SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #157
MDP@mit-ml
SF-LOVERS AM Digest Tuesday, 23 Jun 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 157
Today's Topics:
SF Books - Breathable liquids & Parallel time plot query,
SF Humor - Ann Atomic #2,
SF Topics - Tom is Terrific & No 300 million year civilizations,
SF Movies - UFO's Are Real & Outlands & Raiders/The Ark
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Date: 22 June 1981 2106-EDT (Monday)
From: Joe.Newcomer at CMU-10A
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #156
I recall a liquid acceleration couch being described in Haldeman's
"The Forever War", and I believe the liquid was breathable.
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From: PCR@MIT-MC
Subject: breathing liquids
It would seem to me that animals breathing liquids would get
tired real fast, from the effort of trying to move the liquid in and
out through those small nose passages. The liquid would have to be
extremely non-viscous (what's the word for that?), or else the animals
would end up breathing through their mouth. In any event, their
diaphram would tire out in short order. Eating might be a problem
too.
...phil
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Date: 05/15/81 01:53:57
From: MIKE@MIT-MC
Subject: Another here's the plot so what is it...
I have been trying to remember the title of a short story I read a
number of years ago and where I found it. It was in some kind of
collection. The story was about a region of countryside that was
coexisting with a number of parallel earths. One could walk into
these various zones from the outside but could not necessarily get
back. To make it more fun, there were different rates of time in some
of the zones. The story involved a man and his wife who for some
reason wandered into this region and became separated. The man
slipped through into several of these zones (one of which I remember
as being medieval but not exactly) and finally was rescued by being
lifted out by a helicopter by the military I think. His wife was
trapped in some zone with a different rate of time (faster) and he
seeks only to find her aged tombstone.
Does anyone out there know what or where this story is?
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Date: 15 May 1981 0905-PDT
Sender: Daul at OFFICE
From: Andrews
Subject: Dr. Ann Atomic #2
Another punful story about that famous space physician..
Cat Cause
Ann Atomic's home on Observation Asteroid had been invaded by
large half-robot, half-organic rodents. These cyborg-rats avoided
people, poison, traps, magnets, and cats, but had no fear of the
ten-week-old kitten. Osgood Ascanby was regaling Ann with stories
from his years as a galactic protocol expert when the kitten entered,
yowling and running back and forth in a distracting manner.
"What's the matter with Theocat, Ann?" Osgood asked. "Is he
trying to tell us something?"
"Oh, just ignore him," she sighed. "he's full of sound and
furry, but signifying nothing."
At that moment the rat whizzed into the parlor, bit Theocat on
the tail, and whizzed out.
"There, there, poor baby," Osgood said, trying to comfort the
distraught kitten. "We must stop their tormenting him."
"I suppose your're right." Ann gazed thoughtfully out the
window at Jupiter, the current view.
Within the week cyborg-rats had disappeared. Theocat, no
longer terrorized, was his old , obnoxious, furniture-scratching self.
"The patter of little metal feet is gone but not forgotten,"
Osgood remarked as he removed the kitten's claws from his sleeve.
"How did you get rid of the rats?"
Ann shrugged. "With drugs. I used massive doses of
antibionics."
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Date: 21 May 1981 06:03:44-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley
Subject: Ann Atomic and Tom Terrific
Ann Atomic sounds alot like an ex-girlfriend of mine who used to give
suggestions to the library here under the pseudonym of "The Mad
Punster". Any relation?
Since i started this whole thing about Sat. morning with a request for
Astroboy let me try to get some info about a favorite of my infancy.
Anyone remember Tom Terrific (with MIGHTY MANFRED THE WONDER DOG!!!!)?
As i recall it came on on Channel One of a TV set in Captain
Kangaroo's show. Tom had a thinking cap which gave him ideas and
Mighty Manfred fell asleep alot.
One of the advantages of having a common first name like mine; i got
turned on to Tom Terrific and Tom Swift Jr. due to similarities in
naming. These things got me started on the road to total
insanity/inanity i travel on today.
tom galloway at unc-ch
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Date: 16 May 1981 11:04-EDT
From: Dale R. Worley <DRW at MIT-AI>
Subject: Anybody out there?
There was an article in a recent Physics Today that argues that there
are no civilizations in the galaxy more than about 300 million years
older than us.
