HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: write@eff.org (Glen Cox)
Subject: Re: BOOKS BY DAVID EDDINGS
Originator: write@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 03:39:16 GMT

For those following this recent manifestation of the argument between
"art" and "commercial, entertaining," I direct you to Michael Bishop's
most recent novel, COUNT GEIGER'S BLUES, for a wonderful analysis of
this ongoing debate, as well as a pretty well thought out opinion.

IMHO, however, I feel that Eddings doesn't make the cut.

-- 
/== Glen E. Cox ==============================================================\
|  write@eff.org  | "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity."       |
|  GEnie: G.COX3  |                                --George Orwell            |
| DELPHI: MRWRITE |                                                           |
From: mch@sqwest.wimsey.bc.ca (Mark C. Henderson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Clark Ashton Smith (Was: Re: Lovecraft Thread)
Date: 22 Jul 92 17:32:04 GMT
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Surrey, British Columbia, CANADA

In article <1992Jul21.204452.18534@athena.mit.edu> mouser@athena.mit.edu writes:
>CAS is still in print, at least as of last year when I ordered 
>_A_Rendezvous_in_Averoigne_ through B. Dalton.  It's a hard cover
>containing short stories occurring in Averoigne (4), Atlantis (3),
>Hyperborea (4), Zothique (10), and nine assorted others.  As far as
>I know, Arkham House is the only publisher which carries him and
>so you'll have to pay hard cover prices ($22.95); but if you

Or you can just order it from Arkham House directly (probably much faster).

The address is:
Arkham House Publishers, Inc.
PO Box 546
Sauk City,  WI 53583
USA

Request a copy of their catalogue (it is free).

Mark
-- 
Mark Henderson, SoftQuad Inc, 108-10070 King George Hwy, Surrey, B.C. V3T 2W4
Internet:   mch@west.sq.com, mch@sqwest.wimsey.bc.ca
UUCP: {van-bc,sq}!sqwest!mch Telephone: +1 604 585 8394  Fax: +1 604 585 1926
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 12:24:29 -0400 
From: "Andrew C. Plotkin" <ap1i+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Dealing with Jump shock (Re: The Moat around God's Eye)
	<104770002@otter.hpl.hp.com>

Excerpts from netnews.rec.arts.sf.written: 22-Jul-92 Re: Dealing with
Jump shock.. Tom Gardner@otter.hpl.hp (1059)

> i.e. would you force the photons to go through a forest of "wires" to reach the
> photoreceptors, or would you bring the wires out the back of the eye. 

> Right. Obvious isn't it. At least to any competent engineer. But God got it
> wrong in the human eye. This is a superb way of demonstrating either the
> non-existence of God or that God is fundamentally incompetant. Take your
> choice.

Unwarranted assumption. Maybe God thinks evolution is a cool way to
create living creatures.

I agree, though, that evolution is the Great Kludger. Examples all over
the place. (How much of your DNA did you say you were using? :-)

--Z

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
From: rubinoff@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Robert Rubinoff)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Gibson's _agrippa_: Not A Hoax
Date: 23 Jul 92 20:50:09 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1992Jul21.184809.24166@clarinet.com> brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes:
>[...]    Not many people get their first novel to win the Hugo and
>Nebula.

One a year, at most!  :-)

   Robert
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: The Moat around God's Eye
Date: 21 Jul 92 15:34:02 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <1992Jul18.233515.28827@oracle.us.oracle.com> mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
|Mind telling us why we have absolutely no records of any losers in any
|even semi-modern war doing this?  It would have been quite attractive
|to people like Hitler or the Japanese in WWII.  If the Emperor had
|gone into hiding we couldn't have taken away his god-hood.

Hmm, you haven't heard of the Japanese soldiers that hid out for years
after the war was over on remote Pacific islands?

Also, in some cases where this sort of thing was tried, the ones doing it
*won* the war (read Vietnam).

Remember, it is largely a matter of motivation.  I suspect that the Emporer
was not really all that enamored of being a god.  He certainly seemed to
have a genuine concern for the Japanese people, instead of just for his own
comfort.  But if he had thought the Americans would ruthlessly eliminate
Japanese culture?  What would have happened then?  Oh, we might well have
won the war, but I suspect that many Japanese nationalists would have
buried themselves deep in the mountains, just like the individual soldiers
did further out in the Pacific.

|High fecundity is difficult or impossible for large species.  The
|majority of species, however, are microorganisms and they tend to rely
|on fecundity.

