HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: kbos@carina.unm.edu (K. Mitchell Bose)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Wild Cards XI:Dealer's Choice
Date: 11 Jan 1993 22:47:26 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
NNTP-Posting-Host: carina.unm.edu

In article <C0MJ7z.2Cx@darkside.osrhe.uoknor.edu> stile@okcforum.osrhe.uoknor.edu (Howard Wilson) writes:
>
>Where the heck is the new Wild Cards book?  According to book ten,
>it will be/is/*WAS* due out in November of 1992.  So where is it?  I
>have seen no word of it here on the Net (of course, lately I have been  
>too busy to read ALL news groups but after 2-3 months, one would think
>I would hear about it), and haven't seen it in any bookstore (again,
>time has not exactly allowed me to hang out in any bookstores).
> 
>If it isn't yet out, does anyone know the reason for/length of the delay?
>
Er...not only was Book XI out last year, but I just finished Book XII!

Book Eleven closes out the whole Jumper thing, with some general death and
destruction, and Book Twelve focuses on Cap'n Trips.  There was some book XI
discussion on r.a.comics, but that's all I remember.


-- 
Kurt Bose (as in Daisy, not Rose) * kbos@carina.unm.edu * Walks: not that sexy.
"Halt!  Based on conclusive dental evidence that truly bites, I arrest you 
 hereby for the murdering of the dead Belzic Tascar.  I am obliged to warn you 
 that my weapons are registered as offensive fronds!!"- R.M.Allen, "Monkey See"
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science,sci.physics,sci.skeptic
From: ccw@prefect.cc.bellcore.com (wood,christopher)
Subject: Re: Davis Mechanics (was Re: John Woods Campbell)
Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 23:09:10 GMT

In article <2i40wB7w165w@west.darkside.com> max@west.darkside.com (Erik Max Francis) writes:

>Sorry, no.  From an external frame of reference -- that is, from someone 
>outside the influence of the black hole -- a particle never reaches the 
>event horizon.  

No, the particle has (ignoring quantum effects here...) a position and a
velocity.  The particle is accelerated toward the black hole, and an
observer can identify a point in time when the particle crosses the
event horizon.

[trimmed.  Spaceman sends signals every second to outside observers]

>He starts falling.  As he gets closer to the event horizon, his 
>colleagues note that his signals are getting farther and farther apart, 
>weaker and weaker, and the frequency of the light he's sending is getting 
>more and more redshifted.  

Yup.  But the series does not converge to zero in infinite time, it does
so in finite time - when the (point-sized) astronaut crosses the event
horizon.

If you plot position vs. time, the position is accelerating towards the
event horizon.  If you plot frequency vs. time, the frequency goes down
as the astronaut gets deeper into the black hole's potential well, and
crosses zero when the astronaut crosses the event horizon.  

>But that's only from the station's point of view.  From the spaceman's 
>point of view, things are rather different.

>He starts falling.  He sends his pulse every second.  Since it's being 
>sent every second from his frame of reference, he never notices anything 
>strange about the time between pulses (until the tides wreck him and his 
>beacon).

>  ____  Erik Max Francis -- ..!apple!uuwest!max -- max@west.darkside.com   __

Chris

-- 
Chris Wood     Bellcore     ...!bellcore!prefect!ccw
                         or ccw@prefect.cc.bellcore.com

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Barbara Hambly: Dog Wizard
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 03:28:04 GMT

"Dog Wizard" is a sequel to Barbara Hambly's "The Silent Tower" and 
"The Silicon Mage" -- which didn't really need a sequel.  That said,
it's the best of the three.

The book is a whodunnit.  Windrose has been dragged back to his home
universe because a dangerous magic is out of control, and he's the
expert.  Of course, his expertise makes people suspect him of being
behind it, besides which there's already a death sentence out on him
from the last book, so he's strongly motivated to find the real culprit.

Oh yes, that culprit, whoever it is, is probably the person who kidnapped
his girlfriend and is holding her somewhere.

