Aucbvax.1869
fa.sf-lovers
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!MDP@MIT-AI
Tue Jun 23 05:58:12 1981
SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #156
SF-LOVERS AM Digest Monday, 22 Jun 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 156
Today's Topics:
Administrivia, SF Books - Rare SF Poll,
Query - What is Fab?, Reply - The Haunted Space-Suit,
SF Movies - Lucas comment & Raiders of the Lost Ark,
SF Topics - Xerox (TM) & Breathable liquids
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: June 22, 1981 00:00:00
From: MDP@MIT-AI
Subject: Administrivia
As most of you know, I am filling in for Jim McGrath, our regular
Moderator, who will spend this summer traveling around Europe. SF
lovers have sent in a lot of material of late, and several digests'
worth of messages, dating back to the beginning of May, has built up.
I will draw from the backlog in groups of related messages which may
span long periods of time. This need not affect your submissions.
The latest, most exciting and most pressing issues I will continue to
run immediately. When you have something to say, say it!
Thank you,
Mike Peeler
------------------------------
Date: 20 Jun 1981 (Saturday) 1802-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: Comments on Rare SF list
Well, I've sent out my response to the SF-RARE list, and have now
had some time to sit back and think about the list. I have come the
conclusion that the list is totally arbitrary, and as such,
meaningless.
For the most part, the list consists of books individuals have
suggested as being "rare", with little or no thought as to what makes
them rare. Perhaps an old copy in their collection, or they are
having trouble finding any in used bookstores? Who knows? (My only
entry in this list was one of what I found to be a fascinating book
which is, to my knowledge, out of print and has been so for some
time.) Some of the entries are of dubious quality, many others are
still readily available. Were I to make a new set of suggestions for
this list, I could easily fill up a message with the ilk of Joseph
Milard's "The Gods Hate Kansas", a very weak book (to say the least)
printed circa 1965. I'm quite sure this volume would qualify as
"rare", I doubt any of you (with perhaps 1 or 2 exceptions) have even
*heard* of it, let alone read it.
Does this make the book rare? No.
If you really insist on continuing along this line, I suggest having
each participant type in the titles of each volume in his/her
collection, and eliminating anything which occurs more than
<THRESHOLD> times. I am quite sure this would leave a large set of
low-quality out-of-print volumes, none worthy of the title "rare".
I hope instead that the SF-RARE people will edit the list
accordingly; as we (the reviewers) have graded the volumes we've seen
as poor to excellent, to just save the cream of the crop as "rare".
Another point -- the concept of "rareness" expressed here is quite
relative. When discussing this list with a friend, he remarked that
there were probably over 100000 copies of some of these books
outstanding, !in the possession of anyone who had been a member of the
SF Book Club in the 50's and 60's! As most of us are somewhat younger
than this, it nicely points out the limitations of our views.
In summary, I suggest that we restart, examining first what it is
that makes a book rare, and then begin researching the topic.
-Steve
------------------------------
Date: 11 Jun 1981 1537-PDT
Sender: GEOFF at SRI-CSL
Subject: I just got thru watching Thunderbirds To the Resuce on HBO...
From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow
.and just about every time they got thru saying something on the
radio they ended it with "FAB". Is this British for "roger" or
"over"? I've never heard it used before and am curious as to what
it's suppose to mean or stand for.
------------------------------
Date: 18-Jun-1981
From: JOHN FRANCIS AT EIFFEL at METOO
Subject: Here's the title...
In answer to an earlier query, the story about a cat having kittens
inside a spacesuit is "The Haunted Space-Suit", and it is by Arthur
C. Clarke (NOT Heinlein!). This story can be found in the excellent
anthology "Fifty Short Science Fiction Tales" edited by Isaac Asimov
& Groff Conklin.
Re Thunderbirds query about the meaning of F.A.B. : beats me !!!!!!
Neither I or my wife can remember there being any meaning to it, but
that does not prove anything. Maybe it stand for "Full Ahead Both"?
----John.
------------------------------
Date: 21 Jun 1981 1541-PDT
From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE
Subject: Lucas comment
So "Revenge of the Jedi will be the last movie we shoot on film".
This may sound odd coming from an electrical engineer, but what the
movie industry does NOT need is more and slicker hardware. That's
just following the old path of replacing intelligence with money.
