From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!sf-lovers Newsgroups: fa.sf-lovers Title: SF-LOVERS Digest V6 #7 Article-I.D.: ucbvax.7949 Posted: Thu Jul 8 09:22:35 1982 Received: Fri Jul 9 03:26:23 1982 >From JPM@Mit-Ai Thu Jul 8 09:21:10 1982 SF-LOVERS Digest Wednesday, 7 Jul 1982 Volume 6 : Issue 7 Today's Topics: Administrivia - MisNumbered Digest, SF Books - Ellison Query & Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever & Colony & Voyage from Yesteryear & Crystal Singer, SF Movies - The Thing, SF Topics - SF Ghetto & Hard SF & Brain Use, Random Topics - Violence in Movies, Humor - Genderless Video Games, Spoiler - Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wednesday, July 7, 1982 1:50AM From: Jim McGrath (The Moderator)Reply-to: SF-LOVERS-REQUEST at MIT-AI Subject: MisNumbered Digest No, we did not skip an issue. Issue 5 should have been issue 6, so this issue (numbered 7) is just to get us on the right track again. Jim ------------------------------ Date: 30 Jun 1982 1142-PDT From: Francine Perillo Subject: Query Does anyone know whether The Glass Teat and The Glass Teat II by Harlin Ellison are currently in print? A friend of mine cannot locate copies in the Bay Area. Any suggestions as to where to look? -Francine ------------------------------ Date: 5 Jul 1982 0214-EDT From: Steven J. Zeve Subject: for all you Thomas Covenant fans out there I don't think I sent this to SF-L yet so here goes. Several weeks ago, a lecture on fantasy and science fiction was given in a town near where I live. One of the three speakers was Darrell Sweet, who does cover art for Del Rey line of SF from Ballantine Books. Mr Sweet, who did the cover art for each of the first five Thomas Covenant books by Stephen Donaldson, mentioned that he had just gotten the manuscript for the sixth book. After the lecture, I asked him when he thought that this sixth book would be available; he said he thought it would probably be out sometime in June 1983. Sweet also confirmed the rumor that Donaldson had had a big fight with his editor about the fifth book in the series (The One Tree). This rumor was mentioned here quite some time back, I don't remember when and I don't have access to the archives (perhaps our kindly, but overworked, moderator could fill in the reference here?). According to Darrell Sweet, Donaldson had something go terribly wrong in his personal life and (as far as I understand this) it had a fairly serious effect on "The One Tree" and on his attitude towards the book. As a result Donaldson had a big fight with Lester del Rey, who was his editor at the time. Del Rey refused to continue working with Donaldson, and "The One Tree" was stalled until a new editor could be found. As far as I can tell, Sweet seems to feel that del Rey was in the right and Donaldson in the wrong. (Sweet mentioned that he wanted to get to the new manuscript soon so he could find out if Donaldson had gotten himself pulled together and Thomas Covenant out the fix that he got left in in "The One Tree".) Steve Z. p.s. No I didn't ask Sweet about this rumor. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure how the subject came up. I think it was because someone asked him how he picked the scene that he painted for the cover of "The One Tree". ------------------------------ Date: 2 Jul 1982 04:15:28-PDT From: pur-ee!pur-phy!retief at Berkeley Subject: Laumer and Hogan (slight spoiler) Recently Keith Laumer wrote a book with a title like "Colony", but I seen other titles, similar yet different to it. Is there one book or more? I've just finished reading James Hogan's new book "Voyage from Yesteryear" and found it to be very good. Not as talky as many of his earlier works (although he tends to cook up strange physics theories.) The plot is basically of a stellar colony (naive to old Earth's biases) coming into comflict with its barbaric ancestors. The stellar society that Hogan creates is similar to many "utopian" societies (but different too), but the isolation of interstellar space makes the whole story a bit more real. "Voyage from Yesteryear" is an interesting book to read. Try it. -- Dwight Bartholomew -- ------------------------------ Date: 2 Jul 1982 12:36:42-EDT From: csin!cjh at CCA-UNIX Subject: Re: radio advertising of sf LORD VALENTINE'S CASTLE was supposed to be advertised, according to the contract; the commercials were only heard (so far as I know) in parts of California (Ellison has flamed about this). I heard an ad in Boston a few years back for THE MAGIC GOES AWAY. ------------------------------ Date: 3 July 1982 13:09-EDT From: James M. Turner Subject: Re: Movies as the only discussion topic. Hey man, I don't actually read the stuff, movies are where its at... Seriously, I got the Crystal Singer compression (more on that term later) the other day, and found it interesting. One of those things I read once, and put away for 3 months because I don't feel like reading it again right away (as opposed to Friday, which definitely deserves an immediate rescan/reparse.) The bitch I have with it is the same one I had with Juxtaposition, I saw too many elements of another series by the same author in it. Just as Anthony used the magic/non-magic and sentient/humanoid themes in both the Split Infinity and Xanth series, McCaffrey uses the "achieving in one's profession" (Ship that Sang/Harper series) and "paying back one's dues quickly" (Ship that Sang) themes in Crystal Singer. I don't mind an author using the same idea more than once (if approached from a new angle), but I find it somewhat lazy to use the same themes in two or more series. I will give McCaffrey one thing, the protagonist of Crystal Singer is about as far from the self-conscious Menolly of Dragonsong as can be. I just wish authors would stop playing safe with "pretested" plotlines. A note on Crystal Singer: This is a collection of shorts novelized into a coherent narration. They were written before Weyr Search (I think), so the theme recycling may have propagated in the other direction. Note2: This is part of a larger flame on the subject of "Why are so many series being hatched as such instead of evolving into series based on