Most readers will guess both the identity of the culprit and the nature
of the surprise ending about a quarter of the way through the book.  That
comes with the territory:  If you're writing in a subgenre in which it's
not fair to make a character with almost no exposure the villain, and it's
not done to make the obvious suspect the villain, you're badly constrained.

I've always considered the Windrose books to represent Hambly's worst
writing.  From my perspective, this was a competently written book about
characters I neither liked nor cared about -- Not a bad way to spend an
airplane ride, but not a good use for half of a regular afternoon.

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

   'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
   Go alike, yet each believes his own
		--Alexander Pope
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Lackey and Lisle:  When the Bough Breaks
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 23:07:08 GMT

I suppose I keep trying, long past the point where I should know better,
because I so enjoy Lackey's solo efforts.  (Like the efforts of her
latest coauthor, Piers Anthony, they're a guilty pleasure.)  Past
experience, however, shows that Lackey+junior_coauthor = coauthor -- 
and she doesn't have very good taste in junior coauthors.

The first "Serrated Edge" novel wasn't bad, actually.  (I guess you
have to do a bit more when launching a series -- particularly if you
have to live with the coauthor.)  The second was trash.  "When the
Bough Breaks" is third -- and not quite as good as the second.

"Serrated Edge" isn't really about Elves; it's about child abuse.
The mix is approximately half a pot of plot to a quarter of a pot
of characterization to one pot of message.  The characters, Elf and
Human alike, are caricatures.  The reading list (of course there's
a reading list) includes the SE books.  It's not so much that the
message gets in the way of the story, as that the importance of
the message seems to have made the authors forget that they were
also supposed to be writing a novel.

Someone please let me know if Holly Lisles single-author books are
any good.  This book hasn't inspired me to find out the hard way.

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

   'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
   Go alike, yet each believes his own
		--Alexander Pope
From: damm@diku.dk (Kristian Damm Jensen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Heinlein - Politically correct?
Date: 11 Jan 93 13:06:27 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen

djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes) writes:

>Oh my Gawd.  I'm getting involved in the PFRAHFW again.

>In article <1ik53bINNjkj@nz12.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> ig25@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de 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...

>Where are they?  They're piloting the ships.  It's made clear that they are
>given this duty because (1) they are more fit for it than men [e.g., better
>reaction times] and (2) they are less genetically valuable.

>The first is a clear case of statistics abuse; the *average* woman has a 
>better reaction time than the *average* man, but a given man may well have 
>a reaction time far better than *most* women.

Heinlein had his faults, but not knowing his statistics (or math as a
hole) was not one of them. Women are not the only pilot. I think the
reason we only see female pilots in ST is because RAh want to make a
point.

As to (2): I don't remember anything like that. Could you give a more
precise reference?

>The latter is debateable but seems to fit in with the general "history and
>moral philosophy" principles RAH's projected society posits.

Huh?
-- 
Kristian Damm Jensen (damm@diku.dk)
"Life is like a sewer - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it"
- Tom Lehrer
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: dave@alex.uchicago.edu (Dave Griffith)
Subject: Re: Wild Cards XI:Dealer's Choice
Organization: University of Chicago
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 23:33:10 GMT

In article <C0MJ7z.2Cx@darkside.osrhe.uoknor.edu> stile@okcforum.osrhe.uoknor.edu (Howard Wilson) writes:
>
>Where the heck is the new Wild Cards book?  According to book ten,
>it will be/is/*WAS* due out in November of 1992.  So where is it?  I
>have seen no word of it here on the Net (of course, lately I have been  
>too busy to read ALL news groups but after 2-3 months, one would think
>I would hear about it), and haven't seen it in any bookstore (again,
>time has not exactly allowed me to hang out in any bookstores).
>I've called many times to a local store where I get most of my reading
>material (except that which I get from SFBC...and if you have any comments
>on SFBC, be kind and change the subject when you post them), and they say
>THEY haven't heard a word about it.  Did Melinda's book (Book Ten) bomb
>so badly that they all said to Hell with it?  According to the second
>GURPS book about Wild Cards, there are some new story lines that look GOOD!
>We might get back to the OLD Wild Cards (I.E. good writing) now, without
>Tachy of course.
> 

