HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: AMORE_P@CC.DENISON.EDU (Paul Amore)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Rebuttal to David Eddings complaint
Date: 28 Dec 92 04:32:00 GMT

>I can't even remember the Sapphire Rose story now it's been so long since
>one of his books came out in paperback. I do know I'm very sick of waiting
>years between the books and getting ripped off when it does come out. After
>Christmas they'll probably have the hardback cheaper than this.

	First of all, to a great extent, most series have big time gaps 
between succesive books. That should be par for the course by now. Second of 
all, Eddings fans have to remember that the reason there were such big time 
gaps between books in his last two series, is that he was switching on and off 
between writing the Malloreon and the Elenium. Eddings stated in an interview 
that he did this because, 1) he felt it would give him a freshness of approach 
to the Malloreon, and 2) he was pressured by his publisher to do a second 
series in a world that he felt he was through with, since the Bellgariad had 
been so successful. But now that he is done with the Malloreon, I assume the 
books will come at a faster rate. You can't expect the world, however---not 
every author is as prolific as Piers Anthony.

>I think Edding's popularity is getting to his publisher or something.  If
>they keep this up, no one is going to ever want another one of his books.
>Years and years between books, less than good stories, outrageous prices
>... I wish these people would get another author to exploit.

	Unfortunately, prices are getting outrageous these days. But, it is 
not just Edding's books. To use Anthony again, some of his paperbacks are 
selling for higher prices, also. Publishing is a business, and it is folly not 
to expect Del Rey to make the profit where they can. As to the comments about 
the stories, that is a matter of opinion, and I will leave that to others to 
argue. I will say that you might appreciate the stories a lot more if you go 
back and read them a second time, without the time intervals, as this 
latecomer had the luxury of doing. 

>People ought to say enough is enough and refuse to be extorted by the
>publishers. No author is worth $6 for a paperback. Boycott this garbage!!!

	Sometimes to get great quality goods, you have to pay more than what 
you think is reasonable. That's a sorry fact of our society. Remember, there 
IS a reason why Eddings books are more expensive...

Paul Amore    Internet= Amore_P@cc.denison.edu    Bitnet= Amore_P@denison
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: prs9k@brain.med.virginia.edu (Phil Scarr)
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Organization: Neuroclinical Trials Center, University of Virginia
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 15:31:53 GMT

In article <bjones-281292154313@130.13.26.204> bjones@denitqm.uswest.com (Brent Jones) writes:
>In article <8235@lib.tmc.edu>, drg@biomath.mda.uth.tmc.edu (David
>Gutierrez) wrote:
>> 
>> In article <1992Dec28.101746.16258@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, by
>> prs9k@brain.med.virginia.edu (Phil Scarr) writes:
>> > While you make some good points (and as we stray farther afield here...)
>> > I think you are missing a fundamental point about cannon versus
>> > non-cannon works
>> 
>> What is this literary cannon I keep reading about? Is it the one Jules Verne
>> invented to fire a projectile to the Moon? Maybe it's the one Wells' Martians
>> used to invade the Earth.
>> 
>> David Gutierrez
>> drg@biomath.mda.uth.tmc.edu
>
>"Cannon" is a suppressed, non-canon spelling of "canon."  Should it 
>be considered a lesser word just because it is not part of the canon? :-)

Not at all.  Cannon was my own stupidity and fatigue, nothing more.

;-)


>
>--
>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_

	-Phil
-- 
PHIL SCARR        \      We are Microsoft...     /          (o) 804.243.0229
 University of    /     OS/2 is irrelevant.      \          (f) 804.243.0290
 Virginia,        \     UNIX is irrelevant.      /        prs9k@Virginia.EDU
 Neurosurgery     /     Openness is futile.      \     prs9k@Virginia.BITNET
 HP-UX is my life!\ Prepare to be assimilated... /   ...uunet!virginia!prs9k

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books
From: mvp@netcom.com (Mike Van Pelt)
Subject: Re: Political Correctness + Sci-fi
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 00:41:53 GMT

In article <18945@mindlink.bc.ca> Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
>too much of Cold Equations depends on arbitrary assumptions:
>1. Girls are emotional and dumb, even in a starfaring society.

