Aucbvax.1596 fa.sf-lovers utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!JPM@MIT-AI Wed Jun 10 04:35:48 1981 SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #146 SF-LOVERS AM Digest Wednesday, 10 Jun 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 146 Today's Topics: SF Books - Fantasticats & Tin-Tin, SF Movies - Outland, SF TV - Star Trek Guide, SF Topics - Compu-fiction & Computer Animation & Children's TV (F.A.B. query and Rocky and Bullwinkle) & Children's stories (Query answered and Tom Swift and Homer and Spaceship Under the Apple Tree and Richard Purtill and Mary Renault) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 Jun 1981 11:00 EDT From: Marshall.WBST at PARC-MAXC Subject: cats in sf I cannot resist touting Cordwainer Smith's cats in "The Game of Rat and Dragon". This is a delightful story about mental combat between cats and human partners on one side and mental dragons on the other. The cats in this story are real cats and act very feline. There is also a cat planet in "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal" but the cats are not as feline. If anyone has not read all of Smith's Science Fiction I suggest they do so. The author sketches entire civilizations and societies with only two or three sentences. His universe is vast but we are permitted only small glimpses of it. Unfortunately when he died in 1966 his science fiction only filled four books: Quest of the Three Worlds Norstrilia The Best of Cordwainer Smith The Instrumentality of Mankind The first two are novels and the last two are collections of short stories. I believe he left notes for future sf stories but I don't know if they will ever be published. --Sidney ------------------------------ Date: 8 Jun 1981 00:04:08-PDT From: CSVAX.wildbill at Berkeley Subject: SF felines The Leiber story mentioned in a recent SFL is "Space-Time for Springers". Another Leiber story involving cats is the fifth book in the Fafhrd-Grey Mouser series, "The Swords of Lankhmar". Cats play a very important role in this story. Another Cordwainer Smith story in which one encounters cats qua cats is "The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal", in which the Commander uses a time-warp device and a hypnosis device capable of implanting racial goals (i.e affecting the memories of descendants as well as the originally hypnotized beings) on a pair of cats to extract himself from a particularly nasty situation. Yours in the ancient and honorable society of felinophiles, Bill Laubenheimer ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jun 1981 11:35:27-PDT From: Cory.5 at Berkeley Subject: Kitten Anthologies Here are a few anthologies of kitten stories for you, viz.: 'Kitten Caboodle' edited by Barbara Silverberg 'Supernatural Cats' edited by Claire Necker Yours ever so, John R Blaker (Cory.cc-13@Berkeley) ------------------------------ Date: 9 June 1981 1818-EDT From: Steven Clark at CMU-10A Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #145 Someone mentioned computers that write fiction. Remember in 1984, the fiction was written by computer. I know of a short story about a grey cat that spotted an alien that was transparent to humans. Can anyone remember the author/title? The title had "grey" in it ("All cats are grey"?). -Steve ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jun 1981 1748-PDT From: Craig W. Reynolds from III via Rand Subject: Computer Animation First@SUMEX-AIM is correct in saying that "Lucasfilm is experimenting with full screen animation which is totally generated by computer", but it is rumored that other groups are also barking up that tree. I'm not sure just what the first theatrical use of computer generated animation was, but at least back around '74 there was "Westworld" and later "Futureworld", both of which had computer generated and computer image processed scenes (by III and some stuff from U of Utah). The last feature we worked on was "Looker" which is due to be released in early July. This includes lots of computer generated stuff (some of which is supposed to look like "computer graphics" and some which is supposed to look real). One unique sequence is the "scanning room" where "Cindy" (Susan Dey) is being encoded by the evil computer company, in the control room we see the computer displaying the evolving models it is building of her body. Remind me to tell you how we got the 3D coordinate data for her body ... We are currently working (along with MAGI-Synthavision and NYIT) on the Disney/Lisberger production of TRON. This film will be a combination of computer animation, hand animation, optical image processing ("the Bob Able look") and live action. Only about 10% is live action. While the plot of TRON may be hard for hackers to take (its about computers, and so computer hackers will get picky about the details of the fantasy plotline) it looks like it will be very striking visually. Craig ------------------------------ Date: 8 Jun 1981 20:08 PDT From: TManley.ES at PARC-MAXC Subject: Episode guides for Star Trek I have an Episode guide to Star Trek, but it would be a rather large document to set up for FTP. But if anyone is interested, I will research the publisher and see if they are still available. \TMP. . . ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jun 1981 10:22 PDT From: TManley.ES at PARC-MAXC Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #144 I have more on that Star Trek Guide: "Star Trek Concordance" Copyright 1979 by Paramount Pictures Corp. Author BJO Trimble Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-9778 First Edition 1976 Published by Ballantine Books/New York \TMP. . . ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jun 1981 12:57 PDT From: Woods at PARC-MAXC Subject: Episode guide for Star Trek I have a Star Trek episode guide that I put together N years ago with help from my fellow Trek-watchers in college. I consider this guide a win in that the plot descriptions tend to avoid spoilers. I'll get around to typing it in sometime soon unless some eager beaver wants to beat me to it. -- Don. ------------------------------ Date: 8 June 1981 09:54-EDT From: James M. Turner Shade and Sweet water, The stories dealing with boy scouts using a time machine that Ken Hasse was looking for appeared in Boy's Life, not on TV. Other than suffering from that banal morality that BL applies to everything, it wasn't that bad. One story I remember used the idea of raiding SF during the earthquake so no one would notice (this is post-"Flight of the Horse"). Quick though on "Outland". If those are the best hired killers in the system, why do they fall for such obvious tricks? They