HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Re: Heinlein - Politically correct?
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 01:52:12 GMT

matt@physics.berkeley.edu:
>Rico's society is much more similar to 20th century American society
>than it is, say, to 18th century French society, or 20th century
>Filipino society...Heinlein wasn't a sloppy writer, and I don't think 
>that this was accidental... I just don't think that the society portrayed
>is very realistic...

You're right on all three counts -- the society portrayed was similar
to that of the intended audience, this wasn't accidental, and it's not
realistic.  But I don't think anything interesting can be inferred from this.

The conventions of the genre have changed.  Heinlein wasn't playing the
game you seem to think he ought to have been playing -- but then, few
writers were.  How many American sf novels of the fifties can you think
of which portrayed a future which was *not* substantially a fifties
America with fins?  (I can think of a few, but only a few.)

-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com

   God helpe the man so wrapt in Errours endless traine  -- Edmund Spenser

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: frank@fnbc.com (Frank Mitchell)
Subject: Re: Who killed SF???
Organization: First National Bank Of Chicago, Chicago IL, USA
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 93 19:32:19 GMT

In article <76253@apple.apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Crow's Friend Timmy) writes:
> robichau@lambda.msfc.nasa.gov (Paul Robichaux) writes:
> >However, in most of the mass-market book chains (Walden, B. Dalton,
> >Bookstar, etc.) TSR books, along with the Star Trek series and a few
> >other well-known offenders, get shelf space in proportion to their
> >sales.
> 
> Of course, that's because the TSR books sell. 
> 
> Gosh. Stores selling stuff that sells? What a horrible concept.

Well, yes and no.  Obviously a store has to turn a profit in order to stay in  
buisness.  And I don't fault the chain stores for being mainly profit machines.

What bothers me is that many specialty stores (like SF & Fantasy) and  
independent, "literary" stores -- the ones who are in it more for love than for  
money -- are struggling to stay alive.  (There aren't that many to begin with.)   
Not to mention publishers themselves, also "downsizing" to stay competitive.

I'm not sure whether that's a product of the recession or of a decline in  
reading.  Whatever it is, it makes me think of Darwin -- the creatures that  
breed fastest drive the others to extinction ...

--
Frank Mitchell,	Business Systems Analyst, First National Bank of Chicago
email:frank@fnbc.com (NeXTmail)

"'I am that merry wanderer of the night'?  I am that giggling, dangerous,  
totally bloody psychotic menace to life and limb, more like it."
-- Peaseblossom, _Sandman_ #19
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: agc@bmdhh286.bnr.ca (Alan Carter)
Subject: Re: The Illuminatus trilogy
Organization: BNR-Europe-Limited, Maidenhead, England
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 14:14:54 GMT

In article <3458@nlsun1.oracle.nl>, rgasch@nl.oracle.com (Robert Gasch) writes:
|> If you're looking for a *much* better, more believable conspiracy
|> theory, I suggest you read Focault's Pendelum by Umberto Eco. This
|> book is wonderful and made me reflect in ways which TIT never even
|> came close to.

Apart from the one little idea of adding the calendar reform confusion,
everything else in the FP conspiracy can be found in Illuminatus!!, which
pre-dates FP by several years. In fact, FP is a severely restricted
subset of Illuminatus!!. While Eco the great Professor of Literature
may have been feted by the critics for his brilliance, Illuminatus!! was
ignored, possibly because it was classified as SF, possibly because it
was just too difficult for them. 

The same thing happened again recently, when Martin Amis brought out a
novel using the unusual device of having the hero seeming to move
backward in time. I saw several reviews that said that Amis was a 
creative genius, but that books that play with time cannot ever really
succeed because they are unwriteable. Remember the thread here a few
weeks ago about whether Vonnegut is SF or not? Clearly he must be, as the
mainstream critics have never dared to peek into Slaughterhouse 5!

Which does not alter the fact that Robert personally found FP more
accessable that Illuminatus!!. Without wishing to put words in his
mouth, perhaps that may be because he was looking for a conspiracy theory
thriller, while Illuminatus!! contains many more complex themes, explored
by journalists in an era when journalism was at its most vibrant. As a 
Ripping Yarn sure, FP is far more focused. I suspect that in the next 
century and later Illuminatus!! will serve as a source document for those 
trying to understand a critical period in our species history, a feat that 
most of the participants never seemed to manage.

