HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: YANJUNA@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu
Subject: Re: Who killed SF???
Organization: Yale University
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 93 15:35:11 EST

In article <1993Jan7.191415.9908@news.uiowa.edu>
williams@herky.cs.uiowa.edu (Kent Williams) writes:
 
>
>I go to book stores.  I go to the library, and only rarely do I find anything
>worth buying and reading.  What is all this crap that clogs the shelves???
>
>Here is my list of suspects:
>
>All those nitwits who write endless fantasy series.
>
>Star Trek Crap.  Enough already!  They've made a frigging
>cult from a second rate space opera on TV.
>
>Fantasy Body Snatchers.  Roger Zelazny and U K Leguin used
>to write great books before they got into the fantasy dodge.  Wake up!
>
>Assembly line writers.  Especially the journeymen who they
>hire to produce more product in the style and universe of
>a famous author.
>
>Publishers who pay the big bucks for this crap.  How do they sleep at night?
>
>L. Ron Hubbard.  Excuse me, Mr. Fat Boy Cult leader, but who asked you to
>write Science Fiction again?  And isn't he DEAD??? WHY DO THEY KEEP PRINTING
>BOOKS???
>
>All of the Unicorn and fake medievalist readers who have an insatiable appetite
>for the STOOPIDIST POSSIBLE Trash.
>
>It is sad.  I can actually remember being able to WAIT IN ANTICIPATION FOR THE
>NEXT Philip K Dick to come out.  Can any claim now to be waiting for anything
>that momentous?
>--
 
  SF has just caught up with the Sturgeon's Law, that's all.
 
       Junsok Yang
From: higgins@fnalo.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Origin of term `SF' (was Re: John W. Campbell would laugh...)
Date: 5 Jan 93 16:43:42 GMT
Organization: Fermilab Grossforschungenseinrichtungen
NNTP-Posting-Host: fnalo.fnal.gov

In article <1k23VC#2Lmwcv7ghZ4TB72f2G4GkTT6=esr@snark.thyrsus.com>, esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
[stirring tribute to John Campbell deleted]
> John Campbell's vision of what "scientifiction" could become created modern
> SF --- the very *term* `SF' was his invention, displacing `scientifiction'
> as thoroughly as Campbellian writing obsolesced what had come before!

Ahem.  Who am I to dispute a lexicographer [*The New Hacker's
Dictionary*, edited by Eric S. Raymond and Guy Steele, MIT Press,
$10.95 paperback, available at fine bookstores everywhere]?  But I
fear you err.

The term "scientifiction" was introduced by Hugo Gernsback to describe
the kind of stories he published in *Amazing Stories*, the first all-SF
magazine.

The term "science fiction" was *also* coined by Hugo Gernsback a few
years later (1929? 1930?), I think in the pages of *Science Wonder
Stories*/*Air Wonder Stories*/*Wonder Stories*, after he had his first
SF magazine shot out from under him.

I think Sam Moskowitz has discussed this, and I think this is one of
the topics on which Moskowitz can be trusted.  Correct me if I'm
wrong-- especially if you can come up with an accurate citation; I'm
doing this from memory.

Once "science fiction" was in circulation, it probably didn't take
long to become "SF" (which is what appears in your passage above). 
But it's hard to believe Campbell was the first to abbreviate it!

Bill Higgins, Beam Jockey              | "Enough marshmallows
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory  | will kill you 
Bitnet:           HIGGINS@FNAL.BITNET  | if properly placed."
Internet:       HIGGINS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV  | --John Alexander, leader of
SPAN/Hepnet:           43011::HIGGINS  | "disabling technologies"
 [*Aviation Week*, 7 Dec 1992, p. 50]  | research, Los Alamos
From: chuq@Apple.COM (Crow's Friend Timmy)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Start alt.fantasy-- was Who killed SF?
Date: 11 Jan 93 04:46:39 GMT
Organization: Next Thursday A.D.

morrow@fnalo.fnal.gov (Elmo the Stunt Elk) writes:

>	Well, I disagree--

We can agree to disagree. I'll only state that if a book uses fantasy
constructs like magic, it's fantasy, unless the author decides to try to
make them SF by rationalizing them (Anne McCaffrey's attempt to rationalize
her dragons and etc come to mind. IMHO, it's still fantasy, no matter how
Annie postures, though).

>Alternate history is 
>thus, in my definition, SF

Alternate history is Alternate History. It may be marketed as SF, but that
doesn't mean that it's SF in terms of the literary structures. It could in
many cases simply be mainstream fiction with no fantasy element at all, as
in something like BRING THE JUBILEE.

Don't mistake marketing category for genre. 

>	In short, I still maintain that USENET does not need an artificial
>separation.

Agreed completely. On the other hand, you don't turn an elephant into a
camel simply by calling it so. I still claim that magic is magic, and by
definition magic is a part of fantasy, and you can't turn it inot SF simply
by changing the lines on the map.

>	I'm curious, though:  What is a non-SF alternate history, other
>than possibly Alvin Maker?

There's a lot of alternate history going on in the historical fantasy world,
where the fantasy elements are either very tenuous or completely missing.
Stuff like Judy Tarr's upcoming LORD OF TWO LANDS, or Garcia's SPIRAL DANCE,
or a lot of Morgan Llewllyn's stuff. 

My own story "'TIL DEATH DO US PART", in Tor's ALTERNATE KENNEDYS, is pure
alternate history but no way could be considered SF, since the co-star is a
succubus Marilyn Monre returning from Hell to torment Jack. Not unless you
consider demons and the like SF, of course (I don't. It's really a
horror-supernatural story with an alternate history basis).

In reality, Alternate History isn't *anything*, the way SF or Fantasy is.
It's not so much genre as a fictional context. You can use Alternate History
to write just about anything, including mainstream, SF, Fantasy, Horror,
Romance, Mystery or Western, depending on what you do WITH the AH elements.
So trying to wedge all those things into SF just because SF uses Alternate
History as a construct is an oversimplification.

-- 
            Chuq "IMHO" Von Rospach, ESD Support & Training (DAL/AUX)
                      Member, SFWA =+= Editor, OtherRealms
                chuq@apple.com | GEnie: MAC.BIGOT | ALink:CHUQ 

          I'm history! No! I'm mythology! Whatever, I'm outta here!
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: johnmc@pp711 ()
Subject: Re: Questions about Pern, _Rescue_Flight_
Organization: Motorola Land Mobile Products Sector
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 14:39:56 GMT

In article <1993Jan12.152621.20743@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>, cmeadows@nyx.cs.du.edu (Chris Meadows) writes:
> 
> A dragon's tissue is different from ours.  For example, they have
> copper-based blood while we have iron-based blood.  Fire lizards, 
> wherries, whers, and whersports presumably have the same blood types. 
> So, how can dragons (with their copper-based blood) eat herdbeasts
> (with their presumably iron-based blood), and how can humans eat
> whersports and wherries?  'Twould seem to me to be a lot of incom-
> patibility there.
> 

Ever eat lobster? They have cyanide based blood (as I remember). They use
cyanoglobin instead of hemoglobin as their bloods oxygen carrier.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------u
John McCash						 johnmc@comm.mot.com

"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine....to boldly stay where no one has stayed before"
From: mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Markus Stumptner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Review of the Gripping Hand
Date: 7 Jan 93 12:05:42 GMT
Organization: DB and ES Subdivision, TU Vienna

From article <darknite.726392445@camelot>, by darknite@camelot.bradley.edu (John S. Novak III):
> In <1ifm9gINNq8n@transfer.stratus.com> dswartz@sw.stratus.com (Dan Swartzendruber) writes:
>>My only quibble with Evelyn's review is that (at least as written), she seems to
>>have fallen into the trap many of the Heinlein bashers have in years gone by.
>>Example: author X writes about a society in which slavery is practiced, without
>>soapboxing about how evil it is; so he is accused of being a closet slaveowner,
>>nazi or worse.

Disclaimer: I've only read Mote.
 
>>                As I recall, the original book explained why women's rights had
>>taken such a beating in the second Empire - namely that regression to a more primitive
>>society made this inevitable, as women were relegated to the role of child-bearing.

I thought that was a pretty weak justification at the time I first
read Mote in God's Eye, which must have been about ten years ago.  I
did get the impression that not a lot of work had gone into the human
background for Mote and concluded they'd used what amounted to "stock
footage" for this because they wanted to concentrate on those
interesting aliens.  The description of the navy and the politics
reminded me strongly of a Hornblower novel.  The "Empire" was a
classic 1950's Space Opera background and the war against the Sauron
(or whatever they were called, it's been a few years since I last read
the book) supermen looked like a mix of Star Trek's Eugenic Wars and
WWII to me.