Dealer's Choice has been out for a while, and was frankly disappointing.
Too much like your standard DC or Marvel fare of people who have powers
and no personality beating up on one another for no adequately explored 
reason.  At least five now aces, none of them even slightly interesting.
Got rid of the jumpers finally, though.

OTOH, Flip of the Card, a Victor Milan solo effort, was just released, and
is quite good indeed.  Focuses on Captain Trips.  _Lots_ of character 
development, _lots_ of world building.  I was seriously thinking of giving
the series a miss after Dealer's Choice, but this has turned it around for
me.  No spoilers, read it yourself.
 
-- 
Dave Griffith, Information Resources, University of Chicago,
Department of Surgery                       dave@alex.bsd.uchicago.edu
Neophytes discuss syntax. Amateurs discuss control. Professionals discuss data.
From: steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Heinlein - Politically correct?
Date: 12 Jan 93 23:19:24 GMT
	<MATT.93Jan10150700@physics2.berkeley.edu>
	<1993Jan11.015212.11720@netcom.com>
Organization: Lick Observatory/UCO
NNTP-Posting-Host: topaz.ucsc.edu
In-reply-to: dani@netcom.com's message of Mon, 11 Jan 1993 01:52:12 GMT

In article <1993Jan11.015212.11720@netcom.com> dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:

   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.

That RAH was constrained by editors at that time?

   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

To put it bluntly, even Heinlein could not have sold Starship Troopers
at the time had the teenage mores he portrayed diverged more, or
rather had the divergence been detailed more explicitly in the book.
Look at the trouble he had with Podkayne of Mars (or in fact ST
itself)! Had ST been written after SiaSL it would undoubtedly have
been different in style and explicitness...

|  Steinn Sigurdsson	|I saw two shooting stars last night		|
|  Lick Observatory	|I wished on them but they were only satellites	|
| steinly@lick.ucsc.edu |Is it wrong to wish on space hardware?		|
| "standard disclaimer"	|I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care - B.B. 1983	|
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science,sci.physics,sci.skeptic
From: jasonr@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Jason F Ralph)
Subject: Re: Davis Mechanics (was Re: John Woods Campbell)
Organization: University of Sussex
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 10:02:00 GMT

I really DO hate to spoil the party, but if you want to argue the toss
about black holes I thought that you might like to know that according
to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity... they don't exist. (Or,
more precisely, they cannot form... stuff/matter falling into a black
hole NEVER reaches it... time dilation and so forth.)

The main problem comes from the fact that you cannot reconcile
Einsteinian gravity with quantum field theory... yet! Maybe in the
future it will be possible to marry quantum theories with classical
theories, but it's not possible yet! All this talk about matter in black
holes is complete tosh... we have no idea what happens when you compress
things beyond the nucleic limit. In any case, if you believe QFT's a
quark-electron 'blob' (NOT necessarily a black hole) is still not
incompressible since the speed of 'signal' propagation is still given by
the speed of light... Assuming that the gauge symmetry has been broken,
then only the photon and graviton are massless, the weak bosons and the
gluons have mass => 'signal' propagates slower than the speed of
light... The dominate 'signal' may still be given by the colour force
since this the strongest interaction, but this is still limited by 'c'.

Splottie-kins (respectable and responsible).

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Subject: Re: Editor that hated Chalker ?
Reply-To: djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 18:19:37 GMT

In article <1ifs99INNkb9@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> ca572@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Mark L. Stackpole) writes:
>
>	My guess also was that Chalker was refering to Terry Carr.
> The short story was titled something like "The Dance of Changer Three".
> It's a very good representation of a human trying to come to terms
> with some truly _Alien_ aliens. It was writen in the mid to late
> '60s, if that is of any help, and I think Gardner Dozois reprinted
> it in _Landmarks of Science Fiction_ last year.

