SCHRIESHEIM@DEC-MARLBORO (12/07/82)
- - - - - - - Begin message from: MITTON at SMAUG
Date: 6 Dec 1982 2040-EST
From: MITTON at SMAUG
To: SCHRIESHEIM at MARKET
Subject: DEC SFL submission
Mailed to: MARKET::SCHRIESHEIM
This is an SF-Lovers bulk submission from the DEC Enet. Please remove
the headers due to the sending of this message and this "wrapping" and
handle the enclosed messages as seperate submissions. Thank you.
If you have any problems, please contact me via <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Dave Mitton, DEC SFL Redistribution
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From: "ISHTAR::FELDMAN c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Date: 30-NOV-1982 09:51
Subj: explosive decompression.
First there was a difference between the events in 2001 and outlands.
In 2001 you will recall, the pod was pushed up close to airlock. Thus
although, the airlock was open to space there really was a substantial
amount of pressure for the guy. You will note he was in a real panic
to get the door closed. I remember even reading something about this,
that clarke had looked into this and decided it was plausible. As an
occasional scuba diver I know something about the bio physics. Divers
must be very careful to expel air as they surface. If not a bubble
will be forced into their blood, blocking flow to the brain. In Salt
water the ratio is 31 feet of water to 1 atmosphere of pressure.
Surfacing from 31 feet is the same change as decompression in space.
If you were thrown thru an airlock by a burly guy in a dumb book saying
"resistance is useless" you would have milliseconds to live. Exposed
to a vacum as your lung capilarys would be, they would break due to the
boiling blood in them. Perhaps the correct phrase would be "Your lungs
will be useless". Further speculation leads me to believe that the
entire body would rupture everywhere as the fluid in your body boiled
What would be found a few minutes after decompression would be not unlike
an egyptian mummy, totally desicated, strips of dried flesh hanging on
a skeleton. Finding a vacum chamber at your friendly local highschool
or college science lab, and observing a beaker of water in it would help
you understand. I just realized this is really gorey, but then I did
not bring it up.
---Geoff
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From: "ISHTAR::FELDMAN c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Date: 6-DEC-1982 00:58
Subj: more garbage on decompression
What is this fascination with explosive decompression? Anyway lets pop another
bubble. Your lungs cannot hold more than a few pounds of pressure greater
than ambient pressure. If our hapless astronaut were breathing ample pressure
to survive in his space ship, the resulting change in pressure would be more
than his lungs could contain for even a few seconds. The bends would be the
least of his problems. However the guys blood would fizz as all the disolved
gas's in it came out of solution. This would be due to the sudden change in
pressure. Same phenomenon as popping the lid off a soda bottle too fast.
I maintain that the profound descicating effects of a near perfect vacum would
be the biggest problem for our person. Barring that he would be done in by an
air embolisim, before the bends. Lungs would undoubtedly rupture from the
pressure difference. You could of course blow out all the air, equalizing
the pressure, that of course would not buy you much time.
While we are on the subject... 60% of all SCUBA diving fatalities are due to
good ol boring drowning. 35% are air embolisim. 2% are the bends, Loyd
Bridges not withstanding. Air embolisim is the primary danger in Explosive
decompression where the resulting pressure is ample for survival.
Anyway, as I have stated, if you were dumped into space you would be freeze
dried. Water stays in its liquid state as a function of pressure as well
as temprature. It will, in space, turn to gas.
---Geoff
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From: "HARDY::GLASSER c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Date: 30-NOV-1982 23:48
Subj: Space Music Record List
I have been following the "Space Rock" and associated music commentaries
in SFL for the last few weeks, I've looked through my records and have
produced a list of the ones that I recognised as such, plus a few that
I remember but don't have in my collection. This list includes only
record titles and groups, not individual songs that I remember.