I don't know how this follows from the story.  _THIS_ particular girl
was emotional and... well, maybe not dumb, but certainly ignorant and
naive.  It's been a while since I read it, but I don't recall any
indication that Godwin intended to generalize that.
-- 
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: elric@imryrr.Eng.Sun.COM (Rick Heli)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Hard-boiled SF?
Date: 3 Jan 1993 06:28:00 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc., Mountain View, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: imryrr

Wondering if anyone can point me to books/authors which have combined
the genres of hard-boiled mystery and SF?  Send e-mail and I'll summarize
if there's interest.


--
						Rick Heli
						Internet:  rheli@sun.COM
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: whheydt@pbhya.PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt)
Subject: Re: My last reply.
Reply-To: whheydt@PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 16:57:38 GMT

In article <1992Dec29.023951.29297@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) writes:
>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?

It probably depends on how one measures 'big'.  Length isn't the only
way...

	--Hal
-- 
Hal Heydt                    |    
Analyst, Pacific*Bell        |            You!
510-823-5447                 |    Out of the Gene Pool!
whheydt@pbhya.PacBell.COM    |
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.written:16886 rec.arts.books:23700
From: twain@milton.u.washington.edu (Barbara Hlavin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Date: 2 Jan 1993 20:16:57 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
NNTP-Posting-Host: milton.u.washington.edu

In article <1993Jan2.152641.12297@math.ucla.edu> dstein@oak.math.ucla.edu (David Stein) writes:
>In article <1i3j04INNr5l@shelley.u.washington.edu>,
>twain@milton.u.washington.edu (Barbara Hlavin) writes:
>
>|> _How to Achieve a Rich and Fulfilling Spiritual Life while Eating 
>|> Pizza_, _Everything I Need to Know I Know Already_, and assorted 
>|> collections of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. 
>
>   Have you read any? (Calvin and Hobbes)
>
I love Calvin and Hobbes.  I also get a secret kick out of Robert 
Fulgum. I just don't think this is the sort of thing one should 
pay tuition to be encouraged to read (response to "let them read 
whatever the hell they feel like"). 

--Barbara
From: esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: John Woods Campbell (was: Re: Political Correctness + Sci-fi)
Date: 31 Dec 92 14:05:40 GMT

In <1992Dec29.235318.26302@cs.rochester.edu> Paul Dietz wrote:
> Oh, come now. [The Dean Drive] was defunded because it was obviously nonsense.

Beware of `obvious nonsense'.  It can turn around and bite you in the ass.

The history of physics is full of examples of `conservation laws' turning out to
be violated in special regimes.  Physicists used to think matter and energy
were separately conserved.  They were wrong.  A more subtle (and possibly
more relevant) precedent is the experimental demonstrations of conservation
violation that led up to today's theory of joint CPT invariance in meson decay.

I'm not a Dean Drive partisan as JWC was.  But I haven't yet seen it
definitively put to rest, either, and I suspect that many establishment
physicists rejected it in advance of the facts.  I'm enough like JWC for
that suspicion to incline me towards rooting for the heretics.

> I recall that someone took Davis mechanics seriously and applied it to
> situations in which accelerations are changing rapidly (for example,
> to atoms or molecules).  The conclusion was that energy would be
> nonconserved (objects would tend to spontaneously heat up) on a scale
> incompatible with observation by many, many orders of magnitude.  This
> is sufficient to relegate Davis's theory to the dustbin.

Do you have a more exact pointer?  I would be very interested to read it.  One
objection that occurs to me immediately is that "atoms and molecules" are not
classical systems.  It may have been an error to apply the Davis correction
naively.
-- 
					Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.written:16722 rec.arts.books:23406
From: curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Date: 29 Dec 1992 05:14:22 GMT
Organization: CS Dept. Snakepit - Do Not Feed.
NNTP-Posting-Host: asp.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <18974@mindlink.bc.ca> Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
|Curtis Yarvin quotes Phil Scarr:
|>
|>>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.
|
|This ignores an error or two in the original comment: Literary merit in the
|past was assigned to literary merit, not to live or dead white males.

Eh so?  The critics of the past may have had more subtle biases than
the patriarchal chauvinism induced by the malnourished phallic stature
of their agrarian times.  Who's to say that their scales of "literary
merit" have aught to do with what ought be?

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

c
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: mlabossi@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Michael C LaBossiere)
Subject: Virtual Reality
Summary: Need sources (sci-fi and real-world) for VR.
Organization: The Ohio State University
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 18:22:39 GMT

Hi,
    A friend of mine needs some material on virtual reality. Pleas post or
email any info on this topic. I already have Gibson and Williams on the list,
but could use more as well as some non-fiction on the topic.
    Also, if you play any sci-fi rpgs and would be interested in working on a
corporate sourcebook projecxt, please email me at
mlabossi@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu and let me know what sort of work you have
done in the past.
Thanks,
Michael
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: write@eff.org (Glen Cox)
Subject: Re: New Ace SF Specials (was Re: Literary SF)
Originator: write@eff.org
Keywords: Literary SF
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 01:32:39 GMT

I posted some slightly erroneous information on the New Ace Specials.

Patrick Nielson Hayden responded:

>A bit confused here.  Jack McDevitt's THE HERCULES TEXT, Loren McGregor's
>THE NET, and Richard Kadrey's METROPHAGE were all bought & edited by Terry.
>Claudia O'Keefe's BLACK SNOW DAYS was bought by Terry and edited by Damon.
>And the last book in the series, Gregory Feeley's THE OXYGEN BARONS, was
>bought _and_ edited by Damon.
>
>Michael Kandel's STRANGE INVASIONS was never part of the Specials; it was
>a Bantam paperback original.  If your brains malfunctions the way mine
>chronically does, you mixed up Kadrey and Kandel.

To which I respond:

You're being nice.  I just spaced it, I think, since I own the Kadrey novel,
and not the Kandel.

Thanks for the exact nature of the editing on the other books.  I always
wondered who was responsible for that travesty by Feeley.  <grin>

glen


-- 
/== Glen E. Cox =============================================================\
|  write@eff.org  |  CURRENTLY SEEKING: Rex Stout, Three at Wolfe's Door      |
|  GEnie: G.COX3  |                     P.G. Wodehouse, My Man Jeeves         |
| DELPHI: MRWRITE |                     Ed McBain, Give the Boys a Great...   |
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: YANJUNA@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu
Subject: Re: Niven/Mote in God's Eye
Organization: Yale University
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 22:06:14 EST

In article <88e7VB11w165w@west.darkside.com>
max@west.darkside.com (Erik Max Francis) writes:
 
