From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!sf-lovers Newsgroups: fa.sf-lovers Title: SF-LOVERS Digest V6 #20 Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8090 Posted: Thu Jul 22 20:41:39 1982 Received: Sun Jul 25 23:55:13 1982 >From JPM@Mit-Ai Thu Jul 22 20:27:16 1982 SF-LOVERS Digest Tuesday, 20 Jul 1982 Volume 6 : Issue 20 Today's Topics: Administrivia - Overload, SF Books - True Names Query & Best SF of the Year #11 & Harper Hall Trilogy & Alchemy and Academe & A Scanner Darkly & A Maze of Death & The Hollow Lands & JEM & Dream Park & Operation Chaos & The Word for World is Forrest & Dreamsnake & Bestsellers, SF TV - HHGttG & Star Trek, Random Topics - Space Week, Humor - Genderless Video Games ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tuesday, July 20, 1982 10:24PM From: Jim McGrath (The Moderator)Reply-to: SF-LOVERS-REQUEST at MIT-AI Subject: Overload Currently there is enough material that has already ben submitted to the digest, but not distributed, to make up 6 issues. This means that the average turnaround for any given message is about 6 days. Some messages (short ones on "hot" or current topics) have a shorter turnaround; others (long and introducing new topics) have a longer one. Thus please be patient if you do not see your submission in print for a few days after sending it in. Happy reading. Jim ------------------------------ Date: 8 Jul 1982 1709-PDT From: Mike Leavitt Subject: True Names I may be the only one on this list not to have read \True Names/ because I could never find it. Does anyone know whether it has been anthologized anywhere? Many thanks. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jul 82 9:32-PDT From: mclure at SRI-UNIX Subject: some good summer reading As always at the start of July, I go hunting for my favorite annual short SF fiction collection, Terry Carr's BEST SF OF THE YEAR #nn. This year it's up to volume 11 and reliably seems to have a higher caliber of stories than the Universe, New Dimensions, and Don Wollheim yearly collections. Stories in this year's collection that I thought particularly good are "The Pusher" by John Varley, "Walden Three" by Michael Swanwick, "Emergence" by David R. Palmer, "The Thermals of August" by Ed Bryant, "Going Under" by Jack Dann, and "Swarmer, Skimmer" by Gregory Benford. There are 17 stories, about 428pp, for $3.95 (I got it for $2.95 at a SF convention). Mostly good reading. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Jul 1982 0431-PDT From: William "Chops" Westfield Subject: Book reviews I've been reading quite a lot recently. Here are some book reviews: 1) Anne McCaffrey a) Dragon Riders of Pern - Harper hall trilogy (DragonSinger, DragonSong, and DragonDrums) These are quite enjoyable juvenile novels. The first two (following Menolley, Pern's only female harper) are better than the last (which is mostly about what Piemur does after his voice changes). Menolley is a much more vivid character - you can almost hear her singing. Humorous and fun too. Strongly recommended for light reading. b) Alchemy and Academe: This is a collection of short stories in the A&A genre, whatever that is. To me, it seems that it must be the Theatre of the absurd of SF. I only read about half the stories in the collection, and most of them didn't seem to make any sense. The ones that did make sense, I didn't particularly like. Oh well. 2) P.K Dick What with his death and immediately following praise for his work, I decided to give him another try (I read "The Zap Gun" several years ago, and found it only confusing and boring....). Having read another two books (and some short stories) I have decided that what I don't like about Dick is his characters. They seem to all be anti-heros. All his characters I have read are basically people that you would not want to meet under the best of circumstances, and the circumstances are never that good... (The characters are especially REAL, and Dick's imagery is also very beautiful and/or disturbing. It's not that he can't write, I just don't like it...) a) A Scanner Darkly Inside view of a futuristic drug culture from one who presumably has first hand experience. An undercover narc is assigned to observe himself, resulting in increasing pressure, abuse of the deadly "substance D", and schizophrenia due to the destruction of brain tissue. Ends with an author's note saying "This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did..." followed by a list of people, whom he knew, now