HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dweissman@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov (WiseGuy)
Subject: Jack the Bodiless: Who is Fury
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-b1  
Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. USA
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 18:40:00 GMT

All right.  It's been at least 2 weeks since I've seen this discussion and
since it's been a quiet week ....

Any thoughts on who Fury is?

I can think of only 3 people it could be:
Denis Remillard
Paul Remillard
Marc Remillard

All were present when Victor 'bit the big one' and could have been infected
when Fury was 'born, inevitably'.
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Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books
From: pciszek@nyx.cs.du.edu (Paul Ciszek)
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 93 17:35:55 GMT

curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writes:

>Hmm.  How about:

>	Expose students to whatever the hell they want to read.

In some cases, this will mean a student reads nothing but Harlequin romance
novels or you-can-hear-the-dice-roll fantasy RPG novelizations the whole
time they are in school.

>And when the classics become no longer relevant to modern men, they
>will die off; as, perhaps, they should.

Wrong, under this system the classics will die off when they are no longer
popular.  A lot of books may still be damned relavent even if teenagers
don't want to read them.

I remember having a combination of required books and freely chosen books
in my schooling.  Sometimes the choice was constrained to a fairly broad
list-- The group of "Ancient" classics included the scriptures of most
really old religions, as well as the usual Greek & Roman stuff, while the
group of "modern" classics included _The Monkey Wrench Gang_-- and on
other occasions you could choose any authoror works as long as you could
convince the teacher you weren't making it too easy.  Then, in other 
courses, we all read the same selections.  This was useful when the teacher
wanted to address specific literary techniques or issues.


Paul Ciszek                      When we are planning for posterity, we
                                 ought to remember that virtue is not
pciszek@nyx.cs.du.edu            hereditary.     --Thomas Paine
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: David Eddings: The Sapphire Rose
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 07:11:28 GMT

The third book in David Eddings's "Elenium" trilogy is out in paperback.
I'm not sorry I got it, but I'm glad I waited for the mass-market edition.

There's a certain futility to attempting a review of the third book in
a trilogy.  After all, the only people who are going to read it are those
who've read the first two and know what to expect.

In this case, people certainly *will* know what to expect.  In my
innocence I thought "The Diamond Throne" remarkably similar to "Pawn
of Prophecy".  The similarity was nothing compared to that between
"The Sapphire Rose" and the last books of his other two series.
For good or for ill, you won't be surprised.

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

  The surface of the strange, forbidden planet was roughly textured and green,
  much like cottage cheese gets way after the date on the lid says it is all 
  right to buy it.--Scott Jones


Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Re: Jennifer Roberson's _Tapestry_of_Lions_
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 07:19:45 GMT

alix@iastate.edu (L.A. Melloy):
>1)  Is there a fantasy written group, or is rec.arts.sf.written taking care
>of both the sci fi and fantas genres?

The latter.  The official story is that the sf stands for "speculative
fiction".  The truth is that most readers don't make sharp distinctions
between the genres, so it was convenient to just stick with the group's 
traditional designation.

>2)  I don't know if anyone out there has been reading Roberson's _Chronicles_
>of_the_Cheysuli?  I just picked up the eighth and last in that series,
>_A_Tapestry_of_Lions_.  Anyone interested in discussing it (as soon as I get
>through it)?

Don't look at me:  I posted a somewhat unenthusiastic review when it
came out, and am not excited enough about the book to repeat myself.
But we'll be more than interested to read what *you* have to say.

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

   'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
   Go alike, yet each believes his own
		--Alexander Pope
From: ojvind@chagall.cns.caltech.edu (Ojvind Bernander)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: F&SF, Asimov's
Date: 3 Jan 1993 21:48:56 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Distribution: rec
NNTP-Posting-Host: chagall.cns.caltech.edu

In article <C0A5nC.n1y@panix.com> pnh@panix.com (Patrick Nielsen-Hayden) writes:
>Actually, your first premise is wrong: ANALOG substantially outsells all the
>other SF digests, including ASIMOV'S, and has done so for decades.

