HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: _Falcon_ and Emma Bull
Date: 13 Dec 92 07:00:19 GMT
Reply-To: dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann)
Organization: University of Arizona

Based on some comments I've read on the net, last time I was in a book-
buying mode, I looked around for something by Emma Bull.  All I found
was a book called _Falcon_, which I have started but not yet finishd.

My impression of _Falcon_ is nicely defined characters in a fairly
standard issue plot.

My questions are:
  - What other books has she written (besides _War for the Oaks_ and
    _Bone Dance_)?
  - How does _Falcon_ compare with her other works?

-- 
What I've learned from reading net news #2:
  Surely the most ignored phrase to be posted to the net is "'nuff said".
From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Nancy Lebovitz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Anarchy in S.F.
Date: 20 Dec 92 21:38:16 GMT
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences


Here's some more anarchy in sf: "And Then There Were None" by Eric Frank
Russel--it's a portrayal of a really pleasant anarchist society. (It can
be found in _The Great Explosion_ by Russel, and in a number of other
anthologies.)

This one's more subtle--Zenna Henderson's _The People_ and _No Different
Flesh_. When they aren't explicitly anarchist, the government is irrelevent
--much more than it is in most sf.

Nancy Lebovitz
nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu
From: curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Literary SF
Date: 19 Dec 1992 21:03:55 GMT
Organization: CS Dept. Snakepit - Do Not Feed.
NNTP-Posting-Host: cobra.cs.berkeley.edu
Keywords: Literary SF

In article <4325@novavax.UUCP> mitch@cfraix.cfr.usf.edu (Mitch Silverman) writes:
|In article <1gime7INNrnp@agate.berkeley.edu> curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writes:
|>In article <1992Dec14.163037.17375@gvl.unisys.com> rafem@gvlf7-e.gvl.unisys.com (Ralph Marrone) writes:
|>>
|>>_Palimpsest_ by Carter Scholz and Bruce Harnencourt
|>
|>_Palimpsest_ is the worst sf novel I have ever read, by at least two
|>orders of magnitude.....
|
|You know, I think that was the first of the New Ace Science Fiction
|Specials that I read.  I kinda liked it.

Whatever happened to them Ace Specials, anyhow?  Did they just sort of
disappear, after Terry Carr passed away?  I can only think of three in the
"New" series: _The Wild Shore_, the unmentionable above, _Neuromancer_, and
_Green Eyes_; and I haven't seen a new one in a while.

|In fact, I thought it about as interesting as another book in the same
|Ace series that got a lot of press--by a guy named Gibbon, was it? Well,
|his problem was he tried to write stuff about computers by just making
|stuff up--his lack of relevant expertise was obvious.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I am skewered.

c
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: griffin@sage.cc.purdue.edu (The Crystal Griffin)
Subject: Re: Auto-buy lists
Keywords: tigana
Organization: Purdue University Computing Center
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 03:24:43 GMT

In article <1992Dec18.015418.23388@galileo.cc.rochester.edu> colin@callisto.pas.rochester.edu (Colin Roald) writes:
>
>I'm suddenly curious--what authors are on other people's "auto-buy" lists?
>Meaning that if you see one of their books and you don't have yet and the 
>money is in your pocket, you buy it--no further questions asked.

Howdy-

ZT here.

LARRY NIVEN and Patrick McManus(not sf, but, for lack of a better term,
                                outdoors type humor.  Will have you
                                rolling on the ground.)

Just for my Record.

                       The Crystal Griffin
From: CRAIG@MITVMA.MIT.EDU (Ed Craig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Name that book request
Date: 17 Dec 92 19:21:04 GMT


    If you find the name of that Rick Cook Go book, let me know what
it's called....
    You do see Go occasionally in other SF though, and I'm almost sure
that the "Stones" game in the "Wheel of Time" fantasy series is Go.
                                                    Ed Craig
                                                    CRAIG@MITVMA.MIT.edu
From: mmaxwell@ucsd.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Agrippa check out alt.something or other.cyber
Date: 15 Dec 1992 16:34:50 GMT
Organization: IR/PS at UC San Diego
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: irpsws82.ucsd.edu

