ARPAVAX:UNKNOWN:sf-lovers (09/12/82)
>From SFL@SRI-CSL Sat Sep 11 00:26:58 1982
SF-LOVERS Digest Thursday, 19 Aug 1982 Volume 6 : Issue 44
Today's Topics:
SF Books - Query Answered & The Mathenauts &
Ossian's Ride & Little,Big & The Elfin Ship,
SF Movies - Destination Moon & ET: The Extra-Terrestrial,
SF Music - Twilight Zone, SF TV - Night Gallery & HHGttG & Dr Who,
Spoiler - ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 16 Aug 82 16:14:58-EDT (Mon)
From: Webber.umcp-cs at UDel-Relay
Subject: The Mathenauts
The story being sought is
The Mathenauts by Norman Kagan
it appeared in IF:Worlds of SF July 1964 (and also in one of J.
Merrill's anthologies)
Certainly to be recommended for anyone who thinks that reality is for
people who can't handle pure mathematics.
----------------------- BOB
------------------------------
Date: 18 Aug 1982 1725-EDT
From: DAVID I. LEWIN <LEWIN at CMU-20C>
Subject: here's the plot...
The Fred Hoyle story in which information sent from another star is
used by earth humans to build a device is "Ossians's Ride". In this
Eire becomes the leading technological country through this knowledge.
Also, a character is threatened as follows: he will be fed boron and
exposed to a fast neutron beam.
------------------------------
Date: 18 Aug 1982 at 1638-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11
Subject: Hoyle, ANDROMEDA, OSSIAN'S RIDE, scientific elites
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ANDROMEDA, etc. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yes, A FOR ANDROMEDA and its sequel ANDROMEDA BREAKTHROUGH were by Sir
Fred Hoyle with a collaborator, but it was John Elliot, not his son
Geoffrey Hoyle. Tho many people know Hoyle wrote these, surprisingly
few realize that they are not truly original but are novelizations of
a British TV series. These books also seem to have started Hoyle off
on a spate of plots involving a hero enamored of alien personae in
beautiful female human bodies.
One of those, Hoyle's OSSIAN'S RIDE, is one of my favorite "chase"-
type sf novels. Nicholls' ENC. OF S/F says that it is "interesting
for the aggressively political stance taken by FH, who believes that
science-educated people are more fit to govern than arts-educated
people -- not just that numeracy is as important as literacy, but
that, because a numerate training is less tied up with emotional
questions than a literate training, it would give a necessary coolness
of judgment to the ruling classes". Hmmmmmmm...
I suspect Hoyle's stance is culturally conditioned. From what I have
seen of British-type educational systems, even persons who have been
channeled into "numerate training" have already had "literate
training" comparable (or superior) to the bulk of persons with
American B.A.'s in the arts/humanities. (If nothing else, they have
been forced through the early years in their system to write English
clearly-- or fail their exams, regardless of the subject!)
So Hoyle's science-educated people are both "numerate" AND literate.
In a way, in his British science-educated-people he has something
approaching the best of "the two cultures". The proportion of
recipients of American B.S.'s who would be comparable is small. I
wouldn't consider the bulk of the people with American B.S degrees any
different in capability to govern than those with the B.A..
------------------------------
Date: 28 Jul 1982 16:19:18-EDT
From: csin!cjh at CCA-UNIX
Subject: LITTLE, BIG
Some of you will doubtless call me a lowbrow for this, but I was
not particularly enchanted by LITTLE, BIG; I found parts intriguing
and much of it irretrievably precious. There really isn't a plot; it's
chunks of the lives of several people, most of them related, with
occasional happenings that require supernatural explanations.
------------------------------
Date: 13 Aug 1982 1437-EDT
From: STILLMAN.SHERMAN at RUTGERS
Subject: Lousy new releases - is there an end in sight??
Has anyone else noticed that the latest releases in SF and F books
are really lousy??! And I think I'm being kind...
Whatever you do, stay away from "The Elfin Ship", a real boring
novel by James P. Babbylock (spelling approx.). Its long, tedious, and
goes nowhere. Apparently James thinks that you can hook a reader
simply by introducing cute characters and villains. WRONG! This is
basically a 15 page short story which has been fed so much extraneous
garbage that it has expanded into something obscene.
The basic story is that a 'cheeser' has to bring some of his goods
over to the dwarves so they can trade for honeycakes and elfin toys.
Of course no book would be complete w/out an almost deadly menace, and
this element is certainly used (poorly, mind you). So the big cheese
takes off down the river, and nothing exciting happens for the next
300 odd pages. If you have to read something stay away from this and
look for new traffic signs.
*Steve Sherman*
------------------------------
Date: 18 Aug 1982 0849-PDT
From: Griffin at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Technical advisor "Destination Moon"
A friend of mine was looking over an old issue which stated that
Heinlein was the technical advisor for the movie "Destination Moon".
He's almost positive that it was not Heinlein, but WILLY LEY, the
world-famous aviator and rocket pioneer who died in a plane crash.
KG
------------------------------
Date: 18 Aug 1982 0810-EDT
From: DEVON at MIT-DMS (Devon S. McCullough)
Subject: Twilight Zone
Where [in Cambridge/Boston area pre: DEVON at MIT-DMS (Devon S. McCullough)
Subject: Twilight Zone
Where [in Cambridge/Boston area preferably] should I look to find the
score for the TZ theme, and the letters "Twilight Zone" in the exact
visual font used for the show? The purpose is to digitize both, and
have a pop-up window appear shortly before 11pm on my screen, as a
reminder.
------------------------------
Date: 18 Aug 1982 0229-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Night Gallery
I recently saw an old favorite Night Gallery epsiode, and noticed who
directed it. The episode is the one where a tyranical rich blind
woman blackmails a doctor into grafting the optic nerves from a
desparate man onto her eyes, even though she knows that she will only
gain 12 hours of sight. She feels that 12 hours is too precious to
pass up. The night of the operation, she peals off the bandages and
sees for the first time. But then the light goes away. She seems to
be blind again.... I won't spoil the ending in case anyone hasn't
seen it.
The director was Steven Spielberg, which didn't suprise me at all once
I looked at the interplay of light and darkness, the fuzzy soft
lighting at points, and the good buildup of suspense. Two questions;
What other semi-obscure things has he directed, and where did he get
his mania about soft fuzzy lighting?
Dan (dolata@sumex-aim)
------------------------------
Date: 18 Aug 1982 1049-EDT
From: Larry Seiler <SEILER at MIT-XX>
Subject: WGBH Programming
The Boston public TV station has been announcing on-air that they will
be showing BOTH Hitch-Hiker's Guide and a new season of Dr. Who this
fall. (These announcements are made during the evening pledge period,
right after Dr. Who gets over). They suggest that if you are happy
about this, you might send them a check...
Larry
------------------------------
Date: Thursday, August 19, 1982 1:54AM
From: Jim McGrath (The Moderator) <SFL at SRI-CSL>
Subject: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!
The last three messages in this digest discuss some plot details in
the movie ET: The Extra-Terrestrial. Some readers may not wish to
read on.
------------------------------
Date: Tuesday, 10 August 1982 13:06-PDT
From: Jonathan Alan Solomon <JSol at USC-ECLC>
Subject: E. T.!!
Um, I finally saw it (lines got so bad in Hollywood that you had to
stand in line 3 hours to buy a ticket 7 days in advance and stand in
another 3 hour line to see the show a week later) when it opened in
WestWood; and was amazed at how easily I got emotionally involved in
the story. Spielberg (did I spell it right?) sure knows how to
captivate his audience.
I did see a flaw; in the bicycle chase scene, two police cars were
chasing the kids into a construction site, the kids turned a corner
around a building and Eliot must have taken it too steep, and fell
over, causing E. T. to tumble out of the basket and almost collide
with one of the other bikes (not to mention the cop cars which slowed
down so as to avoid hitting them, nice guys). Then a split second
later they were on their way, it just didn't look like it was
*supposed* to be that way.
Oh well, what a nit. It was truly a great movie. I hope we get a
sequel out of it.
"I will be right here".
--JSol
------------------------------
Date: 6 Aug 1982 0311-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Medics 'last gasp' efforts
If I came upon an alien who was GOING TO DIE without assistance, and I
was the only help available, I would apply whatever techniques I could
to try to save it. Sure, there is a 99%+ chance that adrenalin will
not help it, and a good chance that it will harm it, but it is the
only thing that they had (other than lots of ignorance). Better to
use something that has a slim slim slim chance of helping, than to use
nothing. It is possible that Botulinus Toxin would do better, but
given that these men didn't have information, they did the best they
could.
