cjh (02/07/83)
In response to your message of Fri Feb 4 12:27:01 1983: Now wait a minute! Farmer isn't an old-timer who put sex into SF when it became more popular; Farmer is the writer who \first/ put sex into SF. Books like THE LOVERS and ALLEY GOD were shocking when they came out (although now they seem rather quaint), and they were followed by more and more perverse material (e.g., "Mother"). As for Sturgeon, VENUS PLUS X was published in 1958---and Sturgeon has never been especially explicit or perverse (one of the best words to describe his work is "delicacy"---not what past generations would have called "good taste", which simply means not discussing large parts of the real world, but dealing with the most awkward situations without grossing out the reader). As for Heinlein, one of his problems is that he isn't very tolerant; STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND was a satire, and his attempts since then to deal with personal issues or problems generally have been failures. (Worse, they frequently reflect his personal problems---both traditional male fantasies like being such a dynamite stud that both your mother and your daughters want to bed you, and individual hangups such as the childlessness which becomes a really gross philoprogenitivity in several of his stories.)
@RUTGERS.ARPA:Purtill.SIPB@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA (05/01/85)
From: Mark Purtill <Purtill@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA> <Fnord> >I have been trying to remember about a certain series of 'novels' >(i.e. 4th grade equivalent) about a peculiar inhabited planet which >orbits Earth or orbits the sun near Earth. A very special type of >lens was required to see this planet, which was why real astronomers >didn't know about it; but somehow a kid found such a lens or ran >into a visitor from this planet (whom I remember as a nice little >man) and got involved in various problems on this planet. I remember these (or someother books like them) too. I think the planet was called the * [green] [mushroom] planet, and that there were two kids involved: an older brother and a younger sister; they got in touch with a scientist with a rocket (who may have come from the green mushroom (or whatever it was) planet) through an ad in the classified section of the local newspaper (about mushrooms?); he lived on a street that was only a block long. Also, I think that on the planet you automagically spoke and wrote in some other language, and that this foiled some villianous characters plans (although I may be thinking of something else, e.g., De Camp and Pratt's Harold Shea series.) Does anyone have exact details for these, eg author/title(s)? And does anyone remember the Mathew Looney books, about an (alien) kid from the moon (where they thought DARKNESS traveled at c)? Mark ^.-.^ Purtill at MIT-MULTICS ((")) 2-032 MIT Cambrige MA 02139
Purtill.StudentNS@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA (07/20/85)
From: Mark Purtill <Purtill@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA> <Fnord> >or other, you have to "get out of the game"; warp drives, for, >example, bop out of normal space into a different sort of >environment and bop back into normal space somewhere else, >by-passing the normal space in between. Another approach is to >diminish the mass of your ship in some currently unknown way, to >compensate for the diminishing, return you're getting from the force >you apply. Unfortunately, that doesn't help. As long as your FTL drive obeys the "Principle of Relativity" (which just states that physics is the same in all inertial frames of reference) FTL travel => time travel. I will try to explain (and will probably fail). For convienince, we'll assume an instantanious drive, but a similar argument works for any velocity > c. (This explaination assumes you've seen special relativity before.) t | t' / | We have two frames of .A .B | reference: the x,t frame and | / | the x',t' frame. The '(primed) | | | frame is moving at about .5c | / | relative to the unprimed frame. | | | Given an instantanious drive, | / | x' we'll show that S can communicate | | |___/ with T, which is in it's past on | / ___.S the world-line ST. Bad news. | | ___/ | | / ___/ | | | ___/ | |/___/ | O./___________________.T___ x Okay, so what we do is start off at S moving at .5c relative to the x,t frame, ie, in the x',t' frame of reference. We use our drive, and end up at O (which is simultaneaous to S in the x',t' frame of reference.) Waiting there is another ship, in the x,t frame of reference. We send (via radio or whatever) S's message to that ship, which uses it's drive to get to T (simultaneous in *it's* frame of reference.) But T is just S in the past! Now, *if* one is willing to postualte a special frame of reference, wherein one can travel faster than the speed of light, one is okay. If there are two such, you get time-travel. Also, note that Tachyons avoid the time-travel paradoxes by not being detectable from the STL side of the universe. [This is gotten from a physics book called _Special_Relativity_ or some such, by an author whose name starts with a 'B,' but which I've forgotten. If my explaination is incomprehensible, you might try looking in a book with the same name for a better explaination.] Mark ^.-.^ Purtill at MIT-MULTICS.ARPA **Insert favorite disclaimer here** ((")) 2-032 MIT Cambrige MA 02139