In article <651@blue.cis.pitt.edu> pjhst10+@pitt.edu (Peter   J Hill) writes:
>There have been alot of posts lately talking about W Gibson's
>electronic book.  If you want alot more information than you
>might be able to get here, check out alt.fan.cyber  I think
>that that is the name of the group.  There has been an ongoing
>discussion about Agrippa for a long tome.
(stuff deleted)

Actually, the name of the group is alt.cyberpunk, as far as
i know.  But then my site just might not get alt.fan.cyber.
-------------------
Matt Maxwell
mmaxwell@ucsd.edu

"He took personality tests
 and stapled them to his lower lip" -- Stan Ridgway

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman )
Subject: Re: Civil War Alternate Histories
Organization: Acuson; Mountain View, California
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 23:03:04 GMT

frankt@cwi.nl (Frank Teusink) writes:

>nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Nancy Lebovitz) writes:

>>I've heard arguments that slavery for agriculture became uneconomical--
>>I've never heard any sort of reason why keeping slaves as personal
>>servants is uneconomical, but it's obvious that such slavery doesn't
>>exist in industrialized countries (except for some scams involving
>>illegal immigrants). Any theories about why?

>Just a guess:
>Maybe working in the house requires some kind of commitment (not dropping
>vases, etc.). A house-slave seems to be better off than a field-slave, so
>the house-slaves do their job, because otherwise they are degraded to 
>field work. If there are no field-slaves, this kind of degradation doesn't
>exist anymore, and the commitment gets lost. 

	Rome and Greece used house slaves extensively.  Southerners in
	the US did as well.
-- 
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have
exhausted all other alternatives." - Abba Eban
	Disclaimer:  All views are solely my own & not the views of Acuson.
	<sun!sono!miklg>  or  [miklg@acuson.com]
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: eliz@ai.mit.edu (Elizabeth Willey)
Subject: Re: Literary SF
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 23:10:52 GMT

Tim Guay writes:

   Can anyone recommend any literary SF books/authors? IE: stuff that
   isn't mainstream commercial SF.

I wasn't going to answer this, not wishing to contribute to a
repetitive deluge, but the post itself is intriguing.  Tim Guay places
"literary" sf outside "mainstream commercial" sf, whereas most
discussions of the two forms of whatever-sf-is place "literary" sf in
a perceived commercial mainstream and "commercial" sf in the sf genre
ghetto.  No value judgement, just a curious inversion of the usual
terms.

For answers: Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos, Shikasta, etc., series;
Marge Peircy's (sp?) recent _He, She, and It_; Karen Joy Fowler's
recent _Sarah Canary_; Russell Hoban's OOP _Riddley Walker_; Peter
Carey's short stories (an American collection called _The Fat Man in
History_ contains selections from TWO Australian collections) (his
long works are magic realism, not sf or f in the genre sense); any
"Daedalus" column in _Nature_; anything by Thomas Pyncheon.  J. G.
Ballard and Philip K. Dick are "genre" authors who are on nodding
civil terms with the "literary" mainstream.  Try Ballard's _Crash_ or
Dick's _The Man in the High Castle_, then read onward.  Thomas Disch
publishes respectable poetry as well as sf and horror.

Note that these books have different "values" behind them than genre
sf does.  The authors tend to concentrate on the boring old characters
at the expense of the stimulating science.


Elizabeth Willey
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian)
Subject: Re: Civil War Alternate Histories
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 02:05:29 GMT

I've always wanted to do an alternate Civil War that starts a few years early
as a result of the Pig War--a dispute between the US and Britain over
ownership of an island in Puget Sound. When a Yank settler shot a Hudson's
Bay Co. pig, emotions soared and British and American troops landed on the
island. (A Col. Pickett, later to see Gettysburg, was in charge--so to
speak--of the Americans.)

My story would involve a feckless British officer who topples his country
into an unwelcome war with the US; to sustain the British presence in the
northwest, the Brits highjack a gold ship sailing out of San Francisco while
the southerners secede and Britain must back the revolt or lose its cotton
source and thus risk revolutionary violence by unemployed millworkers.

And it would all, of course, be completely tongue in cheek. But it's probably
one of those stories that will never see daylight, alas...


