SF Novels which cannot be made into movies

[Thomas Koenig]

After re-reading the Bartimaeus series, I have come to the
conclusion that these are (almost) impossible to make into a movie.

If the main character changes shape all the time, how is the viewer
supposed to know who is who?

So... what other SF novels would you never expect to see in
a cinema, because it is just too hard?

[Lynn McGuire]

_Mutineer's Moon_ (the Dahak series) by David Weber. It has so much detail that it would require at least a trilogy just for the
first book in the series.
http://www.amazon.com/Mutineers-Moon-Dahak-David-Weber/dp/0671720856/

Wait, I'll bet that Peter Jackson could do it!

Lynn

[Brenda]

The works of Olaf Stapledon come immediately to mind.

Brenda

[Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy]

Lynn McGuire <l...@winsim.com> wrote in
news:n6mpo1$33d$1...@dont-email.me:

> On 1/7/2016 4:27 PM, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>> After re-reading the Bartimaeus series, I have come to the
>> conclusion that these are (almost) impossible to make into a
>> movie.
>>
>> If the main character changes shape all the time, how is the
>> viewer supposed to know who is who?

The technical aspects are trivial nowadays. The cgi can be rendered
in realtime from motion capture. Presenting it in a way that the
audience understands and can follow is the trick, but that's
_always_ the trick, for all movies. (And the one that the movie
makers fail at the most often. Yeah, I'm looking at *you*, van
Damme, and the godawful mess _Cyborg_. I've never found anyone who
can tell me what the hell that movie is about.)

>>
>> So... what other SF novels would you never expect to see in
>> a cinema, because it is just too hard?
>
> _Mutineer's Moon_ (the Dahak series) by David Weber. It has so
> much detail that it would require at least a trilogy just for
> the first book in the series.

That's true of virtually all novels. Novellas can be done as a
movie, shorter versions are better suited. Novels simply have too
much story for a 1-1/2 to 3 hour movie. A miniseries, maybe, like
Childhood's End (which really wasn't bad), and sometimes a TV
series, such as The Expanse, based on Corey's novels (which, so
far, is actually pretty good), but the only time you get a movie
and a novel that really bear any resemblance to each other is when
the novel is based on the movie, rather than the other way around.

> http://www.amazon.com/Mutineers-Moon-Dahak-David-Weber/dp/0671

> 720856/
>
> Wait, I'll bet that Peter Jackson could do it!
>

Heh.

--
Terry Austin

"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek

Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.

[David Johnston]

Bah. The basic plotline would make a perfectly feasible movie. Unlike,
say, Anathem which would be the Architect scene from Matrix Revolutions
for two hours.

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <n6mood$ohd$1...@newsreader4.netcologne.de>,

I have to admit to never seeing the show, but wasn't that finessed in
"Quantum Leap"?
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

[Don Bruder]

In article <df8abj...@mid.individual.net>,

t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) wrote:

> In article <n6mood$ohd$1...@newsreader4.netcologne.de>,
> Thomas Koenig <tko...@netcologne.de> wrote:
> >After re-reading the Bartimaeus series, I have come to the
> >conclusion that these are (almost) impossible to make into a movie.
> >
> >If the main character changes shape all the time, how is the viewer
> >supposed to know who is who?
> >
> >So... what other SF novels would you never expect to see in
> >a cinema, because it is just too hard?
>
> I have to admit to never seeing the show, but wasn't that finessed in
> "Quantum Leap"?

In Quantum Leap, he ALWAYS looked the same to us, the audience. To those
around him, he apparently looked like whoever he was supposed to be that
episode. We, the audience, only know what he supposedly looks like to
those around him when we get a "he's looking at himself in a
mirror/store window reflection/reflection from a hubcap" type scene.

Not sure if that'd be more correctly called "finessing" or "avoiding".

--
Security provided by Mssrs Smith and/or Wesson. Brought to you by the letter Q

[Don Bruder]

In article <n6mpo1$33d$1...@dont-email.me>, Lynn McGuire <l...@winsim.com>
wrote:

The mind that could create the abortion called "Meet the Feebles"(1) can
probably do just about anything...

(Yeah yeah, I know - I'm deliberately ignoring his forays into middle
earth for this thread...)


(1) If you're not familiar with the title, I'm not surprised. Take "The
Muppet Show", then graft on the sickest, most twisted perversions you
can think up - A classic "dirty old man" geezer of an alcoholic walrus
having an ongoing (and fairly explicit, not to mention pretty darn
kinky) fling with a hippopotamus who's portrayed as being roughly
equivalent to an 8 year old kid is probably one of the mildest ones -
and cap it all off with an ending where a majority of the cast (and
dozens, if not hundreds, of on-screen audience members - remember, I
said start with a "The Muppet Show" base) die in a hail of machine gun
fire, complete with graphic gore including multiple head-shot kills.

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

I'd say Mutineer's Moon is eminently filmable, although I'd recommend
TV series or miniseries rather than a single movie. ADV worked on
adapting it for an anime-style series for a while, but that fell
through. Still, it's a straightforward space opera with pretty easy to
understand basic conflicts. As adaptations go, this would be a cinch.



--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

[hamis...@gmail.com]

and a lot of exposition which takes pages could be done visually in a film which is quicker.

[The Starmaker]

Then two yellow staring eyes materialized in the heart of the smoke.

[The Starmaker]

Thomas Koenig wrote:
>
> After re-reading the Bartimaeus series, I have come to the
> conclusion that these are (almost) impossible to make into a movie.

The movie rights were also sold to Miramax/Disney.


if you can make a graphic novel, you can make the movie.

[Jerry Brown]

On 7 Jan 2016 23:23:32 GMT, t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>)
wrote:

>In article <n6mood$ohd$1...@newsreader4.netcologne.de>,
>Thomas Koenig <tko...@netcologne.de> wrote:
>>After re-reading the Bartimaeus series, I have come to the
>>conclusion that these are (almost) impossible to make into a movie.
>>
>>If the main character changes shape all the time, how is the viewer
>>supposed to know who is who?
>>
>>So... what other SF novels would you never expect to see in
>>a cinema, because it is just too hard?
>
>I have to admit to never seeing the show, but wasn't that finessed in
>"Quantum Leap"?