The 1991 Novel and Short Stories Writer's Market lists Analog's circulation
at 100,000 and Asimov's at 120,000.  For F&SF, I haven't found any figures,
but my impression is that it trail Analog a little bit.

-- Ojvind

Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.written:16774 rec.arts.books:23474
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Date: 30 Dec 92 12:52:03 GMT
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences

msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris) writes:

>Consider making furniture [ . . . ] we have all the ingredients
>necessary for the propagation of a cultural form, and for the setting
>up of extra, artificial (artificial here means man-made---possibly
>though man-discovered---, not necessarily subjective) standards on top
>of simple utility for the judging of beauty in chair making. An art
>form develops, and a standard of judgment for that art form along with
>it. Artist and critic.  Objectivity can still be found even if the art
>form itself and the critical standard of beauty by which it is judged
>were completely arbitrary. Objectivity can be found in so far as
>experts agree.

I don't think you claim enough here.  Although you refer
parenthetically to the possibility of "man-discovered" standards, your
account seems to show only that people who do something together for a
long time and pay a lot of attention to what they're doing they will
develop a common way of thinking about that thing, and judgements based
on that common way of thinking will have a sort of objectivity because
they will be interpersonally valid.  That's fine, but the issue is why
anyone outside that little community should care whether judgements
have that kind of objectivity or not.

>Ezra Pound said Sappho and Dante, Guido Cavalcanti and Arnaut Daniel and
>the Shih King are important. He actively disliked Milton. Somehow (and
>however much I like Milton, and however idionsyncratic Pound's
>tastes were) this simply weighs more than any pronouncement I am likely
>to make on the subject.

It appears that Pound thought Sappho's lyrics and the Confucian Odes
were things of the same general kind that could be judged by common
standards even though there was no connection in antiquity between
poets on Lesbos and poets in China.  So it seems likely that he thought
judgements of poetic value could be objectively valid without reference
to their acceptance by any particular community of people concerned
with poetry.  Can I assume you agree with that view?
-- 
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur."  (Cato)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: weiner@bnlls1.nsls.bnl.gov (Gary Weiner)
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Organization: Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 00:00:17 GMT

In article <1hodudINN3in@agate.berkeley.edu> curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writes:
>In article <1992Dec28.100738.8703@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> prs9k@brain.med.virginia.edu (Phil Scarr) writes:
>>
>>In the past, merit was assigned to DWMs only, now that is
>>changing and the literary community is responding to the "PC" agenda to
>>reform the cannon.
>
>Reform?  Feh.  Feh on your reform.
>
>I say we spike it.
>
>c

I agree, if for no other reason than the greatest philosphers, writer's and
poets throughout history, the prime shapers of our thoughts, literature
and culture have been lumped together and discarded with a derisive
acronym, the DWEM (Dead White European Male).

Socrates? He's a DWEM, Plato and Aristotle too. Shakespeare? Milton?
Marlowe? Blake? No way man, they're DWEM. Washington? Jefferson? 
Lincoln? Hey, those are DWEMs also.

The truth is, most of the people you want to know about to learn about
the devolopment of our culture, values and literature are DWEMs. That's
just the way it is. Before the 20th century, if you weren't a DWEM, you
had very little say or import (Of course, exceptions do abound, but you
get my point).

The thing is, if you want a more diverse cannon (and this is a good thing
IMHO) then don't say "We Need More Black/Red/Blue/Yellow/Women/Homosexual
/etc authors in our cannon" say "We should have this book in our cannon
because it deserves to be there"

And what this has to do with Science-Fiction is beyond me.




Gary J. Weiner  | Brookhaven National Laboratories  | "The killer awoke 
PO BOX 715      | National Synchrotron Light Source |  before dawn...
Upton,NY 11973  |    weiner@bnlls1.nsls.bnl.gov     |  he put his boots on..."

Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.written:16742 rec.arts.books:23432
From: pnh@panix.com (Patrick Nielsen-Hayden)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Date: 29 Dec 92 17:40:08 GMT
Organization: fwa


Dani Zweig writes:

> One of my professors used to complain that Classical studies were
> historically saddled with the function of civilizing students -- and when
> they were dropped from the general curriculum, the job was dumped on the
> English department. 

Terry Eagleton in his vastly amusing primer LITERARY THEORY (a history of,
well, literary theory) makes a good case for the idea that this was the
exact purpose for which "English Studies" was created as an academic
discipline in the late 19th century.

The idea -- put forth by Matthew Arnold, Hippolyte Taine, and other
cultural brain-trusters of the time -- being that we can't properly expect
all these arrivistes to the middle-class (immigrants, rude mechanics, etc)
to master the trivium and quadrivium, and moreover religion is already
losing its hold, so why don't we have them read and discuss popular novels? 
At least it'll get their minds partway out of the gutter. 

(Much of the same thinking underlies many "popular culture" study programs
today.  Not the idea that SF or mysteries or suchlike might actually be
interesting; just the notion that, hell, at least we can maybe get the
little bastards to read some of it.)

Somewhere or other, C. S. Lewis observed that Matthew Arnold (ibid)
predicted that literature would replace religion, and went on to say he
feared Arnold's prediction had come true.  

-----
Patrick Nielsen Hayden       :      senior editor, Tor Books
pnh@panix.com * CIS: 72701,1344 * GEnie: PNH * opinions mine
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 01:48:04 GMT

lmollett@lunatix.uucp (Laura Mollett):
>>>The students who will reap most of the benefit from a thoughtful selection
>>>are those who read, or will be inspired to read, other books as well.  
>>
>>I think the opposite: those are the students who don't need a reading list...
>
>I agree with this... I've read voraciously for all of my life as far as I 
>can remember.  I've also *hated* reading lists for all of that time.  I'm 
>afraid I didn't garner much at all from books that were "force-fed" to me.  

Okay, so readers don't need and non-readers won't read.  Is there anyone
who *does* benefit from the inclusion of books in the curriculum, or should
the time be freed up for more useful activities?

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

   God helpe the man so wrapt in Errours endless traine  -- Edmund Spenser
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee)
Subject: Re: My last reply.
Organization: Johns Hopkins University CS Dept.
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 02:39:51 GMT

In article <1992Dec29.000158.11986@pbhya.PacBell.COM> whheydt@PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt) writes:
>There was a sobering item in the paper today (in answer to a list of
>trivia questions posed last week).  When it is completed, the largest
>made-made structure in the world will be the Fresh Kills Landfill
>in New York...  How does one classify that?

How interesting.  Thousands of miles long, bigger than the Great Wall of
China?
--
"On the first day after Christmas my truelove served to me...  Leftover Turkey!
On the second day after Christmas my truelove served to me...  Turkey casserole
    that she made from Leftover Turkey.
[days 3-4 deleted] ...  Flaming Turkey Wings! ...
   -- Pizza Hut commercial (and M*tlu/A*gic bait)

Ken Arromdee (arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu, arromdee@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu)
From: AANO05@sakacs00.BITNET (ADNAN NIAZY)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Tom Godwin
Date: 27 Dec 92 14:55:00 GMT

I have really enjoyed the discussion of youth and teen reading material.
It brought back to mind so many books I had read and forgotten over the
years.  However, my all-time favorite book when I was young was a fairly
thin book (by today's standards) called _Space Prison_ by Tom Godwin.  I
read it first when I was about 12 years old, and at least once a year
for the next 10 years or so.  As an adult, I searched bookstores and the
public library for any listings by this author and have come up with a
complete blank.  In fact, in 30 years I have never heard of or seen
another copy of this book.  It's a wonderful story, and I still go back
every once in a while and reread it, but my copy, published in 1962 by
Pyramid Books, has become brittle and is crumbling away.  Has anyone
else ever heard of this book or author?  Was it a  one-time shot or is
Tom Godwin a pseudonym for someone else?  I recently saw a game called
Ragnarok listed in a software collection.  Now Ragnarok was the name of
the prison planet in Godwin's book, and it is very difficult for me to
believe that two independent people would come up with such an
imaginative name.  Can anyone shed any light?
Diane Niazy
From: sherlock@sleuth.eskimo.com (Jonathan Marsh)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Frozen sf writers (was Re:  Forward to Foundation (Asimov) )
Distribution: world
X-NewsSoftware: GRn 1.16e (7/4/92) by Mike Schwartz & Michael B. Smith
Date: 20 Dec 92 14:20:03 PST
Organization: Perpetual Motion Machines Ltd.