--
Crawford Kilian   Communications Department   Capilano College
North Vancouver BC Canada V7J 3H5
Usenet: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca
Internet: ckilian@first.etc.bc.ca
From: amadeus@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Susan Harwood Kaczmarczik)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Heinlein and "wimmin"
Date: 15 Dec 92 17:21:37 GMT
Organization: University of Texas at Austin

lpj@col.hp.com (Laura Johnson) writes:

>That is, it's not wrong (obviously!!) to want children. It's "wrong"
>(inaccurate, not morally wrong, I mean) to portray all people as
>wanting to have children because all people DON'T want to have
>children (I don't. QED). So when you read your first Heinlein about
>somebody whose goal in life is to have children, you think "ah, a good
>book. I notice the main character wants children." When you read your
>tenth Heinlein about somebody whose goal in life is to have children,
>you think "Hey, I'm getting tired of all these characters having the
>same goal in life."

I've seen this thread before, and not just here -- you know, the old
"Was RAH a sexist pig or not?" thread.  He seemed to like women
barefoot and pregnant, or otherwise I.B.W.[T.]L.O., as he so
charmingly put it.

The big question I have is, Why are you people surprised?  The man was
a product of his generation and his environment.  Just 'cause he
wanted everybody humping all over the place does *not* mean he was an
enlightened, hip, and modern sort of guy.  He was of the same
generation as my grandmother, and I daresay to find such so-called
unenlightend attitudes in my grandmother probably wouldn't surprise
anybody (least of all me...).  In fact, his attitudes towards women
would probably be considered appropriate and even reverent at the
time, except for that part about them all having so much book
learning.  Judge not without context, o ye readers.

So enjoy the books or not, as you will (I like them but sometimes find
him a bit pissy for my tastes).  One should not assume that he would
be anything other than any other man of his time just because he was a
futuristic writer.

>Now do you get it, guys??? I'm not propounding some feminist manifesto,
>I'm agreeing with all those other people who say Heinlein only writes
>one character. I LIKE Heinlein books. I just think I'd like them better
>if he'd branched out a bit more.

I agree with you there, Laura.  But I feel compelled to add that I'm a
pretty radical feminist and have recently had my first baby and intend
to have plenty more.  Being feminist does not mean being against
childbirth, or babies, or even making them with (gasp!) men.

Even if it means B.I.B.W.[M.] L. O.  :)

>Laura Johnson

-- 
-----Susan Harwood Kaczmarczik-------------------------------*<:-)-------------
"Queens never make bargains."  -- The Red Queen, _Through the Looking Glass_
-----amadeus@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu--------------The University of Texas @Austin---
From: colin@callisto.pas.rochester.edu (Colin Roald)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Good Fantasy was Re: Dragonlance
Date: 17 Dec 92 00:48:59 GMT
Organization: U(r) AstroTheory Group


mcmahan@cs.unca.edu (Scott McMahan -- Genesis mailing list owner) writes:
>Very good point. TSR doesn't dish out much new. The Dark Sun books
>are a strange exception -- they're very imaginative and have
>their own world that's unique in fantasy, at least what I've read.

Another truly unique background is the Spelljammer universe--at least
I've never seen anything like it. Fantasy spaceflight, with fantasy 
physics and fantasy astrography, created from essentially whole cloth.
The rules supplement starts out: "Everything you know about physics is
wrong."  They replace central-force gravity with an odd gravity plane,
so that everywhere on a ship, down is toward the plane.  If you toss
an apple overboard, it oscillates up and down in the extension of the
gravity plane.  Every object carries with it an air envelope proportiona
to its size.  There is of course, a magical 'spacedrive', the spelljammer,
and so on.

Admittedly, nearly every design decision is made for maximum clarity and
simplicity in the physics, but heck, who cares?  It's got a unique 
atmosphere.  The days of windjammers and pirates, in space. More or less.