Yep, but the Moties are a *large* species, which is the point.

|Anyway, the key point was the assumption of the prior poster that
|unlimited fecundity was avoided by species to avoid crashes.  This is
|clearly incorrect if you know anything about genetics.  The poster is
|falling into the old and hackneyed evolution for the good of the
|species trap.

No, I was not.  Large scale starvation is bad for *each* *individual*,
and having fewer kids to avoid this is an *individual* advantage.

|>Almost all of the species called 'K-strategists' do so, though not
|>*consciously*, or by *intent*, but merely due to programming.
|
|Incorrect.  They restrain growth for a different reason - because it
|is a better survival strategy for their offspring as opposed to the
|offspring of other humans, not because it avoids a crash that is bad
|for all humans.

The point is that it is the *crashes* that *make* it a bad individual
strategy.  K-strategy species do quite well ate establishing stable
population sizes.
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
From: phal@PICA.ARMY.MIL ("Patrick M. Phalen", FSAC-PMD)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: awful fantasy
Date: 30 Jul 92 14:25:50 GMT

stas@soda.berkeley.edu 
writes:
>i'd just put down the grim creation of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
>called _Dragon Wing_ of the Death Gate Cycle series, after reading about 20
>pages.

Don't limit them to one bad book.  Anything in the _Dragonlance_ series
pretty much sucked.  Besides that, the premise of writing books so that
TSR could introduce a new world to D&D (new books, new modules, 'mo money,
'mo money).  The whole premise just really bothered me.

>This is the the reader's view of their writing methods:
>1)  
>. 
>.
>5)
 6)  Use chapter titles as foreshadowing (i.e, "Trouble for the twins")
From: grove@triangle.Berkeley.EDU (Eddie Grove)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Ash Ock
Date: 25 Jul 1992 08:36:35 GMT
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: triangle.berkeley.edu


There have been a few postings about the Paratwa trilogy by
Cristopher Hinz, complaining that some of the books are already out of
print.  This may or may not be true.  In any case, a local
book store has at least 4 copies of Ash Ock in hardcover for
$5 apiece, and they will ship (via UPS?) for another $2 or so.
Sounds like a deal to me.  (st. disclam. I am not in any way affiliated ...).

The store is Dark Carnival, in Berkeley CA, phone is 510-845-7757
(according to a leaflet).

I really enjoyed the first book, but think the second and third
were not in the same class.

If you actually call them, mention my name.  They probably don't 
remember me, but what the heck.

Eddie Grove
From: SteveWall@aol.com (Steve Wall)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Just read _Hyperion_/_Fall of...
Date: 23 Jul 92 16:43:46 GMT
Organization: U.S. Army Armament Research Dev. & Eng. Ctr, Dover NJ

> >My last question: I don't mean to imply plagarization, but 
> >did anyone else sense anything familiar about the poet's tale?
> 
> >Specifically, the writer who was
> 
> >1. (temporarily) handicapped
> 
> >2. Working as a manual laborer until he was "discovered" and
> >became famous?
> 
> >(Or semi-famous)...
> 
OK, I'll venture a guess...Chauncey Gardener, from the movie 'Being There'?

If this was the suspected plagiarism I don't see it.  There's some vague
similarity, but callling this plagiarism would be like accusing someone
of stealing the plotline 'boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl at
the end'.  There is some rudimentary level of plot idea too simple
to be called intellectual property, and that's what's involved here.

Steve Wall
From: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Jim Mann)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Beyond the Fall of Night
Date: 28 Jul 92 16:10:13 GMT
Reply-To: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com

In article <1992Jul28.143738.13927@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> eam3@po.CWRU.Edu  
(Eric A. Meyer) writes:
> 
> In a previous article, chris@MorningStar.Com (Chris Miller) says:
> 
> >In order to keep this spoiler-free,  I will only say that I found the 
> >First part of BtFoN to be more-or-less straightforward "hard" sf.
> 
>    That's because (as has been pointed out) it's the word-for-word
> reprint of "Against the Fall of Night," which was one of the first
> Clarke books I ever read.  (Fortunately, the other was the original
> "Rama".)

