Thiotimoline
Aunt Debbie
literacy. It started out with the realization that my friend had never
heard of thalidomide. And seemed only vaguely aware that many drugs have
dangerous sideeffects on fetal development.
The odd part about the discussion is my unflagging weakness when it comes
to remembering chemical names. When I first mentioned the drug Thalidomide,
I actually called it thiotimoline. I ended up looking up the drug in reference
books during the conversation, thus got the name straightened out.
The odd thing is, this friend is a fellow science fiction fan, who didn't
correct my usage of the chemincal name thiotimoline.
Later, when doing sanity checks, I received one resounding "of course I
remember Thalidomide, wasn't that in the Weekly Reader?" one tentative
"wasn't there some sort of birth defect stink?" and one "oh yeah, that's
the chemical that dissolves before it hits the water." (My husband and
I apparently share this particular instance of word-dislexia.)
Okay, so my questions are:
a) was Asimov's chemical called Thiotimoline, or do I still have the spelling
wrong?
b) could someone please supply me with references to the stories in which
Asimov used it? As I recall, it first appeared in a dissertation practice
piece, but there were a few short stories after that?
c) is this just a piece of science fiction obsucrity, or something that
would be included in a Science Fiction Dictionary of Cultural Literacy?
Or, would that be Dictionary of Science Fiction Cultural Literacy?
d) Everyone still knows who Asimov was, right?
- Aunt Deb
Debra Hisle
SYS...@UKCC.uky.edu
Nicholasville, KY
USA
32 weeks and counting...
Matthew P Wiener
>I was recently engaged in what I consider to be a discussion of cultural
>literacy. It started out with the realization that my friend had never
>heard of thalidomide. And seemed only vaguely aware that many drugs have
>dangerous sideeffects on fetal development.
>The odd part about the discussion is my unflagging weakness when it comes
>to remembering chemical names. When I first mentioned the drug Thalidomide,
>I actually called it thiotimoline. I ended up looking up the drug in reference
>books during the conversation, thus got the name straightened out.
I had the exact opposite problem just two days ago. Someone delivered
the straightest of straight lines in talk.origins, and it had to be
mocked with humorous bogus science. At the very end, I casually dropped
in a reference to "thiotilamine". The fact that I hadn't seen the word
in several years was no excuse--the etymology is part of the joke.
As far as I could tell, it's hanging around with all these molecular
biologists here at Wistar that made the -amine suffix inevitable.
>a) was Asimov's chemical called Thiotimoline, or do I still have the
>spelling wrong?
I received numerous corrections. Yours is correct.
>b) could someone please supply me with references to the stories in which
>Asimov used it? As I recall, it first appeared in a dissertation practice
>piece, but there were a few short stories after that?
The first one is in THE EARLY ASIMOV, part 2. The story behind the story
is, in this case, required reading. I can't locate the later stories for
you, but I will mention that it shows up brilliantly in one of the stories
in FOUNDATION'S FRIENDS. Even identifying which one would be a serious
spoiler, so beyond that, I won't say.
>c) is this just a piece of science fiction obscurity, or something that
>would be included in a Science Fiction Dictionary of Cultural Literacy?
>Or, would that be Dictionary of Science Fiction Cultural Literacy?
It's not an obscurity. At least not among the generation that thinks
Brooks is a derivative of Tolkien, as opposed to vice versa.
>d) Everyone still knows who Asimov was, right?
This is USENET. B1FF will show up.
--
-Matthew P Wiener (wee...@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
wnmc...@vax2.winona.msus.edu
>a) was Asimov's chemical called Thiotimoline, or do I still have the spelling
>wrong?
was called "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline".
Yep, you got the spelling right.
As the survivor of a dissertation, I still enjoy the fact that his
dissertation committee thought it was a real chemical--and very impressed
that the committee read ASF!
Kathy Sullivan
Crawford Kilian
Asimov introduced it in a non-fact "article" in the old Astounding, sometime
in the late 1940s I believe. He used it several times, but I don't recall the
details (if I'm old enough to remember Astounding in the 1940s, I'm old
enough to start forgetting a lot of other things! :) )
Is thiotimoline a litmus test, so to speak, of cultural literacy in SF? Well,
maybe, but only if you know what thiotimoline is before you read about it.
I hesitate to raise the issue, but maybe we have the start of a really
annoying thread here: what SF readers should be "expected" to know about the
genre. Judging from many of the comments here, anything published before 1965
was written on cave walls or wet clay tablets. Nothing really wrong with
that, except that so many people are ecstatic about modern stuff that's
really just a third-carbon-copy ripoff of some story from the 1940s or 50s
(the Tolkien clones, though not really in the genre, spring instantly to
mind).
For you young folks, "carbon copies" were what we had to make when we wrote
our stories on "typewriters."
--
Crawford Kilian Communications Department Capilano College
North Vancouver BC Canada V7J 3H5
Usenet: Crawfor...@mindlink.bc.ca
Internet: cki...@first.etc.bc.ca
Thomas Koenig
>I hesitate to raise the issue, but maybe we have the start of a really
>annoying thread here: what SF readers should be "expected" to know about the
>genre.
Well... nobody can know every 'classical' book, surely.
However, anybody who calls himself an SF reader should have at least
read a couple of books from each important direction the field has
taken.
- some Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, for example "20 000 Miles Under the
Sea" and "The War of the Worlds".
- at least one book of the E.E. Smith era, to get a feel of how
things really got started, complement that with one or two of
Hans Dominik's novels.
- 'golden fifties' stuff, such as Asimov's Robot stories, or Heinlein's
earlier work
- some "New Wave" (Moorkock's "Dancers at the End of Time" comes to
mind as an excellent example)
- some newer space opera (The Mote in God's Eye will do :-)
- a few of the eighties authors who have really brought believable
characters in many shades of grey into SF (Cherryh, for example)
- some Cyberpunk, say Neuromancer
From the nineties? Will they be totally dominated by Iain Banks? :-)
>Judging from many of the comments here, anything published before 1965
>was written on cave walls or wet clay tablets.
I find that I usually cannot relate to stories written before, say, 1945
(Poe's "Es laesst sich nicht lesen" - quote comes to mind). (with Verne
and Wells a notable exception), whereas I have few problems with post -
war SF. I guess the mindset was similar enough in those days that most
things are still readable today.
--
Thomas König, ig...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig...@dkauni2.bitnet
The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double
logarithmic diagram.
Andrew C. Plotkin
Deb...@UKCC.UKY.EDU (1715)
> a) was Asimov's chemical called Thiotimoline, or do I still have the spelling
> wrong?
Yes, although I think in the original piece it was "resublimated
thiotimoline" that had the bizarre properties.
> b) could someone please supply me with references to the stories in which
> Asimov used it? As I recall, it first appeared in a dissertation practice
> piece, but there were a few short stories after that?
No recall titles. I first found the original article (a joke science
article, not an SF story) in his collection _Only A Trillion_, which is
probably long out of print. There was a SF short story which mentioned
thiotimoline, but I don't even remember whether Asimov wrote it.
> c) is this just a piece of science fiction obsucrity, or something that
> would be included in a Science Fiction Dictionary of Cultural Literacy?
> Or, would that be Dictionary of Science Fiction Cultural Literacy?
Absolutely it should be included, along with "klaatu barada nikto" and
all the other things that went by in that thread a couple of months ago.
> d) Everyone still knows who Asimov was, right?
How could anyone forget Judith Asimov? :-)
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
coz...@garnet.berkeley.edu
<wnmc...@vax2.winona.msus.edu> wrote:
>
>As the survivor of a dissertation, I still enjoy the fact that his
>dissertation committee thought it was a real chemical--and very impressed
>that the committee read ASF!
The way I read it (the story's in _In Memory Still Green), the committee
didn't think it was a real chemical; they knew it was a spoof; and the
fact that they asked him about it, obviously as a joke, was a signal
to Asimov that he'd passed his orals, whereupon (such was his relief)
he broke into gales of helpless laughter and was gently led away,
still giggling.
Dorothy J. Heydt
UC Berkeley
coz...@garnet.berkeley.edu
Disclaimer: UCB and the Cozzarelli lab are not responsible for my
opinions, and in fact I don't think they know I have any.
Matthew P Wiener
>As the survivor of a dissertation, I still enjoy the fact that his
>dissertation committee thought it was a real chemical
They did not.
> --and very impressed
>that the committee read ASF!
That is not known.
Dani Zweig
>crawford...@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian):
>>...what SF readers should be "expected" to know about the genre.
>However, anybody who calls himself an SF reader should have at least
>read a couple of books from each important direction the field has taken.
>era, to get a feel of how things really got started...
I suggest that this is not a useful approach.
The phrase "anyone who calls himself an SF reader" is problematic in
itself: Anyone who reads current sf is welcome to call himself an
SF reader, and is under no obligation to broaden his horizon. I suspect
that what you both have in mind when you use the phrase "SF reader" is
someone who can reasonably be considered knowledgeable (not necessarily
expert).
But someone who, along with current sf, reads a book or two from *this*
pile and a book or two from *that* pile, etc. is not going to be
knowledgeable. Nor is this approach going to give you much of a feel
for how things really got started.
Almost nobody can read all the thousands of sf books that have been
published, but there is a core of a few hundred that most sf readers
who *are* considered knowledgeable have read most of.
>>For you young folks, "carbon copies" were what we had to make when we
>>wrote our stories on "typewriters."