>
>lpj@col.hp.com (Laura Johnson) writes:
>
>> Yes, I agree with this. Niven/Pournelle books are not the same as Niven
>> books. Many people like both, of course, but I find that I quite enjoy
>> the collaborative efforts but can't finish most books by Niven alone. My
>> perception is that Niven has these great ideas, and Pournelle adds stuff
>> like plot and characterization. Your mileage may vary. Flames to /dev/null.
>> IMHO. Insert favorite disclaimer.
>
>I think you've got the basic idea there.  By Niven's own admission,
>Barnes added the horror theme to _Legacy of Hereot_.  So it's 1. Niven
>has the ideas; 2. Pournelle has the characterization; and 3. Barnes has
>the horror.
>
   IMO, it's a bit more complex than that, and that distinguishes the people
who like Niven or Pournelle or exclusively Niven/Pournelle collaborations.
Niven, in some interviews/introductions seem to be much more interested in
scientific aspects of a story; creating new races, describing the effects
of a comet hitting earth (hot fudge sunday...gotta love it); etc.
Given his interest, characters and even plots may be secondary.  F'instance,
I never could get through a Niven novel except for Ringworld and its sequel,
and I found it a typical travelogue story, great setting, well-thought out
backgrounds, but standard plotline.
   Pournelle, on the other hand, while not a slouch on science, is much more
interested in politics and "moral" issues, including but not limited to
survivalist morality (the only morality is to stay alive).  I personally
find the latter more interesting, but Pournelle's current pseudo-output
(editing his shared universe books) seem to be standard, and no real ideas
are being added to what has been said before.  However, in  his books, it
is relatively rare that we see scientific details lovingly laid out, but
it is usual to see two characters arguing about morality or military tactics.
   So, Niven/Pournelle are true collaborations where the two writers actually
collaborate to bring out their strengths.
 
   And while I'm on the soapbox, I want to say that IMO _Lucifer's Hammer_
is probably the best "realistic" fictional depiction of what would happen
after a somewhat limited nuclear war, at least in the way that people act.
Hell of a lot more realistic than _Warday_ or _Alas, Babylon_, anyway.
(_Alas Babylon_ always seemed to me, as describing a nice vacation down
at sunny Florida coast...)
 
                                         Junsok Yang
 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: dstein@charon.math.ucla.edu (David Stein)
Subject: Re: John Woods Campbell
Reply-To: dstein@charon.math.ucla.edu (David Stein)
Organization: UCLA, Mathematics Department
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 93 06:21:31 GMT

Rick Russell writes:

|> >  Why is it so difficult to communicate just what did Campbell do
|> >  beyond the lifting of general literary and plausibility standards?
|> 
|> I'm no expert in science fiction or magazine editing, but I would say
|> that any professional editor who causes 'the lifting of general
|> literary and plausibility standards' has done a great deal more for
|> his or her field than a few hundred other mediocre editors.

   Agreed.  So?
 
|> It would be difficult to suggest that Campbell had a *bad* influence
|> on SF... after all, look at the changes that occurred in almost every
|> part of the field during his editing tenure.

   It certainly seems that a number of people think Campbell had _some_
   bad influence at least _some_ time in his carreer, and these people
   have mentioned particular reasons for their opinion.  It would seem
   to me difficult to demonstrate that on the balance Campbell was bad
   for SF, but then again some people seem to strongly believe so.   

   In any case, it was quite easy for some to "suggest that Campbell 
   had a *bad* influence on SF".

 - David

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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: David.Dyer-bennet@f0.n1259.z0.tdkt.kksys.com (David Dyer-bennet)
Sender: FredGate@tdkt.kksys.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Political Correctness + Sci-fi
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 10:37:22 -0600

 CK> This is what drives me wild about SF--it's not imaginative enough. Godwin
 CK> wasn't alone in failing to think through the assumptions in his story:
 CK> remember the human taxi driver who schleps Hari Seldon around Trantor? So
 CK> Cold
 CK> Equations became just a thought
 CK> experiment in which everything has to be just
 CK> so if it's going to work (suppose the chick was a 90s superwoman quite
 CK> capable
 CK> of breaking the pilot's neck,
 CK> jettisoning him, and flying the shuttle down by
 CK> herself--what's the moral of the story then?).

The moral of the story remains unchanged.  The super-woman either selfishly
kills the pilot and makes the delivery herself (there to face the scorn of all
who learn what happened), or else she realizes that she screwed up big-time and
chooses to suffer for her mistake herself, rather than killing the innocent
pilot.  Also, it becomes much more difficult to explain why she did it; if she's
that much of a super-woman, she should have understood in advance that only one
of them could survive the trip.


Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: schwartz@roke.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz)
Subject: Tim Powers / Last Call (no spoilers)
Distribution: rec
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 01:26:21 GMT

    I was walking thru a bookstore last week when I noticed Last Call
sitting on the shelf.  I'd been planning on waiting for the paperback
edition, but you know how dull vacations can be, so I bought it.
After seeing the "Tim Powers is god" thread that went on here, I feel
compelled to let you all know that I wish I'd waited for the
paperback.  In general, I like Powers' work, but this time its
shortcomings outweighted its entertainment value for me.

    One general problem with Powers is that he tends to tell the same
story over and over.  In the last few books I didn't mind so much
because the writing was usually well done in other respects, and he
usually had interesting historical settings.  This time, though, they
story was simply too predictable.  After a certain point, when there
should have been an exciting climax and satisfying denouement, there
was only the dull certainty that things would work out just as they
did in the last N books.

    A second factor that diminished my enjoyment of Last Call was that
I couldn't suspend disbelief for more than a few pages at a time.  I'm
not sure if that was because of the previous complaint, or simply
because the setting was too contemporary or too mundane to be
interesting.  In any event, I wasn't too impressed with the tarot
angle.  While reading Last Call, I couldn't help thinking about Piers
Anthony's Tarot books, and frankly I found them to be more
entertaining.

    The final thing that I was unhappy about is that Last Call is less
tightly plotted than The Anubis Gates or The Drawing of the Dark.
Probably 100 pages and any number of minor characters could have been
omitted with no loss to the reader.

    Overall, then, Last Call isn't too bad, but if you've read Powers'
other work you probably won't find it to be very innovative.
From: drg@biomath.mda.uth.tmc.edu (David Gutierrez)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Date: 30 Dec 1992 18:39:15 GMT
Organization: Univ. Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

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.

David Gutierrez
drg@biomath.mda.uth.tmc.edu

"Only fools are positive." - Moe Howard
From: urf@icl.se (Urban F)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Auto-buy lists
Date: 19 Dec 92 19:44:59 GMT
Organization: None. On USENET I speak only for myself.
X-Alt.reply-Address: n.g.u.fredriksson.swe2001@oasis.icl.co.uk

kasprj@isaac.its.rpi.edu (Jim Kasprzak) writes:

>I'm a Niven
>fanatic, but was disappointed by the Smoke Ring books and thought 
>_Fallen Angels_ was a waste of trees.

It was even worse than that. _Descent of Anansi_ should have taught
me that Niven collaborations with someone else than Pournelle often
turn out to be bad. I take that back, change "often" to "always".

>Arthur C. Clarke would have been on
>the list until _2061_ and those awful collaborations started appearing. 

I agree with you on _2061_, and I think the time spent on _2010_
could probably have been better spent writing something else. But
these two are very different from most of his other novels, as most
of them are set up so that it is impossible for them to be sequels
to each other. Anyway, I happened to read _The Ghost from the Grand 
Banks_, and even though it wasn't extremely good, he's back on my
auto-buy list.
His collaborations I've stayed away from due to good advice from 
others.
--
 Urban Fredriksson  urf@icl.se  
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: jahb@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (JENNIFER A. HEISE)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Date: 29 Dec 92 21:05:07 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

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.)

-- 
Jennifer Heise                           Net: jahb@lehigh.edu
Reference Dept.,                         Phone: (215) 758-3072
Fairchild-Martindale Libraries #8A,  Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015
My opinions are my own. No one else would HAVE them anyway.

"The toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth-point goes;
The butterfly upon the road Preaches contentment to that toad."  Kipling
From: chuahl@ocf.berkeley.edu (Chua HakLien)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Solomon Kane: How many stories?
Date: 23 Dec 1992 15:52:00 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: sandstorm.berkeley.edu

How many Solomon Kane stories did Robert E. Howard write, and where
might they be found? I think he's a much more intriguing character
than Conan, but haven't EVER been able to find any Kane books either
in the library or the bookstores.

Chua
+==+