Anybody read any good books lately?
jeanette
it is not absolutely wonderful.
ROCKETSHIP GALILEO again.
CATS CRADLE--had mostly forgotten it after 25+ years--not really my
taste.
I'm now reading TIMELINE by Critchton--I will finish it, but it isn't
great.
Jeanette--making conversation
bookman
"jeanette" <wo...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:17095-403...@storefull-3117.bay.webtv.net...
I just ran though David Drake's "Paying the Piper" again.
It is less intense than his previous "Hammer's Slammers" books,
but is a better examination into the nature fo ruthlessness, IMO.
I've also run through "Tramp Royale", and wonder if the Heinlein's
experience of New Zealand still holds true, esp. as to the censorship
of external media.
I am currently awaiting the next of Drake's "Isles" series.
Rusty the bookman
happy to oblige
Mac
wrote:
Well, here are a couple.
Moon is a Harsh Mistress. (( again...))
Tony Hillerman:
The Wailing Wind
The Sinister Pig
"Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France"
"King Death: The Black Death...late-medieval England"
"Bold Spirit" --- during the Depression of 1892-1893, to save her
farm, this woman walked from Spokane to New York City for a cash prize
being offered of $10,000
"The Cell": inside the 9/11 plot"
"The Stars Are Ours" AND "Star Born" by Andre Norton
J. Gregory Keyes: "Newton's Cannon"... where Newton discovers
Philosopher's Mercury, and Ben Franklin is involved...
PLUS, to relax, am reviewing a chemistry text.
Other than the above, nothing much.
---Mac
fadermcgee
> it is not absolutely wonderful.
>
> ROCKETSHIP GALILEO again.
I've never laid hands on that particular book... hmmm - library trip!
> CATS CRADLE--had mostly forgotten it after 25+ years--not really my
> taste.
Mine, neither.
> I'm now reading TIMELINE by Critchton--I will finish it, but it isn't
> great.
Hmmm... This calls for a two-level answer.
Timeline was the best book by Crichton since Eaters of the Dead, another
favorite by him. Crichton may have hit his niche in historical adventure
(even if his protagonists have to be quantized back in time for the
"history" to happen).
But Crichton seems to have a much better hand at directing than writing.
His movies almost uniformly are improvements on the books of his from which
they are drawn. (This is almost uniformly true of his later work - I've not
seem the movie version of Timeline yet).
> Jeanette--making conversation
Got one for you, Jeanette - Crichton always struck me as an escapee from the
science-fiction ghetto in which most SF writers are mired (small market, 5
to 8 cents a word). Part of this is, of course, that he started directing
in the early '70s and made an early good impression with "Westworld" (a
movie that left me cold - his robotics was pretty implausible, and I was
just beginning to appreciate at that time what could and could not be done
with robots).
Part of it was that with "The Great Train Robbery," Crichton began to
broaden his horizons and establish himself as an historical novelist.
Whadda you think?
VPF
fadermcgee
Wife and I just read Kathy Reichs' "Bare Bones", which is a bit of a letdown
from her last book, to be honest. It's probably the least compelling of
Reichs' books, in fact. But still worth reading if you like Reichs.
Re-reading Clancy's "The Bear and the Dragon" for the nth time.
Just re-read Robert Graysmith's "The Sleeping Lady," which I commend to all
true crime buffs. Graysmith is no hack - he was a newspaper cartoonist in
the Marin County, California area when the Trailside killings were
happening, and had excellent access to the Trailside Killer and most of the
cops and prosecutors involved in bringing in him. The book reflects several
years of hard research and interviews and puts you right in there.
Graysmith also did his own illustrations, which are pretty good.
VPF
LV Poker Player
>I read THE FREE LUNCH by Spider Robinson. Most here would enjoy it but
>it is not absolutely wonderful.
That would be my assessment too. One of my biggest problems with Spider is the
plot holes he leaves. This one had a few gaping ones.
Minor spoilers...
How did she get her book collection into the park with her? I don't even see a
good explanation for this one.
Why did the people from the future come in through the park? Why not pick an
abandoned building or something? I suppose we could assume some doubletalk
about their time machine only working in one specific location for some reason.
He is a good writer, but would be a lot better if he plugged up these holes.
Lady Slings the Booze is another one that is good as long as you ignore a
really serious hole. After Tesla caused the Tunguska event, why didn't he just
destroy his machine and all notes about it, then keep on inventing other
nondestructive things? Why did he decide it was necessary to totally discredit
himself? Why did he leave behind a set of notes on the Tunguska particle beam?
--
Ferengi rule of acquisition #192: Never cheat a Klingon...unless you're sure
you can get away with it.
pixelmeow
wo...@webtv.net (jeanette) scribbled:
>Jeanette--making conversation
Hm, I really really enjoyed _In The Presence of Mine Enemies_, Harry
Turtledove. I've gotten back into the Wizard series by Terry
Goodkind, just started book 3 last night. I may set that aside for
the alien invasion series of Turtledove's, tho, can't decide yet.
Other than that, I'm reading a LOT about Oracle software. But I'm
sure you don't want to hear about *that*. ;-)
--
~teresa~
AFH Barwench
^..^ "Never try to outstubborn a cat." Robert A. Heinlein ^..^
http://pixelmeow.com/ http://www.heinleinsociety.org/
http://pixelmeow.com/Book_Exchange/index.htm
http://pixelmeow.com/forum/
aim: pixelmeow msn: pixe...@passport.com
Simon Jester, Esq.
"bookman" <thebo...@kc.rr.comNULL>
> I've also run through "Tramp Royale", and wonder if the Heinlein's
> experience of New Zealand still holds true, esp. as to the censorship
> of external media.
>
I'd be more worried about the cooking...
Michael Black
>
> Got one for you, Jeanette - Crichton always struck me as an escapee from the
> science-fiction ghetto in which most SF writers are mired (small market, 5
> to 8 cents a word). Part of this is, of course, that he started directing
> in the early '70s and made an early good impression with "Westworld" (a
> movie that left me cold - his robotics was pretty implausible, and I was
> just beginning to appreciate at that time what could and could not be done
> with robots).
>
> Part of it was that with "The Great Train Robbery," Crichton began to
> broaden his horizons and establish himself as an historical novelist.
>
> Whadda you think?
>
> VPF
>
>
I remember of hearing of him (and reading hime) circa 1975. And the copy I
had either did not classify it as SF, or was from a publisher (Dell paperback)
that was neither known much for SF nor made a big issue of it. At the very
least, the big names in SF such as Ballantine, had complete imprints for
the line and you knew it was SF.
So I never really classified him as SF. By his own design or not,
he decided to live outside such circles.
And I've never read many of his books. "Andromeda", "Congo" a few years
back, and "Timeline" just before the movie came out are the ones that come
to mind.
James Nicoll
Michael Black <et...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
snip
>But did he write anything before "Andromeda Strain"? That's the earliest
>I remember of hearing of him (and reading hime) circa 1975. And the copy I
>had either did not classify it as SF, or was from a publisher (Dell paperback)
>that was neither known much for SF nor made a big issue of it.
Dell did have a decent SF line for a time, edited by James Frenkel
before he founded Bluejay, as I recall. I can't recall when he started
working there but I think by 1976. As might be expected, his taste was
fairly reliable.
_Andromeda Strain_ was earlier, from 1969 as I recall.
--
"Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture
and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure,
and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the
future of the world depends." -Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism"
Dr. Rufo
jeanette wrote:
Ma'am,
I appreciate your very well-timed conversational gambit. I haven't had
a great deal of time to spend in recreational reading lately. But I have
read the first three books in Patrick O'Brian's "Captain Aubrey" series.
These are each filled with exacting detail regarding Britain, sailing
and the British Navy of the early 18th Century. The scenes located on
the sea are the best parts of the book, most especially the "battle
scenes." They "fit the bill" for "reading-in-bed-to-fall-asleep" but not
much more. The truly interesting bits don't pay you back for the
slogging effort needed to get to them.
I, too, have read "Timeline." I agree with you: "It isn't great." But
it certainly wasn't anywhere near as boring as that piece of drivel
called the "Eaters of the Dead." If you haven't read it, I warn you away
from it. There are many easier ways to earn your way out of Purgatory.
I have also read "Angels and Demons" and "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan
Brown. (If you wish to read these, I suggest reading "Angels" first for
the sake of chronological sequence.) These are both very
smoothly-written pieces of entertainment. The sloppy parts are handled
well enough that when you get to the good parts you're that pleased you
got there. They are also filled-to-the-brim with pseudo-historical,
pseudo-religious, pseudo-psychological HORSE-FEATHERS!!!!!
The BS is so smoothly placed that typically I've already flipped to the
next page before it "sinks in." Some of his ideas are so very
well-presented that you have to admire him for putting them in to begin
with. Thoroughly enjoyable "two thumbs up!"
Rufe
Dr. Rufo
Michael Black wrote:
< snip >
> But did he write anything before "Andromeda Strain"?
As I recall, he wrote "Andromeda" while he was in medical school.
Damfine job for a "youngster", I think.
I've read almost all of his books since and enjoyed most of them --
certain exceptions noted.
From what I've read about him personally; I figure him for an obsessive
egotist and a selfish jerk. But then, I don't live with him so no worries.
I'll read his books; appreciate them for what they are; and leave the
personality out of the equation.
Rufe
Dr. Rufo
jeanette wrote:
In my previous post, I neglected to mention that I'm currently reading
James Patterson's "The Jester." I've almost finished it and can say in
complete honesty that it is not "in the same league" as his "Alex Cross"
novels.
Pax,
Rufe
Oscagne
"Michael Black" <et...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote in message
news:c1dbsq$i1e$1...@freenet9.carleton.ca...
> But did he write anything before "Andromeda Strain"? That's the earliest
> I remember of hearing of him (and reading hime) circa 1975. And the copy
I
> had either did not classify it as SF, or was from a publisher (Dell
paperback)
> that was neither known much for SF nor made a big issue of it. At the
very
> least, the big names in SF such as Ballantine, had complete imprints for
> the line and you knew it was SF.
>
> So I never really classified him as SF. By his own design or not,
> he decided to live outside such circles.
>
> And I've never read many of his books. "Andromeda", "Congo" a few years
> back, and "Timeline" just before the movie came out are the ones that come
> to mind.
>
I remember reading commentary from one of the "pulp" SF writers (most
probably Heinlein or Asimov) chiding the SF fan community when Andromeda
Strain came out. This is well before my time, but from the content of the
commentary, there was apparently a fan-backlash against AS because Crichton
wasn't "one of us" (a pulp-started SF writer). Apparently the Fandom was
mad that "mainstream" media was paying attention to a SF book that wasn't by
an author who'd come up through the pulps, or something; and there was a
perception that "mainstream" was ignoring good writers who HAD come up
through the pulps.