I know that a 'typewriter' is a keyboard connected directly to a printer
with no buffer, but all copies are carbon-based. Are you sure you
don't mean 'stencils'? :)
-----
Dani Zweig
da...@netcom.com
Roses red and violets blew
and all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew -- Edmund Spenser
Till Poser
In article <930804133...@rutgers.edu>,
|>I was recently engaged in what I consider to be a discussion of cultural
|>literacy. It started out with the realization that my friend had never
|>heard of thalidomide. And seemed only vaguely aware that many drugs have
|>dangerous sideeffects on fetal development.
|>
|>The odd part about the discussion is my unflagging weakness when it comes
|>to remembering chemical names. When I first mentioned the drug Thalidomide,
|>I actually called it thiotimoline. I ended up looking up the drug in
|>reference books during the conversation, thus got the name straightened out.
|>
|>The odd thing is, this friend is a fellow science fiction fan, who didn't
|>correct my usage of the chemincal name thiotimoline.
|>
|>Later, when doing sanity checks, I received one resounding "of course I
|>remember Thalidomide, wasn't that in the Weekly Reader?" one tentative
|>"wasn't there some sort of birth defect stink?" and one "oh yeah, that's
|>the chemical that dissolves before it hits the water." (My husband and
|>I apparently share this particular instance of word-dislexia.)
|>
|>Okay, so my questions are:
|>
|>a) was Asimov's chemical called Thiotimoline, or do I still have the spelling
|>wrong?
As no doubt many people have told You by now, the spelling is correct.
The mock science article "The Endocronic Properties of Resublimated
Thiotimoline" appeared just before Asimov had his thesis defense. It seems
that Campell disregarded his plea to use a pseudonym, Asimov was a bit
apprehensive about making fun of science. There is an account of this in
both "The Early Asimov Vol.II" and "In Memory Yet Green".
|>b) could someone please supply me with references to the stories in which
|>Asimov used it? As I recall, it first appeared in a dissertation practice
|>piece, but there were a few short stories after that?
The first one is reprinted in "The Early Asimov Vol.II" under that name,
the second one eludes me ant the third title is "With Thiotimoline to the
Stars", which was written way after (Opus 100?).
|>c) is this just a piece of science fiction obsucrity, or something that
|>would be included in a Science Fiction Dictionary of Cultural Literacy?
|>Or, would that be Dictionary of Science Fiction Cultural Literacy?
It's one of science's neatest jokes on itself, right along with R.W.Woods'
drolleries, and "Mr.A.Square from Flatland". Certain parts of Asimov's
Oevre <*** SET POMPOSITY/ON ***> should be required reading, anyway, so
influential was he in his earlier days. <*** SET POMPOSITY/OFF ***>, and
this is one piece that is worth it.
|>d) Everyone still knows who Asimov was, right?
Oh, yes, Auntie, we remember, we do remember. 50 Asimov tomes on my bookshelf
bear witness to the fact that he showed me how _good_ SF could be, when I got
started on reading them in the original, nevermind how much he slipped in
his dotage. And I loved his annotation of "Paradise Lost"! Does this date me?
|>- Aunt Deb
|>
|>Debra Hisle
Till Poser Internet: po...@vxdsyc.desy.de
-R- DESY Computing Bitnet: POSER@DESYVAX
bldg.2b-314, Notkestr.85 Hepnet: VXDESY::POSER (13313::Poser)
D-2000 Hamburg 52 Tel.: -49-40-8998-3219
Alan Carter
|> Okay, so my questions are:
|>
|> a) was Asimov's chemical called Thiotimoline, or do I still have the
|> spelling wrong?
Quite right.
|> b) could someone please supply me with references to the stories in which
|> Asimov used it? As I recall, it first appeared in a dissertation practice
|> piece, but there were a few short stories after that?
"On the Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline." Almost certainly
Astounding, don't know when, but Asimov was frightened it might blow his
doctoral thesis defence by showing flippancy. Anthologised much.
|> c) is this just a piece of science fiction obsucrity, or something that
|> would be included in a Science Fiction Dictionary of Cultural Literacy?
|> Or, would that be Dictionary of Science Fiction Cultural Literacy?
In the dictionary. Thiotimoline has become a standard, like waldoes and
ansibles.
|> d) Everyone still knows who Asimov was, right?
Read as "Do all persons who have known who Asimov is still know who Asimov is"
the answer is no - Asimov is no longer a person (in law at least).
|>
|> - Aunt Deb
|>
|> Debra Hisle
|> SYS...@UKCC.uky.edu
|> Nicholasville, KY
|> USA
Alan
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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coz...@garnet.berkeley.edu
Matthew P Wiener <wee...@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu> wrote:
--and very impressed
>>that the committee read ASF!
>
>That is not known.
Well, *somebody* must have read it--who was either on the committee or
who knew Asimov was due for his orals and managed to get the article to
a committee members. Because somebody said to him, when the real questions
were getting thin on the ground, "Mr. Asimov, what can you tell us about
the endochronic properties of resublimated thiotimoline?"
Whereupon (as already indicated) Asimov knew that because they were willing
to crack jokes with him, it meant he'd passed, and he collapsed into
helpless giggles of relief.
That's the way he told it, anyway.
Christopher Davis
MPW> == Matthew P Wiener <wee...@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu>
AD> d) Everyone still knows who Asimov was, right?
MPW> This is USENET. B1FF will show up.
ASMIOV!!! HE"S THAT D00D WITH THE FUNNY BEERD WHO WROTES THE ROBOTSS STORIES?
--
# Christopher Davis # <c...@kei.com> # <c...@eff.org> # [CKD1] # MIME # RIPEM #
``"mail" is an _uncountable_ noun. Like water, or spam, it is not treated
grammatically as if it had natural, countable smallest units (except perhaps
in Monty Python skits).'' -- Alfred Kriman <kri...@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Matthew P Wiener
>>>--and very impressed that the committee read ASF!
>>That is not known.
>Well, *somebody* must have read it
No kidding. But as for anyone on the committee? As Asimov tells it,
copies of the story were circulating like crazy across chemistry
departments everywhere. This can happen with no one on the committee
reading ASF. Presumably the joke was on everyone's lips, so there was
no need for committee members to have even read the article.
>Whereupon (as already indicated) Asimov knew that because they were
>willing to crack jokes with him, it meant he'd passed, and he
>collapsed into helpless giggles of relief.
I tried to keep telling myself that regarding a practical joke one of
my qual committee members pulled on me during the exam. It didn't work,
but yes, I passed.
Crawford Kilian
of Asimov's original article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated
Thiotimoline," I'm wondering whether my subconscious plagiarized the term
"endochronic." I used it in my first SF novel, The Empire of Time (1978),
which is about a series of parallel worlds at different points in time;
people living in a particular "chronoplane" are known as "endochronics" or
"endos," to distinguish them from fully human people in the 21st-century
chronoplane that's learned how to travel from one to another. I thought I was
just showing off my rudimentary Greek...but I must admit I'd read more Asimov
than Homer by the time I went to work of Empire of Time.
Jim Kasprzak
|> Is thiotimoline a litmus test, so to speak, of cultural literacy in SF? Well,
|> maybe, but only if you know what thiotimoline is before you read about it.
|> I hesitate to raise the issue, but maybe we have the start of a really
|> annoying thread here: what SF readers should be "expected" to know about the
|> genre. Judging from many of the comments here, anything published before 1965
|> was written on cave walls or wet clay tablets.
Well now, I wouldn't be too quick to assume that. Granted, the majority of
the discussion here pertains to recently-released works, but I think that's
mainly because those are works which are still fresh in everyone's mind.
Everyone who's read _Snow Crash_, for instance, has read it within the past
year or two; but with a book like, say, _The City and the Stars_, your most
recent reading of it could have been anywhere from this afternoon to fifty
years ago.
I think that most SF fans tend, sooner or later (probably mostly sooner),
to go back to the roots of the genre to see where it all began. If they
discoveres SF in the local libraries, chances are they started out with
the "classics" because most libraries tend to have a lot of those and be
somewhat spotty on the new releases. My junior-high library was well-
stocked with Asimov, Heinlein, and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
Actually, now that I think of it, my SF reading did a fairly good job
of paralleling the history of the genre. The first SF I ever read was
H. G. Wells' _War of the Worlds_ in third grade; from there I went on to
Wells' other SF works, then the grand masters, and by the time my parents
and the local library trusted me with an "adult" card (about age 12, I think),
I'd discovered Niven, Bova, Ellison, and Lem. Once I got my paper route and
had money to spend in the bookstores, that's when I started getting the new
stuff.
I don't know how much this reflects the general SF-reading public, but
I'd guess that it'd be a fairly easy pattern to follow. Anyone out there
care to provide more data points? Did you start reading the "classics"
before or after the recent works? Or are there people out there who really
haven't read much from before the 60's? (I'm setting followups to e-mail,
since the FAQL reccomends against what-was-your-first-SF threads. I'll post
a summary if I get enough responses to be interesting.)
|> For you young folks, "carbon copies" were what we had to make when we wrote
|> our stories on "typewriters."
Those are the things that look like a workstation without the monitor, right?
------------------------------------------------------------------
__ Live from Capitaland, heart of the Empire State...
___/ | Jim Kasprzak, computer operator @ RPI, Troy, NY, USA
/____ *| "Chicken Little tells you that the sky is falling, and
\_| even if it was, would you still come crawling back again..."
==== e-mail: kas...@rpi.edu or kasp...@mts.rpi.edu
David Goldfarb
"The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" appeared
in _Astounding_, and in the book _Only a Trillion_. _OaT_, unless
I'm mistaken, also contained the sequel, "The Micropsychiatric
Applications of Thiotimoline". (In which a classification scheme
for schizophrenics is invented based on which part of a lump of
thiotimoline dissolves first when they pour water on it. The scheme
is beautiful, consistent, and correlates with nothing else whatsoever.)
_Opus 100_ had "Thiotimoline and the Space Age", about which
I know nothing, and _Opus 200_ took "Thiotimoline to the Stars".
Of the four, the first two are written in the style of a scientific
paper, and the fourth is a short story. Don't know about the third.