are obviously familiar with survival on the moons of Jupiter (they didn't get shipped in from Earth) so why were they walking around in shirt-sleeves when the safest thing would have been to put their suits on...I guess they don't make hit men like they used to... James ------------------------------ Date: 10 June 1981 02:25-EDT From: Steve Strassmann Subject: The official Boy Sprout Mag: Time Machines & Tripods The short stories about a bunch of kids who find a time machine behind a rock were written (as far as I remember) for Boy's Life in the late 60's and 70's. The group that found the machine was a patrol (for folks who weren't/aren't Boy Scouts, a patrol is a unit of 4-8 kids in a troop of ~12-80) of modern scouts who went and picked up a Spartan kid from ancient Greece, a bald kid from the n+1th century, and I believe a cave-kid. These kids actually stayed in their home-whens ; the patrol leader only picked them up when they were needed. The time machine possessed an event scanner which allowed the pilot to scan an area (in X,Y,Z, and T) without having to materialize the machine. Does anybody remember the author? Some hardcover anthologies of these stories were published, I think. Boy's Life just recently started serializing Christopher's trilogy about people controlled by aliens ("tripods") via metal skullcaps ( I believe two of the books were "The White Mountains" and "The City of Gold and Lead") in cartoon format. I think I remember their cartoonizing in the past, among other things, excerpts from the Bible and a Heinlein story. Steve Strassmann ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jun 1981 13:06:12-PDT From: IngVAX.kalash at Berkeley Subject: S.I.G. on Captain Scarlet S.I.G. stands for "Spectrum Is Green" they used the expression to indicate that everything was alright. When they used S.I.R. (Spectrum is Red), it meant that something was very wrong. Joe Kalash ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jun 1981 1227-PDT (Tuesday) From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: Tin Tin, Dodo, and animation I have never claimed to be a French comic book fan (... just a minute ... just a minute ... Did I really just say that? How about French postcards? Oh never mind, you know what I mean... ) -- so I apologize for mispelling the name of Tin Tin's creator. As for that "Dodo" kid from outer space... I've never heard of him, and I've had "zero-zero island" sloshing around in my brain pans for years .. so I am pretty sure it's from Colonel Bleep. By the way ... In my opinion, the finest animation ever done, overall, was that for "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". Shadows under EVERYTHING throughout. Absolutely perfect. --Lauren-- ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jun 1981 0144-EDT From: JHENDLER at BBNA Subject: Rocky and moose *sigh* imagine my disappointment in discovering that during the past two weeks when I was out of town NO ONE ELSE chastised Lauren for his error concerning the Kirwood derby. I have checked with many of my R&B Fan friends, and they point out that the Yale Film Society presented an R&B night last year, and featured the Kirwood Derby episode. Sure enough, the derby makes the wearer incredibly SMART not childlike, as Lauren mistakenly claimed. An interesting side note to my search for the truth about the Derby: Apparently Dirwood Kerby (remember him?) SUED the show for lible and won a large settlement!!! Some people have no sense of humor-- --Jim ------------------------------ Date: 9 May 1981 11:45-EDT From: Steven C. Bagley Subject: Star War's revelation Did you know that Darth Vader's wife is named Ella? ------------------------------ Date: 1981-5-11-17:55:29.53 Sender: Paul Young (YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO) From: STEVE LIONEL at STAR at METOO Subject: Children's SF Ah, the memories of childhood, filled with that mind-rotting science fiction. I can still recall the day when I was 8 (18 years ago) when my mother, a loooong-time SF fan, presented me with my first Tom Swift, Jr. book. By the way, no one so far has mentioned that there WAS a Tom Swift Sr., a much older series of books from which the term "a Tom Swift" came from. What is "a Tom Swift"? It's when you use an adverb that relates to the topic of the statement. For example: "What sharp teeth you have," he said bitingly. "I'll do it tomorrow," he said lazily. and so on. Mentioned in passing was "Spaceship Under the Apple Tree". This was either a sequel or prequel to "The Three-Seated Spaceship" (sequel, I think), by . The stories told of a small alien who dressed in seersucker suits and who transported some friendly kids around the Earth seeing the sights. Does anybody have more info on these? Previously mentioned in SFL is the absolutely delightful "Space Child's Mother Goose" by Fredrick Winsor. I found it in Books in Print last year, but I haven't been able to locate a copy. (I haven't tried too hard, I'll admit.) My all-time favorite from this is: Flappity, floppity, flip The mouse on the moebius strip The strip revolved The mouse dissolved In a chronodimensional skip Of course, I fondly recall Danny Dunn, and I recently picked up three of the stories just to refresh my memories. Sort of a cross between Danny Dunn and Tom Sawyer was Homer, of "Homer and the Donught Machine", "Homer and the Unplayable Record", etc. Also, how about Encyclopedia Brown? Remember him, and his bodyguard-girlfriend Sally? It's a shame that the impact of stuff like Star Wars is probably going to dramatically alter children's SF away from the likes of Danny Dunn and more towards "Luke Skywalker Comix". Luckily, the old stuff is still around. Steve Lionel ------------------------------ Date: 18 May 1981 08:04-EDT From: Steven C. Bagley Subject: more walking down memory lane Hey kids, don't forget about "The Mad Scientists Club" and the various Encyclopedia Brown stories, all from Scholastic Book Services. ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 15 May 1981 10:30-PDT Subject: Richard Purtill vs. Mary Renault From: obrien at RAND-UNIX The one thing that struck me about "The Golden Gryphon Feather" was that Richard Purtill must have been a big fan of Mary Renault, who did that stuff much better in all of her books set in Classical Greece. The styles are very similar, though Renault is much more mainstream and does not involve such heavy elements of fantasy. For a completely different look at Crete there's always "The Age of Wizardry", by Jack Williamson. ------------------------------ End of SF-LOVERS Digest *********************** ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.