The author of the commentary was making the point that it didn't matter
_who_ had written the damn thing... just that SF was getting a place out in
plain view (in the mainstream) for a change.
--
Oscagne, High Priest of Skeptics and Cynics
wanna read a story? http://users.ev1.net/~mcgrew/mss
or see my goofy website? http://users.ev1.net/~mcgrew/webpage/home.htm
Oscagne
Poking around Sam Houston State Univ.'s (better than Sam Houston Inst. of
Tech.) library the other day I found an old Turtledove, _A Different Flesh_,
about What If: Homo Erectus had crossed the Aleutian Land Bridge and Homo
Sapiens had not? It's a pretty good read so far, 2/3 through.
Mac
wrote:
>jeanette wrote:
I read THE FREE LUNCH by Spider Robinson. Most here would enjoy it
but
it is not absolutely wonderful.
> ROCKETSHIP GALILEO again.
>
> CATS CRADLE--had mostly forgotten it after 25+ years--not really my
> taste.
>
I'm now reading TIMELINE by Critchton--I will finish it, but it isn't
> great.
>
> Jeanette--making conversation
*************** *************
>Ma'am,
I appreciate your very well-timed conversational gambit. I haven't had
a great deal of time to spend in recreational reading lately. But I
have >read the first three books in Patrick O'Brian's "Captain Aubrey"
series.
SNIP
>I have also read "Angels and Demons" and "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan
>Brown. (If you wish to read these, I suggest reading "Angels" first for
>the sake of chronological sequence.) These are both very
>smoothly-written pieces of entertainment. The sloppy parts are handled
>well enough that when you get to the good parts you're that pleased you
>got there. They are also filled-to-the-brim with pseudo-historical,
>pseudo-religious, pseudo-psychological HORSE-FEATHERS!!!!!
>The BS is so smoothly placed that typically I've already flipped to the
>next page before it "sinks in." Some of his ideas are so very
>well-presented that you have to admire him for putting them in to begin
>with. Thoroughly enjoyable "two thumbs up!"
>Rufe
***************** *************
I enjoyed ANGELS.
Am still waiting on the DaVinci Code as "The Redhead" lent it to a
co-worker and I am waiting for it's return...
I forgot to mention an author I just came across.
Michael McGarrity.
He has a series set in the New Mexico region.
The first in the series is TULAROSA and the next is MEDICINE HAT.
His webpage mentions all of the five or six books in the series and
gives a brief overview.
I like them.
---Mac
David M. Silver
"Dr. Rufo" <bay...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> I, too, have read "Timeline." I agree with you: "It isn't great." But
> it certainly wasn't anywhere near as boring as that piece of drivel
> called the "Eaters of the Dead." If you haven't read it, I warn you away
> from it.
I think they're both readible, however. I found "Eaters of the Dead"
hilarious when it came out because of the joke he played on academia. It
depends on how early on you catch it, I think.
--
David M. Silver www.heinleinsociety.org
"The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!"
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA '29, Lt.(jg), USN, R'td, 1907-88
David M. Silver
"Oscagne" <Osc...@ev1.net> wrote:
>
> The author of the commentary was making the point that it didn't matter
> _who_ had written the damn thing... just that SF was getting a place out in
> plain view (in the mainstream) for a change.
I agreed with that commentary, and think RAH would have too. NIH is a
wasted position to take.
Howard Berkowitz
Rufo" <bay...@mindspring.com> wrote:
_Five Patients_ is roughly the same vintage of _The Andromeda Strain_.
ISTR he wrote at least one or two books under pseudonyms before that.
fadermcgee
"Dr. Rufo" <bay...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:Kqr_b.5197$yZ1....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>
>
> Michael Black wrote:
>
> < snip >
>
> > But did he write anything before "Andromeda Strain"?
>
> As I recall, he wrote "Andromeda" while he was in medical school.
> Damfine job for a "youngster", I think.
Crichton wrote articles for travel magazines before he went to college -
good ones, from all accounts.
I think that his nonfiction "Five Patients" (just after "Andromeda Strain,"
IIRC) is his all-time best job of writing. It is certainly the
best-researched, most incisive look at medicine I have ever read - and badly
due for an update. His reproduction of dialogue between attending docs and
medical students is both hilarious and informative.
I've heard some of the same things you have about Dr. Crichton the human
being, Rufe. The director character in the film "Hooper" (wonderful acting
job by Robert Klein) seems to have been based on Crichton the director. But
as you say, that is a concern for those who must live with him, and them
alone.
It's interesting, however, to see the contortions you have to go through to
be considered (as Crichton, justly, I think, is) a "man of letters" as
opposed to just an ordinary author like the rest of us:
a) get published in real magazines while in high school
b) be accepted for Harvard School of Medicine
c) earn your MD, then chuck it all to go back into writing
d) get a movie deal with your first novel
e) segue rapidly (through a TV movie for ABC called "Pursuit" based on
something Crichton wrote under the pseudonym "John Lange") into
screenwriting and directing movies
f) go into historical novels in a big way
g) write potboilers throughout the late 80s-early 90s
h) repeat as needed.
VPF
VPF
pixelmeow
<Osc...@ev1.net> scribbled:
>
>"jeanette" <wo...@webtv.net> wrote in message
>news:17095-403...@storefull-3117.bay.webtv.net...
>> I read THE FREE LUNCH by Spider Robinson. Most here would enjoy it but
>> it is not absolutely wonderful.
>>
>> ROCKETSHIP GALILEO again.
>>
>> CATS CRADLE--had mostly forgotten it after 25+ years--not really my
>> taste.
>>
>> I'm now reading TIMELINE by Critchton--I will finish it, but it isn't
>> great.
>>
>> Jeanette--making conversation
>>
>
>Poking around Sam Houston State Univ.'s (better than Sam Houston Inst. of
>Tech.) library the other day I found an old Turtledove, _A Different Flesh_,
>about What If: Homo Erectus had crossed the Aleutian Land Bridge and Homo
>Sapiens had not? It's a pretty good read so far, 2/3 through.
<makes notation on getting *another* book>
Howard Berkowitz
<vfri...@rikochet.com> wrote:
> "Dr. Rufo" <bay...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:Kqr_b.5197$yZ1....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> >
> >
> > Michael Black wrote:
> >
> > < snip >
> >
> > > But did he write anything before "Andromeda Strain"?
> >
> > As I recall, he wrote "Andromeda" while he was in medical school.
> > Damfine job for a "youngster", I think.
>
> Crichton wrote articles for travel magazines before he went to college -
> good ones, from all accounts.
>
> I think that his nonfiction "Five Patients" (just after "Andromeda
> Strain,"
> IIRC) is his all-time best job of writing. It is certainly the
> best-researched, most incisive look at medicine I have ever read - and
> badly
> due for an update. His reproduction of dialogue between attending docs
> and
> medical students is both hilarious and informative.
I certainly used it as a starting point in designing expert systems that
were supposed to sound like physicians.
Crichton, I understand, wanted to drop out of med school around his
second year, but the dean convinced him he'd be a more effective writer
with an MD. He did complete the degree, but never took an internship.
fadermcgee
"Oscagne" <Osc...@ev1.net> wrote in message
news:_vedncGdObs...@speakeasy.net...
Good point, too. You'd think SF-Fandom would have been grateful that the
gates to the SF ghetto were open and people were being allowed to move to
and from there.
More's the pity, things have gone back to normal, which means you have two
choices now:
- popular-audience novels in science-fiction settings, which can be as good
as Crichton sometimes is, or just plain awful, (usually the latter - think
about "On the Beach") or
- the pulps, and novels written by people who put in apprenticeships in the
pulps - very good for the most part (thanks to Gardner Dozois and Stanley
Schmidt), some excellent, some so-so.
same as it ever was... same as it ever was...
At the time of the backlash against Andromeda Strain, I only knew SF from
the books I was able to get from libraries and whatever Doubleday and Sons
was sending out that month, so I missed out on the fun. When I read it, I
just thought, "hot damn, can I write like that?"
When at long last I was able to get regular fixes of Analog at LSU, I found
out that you could do even better if you put in the necessary work and walk
over to where the real scientists and engineers work to sidewalk-supervise,
maybe take a course or two (I was still in pre-med, laboring under the
delusion that Michael Crichton and I had anything in common - but I took a
nuclear science course and passed it, over and above the math, chemistry and
computer programming requirements for pre-med).
Actually, people like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke were
crossing over from SF to popular-audience work and back all during that
time. The idea that you have to put in time writing for pulps to be a
"real" SF author is a pernicious myth - but it does manage to get kids to
read Analog, thus (if only by accident) become exposed to speculative
nonfiction by real scientists - so maybe the myth is good for something
after all.
VPF
fadermcgee
Speaking of James Hackerson (and I think that even his Alex Cross series
reeks - YMMV):
Jeffrey Deaver, who wrote the excellent novel on which the movie "The Bone
Collector" was based, followed it up with "Coffin Dancer," which I really
liked... UNTIL... I discovered a hole in the plot you could fly a late-build
747 through, an inconsistency which is, once you realize it, immediately
fatal to the plot... all the credibility leaks out, and you feel like an
idiot for having gotten to the end of the book... which I leave as an
exercise for the student.
VPF
Yisroel Rich Elitist Markov
said:
>I read THE FREE LUNCH by Spider Robinson. Most here would enjoy it but
>it is not absolutely wonderful.
>
>ROCKETSHIP GALILEO again.
>
>CATS CRADLE--had mostly forgotten it after 25+ years--not really my
>taste.
It is mine.
>I'm now reading TIMELINE by Critchton--I will finish it, but it isn't
>great.
Crichton isn't great, period. IMHO.
>Jeanette--making conversation
Currently reading "Growing Up Weightless" by John Ford - interesting,
but weird the way all his non-Star Trek work is weird - and "Politics
of a Guaranteed Income" by Daniel P. Moynihan. Now there was an honest
man, although a politician.
Yisroel "Godwrestler Warriorson" Markov - Boston, MA Member
www.reason.com -- for unbiased analysis of the world DNRC
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"Judge, and be prepared to be judged" -- Ayn Rand
SciFiFan88
The latest was "A Study of If This Goes On" by Bill Patterson, now I'll read
the book.
Before was FUTL after The Door Into Summer.
richard...@verizon.net
jeanette
first read it when I was in high school and it was a recent book. It is
the only book that I have ever read that I got so deep into that when I
stopped for a while I felt like "this is really happening". I reread it
within the last year and think it still is a good cautionary tale. The
Gregory Peck movie is, in my opinion, a classic.
Jeanette
jeanette
the time now to check, but we have had a couple people post here so they
must not be completely protected. My father and one of my daughter's
classmates have visited within the last five years and had nothing but
good comments.