   Alan

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   Maidenhead itself is too snobby to be pleasant. It is the haunt of the
   river swell and his overdressed female companion. It is the town of showy
   hotels, patronized chiefly by dudes and ballet girls. 

   Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome, 1889
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: whheydt@pbhya.PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt)
Subject: Re: Who killed SF???
Reply-To: whheydt@PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 22:21:45 GMT

In article <1isk1cINNgef@shelley.u.washington.edu> dayne@byron.u.washington.edu (Dayne Miller) writes:
>In article <C0pCHL.HCn@math.uwaterloo.ca> gamiddle@math.uwaterloo.ca (Guy Middleton) writes:
>>
>>What came first, the chicken or the egg?
>
>The chicken, obviously. I can't see God wanting to sit on an egg...

While I appreciate the conundrum and the gag as well as the next guy,
I'd like to point out that fish, insects,amphibians, reptiles, and
(so far as I know) birds were laying eggs  for quite a while before
the first critter that could be defined as a chicken came along....

	--Hal

-- 
Hal Heydt                    |    
Analyst, Pacific*Bell        |            You!
510-823-5447                 |    Out of the Gene Pool!
whheydt@pbhya.PacBell.COM    |
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: mmetzger@athena.mit.edu (Michael J Metzger)
Subject: Re: Simmons' Shrike (spoilers)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 18:36:48 GMT

In article <1993Jan9.233744.12172@news.eng.convex.com> cash@convex.com (Peter Cash) writes:
>On a related topic (I think): I recently read Kim S. Robinson's _Icehenge_.
>In this book, one of the characters has the nickname "Shrike". (It's the
>archaeologist's politician friend/lover.) Is this a veiled reference to
>Simmon's Shrike, or does this name have some other meanings that I'm
>missing?
                 (.sig deleted)
If I remember correctly a shrike is a small bird with the wonderfully endearing habit of catching small insects and impaling them on thorns. 

							Michael




Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: jfarrell@morgan.ucs.mun.ca (James Farrell)
Subject: Re: Who killed SF???
Organization: Memorial University of Newfoundland
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 07:03:38 GMT

In article <ROTEN.93Jan8155155@cuba.gsfc.nasa.gov> roten@cuba.gsfc.nasa.gov (Charles Roten) writes:

>>All of the Unicorn and fake medievalist readers who have an insatiable 
>>appetite for the STOOPIDIST POSSIBLE Trash.
>
>They jerk my chain too .. bigtime.  
>
>If it weren't stupid, it wouldn't be pretty and romantic, would it ??  
>And that is what that crowd is REALLY into.  Knights in shining armour 
>and all that.  Not knights who had the habit of riding down their own 
>peasant levies in their haste to execute poorly planned frontal assaults, 
>usually in detail, against the foe.  Not economies where it took an 
>average of 300 hearths (if memory serves) to support a single mounted 
>man-at-arms.  Not levels of medical care wretched even in the best of 
>times, and _completely_ swamped by the frequent outbreaks of epidemic 
>disease.  Not grinding poverty as the norm, compared, say, to China at 
>the same period.  Not the high frequency of death in childbed.  Sheesh, I 
>could go on and on and on.  
>
>The medievalists you mention romanticize what was, by modern standards, 
>a brutal, exploitive, and _hard_ period, for the poor sods who had to 
>live in it.  So research and historical accuracy _must_ be 
>defenestrated.  It would take a miracle to prevent the resulting work 
>from being soft shit.  

Pardon me but this ISN'T the middle ages. It's FANTASY (IE. imagined) If
we wanted non-fiction, then that's what we'd read! The fantasy novels
that you talk about may be BASED on the middle ages, buy they are by no
means an authentic history of what went on. In fiction, we (for the most
part) want the good guys to win. How would you feel if in the end of a
Sci-Fi movie like "Return of the Jedi" Luke joined the Empire and wiped
out the Alliance. It would make for a stupid series. In Fantasy, the
main character is invariably immune to fatal diseases/mishaps/ what have
you. But if that character wasn't immune, then the story would be
written from a totally different point of view (IE the "Main" character
dies and the story centers on another figure). Fantasy is just that ...
FANTASY. History has nothing to do with it, albeit it can be used as a
foundation.