The argument runs like this: If we want to broadcast a message that
we exist across the galaxy, the most efficient way is to build a
spaceship / space factory / computer that will fly into a stellar
system, gobble up asteroids, etc., make a number of copies of itself,
and launch them toward other stars. The author claims that we will be
able to build such a thing in a hundred years or so that could travel
at 0.0001c. The nice thing about this message is that it picks up new
"strength" by eating things along the way. If you wanted to get the
message there faster, you could make plans for an extremely expensive
one that could travel at 0.01c, put the plans in a cheaper one that
could go at 0.0001c, and send it off. It would take tens of thousands
of years for the first one to complete its voyage, but all the future
ones would go much faster.
The ultimate idea is that it would take only about 300 million years
for such a device to propagate copies of itself throughout the galaxy.
Since we are nearly (100 years) able to launch such a thing, if anyone
is 300 million years or so older than us, we would already have gotten
their message.
Clearly, there are alot of objections that can be raised to this idea,
but are any of them good enough to invalidate the basic point?
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Date: 14 May 1981 2223-EDT
From: FISCHER at RUTGERS
Subject: Recent discussions with ET's...
I am not a UFO nut, now that that's out of the way...
A few days ago I was at a friend's house and caught the end of
a movie on the HBO channel called "UFO's are Real" (har har). It was
your typical wow-lets-cash-in-on-this production of no real note. As
far as I can tell it is not a recent film. Only one thing caught my
interest. In the midst of the babblings of various interviewees a
certain UFO enthusiast mentioned a document written by a gentleman in
switzerland who claimed to have had lengthly discussions with aliens
from the Pleiades. The Pleiadians supposedly reassured him they were
not gods and proceeded to spend long afternoons discussing matters of
earth with him in a grassy field somewhere.
OK, silly you say, well the interesting part is that the guy
is supposed to have collected around 2000 pages of notes! They were
described as containing info about new technologies and the immaturity
of our human culture.
Some portion of the notes (they said about a quarter) were
translated into english and published. The enthusiast in the movie
held up a large format paper back book with a white cover. The only
discernable word on it was Pleiades.
This sounds like a tech oriented person's Von Daniken. Has
anyone out there ever seen this book? Read it? What was this swiss
person's flamage about??
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Date: 22 June 1981 09:02-EDT
From: Steven C. Bagley <Bagley at MIT-MC>
Subject: Outland's rating
"Outland"-"High Noon" on the moon, this uncompromising science
fiction thriller stars Sean Connery, Peter Boyle and Frances
Stern-hagen. Rated PG. 3 stars.
I could have sworn that the version I saw was rated R. I have seen
the above review at least twice in SFL -- both times the rating was
listed as PG. Am I going crazy or are there two versions of Outland
out?
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Date: 11 Jun 1981 13:17:58-PDT
From: decvax!duke!ndd at Berkeley
I haven't seen this mentioned in the digest yet, and my
curiosity has gotten the best of me. In the movie, the manager of the
Io mines was told that \three/ assassins were being sent to get the
marshall, but I only saw two. The third man who tried to kill Connery
was, I believe, one of his own men. Did I miss something, or is this
a real goof?
Ned Danieley
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Date: 22 June 1981 23:47-EDT
From: Daniel G. Shapiro <DGSHAP at MIT-AI>
Subject: lucas comments
yeah, but bright lights and gimcrackery don't hurt.
(agreed, most special effects films have that monomania hollywood is
so famous for... where one thing is done to the exclusion of all
others.)
Dan Shapiro
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Date: 22 Jun 1981 1816-PDT
From: First at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: Seams in RotLA (NO SPOILER!)
I don't need to add to the accolades which have poured in regarding
"Raiders"--I'm sure anybody out there who hasn't seen it yet must have
it on top of the queue of films to see. But for those who haven't
seen it, plan to see it again, or have a good visual memory, see if
you can corroborate this observation...
In films as slick as RotLA, I find it fun sometimes to see if I can
find any embarrassing technical flaws in the production--while errors
in editing, post-synchronous sound dubbing, and continuity abound in
such classics as "Plan Nine From Outer Space", because of the
technical mastery of current Hollywood films, such flaws are
relatively uncommon...
As far as RotLA is concerned, I think I spotted an error in continuity
(which are probably the most embarrassing types of errors that can
occur): when Harrison Ford is driving the truck and gets shot in the
arm and is then forced outside the truck, he magically has recovered
from his bloody wound, only to regain it again a couple of minutes
later--obviously what has happened is that they neglected to inflict
the "wound" (in left upper arm) on his stunt double--hence its
disappearance and then reappearance. Did anybody else spot this or
was I just hallucinating from the overdose of pure joy in seeing such
a spectacular film?
(For the non-film buffs in the crowd, "continuity" refers to the
maintenance of temporal consistency in scenes which are shot out of
sequence--one of the most blatant lags in continuity in recent memory
is in "The Goodbye Girl"-- there is a scene in which Richard Dreyfuss
wanders home drunk, knocks over a coffee table with plates on top of
it, and then leans his head outside his window to yell. When he comes
back in, the coffee table is magically upright with the knocked over
dishes re-assembled. Maintaining continuity is so important that
there is a person assigned to the film whose job is exclusively to
check the continuity--but sometimes they slip up)
--Michael (FIRST@SUMEX-AIM)
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Date: 16 Jun 1981 1350-EDT
From: HEDRICK at RUTGERS
Subject: a brief history of the Ark
Because of the popularity of "Raiders of the Lost Ark", I thought some
people might find it interesting to hear a brief description of what
is known about the actual Ark of the Covenant. As far as I know,
everything we know about it comes from the Bible. Quotations and
terminology will be taken from the Good News Bible (as that is the
only translation appropriate for people who are not familiar with the
Biblical tradition). They call the object the Covenant Box, since the
word "ark" is no longer in use, and what it means is "box".
The initial command to make it comes shortly after Moses has received
the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai. This is probably around 1250
B.C.E. It is described in Exodus 25 as a box 45" long, 27" wide, and
27" high. It is covered with gold, with two winged creatures made out
of gold attached to the lid of the box. The two stone tablets with
the Ten Commandments on it are put inside the box. That is probably
the only thing that is in the box, though it is also possible that
there was a sample of manna.
The Covenant Box was carried around by priests. They carried it with
the Israelites as they wandered around in the desert, and sometimes
they carried it with troops when they went to battle. An example of
the former is in Joshua 3-4. Here the Israelites need to cross the
Jordan River. "When the people left the camp to cross the Jordan, the
priests went ahead of them, carrying the Covenant Box. As soon as the
priests stepped into the river, the water stopped flowing and piled
up, far upstream..." [Josh 3:15-16.] An example of the latter is in
1 Samuel 4-6. The Israelites were fighting the Philistines. They
brought the Covenant Box out with the army. Unfortunately the
Philistines still won the battle, and they captured and carried off
the Covenant Box. However holding it turned out to be a mistake: It
caused their idol of Dagon to keep falling down, and as punishment,
the God of Israel caused the Philistines to come down with what is
probably bubonic plague. The Philistines finally get sufficiently
scared that they return the Box. Interestingly, the Israelites to
whom they return it don't want it either. It is not the sort of thing
one wants to leave lying about. "The LORD killed seventy of the men
of Beth Shemesh because they looked into the Covenant Box". [1 Sam
6:19.] The Nazis should probably have given this some thought before
trying to take it back to Berlin.
Eventually King David took the Covenant Box to Jerusalem, his new
capital. [about 1010 B.C.E., see 2 Samuel 6.] During the trip to
Jerusalem, "the oxen stumbled, and Uzzah reached out and took hold of
the Covenant Box [to steady it?]. At once the LORD God became angry
with Uzzah and killed him because of his irreverence." [probable text
- Hebrew for "his irreverence" is unclear] [2 Sam 6:6-7.] David's
son, King Solomon, built a Temple, and had the Box put in a special
room at the center of the Temple. [about 960 B.C.E.] This is the
last definite information about the Covenant Box.
There is one more reference to it: Jeremiah the prophet wrote the
following. Apparently it was written after the destruction of
Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 B.C.E. It is part of a passage
where he is trying to give them hope that Jerusalem and the nation of
Israel will be restored. "Unfaithful people, come back.... I will
bring you back to Mount Zion ... Then when you have become numerous in
that land, people will no longer talk about my Covenant Box. They
will no longer think about it or remember it; they will not even need
it, nor will they make another one." [Jer 3:14-16.] This certainly
implies that the Covenant Box was lost or destroyed by that time.
Many scholars believe that the Babylonians took it when they destroyed
Jerusalem in 587. Possibly they even destroyed it, e.g. maybe they
removed the gold covering it and destroyed the box itself.
I don't know anything about the tradition that it was taken to Egypt.
It doesn't sound likely to me, but I am no archaeologist.
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End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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