Jeanette--whose current knowledge of NZ is from watching "making of"
LOTR type shows.
jeanette
don't know why. If he MUST be labelled that is probably it. I have had
THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY in the house as long as I remember (maybe my
husband brought it to the marriage) but have never read it. It is now
on the top of my "next to read" stack. (That doesn't mean it won't get
buried before I get to it.)
Jeanette
jeanette
enjoyed and REMAKE which I didn't.
Jeanette
LV Poker Player
Me too, although I think of it as "the Ava Gardner movie." Different glandular
bias, I guess. :)
I should reread the book, since I think I only read it once while in high
school. If I remember right, he made the same radiation mistake, ignoring the
effect of half life? Sheesh. Just like Spider Robinson and his plot holes, a
good book and movie could have been better. At least Stanley Kubrick threw in
some doubletalk about "cobalt thorium g" to justify radiation killing off
everyone in Dr. Strangelove.
I also watched the remake (made by Showtime, I think). I don't necessarily
mind remakes, even of old classics, so I did not mind this one. As Ogden
Johnson pointed out, the military procedures did not ring true. The rest of it
did ring true in many ways though, more so than in the 1959 version.
For example, there was no resentment or hostility toward Americans in the 1959
version. I think the remake's take on this is much more likely. Any American
who made it to Australia would face some serious hostility. No mention was
made in 1959 of refugees from northern lands trying to make it to Australia,
but you can bet it would happen, and Australia would face the choice of taking
them in and getting swamped, or fighting them off with armed force, literally.
Looting and rioting toward the end when it was obvious all hope was gone? Just
basic human nature at work, but we don't see it in 1959. I think the world of
movies back then was a kinder and gentler world, and they were not supposed to
show the ugly, gritty, realistic side of human nature as much as we do now.
Somebody at Showtime should have looked into radiation half lives and how they
worked though. Just throw in a line about the "CTG" bomb (to pay homage to
cobalt thorium g) or something like that.
Norman Bullen
way through _Digital Fortress_. I'm finding it much harder to enjoy
because of the blatant ignorance of the facts of cryptology and
computing in general. (The attitude of "of course it's OK that the NSA
should be able to read anyone's email is a little off-putting as well.)
Other recent books:
_Pompeii_ by Robert Harris
_Hornet Flight_ by Ken Follett
and a re-read of an old classic, _Time and Again_ by Jack Finney
Norm
William Hughes
(jeanette) wrote:
> I read THE FREE LUNCH by Spider Robinson. Most here would enjoy it but
> it is not absolutely wonderful.
>
> ROCKETSHIP GALILEO again.
>
> CATS CRADLE--had mostly forgotten it after 25+ years--not really my
> taste.
>
> I'm now reading TIMELINE by Critchton--I will finish it, but it isn't
> great.
>
> Jeanette--making conversation
Currently making heavy weather through "The Last Ship" by William Brinkley, the
story of the Nathan James, the sole surviving warship of WWIII.
RB
Dr. Rufo
I have both "Digital Fortress " and "Deception Point" but am wary of
starting them right now. I'm craving a really GOOD book!!!
I just got a copy of Harris' "Pompeii" -- what did you think?
Rufe
Sean
I believe NZ is a quite a modern western democracy, with most of the
mod-cons including cable TV and a free press. Back in the 50's things may
have appeared more isolated. I think Julian Treadwell is from NZ, but he
hasn't posted here for sometime. ISTR in Tramp Royale RAH having difficulty
(actually finding it impossible) to convince a tour guide that some such
natural feature (geysers?) were bigger and better in the US. Not sure if
this was a product of isolation, ignorance, or an over-active tourism
ministry.
Sean
(...)
fadermcgee
In Friday, RAH portrays New Zealanders as being immensely hospitable,
devout - and somewhat racist. The racism in Fruday's NZ family precipitates
the chain of events leading both to Friday's ouster from the family and the
family's eventual dissolution.
VPF
fadermcgee
YMMV, but:
- On The Beach is wildly implausible in its main premise that a nuclear
exchange, even one using the total megatonnage available at, say, 1960,
would lead to the death of all life on Earth. The vast majority of the
radioactivity from fallout would have decayed in the first two weeks after
the exchange, allowing people to venture from fallout shelters two to four
weeks post-exchange.
Shute's science is just plain wrong.
- I find Shute's plot to be maudlin, and his American submarine commander
character, again, to be implausible. I don't know enough Australians to be
able to speak to the plausibility of those characters.
A classic On The Beach may be, but its scientific errors don't arise from
its being out of date - it was never accurate, not even in its first
edition. And while most people who have read it or seen the movie (I've
done both - thankfully, not the remake, but the Gregory Peck original) like
it, I just don't.
I had a nightmare not a few days ago in which a worldwide, total commitment
of all arsenals nuclear exchange had occurred and a friend of ours who just
happened to have been a New Zealander for a long while had convinced my wife
to commit suicide a la On The Beach along with him and his family. I woke
up shouting.
Of all the "after the war" novels I have read, my firm, ahead-of-the-pack
favorites are Pat Frank's "Alas Babylon" and (of course) RAH's "Farnham's
Freehold." Pat Frank was a reporter for Associated Press and he actually
did his homework before sitting down to write "Alas Babylon," so there was
only one technical glitch worth mentioning in the book - he has fallout
inducing radiation in objects exposed to it, which doesn't and can't
happen - but the rest of the book is entertaining and plausible. The good
guys take reasonable precautions against fallout, have a great deal of luck,
fight outlaws who are killing travelers on the highways and kill them, and
live spartan but worthwhile lives by the end of the book.
VPF
fadermcgee
"LV Poker Player" <lvpoke...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040223201823...@mb-m06.aol.com...
> >From: wolfj
>
> >VPF--I have to disagree that ON THE BEACH is awful. It is dated. I
> >first read it when I was in high school and it was a recent book. It is
> >the only book that I have ever read that I got so deep into that when I
> >stopped for a while I felt like "this is really happening". I reread it
> >within the last year and think it still is a good cautionary tale. The
> >Gregory Peck movie is, in my opinion, a classic.
>
> Me too, although I think of it as "the Ava Gardner movie." Different
glandular
> bias, I guess. :)
>
> I should reread the book, since I think I only read it once while in high
> school. If I remember right, he made the same radiation mistake, ignoring
the
> effect of half life?
And the probable makeup of fallout. The most intense emitters of radiation
from fallout are aluminiun, silicon and sodium isotopes from soil which gets
"neutron activated" by the pulse of neutrons from the nuclear detonation,
then sucked up by the blast into the air and transmitted by air currents a
great distance from ground zero.
The great majority of these isotopes have very short half-lives, hours to
days in most cases, so a two to four week stay in a fallout shelter should
suffice to protect most of the population from the worst fallout radiation
effects.
That doesn't mean that we wouldn't face massive cancer increases - the
transient surge in world levels of iodine-131 from two supposedly zero-yield
nuclear tests (Pascal-A and Pascal-B) during Operation PLUMBOB in 1957
probably increased levels of thyroid cancer across the United States to a
huge extent among people who were born within a few years of the tests. I
suspect that the current surge in pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma is also
connected to the thyroid cancer surge, since pheos and paragangliomas are
commonly found in thyroid cancer sufferers - the same APUD cell group is
involved. There are a bunch of people who, like me, are in their
mid-forties who are getting very bad news from their doctors.
> Sheesh. Just like Spider Robinson and his plot holes, a
> good book and movie could have been better. At least Stanley Kubrick
threw in
> some doubletalk about "cobalt thorium g" to justify radiation killing off
> everyone in Dr. Strangelove.
If he posited lots and lots of multi-megaton H-bombs jacketed with lots and
lots of cobalt and sodium, that might do the trick without necessarily being
doubletalk. Cobalt-jacketed nukes were investigated as a way of making large
areas uninhabitable - the common notation in papers on the subject is that
cobalt-jacketing caused "operational difficulties" and was not adopted.
This is a nice way of saying that the idea was ditched because only a
psychopath would intentionally detonate a bomb that would cover a wide area
with cobalt-60 and kill thousands or millions more people than it had to in
order to destroy its target. Eventually, very accurate ICBMs and cruise
missiles allowed us to get away from the idea of using big, dirty nukes
altogether.
> I also watched the remake (made by Showtime, I think). I don't
necessarily
> mind remakes, even of old classics, so I did not mind this one. As Ogden
> Johnson pointed out, the military procedures did not ring true. The rest
of it
> did ring true in many ways though, more so than in the 1959 version.
>
> For example, there was no resentment or hostility toward Americans in the
1959
> version. I think the remake's take on this is much more likely. Any
American
> who made it to Australia would face some serious hostility. No mention
was
> made in 1959 of refugees from northern lands trying to make it to
Australia,
> but you can bet it would happen, and Australia would face the choice of
taking
> them in and getting swamped, or fighting them off with armed force,
literally.
I have this image of Sean at the ramparts behind a Bofors gun, waiting for
the Yanks to arrive.
> Looting and rioting toward the end when it was obvious all hope was gone?
Just
> basic human nature at work, but we don't see it in 1959. I think the
world of
> movies back then was a kinder and gentler world, and they were not
supposed to
> show the ugly, gritty, realistic side of human nature as much as we do
now.
In "Alas Babylon," Pat Frank did get into looting and even highway robbery
happening in the post-nuclear world, as well as the collapse of the monetary
system - which. in the rural Florida setting of the novel, wasn't as bad as
it probably would have been in larger cities. People readjusted, bartering
and eventually "retooling" into new work that was valuable in the
post-attack world. Obesity promptly ceased to be a national health concern.
VPF
fadermcgee
> I read THE FREE LUNCH by Spider Robinson. Most here would enjoy it but
> it is not absolutely wonderful.
>
> ROCKETSHIP GALILEO again.
>
> CATS CRADLE--had mostly forgotten it after 25+ years--not really my
> taste.
>
> I'm now reading TIMELINE by Critchton--I will finish it, but it isn't
> great.
>
> Jeanette--making conversation
Oh, yeah - I forgot, I just finished Victor Davis Hanson's "Carnage and
Culture," which traces the influence of Western democracy and the classical
Greek idea of "shock battle" on the outcome of several critical battles in
history. Of course, the little dustup between Xenophon's Ten Thousand and
the Persians, Alexander's battle at Gaugamela, the sparring between Western
Europeans and Muslims at Poitiers and at Lepanto, Cortez at Tenochitlan and
a year afterward, having recovered from a near rout, Rorke's Drift (our UK
friends may take a minute to hum "Men of Harlech" at this point), Midway,
and the Tet Offensive of 1968. Weird sounding premise, but Hanson manages
to make his case.