Jim

-- 
********************************************************************
* Jim Farrell  -  Memorial University of Newfoundland (ie. CANADA) *
* These are my opinions, so BUGGER OFF!!!                          * 
********************************************************************
From: urf@icl.se (Urban F)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Heinlein - Politically correct?
Date: 8 Jan 93 18:23:33 GMT
Organization: None. On USENET I speak only for myself.
X-Alt.reply-Address: n.g.u.fredriksson.swe2001@oasis.icl.co.uk

ig25@fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig) writes:

>As far as PC goes:  Where are the women in Starship Troopers?  Were they
>ALL unfit for infantry duty, so that not a single one could make it into
>a base camp of 10000 recruits?  Sounds a bit suspect to me...

They are captains of combat spaceships, as men unsuitable for that
job -- or rather, women have a slight edge over men in that job.
So yes, men might be slightly better than women as Mobile Infantry.

Certainly not something we'd consider PC today, and of course a
0%/100% distribution seems just silly. But how many others at that
time would claim that there are some military jobs women perform
better than men, and do you think it was usual or unusual to have
a main character that's not a white American?
--
 Urban Fredriksson  urf@icl.se  
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: abl@cybill.inesc.pt (Antonio Leal)
Subject: Re: Heinlein - Politically correct?
Organization: INESC - Inst. Eng. Sistemas e Computadores, LISBOA. PORTUGAL.
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 00:02:14 GMT


(I dropped this aside:)

    [Haldeman's Forever War did have mixed outfits;  then, over the centuries,
    first homosexuality became the moral standard, and then Earth became the
    province of a single "perfect" genotype, cloned a million fold.  That's
    probably an object lesson ;-]

mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Markus Stumptner) writes:

   Could you elaborate on that?  Basically, I'd say it proves Haldeman
   was more flexible in his assumptions than Heinlein was.  Nothing in
   that book says the trend is inevitable. [...]


Well, I was mostly making a joke.  But, yes, there's an idea beneath.
I think Vinge, with the "singularity" idea, has hit the right nail -
we're on the verge of an indescribable self-guided evolution.  More
likely self-_un_guided (cf. Lem's Star Diaries - the large Ijon Tichy
"voyage" chapter about the Diochitians, or whatever, who started playing
with their own forms).

Whatever the future is, it's probably bound to be distasteful to
us, if comprehensible at all.  If for no other reason, because it's
different - they don't make my favorite brand of candy anymore, for
starters.  The world has been going to the dogs for millenia, if one
believes the gripes.

So, what does Heinlein do ?  He doesn't spread ST over centuries,
and he cleaves tightly to conservative ideas - conservative in that
they represent the survival of the human species as we know it.
Offhand, I don't remember any Heinlein story set in Earth after the
22nd century - it's all in the colonies.  That's where Haldeman's
"atavistic" protagonist and his friends go too, in the end of FE.

My joke was "yeah, put women in the army, and pretty soon you'll
have a world peopled by a hive mind".  It's not completely a jest.
We may end up with that, just starting with cellular phones and
Usenet, never mind women in the army.  It's all the fault of that
damn monkey with the jawbone bludgeon in his paw.

--
Antonio B. Leal		| IST / INESC
+351.1.310 0300		| R. Alves Redol 9, 1000 Lisboa
abl@inesc.pt		| Portugal
From: pnh@panix.com (Patrick Nielsen-Hayden)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Xenocide Sequel?
Date: 6 Jan 93 16:06:11 GMT
Distribution: rec
Organization: fwa

yamauchi@ces.cwru.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:

>Does anyone know whether a sequel to Orson Scott Card's _Xenocide_ is
>planned, and if so, when it is expected to be published?

I'm not Scott's editor, but I can tell you that a fourth Ender book is in
fact under contract.  You can expect us to publish it some time not long
after Scott turns it in.

Tom Weinstein and Alan Carter can simply not buy it.  Let freedom ring.  <g>

-----
Patrick Nielsen Hayden       :      senior editor, Tor Books
pnh@panix.com * CIS: 72701,1344 * GEnie: PNH * opinions mine
From: ca572@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Mark L. Stackpole)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: KSRobinson _Red Mars_...  When?
Date: 6 Jan 1993 17:21:59 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


	I don't work for TOR, but according to _Publisher's Weekly_
 the release date is Jan. 15.
From: matt@physics2.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: The Gripping Hand
Date: 8 Jan 93 09:51:59
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics2.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: BECKS@TAUNIVM.TAU.AC.IL's message of 8 Jan 93 07:21:50 GMT

In article <9301080721.AA18439@rutgers.edu> BECKS@TAUNIVM.TAU.AC.IL (Sara Beck) writes:

> It also had yet another example of Niven's quite extraordinary
> misogyny, which I don't think has been mentioned on the net.  If a
> writer comes up with ONE alien species in which the females are
> non-sentient or non-intelligent, or in which the process of
> reproduction is fraught with catastrophic threats and dangers, one
> can say that it doesn't make sense scientifically but hey, neither
> does FTL travel, and this is what SF does. But if EVERY
> alien species this writer can find in his imagination has either
> profoundly defective females, great threats in child-bearing, or
> both, phrases like "deep-seated authorial neurosis" begin to come to
> mind.

Niven certainly has invented several alien species where the females
are non-sentient (and also at least one where the males are
non-sentient), but the aliens in The Mote in God's Eye are not one of
those species.  I don't want to go into details (some people haven't
read the book), but I just don't see it there.

What Niven has tried to do, in my opinion, is to create aliens that
are recognizably different from humans, both in biology and in
behavior; often, they reproduce very differently than we do.  (That's
only reasonable.  Mammals, earthworms, and spiders all have sexual
reproduction, but it certainly doesn't take the same form in every
species!  There's no reason to think that an alien species that
reproduces sexually would be more similar to us than to earthworms.)

Of course, I think you could make a case for seeing sexism in the
book's portrayal of the *human* characters, but that's another
matter...

--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618                    crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
austern@lbl.bitnet                faction, an army!  If you don't have any
matt@physics.berkeley.edu         solutions, become a part of the problem!
From: mforget@elfhaven.ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Michel Forget)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Tad Williams, David Brrin - Upcoming...?
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1993 00:11:28 MDT
Reply-To: mforget@elfhaven.ersys.edmonton.ab.ca
Organization: Electric Storm Software
X-Software: HERMES GUS 1.10 Rev. Dec  9 1992
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hi!

I have just started reading the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series by Tad
Williams, and I was wondering if anyone knew the name of the third volume
and when it will be released?

Also, does anyone know when David Brin will write another Uplift novel?  So
far I have read Startide Rising, and am about to read The Uplift War.

Any information would be appreciated,


-- 
--
Regards,

<<  -----------------------------------------  >>
<<    mforget@elfhaven.ersys.edmonton.ab.ca    >>
<<  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  >>
<<               Michel Forget                 >>
<<   The Key:  Spirit over mind over matter.   >>
<<  -----------------------------------------  >>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: kasprj@vccnw03.its.rpi.edu (Jim Kasprzak)
Subject: Re: The Gripping Hand
Reply-To: kasprj@rpi.edu
Organization: The Big Wedge 
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 22:58:03 GMT

In article <C0K1qL.D1w@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca>, jroberts@morpheus.UWaterloo.ca (J. P. Robertson) writes:
|> In article <6281@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at> mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at  
|> (Markus Stumptner) writes:
|> > Now, personally, I'm not convinced the trend she refers to in Niven's
|> > work exists, but arguing that a book is not an outrageously obvious
|> > example does not prove that it is no example at all.  Go dig up races
|> > in Niven's work that dispute the trend.  I seem to remember that the
|> > puppeteers are a counterexample.
|> 
|> O.K.  The obvious species to consider are the Kzinti and the Puppeteers.
|> The Kzinti evolved with both species sentient, however the males of
|> the species chose to bread in such a fashion that the females became
|> unitelligent.  [I can't recall where this tidbit came from, though
|> it might be from Man-Kzin Wars, which might not be canon.]
 
 Niven has given Man-Kzin Wars his stamp of approval, so we can consider 
them to be canon. He does check them for any obvious inconsistencies with 
the established "Laws of Known Space". 
 
