From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:UNKNOWN:sf-lovers Newsgroups: fa.sf-lovers Title: SF-LOVERS Digest V6 #44 Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8474 Posted: Sat Sep 11 18:57:26 1982 Received: Tue Sep 14 04:48:19 1982 >From SFL@SRI-CSL Sat Sep 11 00:26:58 1982 SF-LOVERS Digest Thursday, 19 Aug 1982 Volume 6 : Issue 44 Today's Topics: SF Books - Query Answered & The Mathenauts & Ossian's Ride & Little,Big & The Elfin Ship, SF Movies - Destination Moon & ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, SF Music - Twilight Zone, SF TV - Night Gallery & HHGttG & Dr Who, Spoiler - ET: The Extra-Terrestrial ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 16 Aug 82 16:14:58-EDT (Mon) From: Webber.umcp-cs at UDel-Relay Subject: The Mathenauts The story being sought is The Mathenauts by Norman Kagan it appeared in IF:Worlds of SF July 1964 (and also in one of J. Merrill's anthologies) Certainly to be recommended for anyone who thinks that reality is for people who can't handle pure mathematics. ----------------------- BOB ------------------------------ Date: 18 Aug 1982 1725-EDT From: DAVID I. LEWINSubject: here's the plot... The Fred Hoyle story in which information sent from another star is used by earth humans to build a device is "Ossians's Ride". In this Eire becomes the leading technological country through this knowledge. Also, a character is threatened as follows: he will be fed boron and exposed to a fast neutron beam. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Aug 1982 at 1638-CDT From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 Subject: Hoyle, ANDROMEDA, OSSIAN'S RIDE, scientific elites ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ANDROMEDA, etc. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Yes, A FOR ANDROMEDA and its sequel ANDROMEDA BREAKTHROUGH were by Sir Fred Hoyle with a collaborator, but it was John Elliot, not his son Geoffrey Hoyle. Tho many people know Hoyle wrote these, surprisingly few realize that they are not truly original but are novelizations of a British TV series. These books also seem to have started Hoyle off on a spate of plots involving a hero enamored of alien personae in beautiful female human bodies. One of those, Hoyle's OSSIAN'S RIDE, is one of my favorite "chase"- type sf novels. Nicholls' ENC. OF S/F says that it is "interesting for the aggressively political stance taken by FH, who believes that science-educated people are more fit to govern than arts-educated people -- not just that numeracy is as important as literacy, but that, because a numerate training is less tied up with emotional questions than a literate training, it would give a necessary coolness of judgment to the ruling classes". Hmmmmmmm... I suspect Hoyle's stance is culturally conditioned. From what I have seen of British-type educational systems, even persons who have been channeled into "numerate training" have already had "literate training" comparable (or superior) to the bulk of persons with American B.A.'s in the arts/humanities. (If nothing else, they have been forced through the early years in their system to write English clearly-- or fail their exams, regardless of the subject!) So Hoyle's science-educated people are both "numerate" AND literate. In a way, in his British science-educated-people he has something approaching the best of "the two cultures". The proportion of recipients of American B.S.'s who would be comparable is small. I wouldn't consider the bulk of the people with American B.S degrees any different in capability to govern than those with the B.A.. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Jul 1982 16:19:18-EDT From: csin!cjh at CCA-UNIX Subject: LITTLE, BIG Some of you will doubtless call me a lowbrow for this, but I was not particularly enchanted by LITTLE, BIG; I found parts intriguing and much of it irretrievably precious. There really isn't a plot; it's chunks of the lives of several people, most of them related, with occasional happenings that require supernatural explanations. ------------------------------ Date: 13 Aug 1982 1437-EDT From: STILLMAN.SHERMAN at RUTGERS Subject: Lousy new releases - is there an end in sight?? Has anyone else noticed that the latest releases in SF and F books are really lousy??! And I think I'm being kind... Whatever you do, stay away from "The Elfin Ship", a real boring novel by James P. Babbylock (spelling approx.). Its long, tedious, and goes nowhere. Apparently James thinks that you can hook a reader simply by introducing cute characters and villains. WRONG! This is basically a 15 page short story which has been fed so much extraneous garbage that it has expanded into something obscene. The basic story is that a 'cheeser' has to bring some of his