Not too long ago, re-read Max Boot's "The Savage Wars of Peace," a survey of
America's small wars, what seems to have worked and not to have worked in
the way of strategy, tactics and diplomacy, and the implications of
historical outcomes in these wars for the near future. Writing just after
the attacks of September 11th, 2001, Boot presciently observed that the wars
we embark on to prevent a recurrence of 9/11 would become political
footballs.
VPF
Simon Jester UK
> I read THE FREE LUNCH by Spider Robinson. Most here would enjoy it but
> it is not absolutely wonderful.
>
> ROCKETSHIP GALILEO again.
>
> CATS CRADLE--had mostly forgotten it after 25+ years--not really my
> taste.
>
> I'm now reading TIMELINE by Critchton--I will finish it, but it isn't
> great.
>
> Jeanette--making conversation
I've recently read Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and Anderson's The Broken
Sword. The latter may have left me particularly sensitive to trolls...
bookman
"Sean" <hcat...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
news:c1eskl$1ht3m2$1...@ID-98728.news.uni-berlin.de...
It hasn't been all that long since I last read TR, and IIRC, the geyser/hot pool
thing was a case of nasty nationalism on the part of the guide. Trying to
"prove" that NZ has better phenomena in one way (something about flora
coming right up to the edge of a pool, I believe) than even Yellowstone.
He also hinted that this was only one glaring example of this behavior on
her part.
The restaurant/hotel issues were another item, especially the one
menu per table custom, and billing for meals up front reminded me
of "Inside Intourist" more than a little.
This brings to mind something I ran across a while back - via wetware,
so beware. The writer/artist of "Omaha, the Cat Dancer" mentioned
an Austrailian censorship panel of some sort having to check off on
his comic prior to allowing it in. The details escape me, although I
do recall him saying to the effect "at least they didn't freak out over the
sex scenes, and judged the story as a whole". Very interesting...
(I can try to look it up if there is interest. For those who don't know it,
'Omaha' is an adult comic book. It is basically a soap opera which doesn't
break for commercial when the sex scene comes along - and those are
drawn in a graphic manner (<EG>), It is populated by humanoid animals.)
Regards,
Rusty the bookman
Mac
<vfri...@rikochet.com> wrote:
SNIP SNIP
>> Jeanette--making conversation
>
>Oh, yeah - I forgot, I just finished Victor Davis Hanson's "Carnage and
>Culture," which traces the influence of Western democracy and the classical
>Greek idea of "shock battle" on the outcome of several critical battles in
>history. Of course, the little dustup between Xenophon's Ten Thousand and
>the Persians, Alexander's battle at Gaugamela, the sparring between Western
>Europeans and Muslims at Poitiers and at Lepanto, Cortez at Tenochitlan and
>a year afterward, having recovered from a near rout, Rorke's Drift (our UK
>friends may take a minute to hum "Men of Harlech" at this point), Midway,
>and the Tet Offensive of 1968. Weird sounding premise, but Hanson manages
>to make his case.
>
>Not too long ago, re-read Max Boot's "The Savage Wars of Peace," a survey of
>America's small wars, what seems to have worked and not to have worked in
>the way of strategy, tactics and diplomacy, and the implications of
>historical outcomes in these wars for the near future. Writing just after
>the attacks of September 11th, 2001, Boot presciently observed that the wars
>we embark on to prevent a recurrence of 9/11 would become political
>footballs.
>VPF
******************** **********************
Thank you for the suggestions of these two books.
If The Redhead gives me time off from a few small chores she has
planned for me tomorrow, shall check out the local bookstore for these
two. If not, shall have to order them.
Again, thanks.
---Mac
Sean
"fadermcgee"
> I have this image of Sean at the ramparts behind a Bofors gun, waiting for
> the Yanks to arrive.
My name was invoked and that requires a response to the group. Depends on
the circumstances. The more likely image would be one of providing aid to
refugees in a completely horrific situation. Resentment or hostility towards
Americans for helping cause the death of the world would be understandable,
but clearly futile ("Stupid buggers!"). Everyone dies anyway in OTB. The
end.
Sean
(...)
Sean
"bookman"
<snip>
> This brings to mind something I ran across a while back - via wetware,
> so beware. The writer/artist of "Omaha, the Cat Dancer" mentioned
> an Austrailian censorship panel of some sort having to check off on
> his comic prior to allowing it in. The details escape me, although I
> do recall him saying to the effect "at least they didn't freak out over
the
> sex scenes, and judged the story as a whole". Very interesting...
> (I can try to look it up if there is interest. For those who don't know
it,
> 'Omaha' is an adult comic book. It is basically a soap opera which
doesn't
> break for commercial when the sex scene comes along - and those are
> drawn in a graphic manner (<EG>), It is populated by humanoid animals.)
I've not seen this particular comic book, but we do indeed have an Office of
Film and Literature Review. As long as it is rated accordingly and only sold
in the jurisdictions that allow those ratings, most books etc. will be given
a tick, as long as any sex is shown to be consensual, non-violent, and not
involving people under a certain age.
Sean
(...)
Oliver Gampe
(in <17095-403...@storefull-3117.bay.webtv.net>)
> I'm now reading TIMELINE by Critchton--I will finish it, but it isn't
> great.
A short time ago I stumbled across "Not the end of the world" by
Kate Atkinson. A fascinating collection of short-stories that I can
recommend to everyone with a... mildly weird taste :-)
--
Regards
Oliver
Today's Teaser:
Death is life's answer to the question 'Why?' - Anonymous
Engr Bohn
Hail, Norman Bullen! We who are about to post salute you.
> I also read and enjoyed _Angels_ and _Da Vinci_ and I'm now about half
> way through _Digital Fortress_. I'm finding it much harder to enjoy
> because of the blatant ignorance of the facts of cryptology and
> computing in general. (The attitude of "of course it's OK that the NSA
> should be able to read anyone's email is a little off-putting as well.)
(minor spoiler regarding _Digital Fortress_ follows -- but from what
you've already noted, it shouldn't be a surprise)...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Just wait till you get to the end and (pushing aside imagery that has a
Hollywood film portrayal of computers in mind) find out the NSA staff have
no critical reasoning skills.
Take care,
cb
--
Christopher A. Bohn ____________|____________
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~bohn/ ' ** ** " (o) " ** ** '
"Scientific results cannot be used effectively by soldiers who
have no understanding of them, and scientists cannot produce
results useful for warfare without an understanding of the
operations."
- Dr Theodore Von Karman, Scientific Advisory Group Chairman,
Appointed by Gen "Hap" Arnold (1944)
Oscagne
How do they treat literature that exposes the brutality and evil of those
things by dipicting them graphically (graphic language or pictures)?
--
Oscagne, High Priest of Skeptics and Cynics
wanna read a story? http://users.ev1.net/~mcgrew/mss
or see my goofy website? http://users.ev1.net/~mcgrew/webpage/home.htm
The next Heinlein Readers Group chats will be:
_For Us the Living_ on
Thursday, January 22 at 8:00 p.m. central and
Saturday, January 24 at 4:00 p.m. central.
See http://heinleinsociety.org/readersgroup/index.html#info
to participate.
LV Poker Player
>> Sheesh. Just like Spider Robinson and his plot holes, a
>> good book and movie could have been better. At least Stanley Kubrick
>threw in
>> some doubletalk about "cobalt thorium g" to justify radiation killing off
>> everyone in Dr. Strangelove.
>
>If he posited lots and lots of multi-megaton H-bombs jacketed with lots and
>lots of cobalt and sodium, that might do the trick without necessarily being
>doubletalk. Cobalt-jacketed nukes were investigated as a way of making large
>areas uninhabitable - the common notation in papers on the subject is that
>cobalt-jacketing caused "operational difficulties" and was not adopted.
>This is a nice way of saying that the idea was ditched because only a
>psychopath would intentionally detonate a bomb that would cover a wide area
>with cobalt-60 and kill thousands or millions more people than it had to in
>order to destroy its target. Eventually, very accurate ICBMs and cruise
>missiles allowed us to get away from the idea of using big, dirty nukes
>altogether.
It looks like you have not seen Dr. Strangelove. I recommend it. Yes, they
justified the end of the world pretty much the way you postulate. The title
character (the late, great Peter Sellers at his best) explains that when you
just want to bury bombs, rather than carrying them in bombers or missiles,
there is no limit to the size or number. I won't tell you any more of it.
Norman Bullen
life in the Roman empire. Much more "technical" tan the average
historical novel and, fortunately, much shorter. I thought it was rather
slow moving, especially since the climactic event should be well known
to all.
Norm
Howard Berkowitz
Dr. Strangelove was drawn, very loosely, from the book _Red Alert_,
which was not at all a satire.
I did participate in some senior-level military war games, and it was
truly scary to see how much Karl Deutsch and Dr. Strangelove resemble
one another. I don't know if that was coincidental, since Deutsch wasn't
as well known outside professional circles as, say, Herman Kahn.
Kahn really doesn't fit the image. Physically, he was an immensely obese
American. Contrary to the general impression many people have, he
constantly challenged SAC, etc., the classic quote being "You people
don't have a war plan. You have a wargasm."
His books, such as _Thinking about the Unthinkable_ (general audience),
and _On Thermonuclear War_ and _On Escalation_ (professionally
oriented), shared the premise that it was impossible to have a
public/political debate about nuclear weapons policy without a
systematic vocabulary and taxonomy.
bookman
I must correct myself - wetware slippage. The nation was New Zealand, the
year was 1990, and the committee was the Indecent Publications Tribunal.
(Omaha 16 p32.) The authors are Reed Waller & Kate Worley.
Regards,
Rusty the bookman
fadermcgee
Seen it, LV? I've worn out two tapes of it! My wife is under orders to get
me a DVD of it for Christmas this year! One of my all time favorites.
Herman Kahn in _On Thermonuclear War_ actually gave the screenwriters of
Dr.S(OHILTRALTB) the "Doomsday Machine" idea - and the meme as a whole is
Kahn's invention.
In October 1961, the Soviets got a 50-odd megaton yield (ref:
http://tinyurl.com/3xwg9) by building a largish (mass=20 tons, much of it
protruded from the bomber that dropped it during the flight over to Novaya
Zemlya) fusion (97% of the explosive yield came from thermonuclear fusion)
device.
Weapons effects?
"That morning, at 11:32 AM (Moscow time), there was a 50-megaton (MT)
explosion over Novaya Zemlya island in northern Russia above the Arctic
Circle at an altitude of 4,000 meters. The atmospheric disturbance
generated by the explosion orbited the earth three times. The flash of light
was so bright that it was visible at a distance of 1,000 kilometers, despite
cloudy skies. A gigantic, swirling mushroom cloud rose as high as 64
kilometers.