That was handwaved away in the rules of the show.

It would still be a problem for the above (which I haven't read) and
Banks' Consider Phlebus (which I have) where the Changer protagonist
would need to be played by (IIRC) 4 different actors, which would
probably not work for the majority of audiences.

Thinking about it, I suppose they could follow the Face/Off approach
and have each of the characters he impersonates played by a major
star, but that might provide hints to the audience as to who he was
going to change to next.

--
Jerry Brown

A cat may look at a king
(but probably won't bother)

[Gary R. Schmidt]

Don't forget the Bunny-Pox! Or the nasal sex!!

Frankly, I've always considered it the best movie that Jackson has ever
made.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

--
When men talk to their friends, they insult each other.
They don't really mean it.
When women talk to their friends, they compliment each other.
They don't mean it either.

[Robert Carnegie]

Well, there's possible visual tricks, digital and otherwise.

How about having him wear a red carnation, in each incarnation?

(It may be important that other people in the story do not notice this)

[Magewolf]

Well, it almost got made into an anime before the US anime bubble burst
taking out the financing.

[Lynn McGuire]

If it were anything like "The Expanse", that would be majorly cool.

Lynn

[Kay Shapero]

In article <n6mood$ohd$1...@newsreader4.netcologne.de>,
tko...@netcologne.de says...

>
> After re-reading the Bartimaeus series, I have come to the
> conclusion that these are (almost) impossible to make into a movie.
>
> If the main character changes shape all the time, how is the viewer
> supposed to know who is who?

Several possibilities - haven't read the stories, alas. But the
different forms might all have the same mannerisms, or just general body
movement. Or establish that there's a faint shimmer about them that
only the audience can see. Show each changeover to the audience, as was
done in the Terminator series.


--

Kay Shapero
Address munged, try my first name at kayshapero dot net.

[Kay Shapero]

In article <n6n01i$qjs$1...@dont-email.me>, dak...@sonic.net says...

>
> In article <n6mpo1$33d$1...@dont-email.me>, Lynn McGuire <l...@winsim.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On 1/7/2016 4:27 PM, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> > > After re-reading the Bartimaeus series, I have come to the
> > > conclusion that these are (almost) impossible to make into a movie.
> > >
> > > If the main character changes shape all the time, how is the viewer
> > > supposed to know who is who?
> > >
> > > So... what other SF novels would you never expect to see in
> > > a cinema, because it is just too hard?
> >
> > _Mutineer's Moon_ (the Dahak series) by David Weber. It has so much detail
> > that it would require at least a trilogy just for the
> > first book in the series.
> > http://www.amazon.com/Mutineers-Moon-Dahak-David-Weber/dp/0671720856/
> >
> > Wait, I'll bet that Peter Jackson could do it!
> >
> The mind that could create the abortion called "Meet the Feebles"(1) can
> probably do just about anything...
>
> (Yeah yeah, I know - I'm deliberately ignoring his forays into middle
> earth for this thread...)
>

You don't need to - while the movies were visually gorgeous, I'm still a
bit annoyed by the presentation of Aragorn, he who spent the first half
of a very long life learning how to BE king presented as a reluctant
hero, the "Who IS this and what have you done with the real Faramir"
sequence, or after cutting out a lot of stuff for time replacing it with
an entire non-canon sequence of Aragorn getting lost... I have a few
issues :)

[Kay Shapero]

In article <n6mood$ohd$1...@newsreader4.netcologne.de>,
tko...@netcologne.de says...
>

Neil Stephenson's _Diamond Age_? Lots and lots and lots of ideas from
which you MIGHT be able to dissect the plot and present it as is, I
suppose, but you'd leave most of it out.

[leif...@dimnakorr.com]

Thomas Koenig <tko...@netcologne.de> wrote:
>
> If the main character changes shape all the time, how is the viewer
> supposed to know who is who?
>

By means of a surreptitious wink[1], of course.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94o-D2_k5ew&t=6m30s

--
Leif Roar Moldskred

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <MPG.30fa58c3b...@news.eternal-september.org>,

Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net> wrote:
>
>You don't need to - while the movies were visually gorgeous, I'm still a
>bit annoyed by the presentation of Aragorn, he who spent the first half
>of a very long life learning how to BE king presented as a reluctant
>hero, the "Who IS this and what have you done with the real Faramir"
>sequence, or after cutting out a lot of stuff for time replacing it with
>an entire non-canon sequence of Aragorn getting lost... I have a few
>issues :)

Sibling!

I have saved to disk somewhere someone's post saying, in essence,
that Jackson doesn't believe there are any real heroes, so he had
to make the heroes (and there are several) in LotR into
self-doubting antiheroes. Feh.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

Unless it was actually Jackson posting it, I'd say it's an awfully long
leap. Considering that I didn't see them as self-doubting antiheroes,
it's a REALLY long leap.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <n6r5uk$2iu$1...@dont-email.me>,

Wasp, I will search my disk and see if I can find it. If so,
I'll quote bits. Stay tuned.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <o0pvC...@kithrup.com>,

Okay. On October 11, 2003, somebody named "Dreamer
<dre...@dreamstrike.com>" (if I ever knew who s/he is, I've
forgotten) said:

>Peter Jackson, from what I've seen, does not really believe in
>High Heroic Fantasy. He loves the Lord of the Rings, I am willing
>to believe, but he loves the story and the magic and the scenery
>and the battles. There's nothing wrong with that. But from the
>*extremely limited* information I have on him - some reading,
>watching the featurettes on the DVD's - he seems to be a Thoroughly
>Modern Man in that he doesn't think some people are just *good,*
>some people just *excel.*

So that's what I was remembering.

[Jerry Brown]

Also, I'm not sure if the average viewer will be OK with the lead
character changing faces/actors over the duration, which is why
Quantum Leap did what it did.

[Dimensional Traveler]

Most actors wouldn't be OK with it and the studios won't consider it
because they think viewers watch a show for the favorite/popular actor
they cast as the lead.

