HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: agae@elder.lle.rochester.edu (Andres C. Gaeris)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Anyone like to comment on Garden of Rama?
Date: 15 Dec 92 13:21:44 GMT
Reply-To: agae@elder.lle.rochester.edu (Andres C. Gaeris)
Organization: UofR Laboratory for Laser Energetics

In article <1992Dec15.040154.22147@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu>, pv02@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (PETER VOROBIEFF) writes:
> In article <Bz6xxG.F3F@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, hartlemp@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Michael P Hartley) writes:
> >major spoilers for above...
> >
> >   Anyone agree? Disagree?
> 
> The stuff's not worth wasting your time on arguing over it. I wish
> Gentry Lee got a decent job in some newer Viking project...
> 
> -- 
> ---
> Thus spake Kalmoth the Dreaded, Bane of the Forests of Gnoy.

What about to organize a letter writing campaign for a larger budget
for planetary exploration?
Among the many reasons we could argue that it will keep Gentry Lee
occupied planing missions to far planets and not writing (if at least
he would do it alone and not spoiling Clarke's style) the awful stuff
that he an A.C.C. have been concocting lately.

Andres C. Gaeris
Apprentice laser fusioner and full-time technodreamer
agae@lle.rochester.edu
From: matt@physics2.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Rama Reveiled by A.C. Clarke
Date: 16 Dec 92 16:46:12
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
	<1992Dec11.213532.14667@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> <102397@netnews.upenn.edu>
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics2.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu's message of 16 Dec 92 23:25:59 GMT

In article <102397@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:

> >The first Rama book was BORING.  People land, people gawk at the
> >scenery without really finding anything out, people kill monkeys, 
> >people leave.  There's no conflict (except for that last part about
> >the monkeys), it's just they look around and leave.  They don't
> >even find much out about the aliens--just that they're THERE.
> 
> Exactly.  It's called "sense of wonder", something science fiction
> likes to pride itself on, but missing far too often.  RWR is one of
> the ultimates, lifting most readers to an astonished awe and joy.

Actually, in fact, the characters in the book do find out something
important about the aliens: they are beyond human comprehension.  

Remember "Clarke's Law"?  Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic.  _Rendevous with Rama_ is an
illustration of that point.
--
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!
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Subject: Re: Eco-Catastrophe Novel Request
Reply-To: djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 17:11:13 GMT

In article <1992Dec17.004524.17811@pages.com> bwebster@pages.com writes:
 
>> A friend of mine who is not on the list has found that a book she's used for
>> a course (first-year college) has gone out of print--NATURE'S END by
>> Streiber and Kunetka.

A pity; it's probably the best all-round ecocatastrophe novel in the past 20 
years.

 
>Any number of novels by John Wyndham, including _The Burning World_ and  _The  
>Drowned World_.  

Ahem.  Actually, that's J.G. Ballard.  Though Wyndham may have written under
a number of pasyoodonims, Ballard ain't one of them; they've been seen together.


>John Christopher's _No Blade of Grass_. 

Not a bad choice, and better for teaching about eco-catastrophe than Ballards'.
It really all depends on _what_ the class is in.  Ecology?  Literature?  Science
fiction?

If it's an ecology 101 class using an SF novel as an illustration of "what might
happen if we're not careful," then some options would include --

	NO BLADE OF GRASS, as noted.
	THE END OF THE DREAM, by Philip Wylie, which has much the same
		"documentary" feel as the Streiber/Kunnetka, and manages
		the interesting trick of being both bleaker and more
		hopeful at the same time.
	...and, of course, for examples of how things might go, there's
		nothing like that ol' chestnut, Rachel Carson's SILENT
		SPRING, though it ain't exactly an SF novel...

If it's a class in literature, or SF-as-literature, and you need an example of
an eco-catastrophe novel (why?) you can't beat the Ballards.  My personal choice
would be THE DROWNED WORLD, but you need to know that it's one of a set of 
destroy-the-world-by-earth-air-fire-and-water novels (	THE CRYSTAL WORLD; THE 
WIND FROM NOWHERE; THE BURNING WORLD; THE DROWNED WORLD ) which deal with the 
seductive aspects of catastrophe.