If they're still using the same stock footage eighteen years later
(which they apparently do), then it's not surprising that it looks
fairly dated.

> And the reason why it may have been preserved into the second
> book?  Continuity of culture, perhaps.

I'd attribute this effect simply to laziness on the part of the
authors.  Using in jokes and quoting people from the time the book is
written to make it appear up to date is simple to do but usually has
the opposite effect (like Clarke's reference to "Hofstadter-Moebius
loops" in 2010).  Note that the slave ownership defense does not
necessarily work here - where indeed is the daring speculation in
letting people smoke and drink coffee (to quote a minor detail from
the review)?  This does not give the impression of experiment, but
simply of use of a familiar, comfortable mindset so the author can get
on with the plot.

So, continuity of the culture of the book, definitely.  The culture of
the authors, possibly (which of course is what the review says).

-- 
Markus Stumptner                                mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at
University of Technology Vienna                 vexpert!mst@relay.eu.net
Paniglg. 16, A-1040 Vienna, Austria             ...mcsun!vexpert!mst
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: 1992 in Review
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 05:19:34 GMT

Dave Schaumann writes:

WSJ has a *film critic*?  I never would've guessed it...

	Really. And occasional book reviews and social commentary.
It's all hidden inside `tho.

	Keith
--

Keith Morgan kamorgan@athena.mit.edu
In the end nothing could be said of his work except that it was
preposterous and true and totally unacceptable. Edward Whittemore
From: jgreen@zeus.calpoly.edu (James Thomas Green)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Niven a misogynist?
Date: 12 Jan 93 22:00:15 GMT
Organization: California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

In article <1993Jan8.191016.23773@netcom.com> solovay@netcom.com (Andrew Solovay) writes:
>In article <9301080721.AA18439@rutgers.edu> BECKS@TAUNIVM.TAU.AC.IL (Sara Beck) writes:
>you describe. See also "Grogs" below.
>
>Kdatlyano, Tnuctipun, Outsiders, Bandersnatchi, Martians: Insufficient
>data. We don't even know that they have two sexes.
>
Bandersnatchi are axuasexual and reproduce by budding.  This is
mentioned in World of Praaves(spelling?) when Greenberg who
thinks he's Kanzol (again spelling?) and using K's memories
points out the budding organs while watching a video sent 9 LY
from Jinx of a Bandersnatchi being cut up.  



/~~~(-: James T. Green :-)~~~~(-: jgreen@eros.calpoly.edu :-)~~~\ 
|I didn't do it! Nobody saw me do it! You can't prove anything!	|
|                                   <Bart Simpson> 		| 
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.written:17543 rec.arts.sf.science:4098 sci.physics:22627 sci.skeptic:22369
From: bob@1776.COM (Robert Coe)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science,sci.physics,sci.skeptic
Subject: The "incompressible" rod
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 15:54:58 EST
Distribution: world
Organization: 1776 Enterprises, Sudbury MA

gerry@cmu.edu (Gerry Roston) writes:
> We have all (well almost all) agreed that the original question was
> silly because there is no such thing as an incompressible substance.
> But is that true?  When a star colapses and becomes a black hole, what
> is the density of the material?  Isn't this theorectically a mass of
> nuclei smushed up against ecah other?  If so, how would one compress
> this any further?  Of course, it is probably meaningless to think
> about applying a force to such an object...

Hardly meaningless, given that a black hole can presumably be a member of
an orbiting binary system.  But to me the biggest problem with the initial
assumption isn't the incompressibility of the rod, but rather that a rigid
rod a light year in length could exist at all without, for example, being
torn apart by tidal forces.  (Yes, I know that the assumption was that the
rod be remote from gravitational attractors, but a rod that long at rest in
space should see different spacetime curvature at its two ends.  Or to put
it another way, I don't think you can find a way to orient a rod that long
while pretending that its two ends are in the same reference frame.)