In article <105243@bu.edu> mab@buphy.bu.edu (Michael Burstein) writes:
> In article <alien.01ur@acheron.amigans.gen.nz> alien@acheron.amigans.gen.nz (Ross Smith) writes:
> >
> >Something I've often wondered about : Does anyone know if any SF writers
> >have been frozen after their deaths? It sounds like the sort of thing an
> >SF writer would want, but I've never heard of any examples.

    No, but if any of them were, it would have been L. Ron Hubbard ....

                                         smirk :-)
-- 

    sherlock@sleuth.eskimo.com           Phone 206-782-4359
From: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Jim Mann)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Ellison
Date: 24 Dec 1992 13:16:57 GMT
Organization: Stratus Computer Inc, Marlboro MA
Reply-To: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: gondolin.pubs.stratus.com

In article <9212232319.AA17732@rutgers.edu> DCHANG@uhccmvs.BITNET  
(Doreen Chang) writes:
> Question:  Does anyone remember the title of the Harlan Ellison  
short story
> on which the movie "Terminator" was initially based?

It wasn't a short story. Terminator was based on two Outer Limits
episodes written by Ellison: Demon with a Glass Hand and Soldier.


--
Jim Mann            
Stratus Computer   jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com  

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: bjones@denitqm.uswest.com (Brent Jones)
Subject: Re: Sci-Fi & Merit
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written
Organization: U S WEST Information Technologies
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 15:46:55 GMT

In article <1992Dec29.224458.10531@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
mlabossi@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Michael C LaBossiere) wrote:

[merit musings cut]

>       Why do we want an account of merit? Well, aside from the philosophic and
              ^^^^^
> literay importnace of such an account, an appeal to merit is an effective tool 
> against the censors and other enemies of freedom. Of course, it doesn't always 
> work. Why else might we want such an account?
> Michael

I don't think that *I* want an account of merit, as these globally useful
yardsticks always seem to run up against the statement, "Hey, it had
merit for *me*!" And the response always seems to be, "Yeah, but you're
a cretin and wouldn't know good art if it bit you on the butt." As far
as "objective" merit involving value to society, etc. I say "good luck."

Actually, I think that an appeal to "merit" (whatever the heck that might
be) *leads* to censorship and oppression. It is exclusionary by nature,
as obviously some works will have "merit" (according to whatever arbitrary
definition you dream up) and some won't. So why read/write/produce these
artworks when it has been decided by our "effective tool" that they lack
merit?

But I would be very interested in seeing the form this (implied) global
definition of merit would take.

--
Brent Jones, Lead Tech. Editor, U S WEST IT, bjones@denitqm.uswest.com
Check out _Fiction International_ #24--I'll be in it.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: mvp@netcom.com (Mike Van Pelt)
Subject: Re: Niven/Mote in God's Eye
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 00:45:45 GMT

In article <lys27fr@rpi.edu> kasprj@rpi.edu writes:
> Footfall scary? I didn't really find it to be so - aside from the assumption
>that the President would call in a group of SF writers as the people best 
>qualified to deal with the alien threat. "They write about it all the time,
>so they must be experts." Yeah, and the police departments ask mystery writers
>for advice all the time. 
> 
>Actually, what's even scarier is that I don't find it impossible to imagine
>Bill Clinton doing this. 

Except Clinton would never pick such Politically Incorrect
writers as Robert "Bob Anson" Heinlein and Jerry "Wade Curtis"
Pournelle for the task.  Can you imagine Barry Malzberg and
Harlan Ellison in the Dreamer Fithp?

