yasid: a revolutionary tricks the idiot ruling class into self-exile

[William December Starr]

Sent to ya...@mit.edu:

-----------

The plot is about a ruling class. The members of the ruling class
want to be safe from revolution. A man assures them that he can
provide complete protection -- residence on a planet which no one
can get onto without a code. The catch (unknown to the ruling
class) is that the members of the ruling class cannot leave the
planet without the code. And the code is changed daily, so even if
they were to apply their skills to breaking the code, there would
not be enough time to do so before the code is changed. The members
of the ruling class are stuck on the planet.

The last lines of the story: Just before the image of the man (as
seen by the ruling class) faded from screen, "the man was seen by
them to grasp a lock of his hair. The Revolution was over."

-----------

-- wds

[William December Starr]

In article <lhd1gt$nse$1...@panix2.panix.com>,
wds...@panix.com (William December Starr) said:

[ Back on March 31st ]

Oh come on -- *NOBODY* here can ID this?

-- wds

[Robert Carnegie]

> Oh come on -- *NOBODY* here can ID this?

Not so far, evidently. I suspect it's a short story, and there's
loads of those.

For one thing, it's not clear how a "code" gets you onto or off
a planet. The method of _Stargate SG-1_ comes to mind, where
they "dial" interstellar locations on an ancient Egyptian torus.
And they close a big metal door for incoming traffic to hit hard
unless the incoming traffic sends an appropriate coded radio
signal. So, it could be a Stargate fan fiction story.
Such as, the whole of Congress is sent on a fact-finding
mission to Risa the pleasure planet.

There's a lot more stories about a social elite or sometimes
an unproductive underclass procuring themselves a paradise or
a refuge while leaving the rest of humanity behind either
to suffer grievous deprivation or to self-congratulate on
getting rid of them. The film _Metropolis_ has vertical
segregation; _Elysium_ is one of a number where the elite
head for outer space, as is Ben Elton's novel _Stark_.
_The Marching Morons_ disposes of humanity's redundant
mouths. The world of _The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
has custom-made planets for fantastically rich discontented
people, offers the eugenics angle as the origin of the
human race (refugees from the allegedly doomed planet
Golgafrincham), and allowed some rich humans to escape
again to a distant carefully hidden planet called Nano.

[William December Starr]

In article <660659e6-163d-49e3...@googlegroups.com>,

Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> said:

> For one thing, it's not clear how a "code" gets you onto
> or off a planet.

By turning an automated weapons system on or off, is how I
instinctively interpreted the story description. With "toggles
an impregnable force field on or off" a second choice.

[...]

> There's a lot more stories about a social elite or sometimes an
> unproductive underclass procuring themselves a paradise or a
> refuge while leaving the rest of humanity behind either to suffer
> grievous deprivation or to self-congratulate on getting rid of
> them. The film _Metropolis_ has vertical segregation; _Elysium_
> is one of a number where the elite head for outer space, as is
> Ben Elton's novel _Stark_. _The Marching Morons_ disposes of
> humanity's redundant mouths.

There was a time, long ago (late 1970s or early 1980s) when both
MITSFS's For Sale shelf and the "cheap used books I want to get rid
of" box at Spike McPhee's Fantasy and Science Fiction bookstore in
Harvard Square were infested with copies of the relatively obscure
and possibly over-printed 1971 paperback HIJACK by Edward Wellen.

The plot of it apparently -- I have to extrapolate from the cover
blurb here as I've never met anybody who actually read the book --
involved an operation to trick the Mafia into hijacking and fleeing
en masse in a fleet of orbiting spaceships that were allegedly
constructed to evacuate large numbers of people from Earth before it
was allegedly destroyed by some alleged menace that was allegedly
going to happen real soon now.

(The ISFDB tells me that it was published in 1974 in Italian as COSA
NOSTRA CHE SEI NEI CIELI, which Google translates as "Cosa Nostra
Who Art in Heaven".)

-- wds

[Quadibloc]

On Thursday, May 29, 2014 10:26:19 AM UTC-6, William December Starr wrote:

> The plot of it apparently -- I have to extrapolate from the cover
> blurb here as I've never met anybody who actually read the book --
> involved an operation to trick the Mafia into hijacking and fleeing
> en masse in a fleet of orbiting spaceships that were allegedly
> constructed to evacuate large numbers of people from Earth before it
> was allegedly destroyed by some alleged menace that was allegedly
> going to happen real soon now.

This reminds me of how Magnus, the Robot Fighter, who usually dispatched evil robots with a karate chop to the neck, dealt with Nadmot, a robot surrounded by an impenetrable force field.

They even tried the bound-charge hydrogen bomb on the robot, and it didn't work.

So, as the robot's plan was to kill the members of North Am's city council, Magnus had a spaceship set up with a hologram projector.

So it looked like the councillors were fleeing Nadmot by launching themselves into space. Thus, Magnus ran from Nadmot and his band of robots, all within impenetrable force fields, past the door leading to the spaceship; when they went in to get at the councillors, Magnus closed the airlock door behind them, and the spaceship launched!

John Savard

[Butch Malahide]

"Restricted Clientele" by Kendell Foster Crossen

[Brian M. Scott]

On Wed, 18 Feb 2015 07:49:31 -0800 (PST), Butch Malahide
<fred....@gmail.com> wrote
in<news:43d2c6df-7f13-4711...@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

Which can be read at UNZ.org:

<http://www.unz.org/Pub/ThrillingWonder-1951feb-00133?View=PDF>

I’m not sure whether I’d ever read any of his science
fiction before; I distinctly remember his name from the
mysteries section of the public library when I was a kid,
though.

Brian
--
It was the neap tide, when the baga venture out of their
holes to root for sandtatties. The waves whispered
rhythmically over the packed sand: haggisss, haggisss,
haggisss.

[peterw...@hotmail.com]

On Friday, May 30, 2014 at 5:28:24 AM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Thursday, May 29, 2014 10:26:19 AM UTC-6, William December Starr wrote:
>
> > The plot of it apparently -- I have to extrapolate from the cover
> > blurb here as I've never met anybody who actually read the book --
> > involved an operation to trick the Mafia into hijacking and fleeing
> > en masse in a fleet of orbiting spaceships that were allegedly
> > constructed to evacuate large numbers of people from Earth before it
> > was allegedly destroyed by some alleged menace that was allegedly
> > going to happen real soon now.
>
> This reminds me of how Magnus, the Robot Fighter, who usually dispatched evil robots with a karate chop to the neck, dealt with Nadmot, a robot surrounded by an impenetrable force field.
>
> They even tried the bound-charge hydrogen bomb on the robot, and it didn't work.
>
> So, as the robot's plan was to kill the members of North Am's city council, Magnus had a spaceship set up with a hologram projector.
>

> So it looked like the councilors were fleeing Nadmot by launching themselves into space. Thus, Magnus ran from Nadmot and his band of robots, all within impenetrable force fields, past the door leading to the spaceship; when they went in to get at the councilors, Magnus closed the airlock door behind them, and the spaceship launched!
>
There was a very nice use of under-statement in this story. Magnus arrives at a council meeting regarding Nadmot, and mentions that he had seen a space probe ship being prepared for launch and asks where it is going. One of the councilors replies that the ship in question was to probe the nearest of the quasi-stellar complexes.(At that time the modern consensus that quasars were powered by matter falling into super massive black holes at the centers of galaxies had not been formed, and I don't think the existence of black holes was accepted, but the immense distance to quasars, billions of light years, was known based on red shift measurements.)

Peter Wezeman
anti-social Darwinist

[William December Starr]

In article <43d2c6df-7f13-4711...@googlegroups.com>,

Thank you.

-- wds