goods over to the dwarves so they can trade for honeycakes and elfin toys. Of course no book would be complete w/out an almost deadly menace, and this element is certainly used (poorly, mind you). So the big cheese takes off down the river, and nothing exciting happens for the next 300 odd pages. If you have to read something stay away from this and look for new traffic signs. *Steve Sherman* ------------------------------ Date: 18 Aug 1982 0849-PDT From: Griffin at SUMEX-AIM Subject: Technical advisor "Destination Moon" A friend of mine was looking over an old issue which stated that Heinlein was the technical advisor for the movie "Destination Moon". He's almost positive that it was not Heinlein, but WILLY LEY, the world-famous aviator and rocket pioneer who died in a plane crash. KG ------------------------------ Date: 18 Aug 1982 0810-EDT From: DEVON at MIT-DMS (Devon S. McCullough) Subject: Twilight Zone Where [in Cambridge/Boston area pre: DEVON at MIT-DMS (Devon S. McCullough) Subject: Twilight Zone Where [in Cambridge/Boston area preferably] should I look to find the score for the TZ theme, and the letters "Twilight Zone" in the exact visual font used for the show? The purpose is to digitize both, and have a pop-up window appear shortly before 11pm on my screen, as a reminder. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Aug 1982 0229-PDT From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM Subject: Night Gallery I recently saw an old favorite Night Gallery epsiode, and noticed who directed it. The episode is the one where a tyranical rich blind woman blackmails a doctor into grafting the optic nerves from a desparate man onto her eyes, even though she knows that she will only gain 12 hours of sight. She feels that 12 hours is too precious to pass up. The night of the operation, she peals off the bandages and sees for the first time. But then the light goes away. She seems to be blind again.... I won't spoil the ending in case anyone hasn't seen it. The director was Steven Spielberg, which didn't suprise me at all once I looked at the interplay of light and darkness, the fuzzy soft lighting at points, and the good buildup of suspense. Two questions; What other semi-obscure things has he directed, and where did he get his mania about soft fuzzy lighting? Dan (dolata@sumex-aim) ------------------------------ Date: 18 Aug 1982 1049-EDT From: Larry Seiler Subject: WGBH Programming The Boston public TV station has been announcing on-air that they will be showing BOTH Hitch-Hiker's Guide and a new season of Dr. Who this fall. (These announcements are made during the evening pledge period, right after Dr. Who gets over). They suggest that if you are happy about this, you might send them a check... Larry ------------------------------ Date: Thursday, August 19, 1982 1:54AM From: Jim McGrath (The Moderator) Subject: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING! The last three messages in this digest discuss some plot details in the movie ET: The Extra-Terrestrial. Some readers may not wish to read on. ------------------------------ Date: Tuesday, 10 August 1982 13:06-PDT From: Jonathan Alan Solomon Subject: E. T.!! Um, I finally saw it (lines got so bad in Hollywood that you had to stand in line 3 hours to buy a ticket 7 days in advance and stand in another 3 hour line to see the show a week later) when it opened in WestWood; and was amazed at how easily I got emotionally involved in the story. Spielberg (did I spell it right?) sure knows how to captivate his audience. I did see a flaw; in the bicycle chase scene, two police cars were chasing the kids into a construction site, the kids turned a corner around a building and Eliot must have taken it too steep, and fell over, causing E. T. to tumble out of the basket and almost collide with one of the other bikes (not to mention the cop cars which slowed down so as to avoid hitting them, nice guys). Then a split second later they were on their way, it just didn't look like it was *supposed* to be that way. Oh well, what a nit. It was truly a great movie. I hope we get a sequel out of it. "I will be right here". --JSol ------------------------------ Date: 6 Aug 1982 0311-PDT From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM Subject: Medics 'last gasp' efforts If I came upon an alien who was GOING TO DIE without assistance, and I was the only help available, I would apply whatever techniques I could to try to save it. Sure, there is a 99%+ chance that adrenalin will not help it, and a good chance that it will harm it, but it is the only thing that they had (other than lots of ignorance). Better to use something that has a slim slim slim chance of helping, than to use nothing. It is possible that Botulinus Toxin would do better, but given that these men didn't have information, they did the best they could. ------------------------------ Date: 8 Aug 1982 13:57:46-PDT From: rabbit!xchar at Berkeley Subject: E.T. phone home WARNING: SPOILER! : The following article discusses details of the construction and operation of the long distance communication device in the movie *E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial*. Those readers who prefer to consider the communicator as just a hokey fake may not wish to read on. Reprinted, with permission, from *Bell Labs News*, August 2, 1982, Vol. 22, No. 33, p. 1-2. Bell Labs Henry Feinberg Meet the man who helped E.T. 