I have no idea if the books live up to the originality of the background,
but they might be worth a look.



colin roald rational |  he opened up his mind and popped out of the groove
   romantic mystic   |  he saw both sides of everything and found he could
  cynical idealist   |    not move.                    -- james mcmurtry
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: matt@physics2.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Literary SF
Date: 17 Dec 92 12:45:48
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
Distribution: world
	<bjones-141292111906@130.13.26.216> <wfT=CC@engin.umich.edu>
	<MATT.92Dec16143222@physics.berkeley.edu>
	<1992Dec17.173633.21673@blaze.cs.jhu.edu>
	<1gqf74INNdtq@agate.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics2.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: maverick@fir.CS.Berkeley.EDU's message of 17 Dec 1992 18:00:04 GMT

In article <1gqf74INNdtq@agate.berkeley.edu> maverick@fir.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick) writes:

> |> It just seemed to me that in _Ada_,
> |> Nabokov had written something that only a few people in the world (himself
> |> among them) had enough language ability to understand and enjoy.
> 
> This was not my impression.  I know of books that give me this
> feeling (much of Zukofsky's _A_), but this was more like the
> experience of unreadability given by _Tender Is The Night_; the
> sense that the author is inviting me to a game I don't
> want to play.  (Ditto _Pale Fire_, which I seem to remember
> Matt liking too....)

Good memory, Vance!  I don't always remember that much about my own
tastes, let alone those other other people.

In the case of both _Ada_ and _Pale Fire_, I did feel that there was a
lot of subtlety involved in the construction of the novels, and that
the author was indeed playing a game with intricate rules that he
never told the reader about.  In both cases, I thought that I was
missing a lot of what was going on just beneath the surface---but what
I was able to see was interesting enough so that I didn't feel too
left out.  (Actually, I think that my interest was greater because of
the knowledge that there was more in the book than I was able to see.)

I didn't think there was really much of a linguistic problem with
_Ada_, though; the book is written in perfectly good English, with
just a few lines here and there in French and Russian.  For the most
part (not always, but usually), it's clear from the surrounding text
what the characters are saying when they are speaking those languages.
I think they're essential, in any case, to convey the flavor of the
world that Nabokov created.
--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618                    crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
austern@lbl.bitnet                faction, an army!  If you don't have any
matt@physics.berkeley.edu         solutions, become a part of the problem!
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.written:16438 rec.games.frp.dnd:7681 rec.games.frp.misc:10146
From: seawasp@vm2.cis.pitt.edu (Sea Wasp)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.games.frp.dnd,rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Later, Dudes!
Date: 19 Dec 92 13:38:35 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written
Organization: University of Pittsburgh
Originator: seawasp@unixd3.cis.pitt.edu


	I'm now leaving on vacation and won't be back for a few weeks -- so
if you have anything you want me to see, flames, questions, compliments,
whatever -- make sure you email me a copy; our system expires stuff fairly
frequently.

	Have a good set of holidays.


                                 Sea Wasp
                                   /^\
                                   ;;;
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: levine@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Lenore Levine)
Subject: Re: Heinlein purchase?
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 18:51:28 GMT

In article <1992Dec7.140535.3096@genie.slhs.udel.edu>,
nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:

>(In fact, Lazarus Long even refers to one of his
>daughters as being "Even more of a natural baby factory than her mother".
>*Yech*!!!!) 

I am not disputing -- Heinlein's characterizations of women can
be, let's say, a little dense.

But Lazarus was not referring so much to his daughter's destiny,
as to her *physical* characteristics, which he thought would
make childbirth easy for her.

I note my sister, who is very large-boned, had a relatively easy
time delivering her first child. The nurses told her, if she
ever had a second child, that her time in labor would most likely
be *extremely* short.
From: Alec Plumb <aplumb@ucsd.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: New Brin Stuff (was Re: New publications?)
Date: 11 Dec 1992 19:43:06 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego - IGPP
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: daveman.ucsd.edu
X-UserAgent: Nuntius v1.1.1d13
X-XXMessage-ID: <A74E318C75020D33@daveman.ucsd.edu>
X-XXDate: Fri, 11 Dec 92 19:52:44 GMT

In article <1992Dec4.033454.17118@henson.cc.wwu.edu> Jacob C Kesinger,
n9146070@henson.cc.wwu.edu writes:
>Does anyone know if there will _ever_ be another Uplift novel?

You bet.
He just gave a guest lecture to my Science Fiction class here, and
watching him speak
is even more gripping than reading one of his books (And they pretty darn
high
on my list.)  He just sent off the manuscript for his latest book, and
will begin
work on the next Uplift book any time now.

