HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: rkh@ucs.att.com (Bob Halloran)
Subject: Re: Niven/Mote in God's Eye
Organization: AT&T Universal Card Services, Jacksonville FL
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 19:05:18 GMT

In article <WPWOOD.92Dec22085344@queball.austin.ibm.com> billw@aixwiz.austin.ibm.com (Bill Woodward) writes:
>I love all the Niven/Pournelle colaborations, although I did not love some
>of them as much as the others.  They are :
>
>2)  Lucifer's Hammer - Big rock falls on the Earth.  Film at 11.
>3)  Footfall - Alien invasion.  Was very well done, but seemed to have
>	       a lot of the same characters as #2 above.

As I recall hearing it, N&P's originally planned to do Footfall back then,
but the editors, wanting to jump on the then-current bandwagon of disaster
movies (Earthquake, Meteor, etc.), had them trim it into simply the meteor-
strikes-Earth story of Lucifer's Hammer.  A few successes later, they were
able to go back and do the story they'd originally conceived.

	Bob Halloran
	AT&T Universal Card
	Jacksonville FL

	rkh@ucs.att.com
Any similarity between opinions stated here and AT&T's 
  corporate opinion are purely coincidental.

"How can you tell a politician is lying?  His lips move..."
	-- M-m-max Headroom
"Read my lips - no new taxes" -- George H. W. Bush, 1988
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: Mark_Dakins@Novell.COM (Mark Dakins)
Subject: JW Campbell, Arcot,Wade,Morey Stories
Organization: Novell, Inc.
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 01:48:14 GMT

Someone posted a mention of John W Campbell's Arcot, Wade, and Morey
space opera stories a few days ago.  The posting I am refering to
said that there were a trilogy of these stories.  I have always thought
that I was missing one or perhaps two of a set of four or five.
I have _The Black Star Passes_, _Islands of Space_, and 
_Invaders from the Infinite_.  Because of the lists of "other"
John W Campbell books listed inside each of these I have believed
that _The Mightiest Machine_ and possibly _The Planeteers & The
Ultimate Weapon_ were also part of this series.  Is this true or
false and, if false, what are these later two about?  Thanks.
					Mark Dakins
				mark_dakins@npd.novell.com
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: John Woods Campbell
Date: 2 Jan 93 18:31:56 GMT
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)

dstein@oak.math.ucla.edu (David Stein):
>  3. Why does the definition NOT fit some well known pre-Campbell SF?
>
>   J. Verne's _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_
>   H.G. Well's _The War of the Worlds_
>   A. Huxley's _The Brave New World_
>   Capek's _R.U.R._

You're confusing the history of the genre with the history of literature.
We may claim these works as early SF, but they are certainly not
representative of the sort of writing to be found in the pre-Campbell pulps.
Nobody's crediting Campbell with the invention of good writing, but he
did insist on it in a genre in which it had previously been in short supply.

It could be that if Campbell hadn't been there someone else might have
done it, or several other people:  The genre was likely to grow up simply
because its readers were growing up.  It could be that if Campbell hadn't
been there, others might have done it better.  But this is the old "We
shouldn't celebrate Columbus Day because someone else would have done it
in time" argument.  Campbell *was* there.

It's a measure of the change in the genre in the last half century that
people can think of Vernes and Wells as representing the early genre.
That, in turn, makes it hard for readers to understand why the genre had
such a poor reputation.

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

   If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down.  It's going to be the
   best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills
   you! -- Dorothy Parker
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Anarchy in S.F.
From: alien@acheron.amigans.gen.nz (Ross Smith)
Date: 23 Dec 92 09:19:45 GMT+12
Distribution: world
Organization: Muppet Labs

In article <BzIG2K.3xD@world.std.com> rjk@world.std.com (robert j kolker) writes:
>I can think of two SF novels that have anarchy or anarchic societies as a
>theme and context. They are:
>
>       THE DISPOSSESSED by U.LaGuin
>       INHERIT THE STARS by Hogan
>
>Can you good folks think of any others?