'phone home' Millions of movie-goers this summer are seeing an ingenious device used to make a long, *long* distance call. The movie is *E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial*. The device is a whimsically Rube Goldbergesque microwave system. And if you're willing to wait out the rather lengthy credits at the end of the picture, you'll see the name of the communicator's designer, Henry Feinberg. Feinberg was working in the corporate exhibits group at Short Hills last spring when director Steven Spielberg asked Bell Labs for help in finding someone to create the "communicator." "I was delighted, just delighted," Feinberg said. "It was right up my alley." The communicator is critical to the movie's plot. A homesick extraterrestrial, or E.T., is stranded on Earth. While watching TV in the suburbs, a "Reach Out and Touch Someone" commercial inspires him to try to "phone home." With the help of a 10-year-old Earthling, E.T. builds a communicator from found objects: a golf umbrella, a coat hanger, a coffee can and some electronic toys. Then he beams his signal into space, hoping his friends will pick it up and come back for him. "I had three criteria for the communicator," Feinberg said. "It had to be plausible; it had to be made of everyday materials; and as many of those materials as possible had to be within a 10-year-old's frame of reference." Feinberg built the device in his spare time, amid the clutter of other hobbies in his Manhattan apartment. He started by rewiring a Texas Instruments "Speak and Spell" calculator, to disply a "new alphabet" for E.T. He then ran wires from each button on the keyboard to a row of bobby pins fastened to the dowel of a wooden coat hanger. The hanger was suspended over the turntable of a children's phonograph. Feinberg painted a 10" circular sawblade ("the paint acts as an insulator," he explained) and put it on the turntable. Then he carefully scraped the paint from some areas of the disk so that when it revolves, selected bobby pins make electrical contact with the exposed metal, thus activating the appropriate buttons on the "Speak and Spell." In the movie, the communicator is powered by the wind. A string is tied between a tree branch and a ratchet made from a knife and fork. As the wind moves the branch, the string pulls the ratchet and the fork moves the sawblade, tooth by tooth. Feinberg acoustically coupled a toy CB walkie-talkie to the speaker in the "Speak and Spell" to bring the signal to the transmitter. The transmitter uses the UHF tuner from a television set as a frequency multiplier, a coffee can as a microwave resonator, a funnel as waveguide, and a golf umbrella lined with aluminum foil as a parabolic antenna to beam E.T.'s call home. Feinberg hand-carried the device to the film studio in California. "I took a few days of vacation to help out on the set," he said. "It was hard, intense work--12 hours a day--but a whole lot of fun." Did the device work for E.T. and bring his friends back to rescue him? Ask any kid. It worked for Feinberg, right up to the point of transmission. And even that, he notes, looks plausible. "Cartoons use the concept of the *plausible impossible*," he said. "A character gets chased off a cliff and stays in mid-air for a few seconds. It's only when he looks down that he starts to fall. E.T.'s communicator represents what I call the *plausible possible*. I wanted some of my Bell Labs friends to look at it and say, 'Darned if it couldn't work!'" As Feinberg said, the communicator project was right up his alley. For over twenty years, he has made a career of doing what he likes best, "interpreting science for the public." He started out in the late 1950s as a production assistant on the *Mr. Wizard* TV series, devising ways to demonstrate scientific principles with common, household objects. Then he joined Bell Labs, working on films, displays, exhibits and science demonstrations. Currently he is on assignment at AT&T in New York, working on the Bell System exhibits for Walt Disney's new theme park, EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow). And he's having a ball.