------------------------------
Date: 8 Aug 1982 13:57:46-PDT
From: rabbit!xchar at Berkeley
Subject: E.T. phone home
WARNING: SPOILER! : The following article discusses details of the
construction and operation of the long distance communication
device in the movie *E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial*. Those
readers who prefer to consider the communicator as just a
hokey fake may not wish to read on.
Reprinted, with permission, from
*Bell Labs News*, August 2, 1982, Vol. 22, No. 33, p. 1-2.
Bell Labs Henry Feinberg
Meet the man who helped E.T. 'phone home'
Millions of movie-goers this summer are seeing an ingenious
device used to make a long, *long* distance call. The movie is *E.T.,
the Extra-Terrestrial*. The device is a whimsically Rube
Goldbergesque microwave system. And if you're willing to wait out the
rather lengthy credits at the end of the picture, you'll see the name
of the communicator's designer, Henry Feinberg.
Feinberg was working in the corporate exhibits group at Short
Hills last spring when director Steven Spielberg asked Bell Labs for
help in finding someone to create the "communicator."
"I was delighted, just delighted," Feinberg said. "It was right
up my alley."
The communicator is critical to the movie's plot. A homesick
extraterrestrial, or E.T., is stranded on Earth. While watching TV in
the suburbs, a "Reach Out and Touch Someone" commercial inspires him
to try to "phone home." With the help of a 10-year-old Earthling,
E.T. builds a communicator from found objects: a golf umbrella, a
coat hanger, a coffee can and some electronic toys. Then he beams his
signal into space, hoping his friends will pick it up and come back
for him.
"I had three criteria for the communicator," Feinberg said. "It
had to be plausible; it had to be made of everyday materials; and as
many of those materials as possible had to be within a 10-year-old's
frame of reference."
Feinberg built the device in his spare time, amid the clutter of
other hobbies in his Manhattan apartment.
He started by rewiring a Texas Instruments "Speak and Spell"
calculator, to disply a "new alphabet" for E.T. He then ran wires
from each button on the keyboard to a row of bobby pins fastened to
the dowel of a wooden coat hanger. The hanger was suspended over the
turntable of a children's phonograph.
Feinberg painted a 10" circular sawblade ("the paint acts as an
insulator," he explained) and put it on the turntable. Then he
carefully scraped the paint from some areas of the disk so that when
it revolves, selected bobby pins make electrical contact with the
exposed metal, thus activating the appropriate buttons on the "Speak
and Spell."
In the movie, the communicator is powered by the wind. A string
is tied between a tree branch and a ratchet made from a knife and
fork. As the wind moves the branch, the string pulls the ratchet and
the fork moves the sawblade, tooth by tooth.
Feinberg acoustically coupled a toy CB walkie-talkie to the
speaker in the "Speak and Spell" to bring the signal to the
transmitter. The transmitter uses the UHF tuner from a television set
as a frequency multiplier, a coffee can as a microwave resonator, a
funnel as waveguide, and a golf umbrella lined with aluminum foil as a
parabolic antenna to beam E.T.'s call home.
Feinberg hand-carried the device to the film studio in
California. "I took a few days of vacation to help out on the set,"
he said. "It was hard, intense work--12 hours a day--but a whole lot
of fun."
Did the device work for E.T. and bring his friends back to rescue
him? Ask any kid.
It worked for Feinberg, right up to the point of transmission.
And even that, he notes, looks plausible.
"Cartoons use the concept of the *plausible impossible*," he
said. "A character gets chased off a cliff and stays in mid-air for a
few seconds. It's only when he looks down that he starts to fall.
E.T.'s communicator represents what I call the *plausible possible*.
I wanted some of my Bell Labs friends to look at it and say, 'Darned
if it couldn't work!'"
As Feinberg said, the communicator project was right up his
alley. For over twenty years, he has made a career of doing what he
likes best, "interpreting science for the public."
He started out in the late 1950s as a production assistant on the
*Mr. Wizard* TV series, devising ways to demonstrate scientific
principles with common, household objects. Then he joined Bell Labs,
working on films, displays, exhibits and science demonstrations.