Why "fortunately"?  Against the Fall of Night was one of Clarke's
best books (though I think it was better in the rewritten version:
The City and the Stars).  In fact, The City and the Stars is the 
one Clarke book that I go back and reread every couple of years.
> 
>    That was Benford going off the deep end all by his lonesome.  I wish
> he'd stayed there and not sent us the report.
>    Interesting ideas with a massive scope made confusingly  
uninteresting.
> It beats me how Benford managed it, but he took all of these really  
neat
> things and presented them in such a way that I kept muttering to  
myself,
> "Who cares?"  Besides, unless I missed something explanatory, he  
commits
> a major error.  There is a reference to the fact that the Moon has an
> atmosphere with some sort of permeable membrane to hold it in (I  
think). 
> In the first part, it had been millenia since the Moon had been  
destroyed
> in order to keep it from smacking into the Earth...
>    Oh well.
> 

I think the biggest problem with Benford's sequel is that it wasn't
a sequel, really. The characters weren't the same, the concepts were
changed quite a bit, and so forth.  I think had he changed the names
and published it as a stand-alone novella, with no reference to 
the Clarke novel, it would have seemed like a reasonably good
story.   However, I found myself grumbling throughout "But that's NOT
what the Mad Mind is like, that's not what _____ is like, ...."
This distracted me from enjoying the story in its own right.


--
Jim Mann       jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com  Stratus Computer
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: nickh@CS.CMU.EDU (Nick Haines)
Subject: Re: SF (was Re: Trundling along)
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 92 14:07:40 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written
	<JBW.92Jul19072316@bigbird.bu.edu>
	<1992Jul20.153503.7912@dscomsf.desy.de>
	<1b602aa2.ARN21b8@prolix.pub.uu.oz.au>
Originator: nickh@VOILA.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU

In article <1b602aa2.ARN21b8@prolix.pub.uu.oz.au> dac@prolix.pub.uu.oz.au (Andrew Clayton) writes:

   Iain M. Banks is triffic!

Yes.

   I've also got _The Wasp Factory_ to have a look at, apparently a
   wicked book.

Depends on how you mean `wicked,' really. Not terribly depressing (in
fact, I found the ending quite uplifting).

   Bank's novels have the rare ability to make me laugh out loud.
   Thankfully my partner has had previous fits of LOL behaviour
   [notably reading Kingsley Amos' _Lucky Jim_], so couldn't point
		    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   any fingers-of-derision at me.  Especially when I hoot with mirth
   at 3am whilst reading in bed.  :-)

Interesting. I don't much care for Kingsley Amis myself, but his son
Martin is (IMO) probably the mainstream English author closest in
style and themes to Banks. Read `London Fields' and report back.

   In article <1992Jul20.153503.7912@dscomsf.desy.de>, Till Poser writes:

   > BigPeeve: I'm still missing out on "The State of the Art".

   Is that set in his 'Culture' universe?

Yes.

Here's a brief but (I think) complete Iain Banks bibliography:

as Iain Banks:

The Wasp Factory
The Bridge
Walking on Glass
Canal Dreams
Espedair Street
The Crow Road

as Iain M. Banks:

Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
The Use of Weapons
The State of the Art

--------------------------
Nick Haines nickh@cs.cmu.edu
From: jc@crosfield.co.uk (jerry cullingford)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Dealing with Jump shock (Re: The Moat around God's Eye)
Date: 24 Jul 92 15:42:46 GMT
Organization: Crosfield Electronics, Hemel Hempstead, United Kingdom.

>In article <3481@blue.cis.pitt.edu.UUCP>
>	hnkst2+@pitt.edu (Hanhwe N Kim) writes:

>>Something occurred to me while reading this thread:
>>How do the Imperials deal with Jump Shock themselves
>>when they have to invade a hostile seccesionist planet?

Hmm. At a guess:

(1) By trying to make sure that they're the only ones in control of
the big military ships, so they have a time window before the seccesionists
build some of their own,

(2) By having good enough Langston(?) fields to soak up punishment until
the crews come round,

(3) By sending in enough ships to swamp the defenders once they have come
round.

And possibly (4) by coming in with a high inherent velocity, if that's
preserved across jumps (can't remember offhand). That way you get away
from the opposition fast enough to make sure you don't take too much of a
pounding before you come round.

Hmm.. if inherent velocity _is_ preserved, that opens up some fun tactics..
Take a big rock, accelerate it, and jump it to your target. You could either
use it as a dinosaur killer (if your jump emergence is sufficiently
predictable) or come in after it with your ship - anything in the direction
you're going either gets smeared by the rock, or has to vaporize the rock to
get at you....