The following info on the book he sent out may be somewhat faulty, I'm
working from memory
here:
It is about a world in which most people are clones of their female
parent.  The
few naturally concieved (two parent) females are second class citizens,
and the few males are an entirely seperate society.
I'm looking forward to reading it...


Alec Plumb       \\                 \\ My opinions are certainly not
aplumb@ucsd.edu   \\   619/558-6969  \\ those of the Regents of the
University of California at San Diego \\ University of California, but
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary  \\ they darn well should be.
               Physics                  \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
From: goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Brokedown Palace
Date: 14 Dec 1992 06:35:06 GMT
Organization: The Sinister Icy Black Hand of Death Club
Reply-To: goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb)
NNTP-Posting-Host: earthquake.berkeley.edu
Originator: goldfarb@earthquake.berkeley.edu

	It would seem from clues in the story that Brigitta's father
was a demon. We are never told explicitly, but I have it on good 
authority that Brigitta's daughter is Cawti. (Quite an interesting
parentage...a demon on one side, the King of Fenario on the other...)

-- 
   David Goldfarb          | 
goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu  |      "Hey, mister! Your ninja's dragging!" 
goldfarb@UCBOCF.BITNET     | 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: kasprj@isaac.its.rpi.edu (Jim Kasprzak)
Subject: Re: Auto-buy lists
Reply-To: kasprj@rpi.edu
Organization: The Big Wedge 
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 14:23:55 GMT

 I was kind of surprised to see all these auto-buy lists myself. Maybe
I'm odd (okay, I _know_ that I'm odd), but I can't think of a single 
author whose output consistently corresponds to my tastes. I'm a Niven
fanatic, but was disappointed by the Smoke Ring books and thought 
_Fallen Angels_ was a waste of trees. I can't stand the Uplift books 
but love anything else Brin does. Arthur C. Clarke would have been on
the list until _2061_ and those awful collaborations started appearing. 
And so forth. There are many authors whose names influence me to give
their books higher priority in my purchasing considerations, but I can't
think of a single one whom I'd _always_ buy. I suppose that William 
Gibson and John Crowley come closest, but I suspect they just haven't
been writing for long enough to come up with something counter to my 
tastes (not that I'm hoping for them to do this, mind you). 
------------------------------------------------------------------
     __  Live from Capitaland, heart of the Empire State...
 ___/  | Jim Kasprzak, computer operator @ RPI, Troy, NY, USA
/____ *| Sam Adams,Spaten# Life is too short #Hudson Lager,Beck's 
     \_| Pilsener Urquell#to drink cheap beer#Pete's Wicked Ale
      ====  e-mail: kasprj@rpi.edu or kasprzak@mts.rpi.edu 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books
From: rcj@engin.umich.edu (R o d Johnson)
Subject: Re: Literary SF
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 13:40:26 EST
Organization: Lost Tribes of Gazebo

In article <1gqf74INNdtq@agate.berkeley.edu> maverick@fir.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick) writes:
>In article <1992Dec17.173633.21673@blaze.cs.jhu.edu>, callahan@biffvm.cs.jhu.edu (Paul Callahan) writes:
>|> matt@physics.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern) writes:

>|> [I liked "Ada"]

>|> >I certainly agree that it's a great novel, though, no matter how you
>|> >classify it.

>|> Personally, I found it nearly impossible to read.

>Me too.  I was going to follow up to Matt's comment by asking,
>"What if we classify it as unreadable?" 

Boy.  I would have said "compulsively readable".  I started it while
on a canoe trip up in northern Ontario, through some of the loveliest
country I've ever seen, and yet I found myself unwilling to stop
reading and grudging the time I had to spend canoeing each day.  I
eventuallly had to bury it deep in the food pack so I could get my
paddling done.  I admit, though, it does get fatiguing at times--Van's
disquisition on time I found pretty opaque.

By the way, Vance, I love "A" too, and remember waiting for new
installments to come out in "Poetry".  Takes all kinds, I spose.  I've
never been able to finish anything by Dickens or Conrad, myself.  But
I still remember my first encounters with "A" (the opening lines of
book 14) and the masterful opening sentence of "Ada" and being
completely captivated both times.

-- 
       Rod Johnson  *  rcj@caen.engin.umich.edu  *  (313) 764-3103
    
                "What I do doesn't happen in a warehouse"
                                          --Jim Dickinson