Aucbvax.1451
fa.sf-lovers
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!JPM@MIT-AI
Sat May 30 06:07:18 1981
SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #124
SF-LOVERS PM Digest Friday, 29 May 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 134
Today's Topics:
Administrivia - No Missing Digest
SF Lovers - Film Buff Digest,
SF Books - 2081: A Hopeful View of the Human Future,
SF Movies - Outland, SF TV - Dr Who & Rocky and Bullwinkle,
SF Topics - Children's TV (Rocky and Bullwinkle and
Supercar and Stingray and Johnny Quest and Space Ghost
and Fireball XL-5 and Captain Scarlet and Roger Ramjet)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 29 May 1980 18:42 PST
From: The Moderator <JPM AT MIT-AI>
Subject: Administrivia - No Missing Digest
There were no Wednesday or Thursday digests this week due to some
hardware and software difficulties at the site where the digests are
composed and transmitted. Hopefully that is behind us now, and dialy
transmissions resume with this (the Friday) issue.
Jim
------------------------------
Date: 26-May-81 10:21:40 PDT (Tuesday)
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: FILM-BUFFS disappears
Several higher authorities believe that the existence of FILM-BUFFS
would be pushing the use of the Arpanet too far beyond its
research-oriented mandate. Not wanting to jeopardize the lists we
have now, I yield to those people's better judgment.
Oh, for the day when such strictures disappear! When WORLDNET lets
each interested party EFT his $10/yr for "postage", and Large Lists
rule the world!
--Bruce
------------------------------
Date: 26 May 1981 11:10 PDT
From: Kolling at PARC-MAXC
Subject: misc.
I hope the establishment of FILM-BUFFS doesn't mean that the sf movie
reviews will vanish from the SF-DIGEST.
Didn't anybody but me waste their youth in comic books? There was a
Tom Corbett comic (preceding the tv series, I think), and also an
Aquaman (relation to Aquaboy?) comic.
------------------------------
Date: 26-May-81 10:21:40 PDT (Tuesday)
From: Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: FILM-BUFFS disappears
Several higher authorities believe that the existence of FILM-BUFFS
would be pushing the use of the Arpanet too far beyond its
research-oriented mandate. Not wanting to jeopardize the lists we
have now, I yield to those people's better judgment.
Oh, for the day when such strictures disappear! When WORLDNET lets
each interested party EFT his $10/yr for "postage", and Large Lists
rule the world!
--Bruce
------------------------------
Date: 26 May 1981 1708-PDT
From: Jim McGrath <JPM SU-AI AT>
Subject: Review of 2081
By VICTOR WILSON
Newhouse News Service
WASHINGTON - The title of the book is ''2081: A Hopeful View of
the Human Future.'' It is a look at our world 100 years from now - a
la Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling.
But unlike those fiction forecasters, ''2081'' takes off from the
solid scientific knowledge we already possess and merely looks into
the predictable future.
Developments of the last century that most profoundly affected
human life are factory mass-production methods, the automobile,
aircraft, the telephone, radio and television and public health
techniques which nearly wiped out killer diseases like plague and
typhoid.
Writing in ''2081'' (Simon & Schuster, $13.95), Gerard K. O'Neill
predicts:
- Household robots that shop, drive cars, send mail, mow the lawn,
and record radio and television shows.
- Surgical implants including hearts and other vital organs that
will replace many drugs.
- Factory work done exclusively by robots.
- A three-day workweek.
- Air travel at 6,000 mph; land travel at 800 mph via vacuum
tunnels.
- Climate control by enclosing whole cities in domes.
- Millions living and vacationing in solar-powered space colonies
a short shuttle trip away.
- Pollution-free liquid hydrogen to fuel jets, trucks, buses and
cars.
O'Neill doesn't write science fiction. A physics professor at
Princeton University, he has a B.A. and a D.Sc. from Swarthmore and a
Ph.D. from Cornell.
He is a researcher in particle physics who conceived the idea of
colliding-beam storage rings and conducted the first experiments in
the field. In 1969 he developed a space colony theory within the
limits of existing technology. He received the Phi Beta Kappa Science
Book Award in 1977 for ''The High Frontier'' on space colonies.
O'Neill says he endorses the ''guesses'' of Arthur Clarke, noted
scholar on space possibilities, and believes that wireless
transmission of energy will come by the year 2000. He also expects
interstellar space probes by 2025 and a self-producing ''replicator''
factory that would automatically build combinations of computers and
other machines by 2090.
The author says: ''One of the remarkable features of modern
society is that the universality of the laws of nature makes different
nations develop almost identical designs for aircraft, automobiles and
all other technical artifacts, even though the same nations may be
violently at odds with each other on political, religious or other
ideological issues.''
Computers, automation, space colonies, energy and communications -
these are the five forces ''that will drive the changes of the next
century,'' O'Neill predicts. ''The captains and the kings will come
and go, but the five will endure and will shape the world, unless we
are destined for the final catastrophe in the brief moment of time
that lies just ahead.''
Unless we ''do something violently stupid,'' O'Neill writes, ''the
eternals of hope and love and laughter will still be there too, and
will accommodate all the hope of the five to everyday human affairs
just as successfully as they have already tamed the automobile and the
jet airplane - and even the telephone.''
------------------------------
Date: 26 May 1981 (Tuesday) 0038-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: Outland and Trank darts
Somehow, shooting someone with a trank dart (which must obviously
penetrate the suit to work (hypno-darts?)) only to have them die by
explosive decompression (remember, the dart rips the suit?) seems a
waste of time, as well as possibly non-humane.
-steve
------------------------------
Date: 27 May 1981 13:48 PDT
From: STOGRYN.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: OUTLAND and future societies
[Enter sarcasm mode]
All science fiction movies should start:
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away. . .(c)
That way its direct association with the history of earth would be
remote. Or maybe, it would be better just to provide a disclaimer at
the beginning, end, and prehaps one in the middle of each movie
stating that:
This movie has no significant social value.
It does not pretend to predict the future in
a realistic fashion, (science FICTION remember).
The events in this film will probably never happen.
otherwise, those people who just lay back and enjoy may forget that it
is just a movie.
[Exit fast]
Bravo and Amen to Ron (Newman.ES), Mike at RAND-UNIX, Byron Howes, et.
al. for reminding us that:
. . .technological advances need not go
hand-in-hand with social progress.
. . .Predicting prostitution in the future
is as safe as predicting violence in the future.
. . .Social movements do no persist just because
people want them to persist. . .
Hardware problems are a lot easier to over come than people problems.
No one can tell what the future will really be like. No matter how
many advances we make today, tomorrow it could all come tumbling down,
or better still we could suddenly take a giant leap ahead. . .
whatever that may mean to you. To argue over the validity of any
future social system would only be a matter of personal opinion, but
don't say one or the other cannot be.
Here's hoping the future will be all you want it to be,
Steve
------------------------------
Date: 25 May 1981 1046-PDT
Sender: LEAVITT at USC-ISI
Subject: Dr. Who/ DC area
From: Mike Leavitt <LEAVITT USC-ISI AT>
I just noticed that Dr. Who will be on every night in the Washington,
DC area at 6:30 pm on Channel 26. Starting tonight. (Monday).
Mike
------------------------------
Date: 25 May 1981 22:08:20-PDT
From: CSVAX.dmu at Berkeley
Subject: Fan mail from some flounder?
Rocky is on weekday mornings at 8:00 on channel 2 in the Bay area. If
you thought the \prime-time/ commercials were bad. . .
David Ungar
------------------------------
Date: 26 May 1981 0649-PDT
Sender: ADPSC at USC-ISI
Subject: Rocky and Bullwinkle
From: ADPSC at USC-ISI (Don)
It was with a great sense of disappointment that I found out I could
have been watching R&B on Saturday AM's instead of Bugs Bunny. (Who
ever reads the TV pages anymore?) It has to be my favorite show of
all time, and my recent Saturday mornings have been much more
enjoyable.
I realize now that the show was aimed at adults, but I feel that it
gave me a certain sense of political literacy at 9 years of age. The
episode I recall best (in that vein) is when our heroes (who could
refer to them as anything else) where in a jet with Captain Peachfuzz
when the plane ran out of fuel. Bullwinkle read the Congressional
Record directly into the engines. These being full of hot air kept
the plane in flight, but put the rest of the crew to sleep.
And who could forget their old alma mater, Watzamatta U?
For you trivia fans, the theme song for Dudley Doright came from
"Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna" by Von Suppe.
Until next time...
Don
------------------------------
Date: 27 May 1981 12:14-EDT
From: Thomas L. Davenport <TLD MIT-MC AT>
Subject: Rocky & Bullwinkle
Many thanks to Lauren for bringing up the subject of Rocky &
Bullwinkle! I've always considered the show to be one of the finest
and funniest works of art our society has produced.
Does anyone know of a source for more information about the show, eg.
books, magazines, fan clubs, episode guides, etc.?
I saw the Metal Munching Mice episodes a few years ago, and I remember
that the moonmen were Gidney and Cloyd.
-Tom-
------------------------------
Date: 27 May 1981 15:48:10-PDT
From: decvax!duke!unc!tyg at Berkeley
Subject: Tom Swift in George of the Jungle
Just for clarification, the TS segment in GotJ was about a race driver
of that name, not the Tom Swift and his Computer Mailing List guy.
tom galloway at unc
------------------------------
Date: 17 May 1981 0847-PDT
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-CSL
Subject: Re: (Great) Children's TV programs.
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow
All this discussion about children's TV in the past brings, has served
to jog my memory of the time.
What about/Do you remember:
SUPERCAR: Was only in B&W as i recall... About a scientist
who built a "Super Car" that could fly (maybe do other things?). Was
one of four `puppet' done shows the other three being:
FIREBALL XL-5: Something to do with a space rocket called
Fireball XL-5.
STINGRAY: Some type of underwater submarine rescue team.
<UNKNOWN>: about a family that lived out on an island and had
all sorts of different rockets that were used to avert disasters ...
The show started with a count down. Perhaps its name was Thunderball?
In the animated department, do you remember:
JOHNNY QUEST? One of my personal favorites of the time. Some
kid and his dad who spent most of the time flying around in their Lear
Jet averting disaster or thwarting super criminals.
SPACE GHOST? Some outer space hero of sorts.
Thanks to Lauren and crew for jogging the ol' memory with Astro Boy,
Speed Racer(of which I remember how everyone went OOOOOHHHHHHH all the
time when they were in peril), Ultra Man and the lot.
------------------------------
Date: 18 May 1981 1352-EDT
From: Steven Clark at CMU-10A
Subject: Fireball XL-5 and Captain Scarlet
When I was small these were what I watched. I don't know how Fireball
XL-5 started, but I recall they had an alien (teddy bear) who could
sense danger in the near future.
What I'm really interested in is Captain Scarlet, though. The first
manned mission to Mars finds an advanced alien civilization. The
aliens are proclaim they are friendly and start aiming a bunch of
sensors at the earth ship. The earthmen are so paranoid when they see
devices aimed at them that they shoot at them. The Martians let the
earthmen go home with the warning that this means war. I believe the
Martians go so far as to say they won't use their advanced technology
against us because then we wouldn't stand a chance! Somehow Captain
Scarlet becomes indestructible because of a mistake of the Martians,
and he leads the war against them.
Captain Scarlet had a bunch of really neat devices, the one I remember
best is this futuristic version of an army tank. The driver inside
watches a couple TV monitors that show views of outside; there are no
windows. In fact the driver is facing backwards.
Can anyone out there tell me more about Captain Scarlet or Fireball
XL-5? Do you know who was responsible for creating them? It's
possible that they were shown on Canadian TV and not in the US; at the
time I lived in a place that received one American station and one
Canadian (in good weather).
-----
If you ever see Mike Mars (a series of children's SF), pass it by
immediately! The one of that series that I read was probably the
first SF book I ever read that I didn't like.
-Steve Clark
------------------------------
Date: 26 May 1981 1709-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY at SU-SCORE
Subject: Roger Ramjet he's our man...
Is that how the song started? What are the rest of the words?
--cat
------------------------------
Date: 26 May 1981 2139-PDT (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Roger Ramjet he's our man...
It was something like:
Roger Ramjet, he's our man.
Hero of the nation.
For his adventures,
Just be sure to stay tuned to this station.
--Lauren--
------------------------------
Date: 28 May 1981 1654-PDT
From: OR.TOVEY
Subject: Re: Roger Ramjet he's our man...
Thanks! My best guess was
Roger Ramjet he's our man,
Ruler of creation.
Eating deviled eggs and Spam,
We hope he's on vacation.
--cat
------------------------------
Date: 28 May 1981 1655-PDT (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Re: Roger Ramjet he's our man...
Uh, not quite!
--Lauren--
------------------------------
Date: 28-MAY-1981 09:06
Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO
From: KERMIT::PARMENTER
Subj: SFL: Roger Ramjet
SFL: Vol 3, No. 129
The show was Roger Ramjet and his American Eagle Squadron and they all
flew airplanes, like the Blackhawks. The squadron was four kids named
Yank, Doodle, Dan, and Dee. Their major enemy was Noodles Romanoff
and his Ring. The theme song, to the tune of "Yankee Doodle", was:
Roger Ramjet and his Eagles,
Fighting for our freedom,
Fly through wind and outer space,
Not to join 'em but to beat 'em.
It was full of puns.
------------------------------
End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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