L. Neil Smith has written a series of novels set in an alternate world in
which the US (it's called the North American Confederacy there) turned to
anarchy/libertarianism/whateveryouwanttocallit. They're a lot of fun to read,
even for someone (e.g. me) who doesn't believe the premise for a moment.

The titles I know of are :

   The Probability Broach
   The Venus Belt
   The Nagasaki Vector

but I know there have been several others.


--
...... Ross Smith (Wanganui, NZ) ...... alien@acheron.amigans.gen.nz ......

This is not a disclaimer, but it plays one on TV.

--

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian)
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 06:45:44 GMT

Curtis and I are spending too much time online...and I for one am about to
disappear into the snowy wastes of British Columbia for a few days, but I'll
take a shot at answering Curtis's grumpily phrased question:

And for that matter, can any of you poxwit pundits give me a definition of
"literary merit" that isn't circular?

I tried, earlier in this discussion, to do just that. Let me try again:
literary merit has partly to do with simple craftsmanship: constructing a
story or poem so that readers respond both emotionally and intellectually,
gaining some kind of insight into an idea, human condition, or what have you.
It also has to do with articulating and examining the anxieties and concerns
of the writer's society--sometimes critically, sometimes supportively. For
most of the last couple of thousand years, literature was seen as chiefly a
means of propaganda; Plato, suspecting it might not be reliable as such,
wanted to ban poets from his republic.

I think many of us poxwits would accept a definition of literary merit that
excluded writing which encourages the "stock response," and included writing
which challenges the reader's assumptions and attitudes. In another genre,
the recent movie "The Crying Game" does just that.

Sticking a thoughtful thumb in the reader's eye, however, does not of itself
win an author literary merit; the work ought to refuse to go away, to
continue to offer something of interest to readers even when the original
author is dead and so is his or her society. At that point the story becomes
a classic.

And at this point I vanish. Thanks, Curtis.


--
Crawford Kilian   Communications Department   Capilano College
North Vancouver BC Canada V7J 3H5
Usenet: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca
Internet: ckilian@first.etc.bc.ca

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: phatch@solstice.slc.mentorg.com (Phill Hatch (CONTRACTOR Documentation))
Subject: Re: Accident prone becomes planetary scout--name this story
Organization: Mentor Graphics Corp.,  Murray, Utah
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 17:15:39 GMT

The Minimumum Man,  by Robert Sheckley,  found in  Store of Infinity.

Phil
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Organization: AT&T
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 22:23:36 GMT

In article <1992Dec29.210507.41979@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> jahb@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (JENNIFER A. HEISE) writes:
> In article <18951@mindlink.bc.ca>, Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kili
> an) writes:
> >Non-canonical writers may still deserve serious attention, but to include
> >them in a reading list is to address the anxieties of modern readers rather
> >than the demonstrable influences that have shaped a literature.

But this appears to imply that works which are not demonstrable influences
that have shaped a literature would/should not be in the canon.

If one of Aeschylus's lost plays or a 38th play by Shakespeare were unearthed
tomorrow, these would be canonical, even though they had *no* influence on
shaping literature.  So it seems as though more is involved here than meets
the eye.

> The reason that the canonical writers tend to have shaped literature is
> because they were in the canon that later writers read and studied and based
> their work on.  (Vicious circle, ain't it?)

But little jumped full-blown into the canon.  And many well-respected canon
works eventually fell by the wayside.

> By the way, being influential is NOT the sole criterion for the canon--
> otherwise we'd still be reading Kipling.  (Good characterization, but rather
> Huckleberry-Finnish in its lack of PC.)

Which merely supports what I said earlier, though in the converse.