--
Now the Force-Ghost of DTravel since he was forced by shame to commit
hara-kiri with a dull light-spork after liking the Abrams/Bad Robot Star
Wars movie.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <9ue59bttghvu68s1l...@jwbrown.co.uk>,

Doctor Who, on the other hand ... but they did show a
reincarnation scene at each transition, from a simple fade in the
early years to a spectacular eruption of life-force fireworks in
the recent years, sometimes with the new Doctor comatose,
amnesiac, or generally bonkers for most of his first episode.
Giving the new actor a chance to fit into his character, and
generally goof around. Matt Smith's Eleventh and Peter Capaldi's
Twelfth took the chance and ran with it.

Cf. "The Eleventh Hour" and "Deep Breath" respectively. :)

[Phil Brown]

On Thursday, January 7, 2016 at 2:27:28 PM UTC-8, Thomas Koenig wrote:

> So... what other SF novels would you never expect to see in
> a cinema, because it is just too hard?

Well, the classic (up to now) unfilmable is The Stars My Destination. It's been tried many times and no one seems to be able to write a script. Even John Carpenter tired to crack it and couldn't.
His other great novel, The Demolished Man, seems pretty unfilmable to me as well.

[Robert Carnegie]

We seem to be talking about a weekly TV show now, instead of
a movie. Series - if they last more than a month - benefit
from having familiar faces that people want to see regularly.
Of course the cast may change in the long term.

On the other hand, an episode or two where one or more
characters' minds are transferred into different bodies,
or where they are replaced by the mirror universe cast
or androids, is accepted.

In films, there's _Fallen_ (1998), <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1564777/>
and another, whose title escapes me now, whose subject was
either a troubled young woman, or John Lennon from The Beatles,
or once for each, played by conspicuously different actors
throughout the feature. But in those cases it was seen as
brilliant by some viewers, and hugely annoying by others.

Oh, and Spider-Man in plain clothes can look very different
in comics drawn by different artists, but they used to draw
one side of his face as the Spider-Man mask when his Spider-Sense
was warning him of danger, so you could tell that it was him.

Now he also looks different in different films. I'm not sure
how that is mitigated.

[Cryptoengineer]

Phil Brown <philc...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:9da0ada0-c3ff-4afa...@googlegroups.com:

> On Thursday, January 7, 2016 at 2:27:28 PM UTC-8, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>
>> So... what other SF novels would you never expect to see in
>> a cinema, because it is just too hard?
>
> Well, the classic (up to now) unfilmable is The Stars My Destination.
> It's been tried many times and no one seems to be able to write a
> script. Even John Carpenter tired to crack it and couldn't.

I have heard a radio play adaption, however. The best SFX are in your
head.

pt

[Jack Bohn]

Bester's stories "Fondly Fahrenheit" and "The Pi Man" may not be unfilmable, but may bring up the question, "Why bother?" If the prose style doesn't translate. Any number of New Wave stories could have it said that the style *is* the substance. (Not just them, either. P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves & Wooster plots run well enough, but the greater humor is in the narrative descriptions and asides; only in a few conversations did the Fry and Laurie TV series reach the heights of the books.)

Nonhuman senses or forms of communication pose difficulties if they need to be "shown" rather than "told."

When _Redshift Rendezvous_ appeared in 1990, I thought it probably unfilmable. It's a mystery onboard a ship traveling through a hyperspace with a different speed of light (slower, but it makes up for it by points in its universe being much closer than the points they correspond to in ours). The idea is to make relativistic effect observable on a human scale, but that means every shot would be a special effects shot. In two or three years it likely could come in at a reasonable budget.

--
-Jack

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <9da0ada0-c3ff-4afa...@googlegroups.com>,

I *think* those could be done. It would require a lot of money,
a lot of CGI, and a director/scriptwriter with an iron will and
artistic control. (Bester's been dead a while; does anybody know
who his heirs are?)

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <47b95019-30b7-49bd...@googlegroups.com>,
Jack Bohn <jack....@gmail.com> wrote:
>Bester's stories "Fondly Fahrenheit" ... may not be
>unfilmable,

It *was* filmed, or rather, televised, back in the late fifties.
Bester himself wrote the screenplay, and changed the ending to be
rather more upbeat and to me, at least, more satisfactory. I've
tried to find a copy, but there's none to be found: someone
suggested that a film library in New York *might* have a copy.
This does not put it any closer to my grasp.

http://www.primewire.ag/watch-446117-Sunday-Showcase-Murder-and-the-Android

A very young Rip Torn in the title role.

[Default User]

Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

> In article <47b95019-30b7-49bd...@googlegroups.com>,
> Jack Bohn <jack....@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Bester's stories "Fondly Fahrenheit" ... may not be
> > unfilmable,
>

> It was filmed, or rather, televised, back in the late fifties.

> Bester himself wrote the screenplay, and changed the ending to be
> rather more upbeat and to me, at least, more satisfactory.

Would you mind revealing this information, with suitable spoiler
protection?


Brian

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <n71k52$163j$1...@gioia.aioe.org>,

Well, okay. Can I assume that everybody's read "Fondly
Fahrenheit?"

Maybe not. Okay, two sets of spoilers ensue.







....








....




Spoiler the first: "Fondly Fahrenheit."

A man owns an android that goes nuts and kills people when the
weather gets too hot. He tries to cover up for the android.
The android is nuts, okay, and as he tries to cope, the man also
becomes insane, says the psychiatrist, by projection.

Eventually they are caught and though the man escapes, someone
sets a fire to a field (I think, it's been a while) and the
android is burnt to destruction, madly dancing and singing.
"The thermometer would have registered 450 gloriously
Fahrenheit."

The man escapes to another planet, a very cold one, and buys a
cheap robot (all he could afford). The robot starts dancing
around and people start disappearing ... and the last line is
something like "Cool and discreet, honey, and the thermeter is
registering -40 fondly Fahrenheit."

That was the story.













....














....




Spoiler the second ....

In "Murder and the Android", same thing to begin with (of course
Rip Torn played both the man and the android. He was young and
cute then; this was in the late fifties). But as the plot goes
on, the man becomes nuttier and the android becomes saner and
finally, as the pitchfork-wielding mobs or somebody like that
storm the place, they see the man raving and kill him. The
female lead says, "Where is the android?" and the android says,
"The android is dead."

I liked it a lot. So far as I know it's not available on DVD or
ANYthing ... I do a search once in a while.

[Don Kuenz]

Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:

> In article <n71k52$163j$1...@gioia.aioe.org>,
> Default User <noe...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>
>>> In article <47b95019-30b7-49bd...@googlegroups.com>,
>>> Jack Bohn <jack....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > Bester's stories "Fondly Fahrenheit" ... may not be
>>> > unfilmable,
>>>
>>> It was filmed, or rather, televised, back in the late fifties.
>>> Bester himself wrote the screenplay, and changed the ending to be
>>> rather more upbeat and to me, at least, more satisfactory.
>>
>>Would you mind revealing this information, with suitable spoiler
>>protection?
>
> Well, okay. Can I assume that everybody's read "Fondly
> Fahrenheit?"

Oh, it's no feat to beat the heat.
All reet! All reet!
So jeet you seat
Be fleet be fleet
Cool and discreet
Honey ...

Bill Joy's "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" [1] essay speculates that
silicon life forms will eventually compete against carbon based life
forms for resources. Perhaps psychopathic silicon life will arise due to
projections of carbon based (human) life. Then the future will hold
silicon-on-silicon violence similar to the claw-on-claw violence found
in "Second Variety" by PKD. ;)

Note.

1. http://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/

--
Don Kuenz KB7RPU

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <2015...@crcomp.net>, Don Kuenz <gar...@crcomp.net> wrote:
>
>Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>> In article <n71k52$163j$1...@gioia.aioe.org>,
>> Default User <noe...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>>
>>>> In article <47b95019-30b7-49bd...@googlegroups.com>,
>>>> Jack Bohn <jack....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> > Bester's stories "Fondly Fahrenheit" ... may not be
>>>> > unfilmable,
>>>>
>>>> It was filmed, or rather, televised, back in the late fifties.
>>>> Bester himself wrote the screenplay, and changed the ending to be
>>>> rather more upbeat and to me, at least, more satisfactory.
>>>
>>>Would you mind revealing this information, with suitable spoiler
>>>protection?
>>
>> Well, okay. Can I assume that everybody's read "Fondly
>> Fahrenheit?"
>
> Oh, it's no feat to beat the heat.
> All reet! All reet!
> So jeet you seat
> Be fleet be fleet
> Cool and discreet
> Honey ...
>

That's the one. :)

[Default User]

Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

> In article <n71k52$163j$1...@gioia.aioe.org>,
> Default User <noe...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> > Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> >
> >> In article <47b95019-30b7-49bd...@googlegroups.com>,
> >> Jack Bohn <jack....@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > Bester's stories "Fondly Fahrenheit" ... may not be
> >> > unfilmable,
> >>
> >> It was filmed, or rather, televised, back in the late fifties.
> >> Bester himself wrote the screenplay, and changed the ending to be
> >> rather more upbeat and to me, at least, more satisfactory.
> >
> > Would you mind revealing this information, with suitable spoiler
> > protection?
>
> Well, okay. Can I assume that everybody's read "Fondly
> Fahrenheit?"

Yes.

> Maybe not. Okay, two sets of spoilers ensue.

Thank you.


Brian

[Robert Carnegie]

In the _Doctor Who_ serial "The Robots of Death", the murderer
is a man who was raised by robots, likes to dress up as one,
and plots to destroy all humans since the robots can't do it
themselves because Asimov. Pretty crazy guy, huh? When he
shows up with robot-face make-up, it is quite shocking.

So, changing clothes is an option.

Bender the robot in _Futurama_ is affected by magnets,
and gets an uncontrollable urge to sing show tunes. Without
magnets, he has an uncontrollable urge to commit crime.

[Kevrob]

That was there from the early Lee/Ditko days.

Peter Parker always looked like Peter Parker when Ditko
drew him. John Romita's Parker looked like a central
casting Hollywood pretty boy.

> Now he also looks different in different films. I'm not sure
> how that is mitigated.

That's because they "rebooted" the movies. "Spider-Man" and
"The Amazing Spider-Man" both told the origin story, with a
few changes in the second series of movies.

In the same way as "Superman" and "Man of Steel" are greatly different,
though the much greater amount of time passing between the two films
would have precluded Chris Reeve playing Kal-El, even had he survived
the fatal effects of his riding accident.

It would have been nice to see him play Jor-El, though I have nothing
against Russell Crowe's work in the most recent flick.

Kevin R

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <8900f0ce-2865-4813...@googlegroups.com>,

Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>In the _Doctor Who_ serial "The Robots of Death", the murderer
>is a man who was raised by robots, likes to dress up as one,
>and plots to destroy all humans since the robots can't do it
>themselves because Asimov. Pretty crazy guy, huh? When he
>shows up with robot-face make-up, it is quite shocking.

Well, they *all* wear vaguely robot-like makeup. Thin, pencilled
"eyebrows" extending across the entire forehead.

>
>So, changing clothes is an option.
>
>Bender the robot in _Futurama_ is affected by magnets,
>and gets an uncontrollable urge to sing show tunes. Without
>magnets, he has an uncontrollable urge to commit crime.

Hm. Can he sing in tune? If so, that's a preferable alternative
to committing crimes. If not, hmmmm.

There was always the Asimov robot story, the one on (I think)
Mercury whose brain got poached by the heat and who sang Gilbert
and Sullivan.

[Kevrob]

This was on NBC's "Sunday Showcase" as "Murder and the Android."
Bester wrote the screenplay.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0394922/?ref_=ttep_ep5

Maybe the Museum of Television might have a copy? It lost the Hugo
to a Twilight Zone ep, (Best Dramatic Presentation, 1960)
Wikipedia says it was repeated, so there had to have been a
videotape, or at least a kinescope of it. The repeat was over
Labor Day weekend, so during Pittcon.

Kevin R

[Kevrob]

On Tuesday, January 12, 2016 at 9:45:08 AM UTC-5, Kevrob wrote:

>
> This was on NBC's "Sunday Showcase" as "Murder and the Android."
> Bester wrote the screenplay.
>
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0394922/?ref_=ttep_ep5
>
> Maybe the Museum of Television might have a copy? It lost the Hugo
> to a Twilight Zone ep, (Best Dramatic Presentation, 1960)
> Wikipedia says it was repeated, so there had to have been a
> videotape, or at least a kinescope of it. The repeat was over
> Labor Day weekend, so during Pittcon.