merit? Answer: Greed". Note3: I have been told by friends that they can't see any parallels between Crystal Singer and other McCaffrey works. Am I going gaga. ------------------------------ Date: 4 Jul 1982 14:43:56 EDT (Sunday) From: David Mankins Subject: The Thing Well, John Carpenter has finally made a worthy sequel to his ``Dark Star''. This one's not a comedy, though. ``The Thing'' is a horror movie, all right. From the openning shots when the helicopter filled with crazy Norwegians chases a sled-dog across Antarctic snows, to the ambiguous ending (how many Things are left, anyway?) you're rivetted to your seat. The Thing is an evil (but, unlike ``Alien''s alien, believable) nightmare creature. The people at this Antarctic research station don't do anything stupid (again in contrast to ``Alien'', and most other horror movies), but they're victims all the same. Boy, see this movie with someone you won't be embarrassed clutching at when things get tense. Avoid this movie if you're subject to hypertension... ------------------------------ Date: 5 Jul 1982 0147-EDT From: Steven J. Zeve Subject: Violence in movies The wonderful thing about Glenn Collins' article is that it shows the power of quoting out of context and of juxtaposing unrelated comments. Steve Z. p.s. While gore and violence aren't really nice things, the tendency of viewing them as the pentultimate evil (second only to sex) in movies is absurd. The world is full of violence. If we wish to keep people from seeing or hearing about violence we had best kill everyone now and be done with it, there is no other way to keep people from seeing the violence inherent in the world. All things must be taken in context, including the violence in movies. ------------------------------ Date: Sat Jul 3 05:15:46 1982 From: decvax!utzoo!laura at Berkeley Subject: Real SF writers dont... Hmm. What about another division in science fiction. There was a time when my grade six teacher was perfectly correct in saying that the central theme of science ficiton was a scientific idea or a technological device, and that though the character development in science fiction was often weak, it was a harder medium to write than is genrally believed because it demanded a scientific excellance to be successful. Now the vast majority of science fiction is based on the inner stuggles of human beings (or alien beings). We have moral, personal, humanistic, soft sf. Good sf, yes, -- but the problem is that there are many times when I am only too aware that there are 'people problems' and what I want to do is bask in the appreciation of some idea or technology. I am perfectly willing to read science ficiton which has less 'characterization' and less 'this is the work of an author to rival Hemmingway' and more 'Holy smoke arent Beanstalks really neat things!' I do demand that the science is *accurate* (or *accurate for the time* or *accurate with future predicitons/extrapolations*). So I read all of Clarke, Asimov, Sheffield, Clement, Hogan and Dragon's Egg (the only thing I have seen by Forward). I then read Niven and Hoyle and ... now where do I go?? With the exception of Sheffield, Forward and Hogan are all the 'gosh neat idea/technology' people all in semi-retirement?? I know that fantasy sells -- I know that sf has had to overcome the 'sf has no relevance to humanity because it is not human oriented stigmata' ... but where do I get the hard sf I want ... who *else* is writing it *now* ??? going through withdrawl waiting for the Hogan release (July 15??) Laura Creighton decvax!utzoo!laura ------------------------------ Date: 29 June 1982 06:40-EDT From: Allan C. Wechsler Subject: 6% of brain. Mijjil said something in a recent digest about the average person using only six per cent of their brain. I have been hearing this or similar gibberish for a long time. What is the origin of this folklore? Danny Hillis (I think) once got a phone call from a reporter. "I've heard that the average person only uses about 20% of their brain." "Well, uh," replied Danny, not knowing how to respond to this kind of gubbish. "I was wondering," continued the reporter, "what the exact figure is?" ---Allan ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jul 1982 1834-PDT From: Henry W. Miller Subject: Another PacPun... What do you call a rodent PACMAN? A PAC-RAT. ------------------------------ Date: Wednesday, July 7, 1982 1:50AM From: Jim McGrath (The Moderator) Subject: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING! The last messages 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: Tue Jun 29 20:17:23 1982 From: decvax!idis!mi-cec!dvk at Berkeley Subject: SPOILER WARNING - comment on ST-II TWOK Seem's to me that the whole show could have been avoided if Chekhov, in his wisdom of the Botany Bay affair, had simply yelled into his mike "Beam us up Enterprise - NOW!", instead of turning tail and running into Ricardo Egobahn. And WHY is Kirk such an asshole when it comes to Starfleet regs and shields. What a JERK! And in reply to the earlier question, why DID the critter leave the warmth of Chekhov's obviously tasty mind? Ah, well. To be fair, ST-II was a far-far better movie than ST-I. It mercifully lacked the seemingly endless moments of studying the "concerned" faces of the crew (that we all know by heart now ANYWAY). -Dan Klein ------------------------------ Date: 2 Jul 1982 01:30:08-PDT From: pur-ee!pur-phy!hal at Berkeley Subject: STII:TWOK Has anyone other than me found it strange that Chekov, who was assigned to the crew of the Reliant at the beginning of the movie, just waltzes onto the bridge of the Enterprise ready to assume "his" duties? Does anyone have a plausible explanation? I know that it wasn't explicitly stated that he was part of the Reliant's crew but it sure appeared that way to me. Hal Chambers pur-ee!pur-phy!hal ------------------------------ Date: 1 Jul 1982 1901-EDT From: Larry Seiler Subject: Why the critter crawled out of Chekov's ear Just before it crawled out, McCoy was running his tricorder on Chekov. I assumed that that miraculous device is what caused it to leave. Larry ------------------------------ End of SF-LOVERS Digest ***********************