Currently he is on assignment at AT&T in New York, working on the
Bell System exhibits for Walt Disney's new theme park, EPCOT
(Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow). And he's having a
ball.ARPAVAX:UNKNOWN:sf-lovers (09/12/82)
>From SFL@SRI-CSL Sat Sep 11 00:26:58 1982
SF-LOVERS Digest Thursday, 19 Aug 1982 Volume 6 : Issue 44
Today's Topics:
SF Books - Query Answered & The Mathenauts &
Ossian's Ride & Little,Big & The Elfin Ship,
SF Movies - Destination Moon & ET: The Extra-Terrestrial,
SF Music - Twilight Zone, SF TV - Night Gallery & HHGttG & Dr Who,
Spoiler - ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 16 Aug 82 16:14:58-EDT (Mon)
From: Webber.umcp-cs at UDel-Relay
Subject: The Mathenauts
The story being sought is
The Mathenauts by Norman Kagan
it appeared in IF:Worlds of SF July 1964 (and also in one of J.
Merrill's anthologies)
Certainly to be recommended for anyone who thinks that reality is for
people who can't handle pure mathematics.
----------------------- BOB
------------------------------
Date: 18 Aug 1982 1725-EDT
From: DAVID I. LEWIN <LEWIN at CMU-20C>
Subject: here's the plot...
The Fred Hoyle story in which information sent from another star is
used by earth humans to build a device is "Ossians's Ride". In this
Eire becomes the leading technological country through this knowledge.
Also, a character is threatened as follows: he will be fed boron and
exposed to a fast neutron beam.
------------------------------
Date: 18 Aug 1982 at 1638-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11
Subject: Hoyle, ANDROMEDA, OSSIAN'S RIDE, scientific elites
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ANDROMEDA, etc. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yes, A FOR ANDROMEDA and its sequel ANDROMEDA BREAKTHROUGH were by Sir
Fred Hoyle with a collaborator, but it was John Elliot, not his son
Geoffrey Hoyle. Tho many people know Hoyle wrote these, surprisingly
few realize that they are not truly original but are novelizations of
a British TV series. These books also seem to have started Hoyle off
on a spate of plots involving a hero enamored of alien personae in
beautiful female human bodies.
One of those, Hoyle's OSSIAN'S RIDE, is one of my favorite "chase"-
type sf novels. Nicholls' ENC. OF S/F says that it is "interesting
for the aggressively political stance taken by FH, who believes that
science-educated people are more fit to govern than arts-educated
people -- not just that numeracy is as important as literacy, but
that, because a numerate training is less tied up with emotional
questions than a literate training, it would give a necessary coolness
of judgment to the ruling classes". Hmmmmmmm...
I suspect Hoyle's stance is culturally conditioned. From what I have
seen of British-type educational systems, even persons who have been
channeled into "numerate training" have already had "literate
training" comparable (or superior) to the bulk of persons with
American B.A.'s in the arts/humanities. (If nothing else, they have
been forced through the early years in their system to write English
clearly-- or fail their exams, regardless of the subject!)
So Hoyle's science-educated people are both "numerate" AND literate.
In a way, in his British science-educated-people he has something
approaching the best of "the two cultures". The proportion of
recipients of American B.S.'s who would be comparable is small. I
wouldn't consider the bulk of the people with American B.S degrees any
different in capability to govern than those with the B.A..
------------------------------
Date: 28 Jul 1982 16:19:18-EDT
From: csin!cjh at CCA-UNIX
Subject: LITTLE, BIG
Some of you will doubtless call me a lowbrow for this, but I was
not particularly enchanted by LITTLE, BIG; I found parts intriguing
and much of it irretrievably precious. There really isn't a plot; it's
chunks of the lives of several people, most of them related, with
occasional happenings that require supernatural explanations.
------------------------------
Date: 13 Aug 1982 1437-EDT
From: STILLMAN.SHERMAN at RUTGERS
Subject: Lousy new releases - is there an end in sight??
Has anyone else noticed that the latest releases in SF and F books
are really lousy??! And I think I'm being kind...
Whatever you do, stay away from "The Elfin Ship", a real boring
novel by James P. Babbylock (spelling approx.). Its long, tedious, and
goes nowhere. Apparently James thinks that you can hook a reader
simply by introducing cute characters and villains. WRONG! This is
basically a 15 page short story which has been fed so much extraneous
garbage that it has expanded into something obscene.
The basic story is that a 'cheeser' has to bring some of his goods
over to the dwarves so they can trade for honeycakes and elfin toys.