Lucas has plenty of both so he can make good use of this gimcrackery,
but the rest of the industry does not. "Star Trek: The Motion
Picture" is the prime example. There were enough experts in the
effects department to give it all the flashes and bangs anyone could
want, and enough experts in marketing to promote it heavily enough to
make money, but nobody there seemed to know that cruising around this
model of the Enterprise for five minutes was simply dull. They
replaced dramatic values with technical ones and so blew off forty
million dollars. We don't need better means of producing bright
lights and noises; we need more stories that we can live in with
characters that we care about.
------------------------------
Date: 20 Jun 1981 0035-PDT
From: Mark Crispin <ADMIN.MRC AT SU-SCORE>
Subject: Raiders of the Lost Ark & Is "xerox" a verb?
I was amused by RotLA, but I won't see it a second time, much
less the multiple times I've seen Star Wars or the RHPS. Perhaps
being too acquainted with the Judeo-Christian mythology spoiled it;
e.g. the ending was totally pagan. Other parts were a bit excessive.
I guess if you like mysticism, you'll love RotLA. Oh yeah - I noticed
at the theatre I went to that there were people in the front shouting
at the screen RHPS-style; perhaps Lucas has unintentionally brought
forth a new cult classic?
I claim that as a result of common usage "xerox" is a verb.
"Tape" was originally not a verb, but usage has made it perfectly
acceptable for people to speak of "taping" an event as meaning "to
record on magnetic tape media." There is no way that XEROX (TM) can
possibly prevent "xerox" being used as a verb in colloquial usage.
I believe that if XEROX (TM) is smart, they'd be pleased by this
colloquial usage, because people who have a need to "xerox" often
enough to want to buy a "xeroxing" machine may well be subtly inclined
to consider XEROX (TM) over and above other vendors (such as IBM,
which makes fine copiers themselves) in their purchase.
------------------------------
Date: 20 Jun 1981 14:24:12-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: "xerox is not a verb"
Oh? Xerox may be trying to claim this, but it's a losing battle,
like those insisting on the capitalization of "kleenex" and "jeep".
"Xerox" is fairly broadly accepted as a synonym for "copy
electrostatically".
------------------------------
Date: 20 Jun 1981 0058-EDT
From: HEDRICK at RUTGERS
Subject: trademarks
Here is a question for those who know the details about correct legal
terminology (e.g. "copy with a Xerox brand copier" instead of
"xerox"): Now that DOD has made Ada a trademark, are we going to find
ourselves programming "in the Ada brand programming language?"
------------------------------
Date: 20 Jun 1981 0925-PDT
From: Achenbach at SUMEX-AIM
Subject: xeroxing
>From Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1977 edition)
xerox -- verb transitive often capitalized (Xerox): to copy on a Xerox
machine.
Don't know what your lawyers think, but it looks like your a part of
the language.
/Mike
------------------------------
Date: 15 May 1981 2011-EDT
From: JoSH <JOSH AT RUTGERS>
Subject: breathable liquids
A breathable liquid (or gas if it existed) with a density near that of
water would make a great acceleration couch--the idea goes back to
Verne, who didn't get it quite right in From Earth to Moon... I first
saw it done right in some story I think in Analog I can't remember
very well at all, where "pseudofluid" is used. Anybody know the
reference or an earlier one?
------------------------------
Date: 11 May 1981 15:19 edt
From: JSLove at MIT-Multics (J. Spencer Love)
Subject: Breathing Water
Sender: JSLove.PDO at MIT-Multics
The problem with breathing water, or liquid, has another twist to it.
I'm told that people drown faster in fresh water than in salt water
because IONS diffuse out of the blood into the water faster than
oxygen is used up or lost, and that if you try to breath real hard you
will die of electrolyte imbalance a minute or two sooner than
otherwise. Does anyone know more about this than I do? In
particular, is this problem addressed by adding electrolytes to the
liquid inhaled, or by using a fluid that just won't dissolve the ions
in human blood?
If such a fluid has a specific gravity close to that of the human body
(and in this I don't know if I mean muscle, fat, bone, or some
weighted average), it might be very useful in withstanding high
accelerations. Clearly, this doesn't come anywhere close to dealing
with the tidal forces found in Dragon's Egg or Neutron Star, but how
much might be possible? 20 gravities? 50? 100? Some research is
being done into electromagnetic catapults that might throw payloads
into orbit, from either the Earth or the Moon. Accelerations
mentioned have topped 1000 gravities. This would seem to preclude the
use of such a mechanism to carry passengers, but perhaps not. How
much might a suitably prepared (but revivable) human withstand in the
way of acceleration?
