sf-lovers (07/28/82)
>From JPM@MIT-AI Wed Jul 28 06:23:09 1982
SF-LOVERS Digest Saturday, 24 Jul 1982 Volume 6 : Issue 24
Today's Topics:
SF Books - "True Names" & "Nightflyer" & Heavenly Breakfast &
Star Colony & Roderick & The Jade Enchantress &
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial & The Wrath of Khan,
SF TV - HHGttG, SF Music - Blade Runner,
SF Movies - TRON & Das Boot, Random Topics - American Films,
SF Topics - Stine Query, Humor - Genderless Video Games
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 23 Jul 1982 1122-EDT
From: BLACKWELL at CMU-20C
Subject: True Names
Indeed a hard book to find, but well worth the trouble of looking for
it. It is realy the second novella in a two novella set - Dell SF
Binary Star #5. The two stories are ``Nightflyer'' by George R. R.
Martin, and ``True Names'' by Verner Vinge. I've seen the book filed
under both names, so be sure to look carefully.
If you are in Berkeley, a SF/Fantasy store called `Dark Carnival' on
Telegraph had several copies last time I checked...
-mike-
------------------------------
Date: 27 July 1982 07:58 mst
From: Lippard at PCO-MULTICS (James J. Lippard)
Reply-to: Lippard%PCO-Multics at MIT-MULTICS
Subject: Samuel R. Delany
A book I would recommend for understanding Delany is "Heavenly
Breakfast", by Delany. It is an essay about time he spent in a
commune, and by reading it you can see where he got a lot of material
for "Dhalgren".
------------------------------
Date: Sunday, 25 Jul 1982 17:30-PDT
From: jim at RAND-UNIX
Subject: Star Colony, by Keith Laumer
Mini-Review: A disappointment to a long-standing Laumer fan.
Review: "Aha!" I said. At long last a new Laumer book. Both types
of Laumers are always quite good: the Retief books (in small or
medium doses) are hilarious, and the action books, where we (and
probably Laumer) don't (doesn't) know where the books are going until
they get there.
Star Colony is neither type. It's an attempt at something sort of
serious, with a disjointed plot and dull characters. When I was 1/4
of the way through I would have given up for any random author, but I
plugged through merely out of respect for all the other Laumer books
that I like. Occasionally there is a flash of Retief-like humor, or a
run of action, but even they seem out of place in the mostly serious
treatment of unlikely colonists and more unlikely intelligent aliens.
Star Colony is the first of a three-book series about one of the first
colonies from Earth, planted on an Earth-like planet and then
forgotten while Earth goes through the usual problems. The story
deals with initializing the colony and the experiences of several
groups of early colonists. The dust jacket says this book is the
result of a four-year effort. I wish he had concentrated on more
Imperium, Lafayette O'Leary, or something else.
Hardbound $15.95, St. Martin's Press, (c) 1981.
------------------------------
Date: 24 Jul 1982 16:19:19-PDT
From: decvax!duke!uok!uokvax!jejones at Berkeley
Subject: Roderick
Gee, I'd think for sure that there was some discussion of John
Sladek's *Roderick, or the Education of a Young Robot* in SF-LOVERS.
Perhaps it's in an archive somewhere?
(I enjoyed it thoroughly--the idea of all those school administrators,
Herberts though they might be, not realizing Roderick was *not* human,
is a tad much, but think of it as like the convention of ignoring the
puppeteers in bunraku. In a sentence, the same kind of madness,
perhaps tempered, that *The Mueller-Fokker Effect* had, plus a nifty
portrayal of Roderick, who could definitely pass the Turing test. So
when will we see parts two and three?)
James Jones
(duke!uok!uokvax!jejones)
------------------------------
Date: 25 Jul 82 12:44-PDT
From: mclure at SRI-UNIX
Subject: SF column
SCIENCE FICTION
By Roland J. Green
(c) 1982 Chicago Sun-Times (Field News Service)
John Sladek's ''Roderick'' (TimescapePocket Books, $2.75
paperback) reminded me very much of an electronic-age version of
Voltaire's ''Candide.'' The product of an experiment in artificial
intelligence at a second-rate university, Roderick the Robot is farmed
out for ''adoption'' when the grant that financed his creation is cut
off. His adventures on his way to his new family, in school and in
his frequent wanderings give him a robot's-eye view of modern society.
They give Sladek an ideal vehicle for satire.
Novel-length satires frequently don't work well as stories,
however successful the satire may be. Sladek, however, knows the
novelist's craft - just as well, because this is the first book of yet
another trilogy. The pacing is brisk and the narrative is as easy to
follow as can reasonably be expected with such a large cast of
characters and an essentially episodic structure.