If it's a class in SF that wants an eco-catastrophe novel as an "example of one
of the great themes" of SF, then any of the above will do, but frankly you could
do better in any of a number of short stories.


		When you're stuffing yourself at the Christmas parties,
		don't be surprised when I tell you to take a running jump.
		You're missing the point I'm sure does not need making:
		the Christmas spirit is not what you drink.
			--Ian Anderson

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Net.Roach
My opinions do NOT represent Pacific Bell,
Professional Development, or anyone else.
But I'm willing to share.
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.written:16308 soc.history:10197
From: erics@infoserv.com (Eric S. Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,soc.history
Subject: Civil War Alternate Histories
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 19:35:37 PDT
Organization: Reigning Cats and Dogs
Reply-To: erics@infoserv.com
X-Mailer: uAccess - Macintosh Release: 1.6v1

aa396@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Bill Henley) writes:        
                                                   
>My favorite (though slightly horrifying) idea for an alternate
>CW-era history is this; what if there had been a few less "fire-
>eaters" in the South and a few more level-headed pro-slavery
>types who refused to panic when Lincoln was elected?  If the
>Southern states had remained peacefully in the Union, Lincoln
>would have had neither constitutional nor political power to
>do anything about slavery in the states where it existed.
                  
I'm not sure Lincoln wanted to do anything about slavery in the
states where it existed, did he? He may have personally wanted
to see slavery come to an eventual end and he may have used the
power of the presidency to try to prevent its spread into new
territories, but I doubt that he would have attempted to influence
the institution in states where it existed. I also doubt he would
have taken any extra-Constitutional steps like the Emancipation
Proclamation, if the situation hadn't been forced on him by the
exigencies of war.

Beyond that, Southern leaders had been compromising and waiting things
out for decades, and I think they clearly saw Lincoln's election as a
last straw that couldn't be accepted. If in fact slavery was blocked
from expansion into new territories, it meant the anti-slavery forces
in the government would gain the upper hand, destroying the old equal
balance. This meant a slow but eventual death for the slavery system
anyway. There really weren't many Southern moderates left by 1861;
most Southern leaders saw that separation was the only hope to save
their economic way of life.

>The South might have waited Lincoln out and for a long time after-
>wards -- even conceivably to the present-- we might have had
>a Union with slavery surviving.  (It was the view of many on
>both the pro- and anti-slavery side that slavery would be
>"in the course of extinction" if it was not allowed to expand
>into new territories; but I'm not at all sure this would have
>turned out correct.)
             
I very much doubt that slavery would have continued to this day.
The slave-based agricultural economy of the South was not compatible
with industrialization, and this country was bound to industrialize.
Unless the South could have figured out how to change their plantation
economy to a slave-based industrial one, then either slavery had to
be ended (by force or mutual agreement), or the South had to go its
separate way. And I doubt the North would have stood for the South's
industrializing on a slavery base. If pro-slavery forces lost the
battle for expansion into new territories, and therefore their balance
in Congress, slavery as an institution was doomed.

-----
Eric Smith
erics@infoserv.com
CI$: 70262,3610


Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: mcmahan@cs.unca.edu (Scott McMahan -- Genesis mailing list owner)
Subject: Joe Dever: Lone Wolf
Organization: University of North Carolina at Asheville
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 19:36:56 GMT

Not too long ago, Joe Dever came out with a couple more
Lone Wolf books. Ever since I was a little kid in Jr. High
School, his world has captivated me, and I have really
enjoyed them, and still keep getting them for nostalgia
and cos there's nothing better. It was a blow when
Gary Chalk quit illustrating them, because he is a 
great fantasy illustrator, but I *still* kept getting them.

1) The last one I saw was #14 -- have there been more since then?
   Does anyone have a bibliography of his books?

   Is he not very prolific, or do they not publish them
   regularly?

2) The books I get say "abridged" -- the full-length version
   was printed in the UK. What's up with this!? The books are
   *short* as it is, why are they bothering abridging them?
   What's been cut out, and how do you get the originals?

3) Does anyone know why Gary Chalk quit illustrating and
   co-writing the books? What's he doing these days?

Scott
From: page@student.physics.upenn.edu (Chris Page)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Auto-buy lists
Date: 18 Dec 92 21:46:33 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written
Organization: university of pennsylvania

In article <1992Dec18.015418.23388@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>,
colin@callisto.pas.rochester.edu (Colin Roald) wrote:
> 
> 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.

Well, it seems like everyone has their own list.
Here's mine (in order of how much I look forward to them):


Julie Dean Smith
Elizabeth Moon
Terry Pratchett
Anne McCaffrey
Arthur Clarke
Robert Forward
Robert Jordan
Doris Egan
Robert Asprin
Brian Jaques
Katherine Kurtz
Douglas Adams
Tad Williams


If you notice, I've had trouble finding good science fiction authors
who are not already dead. But with reading this group more often, hopefully
that will change.

Chris Page
page@student.physics.upenn.edu
From: ojvind@chagall.cns.caltech.edu (Ojvind Bernander)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Mass minds (was: Greg Bear Blood Music)
Date: 11 Dec 1992 19:22:27 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology
NNTP-Posting-Host: chagall.cns.caltech.edu

In article <1992Dec7.203159.20401@caeco.mentorg.com> phatch@solstice.slc.mentorg.com (Phill Hatch (CONTRACTOR Documentation)) writes:
>I read _Blood Music_ yesterday...
>Unfortunately, I have to lump it in with the other unified
>mind futures like FOUNDATION, and TIME PRESSURE, and some others
>whose titles I can't remember.
>
>Can anyone tell me what the appeal is?  Sure I have read these 
>people's books and heard their claims, but the entire idea of a 
>unified consciousness is repellent to me.

"Mass minds" seem to come in two flavors.
First, there is the form where a group of people are telepathic
and can share thoughts and feelings to various degrees.
It seems to me that this would be a desirable character to have,
since it would improve communication, empathy, and intimacy.

The second form is when all the little minds give rise to a higher-level
holistic super-mind that in some sense have a will of its own.
This seems to be of little use to the individual, since he wouldn't
"feel" the higher consciousness any more than single neurons in my brain
"think" or get an advantage from _my_ consciousness.  It is a common error
to intermix these two levels of consciousness.  An example is Searle's
Chinese room.  Another common error reduces to the following:
"The brain, which implements a consciousness, is a large feedback system.
X (the Earth, a bacteria, an air-conditioner) is a feedback system.
Therefore X is conscious."
   _
-- Ojvind Bernander
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: frank@fnbc.com (Frank Mitchell)
Subject: Re: Eco-Catastrophe Novel Request
Organization: First National Bank Of Chicago, Chicago IL, USA
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 16:47:50 GMT

In article <1992Dec17.004524.17811@pages.com> bwebster@pages.com (Bruce F.  
Webster) writes:
> Any number of novels by John Wyndham, including _The Burning World_ and  _The  
> Drowned World_.  

Aren't these by J. G. Ballard?

--
Frank Mitchell,	Business Systems Analyst, First National Bank of Chicago
email:frank@fnbc.com (NeXTmail)

"A sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
-- me, I think (twisting Clarke's Law, of course)
From: danac@morc.asd.sgi.com (Dana Crom)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Elves in Tolkien and Folklore
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written
Date: 16 Dec 1992 23:41:16 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: morc.asd.sgi.com

In article <1992Dec13.192927.9305@cs.unca.edu> mcmahan@cs.unca.edu (Scott McMahan -- Genesis mailing list owner) writes:
>Are there any stories or anything of the Alfar and Sidhe
>meeting one another and, well, swapping notes or getting
>new PR people or whatever :)?
>
>Since they *are* different, there ought to be some story
>somewhere when they meet...
>
>I like the Alfar and the norse elves better than the Celtic
>ones... I'd root for them... :^)

Poul Anderson's "The Broken Sword."  A fairly bleak book, written with a human
hero adopted by the Alfar as the main character.