Right chew are.  However, Terry wrote several other stories, of which at least
one of which is very good ("Stanley Toothbrush"), and a not-at-all-bad novel
entitled CIRQUE.


			I'm your only friend.  I'm not your only friend,
			but I'm your little glowing friend, but actually
			I'm not your friend.  But I am
				--TMBG

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Net.Roach
My opinions do NOT represent Pacific Bell,
Professional Development, or anyone else.
But I'm willing to share.
From: kasprj@isaac.its.rpi.edu (Jim Kasprzak)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: The Illuminatus trilogy
Date: 10 Jan 93 13:17:39 GMT
Reply-To: kasprj@rpi.edu
Organization: The Big Wedge

In article <1k4XM6#3LZZSs7tffmH740nq05qfRC9=esr@snark.thyrsus.com>, esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
|> In <3458@nlsun1.oracle.nl> Robert Gasch wrote:
|> > 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.
|> 
|> Chacun a son gout, I suppose.  I liked _Name_Of_The_Rose_ a lot, but 
|> _Foucault's_Pendulum_ struck me as a rather weak knockoff of TIT.

 A weak knockoff... heheheheh... bwahahaha... pardon me, I'm laughing too
hard to compose a coherent response.

|> In some sense Eco may be the better writer...

 In some sense? *ahem* Er, yes, I'd say at least in _some_ sense.
 
 (For the sarcasm-impaired, I concur with Mr. Gasch's opinion expressed above.)
 
 By the way, Eric, I miss your reviews. Do you have any plans to start 
doing them again?
------------------------------------------------------------------
     __  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 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: rcj@engin.umich.edu (R o d Johnson)
Subject: Re: John Woods Campbell
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 93 20:34:40 EST
Organization: Lost Tribes of Gazebo

In article <1993Jan5.220727.11434@news2.cis.umn.edu>
thornley@milli.cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley) writes:

[On John W. Campbell:]

>What would have been the effects if he had been shot by an angry
>romance novellist in 1945?  1950?  1955?  1960?

Now this, my friends, is an Idea.  "Alternate Campbells", the ultimate
fan infra-dig alternate history anthology.  I hope someone gets to
work on it, right after they finish "Alternate Elvises" and "Alternate
Heinleins". 

(Followed by "Alternate Leepers", of course.  :)



-- 
       Rod Johnson  *  rcj@caen.engin.umich.edu  *  (313) 764-3103
    
                "What I do doesn't happen in a warehouse"
                                          --Jim Dickinson
From: mgcbo@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Charles B. Owen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Rama II questions
Date: 9 Jan 1993 16:14:49 -0600
Organization: Educational Computing Network
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: uxa.ecn.bgu.edu

In article <3228@devnull.mpd.tandem.com> mrizzo@allwedo.UUCP (Mike Rizzo) writes:
>I just finished RAMA II. It wasn't that good after all. I kept hoping
>it would come together; that the original awe-inspiring	conception which 
>peered through now and then would, in the end, win out over the PC and word 
>count boosters. Almost to the end it could have. Sadly, it didn't.
>
>It would be easy to say that the good parts were obviously Clark and the 
>bad parts were done by Lee. But can anyone actually say or make an educated
>guess? For example, is there a consensus that the silly dream sequences and 
>mystical episodes were done by Lee? And did Clark lend little more that his 
>name to this book?
>
>Based on RAMA II, I think I will pass on the Garden of Rama. Will I be 
>missing anything?

Gardens of Rama is definately worth reading.  It will be nearly the end
ofthe book before you see it, but the "silly" dream sequences have a
real purpose that is explained and makes a lot of sense.  If I could
comment on a problem with these books it is that they appear to have
been written together as one huge novel, then broken up.  I would prefer
that each novel not leave dozens of questions for the next novel, though
I imagine that is a very good sales technique.  