Stomu Yamashtu's Go Live from Paris ( Island Records ISLD10 )
Tomita Holst-The Planets ( RCA Records ARL1-1919 )
Tangerine Dream Stratosfear ( Virgin International VI2068 )
Mike Oldfield Airborn ( Virgin Records VA13143 )
Walter Carlos By Request ( Columbia M32088 )
Jeff Wayne The War of the Worlds ( Columbia PC235290 )
Moody Blues To Our Childrens Childrens Chilren ( Threshold/London THS1 )
Moody Blues On the Threshold of a Dream ( Deram DES18025 )
Soft Machine Soft Machine ( Probe CPLP4500 )
King Crimson In the court of the Crimson King ( Atlantic SD19155 )
Hawkwind Hawkwind ( United Artists UAS5519 )
Hawkwind Warrior On The Edge Of Time ( Atco SD36115 )
Hawkwind In Search Of Space ( United Artists UAS5567 )
Hawkwind Levetation ( Bronz Records BRON530 ) (Import-England)
Various Wowie Zowie ( Decca SPA34 (Import-England))
Cluster Curiosum ( Sky SKY063 (Import-Germany))
Pink Floyd Meddle ( Harvest SMAS832 )
Pink Floyd Relics ( Harvest SW759 )
Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here ( Columbia PC33453 )
Pink Floyd A Nice Pair ( Harvest SABB11257 )
Kenny Young Last Stage for Silver World ( Warner Bros. BS2676 )
Laurie Anderson Big Science ( Warner Bros. BSK3674 )
The Doors The Soft Parade ( Elektra EKS75005 )
David Bowie Starting Point ( London LC50007 )
Magma Attahk ( Tomato TOM7021 )
Flash and the Pan Lights in the Night ( Epic JE36432 )
Deep Purple Book of the Taliesyn ( Tetragrammaton T107 )
Landscape Manhattan Boogie-woogie ( RCA NFL1-8028 )
Landscape From The Tea Rooms of Mars to the Hell Holes of Uranus
Gong Flying Teapot ( Charly CR30202 (Import-England))
Gong Angels Egg ( Virgin V2007 (Import-England))
Planet Gong Flying Anarchy ( Oxford OX/3197 (Import-Italy))
Bo Hansson Lord of the Rings ( PVC PVC7907 )
Aphrodite's Child 666 ( Vertigo VEL2500 )
Rolling Stones Her Satanic Majesties Request
Flaming Youth ARK II
Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon
Vangellis Friends of Mr. Cairo
Vangellis Albedo 0.39
Ron Geesin Right Through ( Geesin records - RON323 ) ( Import-England )
Ron Geesin and Roger Waters Music from the Body ( EMI/Harvest SHSP4008 )
Finch Glory of the Inner Force ( Atco SD36124 [0698] )
Pulsar The Strands of the Future ( Kingdom KA20.226 ) ( France )
Cosmos Factory A Journey With The Cosmos Factory ( EMI ETP72083 ) (Japan)
Bonzo Dog Band I'm The Urban Spaceman ( Sunset SLS50350 ) ( England )
Bonzo Dog Band The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse ( Sunset SLS50210 )
Tim Blake Crystal Machine
Michael Mantler The Happless Child and Other Inscrutable Tales
Fred Frith Gravity
Richard Peisley Passage
The last SFL that I read before submitting this was V6 #83. At that point
I had noticed that nobody had mentioned several notable contributions.
Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds" is an adaptation of the story by the same
name by H. G. Wells. "Last Stage for Silverworld" is a little known love
story placed in the future and told in music.
Daniel Glasser
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From: "WAJENBERG AT MERLIN c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Posted-date: 30-Nov-1982
Subject: SF in different media
Daniel Spear recently asked for discussion of SF in different media, and
the strengths and weaknesses of each medium. So here is my two cents'
worth.
I think each medium has a characteristic range of lengths it can
accomodate, for any kind of literature, not just SF. Broadcast media,
like TV, movies, and radio, must either limit themselves to one or
two hours or serialize. A printed story, on the other hand, can range
over a much wider variety of lengths (though even they are suffering from
gigantism at the moment, I think).