Museum of TV is now the "Paley Center for Media," BTW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paley_Center_for_Media

After William Paley, of CBS fame.

Kevin R

[Kevrob]

I posted a query in rec.arts.sf.tv asking if anyone knows
of a source for the show.

Kevin R

[Peter Trei]

On Tuesday, January 12, 2016 at 9:49:12 AM UTC-5, Kevrob wrote:

...which has its catalog online. They have the piece.

http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=android&f=title&c=tv&advanced=1&p=1&item=B:02661

They don't lend; you'd have to visit to see it.

pt

[Peter Trei]

...and a number of sites claim to stream it. I'm somewhat skeptical about
those site's safety and legality.

For example:
http://www.watchseries.li/downloadnow/sunday_showcase_s1_e5.html

pt

[Kevrob]

On Tuesday, January 12, 2016 at 10:03:37 AM UTC-5, Kevrob wrote:

> I posted a query in rec.arts.sf.tv asking if anyone knows
> of a source for the show.

rec_arts_sf_tv was supposed to be plain text. If you see a
link, well, it's just wrong. SFW. probably, but wrong.

Kevin R

[Kevrob]

From Liechtenstein? Interesting.

Kevin R

[Don Kuenz]

Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:

The Hollywood treatment of Harlan Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog" adds a
robot named Michael who murders on command. In the movie, after Vic
destroys Michael, Lou Craddock says, "Let's... get another Michael out
of the warehouse. This time, make sure the engineering department wipes
that smile off his face." :)

Then there's the Lieutenant Winger, the mech from the "TekLords" TV
movie. Somebody reprograms Winger to engage in criminal behavior.

--
Don Kuenz KB7RPU

[Peter Trei]

[job related info dump: I work in cyber security]

The linkage between a site's choice of TLD and its geographical location is
tenuous. Running a registrar and selling domains can be a source of revenue
for small nations. For example: Some people like their personal sites to end
in 'ME', so they register in Montenegro, while many TV related sites
choose Tuvalu.

It gets really cutesy (and weird) sometimes. The Artsy site has the URL
art.sy, which required registering in Syria, and the URL shortening site
Bitly is registered in Libya. By no means does that mean they have any
hardware in those countries.

Figuring out where a site is 'really' located is non trivial. Whois records
are often inaccurate or (for often legit reasons) hidden behind services
such as WhoisGuard.

The best you can do sometimes is access the site's 'main page', get the IP
address, and run reverse IP lookup on that through a service such as
DomainTools, which will usually be able to tell you where, geographically,
that IP is assigned.

Even then, CDNs (content delivery networks) such as Akamai and CloudFlare
can add further layers of obfuscation, and different portions of what looks
like a single site may be distributed across different host services, even
in different countries.

...and that's just for sites that *aren't* actually trying to mislead.

In this case, watchseries.li is a domain name owned by 'R Lyes' with an
Algerian contact address, and registered in Lichtenstein. The IP is assigned
to CloudFlare in Phoenix, AZ, and the domain was registered Dec 1, 2012.

(dealing with this confusing mess is part of why I remain gainfully
employed :-)

pt

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <e178d0ae-5c96-4e3f...@googlegroups.com>,

May your search be rewarded! I'd love to see it again.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <09019f3b-61ca-404e...@googlegroups.com>,

Where is the Museum of Television located? Remember that I live
in Vallejo, California, am seventy-three, and don't drive ... :)

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <b7e7540b-b385-43ac...@googlegroups.com>,

Bookmarked....

>
>They don't lend; you'd have to visit to see it.

A little more searching tells me they have a branch in LA and one
in New York. I'd bet a case of cookies _MatA_ is in New York.
This proposes a problem all its own.

But it's nice to know somebody archived it!

And thanks.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <97ca6ef8-1f74-41ae...@googlegroups.com>,

Every cloud has a silver lining!

[Kevrob]

Yes, thanks to Peter for searching further.

Kevin R

[Kevrob]

In was aware that small countries have been doing this, probably since
.tv (for tiny Tuvalu) started showing up often regarding TV shows.

> Every cloud has a silver lining!

This time of year, the "silver" is probably hail.

They are forecasting snow in New England, today. I guess we have
to have some, but we don't need a repeat of last year.

Kevin R

[Lynn McGuire]

On 1/7/2016 7:01 PM, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
> On 1/7/16 5:46 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:

>> On 1/7/2016 4:27 PM, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>>> After re-reading the Bartimaeus series, I have come to the
>>> conclusion that these are (almost) impossible to make into a movie.
>>>
>>> If the main character changes shape all the time, how is the viewer
>>> supposed to know who is who?
>>>
>>> So... what other SF novels would you never expect to see in
>>> a cinema, because it is just too hard?
>>

>> _Mutineer's Moon_ (the Dahak series) by David Weber. It has so much
>> detail that it would require at least a trilogy just for the first book
>> in the series.
>> http://www.amazon.com/Mutineers-Moon-Dahak-David-Weber/dp/0671720856/
>>
>
>
> I'd say Mutineer's Moon is eminently filmable, although I'd recommend TV series or miniseries rather than a single movie. ADV
> worked on adapting it for an anime-style series for a while, but that fell through. Still, it's a straightforward space opera with
> pretty easy to understand basic conflicts. As adaptations go, this would be a cinch.

BTW, who is ADV?

Lynn

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <77dd955a-841a-4d60...@googlegroups.com>,

>> Every cloud has a silver lining!
>
>This time of year, the "silver" is probably hail.
>
>They are forecasting snow in New England, today. I guess we have
>to have some, but we don't need a repeat of last year.

Best of luck. Here in California we are actually getting some
RAIN. We might get some today. Even better, it's been coming in
smallish intermittent storms, rather than Noah's Flood, so it has
a chance to soak in. And we're getting snow in the Sierras.
(We'll gladly take yours too, if you can figure how to get it to
us.)

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

A.D. Vision, which later broke up/reorganized into several separate
companies/divisions, was the largest distributor of anime in the
English-speaking world for quite a few years. Unfortunately for the
planned Mutineer's Moon, they started work on it just a short time
before the "anime bubble" imploded around 2008 (like a number of other
things did), which caused multiple bankruptcies and reorganizations
throughout the industry.


