From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!ucbvax!sf-lovers Newsgroups: fa.sf-lovers Title: SF-LOVERS Digest V5 #52 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 GerringSubject: 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 ***********************