As I recall, it treats *all* mythological beings as existing, more or less
in the areas that believed in them.  Besides a fairly detailed sequence with
the Tuatha de Danaan, there are throwaway references to various Asian
mythological beings encountered on a long trading/raiding voyage.

(The voyage was *not* the centerpiece of the novel, btw - the main action
mostly occurs in late-first-millenium Great Britain - can't be more precise,
it's been too long since I read the book)


-- 
-----------------------+------------------------+------------------------------
Dana Crom    DoD #0679 | Silicon Graphics, Inc. |  Smile - let them *WONDER* 
danac@morc.asd.sgi.com | (415) 390-1449         |  what you've been up to . . .

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: xoanon@carina.unm.edu (timothy k istian soholt)
Subject: Re: CHTORR!!
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 22:45:25 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

durrell@pinball.arcade.uiowa.edu (Bryant Durrell) writes:

>I have also been toying
>with the idea that the Chtorran ecology isn't alien at all.  It's
>perfectly suited for Earth, as Gerrold has pointed out more than
>once, to the point where the worm fur can live on humans and
>interact with their brains.  And (if we buy what the Red Book
>says) the puffballs were discovered quite some time before the
>plagues...but looked like Earth plants.  Hm.
>
>I cannot come up with a rationale for how it could have happened,
>unfortunately.  Sigh.

How about time travel? There's some mention in the first book of
government experiments into fourth-dimensional physics. There's
also a lot of talk (particularly in the first book) about how the
Chtorran ecology is so much more evolved than Earth's. It could
well be that the Chtorran ecology is simply the Terran ecology a
few billion years in the future. That explains why everything in-
teracts so well, it explains the red sun, and it leaves a _whole_
lot of new questions to replace the old ones.

-- Tim Soholt (xoanon@carina.unm.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: jdnicoll@prism.ccs.uwo.ca (James Davis Nicoll)
Subject: Re: Heinlein and "wimmin"
Organization: University of Western Ontario, London
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 19:27:55 GMT

In article <85384@ut-emx.uucp> amadeus@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Susan Harwood Kaczmarczik) writes:

	Material deleted re:  RAH  and sexism and stuff

>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.

	Heh. My Granny  (Paternal) had  a considerably  wilder youth
than I did, and her mores covered a   wider  range  than mine did
at a similar  age: the  result of  her  experiences in Nineteen-twenties
urban America and mine in rural Ontario in  the seventies.

	Not a disagreement, just an observation. Probably an extreme
example,  too.

						James Nicoll					
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: bwebster@pages.com (Bruce F. Webster)
Subject: Re: Eco-Catastrophe Novel Request
Reply-To: bwebster@pages.com
Organization: Banzai Research Institute
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 00:45:24 GMT

In article <01GSCLYK9S1W0056RV@HOPE.CIT.HOPE.EDU> REYNOLDS@HOPE.CIT.HOPE.EDU  
("That ended; so also may this") writes:
> From:	HOPE::REYNOLDS     "That ended; so also may this" 15-DEC-1992  
15:28:13.68
> To:	IN%"sf-lovers-written@rugers.edu"
> CC:	REYNOLDS
> Subj:	Eco-Catastrophe Novel
> 
> A friend of mine who is not on the list has found that a book she's used for
> a course (first-year college) has gone out of print--NATURE'S END by
> Streiber and Kunetka.
> 
> Can anyone recommend a replacement--the idea is that the eco-catastrophe  
(does
> not have to be the end of the world) is precipitated by a continuation or
> extension of current trends (global warming, etc.).
> 

Any number of novels by John Wyndham, including _The Burning World_ and  _The  
Drowned World_.  

John Christopher's _No Blade of Grass_. 