   ___            _                                           -  Bob
   /__) _   /    / ) _   _
(_/__) (_)_(_)  (___(_)_(/_______________________________________ bob@1776.COM
Robert K. Coe ** 14 Churchill St, Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 ** 508-443-3265
From: mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Markus Stumptner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: The Gripping Hand
Date: 8 Jan 93 09:50:21 GMT
Organization: DB and ES Subdivision, TU Vienna

From article <1993Jan8.081216.27276@netcom.com>, by dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig):
> BECKS@TAUNIVM.TAU.AC.IL (Sara Beck):
>>It also had yet another example of Niven's quite extraordinary misogyny.
>>...if EVERY alien species this writer can find in his imagination has either
>>profoundly defective females, great threats in child-bearing, or both...
 
> Many of Niven's 'known space' species have unintelligent females, true.
> It's quite a leap, though, to call Mote "another example of...extraordinary
> misogyny" because it features hermaphroditic aliens who can't control
> their population.

Which was not the argument - the argument was that there existed a
trend which Mote prolonged, not that the book alone establishes that
trend.  If somebody refuses to get up in the bus so an elderly person
can sit down, that would simply be unpolite.  If it was a Boer
activist refusing a seat to a black South African, there might be
something else behind it, even though this could happen to everybody.

Now, personally, I'm not convinced the trend she refers to in Niven's
work exists, but arguing that a book is not an outrageously obvious
example does not prove that it is no example at all.  Go dig up races
in Niven's work that dispute the trend.  I seem to remember that the
puppeteers are a counterexample.

> I have the impression that if the book had contained undotted i's you
> would have identified them as evidence of the authors' profound contempt
> for the English language.  

If Niven had been repeatedly arguing in previous books for removing
English classes from school and substituting Spanish or whatever
instead, such a conclusion might indeed be justified.  As it is, he
didn't, so your analogy does not hold, because it does not address the
question of whether there's some pattern behind the undotted i's
that's repeated in other works.

-- 
Markus Stumptner                                mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at
University of Technology Vienna                 vexpert!mst@relay.eu.net
Paniglg. 16, A-1040 Vienna, Austria             ...mcsun!vexpert!mst
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: rcharbon@athena.mit.edu (Ray Charbonneau)
Subject: Re: Review of the Gripping Hand
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 17:24:32 GMT

In article <1993Jan7.121702.743@uunet!cbmvax!xmws!kripalu>, harit@kripalu.com writes:
|> In article <1ifm9gINNq8n@transfer.stratus.com> dswartz@sw.stratus.com (Dan  
|> Swartzendruber) writes:
|> > My only quibble with Evelyn's review is that (at least as written), she seems  
|> to
|> > have fallen into the trap many of the Heinlein bashers have in years gone by.
|> > Example: author X writes about a society in which slavery is practiced,  
|> without
|> > soapboxing about how evil it is; so he is accused of being a closet  
|> slaveowner,
|> > nazi or worse.  As I recall, the original book explained why women's rights  
|> had
|> > taken such a beating in the second Empire - namely that regression to a more  
|> primitive
|> > soeciety made this inevitable, as women were relegated to the role of  
|> child-bearing.
|> > If you disagree with that thesis, we can argue about that...
|> > 
|> 
|> In theory your respect for an author's ability to write about a position not  
|> his/her own is valid.  If Heinlein had written from other perspectives I would  
|> grant you that point without question.  My problem with his books is that they  
|> reflect only one perspective on such issues.  From that I conclude they are his  
|> perspectives.
|> -- 
|> Michael Allen Latta

Michael, if you're trying to turn everything into a Heinlein flamewar, you're
going to have to do better than this.

"Heinlein, that Nazi women-hater!  Wants to rape every woman he sees, especially
the smart ones!  He's also a Facist, a cannibal, and uses only two characters! 
And he tortures his slaves!"

Hows zat?


-- 
Ray Charbonneau              | The fifth dentist makes all the money.
rcharbon@athena.mit.edu      |             -- me
MIT and the Library Systems Office are glad that I'm posting my opinions
here so that they don't have to listen to them anymore.
From: David.Dyer-bennet@f0.n2108.z0.tdkt.kksys.com (David Dyer-bennet)
Sender: FredGate@tdkt.kksys.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: John Woods Campbell
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 1993 12:04:39 -0600

 DS>  Yet when I ask a few specific questions in order to comprehand
 DS>  how the quantity of Campbell's influence turned to quality and
 DS>  singularity, the only answer I hear is "read so and so".