dead or permanently damaged.... "Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy." Make sure you're in a good mood when you read this. Ugh. b) A Maze of Death This seems to be a little better so far (i'm about half done). A bunch of losers (of various kinds) are reassigned to a colony on a planet. They arive in one way ships and are not told what they are supposed to be doing. The planet is interesting in that about half the "life" on it is in actuality mechanical. Anyway, after everyone arrives, something (one?) starts killing them off. At the point i'm at, their theory is that they are subjects of some sort of stress research by unfriendly persons. The book has as a major point a religion where praying actually works, especially if you use a big radio and one of the more advanced interstellar races happens to hear and take notice... 3) Others a) "The Hollow Lands", by Michael Moorcock Book 2 of the "dancers at the end of time" trilogy. A playfully silly set of novels about a hedonistic utopia has used ancient (to them) technology to abolish death, natural forces, etc. Green sunsets and edible buildings will give you the idea. The only remaining problem is boredom. Jehrick, who was actually naturally conceived (another experiment) decides in book 1 ("An Alien Heat") to try the ancient custom of falling in love, and enlists a women from victorian england (snarfed by a time machine) to help. All sorts of interesting fireworks result, of course. "The Hollw Lands" follows Jehrick as he tries to find another time machine so he can go back looking for his lost love (she got sent back, you see..). Very twisted, irreerant and hilarious. b) "JEM" by Frederik Pohl Competing factions on earth extend their battle into space when a planet that might be colonizable is found. Each of the three major factions (food, people, and oil producers) teams up with a different sentient alien race (the planet just happens to have 3). This book just wasn't believable. The characters are all fanatics. The alien races never cooperate with each other. And I don't believe it would be possible for a small colony to maintain a technological culture without help from home. "Darkover landfall" (non-technical) or "total eclipse" (by Brunner) (death) are both more likely. The latter handles the major idea of the story better too... c) "Dream Park" by Niven and Barnes Using easily extrapolated technology, DND type games gain reality through the use of holograms, actors, and computers. The rich, and other play an occasional such game at fabulous Dream Park, which uses similar technology to create tomorrows Disneyland. During one such game (timewise), however, a dream park security guard is killed, resulting in this combination high tech, DND, detective story. A lot of fun, but I found the characters rather cardboard, with no apparent motives behind their actions. Also you could tell who in the DND game would be "killed" by the depth of the description given of them. No one you care about gets killed until the very end... Otherwise quite enjoyable. d) "Operation Chaos" by Poul Anderson Another fun book. An alternate universe where magic works. Follow the adventures of a werewolf and his wife the witch. Written along the lines of Heinlein's "magic inc" - attempts to handle the magic as a consistent science (I can't rate how it succeeds at this, I don't know enough about classic magic) with humor and parallel jokes throughout (like the polaroid flash that provide the proper illumination for were-animals to transform themselves even when the moon isn't full...). Good stuff. e) "The Word for World is Forrest" by LeGuin Now here is a REALLY good book. Humans are harvesting trees from the world of the Athsheans, seriously disrupting the ecology of the planet and treating the natives as sub-intelligent slave. The are in fact more intelligent than they seem, having highly developed powers of dreaming and an almost innate feel for ecology. Though normally non-violent, The Athsheans eventually become angry... LeGuin is an absolute wizard at creating alien ecologies, psychologies, and sociologies. This book is no exception. Very strongly recommended. f) "Dreamsnake" by Vonda McIntyre I also thought this was good. In the distant future, Genetic engineering has progressed to the point where snakes are bred so that under the proper conditions, they will produce medicines and vacines and such instead of poisons. So your average country doctor travels around (the world