henry (05/30/82)
I have not seen (nor heard of) the movie, but the novel is fairly decent. It contains some botches on details, but you'd have to know a fair bit about military aircraft and related matters to spot them, and on the whole it is eminently readable. This implies nothing about the movie, of course...
kiessig@sri-unix (06/01/82)
Earlier today I saw a poster for the new Clint Eastwood film, Firefox. Also saw a book by the same title by Craig Thomas. The film was done by Warner Brothers. I saw a trailer about two months ago at a local theater. Seemed like it would be pretty exciting. Here are the quotes from the back of the book: "The deadliest warplane ever built, the Soviet Mig-31. Its lethal weapons system is thought-controlled. It can wipe America out of the skies. There is only one man to counter the threat this warplane poses to the Western World. His job -- steal it." About the only other thing I can add is that the plane is supposed to fly at Mach 5, complete with Anti-Radar. If anyone out there sees the film before me, let's hear about it! Rick
hamilton (06/02/82)
#R:fortune:-4800:uicsovax:4000003:000:582 uicsovax!hamilton Jun 1 19:50:00 1982 regarding firefox the book was pretty good, if you can swallow the idea of thought-controls (marginally believable, actually) being invented by the russians first (definitely fantasy!). curiously, there is another book (also quite readable) by a different author (sigh; can't remember title or author right now), that posits a US A-10 tank-killer with thought-controlled weapons, which gets hijacked by russians from east germany during a nato wargame; here the object is for the americans to get the secret back. either of these could be made into enjoyable adventure movies.
hamilton (06/03/82)
#R:fortune:-4800:uicsovax:4000004:000:140 uicsovax!hamilton Jun 3 02:51:00 1982 more about firefox; the other book i mentioned, with similar-but-reversed premises to firefox, is "recovery" by (i think) stephen thompson.
Anonymous (06/12/82)
#R:fortune:-4800:uiucdcs:10700001:000:385 uiucdcs!Anonymous Jun 11 16:43:00 1982 Actually, there is some investigation by the U.S. on visual controlled aircraft. Missles are tracked using a light source (infrared I heard) to detect the motion/position of you eye-ball. Then, vocal commands are issued to arm and fire missles. Still extremely in the test phase though. It would be very interesting to see these sorts of technologies put to peace- ful use, though.