--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

[Robert Carnegie]

On Tuesday, 12 January 2016 14:30:13 UTC, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <8900f0ce-2865-4813...@googlegroups.com>,
> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> >In the _Doctor Who_ serial "The Robots of Death", the murderer
> >is a man who was raised by robots, likes to dress up as one,
> >and plots to destroy all humans since the robots can't do it
> >themselves because Asimov. Pretty crazy guy, huh? When he
> >shows up with robot-face make-up, it is quite shocking.
>
> Well, they *all* wear vaguely robot-like makeup. Thin, pencilled
> "eyebrows" extending across the entire forehead.

Well - I don't think it was meant to be that, but a culture
in which these white-collar workers mostly sat around in
luxury wearing party clothes - this on basically a
science-fiction-ised oil rig - while the robots did anything
requiring real effort. But the humans still complained about
what a hard taskmaster their boss was... Looking like that
all the time, makeup and all, bespeaks too much time on
their hands. It also somewhat reminds of Hercule Poirot
fussing for ages to get his moustache perfectly right.

> >So, changing clothes is an option.
> >
> >Bender the robot in _Futurama_ is affected by magnets,
> >and gets an uncontrollable urge to sing show tunes. Without
> >magnets, he has an uncontrollable urge to commit crime.
>
> Hm. Can he sing in tune? If so, that's a preferable alternative
> to committing crimes. If not, hmmmm.

Well... you can tell what the tune is /supposed/ to be. It's
probably mingled with cuss words; Bender doesn't enjoy it.

> There was always the Asimov robot story, the one on (I think)
> Mercury whose brain got poached by the heat and who sang Gilbert
> and Sullivan.

Not very much better sung, IIRC.

[roy.st...@gmail.com]

Banks' _Use of Weapons_ would be pretty difficult I think.
--
Roy

[Titus G]

On 13/01/2016 11:19 a.m., roy.st...@gmail.com wrote:
> Banks' _Use of Weapons_ would be pretty difficult I think.

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. If you weren't familiar with the book,
what was made would be incomprehensible.

[The Last Doctor]

Are you commenting on the movie that WAS made? I never saw it so wouldn't
know.

--
"I am and always will be the optimist.
The hoper of far-flung hopes and the dreamer of improbable dreams."

[Titus G]

On 13/01/2016 7:42 p.m., The Last Doctor wrote:
> Titus G <no...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>> On 13/01/2016 11:19 a.m., roy.st...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> Banks' _Use of Weapons_ would be pretty difficult I think.

>> David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. If you weren't familiar with the book,
>> what was made would be incomprehensible.

> Are you commenting on the movie that WAS made? I never saw it so wouldn't
> know.

Yes.

[Jack Bohn]

If there's one thing sf tells us, it's that if it exists it will get out!

--
-Jack

[Peter Trei]

I saw the movie, on the basis of recommendations from friends.
I did not read the book, though I did skim through the TVTropes page.

I enjoyed it, and was not particularly confused, though I did think I
was missing a lot of detail.

But this is one of those movies where being a lifetime SF reader might
be a big help - stories very frequently drop fans into unfamiliar worlds
'in media res', and we have to figure out what's going on.

pt

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <31db5548-c4a6-4da1...@googlegroups.com>,

Remembher when _2001_ came out? And so many moviegoers were
saying, "What the hell is going on!?!" from start to finish,
whereas the SF fans were saying, "Oh, right, the alien probe is
uplifting the hominids, the spaceman is going through a
hyperspace tunnel." Familiarity breeds ... familiarity.

[Peter Trei]

I wonder if similar tropes apply in other genres; Westerns, detective
stories, romance novels, etc, in which events and allusions which are
clear to fans of the genre are baffling to those reading them for the
first time.

pt

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <0dca7be8-b31d-48ae...@googlegroups.com>,

I recently read a film article pointing out how the first time a car
exploded onscreen on being started by the "wrong" character it was
a tremendous shock to the audience (I forget the movie name), but now
filmmakers know there will always be audience tension when a car is being
started in thrillers where they know shady actors are about.
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <0dca7be8-b31d-48ae...@googlegroups.com>,

One of the major ... I'm going to call them flaws ... in the
romance genre is that the hero and heroine have to be kept away
from each other for practically the entire book. There are ways
of doing this. I remember skimming one in which they are
separated by being at different places at the time of the New
Madrid earthquake, not meeting again till years later when she
has (out of necessity) married someone else.

(I stopped skimming it as soon as I realized that the earthquake,
which was my area of interest, was just being used as an excuse
to keep the protagonists apart till novel's end.)

But the commonest gimmick is for them to hate each other on sight
and only eventually succumb; and the commonest subset of that one
is for the hero to hate independent women, or all women because
he thinks they're all too independent.

I stopped reading the genre after coming to that conclusion.
Maybe they've changed by now, but I wouldn't bet the rent on it.

[Jerry Brown]

One of the contemporary reviews quoted in Agel's The Making of 2001
assumed that the stargate sequence was supposed to be Bowman
descending through the atmosphere of Jupiter.

The most out-to-lunch review I've ever seen was of Highlander which
thought that every sequence in the past was the protagonist time
travelling rather than experiencing a flashback.

--
Jerry Brown

A cat may look at a king
(but probably won't bother)

[Dimensional Traveler]

No, it hasn't really changed. They've just decided to use it in any TV
series that has a male and a female lead.

--
Now the Force-Ghost of DTravel since he was forced by shame to commit
hara-kiri with a dull light-spork after liking the Abrams/Bad Robot Star
Wars movie.

[Thomas Koenig]

Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> schrieb:

> Remembher when _2001_ came out? And so many moviegoers were
> saying, "What the hell is going on!?!" from start to finish,
> whereas the SF fans were saying, "Oh, right, the alien probe is
> uplifting the hominids, the spaceman is going through a
> hyperspace tunnel."

The best part was when the scientist studied the instructions for
the space toilet.

[Lawrence Watt-Evans]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2016 18:09:00 +0000, Jerry Brown
<je...@jwbrown.co.uk.invalid> wrote:

>One of the contemporary reviews quoted in Agel's The Making of 2001
>assumed that the stargate sequence was supposed to be Bowman
>descending through the atmosphere of Jupiter.
>
>The most out-to-lunch review I've ever seen was of Highlander which
>thought that every sequence in the past was the protagonist time
>travelling rather than experiencing a flashback.