is recovering from a nuclear war, and there are few doctors) with a cobra, a rattler, and an alien "dreamsnake" (it produces euphorics). What "hard" technology remains is in domed cities, and they don't share it. The main character "Snake" loses her dreamsnake (it gets killed) and goes off in search of another (dreamsnakes are very rare - being alien, they are very hard to clone, and the healers haven't been able to get them to breed. The cities, which are the only off world contacts, refuse to have anything to do with the healers). Although things get stretched a little here and there, the whole novel holds together well, and reads well. Fascinating ideas sprinkled throughout... That's all for now. Bill Westfield ------------------------------ Date: 18 Jul 1982 14:27:12-EDT From: csin!cjh at CCA-UNIX Subject: Sf best-sellers TWICE SHY sounds like about as marginal SF as you can get---sort of THE MAN WHOSE NAME WOULDN'T FIT without the magic virus. Does anything with computers in it qualify, in view of their current prevalence? (I suppose you could argue Campbell's dictum (he was looking for stories that would be in SATURDAY EVENING POST in 2000+) but in view of his other statements that's an unsupported remark.) ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jul 1982 1516-EDT From: Bob Krovetz Subject: HHGttG in Washington D.C. The program manager for the PBS station in Washington says the Hitchhikers Guide will be aired sometime in the Fall. -bob ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jul 1982 1927-PDT From: Mike Leavitt Subject: Hgttg in DC I called WETA, the main PBS station in DC. They say that we will have it in October. Sigh. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jul 1982 at 0921-PDT From: dan at SRI-TSC Subject: Re: STAR TREK character aging (non-spoiler) Unfortunately they didn't interview "Scotty" -- he's always been my favorite ST character -- but I agree time has spread him out a bit. But "Bones" was liver-spot city, with lots of wrinkles, grey hair, and an even thinner and more leathery voice. Not that I'm prejudiced against old-folks, I just didn't realize he has THAT old... I'm tempted to say he's in his 70's. -Dan ------------------------------ Date: 18 Jul 1982 1850-PDT From: Henry W. Miller Subject: Trek Trivia Just a few pieces of obscure Trek Trivia I thought you might be interested in. Can you name two actors that guest starred in Trek episodes who were regulars on Battlestar Galatica/Galatica 1980? How many actors/actresses can you name who guest starred in more than one Trek episode. (Note: do not include Roger C. Carmel as Harry Mudd: I am referring to different characters.) Who was a semi-regular crew member in Star Trek who returned in "The Wrath of Kahn"? (Hint: he was a member of the Reliant's crew.) The answers, if you don't figure them out, will appear in a few days. -HWM ------------------------------ Date: 15 Jul 1982 0923-PDT From: Craig E. Ward Subject: Space Week For those interested in the space program: The California Museum of Science and Industry and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics are sponsoring Space Week July 17 - 25 to commemorate the anniversaries of the first landing on the moon by Apollo 11 and the Viking I landing on Mars. Activities include: July 17-25 Museum Theaters--NASA Space films will be screened daily 12-4 pm. The film "The Making of Star Wars" will also be shown. July 19 7:00pm OMNI Magazine will present "Careers in Space--Your Guide to the Future". This multi-media program will be hosted by NASA consultant Stan Kent. July 20 Anniversary Day luncheon featuring Dr. Hans Mark, NASA Deputy Director, and former astronaut Pete Conrad. Call 670-6642 for more information. July 17 Children's Space Program at the Kidspace Museum, 390 S. El Molino, Pasadena, 449-9143 July 24 & 25 The museum will have special space and aircraft displays, Moon Models, space pictures and movies. Live recreation of the Apollo moon walks will take place throughout the day with astronauts in space suits, a replica of the Lunar Lander and a simulated moonscape. All events except the luncheon are free. For more information call (213) 744-7438. ------------------------------ Date: 14-Jul-82 10:42-PDT From: JWAGNER at OFFICE Subject: Genderless video games PacAnimal? Pac-a-Derm? Pac-i-stan? I don't know ... sounds to me like you've been hitting a six-Pac. -- Jim Wagner ------------------------------ End of SF-LOVERS Digest ***********************