The best evidence I can think of on this issue of influence is the
reports of the authors so influenced.  Thus, you find yourself being
referred to various autobiographies, and to other works about the
field which cite conversations with authors on the subject.  Another
good source would be the partial collection of Campbell's letters
published some years ago; you see him talking to authors about
various stories.

I, at least, find it doubtful that you're familiar with these
sources, because I don't see how you could  say the things you have
about Campbell if you were.  Possibly you *are* familiar with them
and for some reason haven't found them convincing or believable, I
suppose, but in that case I'd say it's *your* job to convince *us*
that the sources or conclusions are wrong.

Have you read Asimov's autobiography, Fred Pohl's _The Way the Future
Was_, Damon Knight's _The Futurians_, Sam Moskowitz's book whose name
escapes me right now, and the published collection of Campbell's
letters?  Have you read Heinlein's _Grumbles from the Grave_?  These
sources are where I've obtained the information that has formed or
supported my view of Campbell.

I consider Campbell a rather equivocal character.  He seems to have
been well loved and well hated.  He certainly loved to argue.  He
seems to have believed a number of crackpot notions (I'm trying to
allow for his love of controversy here; he seems, to me, to actually
have *believed* some of the crackpot notions).  But I don't have any
doubt about his pivotal role in SF history.  

Possibly, if he hadn't been there, another would have played the same
role.  This is a major, and unresolvable, argument in historical
theory that I'm not prepared to pursue, personally.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: smb@research.att.com (Steven Bellovin)
Subject: Re: ``The Gripping Hand'' is here!
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 02:55:54 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories

In article <1993Jan5.180154.1@fnalo.fnal.gov>, higgins@fnalo.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:
> In article <1993Jan1.040453.2573@ulysses.att.com>, smb@research.att.com (Steven Bellovin) writes:
> > I didn't see if there were any other copies, but I didn't look very
> > hard; I simply grabbed my trophy and held on to it, *hard*.  
> 
> Prepare to be disappointed.  I spoke this weekend with someone who was
> asked to review it.  She found it barely worth reading.  Then she went
> back to *Mote* and re-read it.  Yup, it was a really good SF novel. 
> Nothing wrong with her-- it's just that *The Gripping Hand* was dull
> and disappointing.
> 
> "You mean," I said, saddened but not really surprised, "the heroes of
> our youth have failed to deliver?"
> 
> The ever-aphoristic Barry Gehm overheard this conversation. 
> 
> "The heroes of our youth," he intoned, "have fyunch-clicks of clay."

Yup -- I was indeed disappointed.  I don't agree that it was ``barely
worth reading''; I suspect that that was a reaction to overly-high
expectation.  I've been meaning to write a review for the net, but
it's been hard to summon the energy.  I'll leave y'all with two tidbits
for now.  First, the gimmick by which the blockade is broken is very
much non-obvious, and mostly legitimate.  I was quite impressed.
Second, when I was ~250 pages into the book (out of 400), I started
muttering ``there's not enough time left in the book to resolve
everything''.  I was right -- can you spell ``threequel?''  (Can I?)

Oh yes -- in the years since Mote, the Second Empire's technology
has improved a great deal.  They now have voice-operated computers
and public-key cryptography.  Glad they've made so much progress...
(Yah, I know -- if Niven and Pournelle knew about the latter
when Mote was written, it was because someone at NSA spilled some
top-secret information; Diffie and Hellman hadn't (re-)invented it
yet.  But why mention it at all, then?  That's just bad craftsmanship.)


		--Steve Bellovin
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: pciszek@nyx.cs.du.edu (Paul Ciszek)
Subject: _Microcosmic Tales_ same as _100 Great SF Short-Short Stories_?
Keywords: Asimov, 100 short-short stories
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 03:21:24 GMT

ekho@cybernet.cse.fau.edu (amanda rothman) writes:

>  The book you are speaking of is titled "Microcosmic Tales", edited by 
>Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander.  And it says 
>"100 _Wondrous_ Science Fiction Short-Short Stories".  ;)  A perfect
>reason to buy it, as stories this short (1-5 pgs) are quite often well 
>worth it, especially the ones I've found by Issac Asimov.  Enjoy!

The book I saw a few years back was definately NOT titled _Microcosmic Tales_.
However, it is quite possible that it was repackaged as such in a fit of
Asimovian necrophilia on the part of some publisher.  Does anyone know if
the two books are distinct or not?


Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written