David Goldfarb |"Bagels can be an enormous force for good or
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | for evil. It is up to us to decide how we
gold...@UCBOCF.BITNET | will use them."
gold...@soda.berkeley.edu | -- Daniel M. Pinkwater
Christian Neuss
>In article <930804133...@rutgers.edu>, SYS...@UKCC.UKY.EDU (Aunt Debbie) writes:
>|> ...
>|> Okay, so my questions are:
>|>
>|> a) was Asimov's chemical called Thiotimoline, or do I still have the
>|> spelling wrong?
>Quite right.
One question.. (I don't know the story, so it might be a stupid one :-)..
Do you think that Thiotimoline = Thy timeline (=Your timeline)?
Cheers,
Chris
Champion R.
>But someone who, along with current sf, reads a book or two from *this*
>pile and a book or two from *that* pile, etc. is not going to be
>knowledgeable. Nor is this approach going to give you much of a feel
>for how things really got started.
Say what? I assure you that it is quite possible to read a variety of books
and still maintain a high degree of knowledge. Case in point; I'm mainly
interested in SF/Fantasy books... however, I also read ALOT of non-fiction
(history / science) and plenty of mainstream fiction. I read at a rate of
a standard paperback every 3 days (mostly on the train to and from work).
I've got litterally hundreds of books at home (over a thousand) and most of
them are SF. You just have to read really fast.
Rich 'mcmxciibo' Holmes
>I hesitate to raise the issue, but maybe we have the start of a really
>annoying thread here: what SF readers should be "expected" to know about the
>genre. Judging from many of the comments here, anything published before 1965
>was written on cave walls or wet clay tablets. Nothing really wrong with
>that, except that so many people are ecstatic about modern stuff that's
>really just a third-carbon-copy ripoff of some story from the 1940s or 50s
Naturally, anything written before 1965 was absolutely original.
Please disregard any accidental similarities between "Foundation" and
"The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire".
--
- Rich "mcmxciibo" Holmes
'In every walk of life, when wrestling with difficult moral dilemmas,
one can always find assistance by asking oneself, "How would Elmer
Dani Zweig
>>But someone who, along with current sf, reads a book or two from *this* pile
>>and a book or two from *that* pile, etc. is not going to be knowledgeable.
>
>and still maintain a high degree of knowledge.
Sure, if you read a lot. It was the "as a music lover you should be
familiar with a piece from the Renaissance, two Classical pieces, one
from the Baroque..." approach I was disagreeing with.
-----
Dani Zweig
da...@netcom.com
If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the
best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills
you! -- Dorothy Parker
Donald J. Harlow
>In article <27...@mindlink.bc.ca> crawford...@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
>
>>I hesitate to raise the issue, but maybe we have the start of a really
>>annoying thread here: what SF readers should be "expected" to know about the
>>genre. Judging from many of the comments here, anything published before 1965
>>was written on cave walls or wet clay tablets. Nothing really wrong with
>>that, except that so many people are ecstatic about modern stuff that's
>>really just a third-carbon-copy ripoff of some story from the 1940s or 50s
>
>Naturally, anything written before 1965 was absolutely original.
>Please disregard any accidental similarities between "Foundation" and
>"The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire".
>
From the works of Edward Gibbon..."
or ....
"With an empire that is Roman
You will find you are at home in
All the starry Milky way."
(both from some poem or other by ... I. Asimov!!)
--
----------------------------------------------
Don Harlow do...@netcom.com
Prezidanto, ELNA (510)222-0187
Esperanto League (Info only) (800)828-5944
Kavalir' fantom-tenebra alvokas min turniri
dek mejlojn trans la monda fin': laux mi, ne longe iri.
-- Freneza Tom
----------------------------------------------
S. Arrowsmith
sulphur (usually in place of an oxygen -- eg thiosulphate S2O3 cf sulphate
SO4) -- thiotimoline has, if I remember, a sulphur with one bond pointing
into the future and one into the past (hence its endochronic properties).
The `-timoline' however, I can well believe to be a pun on `timeline.'
(Oh, feel free to spell `sulphur' `sulfur' if you really must....)
--
\S
SA...@phx.cam.ac.uk | "Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for
___ | some people it is a complete substitute for life."
\X/ | -- Andrew Brown, The Independent
coz...@garnet.berkeley.edu
Rich 'mcmxciibo' Holmes <rsho...@mothra.syr.EDU> wrote:
>
>Naturally, anything written before 1965 was absolutely original.
>Please disregard any accidental similarities between "Foundation" and
>"The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire".
>
So success is not a mystery, just brush up on your history, and borrow
day by day.
Take an Empire that was Roman and you'll find it is at home in all the
starry Milky Way.
With a drive that's hyperspatial, through the parsecs you will race,
you'll find that plotting is a breeze,
With a tiny bit of cribbin' from the works of Edward Gibbon and that
Greek Thucydides.
Andrew C. Plotkin
David Gold...@ocf.berke (1050)
> "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" appeared
> in _Astounding_, and in the book _Only a Trillion_. _OaT_, unless
> I'm mistaken, also contained the sequel, "The Micropsychiatric
> Applications of Thiotimoline". (In which a classification scheme
> for schizophrenics is invented based on which part of a lump of
> thiotimoline dissolves first when they pour water on it. The scheme
> is beautiful, consistent, and correlates with nothing else whatsoever.)
You're mistaken. :-) I have _OaT_ (my very first Asimov book! ah,
youth) and I've never read "Micropsychiatric..."
The second joke-science article in _OaT_ is "Pate Foie de Gras", which
I've probably misspelled -- the goose-and-golden-egg story.
Marty Helgesen
after the original. The title was, as I recall, "The Micropsychiatric
Applications of Resublimated Thiotimoline" It's been years since I
read it, but the basic idea was that one could measure certain mental
conditions by measuring how long before water was added to thiotimoline
the thiotimoline dissolved when the water was poured by someone with
the condition.
-------
Marty Helgesen
Bitnet: mnhcc@cunyvm Internet: mn...@cunyvm.cuny.edu
Robert E. Lee was Pro-Choice on Slavery.
Rebecca Crowley
in the what-did-you-read-first part peripherally, and in the cultural
literacy aspect mostly.
I consider myself a fairly well-read person, given that I'm not now
and never have been involved in one of the many read x pages a night
out of the Great Books programs. In a desultory fashion, however, I've
read a lot. Of the big three, I quite like Heinlein, like Clarke's _Tales
of the White Hart_ more than anything else of his I've read, and prefer
Asimov's mysteries to his science fiction (and his science essays, on
occasion, to both). These tastes were established comparatively early
for me (about the same time period I was reading Lensman novels). Still,
SF was always something I did for fun, and only in the last couple of years
(especially the last year) have I gotten serious about reading
through previous award winners.
Despite the fact that I've spent the last year (plus a bit) attempting
to close the gap between the current stuff I read, and the earlier
stuff I read as a teenager (I *really* like Delany and am glad I
made the effort), I would like to make a couple comments on why
I think this effort was worthwhile, and why I think others might
want to do the same.
I do not, and I think this is a fundamental difference of opinion
or style between Jim Kasprzak and me (judging by a related thread
on rec.arts.books), think that anyone should be told to read fiction because
they "ought", "should", or because "any well-read", or
to be "culturally literate" or ANYTHING ELSE that involves duty.
We're talking about entertainment here, not eating your broccoli,
and anyone who tells you different is going to prevent a lot of
people from ever liking broccoli, if they were allowed to get
to it in their own time, when it smelled good, and looked delicious.
This is, in fact, a pet rant I have against all attempts to define
a canon, to supply reading lists of what one "should" read. I
don't object to the lists -- they are wonderful for finding
books which bring me a great deal of joy and pleasure and,
on very rare occasions, something resembling insight. I, personally,
feel that reading out of a sense of duty, or obligation, gets
in the way of feeling that joy, that pleasure, and being receptive
to that insight. A feeling of duty or obligation tends to make
me downright hostile.
I understand that others may feel differently. More power to them.
Please do not allow me or my feelings on the subject get in the way of
reading something because you feel you should have read it (already,
preferably).
In the meantime, however, in the interests of preserving this
genre as a viable field of entertainment (which, if it ceases to
be, it will shortly cease to produce worthwhile art, as well, imo.
It's been the historical trend.), I'd just like to say to everyone
who hated to be forced to eat their vegetables as kids, but learned
to crave cauliflower as an adult: Don't let anyone guilt trip you
into reading Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Niven, LeGuin, Delany, C.J. Cherryh,
Iain Banks, or anyone else. These are all wonderful authors who have
successfully entertained a whole *lot* of people. Read them because a
lot of other (with-it intelligent people like you) thought they were the
best kind of fun, the kind of fun that rewards repeated reading, and close
scrutiny (i.e. they're *good*, too). Or wait. There is a time
for everything, especially good science fiction.
Jim Kasprzak (kas...@isaac.its.rpi.edu) wrote:
:
: I think that most SF fans tend, sooner or later (probably mostly sooner),
: to go back to the roots of the genre to see where it all began.
This would probably depend on the definition of fan. If you mean
reader fans (rather than fen, who, I am discovering, often don't
read much sf at all), then you're probably right.
: If they
: discoveres SF in the local libraries, chances are they started out with
: the "classics" because most libraries tend to have a lot of those and be
: somewhat spotty on the new releases. My junior-high library was well-
: stocked with Asimov, Heinlein, and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
I know people who were assigned Heinlein (the case I remember off-hand
was "The Roads Must Roll") in junior high school reading classes.
Ursula LeGuin made it onto most recommended reading lists in my school
district.