Actually, some quick browsing through the SF section of any decent bookstore  
should produce several candidates.  ..bruce..
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: pkeller@sam.math.ethz.ch (Philipp Keller)
Subject: Re: good book for Christmas present
Organization: Seminar for Applied Mathematics, ETH Zurich.
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 17:14:01 GMT

I liked very much the book 
        'Quarantine' by Greg Egan
It was published by 'Legend' but I think Greg Egan is an Australian 
writer so that your friend may already have this book. In any case,
the book was great and it was for me the most interesting book I read
this year.
Also great were
    Harry Harrison + Marvin Minsky  The  Turing Option by Warner
    Brian Stableford                Tales of the Wandering Jew by Daedalus
    Roger MacBride Allen            The Next Wave 4:
                                    The Modular Man byBantam Spectra

pkeller@sam.math.ethz.ch
From: curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Carter Scholz (Re: Literary SF)
Date: 20 Dec 1992 06:21:50 GMT
Organization: CS Dept. Snakepit - Do Not Feed.
NNTP-Posting-Host: cobra.cs.berkeley.edu
Keywords: Literary SF

In article <1992Dec19.173903.22309@hellgate.utah.edu> speterse%peruvian.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (soren--Ms. Jackson if you're nasty) writes:
>
>I did read *Palimpsests*, and while I didn't think it was successful (the
>classic rookie mistake of trying to do everything at once in the first 
>novel), it certainly wasn't the worst sf novel I ever read (that honor
>goes to Van Vogt's *The Anarchistic Colossus*) by a fairly long shot.

Ah.  Well, bear in mind that when I say, "ever read," I mean
read and finished.  Scholz had, indeed, done some really fine
short fiction, and it's hard to give up on a novel which is
well-written at the lowest level even if it fails completely
on every other level.

Anyone know what happened to him?  Is he still out there,
plotting his revenge?

c
From: curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Bathroom reading
Date: 13 Dec 1992 08:52:58 GMT
Organization: CS Dept. Snakepit - Do Not Feed.
NNTP-Posting-Host: cobra.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Dec12.222211.23834@netcom.com> rebekah@netcom.com (Rebekah J. Jensen) writes:
>Hullo all!
>
>Recently they've come out with "Bathroom Readers" full of general fiction,
>etc. for the general public, what about some good bathroom reading for SF
>lovers?

Could it be anything but late Delany?  

Not suited, perhaps, for the coffee-table, but upon the pot
doth our brave reader find the culmination of his anal
fixations; and reach rectal enlightenment.  A synergism of the
Tao.  Drops the man the butterfly?  Or be it bass-ackward?

I think _GR_ has some fine scatological sequences, too.

Does anyone know of any other SF in this vein?  Humor,
certainly, but I'm looking for serious treatments of the
subject.  This is no laughing matter.  Mainstream literature
has already covered all the bases; but sf is still in the
sanitized fifties.  We must catch up, or we run the risk of
falling behind.

c
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.written:16354 rec.arts.books:22683
From: maverick@cork.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Literary SF
Date: 17 Dec 1992 22:10:46 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: cork.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <N6T=R8-@engin.umich.edu>, rcj@engin.umich.edu (R o d Johnson) writes:
|> [I had tried to separate my claim of "unreadability" in _Ada_
|> from "difficulty" as exemplified by Zukofsky's _A_]
|> 
|> By the way, Vance, I love "A" too, and remember waiting for new
|> installments to come out in "Poetry".  Takes all kinds, I spose.

Hmm, is this the Canto-man talking?  :)  I actually didn't mean to
suggest I disliked it -- parts strike me as wonderful, parts as
opaque, parts both.  Recently I've been getting into _80 Flowers_,
where I know for sure, with every word, that I'm not getting even
half what he put in there: choosing to read those little poems in
disregard of their construction, though, I find something very
interesting going on.

Speaking of Poundy poets, and of names like yours, what do you
make of Ronald Johnson?

	Vance