TIME's reviewer for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" thought the
Klingons in the opening sequence were V'ger's crew and that their
omission later was inexplicable.





--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

[Jack Bohn]

I just saw the movie "About Time" (2013). It was romantic, but, I take it, not a genre romance, as the couple are seperate for a mere fraction of the movie. Although it features a time-traveler from a family of time-travelers, I'd say it's not genre sf, either.

--
-Jack

[Moriarty]

Heh. That trope was old when Jane Austen used it in "Pride and Prejudice".

-Moriarty

[Titus G]

I wandered off the original question so have altered the subject.

On 14/01/2016 4:30 a.m., Peter Trei wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 13, 2016 at 2:24:12 AM UTC-5, Titus G wrote:
>> On 13/01/2016 7:42 p.m., The Last Doctor wrote:
>>> Titus G <no...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>>>> On 13/01/2016 11:19 a.m., roy.st...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>> Banks' _Use of Weapons_ would be pretty difficult I think.
>>
>>>> David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. If you weren't familiar with the book,
>>>> what was made would be incomprehensible.
>>
>>> Are you commenting on the movie that WAS made? I never saw it so wouldn't
>>> know.
>>
>> Yes.
>
> I saw the movie, on the basis of recommendations from friends.
> I did not read the book, though I did skim through the TVTropes page.
> I enjoyed it, and was not particularly confused, though I did think I
> was missing a lot of detail.

The book was a 5 star read for me and whilst the film was faithful to
plot,settings and characters as well as big budget quality, the
structure and focus was different. I would have highly recommended you
to read the book but am not sure what affect having seen the film would
have.

> But this is one of those movies where being a lifetime SF reader might
> be a big help - stories very frequently drop fans into unfamiliar worlds
> 'in media res', and we have to figure out what's going on.

I would be a little surprised that many would be able to follow the
plots and the way they were linked and perhaps, because of your
familiarity with SF, you are a special case. I haven't read the TVTropes
page but guess that would link the separate stories by theme. Another
possibility is that my brain is shrinking.

I am not a fanatic but The Hobbit and tLOtR were also 5 star reads some
decades back but having seen the LOtR films, I do not want to see the
film of (Been) There and (not going) Back Again.
For me, images and scenes from a film replace my memories of the same
book and I do not wish that to happen with my favourites so if made, I
will not be watching Mitchell's "Thousand Autumns of...." and "The Bone
Clocks" either.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <340f360c-3eac-4716...@googlegroups.com>,

Gosh. Sounds like the off-and-on romance of Doctor Who and
River Song.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <n766rf$928$1...@newsreader4.netcologne.de>,

Except that in the movie, we couldn't read the instructions. A
book on the making of the movie later printed the text in full.
The toilet was contained in a small centrifuge, and there were
detailed instructions for getting in, sealing the door, turning
the centrifuge on, doing your thing in artificial gravity,
turning the centrifuge off, and unsealing the door. Really.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <d73ccf99-8b64-46f6...@googlegroups.com>,

Yeah, but Austen pulled it off and I haven't seen any
twentieth-century writer make it anything short of ridiculous.

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2016 20:47:27 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
wrote:

I lost a girlfriend to that once, out here in the real world. Her and
the future boyfriend spent about three months sniping and bitching at
and about each other, then that went quiet, then they ran off together
another three months down the line. It was a bit odd.

Ages of all involved was 20ish.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
Beauty is only skin deep, but it turns out that you still need the bones and gunk
-- j comeau, a softer world

[Peter Trei]

On Wednesday, January 13, 2016 at 4:00:04 PM UTC-5, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <d73ccf99-8b64-46f6...@googlegroups.com>,
> Moriarty <blu...@ivillage.com> wrote:
> >On Thursday, January 14, 2016 at 4:00:05 AM UTC+11, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> >> In article <0dca7be8-b31d-48ae...@googlegroups.com>,

[...]

> >> One of the major ... I'm going to call them flaws ... in the
> >> romance genre is that the hero and heroine have to be kept away
> >> from each other for practically the entire book. There are ways
> >> of doing this. I remember skimming one in which they are
> >> separated by being at different places at the time of the New
> >> Madrid earthquake, not meeting again till years later when she
> >> has (out of necessity) married someone else.
> >>
> >> (I stopped skimming it as soon as I realized that the earthquake,
> >> which was my area of interest, was just being used as an excuse
> >> to keep the protagonists apart till novel's end.)
> >>
> >> But the commonest gimmick is for them to hate each other on sight
> >> and only eventually succumb;
> >
> >Heh. That trope was old when Jane Austen used it in "Pride and Prejudice".
>
> Yeah, but Austen pulled it off and I haven't seen any
> twentieth-century writer make it anything short of ridiculous.

I haven't read the book, but last night saw an ad for the upcoming
'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies'.

The Z factor could used as another 'they can't be together ... yet'
mechanism.

pt

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <1c6f9d0c-83e0-4ae8...@googlegroups.com>,

Yeah, but not a very good one. Same with the New Madrid fault;
the author may have known what *she* thought the book was about,
but it didn't get across to me.

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 1/13/16 4:05 PM, Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Jan 2016 20:47:27 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
> wrote:
>
>> In article <d73ccf99-8b64-46f6...@googlegroups.com>,
>> Moriarty <blu...@ivillage.com> wrote:
>>> On Thursday, January 14, 2016 at 4:00:05 AM UTC+11, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>>> But the commonest gimmick is for them to hate each other on sight
>>>> and only eventually succumb;
>>>
>>> Heh. That trope was old when Jane Austen used it in "Pride and Prejudice".
>>
>> Yeah, but Austen pulled it off and I haven't seen any
>> twentieth-century writer make it anything short of ridiculous.
>
> I lost a girlfriend to that once, out here in the real world. Her and
> the future boyfriend spent about three months sniping and bitching at
> and about each other, then that went quiet, then they ran off together
> another three months down the line. It was a bit odd.

My wife couldn't stand me when we first met. She said as much to her
mother, who apparently said "I'm afraid that's going to be my next
son-in-law."