 Also, there are hints in that series that the Kzinti breeding patterns 
have actually produced females who are good at hiding their intelligence,
or who use it for different things, rather than being nonsentient. Of 
course the Kzinti males would never bring themselves to admit this...
------------------------------------------------------------------
     __  Live from Capitaland, heart of the Empire State...
 ___/  | Jim Kasprzak, computer operator @ RPI, Troy, NY, USA
/____ *|          he who refuses to do nonsense  
     \_|          is doomed to talk arithmetic.
      ====  e-mail: kasprj@rpi.edu or kasprzak@mts.rpi.edu 

Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.written:17327 alt.config:8355
From: morrow@fnalo.fnal.gov (Elmo the Stunt Elk)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,alt.config
Subject: Re: Start alt.fantasy-- was Who killed SF?
Date: 9 Jan 93 16:12:12 -0600
Organization: The Eekcidental Tourist
NNTP-Posting-Host: fnalo.fnal.gov

chuahl@ocf.berkeley.edu (Chua HakLien) writes:
> 
> [ How do we define SF and how do we define fantasy.. ]
> 
> While it's true that it's hard to make a complete seperation of the two,
> it's also true that in 99% of the discussions in r.a.sf.written, it's easy
> to see which of the two we're talking about. [...]
> Card's Alvin Maker series [...]
> all fall into the fantasy category, for example.

	Nope.  Alvin Maker is alternate history, and that's solidly SF.  So
there's magic involved?  BFD.  It's more SF than fantasy IMHO.
	And that is, of course, the problem.  Everyone agrees that the two
are distinct; no one agrees on the distinction.
	Keep fantasy discussions on sf.written where they belong.
-- 
"Speak softly and carry a big stick."                                          
--Teddy Roosevelt                                                              
  
elmo (morrow@physics.rice.edu,morrow@fnal.fnal.gov)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: parmentier@iowasp.physics.uiowa.edu
Subject: Re: Hugo Nominations (my suggestions)
Organization: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 20:41:11 GMT

In article <1993Jan12.153203.22369@cbnewsj.cb.att.com>, ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) writes:
> Since the Hugo nominations are due in a couple of months, I thought I'd
> post what I think are good choices.  If other people have works they
> want to recommend, it might help people who haven't been keeping
> lists all year.

	Thought I'd add my 0.16 bit.
	Unlike Ms Leeper, I read very little new writing, so my nominating
list is much shorter.  Oh, to have the time...  I also tend toward long
fiction not short.  I heartily agree that the women are jumping to the
front in many ways.

Novel
	Steven Brust &
	 Megan Lindholm	- The Gypsy
	Jack Vance	- Throy
	  ( unfortunately this will probably not see a large print
	    edition until after the deadline for nominating. )

Novelette
	Martha Soukup	- "Things Not Seen" Analog, Sept 1992

Non-Fiction
	Robert Heinlein	- Tramp Royale
	  ( Not being about SF I'm not sure if this really
	    qualifies.  It was excellent, and I'll nominate
	    it anyway, they can always ignore me on this. )

--
"Science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind." Albert Einstein   _/_
      _, .__  _  _,  _,      _   _, .__  ____  _  __  / o _ .__
     (_)_/ (_(/_(_)_(_)_    |_)_(_|_/ (_/ / /_(/_/ /_/_/_(/_/ (__
      /|         /|  /|    /|      ___ Gregg  Parmentier ___
     |/         |/  |/     |/ parmentier@iowasp.physics.uiowa.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: schumach@stortek.com (Kurt Schumacher)
Subject: Re: Dave Duncan
Reply-To: schumach@stortek.com
Organization: Storage Technology Corp
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 17:21:24 GMT

Emperor and Clown is the fourth volume of the series "A Man of His Word".
This series preceeded the new series, of which The Cutting Edge is the first
volume.

When I "discovered" Duncan, it took me a long time to track down the four
volumes of "A Man of His Word".  It took even longer to get all his previous
books, including scouring all the used book stores I could find.

Emperor and Clown came out in paperback within the past year, I believe, but
it's already hard to find on the shelves.  This is part of the problem caused
by the new tax laws, which encourage publishers to only print enough books for
a first run and not keep any back stock.  Once the first printing is gone, it
gets really hard to find books.  This is the same thing that drove my wife
out of the craft business.  The complications of the tax laws and the amount
of record keeping required were simply too much to deal with.

	Kurt
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science,sci.physics,sci.skeptic