Of course no book would be complete w/out an almost deadly menace, and
this element is certainly used (poorly, mind you). So the big cheese
takes off down the river, and nothing exciting happens for the next
300 odd pages. If you have to read something stay away from this and
look for new traffic signs.
*Steve Sherman*
------------------------------
Date: 18 Aug 1982 0849-PDT
From: Griffin at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Technical advisor "Destination Moon"
A friend of mine was looking over an old issue which stated that
Heinlein was the technical advisor for the movie "Destination Moon".
He's almost positive that it was not Heinlein, but WILLY LEY, the
world-famous aviator and rocket pioneer who died in a plane crash.
KG
------------------------------
Date: 18 Aug 1982 0810-EDT
From: DEVON at MIT-DMS (Devon S. McCullough)
Subject: Twilight Zone
Where [in Cambridge/Boston area preferably] should I look to find the
score for the TZ theme, and the letters "Twilight Zone" in the exact
visual font used for the show? The purpose is to digitize both, and
have a pop-up window appear shortly before 11pm on my screen, as a
reminder.
------------------------------
Date: 18 Aug 1982 0229-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Night Gallery
I recently saw an old favorite Night Gallery epsiode, and noticed who
directed it. The episode is the one where a tyranical rich blind
woman blackmails a doctor into grafting the optic nerves from a
desparate man onto her eyes, even though she knows that she will only
gain 12 hours of sight. She feels that 12 hours is too precious to
pass up. The night of the operation, she peals off the bandages and
sees for the first time. But then the light goes away. She seems to
be blind again.... I won't spoil the ending in case anyone hasn't
seen it.
The director was Steven Spielberg, which didn't suprise me at all once
I looked at the interplay of light and darkness, the fuzzy soft
lighting at points, and the good buildup of suspense. Two questions;
What other semi-obscure things has he directed, and where did he get
his mania about soft fuzzy lighting?
Dan (dolata@sumex-aim)
------------------------------
Date: 18 Aug 1982 1049-EDT
From: Larry Seiler <SEILER at MIT-XX>
Subject: WGBH Programming
The Boston public TV station has been announcing on-air that they will
be showing BOTH Hitch-Hiker's Guide and a new season of Dr. Who this
fall. (These announcements are made during the evening pledge period,
right after Dr. Who gets over). They suggest that if you are happy
about this, you might send them a check...
Larry
------------------------------
Date: Thursday, August 19, 1982 1:54AM
From: Jim McGrath (The Moderator) <SFL at SRI-CSL>
Subject: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!
The last three messages in this digest discuss some plot details in
the movie ET: The Extra-Terrestrial. Some readers may not wish to
read on.
------------------------------
Date: Tuesday, 10 August 1982 13:06-PDT
From: Jonathan Alan Solomon <JSol at USC-ECLC>
Subject: E. T.!!
Um, I finally saw it (lines got so bad in Hollywood that you had to
stand in line 3 hours to buy a ticket 7 days in advance and stand in
another 3 hour line to see the show a week later) when it opened in
WestWood; and was amazed at how easily I got emotionally involved in
the story. Spielberg (did I spell it right?) sure knows how to
captivate his audience.
I did see a flaw; in the bicycle chase scene, two police cars were
chasing the kids into a construction site, the kids turned a corner
around a building and Eliot must have taken it too steep, and fell
over, causing E. T. to tumble out of the basket and almost collide
with one of the other bikes (not to mention the cop cars which slowed
down so as to avoid hitting them, nice guys). Then a split second
later they were on their way, it just didn't look like it was
*supposed* to be that way.
Oh well, what a nit. It was truly a great movie. I hope we get a
sequel out of it.
"I will be right here".
--JSol
------------------------------
Date: 6 Aug 1982 0311-PDT
From: Dolata at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Medics 'last gasp' efforts
If I came upon an alien who was GOING TO DIE without assistance, and I
was the only help available, I would apply whatever techniques I could
to try to save it. Sure, there is a 99%+ chance that adrenalin will
not help it, and a good chance that it will harm it, but it is the
only thing that they had (other than lots of ignorance). Better to
use something that has a slim slim slim chance of helping, than to use
nothing. It is possible that Botulinus Toxin would do better, but
given that these men didn't have information, they did the best they
could.