A one- or two-hour movie reduces to a short story or novella, if you
convert the one to the other. This is one reason conversions are so
often unsatisfactory. If you convert a novel to a movie, you are going
to have to leave out some bits. If you are clumsy about it, you will
leave out important bits; but even if you are clever about it, you will
leave out some bits that any admirer of the novel liked. Hence he will
find fault with the movie, or, at best, have to excuse the movie. The
various attempts to make a movie out of Lord of the Rings are good examples
of this problem.
If you convert a movie into a novel, you will probably have to pad it out.
This sometimes works fairly well, but then again sometimes it doesn't. The
novelizations of Star Wars were middling at best, I think, and padded. The
novelization of The Wrath of Kahn was pretty good, but only because the
author was very good at inventing her padding and integrating it with the
movie script.
I think James Blish had the right idea when he converted several hour-long
Star Trek episodes into anthologies of short stories -- one short story per
episode. I also think the BBC or Douglas Adams or whoever had the right
idea in turning Hitchhiker's Guide into a serial. However, not all novels
take well to being serialized, or to being radically trimmed. These
novels simply cannot be converted sucessfully to broadcast media.
(Lord of the Rings might do well as a serial movie -- it was moderately
good as a radio serial -- but it would take forever to produce. Also,
at present there would be a strong temptation to introduce more flashy
visual effects than the story really warrants.)
Some stories cannot be turned into visual media because they deal too
much with non-visual subjects. To use Lord of the Rings again, it is
very, very hard to come up with human actors that will live up to most
reader's expectations of Elves, who are more or less DEFINED as being
super-humanly beautiful. Many stories, in many genras, are very mental
and spend lots of time examining the consciousness of the main characters.
This doesn't turn into film easily. (Echo-chamber voices to represent
thoughts might help, but they are not the fashion at present.)
Contrariwise, printed media cannot convey the visual impacts of movies
and TV. That's why the novelizations of SF and fantasy movies frquently
have a sheaf of pictures in the middle. If a book is to give you a
visual or spatial impression, it must weave its spell slowly, with
descriptive passages and allusions in the dialogue. This slow effect
is not inferior to the fast one of a movie, but it is different and the
one may not be consistently turned into the other. (The same limitations
apply to radio as well as to books. Wind-noises and bird-song and ocean
waves are all well and good, but they aren't the same as seeing the place.)
Finally, books are addressed to an audience of one, while radio, movies,
and TV are addressed to a mass. A movie, especially, is addressed to
a large number of people sitting together in the dark, at the same time
and place. TV and radio is addressed to a large number of people in
different places at the same time. Usually, an author wants his book to
be read by a great number of people, of course, but not always; many books
are written for a limited audience. And books are not nearly as limited by
constraints of space and time.
The result is that books can practice an elitism which the other media
cannot. A book can deal with rarefied ideas or feelings at a length
which would leave a mass audience bored and restless, simply because
most of them are not interested in that topic. This may be why science
fiction so seldom gets into the movies except as space opera. Space
opera has ready visual appeal and precious little intellectual appeal,
while a great deal of science fiction is (or tries to be) a literature
of ideas. Consider one of James White's Sector General stories. It
would make a moderately good movie in that you would have a pair of
human lovers (Conway and Murchison, though they are seldom shown acting
tenderly) and an interesting variety of non-humans. But the point of
these stories is usually a piece of biological deduction carried out
by Conway. In a movie, this would almost certainly by shoved into
a few odd minutes and be lost on most of the audience, simply because
they were distracted by the sight of Dr. Prilicla (an insectile empath)
or Dr. Thornastor (an elephantine pathologist).
