HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Wild Cards #11: Dealer's Choice
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 05:42:00 GMT

I've just read Wild Cards #11, and I'm giving up on Wild Cards.  Okay,
so I'm slow.  Number ten wasn't bad, but it was a single-author novel.
The current "mosaic" novel reveals the bankruptcy of the Wild Cards
series.  The series is now about where "Thieves World" was around issue
nine:  It's lost most of its better authors, and the authors that are
left seem to be on autopilot, churning out depressing and dirty ways
for their characters to die.

The story?  The government has gotten fed up with the idea of an
independent Joker homeland on Ellis Island, and concluded that it's
nothing a sufficiently sustained barage of missiles and bombs can't 
cure.  Eventually the authors run out of either pages or corpses, and
the battle is ended.

The writing is mind-numbingly pedestrian.  The book's subplots were
farmed out to a number of authors and then cut and pasted to form a
chronologically coherent narrative.  It's competent work, but who needs
to spend six dollars and three hours on 'competent'?  And how could it
rise above 'competent'?  A good novel is more than the sum of its
subplots.

So what's left as a reason for reading Wild Cards?  Wanting to know what
happens next?  There are some engaging characters in the Wild Cards universe,
but they're not the ones being written about.  (It's largely a matter of
turf:  The authors who are writing here concentrate on the characters
they created.)  It's hard to care much what happens to Bloat and to Carnifex
and to Hartmann and to Modular Man.

Worst of all, there's a sense of boredom.  Not that the book is boring (though
it is) but, worse, that the authors seem bored.  There's no sense that the
book was written by people who cared.  The writing is sometimes clever, but
never profound; there is sometimes brain, but never heart.

Wild Cards started out with some wonderful ideas.  Somewhere along the line
it turned into a cynically packaged semiannual product sold under a false
pretense.  The pretense is that, because it still says "Wild Cards" on the
cover, it is still the product readers remember from the early issues --
and that it might go back to being as good.  It won't, of course.  It's
more practical to grind out "The Further Adventures of Blood in the Gutter."

Okay, I'll admit it, this book disappointed me.

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

   'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
   Go alike, yet each believes his own
		--Alexander Pope
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: "A Fire Upon The Deep" by Vernor Vinge
From: David Silberstein <DASBC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Date: Thursday, 15 Oct 1992 19:52:08 EDT
Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center

Well, its fairly obvious that Vinge is on Usenet.
Whether he also reads these SF groups is open to
debate; remember that he is a computer scientist
first, and an SF author second. When I found out
he was on the Internet, I thought of sending him
Email with the question below, but then decided
to be courteous and post it on Usenet for SF FANS
(like you guys reading this) to kick around. If
Vinge does read it and respond, though, that
would be most appreciated.

**** Spoiler Discussion below....********


























The skroderiders in the story are believed to
be the creations of the Blight, in the sense
that the Blight found them on their original
world, uplifted them by giving them Skrodes
that were of Transcendant design (even though
they would work anywhere), and allowed them to
reproduce across the galaxy -- leaving in
the mechanism and programming a "back door" that
would allow the Skrode and rider to be instantly
subverted to the will of the Blight.
Since we are given the information that the
Skroderiders are a fairly benevolent race on the
whole, I would think that a hypothesis that is
just as good might run like this: The original
Uplifters of the Skroderiders left the back door
in the programming for their own reason. When
the Blight fist expanded, it analyzed the Skrodes
it captured, and found this useful method of
subverting the skrodes. Once it had that, it used
the Skroderiders as just another medium for its
own propagation..
You might well ask, what possible reason could the
Uplifters have had for allowing members of their
client race to be totally taken over and
controlled. One thought that comes to mind is to
expedite evacuation from a planet, solar system
or region of space: If some disaster threatened
(incoming comet, the local sun going nova, a
Slow Zone flux, an insanely aggressive species
on jihad, etc), the Uplifters may have felt that
the Skroderiders would not be able to organize
effectivly in time to save all their people
(remember, the Skroderiders have no short-term
memory, and may have difficulty coping with
something global, deadly and sudden).
    IMHO, the paranoid theory saying that the
Skroderiders are latent tools of the Blight
is analogous to saying that Ralph T Morris
was the one who was responsible for the flaws
in BSD Unix that he exploited to create his worm!
 Hmmm... come to think of it, Vernor Vinge, in
writing about the Blight taking over regions
of space while the Net chatters frantically about
the crisis might very well be an in-joke about
the propagation of the Internet Worm!

               Any thoughts??
--	
David Silberstein  dasbc@cunyvm.cuny.edu

No, I am not a hexapod.
From: JOHN@ZENO.MSCD.EDU (HUNTLY)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: The Sea of Stars
Date: 9 Oct 92 14:16:58 GMT

Hi, 
    I have been reading these messages for a while now and am finally posting 
a message now.  There was a book I read a year or so ago, it's title is 
" In a Sea of Stars" or something in that effect.  It is about Earth getting
invaded by aliens, who take over the planets oceans.  It is no longer safe for
the humans to travel by sea because ocean vessels get attacked.  This book has
a second plot about a astroid space ship that was launched before the invasion.
It deals with these people on the ship and their lives.

    My question is, Is there another book out there the begins where this
book left off?  Just when this book was getting interesting it ended.
If anybody can give any clue.   Thanks


 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                          |                                |
|  Internet address : John@zeno.mscd.edu   |   This space for Rent          |
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|                                          |                                |
|  Software - What my brain turns into     |                                |
|             when playing Computer games  |                                |
|             for several hours.           |                                |
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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ca572@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Mark L. Stackpole)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Was:Has MC5...Now Lester Bangs
Date: 13 Oct 1992 17:07:33 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


Hey, that's not just any off-the-wall comix illustrator, that's
Dori Seda, who was a real live person too. Go into any comic book
store (or sequential graphic novel specialty shop) and ask the
sales person to bring out the copies of _Weirdo_ from behind the
counter. You should find some of Dori's art in any random issue.
She's the one with the over-affectionate German Shepard.
	Bruce Sterling is one of the contibuting factors to my
marriage: I knew who Dori Seda was, and she knew who Lester Bangs
was - "Dori Seda" brought us together.
Mark_Stackpole@oclc.org
From: parmentier@iowasp.physics.uiowa.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Vance
Date: 14 Oct 92 19:11:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: iowasp.1992Oct14.131129.1
Organization: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa

In article <ELIZ.92Oct13215214@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu>, eliz@ai.mit.edu (Elizabeth Willey) writes:
> Michael Lerner writes:
> 
> > found a Jack Vance book called "Wyst: Alastor 1716" on my Dad's bookshelf.
> > It's a first time in print novel, (c) November 1978.  Is it worth my time
> > to try to sell  the book?  I'm guessing it may be worth something since most
> > of Vance's stuff is hard to come by, and it's first ed.  Also, it looks like
> > an interesting plot, I think I'll read it! ;)
> 
> You must be hard up.  Don't expect to get rich, even if it's in mint
> uncracked condition.
> 
> Vance isn't *that* hard to find.  Regular sweeps in urban bookstores
> and at the occasional con dealer's table will round up all the Alastor
> books, the Pnume books, and anything else you care to think of by
> Vance.
 