Sladek seems to be well-informed about most of the things he
satirizes - or at least capable of drawing a convincing and consistent
picture of them. He hits gypsies, university politics, the CIA, art
critics, public education, the Catholic Church, visiting Oriental
potentates, television (it gives Roderick his initial notions about
how the world is run), the counterculture and much else. He darts from
one target on this list to the next, always with stiletto in hand.
Occasionally Sladek lets his dislike - notably of the Catholic
Church - carry him into producing mindlessly savage caricatures. Most
of the time, though, he shows a mastery of both the novel and satire,
which promises well for the ''Roderick the Robot'' trilogy.
In E. Hoffman Price's graceful fantasy ''The Jade Enchantress''
(Del ReyBallatine, $2.75 paperback), a minor Chinese goddess begins
the story by seeking a mortal lover, a shrewd young farmer. Price
tells what follows from this with wit, sympathy for all of his large
cast of characters, a profound knowledge of Tang Dynasty China that
never slows the brisk pacing and a delightful savoring of Chinese
philosophy, sexual mores, magic and cuisine. Along with Price's ''The
Devil Wives of Li Fong'' (also a Ballatine paperback), this book
recalls the Judge Dee mysteries of Robert Van Gulik - an
extraordinarily effective use of another time and culture to bring a
new dimension to a genre.
The novelization of a motion picture screenplay seldom produces a
worthwhile book. Both the raw material and the author are often less
than outstanding, entirely apart from the problems of translating a
story from one medium to another. However, two of this summer's most
popular science fiction films have given two excellent writers
material for a pair of thoroughly agreeable novels.
William Kotzwinkle's ''E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial''
(BerkleyPutnam, $12.95 hardcover, $2.75 paperback) uses the author's
gift for surrealism and fantasy on a screenplay ideally suited for it.
Kotzwinkle faithfully re-creates the contrast between the marooned
alien scientist with his almost magical powers and the classically
conventional suburb where he lands. He also does excellent work with
the three main characters - the E.T., the boy who befriends him and
the boy's mother.
Vonda McIntyre's ''The Wrath of Khan'' (TimescapePocket Books,
$2.95) does equal justice to an entirely different sort of raw
material - the second ''Star Trek'' novel. She has wit, good pacing, a
sound grasp of her characters (including some like Lt. Saavik, whom
the movie leaves poorly defined) and an entirely adequate
understanding of military institutions. She even tackles with some
success the various scientific improbabilities of the script, notably
the Genesis effect.
------------------------------
Date: 27 July 1982 08:52-PDT (Tuesday)
From: KING at KESTREL
Subject: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
It's being aired 9:00 PM on channel 60 on Wednesdays.
------------------------------
Date: 27 Jul 1982 1545-EDT
From: Rich Schneider <ECG.RICH at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: HHGttG
I talked to someone in the programming office of WGBH (Boston PBS)
last Friday. They have no current plans of airing HHGttH, gasp
*sigh*. Let's start swamping them with letters.
------------------------------
Date: 25 Jul 1982 at 1608-CDT
From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11
Subject: No BLADERUNNER soundtrack album?
According to the local record store, there isn't going to be any
soundtrack record of the BLADERUNNER music. With all the hype the
movie got, and Vangelis being pretty hot property at present, this
seems strange. Has anybody heard anything to the contrary, or any
reason why such a decision might have been made?
John M. (via HJJH at UTEXAS-11)
------------------------------
Date: 17 July 1982 01:26-EDT (Saturday)
From: Robert A. Carter <CARTER at RUTGERS>
Reply-to: CARTER at RUTGERS
Subject: Yet Another TRON Review
Readers of SFL might find it interesting to compare the mixed reviews
TRON has received here with the reactions of one "serious" critic.
[The following are excerpts from a very long review in the Village
Voice, July 20, 1982. The Voice (if there is anyone out there who has
never seen it) is a very successful kitsch-Left New York weekly, the
writers of which tend toward self-importance. This is never more so
than when dealing with Film (not "movies"). Rickey is the second-
string Voice film critic.]
Let a Million Microchips Bloom
By Carrie Rickey
* * *
Congenial pioneer of the technoaesthetic vanguard, TRON is an
original--formally, conceptually, and philosophically.
* * *
The imagery, so hard to verbally approximate, is nothing like any
computer art I've ever seen. Most so-called computer-generated
art is interested in abstract or optical illusionism, which has a
fascination as limited as that of a trompe l'oeil painting. How
compelling can an image of geometrical shape illuminated by
Day-Glo color be, even though a computer, not a person, created
it? There are, however, fine arts equivalents to TRON. Much of
it has the hallucinatory radiance, the indeterminate space, of the
paintings of Ed Paschke, whose canvases typically depict people
and places irradiated with unearthly light. Searching for an
artworld technique applicable to TRON, I'd have to call it a
computer silkscreen. Like Rauschenberg or Warhol, Lisberger is
interested in layering images and effects to give a simultaneous
impression of flatness and depth. To get the look of TRON's
computerworld, Lisberger filmed the actors in black and white on
bare sets, reducing their gestures to Kabuki-like formality.
Color and backgrounds were added afterward by matte, animation,
computer- and hand-painted enhancements, so the multi-stage
silkscreen metaphor is particularly apt.
* * *
TRON disarmingly demonstrates that the most sophisticated and
intimidating technology can be mastered by engaging schlepps and
nerds who have decided not to let it master them. It's an
incredible document of propaganda, exulting in and demystifying
computer power. Ultimately, its narrative is not unlike that of
STAR WARS, ever about the triumph of the democrats over the
plutocrats. But I've never seen a blossoming of democracy quite
as spectacular of TRON's people's purge of the MCP, which lets a
million microchips bloom, the MCP tower of power redistributed to
a galaxy of small energy centers.
Possibly the first movie to celebrate computer populism, TRON
could warm the cockles of a digitizer's heart with its mix of low
sentiment and high tech. While sensibility and computer
intelligence have long been considered mutually exclusive, in TRON
their conjunction is exhilarating, and the move goes so far as to
say that to exist at all both must coexist. To say that TRON
envisions technology as it has never been seen before is an
understatement. No movie more deserves the praise, state of the
art.
------------------------------
Date: 27 Jul 1982 1143-PDT
From: Jwagner at OFFICE
Subject: Das Boot & the failure of American film makers
"(Das Boot) is a powerful and moving picture; seeing it after this
summer's crop of Spielbergian sentimentality is a good reminder of
what real movies are about. See it." -- Robert A. Carter
<Carter@Rutgers>
I couldn't agree more! I also agree that the movie has many elements
of the best in Science Fiction -- in fact, I found it similar to Alien
in mood, although the "monster" in Das Boot is the American destroyers
cutting the waters above, sending depth charges below. Great!
Comparing this movie to the current crop of SF thrillers is entirely
fair and warranted. It's a real indictment of American (Hollywood)
movie making -- it seems all we can produce are more of the same ol'
techno-thriller-whiz-bang genre, but, unfortunately, those are the big
money makers.
SF movies tend to rely on fancy effects and ignore the more subtle
aspects of fine-film making. In ET, Spielberg produced a sensitive
and insightful film for children who (presumably) are more easily
entertained than adults. When is an SF director going to produce a
thoughtful and emotionally stimulating film for grownups? Don't try
to pawn BladeRunner as such a movie -- it relies entirely on special
effects and gratuitous violence (aimed mostly at women) and therefore
is an utter cinematic failure (not counting its flawed, jig-saw-puzzle
plot). Tron, Star Trek II, and the others are visually exciting, but
little else. It's a shame that SF movie makers are squandering the
genre for the sake of big bucks.
Jim Wagner/jwagner@office
------------------------------
Date: 5 Jul 1982 20:11:21-PDT
From: cbosg!nscs!jpj at Berkeley
Subject: G. Harry Stine
In SF-LOVERS Digest, V7 #1, there was a reference to G. Harry Stine,
where he was billed as, "everybody's favorite futurist." Years ago,
when I was heavily involved w/model rocketry, I read and put to good
use a book by a G. Harry Stine on that topic - it was an excellent
book. Is this the same individual? If so, what is his background
that would qualify him as the above quote indicates?
Cheers...
Jim Jenal
------------------------------
Date: 22 July 1982 11:03-EDT
From: Reilly F. Hayes <RLYEH at MIT-AI>
The last SF-LOVERS submission from VASAK (Tom VASAK) was
actually not from Tom Vasak. I thought that I included a note to the
effect that it was from me. AI wasn't receiving network links that
day , so I used Tom's username to make the submission. I am really
Rlyeh@MIT-AI
------------------------------
Date: 07/20/82 17:26:16
From: junkmail.umcp-cs@udel-relay (Sent by ___037)
Have you heard about the new candy that is available only via ARPAnet?
It's called TIP-TACs!
- This is so bad that I won't
even sign my name...
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End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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