Rebecca Crowley
standard disclaimers apply
rcro...@zso.dec.com
Joel B Levin
|Excerpts from netnews.rec.arts.sf.written: 5-Aug-93 Re: Thiotimoline
|David Gold...@ocf.berke (1050)
|> "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" appeared
|> in _Astounding_, and in the book _Only a Trillion_. _OaT_, unless
|> I'm mistaken, also contained the sequel, "The Micropsychiatric
|> Applications of Thiotimoline".
|youth) and I've never read "Micropsychiatric..."
|
|The second joke-science article in _OaT_ is "Pate Foie de Gras", which
|I've probably misspelled -- the goose-and-golden-egg story.
Yes; that's where I also first heard of Thiotimoline. Nevertheless
there is another Asimove collection, which I believe is mostly non-SF,
that contains at least the "Micropsychiatric" article and I think the
"Endochronic" article as well.
Keep hunting through old Asimov books, you'll find it...
/J
Jim Kasprzak
|> rsho...@mothra.syr.EDU (Rich 'mcmxciibo' Holmes) writes in a recent posting (reference <RSHOLMES.9...@mothra.syr.EDU>):
|> >Please disregard any accidental similarities between "Foundation" and
|> >"The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire".
|> >
|> "With a little bit of cribbin'
|> From the works of Edward Gibbon..."
|>
|> or ....
|>
|> "With an empire that is Roman
|> You will find you are at home in
|> All the starry Milky way."
|>
|> (both from some poem or other by ... I. Asimov!!)
least the meter) from the works of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan.
Joel Upchurch
> Okay, so my questions are:
>
> a) was Asimov's chemical called Thiotimoline, or do I still have the spellin
> wrong?
Yes you've got it right.
> b) could someone please supply me with references to the stories in which
> Asimov used it? As I recall, it first appeared in a dissertation practice
> piece, but there were a few short stories after that?
Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline - Astounding Mar 48
The Micropsychiatric Applications of Thiotimoline - Astounding Dec 53
Thiotimoline to the Stars - Buy Jupiter and Other Stories
Asimov mentioned in his bio that quite a few readers thought that it
was a serious article and that Campbell told him that that readers
floooded the NY Public Library demanding to see the fake journals he
had referenced.
(If your mail bounces use the address below.)
Joel Upchurch/Upchurch Computer Consulting/718 Galsworthy/Orlando, FL 32809
jo...@peora.ccur.com {uiucuxc,hoptoad,petsd,ucf-cs}!peora!joel (407) 859-0982
Joel Upchurch
> As the survivor of a dissertation, I still enjoy the fact that his
> dissertation committee thought it was a real chemical--and very impressed
> that the committee read ASF!
They didn't think it was real; they asked him about it as a joke. He
describes his orals on pages 525-6 of "In Memory Yet Green". Asimov
said that the article was very popular among chemists and he got a
lot of requests to reprint it in various chemical journals.
Unshaved Heart
rsho...@mothra.syr.EDU (Rich 'mcmxciibo' Holmes) writes:
|> In article <27...@mindlink.bc.ca> crawford...@mindlink.bc.ca
(Crawford Kilian) writes:
|>
|> >I hesitate to raise the issue, but maybe we have the start of a
really
|> >annoying thread here: what SF readers should be "expected" to know
about the
|> >genre. Judging from many of the comments here, anything published
before 1965
|> >was written on cave walls or wet clay tablets. Nothing really wrong
with
|> >that, except that so many people are ecstatic about modern stuff
that's
|> >really just a third-carbon-copy ripoff of some story from the 1940s
or 50s
|>
|> Naturally, anything written before 1965 was absolutely original.
|> Please disregard any accidental similarities between "Foundation"
and
|> "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire".
Geez, Rich, settle down. Why is it that no one can raise a point on
this
group without someone cheesing off?
He wasn't saying it was all original before 1965. He was saying that a
lot
of modern stuff is the same as from the 1940's and 50's. It says just
that
in the part you quoted!
And Asimov BASED his Foundation series on The Rise and Fall of the
Roman Empire. He says so in his intro to the later editions. It's not
like a conspiracy or something.
My advice, which is worth the price I'm charging you, is to read
carefully what people say, and give them the benefit of the doubt.
It would cut back on maybe 75% of posting to this group.
--
* Phil Plait pc...@virginia.edu
* Baby Member (by 1.83 years), STOFF
* "To escape from our own island, we must each metaphorically
* kill our own Gilligan..."
Droo the Ponderer
>The second joke-science article in _OaT_ is "Pate Foie de Gras", which
>I've probably misspelled -- the goose-and-golden-egg story.
I think it's as I have it in the Subject line (sans accent marks).
Slight spoilers follow...
My question marks me as someone woefully deficient in the life sciences,
but I'm going to ask anyway. Asimov said there are two reasonable
solutions to the problem posed in the story. (He originally had one in
mind, but advancing technology made the other feasible.)
I'm assuming one of the solutions is to clone the goose. Does anyone
know the other (and know both of them, if I'm wrong)?
--
Andrew Hackard UT wouldn't be caught dead with opinions like this.
"Being intelligent doesn't mean you aren't stupid." -- Robert Fulghum
Teddy Bear
>This is, in fact, a pet rant I have against all attempts to define
>a canon, to supply reading lists of what one "should" read. I
>don't object to the lists -- they are wonderful for finding
>books which bring me a great deal of joy and pleasure and,
>on very rare occasions, something resembling insight.
>
Just something about the definition of the word "canon." I had the great
fortune to be in a class last semester with a brilliant professor, and we
were to come up with a definition of/works to be included in an Asian-
American canon. The best definition the class could come up with was "A
small body of works which represents the whole [culture]." It's more
intended to *introduce* people to, in this case, SF, rather than say, "You
have to read all these before you can knowledgeably discuss SF." And since
it's very difficult to draw a line separating SF from not-SF (we had enough
difficulty defining an "Asian-American novel"), there is always disagreement
about what should go into a canon. Unfortunately, once a canon becomes
accepted among professors in any field of literature, it becomes difficult to
remove anything from the list or add anything to the list. That's academic
inertia for you.
If I were recommending a few SF novels to someone who hadn't read SF much
before, off the top of my head I'd recommend a couple of Heinlein juveniles,
Clarke's _Childhood's End_, Bujold's _Borders of Infinity_, and a couple of
Duane's Star Trek novels. Not that I think these are the deepest and most
profound SF works of all time, just that they are all fairly good, represent
a fairly broad range of styles and content, and come from a few differing
time periods.
Joel Singer *Harvey Mudd College* ( jsi...@jarthur.claremont.edu )
"Ecce Eduardus Ursus scalis nunc tump-tump-tump occipite gradus pulsante
post Christophorum Robinum descendens." -- A.A. Milne, via Alexander Lenard
Lee Ann Rucker
in the 60's - I've read lots of golden age authors - almost everything
Heinlein wrote, Piper, Cordwainer Smith, Doc Smith, Kuttner, CL Moore, and
of course some Asimov (few can claim to have read _all_ of Asimov, after
all) but I'd never heard of this stuff.
Matt Austern
[Don't read this unless you're alread read Pate de Foie Gras]
> My question marks me as someone woefully deficient in the life sciences,
> but I'm going to ask anyway. Asimov said there are two reasonable
> solutions to the problem posed in the story. (He originally had one in
> mind, but advancing technology made the other feasible.)
>
> I'm assuming one of the solutions is to clone the goose. Does anyone
> know the other (and know both of them, if I'm wrong)?
The one I thought of was: the goose was sterile because of heavy metal
poisoning. If there wasn't any gold, it might no longer be sterile.
So all you do is cut off the supply of Fe(56), and voila, no more gold.
I didn't send my suggestion to Asimov, though; I read the story 20
years after its first publication. The goose was probably dead by then.
--
Matthew Austern Maybe we can eventually make language a
ma...@physics.berkeley.edu complete impediment to understanding.
Joe Slater
>Aunt Debbie (sys...@ukcc.uky.edu) asked
>>a) was Asimov's chemical called Thiotimoline, or do I still have the spelling
>>wrong?
>The first article appeared in ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION March 1948 and
>was called "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline".
>Yep, you got the spelling right.
>As the survivor of a dissertation, I still enjoy the fact that his
>dissertation committee thought it was a real chemical--and very impressed
>that the committee read ASF!
They didn't actually think it was a chemical. Isaac was afraid that its
publication would hurt his dissertation, so he asked that it be published
under a pseudonym. For some reason it got published under his real name.
This made him very nervous. After his dissertation one of the examiners
asked him about the endochronic properties of resubliminated thiotimoline,
and they all cracked up.
jds
--
j...@zikzak.apana.org.au | As I was going to St Ives I met a
T: +61-3-525-8728 F: +61-3-562-0756 | man with twenty wives. Each wife had
If all else fails try Fidonet: | twenty sacks; each sack had twenty
joe_s...@f351.n632.z3.fidonet.org | cats; each cat had twenty kits.
Abigail Ann Young
that one of my favourite Andre Norton juveniles, _Star Guard_, was an
almost exact transposition of Xenophon's Anabasis into a SF setting.
It just goes to show how deeply I am sunk in the DWM school of
European culture that I enjoyed both books the better for knowing that!
I think the impulse to define a canon can be a positive one, as
helping to give a sense of a literary field and its antecedents, as
long as it doesn't become a strait-jacket. I don't see why we couldn't
approach it in the same spirit as those wonderful short-story
collections by Moscovitz (who was, I think, conciously defining a
canon) or Conklin (who wasn't, but is my favourite anthologiser of
SF.... I still love the stories in _Invaders of Earth_).
Abigail
Mark Bernstein
: In article <donhCBA...@netcom.com>, do...@netcom.com (Donald J. Harlow) writes:
: |>
: |> "With an empire that is Roman
: |> You will find you are at home in
: |> All the starry Milky way."
: |>
: |> (both from some poem or other by ... I. Asimov!!)
:
: "The Foundation of SF Success"... which itself cribbed the tune (or at
: least the meter) from the works of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan.