The bomb exploded after having fallen slowly from a height of 10,500
meters, suspended by a large parachute. By that time the crew of the TU-95
"Bear" bomber, commanded by Major Andrei
Durnovtsev, were already in the safe zone some 45 km from the target. The
commander was returning to earth as a lieutenant colonel and Hero of the
Soviet Union.
Efim Slavsky and Kirill Moskalenko, as deputies to the Congress, had
arrived by plane on the day of the test to observe the explosion. They were
aboard an Il-14 "crate" at a distance of several hundred kilometers from
ground zero, when a fantastic scene appeared before them; one participant in
the test saw a bright flash through dark goggles and felt the effects of a
thermal pulse even at a distance of 270 km. In districts hundreds of
kilometers from ground zero, wooden houses were destroyed, and stone ones
lost their roofs, windows and doors; and radio communications were
interrupted for almost one hour. At the time of the blast, the bomb's
designers and test supervisors, headed by Major General Nikolai Pavlov, the
Chairman of the State Commission, were at the airfield near Olenya station
on the Kola Peninsula. For 40 minutes they had no firm information on the
test, or the fate of the bomber and the Tu-16 "Badger" airborne laboratory
accompanying it. Only when radio contact with Novaya Zemlya was
reestablished were they able to request information on the altitude of the
cloud. It was clear that the bomb design had worked.
Meanwhile, both aircraft and documentary crews observing the test were
subjected to a most graphic experience. As one cameraman recalled: "The
clouds beneath the aircraft and in the distance were lit up by the powerful
flash. The sea of light spread under the hatch and even clouds began to
glow and became transparent. At that moment, our aircraft emerged from
between two cloud layers and down below in the gap a huge bright orange ball
was emerging. The ball was powerful and arrogant like Jupiter. Slowly and
silently it crept upwards.... Having broken through the thick layer of
clouds it kept growing. It seemed to suck the whole earth into it. The
spectacle was fantastic, unreal, supernatural."3
Another cameraman saw "a powerful white flash over the horizon and after a
long period of time he heard a remote, indistinct and heavy blow, as if the
earth has been killed!"4
Some time after the explosion, photographs were taken of ground zero. "The
ground surface of the island has been levelled, swept and licked so that it
looks like a skating rink," a witness reported. "The same goes for rocks.
The snow has melted and their sides and edges are shiny. There is not a
trace of unevenness in the ground.... Everything in this area has been
swept clean, scoured, melted and
blown away."5"
NOTE: see the cite I supplied above for the references which go with the
footnote numbers.
Andrei Sakharov, the bomb's designer, mentioned several "civilian"
applications for his superbomb - one of which, deflecting asteroids from
colliding with Earth, is actually plausible. Of course, a 50MT weapon in
Earth orbit waiting for an asteroid is not calculated to make anyone sleep
better at night....
By the way, the 50MT bomb was apparently a "proof of concept" device - the
goal was a 100 MT yield, and such a bomb was reportedly built, but even
Khrushchev realized that cooking a bomb of that yield off in their Arctic
Circle weapons testing area would demolish buildings over a nice-sized piece
of European Russia and Scandinavia.
Getting back to the original topic, yes, it would be a lot more "economical"
to bury some of these bad boys, jacket them with cobalt and sodium, and
announce that if anybody cheeses us off, we'll sterilize the world. It
would also be insane, because, just as Kahn and the screenwriters of Dr.S.
predicted, a "Doomsday race" would immediately result, with any number of
players.
However, one or two weapons like this with cobalt-sodium salting wouldn't be
enough to account for what Nevil Shute has happening in "On The Beach."
Blanketing the Earth from pole to pole with lethal fallout would require a
major nuclear power to bury many such weapons (to throw as much dirt as
possible into the atmosphere to contribute to the mass of fallout
generated). Congress sure wouldn't pay for it, and I suspect that the
Supreme Soviet wouldn't have either.
The Soviets apprarently didn't intend to build a Doomsday Machine - they
were concerned about the accuracy of their ICBMs and wanted to counteract
accuracy problems by delivering a bomb that would kill the target of one of
their missiles from a few miles away.
Since then, the US has taken advantage of our very accurate ICBMs by using
smaller nukes delivered in "buses" on top of each ICBM - the MIRV. A
"strategic" nuke these days is liable to top out at 170 KT, not megaton
range as it would have in the good old days.
Of course, India, Pakistan, China, Israel, Iran, etc are way back on the
learning curve from where we and the Russians are, so we can expect them to
build the very biggest nukes possible in order to compensate for lousy
missiles.
VPF
Sean
"Oscagne"
<snip>
> How do they treat literature that exposes the brutality and evil of those
> things by dipicting them graphically (graphic language or pictures)?
Sorry mate, I'm not sure what you're asking. If something is considered by
the Review Board and it falls outside the guidelines for approval it won't
receive approval (or get a rating). If an appeal is unsuccessful this
usually means it cannot be sold here. What the specific guidelines are, I'm
not really sure, but it's basically got to be extremely abhorrent with
absolutely no redeeming qualities to not gain approval.
Sean
(...)
atwork
Basically the _Huckleberry Finn_ problem.
Clemens wrote a book that pretty much ridiculed racism, by depicting racists
as dumbasses (forgive my technical language). One of the ways of
identifying the racists was their use of the "n" word.
Problem is; folks wanted to ban the use of the "n" word, and so wanted to
ban the book. It completely escaped them that even though the book had that
word in it, it was ridiculing use of that word and basically was on the side
of the banners' primary goal: eliminating racism.
You said the Review Board wouldn't give the OK to works that had (for
instance, and going from memory) graphic depictions of rape. So imagine a
filmaker who wants to show people exactly how brutal, terrible, evil, and
deserving of ridicule a rapist is, and does so by showing the rapist in his
most brutal, terrible, and evil moment: during the rape. Now, while the
movie is anti-rape, and is trying to bring about a lessening of the
occurrance of rape, would your Review Board ban or rate-out (when our MPAA
gives a NC-17 rating, you can almost guarantee the movie won't make back
it's nut) the movie because it graphically depicts rape?
I am NOT accusing your country of anything... just wondering how they
respond to the problem.
--
Oscagne
Major oz
>In Friday, RAH portrays New Zealanders as being immensely hospitable,
>devout - and somewhat racist.
>VPF
....pretty much the way it is around here -- southern Missouri.
cheers
oz
Major oz
>
Been re-reading a lot of my old Matt Helm, Travis McGee, and stuff by Carl
Hiasson and Patricia Cornwell.
Also finding and enjoying some OLD Fred Pohl stuff that I had never read.
Waiting for trout season 1 Mar.
cheers
oz, who just learned how to spell "eclectic"
fadermcgee
"Major oz" <maj...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040225172848...@mb-m17.aol.com...
And pretty much the way it is in Indiana, Louisiana, Texas, England...
Colorado is probably the least racist place I've ever lived. Love it, for
that and many other reasons. Wasn't singling NZ out, but the guy who
reviewed Friday for Analog when it came out said pretty much the same thing.
VPF
fadermcgee
That word comes in handy in this NG, doesn't it? :-)
VPF
David M. Silver
"atwork" <atwork.ev1.null> wrote:
> "Sean" <hcat...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
> news:c1hn62$1hvpaj$1...@ID-98728.news.uni-berlin.de...
> >
> > "Oscagne"
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > > How do they treat literature that exposes the brutality and evil of
> those
> > > things by dipicting them graphically (graphic language or pictures)?
> >
> > Sorry mate, I'm not sure what you're asking. If something is considered by
> > the Review Board and it falls outside the guidelines for approval it won't
> > receive approval (or get a rating). If an appeal is unsuccessful this
> > usually means it cannot be sold here. What the specific guidelines are,
> I'm
> > not really sure, but it's basically got to be extremely abhorrent with
> > absolutely no redeeming qualities to not gain approval.
>
> Basically the _Huckleberry Finn_ problem.
>
[snip]
An interjection. Art Dula just got back from an aerospace meeting in The
Netherlands. He ran across several Heinlein readers. Their big complaint
to him is they cannot get _Stranger in a Strange Land_, because whatever
passes for a review board in what used to be the land of refuge for
those fleeing persecution of the 17th century enlightenment discovered
that Stranger deals with religion.
--
David M. Silver www.heinleinsociety.org
"The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!"
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA '29, Lt.(jg), USN, R'td, 1907-88
Oscagne
"David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:ag.plusone-555C6...@news.fu-berlin.de...
> An interjection. Art Dula just got back from an aerospace meeting in The
> Netherlands. He ran across several Heinlein readers. Their big complaint
> to him is they cannot get _Stranger in a Strange Land_, because whatever
> passes for a review board in what used to be the land of refuge for
> those fleeing persecution of the 17th century enlightenment discovered
> that Stranger deals with religion.
That's just sad. Am I right that the Netherlands is the place where hard
drugs are legal if you keep them private, and prostitution is legal right
out in public? Yet a book can't even discuss religion? Eiw.
bookman
> >
>
> Been re-reading a lot of my old Matt Helm, Travis McGee, and stuff by Carl
> Hiasson and Patricia Cornwell.
>
> Also finding and enjoying some OLD Fred Pohl stuff that I had never read.
>
> Waiting for trout season 1 Mar.
Trout season, not duck season, eh?
BUGS: (Singing.) Now into the brook and fish for the trout,
Dive right in and splash about.
Trout, trout, pretty little trout,
One more splash and come right out.
Regards,
Rusty the bookman
just silliness, folks!
Sean
"atwork" <atwork.ev1.null> wrote in message
news:103q1sk...@corp.supernews.com...
I understand what you are saying now. Well, there have been plenty of
anti-rape message movies with graphic depiction of rape shown here, so I
guess that isn't a problem for the Review Board. My general impression is
that certain works may get a pass because of special consideration, even if
they may not strictly fall within the approval guidelines. This would help
with movies and books like the ones you mention above. Of course, community
standards (for better or worse) have changed over time, and this has been
reflected in the kinds of things that do not get approved from time to time.
I remember that _A Clockwork Orange_, _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_, and various
B-grade schlock-horror movies were banned at one stage years ago, ...but no
longer. HTH.
Sean
(...)
djinn
> In article <gLq_b.5151$yZ1....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
> "Dr. Rufo" <bay...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> > I, too, have read "Timeline." I agree with you: "It isn't great." But
> > it certainly wasn't anywhere near as boring as that piece of drivel
> > called the "Eaters of the Dead." If you haven't read it, I warn you away
> > from it.
>
> hilarious when it came out because of the joke he played on academia. It
> depends on how early on you catch it, I think.
That could be.. I wasn't very into it until I caught on. I kind of
like the '13th Warrior' too, better than the book in fact.
Timeline was to me just good enough that I didn't put it down and give
up. Then I traded it at the Bookman over in Orange.
djinn
> On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 00:21:23 -0800 (PST), in alt.fan.heinlein,
> wo...@webtv.net (jeanette) scribbled:
>
> >Jeanette--making conversation
>
snip
>
> Other than that, I'm reading a LOT about Oracle software. But I'm
> sure you don't want to hear about *that*. ;-)
>
Reading fiction, are you? :)
Just had an amusing experience, someone walked up to me on the street
and offered to sell me the complete disk set for 9i for less than $5
US. I pulled back the lapel of my coat to display the Oracle logo on
my shirt[1]. They looked kinda worried and went away. Elleson would
have a dying duck fit.
[1] Oracle had some kind of contest on their website and I had one of
the first right answers. Got a nice shirt out of it too...
Ya never know when you'll need to know stuff like that.
djinn
> > I read THE FREE LUNCH by Spider Robinson. Most here would enjoy it but
> > it is not absolutely wonderful.
> >
> > ROCKETSHIP GALILEO again.
> >
> > CATS CRADLE--had mostly forgotten it after 25+ years--not really my
> > taste.
> >
> > I'm now reading TIMELINE by Critchton--I will finish it, but it isn't
> > great.
> >
> > Jeanette--making conversation
>
> It is less intense than his previous "Hammer's Slammers" books,
> but is a better examination into the nature fo ruthlessness, IMO.
>
> I've also run through "Tramp Royale", and wonder if the Heinlein's
> experience of New Zealand still holds true, esp. as to the censorship
> of external media.
>
Finally got it from Motherthing, did you? :)
> I am currently awaiting the next of Drake's "Isles" series.
>
That series ran out of steam for me. I liked it to start with, but to
me it reads like it should have ended already. YM obviously V
> Rusty the bookman
> happy to oblige
I just found and read an unabridged Three Musketeers. It was even
funnier than the versions I've read before.
Also borrowed back and re-read Glory Road. It's better than I
remembered, and it's always been one of my favorites.
pixelmeow
qinji...@yahoo.com (djinn) scribbled:
>pixelmeow <NJZLIR...@spammotel.com> wrote in message news:<f7d3f184cf99607a...@news.teranews.com>...
>> On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 00:21:23 -0800 (PST), in alt.fan.heinlein,
>> wo...@webtv.net (jeanette) scribbled:
>>
>> >Jeanette--making conversation
>>
>snip
>>
>> Other than that, I'm reading a LOT about Oracle software. But I'm
>> sure you don't want to hear about *that*. ;-)
>>
>Reading fiction, are you? :)
Well, I've got two of Kyte's books and a few other highly recommended
by those over in comp.databases.oracle.server. I sure *hope* they're
not fiction!!! :-P
>Just had an amusing experience, someone walked up to me on the street
>and offered to sell me the complete disk set for 9i for less than $5
>US. I pulled back the lapel of my coat to display the Oracle logo on
>my shirt[1]. They looked kinda worried and went away. Elleson would
>have a dying duck fit.
ROFL!!! That is *hysterical*, especially considering you can download
any of the software you want from the website! Oh that is *too*
funny!
>[1] Oracle had some kind of contest on their website and I had one of
>the first right answers. Got a nice shirt out of it too...
>Ya never know when you'll need to know stuff like that.
Definitely. :-)
--
~teresa~
AFH Barwench
^..^ "Never try to outstubborn a cat." Robert A. Heinlein ^..^
http://pixelmeow.com/ http://www.heinleinsociety.org/
http://pixelmeow.com/Book_Exchange/index.htm
http://pixelmeow.com/forum/
aim: pixelmeow msn: pixe...@passport.com
Oscagne
> I understand what you are saying now. Well, there have been plenty of
> anti-rape message movies with graphic depiction of rape shown here, so I
> guess that isn't a problem for the Review Board. My general impression is
> that certain works may get a pass because of special consideration, even
if
> they may not strictly fall within the approval guidelines. This would help
> with movies and books like the ones you mention above. Of course,
community
> standards (for better or worse) have changed over time, and this has been
> reflected in the kinds of things that do not get approved from time to
time.
> I remember that _A Clockwork Orange_, _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_, and
various
> B-grade schlock-horror movies were banned at one stage years ago, ...but
no
> longer. HTH.
You mean they use common sense?! OH, the Horror! Where do you hide your
bureaucrats? %^)
Dr. Rufo
bookman wrote:
That's in the cartoon where he's "calling a square dance" and playin'
the fiddle for the two "hillbilly boys", no?
pixelmeow
<bay...@mindspring.com> scribbled:
LMAO!!! I *love* that one!!!!! I wish it were possible to purchase
those cartoons over the internet like you can songs, now.
bookman
"djinn" <qinji...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:5a546924.04022...@posting.google.com...
> "bookman" <thebo...@kc.rr.comNULL> wrote in message
news:<80j_b.27975$Dg1....@twister.rdc-kc.rr.com>...
> > "jeanette" <wo...@webtv.net> wrote in message
> > news:17095-403...@storefull-3117.bay.webtv.net...
> > > I read THE FREE LUNCH by Spider Robinson. Most here would enjoy it but
> > > it is not absolutely wonderful.
> > >
> > > ROCKETSHIP GALILEO again.
> > >
> > > CATS CRADLE--had mostly forgotten it after 25+ years--not really my
> > > taste.
> > >
> > > I'm now reading TIMELINE by Critchton--I will finish it, but it isn't
> > > great.
> > >
> > > Jeanette--making conversation
> >
> > I just ran though David Drake's "Paying the Piper" again.
> > It is less intense than his previous "Hammer's Slammers" books,
> > but is a better examination into the nature fo ruthlessness, IMO.
> >
> > I've also run through "Tramp Royale", and wonder if the Heinlein's
> > experience of New Zealand still holds true, esp. as to the censorship
> > of external media.
> >
> Finally got it from Motherthing, did you? :)
SHHHHHH! She doesn't know... Ooops.
>
> > I am currently awaiting the next of Drake's "Isles" series.
> >
> That series ran out of steam for me. I liked it to start with, but to
> me it reads like it should have ended already. YM obviously V
Yeah, the basic plot (core charachters split up, fight bad guys,
occasionally cross paths to help each other - just in time, and
manage to reconvene just in time for the climactic battle) has
worn a bit thin for me, too. I still like some of the sub-themes
that he's working, and some of the secondary charachter development
as well - like the bird-guy, and the legless wizard & apprentice.
The dead hermit has had his moments, too.
>
> > Rusty the bookman
> > happy to oblige
>
> I just found and read an unabridged Three Musketeers. It was even
> funnier than the versions I've read before.
>
> Also borrowed back and re-read Glory Road. It's better than I
> remembered, and it's always been one of my favorites.
There's a couple thoughts - just as soon as I get some spare time! ;-)
Regards,
Rusty the bookman
bookman
> On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 19:17:42 GMT, in alt.fan.heinlein, "Dr. Rufo"
> <bay...@mindspring.com> scribbled:
>
> >
> >
> >bookman wrote:
> >
> >> "Major oz" <maj...@aol.com> wrote in message
> >> news:20040225173307...@mb-m17.aol.com...
> >>
> >>>>Jeanette--making conversation
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>Been re-reading a lot of my old Matt Helm, Travis McGee, and stuff by Carl
> >>>Hiasson and Patricia Cornwell.
> >>>
> >>>Also finding and enjoying some OLD Fred Pohl stuff that I had never read.
> >>>
> >>>Waiting for trout season 1 Mar.
> >>
> >>
> >> Trout season, not duck season, eh?
> >>
> >> BUGS: (Singing.) Now into the brook and fish for the trout,
> >> Dive right in and splash about.
> >> Trout, trout, pretty little trout,
> >> One more splash and come right out.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >>
> >> Rusty the bookman
> >> just silliness, folks!
> >>
> >>
> > That's in the cartoon where he's "calling a square dance" and playin'
> >the fiddle for the two "hillbilly boys", no?
>
> LMAO!!! I *love* that one!!!!! I wish it were possible to purchase
> those cartoons over the internet like you can songs, now.
According to this site, it is available on VHS:
http://www.dosado.com/articles/bugs/index.txt
Here's a Yahoo shopping list for Bugs Bunny videos:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2F216D87
(prices vary)
If you want my help in searching, drop me a line, Pix!
Regards,
Rusty the bookman
bookman
"Dr. Rufo" <bay...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:qDr%b.10465$aT1....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
bookman
"Dr. Rufo" <bay...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:qDr%b.10465$aT1....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>
>
Oops, apologies for the Double!
Yeah, it is "Hillbilly Hare" according to:
http://www.dosado.com/articles/bugs/index.txt
Rtb
And a good one, too!
fadermcgee
news:<80j_b.27975$Dg1....@twister.rdc-kc.rr.com>...
> > "jeanette" <wo...@webtv.net> wrote in message
> > news:17095-403...@storefull-3117.bay.webtv.net...
> > > I read THE FREE LUNCH by Spider Robinson. Most here would enjoy it
but
> > > it is not absolutely wonderful.
> > >
> > > ROCKETSHIP GALILEO again.
> > >
> > > CATS CRADLE--had mostly forgotten it after 25+ years--not really my
> > > taste.
> > >
> > > I'm now reading TIMELINE by Critchton--I will finish it, but it isn't
> > > great.
> > >
> > > Jeanette--making conversation
> >
> > I just ran though David Drake's "Paying the Piper" again.
> > It is less intense than his previous "Hammer's Slammers" books,
> > but is a better examination into the nature fo ruthlessness, IMO.
> >
> > I've also run through "Tramp Royale", and wonder if the Heinlein's
> > experience of New Zealand still holds true, esp. as to the censorship
> > of external media.
> >
My idea of scanning/OCRing my wife's and my library into a portable
multi-terabyte hard drive/array for comvenience in travel has a non-obvious
advantage - with any luck, no customs agent is going to insist on sifting
through a couple of trillion bytes of storage for banned books.
Hmmmm... "booklegging" (the crime for which the blessed Leibowitz was
martyred in "A Canticle for Leibowitz"). If I smuggle SIASL electronically
into Holland, what exactly would be the penalty? Euthanasia?
VPF
fadermcgee
Our tax money finally accomplished something - The US Department of Justice
just announced that Oracle's planned takeover of PeopleSoft (for whom a good
friend works) would be blocked because it would violate anti-trusst laws.
Since Oracle is infamous for buying competitors to shut them down and fire
all their employees, this would be a BAD THING. I may stop stamping "PAID
UNDER PROTEST" on my income tax returns.
VPF
Howard Berkowitz
<vfri...@rikochet.com> wrote:
.
>
> Our tax money finally accomplished something - The US Department of
> Justice
> just announced that Oracle's planned takeover of PeopleSoft (for whom a
> good
> friend works) would be blocked because it would violate anti-trusst laws.
> Since Oracle is infamous for buying competitors to shut them down and
> fire
> all their employees, this would be a BAD THING. I may stop stamping
> "PAID
> UNDER PROTEST" on my income tax returns.
>
Antitrust is one of the great oddities about where political theory
meets practice. While the free market is one of the foundations of both
economic conservatism and libertarianism, the reality is that Greed
Makes The World Go Around and The Tragedy of the Commons Is Always With
Us.
The irony takes place when government intervention is necessary to limit
monopoly and other market manipulation, in order to ensure the
relatively free function of the market.
Vance has a pet peeve with Oracle. One of my recent ones is that
Citibank seems to have a strategy of buying up all the store credit
cards it can. I had, for example, been a Sears cardholder for over 30
years, and indeed had paid off my account in full within the last year.
On walking into a Sears store and making a routine purchase, recognizing
Sears had high interest but finding it useful, in tough times, for
things like clothing and home repair, I was shocked to have a charge
rejected. A few days before, I had a very large credit line. Citibank
had stepped in and re-reviewed accounts by their own financial criteria,
apparently not considering either the history with the merchant or the
value of credit-driven business to that business. Citibank cut it to the
current balance.
While Sears sold its credit card business, I am going to try a letter to
the CEO of Sears, seeing if they have any leverage to reflect long-term
customer loyalty.
Radio Shack and others also have been acquired by Citibank.
Sean
"Oscagne" <Osc...@ev1.net> wrote in message
news:8u6dnVRyeZs...@speakeasy.net...
>
> "Sean" <hcat...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
> news:c1k6si$1f629s$1...@ID-98728.news.uni-berlin.de...
> > I understand what you are saying now. Well, there have been plenty of
> > anti-rape message movies with graphic depiction of rape shown here, so I
> > guess that isn't a problem for the Review Board. My general impression
is
> > that certain works may get a pass because of special consideration, even
> if
> > they may not strictly fall within the approval guidelines. This would
help
> > with movies and books like the ones you mention above. Of course,
> community
> > standards (for better or worse) have changed over time, and this has
been
> > reflected in the kinds of things that do not get approved from time to
> time.
> > I remember that _A Clockwork Orange_, _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_, and
> various
> > B-grade schlock-horror movies were banned at one stage years ago, ...but
> no
> > longer. HTH.
>
> You mean they use common sense?! OH, the Horror! Where do you hide your
> bureaucrats? %^)
I just had a quick look at the website for the Australian Office of Film and
Literature Classification at http://www.oflc.gov.au/content.html. Quite a
bit of detail there for anyone who was interested.
Sean
(...)
Oscagne
> I just had a quick look at the website for the Australian Office of Film
and
> Literature Classification at http://www.oflc.gov.au/content.html. Quite a
> bit of detail there for anyone who was interested.
Quoting the website:
"The Internet
The ABA also regulates Internet content. This scheme allows for persons to
make a complaint about prohibited, or potentially prohibited, content to the
ABA."
/me goes to look for a fork, that the ABA may hold back the tide.
-sorry... 1st beer in a month tonight... I'm giddy.
Sean
>
> "Sean" <hcat...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
> news:c1orci$1lbtmj$1...@ID-98728.news.uni-berlin.de...
> > I just had a quick look at the website for the Australian Office of Film
> and
> > Literature Classification at http://www.oflc.gov.au/content.html. Quite
a
> > bit of detail there for anyone who was interested.
>
> Quoting the website:
> "The Internet
> The ABA also regulates Internet content. This scheme allows for persons to
> make a complaint about prohibited, or potentially prohibited, content to
the
> ABA."
>
> /me goes to look for a fork, that the ABA may hold back the tide.
>
> -sorry... 1st beer in a month tonight... I'm giddy.
Good health!
I think the reference is only in regard to internet content located within
Australia. Doesn't stop someone from here uploading content to another
jurisdiction of course, just attempting to keep our own backyard clean.
Sean
(...)
Ogden Johnson III
>"Oscagne" <Osc...@ev1.net> wrote
>> "Sean" <hcat...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
>>>I just had a quick look at the website for the Australian Office of Film and
>>>Literature Classification at http://www.oflc.gov.au/content.html. Quite a
>>>bit of detail there for anyone who was interested.
>>Quoting the website:
>>"The Internet
>>The ABA also regulates Internet content. This scheme allows for persons to
>>make a complaint about prohibited, or potentially prohibited, content to the
>>ABA."
>>
>>/me goes to look for a fork, that the ABA may hold back the tide.
>>
>>-sorry... 1st beer in a month tonight... I'm giddy.
>Good health!
>
>I think the reference is only in regard to internet content located within
>Australia. Doesn't stop someone from here uploading content to another
>jurisdiction of course, just attempting to keep our own backyard clean.
I don't know why it never occurred to me or I haven't seen the
comparison elsewhere, but ...
[Perhaps its the Brit/Sri Lanka{Ceylon}/Oz nexus]
We all, I hope, know that Arthur C. Clarke conceived
communications satellites, and included them in a short story he
wrote in which, after the satellites were up and working and the
world-wide hosannas had died down, the downside appeared. A
pirate broadcaster used the satellites to beam porn down to
everyone in the world.
Internet anyone?
--
OJ III
[Email sent to Yahoo addy is burned before reading.
Lower and crunch the sig and you'll net me at comcast]
djinn
> "djinn" <qinji...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:5a546924.0402...@posting.google.com...
> > pixelmeow <NJZLIR...@spammotel.com> wrote in message
> news:<f7d3f184cf99607a...@news.teranews.com>...
> > > On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 00:21:23 -0800 (PST), in alt.fan.heinlein,
> > > wo...@webtv.net (jeanette) scribbled:
> > >
>
> Our tax money finally accomplished something - The US Department of Justice
> just announced that Oracle's planned takeover of PeopleSoft (for whom a good
> friend works) would be blocked because it would violate anti-trusst laws.
> Since Oracle is infamous for buying competitors to shut them down and fire
> all their employees, this would be a BAD THING. I may stop stamping "PAID
> UNDER PROTEST" on my income tax returns.
>
might still be worth somethin?
Kinda funny that, PeopleSoft can buy JD Edwards but then Oracle can't
buy PeopleSoft. Not that an Oracle world would be a good thing.
bookman
Nah, "euthanasia" is the penalty for having sex in China.
HTH,
Rusty the bookman
Engr Bohn
Hail, bookman! We who are about to post salute you.
> Nah, "euthanasia" is the penalty for having sex in China.
booooooo!
Take care,
cb
--
Christopher A. Bohn ____________|____________
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~bohn/ ' ** ** " (o) " ** ** '
"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
- Wernher von Braun
charles krin
wrote:
>
>Lady Slings the Booze is another one that is good as long as you ignore a
>really serious hole. After Tesla caused the Tunguska event, why didn't he just
>destroy his machine and all notes about it, then keep on inventing other
>nondestructive things? Why did he decide it was necessary to totally discredit
>himself? Why did he leave behind a set of notes on the Tunguska particle beam?
Another problem with LStB is when Quigley recognizes Steve Wozniak,
but fails to catch the joke about 'Son of Jobs'...
working on a post for Alt.Callahans on this one...Spider has been
rather active over there recently.
ck
--
country doc in louisiana
(no fancy sayings right now)
Spider Robinson
LV Poker Player wrote:
>
> >From: wolfj
>
> >I read THE FREE LUNCH by Spider Robinson. Most here would enjoy it but
> >it is not absolutely wonderful.
>
> That would be my assessment too.
Mine as well. To be absolutely wonderful, that book would have had to
be what it started out to be: a collaboration with Herb Varley. He'd
have built a MUCH better theme park than I did, for one thing, and a
much more detailed Under.
One of my biggest problems with Spider is the
> plot holes he leaves. This one had a few gaping ones.
>
> Minor spoilers...
>
> How did she get her book collection into the park with her? I don't even see a
> good explanation for this one.
I don't even see your problem. Annie KNOWS Dreamworld. She's the Mother
Elf. She's WIRED. You're told that she's had the place hacked for 13
years. She can go through the truck entrance at 4 AM without leaving a
record. She can manipulate Dreamworld's own ordering and shipping
protocols undetected. She'd have had no trouble bringing in a piano if
she'd wanted one, hiding the cost somewhere in a discretionary fund or a
faked prop budget--or simply paying for it from her own credit outside.
Her only really practical constraint would be, she has to be able to
move the load from point-of-delivery within Dreamworld to her home Under
by herself, with only mechanical assistance. 320 paperback books (the
total contents of two packed Ikea bookshelves I'm looking at as I type,
her stated collection) plus the bookcases disassembled would be a single
trip with a lightly loaded handtruck. She'd probably have to settle for
an upright piano.
>
> Why did the people from the future come in through the park? Why not pick an
> abandoned building or something? I suppose we could assume some doubletalk
> about their time machine only working in one specific location for some reason.
Sorry, LV, I'm just baffled here. That point was specifically and
explicitly addressed in the text, more than once--and frankly should be
fairly self-evident. If you saw a dozen costumed dwarves a day leaving
an abandoned building, won't you pay just a BIT more attention than if
you saw an EXTRA dozen costumed dwarves a day among hundreds of them
routinely leaving an amusement park at end-of-shift? And: where would
you normally be at your most suspicious when observing anything
bizarre--in a neighborhood with abandoned buildings, or in Dreamworld
where nothing can ever go wrong? What don't you get?
>
> He is a good writer, but would be a lot better if he plugged up these holes.
>
> Lady Slings the Booze is another one that is good as long as you ignore a
> really serious hole. After Tesla caused the Tunguska event, why didn't he just
> destroy his machine and all notes about it, then keep on inventing other
> nondestructive things? Why did he decide it was necessary to totally discredit
> himself?
How can I put this gently? You're talking out your ass...
FIRST: The word Tunguska does not appear anywhere in the book LADY
SLINGS THE BOOZE. The only reference I find in the manuscript to a
particle beam is the following, from Chapter 12:
"I'd gotten interested in him in the first place because you can't study
esoteric weapons for very long without hearing about the death-ray he
said could score the surface of Mars…which of course he never got to
build." [As far as the narrator knew.]
The only reference to notes, from later in that same chapter:
"Tesla was famous for rarely using drawings or models or notes or
experiments. A device would appear in his imagination, complete. He
would build it. It would work. The Mark I was the finished product."
A weapon IS used that is referred to as a "death ray"--a hand weapon.
But it is produced by Lady Sally, not Tesla, and she never calls it a
particle beam weapon or states or implies any connection between it and
Tesla. (Ken calls it a hand laser; she does not correct him.)
But Tesla never mentions a particle beam--AND futhermore never once
suggests that he might have deliberately discredited himself--at any
time in LADY SLINGS THE BOOZE.
