godwin@uci-icse (09/15/85)
From: Dave Godwin <godwin@uci-icse> A recent note on the bboard brought something to mind. In the old Venus Equilateral stories, by George O. Smith, large sections of some of the stories took place at "Joe's" ( billed as the best bar in 124,000,000 miles ). The engineers would solve problems, get ideas, etc. there. Joe was continually miffed, cuz the guys kept stealing his table clothes so they could run them through the blueprint machines. I remember a scene where the engineers had to figure out the flight path of some object. "OK, look, this ketsup stain is Venus, that coffee stain over there is the Sun, and the cigarette burn here is Earth..."
rsingle@bbncc-washington (09/17/85)
From: Ron Singleton <rsingle@bbncc-washington>
Chris Miler asks: "Why do we think any other species would be interested in
a bar?"
The immediate response from my (sometimes malfunctioning) synapses is:
Given most sorts of advanced society structure folks (species, if you wish)
will have *some form* of informal social gathering spot where they can
discuss (and complain about) their day (or second, or year, depending on
lifespan and/or how long since they've had the chance to perform this
'ritual').
Writing primarily from the human viewpoint and quite often using
human-dominated situations, the 'bar' environment is a natural. A social
club, church or family/clan gathering are others, and I suppose they have
each been used.
Ron Singleton