Another thought on the Moties and the blockade: If the moties come up with
a version of the field that reflects energy instead of absorbing it (not too
far fetched if watchmakers can improve the field just on instinct), then I
can't see how you'd ever stop them short of ramming...
-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+     |
| Jerry Cullingford  #include <std.disclaimer>     +44 442 230000 |   ,-|--
| jc@crosfield.co.uk (was jc@cel.co.uk) or jc@cel.uucp      x3868 |   \_|__
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+ \___/
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: mcmahan@cs.unca.edu (Scott McMahan -- Genesis mailing list owner)
Subject: Re: Dune group or mailing list
Organization: University of North Carolina at Asheville
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 21:30:58 GMT

kipper@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Kip Ingram) writes:

: alt.dune 

: Comments?

Yes! Go for it!

Scott

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: mvp@hsv3.lsil.com (Mike Van Pelt)
Subject: Re: New Book -- Cherryh: Chanur's Legacy
Organization: Video 7 + G2 = Headland Technology
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 20:42:38 GMT

In article <QUASAR.92Jul29103705@samurai-cat.ctt.bellcore.com> quasar@ctt.bellcore.com (Laurence R. Brothers) writes:
>... so you should all go out and buy it, if only to support one of the
>few female authors of traditional space opera around at the moment.

This is not a good reason to go out and buy the book, IMHO.  Buy it
because Cherryh is one of the very best of today's writers, and one of
the few who is still writing *real* SF, of whatever gender.

-- 
Mike Van Pelt                                When guns are outlawed,
Headland Technology/Video 7                  only Carl Rowan will have guns.
sun!indetech!hsv3!mvp
mvp@hsv3.lsil.com
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: _Jaran_ by Kate Elliott
Date: 22 Jul 92 16:46:35 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)

mlkenned@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Melita L Kennedy):
>>Pretty good book.  It managed to keep my attention and made me care about
>>the characters enough to actually read all of it after I had sneaked a
>>look at the ending.

It's Standard Plot #17 (compare, for example, "The Blue Sword"), but yes,
well enough written to keep the reader going.

I imagine we have a sequel in store, as a number of details were
deliberately left up in the air, such as

-- We have reason to believe that the birth of a mixed child will
   kill the mother.  (There are also a few mentions of longevity
   factors which could be meant to be significant.)

-- Ilya's Cossackish Horde is about to burn civilization to the ground.

-- There's still a pesky Galactic Empire to take care of.

>>Anyway, my real question is, who is Kate Elliott and what else has she/he 
>>written?  Locus says it is a pseudonym for a known author. Does anyone know?

branwen@cerebus.ccc.amdahl.com (Karen Williams):
>Yup. She's my boyfriend's cousin.

Thanks, Branwen, that's very helpful. :)

-----
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
From: qvortrup@inf.ethz.ch (Michael Qvortrup)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Merlin Backwards (was Re: My view of the ESF stories ..)
Date: 31 Jul 92 06:20:31 GMT
Organization: Dept. Informatik, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, CH

In article <1992Jul30.214934.27426@kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca> aaron@space.ualberta.ca writes:
>...
>Next was "Winter Solstice".  I don't know if there's precedent in Arthurian
>mythos for Merlin's living backwards.  

I am fairly sure that there is a strong precedent for Merlin living
backwards, but I can't remember where I got it from. At least it came
as no surprise to me. The time line in Tolstoy's Arthurian retelling
is just a wee bit confusing, and seems to indicate that Merlin is actually
born *after* Arthur. Whether he is then living backwards or has just been
transported back in time is an open question as far as I remember it.
Can anybody remember other retellings where this also occurs? I think
Lawhead had a very straight no-nonsense time line, but his is unfortunately
the only one I can remember anything about right now.

>                                     And maybe it's Fantasy, not Saifai,
>but--well, maybe I'm just Canadian, but for me the S in SF stands for
>"Speculative", not "Science".

Well, if McCaffrey's Pern books are *science* fiction, then so is "Winter
Solstice". Anyway, I also prefer "speculative". It makes a lot of dis-
cussions moot.

Greetings,
--Mike

-- 
#include <std-disclm.h>--"... and there is a small flaw in my character."---
Real Life: Michael Christian Heide Qvortrup      A Dane         ETH, Zuerich
e-mail   : qvortrup@inf.ethz.ch                  abroad         Switzerland
Institut fuer wissenschaftliches Rechnen  /  Inst. of Scientific Computation
From: futor@llnl.gov (randy j futor)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Dune group or mailing list
Date: 27 Jul 92 19:46:11 GMT
Organization: CSo @ LLNL


 urlichs@smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs) writes:
> 
>  alt.fan.frank-herbert . . .

That's the one, Matthias.
--
__
\/ -+- randy -+- all generalizations are flawed -+- futor@llnl.gov

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: ericg@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (E. Chris Garrison)
Subject: Re: BOOKS BY DAVID EDDINGS
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 92 13:20:05 GMT

In article <1992Jul26.050219.3184@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> nudd@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Nai Ying Kwok) writes:
>: My opinion is not based on what a masterpiece of prose Eddings' books
>: are:  I don't read fantasy for artful construction any more than I
>: read the comics for intellectual stimulation.  I read fantasy
>: for escape.  Eddings provided a comfortable place to hang out,
>: and sure, a lot of it was merely clever patter, but I found it
>: enjoyable.  
>
>Forgive me for intruding on your private conversation, but I resent your
>insinuation that anything in the fantasy genre is nothing more than
>light reading. How would you explain Rushdie's _Grimus_, or the _Satanic
>Versus_, for that matter? As for comics not being "intellectual",
>perhaps you should reads stuff from pioneering authors like Dave Sim, or
>Neil Gaiman on a good day. How about clearly brilliant work like V for
>Vendetta? Please don't let your prejudices distort your judgement of
>what is, and is not, good literature.

Sorry, that is not what I meant to convey at all.  I was saying that *I*
look for light reading and entertainment in the fantasy genre.  Fantasy
does have many classics and is more than light reading.  Though a large
portion of the fantasy printed these days is very light, consider the
way Piers Anthony went from innovative to old hat and trite in the space
of a few years.  Heck, if you want good fantasy, just pick up the
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

I was just comparing Eddings to the majority of the genre and explaining
my motivation in reading him instead of something more weighty. (not
counting physical size here... :-) )
 
>For the record, I did read David Eddings and I even liked the first five
>book _initially_. In my defence, however, is the fact that I was a mere
>youth in those days, and as one grows more discerning and reads better
>literature, one is better able to see the painful shortcomings in the
>books by Eddings.

Yeah, I realize the books have lots of flaws, but I enjoyed them anyway.
They were fun.

Eric

-- 
------
E. Chris Garrison			      Computing Services Support Center
ericg@ucs.indiana.edu			      Indiana University
Organization: Graduate School of Industrial Administr., Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 17:44:19 -0400 
From: Bill Thomas <bt16+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Errors in Covers (was Re: Hyperion covers)

Excerpts from netnews.rec.arts.sf.written: 24-Jul-92 Re: Errors in
Covers (was R.. by Chuq Von Rospach@Apple.C 
> What will take care of it is time, and the hope that they all smoke and eat
> lots of fatty foods.

I don't doubt that Chuq is accurately representing the reality of doing
business in the publishing marketplace. And I don't intend to rail
against the evils of the marketplace -- all it all, it's pretty good.
Still, I can't accept that your do-nothing-and-wait policy is the best
way to go. I maintain that a letter-writing campaign could have an
impact, while carrying only a slight possibility of backlash against
authors, who might be inclined to avoid black characters and thus avoid
the controversy. I don't think a decent writer would make such a
decision. Good writers tend to have good ethics, I've found.

The real power of a letter-writing campaign is that it injects a little
fear into the people who stand to lose money -- especially if the media
start covering it. Can anyone else picture the executive of a
distribution company being questioned by 60 Minutes? Sounds like fun to
me. I wouldn't underestimate the power of this to generate publicity,
especially in the era of political correctness and especially when it's
such a, ahem, black-and-white issue. After all, if the writer says the
character is black and the cover shows the character as white -- well,
somebody made a race-conscious decision.

If nothing else, we might soon discover that book covers only include
characters if the characters are white. Books with black characters
don't have characters on the covers. That's still a wretched approach,
but at least it's not flat-out dishonest. Maybe when the bigots whom
Chuq describes all die off, we can have some integrity in book covers.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written