If I recall correctly, the specific tune in use is "Am I Alone and
Unobserved?", Bunthorne's patter song from Patience.
--
Mark Bernstein
ma...@cimage.com
Ross Smith
>crawford...@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
>
>>I hesitate to raise the issue, but maybe we have the start of a really
>>annoying thread here: what SF readers should be "expected" to know about the
>>genre.
>
>
>However, anybody who calls himself an SF reader should have at least
>read a couple of books from each important direction the field has
>taken.
>
>- some Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, for example "20 000 Miles Under the
^^^^^
> Sea" and "The War of the Worlds".
That's the abridged edition, right? :-)
--
... Ross Smith (Wanganui, New Zealand) ... al...@acheron.amigans.gen.nz ...
Computer [n.]: A device which comes in three varieties:
(1) The personal computer or workstation, a.k.a. "my computer";
(2) The toy computer or games machine, a.k.a. "your computer";
(3) The mainframe or dinosaur, a.k.a. "their computer".
David Bofinger
> As the survivor of a dissertation, I still enjoy the fact that his
> and very impressed that the committee read ASF!
This isn't quite the way that Asimov told it. The article for ASF was
supposed to have been published under a pseudonym. It got published
under his real name instead by accident, and Asimov was terrified his
examiners would think he was damaging chemistry's dignity or
something. During the exam one of them asked him -- as a joke -- to
talk about thiotimoline, and Asimov breathed a sigh of relief, because
he knew they wouldn't joke about it if they were angry with him for
making jokes. I imagine the other examiners had no idea what the
question meant, unless they'd been shown the article earlier.
> From: SYS...@UKCC.UKY.EDU (Aunt Debbie)
> It started out with the realization that my friend had never heard of
> thalidomide. And seemed only vaguely aware that many drugs have
> dangerous sideeffects on fetal development.
(Sir?) William MacBride, the doctor who discovered the harmful effects
of thalidomide, was just recently struck off the medical register.
He'd been caught (a few years back) faking evidence that another drug,
Debendox, had similar effects. He published without telling his
graduate students/employees, and they blew the whistle on him when
they found out. A sobering episode for anyone interested in scientific
and/or medical ethics.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Bofinger AARNet: dxb...@phys.anu.edu.au
Snail: Dept. of Theoretical Physics, RSPhysSE, ANU, ACT, 2601
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
coz...@garnet.berkeley.edu
Droo the Ponderer <an...@doc.cc.utexas.edu> wrote:
>...Asimov said there are two reasonable
>solutions to the problem posed in the story. (He originally had one in
>mind, but advancing technology made the other feasible.)
>
>I'm assuming one of the solutions is to clone the goose.
That would, I suppose, be the one made possible by advancing technology.
Does anyone know the other ..?
That would be the original one: to put the goose in a sealed environment
where it couldn't get any of the isotope ... the mind goes blank, I
think it was heavy oxygen or something ... from which it transmuted
the gold. With no more gold in its system, its ovaries wouldn't be
poisoned and it could lay fertile eggs ... IF, of course, as many
pointed out, you put a gander in with the goose.
Cloning it would probably work better anyway; you don't know if the
trait would be dominant, and if not, you'd have to raise many generations
of geese, breeding them back to each other.
Crawford Kilian
literary canon:
The best definition the class could come up with was "A
small body of works which represents the whole [culture]."
I must respectfully disagree. I understand a canon to be those works which
have most influenced later works (and by extension, their society). So the
canon of 18th-century literature would probably not include broadside verses,
however widespread their popularity; it would include Pope, Sterne, and a
host of other writers whose work formed the environment for later writers and
readers.
By this definition, SF works like Clarke's early novels would certainly be
canonical because they influenced many later writers; Stapledon's would also
be canonical because they clearly influenced Clarke. (Why am I working this
argument backward? Too much thiotimoline in my coffee this morning.) The Star
Trek novels, like the Perry Rhodan and Gor series, aren't canonical...yet. If
they influence later writers, *then* we can look back and say, with Mr.
Spock, "Those were the giants."
--
Crawford Kilian Communications Department Capilano College
North Vancouver BC Canada V7J 3H5
Usenet: Crawfor...@mindlink.bc.ca
Internet: cki...@first.etc.bc.ca
David Higgen
>
> My question marks me as someone woefully deficient in the life sciences,
> but I'm going to ask anyway. Asimov said there are two reasonable
> solutions to the problem posed in the story. (He originally had one in
> mind, but advancing technology made the other feasible.)
>
> I'm assuming one of the solutions is to clone the goose. Does anyone
> know the other (and know both of them, if I'm wrong)?
I don't recall the Asimov quote about the two solutions, or if he ever
stated them.
But one can fairly easily construct at least one other solution from the
story itself. As I recall, the Goose converted just one particular isotope of
oxygen into gold. (Oxygen 18, was it?)
Thus, one just has to arrange to keep it for a while in an environment
free of that particular isotope: artificially produced air & water containing
only oxygen isotopes other than the critical one. (Likewise its diet, of
course, which would have to be similarly raised in an artificial environment.)
Expensive & difficult to do, of course, but technically feasable...
daveh
Matthew P Wiener
>The Star Trek novels, like the Perry Rhodan and Gor series, aren't
Wait a moment. Where do present day Star Trek novels come from?
--
-Matthew P Wiener (wee...@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
Crawford Kilian
In article <27...@mindlink.bc.ca>, crawford_killian@mindlink (Crawford
Kilian)
writes:
>The Star Trek novels, like the Perry Rhodan and Gor series, aren't
>canonical...yet. If they influence later writers, [...]
Wait a moment. Where do present day Star Trek novels come from?
...to which I can only reply that their influences must go back at least as
far as the Odyssey and the legend of the Argonauts. To become canonical, the
ST novels would have to influence later works; perhaps by featuring perennial
squabbles between a healer and a logician aboard a quasi-military craft.
John Redford
Actually, now that I think of it, my SF reading did a fairly good job
of paralleling the history of the genre. The first SF I ever read was
H. G. Wells' _War of the Worlds_ in third grade; from there I went on to
Wells' other SF works, then the grand masters, and by the time my parents
and the local library trusted me with an "adult" card (about age 12, I think),
I'd discovered Niven, Bova, Ellison, and Lem. Once I got my paper route and
had money to spend in the bookstores, that's when I started getting the new
stuff.
Although I started my SF reading in the library, the bulk of it came
from used bookstores. This was a great way to catch up on everything
in the field, or at least everything that survived the decay of the
cheap pulp paper in paperbacks. Even broke teenagers could afford
them, and there was a much wider variety of books than the new
bookstores could carry. The used places also had a lot more lurid
books than a library would look at.
Today, though, there seem to be many fewer used bookstores than there
were twenty years ago. Perhaps teenagers have more money and so don't
need them. Perhaps people read less. Or perhaps I just no longer
look for them.
--
/jlr (John Redford, jred...@bbn.com)
coz...@garnet.berkeley.edu
Crawford Kilian <crawford...@mindlink.bc.ca> wrote:
>
>...To become canonical, the
>ST novels would have to influence later works; perhaps by featuring perennial
>squabbles between a healer and a logician aboard a quasi-military craft.
But if you tried to sell such a novel, it would get bounced as "too much
like Star Trek." I know whereof I speak. Long ago in the morning of
the world Astrid Anderson and I wrote such a novel. Everyone we showed it
to who _wasn't_ an editor loved it. Everyone we showed it to who _was_
an editor said "Too much like Star Trek." So how will the ST novels ever
get to be canonical?
Sara Larson
I know people who were assigned Heinlein (the case
I remember off-hand was "The Roads Must Roll") in
junior high school reading classes. Ursula LeGuin
made it onto most recommended reading lists in my
school district.
LeGuin's _The Left Hand of Darkness_ was assigned reading
for sophomores at my highschool. What fun for me! It was
quite possibly the most uplifting book (read that to mean
"not depressing") of the entire year. It came at the very
end of a long hike through _When the Legends Die_ (Hal
Borland), "Hamlet", _Jane Eyre_(sp?(Did I just spell out
the name of some small country somewhere?)), _The Return
of the Native_, among many other not-particularly-cheerful
tomes.
-Sara
Sea Wasp
>Rebecca Crowley (rcro...@zso.dec.com) writes:
> I know people who were assigned Heinlein (the case
> I remember off-hand was "The Roads Must Roll") in
> junior high school reading classes. Ursula LeGuin
> made it onto most recommended reading lists in my
> school district.
>LeGuin's _The Left Hand of Darkness_ was assigned reading
>for sophomores at my highschool.
Does this stuff sound BIZARRE to anyone else -- I mean, hitting
you with how much high schools must have changed in the past couple
of decades?
I remember having SF books literally taken away and torn to pieces
by other students when I was in junior high. I remember SF/Fantasy being
universally considered "wierd" and no one in any position of authority
(with a very few notable exceptions) taking it seriously -- certainly
NO ONE even considering SF as a possible source for class reading.
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Dave Schweisguth
: In article <27...@mindlink.bc.ca>,
: Crawford Kilian <crawford...@mindlink.bc.ca> wrote:
: >...To become canonical, the ST novels would have to influence later works;
: >perhaps by featuring perennial squabbles between a healer and a logician
: >aboard a quasi-military craft.
:
: But if you tried to sell such a novel, it would get bounced as "too much
: like Star Trek." I know whereof I speak. Long ago in the morning of
: the world Astrid Anderson and I wrote such a novel. Everyone we showed it
: to who _wasn't_ an editor loved it. Everyone we showed it to who _was_
: an editor said "Too much like Star Trek." So how will the ST novels ever
: get to be canonical?
Looks like they're influencing later works. They're canonical!
(OTOH, give it some time.)
