From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!sf-lovers Newsgroups: fa.sf-lovers Title: SF-LOVERS Digest V6 #38 Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8274 Posted: Fri Aug 13 05:03:18 1982 Received: Sun Aug 15 06:23:38 1982 >From SFL@SRI-CSL Fri Aug 13 04:54:40 1982 SF-LOVERS Digest Tuesday, 10 Aug 1982 Volume 6 : Issue 38 Today's Topics: SF Books - Ursula LeGuin & Query Answered & Courtship Rite & Crystal Singer & The Robot Who Looked Like Me & Kingsbane & The Elfstones of Shannara, SF Topics - Holographic Memory, Humor - Genderless Video Games, Spoiler - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 10 Aug 82 19:51-PDT From: mclure at SRI-UNIX Subject: Ursula Le Guin alive? Our local SF shop Future Fantasy says they haven't heard of any Le Guin obit and one of their employees/friends lives in Portland where Le Guin lives. ------------------------------ Date: 10 Aug 1982 16:45:46 EDT (Tuesday) From: Winston B. EdmondSubject: Reply to Steve Alexander Steve, Perhaps the book you are thinking about is A For Andromeda, by Fred Hoyle. -WBE ------------------------------ Date: 11 Aug 1982 16:39:39-EDT From: csin!cjh at CCA-UNIX Subject: plot/title query This sounds somewhat like A FOR ANDROMEDA, except that they build the computer (per instructions) almost immediately and spend the rest of the book occasionally regretting it. ------------------------------ Date: 10 Aug 82 16:42-PDT From: mclure at SRI-UNIX Subject: sf column SCIENCE FICTION By Roland J. Green (c) 1982 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service) In ''Courtship Rite'' (Timescape-Simon & Schuster, $17.50 hardcover, $8.95 trade paperback), Donald Kingsbury, a Canadian, has worked on a grand scale and achieved impressive success. The book combines imaginative world-building, fascinating characters, and an absorbing if somewhat convoluted story, as well as grace, wit, and the intelligent use of the English language. The world of the story is the harsh, metal-poor planet Geta. Its human colonists have survived over the centuries only by the use of advanced techniques of genetic engineering and the rigorous culling of those with low kalothi - low genetic potential for survival - preferably before they can reproduce. Ritual suicide and cannibalism play large parts in this culling process. Three brothers who have formed a group marriage with two wives seek a third wife. The most important leader of their clan desires their first choice for himself, and sends them after another woman, a religious leader preaching a heretical opposition to cannibalism. The brothers decide to put the woman through a series of seven ordeals; if she passes all of them, she will have proved her high kalothi and her fitness to be their ''three-wife.'' This simple plan for courtship is progressively complicated by the schemes and ambitions of the clan leader, a seafaring clan using genetic engineering to back a plan of conquest, and a cloned female assassin. Kingsbury has done his homework on just about everything he puts into the book. Particularly notable are his convincing and amusing portrait of the dynamics of a group marriage and his intelligent treatment of religion and the religious mentality. Science fiction has too often been tolerant of ignorance or outright prejudice against religion; Kingsbury cannot be faulted here. A nice satirical touch is the Getan reaction to a newly discovered history of the wars of the legendary planet Earth; they are horrified at leaders who killed more enemies than they could eat before the corpses rotted! (No, ''Courtship Rite'' is not for the squeamish.) Anne McCaffrey's ''Crystal Singer'' (Del Rey-Ballantine, $2.95 paperback) has no dragons, but it has all of McCaffrey's gifts for world-building and characterization. Killashandra Ree, denied her hoped-for musical career, turns her talent to seeking crystal on the planet Ballybran. The crystal is vital to the galactic economy, and those who discover and test it with their singing are among the best-rewarded workers around. They also undergo irreversible physiological changes which bind them to crystal singing and the crystal planet for the rest of their lives. The novel suffers from one major problem, imposed on McCaffrey and a host of other SF writers by the low rates paid for short science fiction. There is great financial pressure to assemble one's short pieces into novels whenever possible, and McCaffrey has done exactly that; ''Crystal Singer'' was originally four novellas published in a series of anthologies edited by Roger Elwood. As a result, McCaffrey winds up with four conflicts to resolve instead of just one, making some parts of the story, such as Killashandra's becoming the lover of the leader of the crystal singers, seem to happen too fast or too easily. She is much too good a writer for this to be other than an excellent book in spite of the seams, but they do show. BRIEF NOTES: ''The Robot Who Looked Like Me,'' by Robert Sheckley (Bantam, $2 paperback) contains 13 short stories demonstrating Sheckley's unique brands of satire and sheer zaniness. ''Kingsbane,'' by John Morressy (Playboy Paperbacks, $2.50), is a well-told, straightforward fantasy-adventure quest novel, the conclusion of a trilogy but eminently readable on its own. Particularly recommended for readers just getting their feet wet in heroic fantasy. ''The Elfstones of Shannara,'' by Terry Brooks (Del ReyBallantine, $15.95 hardcover, $7.95 trade paperback), is