I believe you are thinking of an entirely different novel, published
nearly a decade later than LSTB, called CALLAHAN'S KEY. It is in THAT
book that Tesla FOR THE FIRST TIME explicitly discusses his particle
beam weapon, its role in the Tunguska event, and his subsequent decision
to discredit himself.
NEXT: Why discredit himself, rather than just stop work on the device?
Again, this is specifically addressed in text, and is also fairly
obvious: he wanted to ENSURE no one would follow the same path he had.
The method he chose is basic Lying 101. If he’d simply abandoned that
line of research, others would still have poked around with it, hoping
find the key he missed, and surpass the master. Far better to ATTACH
himself to that line of research...and then look like a charlatan.
There are still quite a few people trying to make cold fusion work
today, and guys are still working on steady state theory. But nobody is
trying to replicate the fraudulent work of Cyril Burt, and the theories
of Velikovski are neglected. Have you heard of much follow-up on
Rhine's work at Duke lately? Laughingstock goes WAY down on the Big Board....
Why did he leave behind a set of notes on the Tunguska particle beam?
FIRST: a quibble--the text says only:
“'Oh my God, Nikky—is this to do with that stuff the feds supposedly
took out of the hotel basement after you died, and then classified
forever? Papers and working models? Your Death Ray?'
Still looking down, he nodded. 'A type of particle-beam weapon.
Quite unconventional…and quite powerful.'”
The nature of the "stuff" that's relevant is never clearly defined, and
if it is papers, they may not be a set of notes.
But that is a quibble--you are basically right on this point: Nikky
definitely left SOMETHING he shouldn't have in that safe, whether it was
papers or models.
Here, I'm afraid, you catch Nikola Tesla in a rare moment of
foolishness. A naturalized American, he naively failed to imagine that
in the United States of America, a federal agency would be permitted to
rob a dead man in broad daylight. The FBI’s illegal plundering of his
hotel safe within hours of his death took him by surprise. Those were
different times, is all I can say in his defense. Difficult as it may
be to imagine now, back in those days hardly any Americans consciously
realized that a state of perpetual and all-out war exists between them
and their government.
I submit however that this is a (rare) hole in Tesla's thinking, not in
my plotting. Nikky behaved irrationally more than once in his life
without any help from me.
I hasten to concede that many of my books DO indeed contain plot holes,
some large and some small. [For a complete list, send $US5.95 to
Hell--hand delivery only.] But you're 0 for 3 so far, in the ones you
picked as exemplars. I politely suggest that you may for some reason be
predisposed to see holes where none exist. Please consider cutting me a
little slack in future, and giving me the benefit of the doubt, LV. I
work pretty hard on this shit.
Thanks,
Spider
>
> --
> Ferengi rule of acquisition #192: Never cheat a Klingon...unless you're sure
> you can get away with it.
Sound like famous last words to me.
Hey, that reminds me, though: I just found out: my Hugo-winning short
story "Melancholy Elephants" is going to be translated into Klingon, in
a forthcoming Klingon-only anthology! My stuff is finally available in
TWO STAR-SYSTEMS.....
LV Poker Player
Whoa, I really was not expecting a reply from the author himself. Seriously,
there are only two authors I buy in hardcover rather than waiting for
paperback, you and Harry Turtledove.
>> How did she get her book collection into the park with her? I don't even
>see a
>> good explanation for this one.
>
>I don't even see your problem. Annie KNOWS Dreamworld. She's the Mother
>Elf. She's WIRED. You're told that she's had the place hacked for 13
>years. She can go through the truck entrance at 4 AM without leaving a
>record. She can manipulate Dreamworld's own ordering and shipping
>protocols undetected.
All right, all right.
>> Why did the people from the future come in through the park? Why not pick
>an
>> abandoned building or something? I suppose we could assume some doubletalk
>> about their time machine only working in one specific location for some
>reason.
>
>Sorry, LV, I'm just baffled here. That point was specifically and
>explicitly addressed in the text, more than once--and frankly should be
>fairly self-evident. If you saw a dozen costumed dwarves a day leaving
>an abandoned building, won't you pay just a BIT more attention than if
>you saw an EXTRA dozen costumed dwarves a day among hundreds of them
I was thinking more in terms of a deserted western desert abandoned mineshaft
or deserted and isolated farm, something like that. I suppose even then there
is the chance a hiker or someone would stumble onto the operation.
>> He is a good writer, but would be a lot better if he plugged up these
>holes.
>>
>> Lady Slings the Booze is another one that is good as long as you ignore a
>> really serious hole. After Tesla caused the Tunguska event, why didn't he
>just
>> destroy his machine and all notes about it, then keep on inventing other
>> nondestructive things? Why did he decide it was necessary to totally
>discredit
>> himself?
>
>How can I put this gently? You're talking out your ass...
>
>FIRST: The word Tunguska does not appear anywhere in the book LADY
>SLINGS THE BOOZE. The only reference I find in the manuscript to a
>particle beam is the following, from Chapter 12:
You're right, I was doing it from memory and mistyped. I definitely should
have typed Callahan's Key.
Major snippage...
>I submit however that this is a (rare) hole in Tesla's thinking, not in
>my plotting. Nikky behaved irrationally more than once in his life
>without any help from me.
Once again, all right, all right.
>I hasten to concede that many of my books DO indeed contain plot holes,
>some large and some small. [For a complete list, send $US5.95 to
>Hell--hand delivery only.] But you're 0 for 3 so far, in the ones you
>picked as exemplars. I politely suggest that you may for some reason be
>predisposed to see holes where none exist. Please consider cutting me a
>little slack in future, and giving me the benefit of the doubt, LV. I
>work pretty hard on this shit.
Actually there is one acid test we can apply. How many books have you
published? Don't know; I haven't counted. How many have I published? That
one is easy: none.
Pax? :)
If I continue buying your books in hardcover as they come out, is that cutting
you enough slack? :)
Simon Jester, Esq.
"LV Poker Player" <lvpoke...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040309134212...@mb-m13.aol.com...
> >From: Spider Robinson
>
> Whoa, I really was not expecting a reply from the author himself.
Seriously,
> there are only two authors I buy in hardcover rather than waiting for
> paperback, you and Harry Turtledove.
Ditto on those two. Also, RAH, Clancy Jordan, Niven and Aspirin. At least
on a regular basis. Heck, I like this place. Have had two of my favorites
show up here...
atwork
> Whoa, I really was not expecting a reply from the author himself.
Seriously,
> there are only two authors I buy in hardcover rather than waiting for
> paperback, you and Harry Turtledove.
Roger that. I even bought the Callahan's Game from some guy on ebay, and
had to un-engineer my machine to try and get it to work. I never did get
the sound to play, but it's a cute game.
--
Oscagne
Engr Bohn
Hail, "atwork" <atwork.ev1.null>! We who are about to post salute you.
> Roger that. I even bought the Callahan's Game from some guy on ebay,
> and
> had to un-engineer my machine to try and get it to work. I never did
> get the sound to play, but it's a cute game.
Oscagne, please tell me you didn't buy it recently...
scroll to the bottom of http://www.spiderrobinson.com/gameart.htm
I've downloaded it but haven't played it. Time's a bit lacking at the
moment.
Take care,
cb
--
Christopher A. Bohn ____________|____________
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~bohn/ ' ** ** " (o) " ** ** '
9 March 1993 -- A Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird makes its first
scientific flight for NASA at the Dryden Flight Research Center
at Edwards AFB CA.
atwork
"Engr Bohn" <BravoOscarH...@cis.ohio-state.edu> wrote in message
news:Azq3c.10399$t16.6...@newssvr28.news.prodigy.com...
> Good afternoon,
>
> Hail, "atwork" <atwork.ev1.null>! We who are about to post salute you.
>
> > Roger that. I even bought the Callahan's Game from some guy on ebay,
> > and
> > had to un-engineer my machine to try and get it to work. I never did
> > get the sound to play, but it's a cute game.
>
> Oscagne, please tell me you didn't buy it recently...
> scroll to the bottom of http://www.spiderrobinson.com/gameart.htm
>
> I've downloaded it but haven't played it. Time's a bit lacking at the
> moment.
It was about a year ago. I got it off ebay for... I want to say about $5.
I remember trying the download and not being able to get it going. But...
for that $5 I also got the original packaging and instruction booklet.
--
Oscagne
jeanette
to-read lists. After someone here recommended THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY,
I found it on the shelf. It is good. Some other books mentioned have
been put on request at the library.
I have taped the new series KINGDOM HOSPITAL, but have not watched it
yet. I was pleased that one library in the system had THE KINGDOM (four
hour) miniseries on which it was based. The cover describes it as ER on
acid. I think it is more MASH doctors in Amityville Hospital, Denmark.
I liked it.
Jeanette
fadermcgee
Glad you enjoyed _The Great Train Robbery_ - if your library lends out video
tapes and DVD (mine does, thank God) look for the movie - it's a fantastic
adaptation. I've noticed this interesting thing about Crichton's work - the
movies are almost always better than the novels they're based on. I haven't
seen _Timeline_ the movie yet, have read the book, can't wait until I can
lay hands on a copy of the movie (I prefer home theater to walking on floors
sticky with God only knows what to a smelly, butt-punishing chair)..
I saw part of Kingdom Hospital, but was ill and fell asleep in mid-episode.
I did think that Ed Begley, Jr. was fantastic as the absent-headed
professor.. Hope this isn't just a miniseries - I..... LIKR IT!!
VPF
Howard Berkowitz
<vfri...@rikochet.com> wrote:
> "jeanette" <wo...@webtv.net> wrote in message
> news:10935-405...@storefull-3111.bay.webtv.net...
> > I finished TIMELINE by Michael Crichton. I suggest it go on the back
> > of
> > to-read lists. After someone here recommended THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY,
> > I found it on the shelf. It is good. Some other books mentioned have
> > been put on request at the library.
> >
> > I have taped the new series KINGDOM HOSPITAL, but have not watched it
> > yet. I was pleased that one library in the system had THE KINGDOM
> > (four
> > hour) miniseries on which it was based. The cover describes it as ER
> > on
> > acid. I think it is more MASH doctors in Amityville Hospital, Denmark.
> > I liked it.
> >
> > Jeanette
>
>
> Glad you enjoyed _The Great Train Robbery_ - if your library lends out
> video
> tapes and DVD (mine does, thank God) look for the movie - it's a
> fantastic
> adaptation. I've noticed this interesting thing about Crichton's work -
> the
> movies are almost always better than the novels they're based on.
I was always amused that the technical details were more extensive and
more consistent in the movie version of _Andromeda Strain_. Of course,
once having to run a demonstration in a (still organism-free) multilevel
biological containment, and rushing to a pay phone to keep up the dialup
link from one of the labs, is too real for me!