Aucbvax.1596
fa.sf-lovers
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!JPM@MIT-AI
Wed Jun 10 04:35:48 1981
SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #146
SF-LOVERS AM Digest Wednesday, 10 Jun 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 146
Today's Topics:
SF Books - Fantasticats & Tin-Tin,
SF Movies - Outland, SF TV - Star Trek Guide,
SF Topics - Compu-fiction & Computer Animation &
Children's TV (F.A.B. query and Rocky and Bullwinkle) &
Children's stories (Query answered and Tom Swift and Homer and
Spaceship Under the Apple Tree and Richard Purtill and Mary Renault)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 9 Jun 1981 11:00 EDT
From: Marshall.WBST at PARC-MAXC
Subject: cats in sf
I cannot resist touting Cordwainer Smith's cats in "The Game of Rat
and Dragon". This is a delightful story about mental combat between
cats and human partners on one side and mental dragons on the other.
The cats in this story are real cats and act very feline. There is
also a cat planet in "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal" but
the cats are not as feline. If anyone has not read all of Smith's
Science Fiction I suggest they do so. The author sketches entire
civilizations and societies with only two or three sentences. His
universe is vast but we are permitted only small glimpses of it.
Unfortunately when he died in 1966 his science fiction only filled
four books:
Quest of the Three Worlds
Norstrilia
The Best of Cordwainer Smith
The Instrumentality of Mankind
The first two are novels and the last two are collections of short
stories. I believe he left notes for future sf stories but I don't
know if they will ever be published.
--Sidney
------------------------------
Date: 8 Jun 1981 00:04:08-PDT
From: CSVAX.wildbill at Berkeley
Subject: SF felines
The Leiber story mentioned in a recent SFL is "Space-Time for
Springers". Another Leiber story involving cats is the fifth book in
the Fafhrd-Grey Mouser series, "The Swords of Lankhmar". Cats play a
very important role in this story.
Another Cordwainer Smith story in which one encounters cats qua
cats is "The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal", in which the
Commander uses a time-warp device and a hypnosis device capable of
implanting racial goals (i.e affecting the memories of descendants as
well as the originally hypnotized beings) on a pair of cats to extract
himself from a particularly nasty situation.
Yours in the ancient and honorable society of felinophiles,
Bill Laubenheimer
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jun 1981 11:35:27-PDT
From: Cory.5 at Berkeley
Subject: Kitten Anthologies
Here are a few anthologies of kitten stories for you, viz.:
'Kitten Caboodle' edited by Barbara Silverberg
'Supernatural Cats' edited by Claire Necker
Yours ever so,
John R Blaker (Cory.cc-13@Berkeley)
------------------------------
Date: 9 June 1981 1818-EDT
From: Steven Clark at CMU-10A
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #145
Someone mentioned computers that write fiction. Remember in 1984, the
fiction was written by computer.
I know of a short story about a grey cat that spotted an alien that
was transparent to humans. Can anyone remember the author/title? The
title had "grey" in it ("All cats are grey"?).
-Steve
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jun 1981 1748-PDT
From: Craig W. Reynolds from III via Rand <REYNOLDS AT RAND-AI>
Subject: Computer Animation
First@SUMEX-AIM is correct in saying that "Lucasfilm is experimenting
with full screen animation which is totally generated by computer",
but it is rumored that other groups are also barking up that tree.
I'm not sure just what the first theatrical use of computer generated
animation was, but at least back around '74 there was "Westworld" and
later "Futureworld", both of which had computer generated and computer
image processed scenes (by III and some stuff from U of Utah).
The last feature we worked on was "Looker" which is due to be released
in early July. This includes lots of computer generated stuff (some of
which is supposed to look like "computer graphics" and some which is
supposed to look real). One unique sequence is the "scanning room"
where "Cindy" (Susan Dey) is being encoded by the evil computer
company, in the control room we see the computer displaying the
evolving models it is building of her body. Remind me to tell you how
we got the 3D coordinate data for her body ...