Evelyn C. Leeper  |  +1 908 957 2070  |  att!mtgzy!ecl or  ecl@mtgzy.att.com
--
"God does not play dice with the universe."  --Albert Einstein
"Albert, stop telling God what to do."  --Niels Bohr
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: jdnicoll@prism.ccs.uwo.ca (James Davis Nicoll)
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Organization: University of Western Ontario, London
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 22:42:14 GMT

In article <1992Dec29.210507.41979@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> jahb@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (JENNIFER A. HEISE) writes:
>In article <18951@mindlink.bc.ca>, Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kili
>an) writes:
>>Non-canonical writers may still deserve serious attention, but to include
>>them in a reading list is to address the anxieties of modern readers rather
>>than the demonstrable influences that have shaped a literature.
>
>The reason that the canonical writers tend to have shaped literature is
>because they were in the canon that later writers read and studied and based
>their work on.  (Vicious circle, ain't it?)
>By the way, being influential is NOT the sole criterion for the canon--
>otherwise we'd still be reading Kipling.  (Good characterization, but rather
>Huckleberry-Finnish in its lack of PC.)

	Odd to see Twain and Kipling lumped together, given that one
satirized/criticized his nation & culture, while the other glorified
his.

	I suppose (Thinking of 'An Innocent Abroad') Twain thought of
non-Americans as pretty silly, as well as Americans.

	I take it Twain and Kipling have been cast into the void of
unacceptable behavior (ie; being clearly of another time and of other
cultures) and are no longer taught in school?

							James Nicoll


Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: bjones@denitqm.uswest.com (Brent Jones)
Subject: Night Relics
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written
Organization: U S WEST Information Technologies
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 20:23:43 GMT

_Dark Relics_ is James P. Blaylock's newest book, due out in hc from
Ace in early '93. Title sounds like it might be something of a
departure for him, but I know absolutely nothing about the book.

Has anyone heard or read anything about it? What can we expect?

--
Brent Jones, Lead Tech. Editor, U S WEST IT, bjones@denitqm.uswest.com
"of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer and helplessly have 
to watch the shadow of his simian stoop leave mangled flowers in its wake, 
as the monstrous darkness approaches."--V. Nabokov _Signs and Symbols_
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science
From: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee)
Subject: Heinlein and time travel (was Re: Why Heinlein's folk want babies)
Organization: Johns Hopkins University CS Dept.
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 20:34:44 GMT

In article <1h5l48INNk55@agate.berkeley.edu> datta@wheatena.berkeley.edu (Ruchira Datta) writes:
>	Another problem - the Libby-Sheffield Drive supposedly works by
>going through an n-dimensional hyperspace.  Travel in time
>is explained as reentering at a different spot on the time axis (different
>from what? - the relativity of time seems to figure not at all in this
>picture), so presumably the "hyperness" of hyperspace includes hypertime.
>Then why did it take a century (and relative to whom?) to get the news about 
>the old starship?  Is it possible that noone else in a thousand years, other
>than Andy Libby and Lazarus Long (aka Aaron Sheffield), could figure out
>the application to time travel (and thus FTL travel)?  So much for the much
>vaunted evolution of the human race!

Heck, we can figure it out in the 20th Century.  (It's not hard to show that
if you have FTL, and no preferred reference frame, you can get time travel....)
--
"the bogosity in a field equals the bogosity imported from related areas, plus
the bogosity generated internally, minus the bogosity expelled or otherwise
disposed of."  -- K. Eric Drexler

Ken Arromdee (arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu, arromdee@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: smb@research.att.com (Steven Bellovin)
Subject: ``The Gripping Hand'' is here!
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 04:04:53 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs

It's true -- I found a copy at Shakespeare and Co., in New York.  (The
Upper West Side store, for anyone who feels like storming the place.)
I didn't see if there were any other copies, but I didn't look very
hard; I simply grabbed my trophy and held on to it, *hard*.  I also
didn't worry about things like price -- I've been waiting for that
book for ~18 years.  Only problem is, once I started Mote, I ended up
pulling an all-nighter to finish it.  I'm afraid history might repeat
itself tonight...
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.written:16873 rec.arts.books:23685
From: curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Date: 2 Jan 1993 05:50:52 GMT
Organization: CS Dept. Snakepit - Do Not Feed.
NNTP-Posting-Host: cobra.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Dec29.065706.26269@netcom.com> dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:
|
|Few claim that the 'canon' is best-ten or best-twenty or best-thousand
|list of literary works.  The canon is the reading list from which we
|draw to achieve our educational objectives.  There's some debate over
|which books are most efficacious, but the main source of the screaming
|is a disagreement over what the objectives should be.  Candidates include:
|
|Expose students to the works that shaped our culture.
|Expose students to good literary craftsmanship.
|Expose students to the most worthwhile/enjoyable/inspiring/younameit books.
|Expose students to a broad range of cultures and subcultures.
|Expose students to books dealing with their personal conflicts and concerns.
|Expose students to positive role models.
|Expose students to the works others will expect them to have read.
|Expose students to the works which enjoy/enjoyed the highest prestige.
|Expose students to books which reinforce our cultural norms.
|Expose students to books which challenge our cultural norms.
|Expose students to a broad range of literary styles.

Hmm.  How about:

	Expose students to whatever the hell they want to read.

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

c
From: stong@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU (Simon Tong)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: *** Daniel Keys Moran (Re: Auto-buy lists)
Date: 22 Dec 1992 12:03:15 +1100
Organization: University of Melbourne
NNTP-Posting-Host: ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au

In article <1992Dec18.234307.20756@ninja.zso.dec.com> rcrowley@donne.zso.dec.com (Rebecca Crowley) writes:
>Autobuy list:
>
> [stuff deleted]
>
>Daniel Keys Moran

 YES !!!  It's a real pity that all his books are out of print.  Hopefully
 that will change when his new novel _The Last Dancer_ comes out next
 year.

 Moran has published four books so far, _The Ring_, _Armageddon Blues_,
 _Emerald Eyes_ and _The Long Run_. The last two are part of the 
 _Tales of Continuing Time_ series, which will comprise of 33 novels (!). 

 Try to get your hands on his books however you can, you won't be 
 disappointed.  Warning :  _The Ring_ was based on a movie script, I 
 don't think it's representative of Moran's style.

 If you don't know who he is, or can't find his books,
 remember his name anyway and watch out for _The Last Dancer_, due out
 next Fall.
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: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 22:16:40 GMT

markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder):
>Whatever goals we have, is there any evidence that forced reading of a 
>handful of books in high school and college accomplishes it?

If you think having students read books serves no useful purpose,
then you are presumably advocating the removal of book-reading
from the curriculum.  As long as we believe that it *does* serve
one or more useful purposes, we're going to have a canon -- a
preferred reading list, if you will.

If the handful of books in question is all those students ever read,
we might as well restrict the list to Dr Seuss.  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.  One
of the goals of the exercise is to offer those students guidance
in choosing among the tens of thousands of candidate books, and
a foundation to enable them to read their choices critically and
with understanding.

There may be many students who do not benefit from a forced reading
of a handful of books:  If it doesn't matter what they read, we can
at least make the selections that will best benefit those students
for whom reading is not a matter of coercion.

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

   The inability of snakes to count is actually a refusal, on their part,
    to appreciate the Cardinal Number system. -- "Actual Facts"
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Midori Snyder: Beldan's Fire
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 07:05:49 GMT

"Beldan's Fire", the third book in Midori Snyder's "Queen's Quarter"
trilogy, is probably the best written of the three.  At the same time,
I found it the least interesting.  I think Snyder wrote herself into
a corner:  There was only one possible outcome, generally speaking,
unless she was willing to throw a lot of foreshadowing out the window.
So the only real question was how much she planned to make her
characters sweat and suffer in the interim.  

It's too bad that Snyder's first 'novel' was a trilogy.  It's not
bad, but she doesn't have the skill yet to give a large cast of
characters depth.  Single-novel length would have allowed her to
cover that better.

Call it -- "New Moon", "Sadar's Keep", "Beldan's Fire" -- an
above-average fantasy trilogy.