-- 
Mike Van Pelt          | What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth?
mvp@netcom.com         | Judging from realistic simulations involving a
                       | sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we
                       | can assume it will be pretty bad. -- Dave Barry
From: trumpins@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu (Barbara Trumpinski)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Date: 30 Dec 92 22:03:29 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana

In <8249@lib.tmc.edu> drg@biomath.mda.uth.tmc.edu (David Gutierrez) writes:

>In article <1992Dec29.232115.24785@netcom.com> solovay@netcom.com (Andrew
>Solovay) writes:
>>How can Huckleberry Finn possibly be non-PC or anti-PC? It was,
>>and is, one of the most strongly anti-racist books in American
>>literature. I would think Huck Finn would be the one part of the
>>canon the PC types were happiest with.

>Irrelevant to the Politically Correct. The book contains the word "nigger",
>therefore it is evil - never mind what the words surrounding it say.

CRAP!  (in lieu of something stronger)

--
***************************************************************************
conan the librarian a.k.a. kitten           /\ /\  barbara ann 
"my life's a soap opera, isn't yours?"      {=.=}
                                              ~   trumpins@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu 
"love is the wild card of existance"
                          rita mae brown
From: zgilbert@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Zvi Gilbert)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Date: 30 Dec 92 16:20:59 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writes:
>prs9k@brain.med.virginia.edu (Phil Scarr) writes:
>>
>>In the past, merit was assigned to DWMs only, now that is
>>changing and the literary community is responding to the "PC" agenda to
>>reform the cannon.
>
>Reform?  Feh.  Feh on your reform.
>
>I say we spike it.

(to the tune of Public Enemy's "Fight the Power")

Spike the canon
spike the canon
spike the canon
we've gotta spike the canon, PC!

Shakespeare was a hero to most 
but he never meant shit to me
straight out racist the sucker was simple and plain...

etc. etc.

--Zvi
zgilbert@titan.ucc.umass.edu
(I didn't realize the spike lee connection until I read this post over.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Followup-To: rec.arts.books
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 17:07:29 GMT

Dani Zweig writes:

I could go on for a while.  Are we trying to teach good English? the
history of ideas? self-respect?  One of my professors used to complain
that Classical studies were historically saddled with the function of
civilizing students -- and when they were dropped from the general
curriculum, the job was dumped on the English department.  


Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com


	Yet, the argument used to be that the function of liberal
education was to inculcate civilizing influences. And, of course, it
is also possible to make an argument that no department considers its
function to "civilize" the little boogers since there are bigger fish to
fry. 

	Keith
--

Keith Morgan kamorgan@athena.mit.edu
In the end nothing could be said of his work except that it was
preposterous and true and totally unacceptable. Edward Whittemore
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: amadeus@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Susan Harwood Kaczmarczik)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Recommendation wanted: Books about magicians
Date: 22 Dec 92 17:34:08 GMT
Organization: University of Texas at Austin

Patricia Kennealy's Keltiad series has some great stuff about
magicians, magical orders and magical practices.  Also, some of
Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald Mage series does too.  Of course,
there's Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series, and her new Adept series with
Deborah Turner Harris has some good bits.  Also try Kurtz's _Lammas
Night_.  And you might take a gander at _Gossamer Axe_ by Gael Baudino.

Of the above, I consider the Kennealy works the best overall, but all
of them are quite sane in their approach.  But the important thing to
rememeber, whichever books you pick, is that these things are
*fiction.* They are based on real-life practices and experience, but
the works themselves are FICTION.  All of these authors have been
plagued by readers who do not understand that, and who want to become
a Keltic Bandraoi, a Herald-Mage or a Deryni sorceror (who even claim
they have the blood, no less!).

Have a lovely read...

-- 
-----Susan Harwood Kaczmarczik-------------------------------*<:-)-------------
"Queens never make bargains."  -- The Red Queen, _Through the Looking Glass_
-----amadeus@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu--------------The University of Texas @Austin---