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2016 16:55:37 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
Heydt) wrote:

[snip]

>I stopped reading the genre after coming to that conclusion.
>Maybe they've changed by now, but I wouldn't bet the rent on it.

The occasional romance has them not getting together.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2016 19:14:37 -0500, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:

[snip]

> My wife couldn't stand me when we first met. She said as much to her
>mother, who apparently said "I'm afraid that's going to be my next
>son-in-law."

Was her emotion admiration or fear?

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

Resignation, I think. I wasn't liked by the household at first.
Justifiably, I was less shy, retiring, and pleasant then.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <n772v0$avr$2...@dont-email.me>,

Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>On 1/13/16 8:59 PM, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>> On Wed, 13 Jan 2016 19:14:37 -0500, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
>> <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> My wife couldn't stand me when we first met. She said as much to her
>>> mother, who apparently said "I'm afraid that's going to be my next
>>> son-in-law."
>>
>> Was her emotion admiration or fear?
>>
>
> Resignation, I think. I wasn't liked by the household at first.
>Justifiably, I was less shy, retiring, and pleasant then.

And had fewer tentacles? :)

[Greg Goss]

djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:

Isn't there some kind of jellyfish that mates by removing tentacles
and exchanging them? Marital bliss may result in fewer tentacles NOW.
--
We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current.

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

Oh no, I had been the Sea Wasp for at least 10 years by then. I was the
Sea Wasp from 1977 on. :)

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <dfpe7e...@mid.individual.net>,

Sounds more like octopods. There was (IIRC) a nineteenth-century
Frenchman who wrote about the mating habits of various life
forms, and when he got to the octopus he got all lyrical, on the
order of "When the gentleman octopus beholds the lady octopus, he
offers her his hand, she accepts it, and takes it, and walks away
with it...." Thus he describes the transfer of the
spermatophore, q.v.

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <dfpe7e...@mid.individual.net>,
Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:

Something in Piers Anthony's "Cluster" series wasn't there..

[Kay Shapero]

In article <ured9bpprtt5b77oj...@4ax.com>,
jai...@sometimes.sessile.org says...

>
> On Wed, 13 Jan 2016 20:47:27 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
> wrote:
>
> >In article <d73ccf99-8b64-46f6...@googlegroups.com>,
> >Moriarty <blu...@ivillage.com> wrote:
> >>On Thursday, January 14, 2016 at 4:00:05 AM UTC+11, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> >>> But the commonest gimmick is for them to hate each other on sight
> >>> and only eventually succumb;
> >>
> >>Heh. That trope was old when Jane Austen used it in "Pride and Prejudice".
> >
> >Yeah, but Austen pulled it off and I haven't seen any
> >twentieth-century writer make it anything short of ridiculous.
>
> I lost a girlfriend to that once, out here in the real world. Her and
> the future boyfriend spent about three months sniping and bitching at
> and about each other, then that went quiet, then they ran off together
> another three months down the line. It was a bit odd.
>
> Ages of all involved was 20ish.
>
>

Figures. I did some mighty odd things in that time frame myself.
Though the only time I met a guy I couldn't STAND, it remained that
way... :)

--

Kay Shapero
Address munged, try my first name at kayshapero dot net.

[Kay Shapero]

In article <o0ws0...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com says...

>

> >
> >The best part was when the scientist studied the instructions for
> >the space toilet.
>
> Except that in the movie, we couldn't read the instructions. A
> book on the making of the movie later printed the text in full.
> The toilet was contained in a small centrifuge, and there were
> detailed instructions for getting in, sealing the door, turning
> the centrifuge on, doing your thing in artificial gravity,
> turning the centrifuge off, and unsealing the door. Really.

Somehow, Leslie Fish's song about the poor lass in winter garb
frantically attempting to use the toilet at an SCA gathering comes to
mind. It ended unfortunately.

[Robert Carnegie]

I was going to blame your writer for ignoring romance genre convention,
but, if your life is episodic in format, the writer could be a different
person from week to week. For serial fiction there's probably a
script conference, and for comedy, a gang of people tossing jokes in
until the allotted time is filled.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <MPG.310244ee3...@news.eternal-september.org>,

Oh gosh, I never heard that one. Do you have a link? But just
reading your description, I can sympathize.

Now ... I may be about to commit TMI here ... if a lady is
dressed Early Period, say, ninth century, she is wearing a shift
or undergown, and one or several layers of overgown over that,
and no underpants at all. This makes the process much easier.

The real problem arises if one is dressed in Victorians, with
many layers of petticoats, and long underdrawers under those,
tied with a drawstring, because *elastic had not yet been
invented.* Really period underdrawers of that period had an open
crotch, so that the Victorian lady need not atttempt to untie
the drawstring at all, while holding up all those petticoats.

I'm now visualizing a Hindu goddess with multiple arms, dressed
in the height of Victorian fashion; she would look very strange,
but I bet she could cope!

[Default User]

Robert Carnegie wrote:

> Bender the robot in Futurama is affected by magnets,
> and gets an uncontrollable urge to sing show tunes. Without
> magnets, he has an uncontrollable urge to commit crime.

Not show tunes, but folk songs and spirituals.


Brian

[Brian M. Scott]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2016 20:47:27 GMT, Dorothy J Heydt
<djh...@kithrup.com> wrote
in<news:o0wsF...@kithrup.com> in rec.arts.sf.written:

> In article <d73ccf99-8b64-46f6...@googlegroups.com>,
> Moriarty <blu...@ivillage.com> wrote:

>> On Thursday, January 14, 2016 at 4:00:05 AM UTC+11,
>> Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

[...]

>>> But the commonest gimmick is for them to hate each
>>> other on sight and only eventually succumb;

>> Heh. That trope was old when Jane Austen used it in
>> "Pride and Prejudice".

> Yeah, but Austen pulled it off and I haven't seen any
> twentieth-century writer make it anything short of
> ridiculous.

Georgette Heyer. Actually, I’ve seen it done decently
quite a few times.

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.

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Fri, 15 Jan 2016 14:46:40 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
Heydt) wrote:

[snip]

>I'm now visualizing a Hindu goddess with multiple arms, dressed
>in the height of Victorian fashion; she would look very strange,
>but I bet she could cope!

The image is striking, yes.

Maybe, she would decide to use one of those edged weapons and cut
through.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko