FIGMO%KESTREL@sri-unix.UUCP (07/08/83)
From: Lynn Gold <FIGMO at KESTREL> He's slated to be pro guest of honor at Baycon this fall (Thanksgiving weekend) in San Jose, in case anyone's interested. If last year's Baycon is any indication of what they'll do this year, I highly recommend this con. --Lynn -------
LEWIN@CMU-CS-C.ARPA (07/12/83)
From: DAVID.LEWIN <LEWIN@CMU-CS-C.ARPA> While I enjoy Hogan very much, I recently read the "Giants" trilogy and was bothered by some of the biology. 1--Why should Minervan biochemistry be compatible with Terrestrial, to the point of being able to eat each other's food. Are the terrestrial amino acids the only possible ones? 2--The self-immunization system that is proposed as the reason only man developed intelligence is pure pseudoscience, unless Hogan is talking about autoimmunity. Also, how does he them explain large brain size and complexity in cetaceans and elephants? Also, I wasn't happy with the closed temporal loop in "Giant's Star". Might not such a loop be the temporal equivalent of a black hole? -------
tim@unc.UUCP (07/15/83)
I won't comment on the two problems with Hogan's Ganymede trilogy
that were mentioned (for one thing, the person accused Hogan of
pseudo-science and then asked if a closed temporal loop was the time
equivalent of a black hole), but I did have one big problem with the
second book. This is a bit of a spoiler, but I can't change the
subject line of a followup, so no flames please.
(SPOILER)
The ship was out for 25,000,000 years, correct? That's a pretty
long time. Isn't it amazing that they came out of their "suspension"
within a decade after the first few traces of their civilization were
turned up by a human. (It might have been two decades.) That's
something like 1,250,000 to 1 against, using the figure of 20 years.
Even if you say that they would have come out at some point between
22,000,000 and 28,000,000, the odds are 150,000 to 1 against that
twenty-year span.
______________________________________
The overworked keyboard of Tim Maroney
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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill