Aucbvax.1618 fa.sf-lovers utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!JPM@MIT-AI Thu Jun 11 05:46:00 1981 SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #147 SF-LOVERS AM Digest Thursday, 11 Jun 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 147 Today's Topics: SF Books - Dream Park & Fantasticats & Tin-Tin, SF Movies - Clash of the Titans, SF Topics - Science in Science Fiction & Children's stories (Boy's Life Time Machine) & Children's TV (Dodo the Kid from Outer Space and Rocky and Bullwinkle and Traffic Zone and Teen Titans and Beanie's Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 1981-6-3-12:57:56.05 From: AL LEHOTSKY at METOO Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO Subject: Dream Park by Niven and Barnes I just got my SF Bookclub copy of Dream Park and want to respond to some earlier gritching in SFL on the book. pico-review: Couldn't put it down... nit-picking: When I first started reading DP, I had a lot of skepticism about the economics of running a disneyland and fantasy-gaming park at such low rates (10^2 $/day), but barring that single nit, the story hangs together fairly well. As a mystery story, it is a flop, there aren't enough clues to figure whodunnit. But as a "sword-and-sorcery" novel, I really liked it. I also wish that it was about 100 pages longer. It really should of had additional "puzzles" for the gamers to solve. ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jun 1981 1451-EDT From: RICHARDSON Subject: SF cat stories For : What about the short story (Heinlein, probably) about the cat who has kittens in someone's spacesuit? The unsuspecting owner gets the shock of his life when, while out in space, a small furry thing touches him! Doesn't anyone else remember flatcats? That is probably also Heinlein, maybe Asimov -- something I read a long time ago. What about the "cattails" on Ringworld? I think Kzinti make fine cats -- remind me of my own two felines. /CLR ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jun 1981 1454-EDT From: RICHARDSON Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO Subject: SF Lovers cats query (more stuff) Anyone out there want to write new short stories rather than dig up obscure ones? I always thought that what my two cats (JFCL, the no-op cat (enormous black and white female meatloaf) and Coalsack Nebula (black, half-Siamese)) needed is: 1) vocal chords, and 2) opposing thumbs. ------------------------------ Date: 10 June 1981 10:13-EDT From: David Vinayak Wallace Subject: SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #146 The story about the invisible alien which cat's could see was, I believe, an Andre Norton, with a title like 'Queen of the Spaceways', or somesuch. The hero was an out-of-work space captain who goes to salvage (loot) an old derelict with some old lady; she is...I won't spoil it, but this might make you remember. As for the boy scouts with the time machine, they were also published in novels, I belive, as I was never a boy scout, I never read Boy's Life. The thing that impressed me at the time was that I read them in ~1973, when I was ~9-10 yers old; the books I read forecast great wonders for the far future age of 1976! Teaching machines, the daily rocket to africa, etc.... Has anyone read a book in which the predictions for the future are reasonably accurate? I'm just reading Gernsback's 'Ralph 124C 41+' which forecasts such marvels as travelling from Paris to New York in only 12 hours... The main problem with it is that the characters act like they were born in 1900, not 2600. Unfortunately, most stories like this have the same problem. ------------------------------ Date: 10 Jun 1981 0957-PDT From: Achenbach at SUMEX-AIM Subject: Time machine, boy's life et al I can remember from back in my days as a Boy Sprout that Boy's Life ran several SF stories from time to time. E.g. "Wind from the Sun" by Arthur C. Clarke first appeared in BL (this was a story about a regatta in space, using solar wind and mylar sails). Also there was a series about a troop of boy scouts on a generation ship aimed somewhere out in space. I can only remember one scene of a patrol taking a quarter mile hike outside the ship in space suits to fulfill the requirement for the hiking merit badge or some such. Then of course there was the time machine stories. As a matter of fact, a novel of the time machine was published, which covered the discovery, a few adventures, and the origin of the time machine. It came from the future, and was hijacked by a couple of badies, who the patrol meets. I know I bought that book, but I can't find it. I guess it's buried with all the other relics of that time in my life (Tom Swift Jr books, Hardy Boys, etc.) By the way, my entry for the best animation is Pinochio. Much better than Snow White. /Mike ------------------------------ Date: 10 Jun 1981 11:02:30-PDT From: E.jeffc at Berkeley Subject: No science in science fiction ? At least, that's what a magazine article that I recently read claimed. No doubt that many of you out there are already gaping at your terminal screens in disbelief, and this provides an excellent opportunity for this digest to stop talking about kiddy shows and start talking about science fiction. In any case, I am willing to play the devil's advocate and set forth the arguments which this article used. (I don't recall the name of the magazine right now.) The main premise is this: science fiction attacks the belief that the universe is knowable to man. SF, of course, has plenty of gadgets and devices and other sorts of technology, but SCIENCE??? Let's take the example of a story which uses a hyperspace drive for interstellar travel. OK, so the story assumes its existence, and it is used. Why is that science? How does the drive work? How is the conflict with the fact that nothing can go faster than light resolved? What are the physics behind it? Often, when there is an attempt at explaining how the drive works, matters only get worse. For example, the conflict with the speed of light is resolved by simply stating that while in hyperspace, you are not in this universe, and therefore such laws do not apply. When stories deal with alternate universes and fancy stuff like that, this type of reasoning gets carried to the extreme. Science is not the process of making up arbitrary rules. Now, some of you might point out at this time that science fiction is science FICTION. True, and that is a handy excuse for completely disregarding what we KNOW about the universe today, and to come up with something totally arbitrary, and justifying it by simply saying that it's a piece of fiction, and therefore it doesn't matter. Some of you might say: aha! I caught you! What we KNOW about the universe today is not what we will know about it tomorrow. That is absolutely correct. Science is the process of discovering the lawful ordering of the universe, and it is inevitable that in the future, someone will come up with something that will supersede what we know today. Is science, as thus defined, present in science fiction? Or is there merely at lot of gadgetry that is not and cannot be explained by anything we know today? That is merely the passive side of the problem. A lot of science fiction actually encourages anti-scientific thought, such as that written by H.G. Wells. So that this letter does not get excessively long, I will continue with that in another letter tomorrow. To conclude. Even for a person who completely agrees with the arguments presented, there is still the question, "why all the big fuss? I like reading science fiction and it really doesn't matter to me that there is no 'science' in it." For us, that's probably true. None of us, as far as I know, have been "damaged" in any way by reading science fiction, but what about the kids who read this stuff? They are rather impressionable, and if they get the idea that science means a lot of gadgets for which there is no explanation, or that a lot of phenomenon in the universe, such as hyperspace, are simply unknowable, then what are the implications? Jeff ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jun 81 18:59-PDT From: mclure at Sri-Unix Subject: Clash of the Titans ripoffage Just saw a commercial for Clash of the Titans and almost fell back in my chair when I recognized the film score that they were playing during the commercial; it was a number of extracts from the excellent score by Carmine Coppola for The Black Stallion from last year. What sort of ripoff is this? I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who goes to see the film on whether the score in the film is the same as the one in the commercial. ------------------------------ Date: 10 Jun 1981 12:40:35-PDT From: Cory.cc-13 at Berkeley Subject: Tintin First off, that's Tintin, not Tin-Tin. Here are the few titles that I can come up with off the top of my head: 1 Secret of the Unicorn 2 Red Rackham's Treasure 3 The Crab with the Golden Claws 4 Tintin in Tibet 5 Destination Moon (Pure Science Fiction) 6 Explorers on the Moon (These two sparked my interest in SF) 7 Tintin in America 8 The Broken Ear 9 The Seven Crystal Balls 10 Prisoners of the Sun 11 Tintin and the Picaros 12 Cigars of the Pharoah 13 King Ottokar's Scepter 14 Flight 714 15 The Shooting Star 16 The Calculus Affair 17 The Castafiore Emerald 18 The Black Island 19 Land of Black Gold 20 Tintin in the Land of the Soviets 21 Tintin in the Congo I have all but the last two on the list, and there are probably others. Some of the characters are Major Characters in several books: Tintin:---------Our hero boy reporter Captain Haddock:Wealthy(In later books) former sea captain, and Tintin's companion (A heavy drinker) Professor Cuthbert Calculus:Deaf (and daft) inventor and scientist Thompson and Thomson:Incompetent Detectives Nestor:---------Captain Haddock's butler Bianca Castafiore:Milanese opera singer. Powerful lungs Rastapopoulos:--Arch villain Minor Characters (Or pivotal to only one or two books: Jolyon Wag:-----Typical insurance salesman General Alcazar:Deposed South American Dictator General Tapioca:His rival (now in power) Lazlo Carreidas:"The Millionaire Who Never Laughs" Skut:-----------Esthonian pilot Captain Chester:Friend of Captain Haddock Yours ever so, John R Blaker (Cory.cc-13@Berkeley) P.S. Someone looking over my shoulder tells me that "Herge" is a pen name based on the French spellings of the written out form of the letters "R" and "G", apparently the initials of the real name of the author. JRB P.P.S Also, since these were all originally published in French, the names of many of the characters are different. Professor Calculus is Professor Tournossol (or something like that). The Thompson and Thomson were originally Dupon and Dupond. JRB ------------------------------ Date: 10 Jun 1981 1145-PDT (Wednesday) From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: The Derby Actually, I did get one piece of direct mail claiming I was wrong about the Derby, but I dismissed it as the ravings of a deranged person (it takes one to know one? Never mind...) I will accept the concept that I might be wrong on this one -- I suppose the Moose put on the Derby and got real smart, or some such. One of the nice things about having 3000+ people reading this stuff is that there is always somebody who can correct any errors. At least, I *THINK* that's one of the nice things?! Back to my cage... --Lauren-- ------------------------------ Date: 10 Jun 1981 1505-PDT From: Lynn Gold Subject: Derwood Kirby What ever happened to him, anyway? --Lynn ------------------------------ From: KARIM@MIT-MC Date: 06/10/81 09:05:44 Subject: Yes, Virginia, there is a "Dodo" Honestly now, I wasn't kidding! Anyone else remember "Dodo, the Kid from Outer Space"? Maybe I'm getting something else mixed up, but I thought that was the title of a show...I even remember part of the theme song. Hard to forget, it was. This was aired in NYC, around the mid-60's. Anyone? -Karim ------------------------------ Date: 1981-6-9-02:18:22.40 From: PAUL WINALSKI at METOO Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO Subject: Saturday morning memory dump The continuing discussion of old cartoon favorites really brings back some fond memories.... One of the things I find fascinating when I think back to those cartoons is how many of the jokes are aimed at grownups and just whizzed right over my head. Take, for example, the Traffic Zone episodes of Hoppity Hooper and Waldo Wigglesworth. The Traffic Zone was an extra-dimensional space where really strange things happened. It could only be detected in the real world by sound; when Hoppity was near the entrance to the Traffic Zone, he would hear car horns honking and police whistles. I think you entered the Zone via a traffic light. You could only enter the Zone when it was green. As I recall, Hoppity and/or Waldo got caught there when the light changed to red. Anybody remember Tom Terrific and Manfred the Wonder Dog (who was almost as depressive as Marvin from HHGttG) from Captain Kangaroo? Tom lived in a tree and was capable of several marvelous things. Recurring villains were Isotope Feeney and Crabby Appleton (rotten to the core). And who can forget Saturday Morning's contribution to real SF? Time for Beanie's Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent is cited as the reason why Niven's aliens are named Pierson's Puppeteers. There was also an episode on Beany & Cecil that featured two rabbits, an iron-pumping father and his brainy son, who used to get into all sorts of fixes and were pulled out of the mess by "brains, not brawn." ------------------------------ Date: 1981-6-9-02:20:55.08 From: PAUL WINALSKI at METOO Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO Subject: Aquaman/Aquaboy Aquaboy bears the same relationship to Aquaman as Robin does to Batman, Speedy to the Green Arrow, Kid Flash to the Flash, and Wonder Girl to Wonder Woman. Aquaboy was his teen sidekick. The five of them (Aquaboy, Robin, Speedy, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl) made up the Teen Titans. ------------------------------ 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.