	Vance ins't hard to find unless your talking about Vance's
non-Ellery Queen mysteries, _Vandals of the Void_, _Bad Ronald_, or
_Monsters in Orbit_.  The copy of _Wyst_ is probably worth $6-8 to
a collector of Vance.
							Ggg
-- 
"I'm not a programmer, but I play one at work." _/_
 _, .__  _  _,  _,     _   _, .__  ____  _  __  / o _ .__
(_)_/ (_(/_(_)_(_)_   |_)_(_|_/ (_/ / /_(/_/ /_/_/_(/_/ (__
 /|         /|  /|   /|      ___ Gregg  Parmentier ___
|/         |/  |/    |/ parmentier@iowasp.physics.uiowa.edu
From: wilhelmf@MICROSOFT.COM
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Charles Harness "The Paradox Men"
Date: 8 Oct 92 18:33:55 GMT


Peter Longworth (c9005189@wombat.newcastle.edu.au) writes:

>Could someone please give me some information on Charles Harness's science-
>fiction novel "The Paradox Men" (1953).
>
>I am interested to read this novel, but would first like some information
>on the book, particularly some info detail on plot and Harness's other

I just finished reading this book (which showed up as part of my Easton
Press "Classics of SF" subscription).  It is definately a Van Vogt pastiche,
which the author frankly admits in his afterword.  But I enjoyed it greatly
nonetheless.

Without giving away too much, the book is set in a future America (America
Imperial) which seems to be NATO gone bad vs. a nebulous Eastern Alliance
of some sort (who are mostly incidental to the plot).  The protaganist is
Alar the Thief, who is part of an underground resistence movement against
America Imperial.

This is all backdrop however, and major themes of the book are grand and
cosmic indeed.  The scientific details are obviously out of date, but the
broad themes are still plausible, and the book read well right on the heels
of finishing Hawking's "A Brief History of Time."

Since the plot hinges on a mystery and a paradox, you can't say much more
about it without spoiling the read.  If you enjoy grandious action/adventure
coupled with BIG SCIENCE, you should probably read this book.  If somewhat
out of date science and two dimensional characterizations bother you, then
you might want to avoid it.

Wilhelm Fitzpatrick
wilhelmf@microsoft.com

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: frank@fnbc.com (Frank Mitchell)
Subject: Re: Yet More on Languages in SF&F
Organization: First National Bank Of Chicago, Chicago IL, USA
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 92 14:14:08 GMT

In article <9210140917.aa10164@msi8500.micros.com> mike@micros.COM ("Michael J.  
Lonski") writes:

 > I remember a short story in a collection, (Alan Dean Foster's "With Friends
 > Like These..."???), where a human gets into a conversation with a group of
 > aliens at a bar.  These aliens are technoligically superior but mention
 > being wary of humans because we use the same possesive, (ex. my father, my
 > car, my hand), for everything whereas they differentiate between all of
 > these cases.  To them, this makes the human's reactions very unpredictable
 > and therefore unsafe to meddle with.					 
						
Actually, I think it was an anthology of Larry Niven's early stuff 
(Before he came up with Known Space).  The name of the book escapes me, 
although the aliens were called something like "Chirpsithtra".

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

"In a way, staring into a computer screen is like staring into an eclipse. 
It's brilliant and you don't realize the damage until its too late."
-- Bruce Sterling, LA Times, 2/20/92
From: IOR@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Thomas Hyer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Author Polls -- Tanith Lee (REPOST)
Date: 8 Oct 92 16:41:05 GMT
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

Welcome to the author polls.  This week's author is Tanith
Lee.

INTRO to AUTHOR POLLS  (skip if you've participated before):

   Since no two readers can generally be expected to agree
   about the quality of a given author, an overall poll
   like that used in rec.arts.movies would be useless
   except as an incendiary.  However, there is often good
   agreement about which books by a given author are most
   worthy: thus this poll.

IF YOU MISSED AN EARLIER POLL and want to contribute, please
   feel free to DO SO.

BALLOT FORMAT  (read this once):

   You have four votes, one each at +3, +2, +1, and -1. You
   may vote for a work of any length, though you may wish
   to restrict yourself to the form in which the author was
   most prolific.