Cheers,
--
| Dave Schweisguth Yale MB&B & Chemistry Net: d...@neutron.chem.yale.edu |
| Lab phone: 203-432-5208 Fax: 203-432-6144 Home phone: 203-624-3866 |
| For complying with the NJ Right To Know Act: Contents partially unknown. |
Valerie S. Hammerl
>In article <70...@mimsy.umd.edu> lar...@cfar.umd.edu (Sara Larson) writes:
>>Rebecca Crowley (rcro...@zso.dec.com) writes:
>> I know people who were assigned Heinlein (the case
>> I remember off-hand was "The Roads Must Roll") in
>> junior high school reading classes. Ursula LeGuin
>> made it onto most recommended reading lists in my
>> school district.
>
>>LeGuin's _The Left Hand of Darkness_ was assigned reading
>>for sophomores at my highschool.
>
> Does this stuff sound BIZARRE to anyone else -- I mean, hitting
>you with how much high schools must have changed in the past couple
>of decades?
It sounds bizarre to me. Reading Huckleberry Finn was the most liberal
thing they used as assigned reading, or perhaps something from Faulkner.
The only spot for cs was a teeny, tiny corner of the library. It was
the sort of thing that just never was spoken about in English class,
with the attitude that it was inferior to the sort of literature we
were expected to read (For the curious, that included Pride and Prejudice,
Lord of the Flies, Shakespeare (plays and sonnets), To the Lighthouse,
Light in August, and things along the same vein). And this was less than
a decade ago, back in 1983-87. SF was just considered "inappropriate" for
an English class, especially if you'd asked my freshman year English
teacher, who wouldn't know who LeGuin was (of course, neither did the
guy stocking books at Barnes and Noble when someone asked him about
a book by her on Thursday . . .).
--
Valerie Hammerl |Address beginning this fall (probably):
ham...@acsu.buffalo.edu |aa...@freenet.buffalo.edu
V085...@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU |
Rebecca Crowley
Hammerl (ham...@acsu.buffalo.edu) wrote:
: And this was less than
: a decade ago, back in 1983-87. SF was just considered "inappropriate" for
: an English class, especially if you'd asked my freshman year English
: teacher, who wouldn't know who LeGuin was (of course, neither did the
: guy stocking books at Barnes and Noble when someone asked him about
: a book by her on Thursday . . .).
Hm, she went to high school the same years I did.
In junior high, we had 2 volume paperback "Great Books", which
included excerpts from stuff like Huck Finn, short stories
like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery", etc. Also "Harrison Bergeron",
by Vonnegut. Also a story (name escapes me: "The Gun"?) in which
our hero lands his space ship on a strange planet and goes for
a walk, carrying his handy dandy J. Random Ray Gun by his side.
He is attacked by wolflike natives, who run in packs. He shoots
a lot of them. J. Random Ray Guns, however, are silent. The wolves
are not scared by noise, and they are too stupid to realize they
are dying in droves (the ray guns are basically disintegrator beams
so there are no corpses, either). There appears to be an infinite supply
of the animals and our hero retreats to his space ship. They
follow. He kills them and falls asleep. He awakens to discover
he has disintegrated important components in his ship and is
stranded here (presumably, forever). If anyone recognizes
this story, could you tell me what it is? I've long since got
rid of the book, and am somewhat curious.
The Heinlein case dates from slightly earlier -- sometime in the middle
70's, in an American high school in Germany, run for military
brats.
But the oldest case I can come up with would have to be my father,
who claims his high school English teacher encouraged him in his
reading of Tom Swift novels (which I think almost count as sf).
Otoh, that was bonehead English. She spent a lot of the year
reading Poe out loud to the class on the theory that if they
had no chance of learning the "regular" material, she might
as well expose them to something wortwhile that they could comprehend
and enjoy.
Dad graduated from high school in, as I recall, 1952.
While this might be bizarre, I find the widespread neglect in public
education of one of the most viable genres of modern fiction to
be sad, more than anything else. Despite that, I distinctly recall writing
a couple book reports on sf novels and, on one particularly
irrepressible occasion, citing a Heinlein novel in a paper on
the aesthetic theory developed in Joyce's _Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man_.
(Heck, I know a girl (sophomore in high school) who has written book
reports on Misty Lackey novels.)
Rebecca Crowley
rcro...@zso.dec.com
standard disclaimers apply
J Greely
(Valerie S. Hammerl) writes:
>And this was less than a decade ago, back in 1983-87. SF was just
>considered "inappropriate" for an English class,
When I was in seventh grade (um, '78?), I found "To serve man" in the
back of our textbook, and when it was brought to her attention, the
teacher promptly added it to the required reading list. Most of the
other students didn't appreciate it properly...
--
J Greely (jgr...@cis.ohio-state.edu; osu-cis!jgreely)
Teddy Bear
>literary canon:
>
>The best definition the class could come up with was "A
>small body of works which represents the whole [culture]."
>
>I must respectfully disagree. I understand a canon to be those works which
>have most influenced later works (and by extension, their society).
Ah. We were defining the canon in relation to the field of Asian-American
literature, which had an immense explosion in the 1980's. There just aren't
really any fundamental works of the sort you're describing, so that's the
definition we came up with.
But if we used your definition up above, how does one decide how far back to
go in showing works which have influenced the field as it is today? One can
go all the way back to the Greeks, if one so desires...
Other characteristics which our hypothetical canon should have are quality;
a mixture of "popular" and "scholarly" works; a mixture of "classic" and
"recent" works (to show development over time); and breadth, to cover many
different facets of the genre.
Of course, the *really* tricky question is defining what SF is, so one can
tell whether a work you point at is SF. But I'm not even going to touch
that one... :)
Susan Eisenhour
I was in high school, they chose for dull in our reading lists. It
was almost as if they wanted us to hate reading and see it as a horrible
duty. You had to really LOVE reading to overcome this...fortunately, I
was/am completely obsessive about books and even my highschool reading
list couldn't discourage me. Now I suppose someone will ask just what
books were so awful....that was mumbble-de-mumble years ago and they've
all mercifully fled my brain. Oh, wait! I do remember The House of the
Seven Gables--and before someone jumps all over me, no, that is not a
terrible book. I read it again later and enjoyed it. But not when I was
14 or 15!
*******************************************************************
cf...@ux1.cts.eiu.edu |Rihannsu Galae ch'Lloann'mhrahel
Susan Eisenhour |SFLAaE/BS Assoc. Memb.
|SEFEB and Ladies Anarchist Sewing Circle
|and Terrorist Society
Crawford Kilian
like Star Trek get rejected as being "Too much like Star Trek."
The usual developmental pattern of a genre runs from romance to realism to
irony and satire. A gritty, kitchen-sink ST would presumably be the real
"next generation," after which writer would turn the conventions upside down
in some way. Compare the development of the western (itself an adaptation of
pastoral), especially in movies but also in fiction.
Crawford Kilian
here in Canada John Wyndham's The Chrysalids (known in the US as Rebirth) has
been on high school reading lists since the 1960s...part of its popularity no
doubt stems from its Canadian setting in a subtropical Labrador.
Valerie also mentions Lord of the Flies, which escapes being SF largely
because of its scientific illiteracy and general pretentiousness.
A really hip high school English program would expose kids to Olaf Stapledon
(Odd John! The Star Maker! Major parental hysteria!) and the handful of
really wicked modern writers like Terry Bisson. Wouldn't that be fun...
Dave Schaumann
Sea Wasp <sea...@vm2.cis.pitt.edu> wrote:
>In article <70...@mimsy.umd.edu> lar...@cfar.umd.edu (Sara Larson) writes:
>>LeGuin's _The Left Hand of Darkness_ was assigned reading
>>for sophomores at my highschool.
>
> Does this stuff sound BIZARRE to anyone else -- I mean, hitting
>you with how much high schools must have changed in the past couple
>of decades?
It does seem a bit odd that it was *assigned* reading. But not too odd.
One of my high-school English classes offered Bradbury's _Something Wicked
This Way Comes_ as a choice of reading material. (this was '77 or '78).
> I remember having SF books literally taken away and torn to pieces
>by other students when I was in junior high.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Well, jr. high students tend to be self-important that way. I don't
think I really came aware of SF until I was in high school (which had
a library containing a fairly decent selection to choose from).
> remember SF/Fantasy being
>universally considered "wierd" and no one in any position of authority
>(with a very few notable exceptions) taking it seriously -- certainly
>NO ONE even considering SF as a possible source for class reading.
Wow. I never got anything like that kind of reaction. Mostly it was
positive, when there was any reaction at all. (My folks even read
some of the books I brought home!). Also, "Star Trek" was reasonably
popular at the time, and this was about the same time _Star Wars_
first came out, so it would've been very hard to make SF into
a pariah (though, of course, it was hardly considered worth much
serious study, either...)
--
Dave Schaumann da...@cs.arizona.edu
Bill Blum
>In article <18...@blue.cis.pitt.edu>,
>Sea Wasp <sea...@vm2.cis.pitt.edu> wrote:
>>In article <70...@mimsy.umd.edu> lar...@cfar.umd.edu (Sara Larson) writes:
>>>LeGuin's _The Left Hand of Darkness_ was assigned reading
>>>for sophomores at my highschool.
>> Does this stuff sound BIZARRE to anyone else -- I mean, hitting
>>you with how much high schools must have changed in the past couple
>>of decades?
>
>It does seem a bit odd that it was *assigned* reading. But not too odd.
>One of my high-school English classes offered Bradbury's _Something Wicked
>This Way Comes_ as a choice of reading material. (this was '77 or '78).
Heck, my senior english teacher passed out a questionaire the first day of
class asking us what our "favorite" types of literature were...
She would then assign books within our favorite genres..
and what surprised me was, she actually -read- most of the books.
Ahhh... if I could only get away with writing reports on "Ender's Game" in
college.
--
Bill Blum bl...@sage.cc.purdue.edu Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN
Rebecca Crowley
: Ahhh... if I could only get away with writing reports on "Ender's Game" in
: college.
Give it time. There's a woman whose American Lit PhD dissertation
topic is Heinlein.
James P. H. Fuller
ham...@acsu.buffalo.edu (Valerie S. Hammerl) writes:
|> SF was just considered "inappropriate" for
|> an English class, especially if you'd asked my freshman year English
|> teacher, who wouldn't know who LeGuin was (of course, neither did the
|> guy stocking books at Barnes and Noble when someone asked him about
|> a book by her on Thursday . . .).
You could have shown this person some of LeGuin's _New Yorker_ stories.
Freshman English teachers are often impressed by _TNY_ and I'm pretty
sure LeG had placed several of these by the period 83-87. I first read
"Two delays on the northern line" there and was blown away by it, though
the editor had quite rightly changed "delays" to "stops."
-- jf
Bronis Vidugiris
)>Rebecca Crowley (rcro...@zso.dec.com) writes:
)>LeGuin's _The Left Hand of Darkness_ was assigned reading
)>for sophomores at my highschool.
)
) Does this stuff sound BIZARRE to anyone else -- I mean, hitting
)you with how much high schools must have changed in the past couple
)of decades?
)
) I remember having SF books literally taken away and torn to pieces
)by other students when I was in junior high. I remember SF/Fantasy being
)universally considered "wierd" and no one in any position of authority
)(with a very few notable exceptions) taking it seriously -- certainly
)NO ONE even considering SF as a possible source for class reading.
Yep. SF was regarded with much of the same respect as comic books back
when I went to High school, though nobody ever took one away and tore it
to pieces.
The conflict between SF and literature was even stronger in those days, with the
academcs not realizing that SF was here to stay. (One does have to give the
academics some minimal credit, though - after the books got old and moldy
enough, a few of the more daring started to see some importance in them.)
The idea of the same books I've read and enjoyed being ruthlessly analyzed into
the dust by the rigid, authoritarian, snobbish school system saddens me
a bit. On the other hand, maybe some schools lucked out and didn't have
the same level of awful instruction that I happened to 'enjoy'. Anwyay,
being more a part of the mainstream is a mixed blessing, I suppose.
--
"Stop or I'll scream" -- Black Bolt
coz...@garnet.berkeley.edu
sea...@vm2.cis.pitt.edu (Sea Wasp) writes:
>)In article <70...@mimsy.umd.edu> lar...@cfar.umd.edu (Sara Larson) writes:
>)>Rebecca Crowley (rcro...@zso.dec.com) writes:
>
>)>LeGuin's _The Left Hand of Darkness_ was assigned reading
>)>for sophomores at my highschool.
>)
>) Does this stuff sound BIZARRE to anyone else -- I mean, hitting
>)you with how much high schools must have changed in the past couple
>)of decades?
Oh, yeah, I can remember high school teachers who scorned SF. But what
really sounds bizarre to me is the concept of teachers giving, not SF
generally, but LHoD specifically. Back when I was a girl (back in the
50s) NObody would have given (or permitted) the kids to read anything
with s_x in it... But then I went to school in the 1950s in Orange
County....
Nancy Lebovitz
silent disintegrator was by Robert Sheckley, master of ironic
machine failure, but I can't remember the title.
--
Nancy Lebovitz calligraphic button catalogue available by email (170K)
na...@genie.slhs.udel.edu
Nancy Lebovitz
>like Star Trek get rejected as being "Too much like Star Trek."
>
>The usual developmental pattern of a genre runs from romance to realism to
>irony and satire. A gritty, kitchen-sink ST would presumably be the real
>"next generation," after which writer would turn the conventions upside down
>in some way. Compare the development of the western (itself an adaptation of
>pastoral), especially in movies but also in fiction.
Very interesting--what happens afer irony and satire? Does the genre die,
or take a new form, or what?
Does this pattern apply to cyberpunk? I'm not sure whether the original
cyberpunk is romance or realism, but it seems to have gone straight to
_Snow Crash_. (I think I can make a case for cyberpunk being a sort of
romanticism in the sense that it's just too gritty to be realistic.)
>
>
>--
>Crawford Kilian Communications Department Capilano College
>North Vancouver BC Canada V7J 3H5
>Usenet: Crawfor...@mindlink.bc.ca
>Internet: cki...@first.etc.bc.ca
>
Michael Stoodt
>But one can fairly easily construct at least one other solution from the
>story itself. As I recall, the Goose converted just one particular isotope of
>oxygen into gold. (Oxygen 18, was it?)
>Thus, one just has to arrange to keep it for a while in an environment
>free of that particular isotope: artificially produced air & water containing
>only oxygen isotopes other than the critical one. (Likewise its diet, of
>course, which would have to be similarly raised in an artificial environment.)
>Expensive & difficult to do, of course, but technically feasable...
The clue from the story was that they put the goose into an O18-rich
environment and gold production went up; if they can do that, they
should be able to do the reverse...
--
Michael A Stoodt [MaS] | we hurt the ones we love the most
sto...@cis.umassd.edu | it's a subtle form of compliment
Comp&InfoSci, UMassDartmouth | -- "I Don't Care",
mumble mumble disclaimer mumble... | Shakespear's Sister
Crawford Kilian
romance, moves into realism, and then turns ironic. According to Northrop
Frye (by the way, a superb analyst of SF when it comes his way), irony
exhausts itself in self-referential academicism and the literary form goes
back into popular genres for a boost of romance and energy. (By romance I
mean a story about larger-than-life characters enjoying amazing adventures in
extraordinary settings.)
Frye's classic work Anatomy of Criticism explains a great deal about SF and
fantasy; see his sections on romance and on Menippean satire, and you'll see
that SF is a hybrid of those two forms.
William D.B. Loos
>
>if you'd asked my freshman year English
>teacher, who wouldn't know who LeGuin was (of course, neither did the
>guy stocking books at Barnes and Noble when someone asked him about
>a book by her on Thursday . . .).
For that matter, the reference librarian at the main branch of the
Cambridge (MA) Public Library didn't know who Lord Dunsany was when
I mentioned him in the course of trying to dig up references on Old
Fantasy. She thought that the "Lord" was some kind of cutesy nickname
he had adopted (apparently something along the lines of "Captain"
Beefheart). She seem quite surprised when I told her that, yes, he
really was a lord, 18th Baron Dunsany...
William D.B. Loos
lo...@frodo.mgh.harvard.edu
Rebecca Crowley
title forgotten, synopsis: guy-lands-on-planet-is-attacked-by-wolves-
kills-lots-they-keep-attacking-cause-gun-makes-no-noise-he-retreats-to-
ship-destroys-wolves-AND-part-of-ship-is-stranded-makes-bow-and-arrows.
Title supplied in email turned out to be "The Gun Without a Bang".
Nancy Lebovitz (na...@genie.slhs.udel.edu) wrote:
: I'm reasonably certain that the story about about uselessly
: silent disintegrator was by Robert Sheckley, master of ironic
: machine failure, but I can't remember the title.
I suppose the logical thing to ask at this point would be, anyone
know where this is anthologized?
Further comment on weaponry including spoilers follows:
Sheckley's _The Tenth Victim_ ends with the Victim's ex-wife shooting
the-gun-that-shoots-the-person-who-fires-it (and winding up dead),
truly a useless weapon from the user's point of view.
I have further vague recollections of someone on a (very small)
planetoid (asteroid?) defending same and self from the Evil Pirates
he used to work for (he didn't realize they were going to attack
his *sister*. Geez.). He does this by, literally, throwing
Very Big Rocks at them. (This is the old weightless != inertialess
problem again.) One of the pirates kills himself by flinging
a too-small rock, too hard at the defender (who ducks), sending
it into (very low) orbit. Needless to say, it comes winging back
'round and nails the creep (dead. Very dead. Punctured his space
suit). I think this is in the Best of James Schmitz anthology
NESFA did last year (?).
This is, actually, a theme I tend to like in sf: person A attacks
person B. Person B, peacable, personable, etc., doesn't *precisely*
respond in kind. Nevertheless, person A's attacks wind up only
hurting A. Judo, basically.
Del Cotter
>The usual developmental pattern of a genre runs from romance to realism to
>irony and satire. A gritty, kitchen-sink ST would presumably be the real
>"next generation," after which writer would turn the conventions upside down
>in some way. Compare the development of the western (itself an adaptation of
>pastoral), especially in movies but also in fiction.
I seem to recall a David Gerrold novel (maybe called Starhunt?) which
featured a ship called the Roger Burlingame. This ship was recognisably
the Enterprise, except that its crew were *not* nice people...
--
',' ' ',',' | | ',' ' ',','
', ,',' | Del Cotter mt9...@brunel.ac.uk | ', ,','
',' | | ','
coz...@garnet.berkeley.edu
>
>I seem to recall a David Gerrold novel (maybe called Starhunt?) which
>featured a ship called the Roger Burlingame. This ship was recognisably
>the Enterprise, except that its crew were *not* nice people...
If it's the one I remember, David started writing it as a Star Trek
novel and--here my memory goes foggy--either the ST folk didn't want
it, or else he wanted to make some changes that didn't jibe with the
ST universe. But he still had the Captain singing part of the Captain's
song from _H.M.S. Trek-a-Star_:
When I first got leave in Venusport,
I took up the local indoor sport,
And found I could attract the girls so well
That right away my head began to swell--
But my head didn't reach its present size
Till I became the Captain of the Enterprise!
(David played the role of Kirk at Baycon, 1968)
Barbara Swetman
>>Rebecca Crowley (rcro...@zso.dec.com) writes:
>> I know people who were assigned Heinlein (the case
>> I remember off-hand was "The Roads Must Roll") in
>> junior high school reading classes. Ursula LeGuin
>> made it onto most recommended reading lists in my
>> school district.
>
>>LeGuin's _The Left Hand of Darkness_ was assigned reading
>>for sophomores at my highschool.
>
> Does this stuff sound BIZARRE to anyone else -- I mean, hitting
>you with how much high schools must have changed in the past couple
>of decades?
>
It was a short story in one of those school lit anthologies from
Harcourt Brace. That would have been early 70's. Frosh year there were
some kind of group reports from optional novels off of a list. I remember
someone doing the Hobbit (I thought it sounded like a pretty dumb book :-))
I'm pretty sure that I read Asimov's I Robot & H.G. Wells from the
school library in Jr. High. I did not rediscover SF again until a couple
of years ago.
Here's a research question for someone. If you have access to a library
with a historical textbook collection go look at the anthologies from
the past & see what's there. I'm pretty sure the IMC at UWisc-Madison
has one. There's probably lots of great stuff we were too young to
appreciate & required reading is by definition tedious already isn't
it? After all who wants to have to read on a deadline then report?
Anita Graham
>>>LeGuin's _The Left Hand of Darkness_ was assigned reading
>>>for sophomores at my highschool.
>>
>> Does this stuff sound BIZARRE to anyone else -- I mean, hitting
>>you with how much high schools must have changed in the past couple
>>of decades?
>
I am pretty sure the whole class read some classif SF. I can't remember the
title now - but it was John Christopher, I think, tall tripods invade
earth, mind control helmets, youthful hero(s) travel world to France etc.
I was just learning French, and remember working out the`chemin-de-fer'
reference. This was 1970-72. We might have read the Triffids, too.
This is in small, country town Australia, at a Catholic school. Can you get
more conservative?
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anita Graham
an...@mincom.oz.au
Sara Larson
Well now, I did not read Lord of the Flies or
To the Lighthouse in highschool. Too bad, because
I really enjoy reading Woolf. As for LotF, I cannot
say that I have a desire to read it again, but
it made a very strong impression!
I should clarify: my highschool was one of those
which separated all the different readers into
good, better, best. Readers like me read, for
example, the LeGuin book; readers of another
sort, as classified by the school system, read
Lord of the Flies. To me this is far weirder than
any inclusion of literature could be. Different
students going through 'the system' with
different views of literature, not because
teachers wanted to each do their own thing, but
because some god-like being decided to give
assignments based on largely subjective testing
of reading skills.
Oh well; the flood of words has been diverted,
finally. Back to work.
-Sara
Dawn Friedman
>
>For that matter, the reference librarian at the main branch of the
>Cambridge (MA) Public Library didn't know who Lord Dunsany was when
>I mentioned him in the course of trying to dig up references on Old
>Fantasy. She thought that the "Lord" was some kind of cutesy nickname
>he had adopted (apparently something along the lines of "Captain"
>Beefheart). She seem quite surprised when I told her that, yes, he
>really was a lord, 18th Baron Dunsany...
Oh dear. And that's a library with an unusually good SF section.
--Dawn
--
-- Dawn
frie...@husc.harvard.edu
"I think I must advise you, just to be on the safe side,
to steer clear of young girls, mature women, and crones."
Chris Croughton
bswe...@itsmail1.hamilton.edu (Barbara Swetman) writes:
>Somewhere along the line I read Ray Bradbury in Jr. High or High School.
>It was a short story in one of those school lit anthologies from
>Harcourt Brace. That would have been early 70's. Frosh year there were
>some kind of group reports from optional novels off of a list. I remember
>someone doing the Hobbit (I thought it sounded like a pretty dumb book :-))
We read The Hobbit in the first year secondary school (11-12 years old -
translate that to your system!). A radio version was being transmitted
on the BBC, and our English teacher recorded it (reel to reel tape
recorder - I'm talking about 1968!) and played it for the class. He was
a superb reader himself (Mr. Petherick - yes, he made that much
impressin on me!) and in the class he would read parts from the
original. Since I was brought up with books, this was nothing new to me
(my parents received the first two volumes of LotR as a wedding present
- and then had to wait over a year for the third volume to be
published! Torture...), but to a lot of the kids this was really new.
I also remember doing class presentations on James Blish and Andre
Norton (who, at that time, I thought was a man).
Admittedly, my work was often marked down because I wrote *all* my
essays (not just fiction) as SF, but surprisingly the teachers didn't
seem to mind *some* of them being SF (I think it was just the obsession
with one genre they didn't like)...
Britain, 1968 CE - a whole different world...
***********************************************************************
* ch...@keris.demon.co.uk * *
* chr...@cix.compulink.co.uk * FIAWOL (Filking Is A Way Of Life) *
* 10001...@compuserve.com * *
***********************************************************************
Nancy Lebovitz
there was a moderate amount of sf in the library and sf in classroom
anthologies, but I can't remember sf actually being taught. I wasn't
attacked for reading sf.
I've been concerned that sf being taught would lead to people hating
it for being compulsory, but what people have posted so far suggests
that it isn't happening, though it could simply be that the people
who acquired a detestation of sf aren't posting here. :-)
Nancy
Matt McIrvin
>Somewhere along the line I read Ray Bradbury in Jr. High or High School.
>It was a short story in one of those school lit anthologies from
>Harcourt Brace. That would have been early 70's. Frosh year there were
>some kind of group reports from optional novels off of a list. I remember
>someone doing the Hobbit (I thought it sounded like a pretty dumb book :-))
>I'm pretty sure that I read Asimov's I Robot & H.G. Wells from the
>school library in Jr. High. I did not rediscover SF again until a couple
>of years ago.
I was reading SF before it got assigned to me, but in junior high we
had Ray Bradbury's _The Martian Chronicles_ and some of the
stories in _R is for Rocket_, and Pat Frank's _Alas, Babylon_ as
assigned reading (the latter seems to be a common assigned book in
US junior high, for some reason, perhaps because it jibes well with
Cold War-era history). In high school I read _The Andromeda Strain_,
and William Golding's _The Inheritors_ and _Lord of the Flies_ (the
SFnal elements of _LotF_ are sufficiently subtle that many people
miss them). Other students were assigned _1984_, _Brave New World_,
_Childhood's End_, and _Fahrenheit 451_, but I read them
extracurricularly.
We were never taught to consider SF an inferior form of literature;
books that were obviously SF were assigned along with mainstream
books.
--
Matt 01234567 <-- Indent-o-Meter (mod 8)
McIrvin ^ Void where prohibited by your editor.
Dan Tilque
>
>The clue from the story was that they put the goose into an O18-rich
>environment and gold production went up; if they can do that, they
>should be able to do the reverse...
Not necessarily. Oxygen-18 is rather ubiquitous, is it not? I think
it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to remove from an
environment in a short enough period of time (geese don't live all that
long). Of course, you wouldn't have to remove all of it, just get it's
concentration down below a certain level.
---
Dan Tilque -- da...@techbook.com
Mike Van Pelt
>Not necessarily. Oxygen-18 is rather ubiquitous, is it not? I think
>it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to remove from an
>environment in a short enough period of time (geese don't live all that
>long).
O-18 is about 12% more massive that the more common O-16, so you could
possibly separate it via distillation. If you had to go to more exotic
techniques, it'd be a much easier task than separating U235 from U238.
--
Mike Van Pelt | What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth?
m...@netcom.com | Judging from realistic simulations involving a
| sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we
| can assume it will be pretty bad. -- Dave Barry
Matt Austern
> >The clue from the story was that they put the goose into an O18-rich
> >environment and gold production went up; if they can do that, they
> >should be able to do the reverse...
>
> Not necessarily. Oxygen-18 is rather ubiquitous, is it not? I think
> it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to remove from an
> environment in a short enough period of time (geese don't live all that
> long). Of course, you wouldn't have to remove all of it, just get it's
> concentration down below a certain level.
Except that the crucial isotope *wasn't* O(18); it was one of the
stable isotopes of iron. Fe(56), maybe.
This is still a difficult task, but not as difficult; I don't think
that it would be any more difficult than (say) isotopic separation of
U(235) from U(238), and the potential gains would be greater.
--
Matthew Austern Maybe we can eventually make language a
ma...@physics.berkeley.edu complete impediment to understanding.
David Zink
>In article <11AUG199...@amber.mgh.harvard.edu> lo...@amber.mgh.harvard.edu (William D.B. Loos) writes:
>>I mentioned him in the course of trying to dig up references on Old
>>Fantasy. She thought that the "Lord" was some kind of cutesy nickname
>>he had adopted (apparently something along the lines of "Captain"
>>Beefheart).
Or `Sergeant' Shriver.
Dan Tilque
>da...@techbook.techbook.com (Dan Tilque) writes:
>
>> >The clue from the story was that they put the goose into an O18-rich
>> >environment and gold production went up; if they can do that, they
>> >should be able to do the reverse...
>>
>> Not necessarily. Oxygen-18 is rather ubiquitous, is it not? I think
>> it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to remove from an
>> environment in a short enough period of time (geese don't live all that
>> long). Of course, you wouldn't have to remove all of it, just get it's
>> concentration down below a certain level.
>
>Except that the crucial isotope *wasn't* O(18); it was one of the
>stable isotopes of iron. Fe(56), maybe.
It's been a long time since I've read it, but wasn't it a two stage
reaction. The first combining O18 to iron, which releases heat and
would cook the goose if it were not for the second which combined the
resultant iron to gold and used up the heat.
>This is still a difficult task, but not as difficult; I don't think
>that it would be any more difficult than (say) isotopic separation of
>U(235) from U(238), and the potential gains would be greater.
Perhaps it would be easier, but you couldn't directly remove all of it
from the goose's environment. From the water would be easy, but to get
clean food, you'd have to raise all her food in a clean environment.
Keeping everything uncontaminated would be a real chore.