We are currently working (along with MAGI-Synthavision and NYIT) on
the Disney/Lisberger production of TRON. This film will be a
combination of computer animation, hand animation, optical image
processing ("the Bob Able look") and live action. Only about 10% is
live action. While the plot of TRON may be hard for hackers to take
(its about computers, and so computer hackers will get picky about the
details of the fantasy plotline) it looks like it will be very
striking visually.
Craig
------------------------------
Date: 8 Jun 1981 20:08 PDT
From: TManley.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Episode guides for Star Trek
I have an Episode guide to Star Trek, but it would be a rather
large document to set up for FTP. But if anyone is interested, I will
research the publisher and see if they are still available.
\TMP. . .
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jun 1981 10:22 PDT
From: TManley.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #144
I have more on that Star Trek Guide:
"Star Trek Concordance"
Copyright 1979 by Paramount Pictures Corp.
Author BJO Trimble
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-9778
First Edition 1976
Published by Ballantine Books/New York
\TMP. . .
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jun 1981 12:57 PDT
From: Woods at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Episode guide for Star Trek
I have a Star Trek episode guide that I put together N years ago with
help from my fellow Trek-watchers in college. I consider this guide a
win in that the plot descriptions tend to avoid spoilers. I'll get
around to typing it in sometime soon unless some eager beaver wants to
beat me to it.
-- Don.
------------------------------
Date: 8 June 1981 09:54-EDT
From: James M. Turner <JMTURN AT MIT-AI>
Shade and Sweet water,
The stories dealing with boy scouts using a time machine that
Ken Hasse was looking for appeared in Boy's Life, not on TV. Other
than suffering from that banal morality that BL applies to everything,
it wasn't that bad. One story I remember used the idea of raiding SF
during the earthquake so no one would notice (this is post-"Flight of
the Horse").
Quick though on "Outland". If those are the best hired killers
in the system, why do they fall for such obvious tricks? They are
obviously familiar with survival on the moons of Jupiter (they didn't
get shipped in from Earth) so why were they walking around in
shirt-sleeves when the safest thing would have been to put their suits
on...I guess they don't make hit men like they used to...
James
------------------------------
Date: 10 June 1981 02:25-EDT
From: Steve Strassmann <STRAZ AT MIT-AI>
Subject: The official Boy Sprout Mag: Time Machines & Tripods
The short stories about a bunch of kids who find a time machine behind
a rock were written (as far as I remember) for Boy's Life in the late
60's and 70's. The group that found the machine was a patrol (for
folks who weren't/aren't Boy Scouts, a patrol is a unit of 4-8 kids in
a troop of ~12-80) of modern scouts who went and picked up a Spartan
kid from ancient Greece, a bald kid from the n+1th century, and I
believe a cave-kid. These kids actually stayed in their home-whens ;
the patrol leader only picked them up when they were needed. The time
machine possessed an event scanner which allowed the pilot to scan an
area (in X,Y,Z, and T) without having to materialize the machine. Does
anybody remember the author? Some hardcover anthologies of these
stories were published, I think.
Boy's Life just recently started serializing Christopher's trilogy
about people controlled by aliens ("tripods") via metal skullcaps ( I
believe two of the books were "The White Mountains" and "The City of
Gold and Lead") in cartoon format. I think I remember their
cartoonizing in the past, among other things, excerpts from the Bible
and a Heinlein story.
Steve Strassmann <STRAZ @ AI>
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jun 1981 13:06:12-PDT
From: IngVAX.kalash at Berkeley
Subject: S.I.G. on Captain Scarlet
S.I.G. stands for "Spectrum Is Green" they used the expression to
indicate that everything was alright. When they used S.I.R. (Spectrum
is Red), it meant that something was very wrong.
Joe Kalash
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jun 1981 1227-PDT (Tuesday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Tin Tin, Dodo, and animation
I have never claimed to be a French comic book fan (... just a minute
.. just a minute ... Did I really just say that? How about French
postcards? Oh never mind, you know what I mean... ) -- so I apologize
for mispelling the name of Tin Tin's creator.
