ET: The Extra-Terrestrial & The Wrath of Khan, SF TV - HHGttG, SF Music - Blade Runner, SF Movies - TRON & Das Boot, Random Topics - American Films, SF Topics - Stine Query, Humor - Genderless Video Games ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 23 Jul 1982 1122-EDT From: BLACKWELL at CMU-20C Subject: True Names Indeed a hard book to find, but well worth the trouble of looking for it. It is realy the second novella in a two novella set - Dell SF Binary Star #5. The two stories are ``Nightflyer'' by George R. R. Martin, and ``True Names'' by Verner Vinge. I've seen the book filed under both names, so be sure to look carefully. If you are in Berkeley, a SF/Fantasy store called `Dark Carnival' on Telegraph had several copies last time I checked... -mike- ------------------------------ Date: 27 July 1982 07:58 mst From: Lippard at PCO-MULTICS (James J. Lippard) Reply-to: Lippard%PCO-Multics at MIT-MULTICS Subject: Samuel R. Delany A book I would recommend for understanding Delany is "Heavenly Breakfast", by Delany. It is an essay about time he spent in a commune, and by reading it you can see where he got a lot of material for "Dhalgren". ------------------------------ Date: Sunday, 25 Jul 1982 17:30-PDT From: jim at RAND-UNIX Subject: Star Colony, by Keith Laumer Mini-Review: A disappointment to a long-standing Laumer fan. Review: "Aha!" I said. At long last a new Laumer book. Both types of Laumers are always quite good: the Retief books (in small or medium doses) are hilarious, and the action books, where we (and probably Laumer) don't (doesn't) know where the books are going until they get there. Star Colony is neither type. It's an attempt at something sort of serious, with a disjointed plot and dull characters. When I was 1/4 of the way through I would have given up for any random author, but I plugged through merely out of respect for all the other Laumer books that I like. Occasionally there is a flash of Retief-like humor, or a run of action, but even they seem out of place in the mostly serious treatment of unlikely colonists and more unlikely intelligent aliens. Star Colony is the first of a three-book series about one of the first colonies from Earth, planted on an Earth-like planet and then forgotten while Earth goes through the usual problems. The story deals with initializing the colony and the experiences of several groups of early colonists. The dust jacket says this book is the result of a four-year effort. I wish he had concentrated on more Imperium, Lafayette O'Leary, or something else. Hardbound $15.95, St. Martin's Press, (c) 1981. ------------------------------ Date: 24 Jul 1982 16:19:19-PDT From: decvax!duke!uok!uokvax!jejones at Berkeley Subject: Roderick Gee, I'd think for sure that there was some discussion of John Sladek's *Roderick, or the Education of a Young Robot* in SF-LOVERS. Perhaps it's in an archive somewhere? (I enjoyed it thoroughly--the idea of all those school administrators, Herberts though they might be, not realizing Roderick was *not* human, is a tad much, but think of it as like the convention of ignoring the puppeteers in bunraku. In a sentence, the same kind of madness, perhaps tempered, that *The Mueller-Fokker Effect* had, plus a nifty portrayal of Roderick, who could definitely pass the Turing test. So when will we see parts two and three?) James Jones (duke!uok!uokvax!jejones) ------------------------------ Date: 25 Jul 82 12:44-PDT From: mclure at SRI-UNIX Subject: SF column SCIENCE FICTION By Roland J. Green (c) 1982 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service) John Sladek's ''Roderick'' (TimescapePocket Books, $2.75 paperback) reminded me very much of an electronic-age version of Voltaire's ''Candide.'' The product of an experiment in artificial intelligence at a second-rate university, Roderick the Robot is farmed out for ''adoption'' when the grant that financed his creation is cut off. His adventures on his way to his new family, in school and in his frequent wanderings give him a robot's-eye view of modern society. They give Sladek an ideal vehicle for satire. Novel-length satires frequently don't work well as stories, however successful the satire may be. Sladek, however, knows the novelist's craft - just as well, because this is the first book of yet another trilogy. The pacing is brisk and the narrative is as easy to follow as can reasonably be expected with such a large cast of characters and an essentially episodic structure. Sladek seems to be well-informed about most of the things he satirizes - or at least capable of drawing a convincing and consistent picture of them. He hits gypsies, university politics, the CIA, art critics, public education, the Catholic Church, visiting Oriental potentates, television (it gives Roderick his initial notions about how the world is run), the counterculture and much else. He darts from one target on this list to the next, always with stiletto in hand. Occasionally Sladek lets his dislike - notably of the Catholic Church - carry him into producing mindlessly savage caricatures. Most of the time, though, he shows a mastery of both the novel and satire, which promises well for the ''Roderick the Robot'' trilogy. In E. Hoffman Price's graceful fantasy ''The Jade Enchantress'' (Del ReyBallatine, $2.75 paperback), a minor Chinese goddess begins the story by seeking a mortal lover, a shrewd young farmer. Price tells what follows from this with wit, sympathy for all of his large cast of characters, a profound knowledge of Tang Dynasty China that never slows the brisk pacing and a delightful savoring of Chinese philosophy, sexual mores, magic and cuisine. Along with Price's ''The Devil Wives of Li Fong'' (also a Ballatine paperback), this book recalls the Judge Dee mysteries of Robert Van Gulik - an extraordinarily effective use of another time and culture to bring a new dimension to a genre. The novelization of a motion picture screenplay seldom produces a worthwhile book. Both the raw material and the author are often less than outstanding, entirely apart from the problems of translating a story from one medium to another. However, two of this summer's most popular science fiction films have given two excellent writers material for a pair of thoroughly agreeable novels. William Kotzwinkle's ''E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial'' (BerkleyPutnam, $12.95 hardcover, $2.75 paperback) uses the author's gift for surrealism and fantasy on a screenplay ideally suited for it. Kotzwinkle faithfully re-creates the contrast between the marooned alien scientist with his almost magical powers and the classically conventional suburb where he lands. He also does excellent work with the three main characters - the E.T., the boy who befriends him and the boy's mother. Vonda McIntyre's ''The Wrath of Khan'' (TimescapePocket Books, $2.95) does equal justice to an entirely different sort of raw material - the second ''Star Trek'' novel. She has wit, good pacing, a sound grasp of her characters (including some like Lt. Saavik, whom the movie leaves poorly defined) and an entirely adequate understanding of military institutions. She even tackles with some success the various scientific improbabilities of the script, notably the Genesis effect. ------------------------------ Date: 27 July 1982 08:52-PDT (Tuesday) From: KING at KESTREL Subject: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy It's being aired 9:00 PM on channel 60 on Wednesdays. ------------------------------ Date: 27 Jul 1982 1545-EDT From: Rich SchneiderSubject: HHGttG I talked to someone in the programming office of WGBH (Boston PBS) last Friday. They have no current plans of airing HHGttH, gasp *sigh*. Let's start swamping them with letters. ------------------------------ Date: 25 Jul 1982 at 1608-CDT From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 Subject: No BLADERUNNER soundtrack album? According to the local record store, there isn't going to be any soundtrack record of the BLADERUNNER music. With all the hype the movie got, and Vangelis being pretty hot property at present, this seems strange. Has anybody heard anything to the contrary, or any reason why such a decision might have been made? John M. (via HJJH at UTEXAS-11) ------------------------------ Date: 17 July 1982 01:26-EDT (Saturday) From: Robert A. Carter Reply-to: CARTER at RUTGERS Subject: Yet Another TRON Review Readers of SFL might find it interesting to compare the mixed reviews TRON has received here with the reactions of one "serious" critic. [The following are excerpts from a very long review in the Village Voice, July 20, 1982. The Voice (if there is anyone out there who has never seen it) is a very successful kitsch-Left New York weekly, the writers of which tend toward self-importance. This is never more so than when dealing with Film (not "movies"). Rickey is the second- string Voice film critic.] Let a Million Microchips Bloom By Carrie Rickey * * * Congenial pioneer of the technoaesthetic vanguard, TRON is an original--formally, conceptually, and philosophically. * * * The imagery, so hard to verbally approximate, is nothing like any computer art I've ever seen. Most so-called computer-generated art is interested in abstract or optical illusionism, which has a fascination as limited as that of a trompe l'oeil painting. How compelling can an image of geometrical shape illuminated by Day-Glo color be, even though a computer, not a person, created it? There are, however, fine arts equivalents to TRON. Much of it has the hallucinatory radiance, the indeterminate space, of the paintings of Ed Paschke, whose canvases typically depict people and places irradiated with unearthly light. Searching for an artworld technique applicable to TRON, I'd have to call it a computer silkscreen. Like Rauschenberg or Warhol, Lisberger is interested in layering images and effects to give a simultaneous impression of flatness and depth. To get the look of TRON's computerworld, Lisberger filmed the actors in black and white on bare sets, reducing their gestures to Kabuki-like formality. Color and backgrounds were added afterward by matte, animation, computer- and hand-painted enhancements, so the multi-stage silkscreen metaphor is particularly apt. * * * TRON disarmingly demonstrates that the most sophisticated and intimidating technology can be mastered by engaging schlepps and nerds who have decided not to let it master them. It's an incredible document of propaganda, exulting in and demystifying computer power. Ultimately, its narrative is not unlike that of STAR WARS, ever about the triumph of the democrats over the plutocrats. But I've never seen a blossoming of democracy quite as spectacular of TRON's people's purge of the MCP, which lets a million microchips bloom, the MCP tower of power redistributed to a galaxy of small energy centers. Possibly the first movie to celebrate computer populism, TRON could warm the cockles of a digitizer's heart with its mix of low sentiment and high tech. While sensibility and computer intelligence have long been considered mutually exclusive, in TRON their conjunction is exhilarating, and the move goes so far as to say that to exist at all both must coexist. To say that TRON envisions technology as it has never been seen before is an understatement. No movie more deserves the praise, state of the art. ------------------------------ Date: 27 Jul 1982 1143-PDT From: Jwagner at OFFICE Subject: Das Boot & the failure of American film makers "(Das Boot) is a powerful and moving picture; seeing it after this summer's crop of Spielbergian sentimentality is a good reminder of what real movies are about. See it." -- Robert A. Carter I couldn't agree more! I also agree that the movie has many elements of the best in Science Fiction -- in fact, I found it similar to Alien in mood, although the "monster" in Das Boot is the American destroyers cutting the waters above, sending depth charges below. Great! Comparing this movie to the current crop of SF thrillers is entirely fair and warranted. It's a real indictment of American (Hollywood) movie making -- it seems all we can produce are more of the same ol' techno-thriller-whiz-bang genre, but, unfortunately, those are the big money makers. SF movies tend to rely on fancy effects and ignore the more subtle aspects of fine-film making. In ET, Spielberg produced a sensitive and insightful film for children who (presumably) are more easily entertained than adults. When is an SF director going to produce a thoughtful and emotionally stimulating film for grownups? Don't try to pawn BladeRunner as such a movie -- it relies entirely on special effects and gratuitous violence (aimed mostly at women) and therefore is an utter cinematic failure (not counting its flawed, jig-saw-puzzle plot). Tron, Star Trek II, and the others are visually exciting, but little else. It's a shame that SF movie makers are squandering the genre for the sake of big bucks. Jim Wagner/jwagner@office ------------------------------ Date: 5 Jul 1982 20:11:21-PDT From: cbosg!nscs!jpj at Berkeley Subject: G. Harry Stine In SF-LOVERS Digest, V7 #1, there was a reference to G. Harry Stine, where he was billed as, "everybody's favorite futurist." Years ago, when I was heavily involved w/model rocketry, I read and put to good use a book by a G. Harry Stine on that topic - it was an excellent book. Is this the same individual? If so, what is his background that would qualify him as the above quote indicates? Cheers... Jim Jenal ------------------------------ Date: 22 July 1982 11:03-EDT From: Reilly F. Hayes The last SF-LOVERS submission from VASAK (Tom VASAK) was actually not from Tom Vasak. I thought that I included a note to the effect that it was from me. AI wasn't receiving network links that day , so I used Tom's username to make the submission. I am really Rlyeh@MIT-AI ------------------------------ Date: 07/20/82 17:26:16 From: junkmail.umcp-cs@udel-relay (Sent by ___037) Have you heard about the new candy that is available only via ARPAnet? It's called TIP-TACs! - This is so bad that I won't even sign my name... ------------------------------ End of SF-LOVERS Digest ***********************