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From: LINDSAY%TARTAN@CMU-CS-C.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Klaatu
Message-ID: <1004@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 19-Jun-84 02:33:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.1004
Posted: Tue Jun 19 02:33:37 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Jun-84 01:47:12 EDT
Lines: 27


"The Day the Earth Stood Still" is based on "Farewell to the Master",
by Harry Bates. My copy of "Adventures in Time and Space" (Bantam, 1946)
lists it as Copyright 1939.  Bates was the founding editor of "Astounding
Stories of Super-Science" (1930..), quickly renamed "Astounding Stories". 
It is considered the first true pulp SF magazine, given the literary
standards of the Gernsback magazines.

The story stands up well, barring lines like "[the spaceship] had been
destroyed when it was pulled into the sun."  Of course, the visitor used
"the universal gesture of peace", before saying his only line into the
television (!) cameras:

   "I am Klaatu, and this is Gnut."

**SPOILER** The visitor is then killed, and Gnut eventually recreates him:

"As you must know, a given body makes a characteristic sound. He constructed
an apparatus which reversed the recording process, and from the given sound
made the characteristic body."

Anyone out there with a collection of Queen albums might like to dig out the
one showing a remorseful robot with blood on its hand.  The art is adapted
from an old Kelly Freas, and the robot is Gnut.

Don Lindsay
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