As for that "Dodo" kid from outer space... I've never heard of him,
and I've had "zero-zero island" sloshing around in my brain pans for
years .. so I am pretty sure it's from Colonel Bleep.
By the way ... In my opinion, the finest animation ever done, overall,
was that for "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". Shadows under
EVERYTHING throughout. Absolutely perfect.
--Lauren--
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jun 1981 0144-EDT
From: JHENDLER at BBNA
Subject: Rocky and moose
*sigh* imagine my disappointment in discovering that during the past
two weeks when I was out of town NO ONE ELSE chastised Lauren for his
error concerning the Kirwood derby. I have checked with many of my
R&B Fan friends, and they point out that the Yale Film Society
presented an R&B night last year, and featured the Kirwood Derby
episode. Sure enough, the derby makes the wearer incredibly SMART not
childlike, as Lauren mistakenly claimed.
An interesting side note to my search for the truth about the Derby:
Apparently Dirwood Kerby (remember him?) SUED the show for lible and
won a large settlement!!! Some people have no sense of humor--
--Jim
------------------------------
Date: 9 May 1981 11:45-EDT
From: Steven C. Bagley <BAGLEY AT MIT-AI>
Subject: Star War's revelation
Did you know that Darth Vader's wife is named Ella?
------------------------------
Date: 1981-5-11-17:55:29.53
Sender: Paul Young (YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO)
From: STEVE LIONEL at STAR at METOO
Subject: Children's SF
Ah, the memories of childhood, filled with that mind-rotting science
fiction. I can still recall the day when I was 8 (18 years ago) when
my mother, a loooong-time SF fan, presented me with my first Tom
Swift, Jr. book. By the way, no one so far has mentioned that there
WAS a Tom Swift Sr., a much older series of books from which the term
"a Tom Swift" came from. What is "a Tom Swift"? It's when you use an
adverb that relates to the topic of the statement. For example:
"What sharp teeth you have," he said bitingly.
"I'll do it tomorrow," he said lazily.
and so on.
Mentioned in passing was "Spaceship Under the Apple Tree". This was
either a sequel or prequel to "The Three-Seated Spaceship" (sequel, I
think), by <?>. The stories told of a small alien who dressed in
seersucker suits and who transported some friendly kids around the
Earth seeing the sights. Does anybody have more info on these?
Previously mentioned in SFL is the absolutely delightful "Space
Child's Mother Goose" by Fredrick Winsor. I found it in Books in
Print last year, but I haven't been able to locate a copy. (I haven't
tried too hard, I'll admit.) My all-time favorite from this is:
Flappity, floppity, flip
The mouse on the moebius strip
The strip revolved
The mouse dissolved
In a chronodimensional skip
Of course, I fondly recall Danny Dunn, and I recently picked up three
of the stories just to refresh my memories. Sort of a cross between
Danny Dunn and Tom Sawyer was Homer, of "Homer and the Donught
Machine", "Homer and the Unplayable Record", etc. Also, how about
Encyclopedia Brown? Remember him, and his bodyguard-girlfriend Sally?
It's a shame that the impact of stuff like Star Wars is probably going
to dramatically alter children's SF away from the likes of Danny Dunn
and more towards "Luke Skywalker Comix". Luckily, the old stuff is
still around.
Steve Lionel
------------------------------
Date: 18 May 1981 08:04-EDT
From: Steven C. Bagley <BAGLEY AT MIT-AI>
Subject: more walking down memory lane
Hey kids, don't forget about "The Mad Scientists Club" and the various
Encyclopedia Brown stories, all from Scholastic Book Services.
------------------------------
Date: Friday, 15 May 1981 10:30-PDT
Subject: Richard Purtill vs. Mary Renault
From: obrien at RAND-UNIX
The one thing that struck me about "The Golden Gryphon
Feather" was that Richard Purtill must have been a big fan of Mary
Renault, who did that stuff much better in all of her books set in
Classical Greece. The styles are very similar, though Renault is much
more mainstream and does not involve such heavy elements of fantasy.
For a completely different look at Crete there's always "The
Age of Wizardry", by Jack Williamson.
------------------------------
End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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