------------------------------
Date: 13 May 1981 0805-PDT (Wednesday)
From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael Urban)
Subject: Breathing Underwater In Children's Books
When L. Frank Baum got sick and tired of writing about Oz around
1911, he wrote a couple of "Borderland of Oz" stories which introduced
two characters named Trot and Cap'n Bill. These books were only
marginally successful, and he soon bowed to the inevitable and
migrated the characters to Oz in "The Scarecrow of Oz." Anyway, in
the first of these books, "The Sea Fairies", T & CB are taken on a
(typically Baumanian) very episodic guided tour of an underwater realm
by a group of mermaids. In order to permit their survival there, they
are transformed to mermaids. How do they breathe? Seems that
mermaids "magically" maintain a very thin layer of air around their
bodies, extracted from the water around them constantly. This allows
them to remain dry, too, by the way, and I think even do nifty things
like light matches, etc. The evil villain Zog takes the alternative
approach; he gives his human servant fish-like gills.
"The Sea Fairies" is one of Baum's better fantasies. Maybe Random
House (who own both Reilly & Lee and Ballantine) will see fit to
reprint it one of these years.
Mike
------------------------------
Date: 12 May 1981 13:08:20-PDT
From: ihuxi!agk at Berkeley
Subject: Breathable water
In V3, #118, SHRAGE asked about a breathable fluid. This fluid is
featured in the current issue of either NEXT magazine or Science 81 (I
just finished reading both). The stuff is used in Japan as an
experimental substitute for blood -- nice because it has no "type" and
will store for two months instead of two weeks (for whole blood).
Experimenters in both the US and Japan have replaced the blood of rats
with the stuff and the animals live normally. One dog littered twice
(and was arrested both times) after living on the stuff for a couple
of days. The article also has a photograph of a very soggy mouse that
was dunked in the stuff for a while, and another photo of a very pale
mouse (white eyes, white ears, etc. -- an albino would have been pink
instead of red, but not this bizarre white) with the stuff flowing in
its veins. I can't recall the name of the stuff beyond S------. I'll
try to dig up the article when I get home.
Here's blood in your veins,
andy kegel
------------------------------
Date: 13 May 1981 22:09:16-PDT
From: CSVAX.wildbill at Berkeley
Subject: Underwater Breathing
There is a good chance that Chip is thinking of Leigh Brackett's
novelette "Enchantress of Venus" when he mentions "Carter on Venus" in
SFL #119. In this story, Eric John Stark (Brackett's Carter clone) is
on the lam from the local law, and winds up enslaved by the local
high-tech wizards who are performing excavations in what is known
thereabouts as the "Red Sea". Although no specific details about the
composition of the fluid can be found (this being primarily a work of
fantasy), it seems that the fluid is imperfect in that humans can only
survive for a few years in it. Those interested in further details
can find this story in the Ballantine/Del Rey book, \\The Best of
Leigh Brackett//.
------------------------------
Date: 13 May 1981 17:50:26 EDT (Wednesday)
From: Ward Harriman <HARRIMAN BBNT AT>
Subject: funny water which animals can breath.
I remember some Onion Carbine 'tube commercials which kind of went:
In the Voice of the commercial:
One of our scientists was doing basic research on a new solvent. He
had a tank of it and put several items into the tank,
he put a radio in it, and it didn't do anything. he put a bunch of
fruit in it, and it didn't do anything. he put a rat in it and it
didn't do anything.
and what's so remarkable about this solvent?
IT DIDN'T DO ANYTHING.......TO ANYTHING!
just thought I'd flash some old memories.
ward
------------------------------
Date: 14 May 1981 17:41:38 EDT (Thursday)
From: Morris Keesan <MKEESAN AT BBN-UNIX>
Subject: Breathable liquids
"Ocean on Top" by Hal Clement takes place in a liquid environment
which is "breathable". That's in quotes because people living in it
absorb oxygen from it through their lungs, but don't actually breathe.
It's too viscous and under too much to be moved by the human diaphragm
(which is good, because that makes it swimmable in), but oxygen is
bound loosely enough in its molecules and in a high enough
concentration that people get sufficient oxygen by diffusion. This
book (DAW book No. 57) was published in 1973, with a magazine serial
version in 1967.
------------------------------
End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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