Has anyone ready Rama Revealed yet?  I have not been able to get a copy.
That is the last book in the "trilogy".
-- 
| Charles B. Owen                            Internet: mgcbo@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu |
| Western Illinois University                            Phone: 309-837-4292 |
| 1002 E. Murray                                                             |
| Macomb, IL  61455                                                          |
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: gmills@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca (MILLS G - CHEMICAL ENG.)
Subject: A Season for Slaughter question
Organization: University of Waterloo
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 20:36:28 GMT


I finished _A Season for Slaughter_ a little while ago, and I've been
wondering about something towards the end.  McCarthy says he concludes the
Temp Corps are watching the mission through Dwan (the electric potatohead)
because she calls him _Jimbo_ at some point.  I tried to find this
occurance in the text and all I can find is the scene where they're lifting
him into the tree to the hospital (approx. 20 pages earlier).  It seems pretty
clear that it's Shawn (the cabinboy) who uses the name.  Any clearifications?

Greg Mills
(STILL no sig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books
From: dstein@oak.math.ucla.edu (David Stein)
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Organization: UCLA Mathematics Department
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 93 14:13:18 GMT

Curtis Yarvin writes:
 
>If a person pays $20,000 to attend classes for the sole purpose of
>enjoying himself, is it honest to give him anything other than what
>he wants?

  If someone would be so stupid, it would be dishonest not to teach him
a lesson and force down his throat the collected volumes of, say,
Heideger, preferebly in German.

 - David

p.s. Sorry if I misspelled his name, he's not important enough to
     make it to our on-line spell-checker ...

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm not a native speaker of English, so I'm not sure what I wrote.
Flames will be ignored unless you post them in perfect Czech.
================================ - David (the metamathician) - ===
From: tomw@orac.asd.sgi.com (Tom Weinstein)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Dave Duncan
Date: 6 Jan 93 18:43:10
Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc.
Reply-To: tomw@asd.sgi.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: orac.asd.sgi.com
In-reply-to: rogrif@SNLL-ARPAGW.LLNL.GOV's message of 6 Jan 93 23:12:58 GMT

In article <9301062312.AA15967@snll-arpagw.llnl.gov>, rogrif@SNLL-ARPAGW.LLNL.GOV (griffith richard o) writes:

> I am most of the way through "The Reaver Road" by Dave Duncan, and I just
> can't restrain myself:  is it just me, or does he seem to be getting better
> and better?  It seems that each time I read something new from him, I like
> it more than the previous work.  Does anyone else feel this way, or am I
> being insidiously and progressively brainwashed?

I feel the same way.  I just finished _The_Cutting_Edge_, and I loved
it.  At first reading, I didn't like the end of _Emperor_and_Clown_, but
after reading TCE, I think I like it better.

--
Love is a conveyor belt of   |   Tom Weinstein  tomw@orac.esd.sgi.com
warmth  -- Jackie Chan       |                  tomw@bears.ucsb.edu
From: cq973@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Thomas Chung)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Dan Simmons - Hyperion
Date: 6 Jan 93 03:46:09 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, jvessey@husc10.harvard.edu (Jonathan Vessey) says:

>am looking for recommendations of other books by Simmons that are worth 
>reading. I'm primarily interested in SF, though I know he writes horror, too,
>and if a horror work were good enough, I'd consider reading it, too. Does   
>anyone have any suggestions?
>
>Thanks,
>Jon
>

Try Carrion Comfort. It's a horror novel and a bit overlong, but as gripping 
as the Hyperion novels, tho it doesn't have as much depth.  Also, he had a
collection of short stories with  some si-fi and horror.  Children of the
Night is also a horror novel by Simmons tho don't recommend it.

He'd written two other  novels, both horrors, but I've not read them yet.
-- 
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