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From: "PAUL WINALSKI AT METOO c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Posted-date: 01-Dec-1982
Subject: Wolfe's BOOK OF THE NEW SUN
RE: question about third book in the "Torturer" series
Gene Wolfe's BOOK OF THE NEW SUN is a tetralogy, not a trilogy. The four
books are:
The Shadow of the Torturer
The Claw of the Conciliator
The Sword of the Lictor
The Citadel of the Autarch
THE SWORD OF THE LICTOR is currently available in hard cover only. The
first two books are available both in hard cover and in paperback. Book
four is supposed to be out in January.
I won't risk a spoiler by discussing plot details of tSotL. Suffice it to
say that the literary quality is up to the high standards set by the first
two volumes, and there are plenty of loose ends to be tied up in book four.
--PSW
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From: "JOHN FRANCIS AT EIFFEL c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Posted-date: 01-Dec-1982
Subject: SF music
I realise this is a bit late, but we've been having distribution problems
since our previous distributor left, and I've only just got the last month
or so of SFL. Anyway, here's my contribution to the SF-related music list.
The Pink Floyd foursome are:-
o Astronomy Domine
o Interstellar Overdrive
o Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
o Saucerful of Secrets
The first two are from "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" (1967). The second
two are from "Saucerful of Secrets" (1968). These 2 albums were later
re-released as a double album entitled "A Nice Pair". Live versions (as
opposed to studio versions) of all except "Interstellar Overdrive" can
be found on the first album of the double album "UmmaGumma" (1969).
Then, of course, there is always "Dark Side of the Moon"....
Other space-oriented rock music in my collection :-
o "Space Oddity" (David Bowie)
o "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars".
This is the full title of the David Bowie album normally referred
to as "Ziggy Stardust". Notable tracks: "Starman", "Lady Stardust"
o "Hunkydory" (also David Bowie) contains a track entitled "Life on Mars"
o "War of the Worlds". Put together by Rick Wakeman, but contains lots
of other people. The most notable, however, is Richard Burton as the
narrator. If you've never heard this double album, you are missing
a treat!
Not in my collection, but brought back to mind by the recent discussions
about Michael Moorcock - "Silver Machine", by Hawkwind.
In my collection, but not rock music - "Space Girl", by Peggy Seeger.
This is an excellent song (originally written for the Opera album "You're
Only Young Once"), and is a 'Traditional Folk Song of the 25th Century'.
And finally - "Urban Spaceman" by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. (Honestly,
I'm not making this up!). This was released as a single in England, and
got into the top ten. Best chance to hear it, I suppose, would be to ask
Dr. Demento. He seems the most likely DJ to know about the Bonzos.
(If anyone can top this for obscurity, I don't want to know. And anyway,
I actually HAVE a copy of this, rather than just having heard of it!).
P.S.
FLAME
I'd rather wade through a discussion of a topic in SFL that didn't
interest me very much (even at 300 baud), and see original contributions,
than get yet another re-print of an opinionated movie review that I could
get for myself from another source if I was really interested.
EMALF
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From: "JOHN FRANCIS AT EIFFEL c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Posted-date: 01-Dec-1982
Subject: Dr. Who
Many thanks to the person who contributed the guide to the Dr. Who
series. I printed off a copy for my wife (an avid Dr. Who fan), and
she was very pleased with it.
But - can anyone explain why she tried to beat me to death with it ?
All I did was to tell her it was a "Who's Who"!
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From: "KERMIT::T_PARMENTER c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Date: 6-DEC-1982 13:56
Subj: The Tribble with Troubles
I'm not a trekkie, trekker, or trekkist, but I've watched a few ST's and
it's just not clear to me why there's all this SFL interest in Trek
continuity. The way I make it out, there is *very little* continuity in
ST other than the characters. For instance, Jim never learns not to mess
around with alien maidens.
Or consider the following: Klingons look a lot like humans. It's hard
to spot a Klingon spy. Tribbles can tell the difference between Klingons
and humans, but all the Tribbles were fired out the port and into the heart
of some sun.
Changing subject: The Purple People Eater was written and recorded by
Sheb Wooley, one of the leading lights of Hee-Haw.
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