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

Roses red and violets blew
  and all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew -- Edmund Spenser

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Nancy Lebovitz)
Subject: Re: Anarchy in S.F.
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1992 21:07:42 GMT

In article <18929@mindlink.bc.ca> Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
>I haven't been following this thread very closely, so forgive me if I'm
>repeating--but I suddenly remembered an Eric Frank Russell novelette, circa
>1950 or so, about a planet of anarchist nonviolent-resistance types
>rediscovered by a highly bureaucratic Earth government. The anarchists' motto
>is MYOB (Mind your own business) and they drive the Earth crew bananas
>because they won't be intimidated and refuse to cooperate unless they feel
>like it. Now *I'm* going bananas because I can't remember the title of the
>story! Help, please...

The story is either called "Then There Were None" or "And Then There Were
None". One of the places it can be found is in a collection by Russell 
called _The Great Explosion_. (It has the same bunch of bureaucrats trying
to take over a planet of thieves where such little useful work as gets
done is done by slaves (except for one fellow generally thought crazy)
and another where no one who doesn't look athletic gets listened to. 
The latter reads like a parody of modern ideas of physical fitness, but
I think it was written before they got started.)

Nancy Lebovitz
calligraphic button catalogue available by email  (170K)
nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu

Politician are like rats--what they take for themselves is trivial compared
to what they destroy to get it 


Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: gip207@sci.kun.nl (gip2 course)
Subject: Re: The Wheel Of Time - Gentling (mild spoilers)
Keywords: gentling, power, escape
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 12:25:13 GMT


Possible spoilers here, so be warned:



>>If being gentled is being permanently shielded from the True Source, which
>>is what it seems like to me, perhaps a man could "ungentle" himself.  At
>>the very least, an Aes Sedia could get through a shield blocking her from
>>the source.

>Bear this in mind:  I've never heard references to gentling or
>stilling before the Breaking of the World.  There may be a reason
>for this.  The reason may be as simple as a lack of reference,
>but I prefer the following reasoning:  If gentling were possible,
>would not the Forsaken have gentled Lews Therin Telamon, or
>vice-versa?  Its entirely possible that un-gentling someone is
>(or was) a fairly trivial task, with the right knowledge and
>power

Another possibility is that men can undo gentling performed by women and
vice versa. After all their power is different (Look at the part where
Elayne and Egwene realised this when Rand absorbed fire through his own
body, something impossible for women), so it could be a woman can't
block all passages of the flow for a male channeler and vice-versa.
So it could be possible for a man to escape gentling by squizing (sp?)
through the little holes left in the shield, which might be a painful
experience to say the least.


			-Jos
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re:  Anarchy in S.F.
From: alien@acheron.amigans.gen.nz (Ross Smith)
Date: 23 Dec 92 09:21:26 GMT+12
Distribution: world
Organization: Muppet Labs

In article <1992Dec19.220418.23259@netcom.com> solovay@netcom.com (Andrew M. Solovay) writes:
>In article <BzIG2K.3xD@world.std.com> rjk@world.std.com (robert j kolker) writes:
>>I can think of two SF novels that have anarchy or anarchic societies as a
>>theme and context. They are:
>>
>>      THE DISPOSSESSED by U.LaGuin
>>      INHERIT THE STARS by Hogan
>>
>>Can you good folks think of any others?
>
>Heinlein's _The_Moon_is_a_Harsh_Mistress_ should be at the top of
>your list. Oh, and are you sure you mean _Inherit_the_Stars_?
>That one didn't seem to have much about anarchy (that I can
>recall). Perhaps you mean _The_Two_Faces_of_Tomorrow_, where
>Earthers try to impose laws on an anarchic colony?

The novel you're both looking for is "Voyage from Yesteryear".


--
...... Ross Smith (Wanganui, NZ) ...... alien@acheron.amigans.gen.nz ......

This is not a disclaimer, but it plays one on TV.

--