SAMPLE BALLOT (just a reminder):

   + 3 <vote for at most one work>
   + 2 <vote for at most one work>
   + 1 <vote for at most one work>
   - 1 <vote for at most one work>

SEND BALLOTS TO THIS ADDRESS.  If you prefer multiple choice,
you can obtain fairly complete bibliographies by anonymous ftp
from gandalf.rutgers.edu, in /pub/sfl/authorlists.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS (abridged):

Greg Bear
---------
 Eon                               +  26
 Blood Music                       +  17
 Queen of Angels                   +  16
 Infinity Concerto                 +  11
 Forge of God                      +  10
 Serpent Mage                      +   9
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

PREVIOUS AUTHORS (for listings, EMail to this address):
  Roger Zelazny
  Orson Scott Card
  Ursula K. Le Guin
  Larry Niven
  Robert A. Heinlein
  C.J. Cherryh
  David Brin
  Arthur C. Clarke
  Isaac Asimov
  John Brunner
  Jack Vance
  Philip K. Dick
  Samuel R. Delany
  Robert Silverberg
  Philip Jose Farmer
  Frederick Pohl
  Stanislaw Lem
  Poul Anderson
  Gordon R. Dickson
  Cordwainer Smith
  Walter Jon Williams
  Fritz Leiber
  Clifford D. Simak
  Harlan Ellison
  Theodore Sturgeon
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: cmeadows@nyx.cs.du.edu (Chris Meadows)
Subject: Re: Enders Trilogy by Orson Scott Card
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 92 19:11:05 GMT


What _I_ would like to know about the trilogy has to do with something
MENTIONED in SPEAKER but never touched upon in XENOCIDE.  According
to ansible news reports (or something) in the first part of SFTD, a
team of anthropologists/investigators had been dispatched on a light-
speed ship to Lusitania, but Ender was closer so he arrived first.
According to the book (which I don't have with me or I could quote
exactly) the scientists should have arrived sometime between Ender
and Val, a LONG time after the quarantine was declared.  However, THEY
WERE NEVER MENTIONED IN XENOCIDE.  What happened?  When they arrived, 
were they arrested/detained/turned away/what?  Enquiring minds wanna
know!

---Chris Meadows

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: durrell@pinball.arcade.uiowa.edu (Bryant Durrell)
Subject: Re: send
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 13:04:55 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Iowa

In article <1992Oct6.210730.22095@galileo.physics.arizona.edu> lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat) writes:
>Hrothgar shows himself to be completely out of his mind when he writes:

>>I'm (so far) futilely searching for a copy of a book called
>>"The Big U".  (the author is unknown, unfortunately.  It is a comic look at
>>life at the megaversity.  I saw a copy of the book once, over the summer, but
>>couldn't convince the owner to part with it.  If anyone out there knows of a
>>copy availible for sale, please jot off a note.

>NFW I'm parting with them.

You can't have mine either.  But it's by Neil Stephenson, who also
wrote Snow Crash (in print, selling well) and Zodiac.  Cross your
fingers -- the popularity of Snow Crash may lead to reprints...

Bryant Durrell
durrell@chop.isca.uiowa.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: akriger@hamp.hampshire.edu
Subject: <None>
Organization: Hampshire College
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 00:52:44 GMT

About two or three years (? timing) ago, Katherine Kurtz began a new
Deryni trilogy.  So far, to my knowledge, only the first book has been
published (title escapes me).  Does anyone know where the other two books
are? 

-andrew kriger
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: kasprj@isaac.its.rpi.edu (Jim Kasprzak)
Subject: Re: Wild Cards?
Reply-To: kasprj@rpi.edu
Organization: The Big Wedge 
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 12:04:06 GMT

In article <1992Oct11.014258.16266@husc3.harvard.edu>, jvessey@husc8.harvard.edu (Jonathan Vessey) writes:
|> Is anyone out there a fan of the Wild Card series of books? I've read all of
|> them with the exception of part of Aces Abroad (I read books five and six first
|> so I sort of know what happens and haven't felt like going back over it). 
|> Needless to say, I was psyched to see that the newest book in the series is
|> out a bit before I was planning on it. Has anyone read it? What did you think?
 