------------------------------
Date: 8 Aug 1982 13:57:46-PDT
From: rabbit!xchar at Berkeley
Subject: E.T. phone home
WARNING: SPOILER! : The following article discusses details of the
construction and operation of the long distance communication
device in the movie *E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial*. Those
readers who prefer to consider the communicator as just a
hokey fake may not wish to read on.
Reprinted, with permission, from
*Bell Labs News*, August 2, 1982, Vol. 22, No. 33, p. 1-2.
Bell Labs Henry Feinberg
Meet the man who helped E.T. 'phone home'
Millions of movie-goers this summer are seeing an ingenious
device used to make a long, *long* distance call. The movie is *E.T.,
the Extra-Terrestrial*. The device is a whimsically Rube
Goldbergesque microwave system. And if you're willing to wait out the
rather lengthy credits at the end of the picture, you'll see the name
of the communicator's designer, Henry Feinberg.
Feinberg was working in the corporate exhibits group at Short
Hills last spring when director Steven Spielberg asked Bell Labs for
help in finding someone to create the "communicator."
"I was delighted, just delighted," Feinberg said. "It was right
up my alley."
The communicator is critical to the movie's plot. A homesick
extraterrestrial, or E.T., is stranded on Earth. While watching TV in
the suburbs, a "Reach Out and Touch Someone" commercial inspires him
to try to "phone home." With the help of a 10-year-old Earthling,
E.T. builds a communicator from found objects: a golf umbrella, a
coat hanger, a coffee can and some electronic toys. Then he beams his
signal into space, hoping his friends will pick it up and come back
for him.
"I had three criteria for the communicator," Feinberg said. "It
had to be plausible; it had to be made of everyday materials; and as
many of those materials as possible had to be within a 10-year-old's
frame of reference."
Feinberg built the device in his spare time, amid the clutter of
other hobbies in his Manhattan apartment.
He started by rewiring a Texas Instruments "Speak and Spell"
calculator, to disply a "new alphabet" for E.T. He then ran wires
from each button on the keyboard to a row of bobby pins fastened to
the dowel of a wooden coat hanger. The hanger was suspended over the
turntable of a children's phonograph.
Feinberg painted a 10" circular sawblade ("the paint acts as an
insulator," he explained) and put it on the turntable. Then he
carefully scraped the paint from some areas of the disk so that when
it revolves, selected bobby pins make electrical contact with the
exposed metal, thus activating the appropriate buttons on the "Speak
and Spell."
In the movie, the communicator is powered by the wind. A string
is tied between a tree branch and a ratchet made from a knife and
fork. As the wind moves the branch, the string pulls the ratchet and
the fork moves the sawblade, tooth by tooth.
Feinberg acoustically coupled a toy CB walkie-talkie to the
speaker in the "Speak and Spell" to bring the signal to the
transmitter. The transmitter uses the UHF tuner from a television set
as a frequency multiplier, a coffee can as a microwave resonator, a
funnel as waveguide, and a golf umbrella lined with aluminum foil as a
parabolic antenna to beam E.T.'s call home.
Feinberg hand-carried the device to the film studio in
California. "I took a few days of vacation to help out on the set,"
he said. "It was hard, intense work--12 hours a day--but a whole lot
of fun."
Did the device work for E.T. and bring his friends back to rescue
him? Ask any kid.
It worked for Feinberg, right up to the point of transmission.
And even that, he notes, looks plausible.
"Cartoons use the concept of the *plausible impossible*," he
said. "A character gets chased off a cliff and stays in mid-air for a
few seconds. It's only when he looks down that he starts to fall.
E.T.'s communicator represents what I call the *plausible possible*.
I wanted some of my Bell Labs friends to look at it and say, 'Darned
if it couldn't work!'"
As Feinberg said, the communicator project was right up his
alley. For over twenty years, he has made a career of doing what he
likes best, "interpreting science for the public."
He started out in the late 1950s as a production assistant on the
*Mr. Wizard* TV series, devising ways to demonstrate scientific
principles with common, household objects. Then he joined Bell Labs,
working on films, displays, exhibits and science demonstrations.
Currently he is on assignment at AT&T in New York, working on the
Bell System exhibits for Walt Disney's new theme park, EPCOT
(Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow). And he's having a
ball.
"I'm a kid at heart," he admits. "Absolutely!"
------------------------------
End of SF-LOVERS Digest
***********************