a gigantic fantasy novel, sequel to Brooks' best-selling ''Sword of Shannara.'' It's certain to be popular with people who liked the first one. Brooks still rambles, but many scenes rise to great power. ------------------------------ Date: Tuesday, 10 August 1982 13:20-PDT From: KDO at SRI-KL Subject: More holograms Holograms store information, and a lot of it is redundant. (you could make a hologram which projects a different, unrelated image in each direction, rather than a different view on the same scene.) If you cut out half the hologram, half the information is destroyed (for example you can't move your head as far to look around things). The information is redundantly stored you can recover a lot, but this is not the same as one piece information being stored distributed over the whole image (I guess I am trying to distinguish between distributing the information and duplicating it). When people say that memory is holographic, I assume that does not mean the same thing as highly redundant. Ken ------------------------------ Date: 27 Jul 1982 1636-PDT From: FEATHER at USC-ISIF (Martin S. Feather) Subject: extraterrestial video games What's the E.T. version of Pacman? sPACeman. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Jul 1982 1919-PDT From: Henry W. Miller Subject: Pac Humour What do you get when you cross Ms. Pacman with Bo Derek? A Pac-Ten. -HWM ------------------------------ Date: 29 July 1982 00:55-EDT From: Charles F. Von Rospach Subject: genderless video games If you are getting VERY tired of not-very-funny puns based on certain unnamed video games, do you tell the joke tellers to PAC it up? *ugh* ------------------------------ Date: 29-JUL-1982 19:37 From: TSC::COORS::VICKREY Reply-to: "TSC::COORS::VICKREY c/o" Subject: PacPuns To all PacPunners: I don't mind the puns, some of them are even good (and Bog knows it's no where near as bad as the RotLA jokes last summer!), but I do have one little complaint. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!STOP APOLOGISING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If your going to pun, then PUN, and enjoy it! susan ------------------------------ Date: 29 Jul 1982 2020-PDT From: Henry W. Miller Subject: TIP-TAC's To whom ever sent that pun in: that was very TACky of you. -HWM ------------------------------ Date: 28 July 1982 09:58-PDT (Wednesday) From: KING at KESTREL Subject: untitled I haven't seen any Pacmen at the video arcades lately. I guess they're all playing Pacgammon. ------------------------------ Date: 4 August 1982 10:31-PDT (Wednesday) From: KING at KESTREL Subject: I can't seem to stop What is a giant PacMan who goes around knocking down trees in Africa? A PacHyderm ------------------------------ Date: 4 August 1982 17:13-EDT (Wednesday) From: David H. Kaufman Subject: [MILLER: PAC humour] Date: Wednesday, 28 July 1982 20:38-EDT From: Henry W. Miller Re: PAC humour What does a PACMAN do in the great outdoors? Why, he goes back-pacing... -HWM And what does he sing while he does it? ``If somehow you could Pac up your sorrows ...'' ------------------------------ Date: 4 August 1982 17:15-EDT (Wednesday) From: David H. Kaufman Subject: Pac Humor What're the pacpeople's favorite football teams? The Pac-10, of course! - Dave ------------------------------ Date: 05-Aug-1982 From: DAVE PORTER AT SMAUG Reply-to: "DAVE PORTER AT SMAUG c/o" Subject: Pax PACk it in, will you? ------------------------------ Date: 11 Aug 1982 1852-EDT From: Hobbit Subject: Sigh If you were to take a mess of those little white styrofoam frobs that they use for shipping material, paint them yellow with little black wedges, what would you wind up with? PACing peanuts. Again: *Sigh*. _H* ------------------------------ Date: Thursday, August 12, 1982 6:27AM From: Jim McGrath (The Moderator) Subject: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING! The last message 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: 10 August 1982 0834-PDT (Tuesday) From: andrews at UCLA-Security (Richard Andrews) Subject: "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" HUMOR and SPOILER Is anyone else out there tired of reading first-grade level humor in this digest? (I'm referring to "Genderless Video Game" one-liners of the form: "Does a Pac-man by his cigarettes by the carton? No, he buys them by the Pac.") Below, I've made an attempt at humor of a bit higher level of sophistication: the limerick. These were inspired by some of the spoilers I've read in this digest concerning Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, so unfortunately these are spoilers also. I've done a bit of thinking about Spock's last mind-meld with McCoy and the theory that his memory is being kept in the doctor's brain. Although we all saw Spock was dead, Along comes this theory instead- While his body rests easy His mind lies uneasy With the illogic in McCoy's head. I think this is quite a strange fate, But the good folks at Paramount debate: "Since Spock has no equal Bring him back for a sequel Or six, or seven, or eight." I wonder just what Bones would say When he learns of the role he must play. Quite often he'll find He's got Spock on his mind But it's never happened quite THIS way. It will most likely come as a shock To learn he's got something of Spock's. He'll probably say In his inimitable way, "I'm a doctor not a safe-deposit box!!!" Rich Andrews andrews@ucla-security ------------------------------ End of SF-LOVERS Digest ***********************