 I picked these books up when I moved into my new apartment (ah, the joys of
roommates with large, non-overlapping SF libraries). I read the first four,
but #5 is buried somewhere and I haven't got the energy to dig it out of the
pile.
 
 Essentially I was very impressed with the first book, and it was a long 
downhill slide from there. Volume I took us from just after the Second World
War up to the 70's or so, and its portrayal of the events of those times was
what really made the books worthwhile. I've always been a fan of alternate
history, and after _Watchmen_ introduced a bit more realism to the superhero
genre, I was glad to see some authors tackling the concept in a serious 
manner. Watching the real events of our time and how they were altered (or
failed to be altered) by the presence of "aces" and "jokers" made for an 
absorbing premise.
 
 So what happened after that? We fast-forward to the late 80's and suddenly 
everything becomes one huge superhero slugfest, just like in the comics. 
If I wanted this sort of nonsense, I'd go back to Marvel. Okay, there was 
some interesting character development in the first two books, but after 
that, I really couldn't bring myself to care about what happened to anyone
except the Great and Powerful Turtle (probably the most "human" of all the
Wild Card victims). If someone can tell me what finally happened to him, 
I'll quit looking for the fifth volume and give up on the series for good.
 
 Wild Cards was a great concept that fizzled in the long run. I reccomend
reading the first volume and quitting there. You'll save yourself time, 
money and frustration.
------------------------------------------------------------------
     __  Live from Capitaland, heart of the Empire State...
 ___/  | Jim Kasprzak, computer operator @ RPI, Troy, NY, USA
/____ *| Pro-Environment. Pro-Education. Pro-Family. Pro-Choice. 
     \_| Pro-Change. Pro-America. Pro-Clinton.
      ====  e-mail: kasprj@rpi.edu or kasprzak@mts.rpi.edu 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: jng53092@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Jon Gad)
Subject: Re: Dragonlance
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 01:34:51 GMT

bidelen@cs.few.eur.nl (Otto Delen) writes:


>I've just finished the Legends trilogy (Dragonlance), and I was
>wandering does anybody know if there is an order in those books. 
>Which trilogy should I read first, the Cronicles, Preludes, Preludes II, 
>Legends, Heroes etc..

>Thanks Otto. 
>-- 

>" The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. "

Easy.  First you read Chronicles, then you read Legends, and then you stop.
IMHO, just about everything after Legends is crap.  Worse, its SILLY crap 
that just dilutes the quality of the earlier novels.  Granted, I haven't read
ALL of the Dragonlance books out there, but the few I DID read  after Legends
and Chronicles were pretty much crap.  There are a couple of moderate to good
short stories in some of the collections, and some of my friends SWEAR that 
one or two of the others aren't so bad, but for the most part I stand by my
analysis: crap.


Jon Gad
jng53092@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: ikos@netcom.com (Ikos)
Subject: Question on Niven's "Magic Goes Away" & "Wishing Game".
Summary: Whatever happened to ...
Keywords: Missing person...
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 03:58:50 GMT


No serious spoilers present.  If you've read both stories, you'll know
whom I'm talking about.  But just in case I'll include a control-L anyways...


I've just read "The Wishing Game" from Niven's "Playgrounds".  The story
is an epilogue of "The Magic Goes Away"; it's focus is on two of the survivors
of the resurrection of Roze-Kattee.

My only problem is that I counted three people that made it through.  Will
somebody explain what happened to the other guy?

Did I miscount (in that case, don't have me as your bridge partner), or is
Niven going to leave his fate to our imaginations...

-Jeff Chan
	jeff@ikos.com	(*not* ikos@netcom.com)
	..!netcom!ikos!jeff

Warlock's real name is Skeeve...