Aucbvax.1961
fa.sf-lovers
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!MDP@MIT-AI
Sat Jun 27 08:43:45 1981
SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #159
SF-LOVERS AM Digest Friday, 26 Jun 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 159
Today's Topics:
SF Books - Robot animals & Vacuum animals &
"Quest for Saint Aquin" & Palely Loitering,
SF Topics - "That does not compute" & Many-chefs story formula &
Tom Swifties,
SF Movies - Harryhausen & "History of the World--Part I" &
"Raiders" flaws & Lucas' non-photographic movies,
Spoiler - "Raiders"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 25 Jun 1981 2147-EDT
From: DAA at MIT-DMS (David A. Adler)
Subject: Robot animals
Recently I read 'Mockingbird' by Walter Tevis that mostly took
place in New York. The Bronx Zoo was replaced with animals that were
robots, as many of the people in New York that were around were also
robots.
------------------------------
Date: 25 Jun 1981 (Thursday) 2300-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Vacuum animals
To: josh at RUTGERS
I don't know whether you would consider this to be an animal or not
but in "Creatures of Light and Darkness" (Zelazny) there is this
"horse-like" thing that they call the "abyss". It is some sort of rip
in space that is somehow related to the other characters (related as
in blood, not just friends). Zelazny never really makes it clear
exactly what it is. Its name escapes me.
------------------------------
Date: 26 Jun 1981 10:53:56-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: several short topics:
Cc: Mike at MC, Woods at parc-maxc
"The QUEST for Saint Aquin" is a 50's (? \maybe/ early 60's) story
by Anthony Boucher; it was mentioned by several people when the
subject of robot \\animals// was brought up by hjjh. As a
sometime-assistant on the Cyber-SF project I should note that of all
the suggestions so far, only the Anderson fits the criteria of
"natural" cybernetic devices---this seems to be an extremely small
category.
"Good News from the Vatican" is by Silverberg, from the early-mid
70's.
With the aid of Don Woods' suggestion I can identify a possible
candidate for Mike's story as "Palely Loitering" by Chris Priest.
This was a Hugo nominee two years ago; it concerns a park connected to
the rest of the city by three bridges over a "time river"---one bridge
takes you a day back, one is just a bridge, and one takes you a day
forward. Obviously, you get a slow and awkward time machine out of
this; you also have unreliable sight across the "river". I didn't like
it, but I don't think much of anything by Priest.
I'm quite sure that "Does Not Compute" isn't said in FORBIDDEN
PLANET. LOST IN SPACE is a possibility, but I would swear it's from
STAR TREK if I could remember/hear it being said by a female
voice---which I can't.
Leaving out comic book and other imitations, I know of one previous
parody of the ape scene from 2001; the beginning of GROOVE TUBE, where
they have a TV set instead of a monolith.
I don't recall a light-saberish duel in GATHER, DARKNESS, but last
year during my books-into-films survey someone mentioned Gordon
Dickson's WOLFLING, which has a similar idea except there are two rods
per fighter with the force strongest at the intersection of the
"blades".
------------------------------
Date: 25 June 1981 21:09-EDT (Thursday)
From: David Goldfarb <GOLDFARB MIT-XX AT>
To: ihnss!karn at Berkeley
Subject: "That does not compute"
It was definitely the robot on Lost In Space; I spent many, many hours
of my otherwise wasted youth watching that show.
- David
------------------------------
Date: 25 Jun 1981 2110-PDT (Thursday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: "That does not compute"
How could anyone even have a QUESTION about this one?
This immortal line is certainly to be credited to the "Lost In Space"
robot, who used it VERY frequently.
Robbie was too classy to make remarks like that!
--Lauren--
------------------------------
Date: 26 June 1981 0019-EDT (Friday)
From: Lee.Moore at CMU-10A
Subject: "That does not compute"
Responses to the origin of that phrase were being collected by Phil
Agre @ MIT. I believe that he is still absent from the country.
Lee
------------------------------
Date: 15 Jun 1981 (Monday) 1719-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: Modified FiCom protocol
A modification to the Fiction Communication system has been suggested
that corrects a problem in my original design: The initial editor
does not write the initial storyline. Rather, he controls the voting
for the initial section and then publishes the first winner as the
opening storyline. The winner of each successive vote becomes the new
editor and may not contribute to the next set of optional lines.
Thus, if someone is very good they do not get to just write the whole
thing. Also, the editorial workload is well distributed and there is
some "uniform discontinuity" in the editorial style. This is a better
idea than editorial tenure.
If you would like to either write for this project or take a hand in
the voting procedure please send me mail. If I get enough responses
(say about 40) we'll go for it on a trial basis. DO NOT SEND ME MAIL
IF YOU ARE SIMPLY INTERESTED IN READING THE RESULTS -- they will be
sent to SFL for everyone's interest.
Another suggestion was that perhaps instead of writing out the whole
gory thing in vivid detail, we simply collect and vote on one or two
paragraph plot snapshots. This will ease every body's life but then
someone has to sit down ex post facto and write the whole thing out.
(We could send it off to Alan Dean Foster!) If you send me mail
include your prefence as to doing the whole text or just the plot
lines.
Anyone who has already sent me mail needn't do so again. I have
already taken down your addresses.
-- Jeff
------------------------------
Date: 15 June 1981 11:55-EDT
From: James M. Turner <JMTURN@MIT-AI>
Subject: Delphing for literary profit
Shade and Sweet water,
Some thought on a Delphi short-story. First, imagine the
following scenarios:
1) Person A writes a passionate love scene. Person B then
writes the next chapter having one lover kill the other. Person A
goes on vacation and misses the next chapter or 10. When he gets
back, he sees what happened to the characters he introduced and goes
into flames mode. He (or she) refuses to allow his/her chapter to be
part of the story...trash 50 pages.
2) 400 people write one chapter...do you wanna read 4000
pages?
3) Miracle of miracles, it's published...who gets the check?
4) Of course, if it is published, it becomes commercial use of
the net and is verboten.
Other than those problems, I think it sounds kinda fun. It
should probably NOT be associated with SFL.
James
P.S. Also, if you are one of the 'jurors', what happens if you are
away and can't answer the ballot. Perhaps a list-wide ballot with a
limited response time would be more reasonable.
------------------------------
Date: 24 Jun 1981 1023-EDT
From: DYER-BENNET
Subject: Response to 15-Jun SFL
Since I'm new to this, I just went back and read the 15-Jun SFL
(having finished with the 22-Jun edition) and found more to remark
on...
Steve Lionel refers to "a Tom Swift." Actually, they're called "Tom
Swifties." My favorite example is "'Gee I wish I had a BB gun,' said
Tom lackadaisically."
Now, are any of you familiar with the "Tom Swift Verbal pun?" These
are like Tom Swifties, except that the pun is made with the verb
rather than the adverb. The standard basic example is "'Two plus two
is four,' Tom added." It's somewhat harder but more interesting to
come up with these. The worst one I've heard was "'Let's get out of
this Egyptian port,' the Captain said."
------------------------------
Date: 21 Jun 1981 16:34:21-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: Harryhausen
I can see why he's worried; it's not overexposure but the fact that
his work is so bad compared to most of the other sfx stuff done today.
He seems stuck with stop-motion when others use it as one part of a
complex blend.
A friend in theater told me yesterday that H actually \likes/ and
tries to imitate the jerky 1940's work of his youth---maybe that's why
he now seems so far behind the times or over the hill. (It was the
general conclusion of the solstice party that his best was JASON AND
THE ARGONAUTS or possibly THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD (better plot,
sfx not as spectacular).)
------------------------------
Date: 25 Jun 1981 1902-PDT
From: Jwagner at OFFICE
Subject: HotW - Part I -- More Apes
I doubt Mel Brooks will be sued for plagiarism for his opening scene
in "History of the World -- Part I", but another popular comedy began
with a parody of the Ape scene in "2001."
Does anybody remember a movie called "The Groove Tube"? It was
produced by Ken Shapiro, whose Hollywood career was indeed meteoric --
a real burnout. At the start of this movie, a group of missing-link
types in some rocky Pleistocene outpost discover not a monolith, but a
television set. One of the apes accidentally turns the set on, and
the next thing you know they're all dancing to some heavy rock 'n'
roll beat. Cute, huh?
The most notable thing about "The Groove Tube" is that it's Chevy
Chase's debut on the big screen. In one vignette, a parody of Geritol
commercials, Chase is praising the aphrodisiac qualities of a product
called "Geritan" which has worked wonders on his wife; and in another,
Chevy is singing "I'm looking over a four-leaf clover" while Shapiro
bongos on his head.
Jim Wagner/jwagner@office
[mdp - Thanks also to Margolin.PDO at MIT-Multics, MD at MIT-XX (Mike
Dornbrook), SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager), Pattin.PDO at
MIT-Multics (Jay Pattin), and cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock) for
pointing out the 2001 parody in "The Groove Tube".]
------------------------------
Date: 25 Jun 1981 11:01:37-EDT
From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: stunt doubles
I'm not sure which scene ?? was speaking of in the case of Harrison
Ford being inside and outside the truck in RotLA, since I haven't seen
the movie, but I've seen a "scenes from shooting RotLA" film (it was
shown at Disclave) and I wouldn't swear that Ford ever used a double.
I particularly remember some shots of the setup for the scene in which
he's dragged behind a jeep; it's my impression that "double" in "stunt
double" is a relative term (the stuntman having only a general
resemblance to the person he's replacing) but I could swear it was
Ford they were padding so he could be dragged without too much damage.
------------------------------
Date: 26 June 1981 10:14-EDT
From: Dennis L. Doughty <DUFTY MIT-MC AT>
Subject: Raiders of the Lost Ark Rebuttal
Regarding "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (I hate these stoopid abbrevs), I
checked out FIRST'S complaint when I went to see it again. (This
comment regarded the mysterious disappearence and then reappearence of
Jones' wound. Well, it was there the whole time. You see, Jones was
wearing a jacket through which (when the hole was open -- the bullet
tore the jacket) you could see blood. When he was sliding along
behind the truck, the slit in the jacket folded over itself (check it
yourself) so the wound could not be seen directly. However, some
blood did impart itself to the outer left sleeve of the jacket, and,
in fact, one could barely see a hint of red on the stunt man's left
shoulder.
Regarding the cobra, I didn't notice the glass partition, but I did
notice a lapse in continuity. From one angle, Jones is seen staring
down the snake, and starting to back up; then we cut to a different
angle (he still must be two feet or less from the cobra at this point)
and he's looking away as if he's out of danger. I never did really
understand how he got away -- although we're supposed to believe that
he simply backed up until he was out of danger.
All in all, I enjoyed the movie. It was a real treat to see a giant
boulder (previously only seen on WB cartoons on Saturday mornings)
racing after our hero. What a disappointment it was the second time
when I arrived too late to see this! ***1/2 stars (Four stars for
enjoyment and general style minus 1/2 a star for the snakes [Why did
it have to be snakes?]) --Dennis
------------------------------
Date: 25 Jun 1981 09:41:57-PDT
From: CSVAX.presotto at Berkeley
Subject: Lucas' non-photographic movies
In reply to REDFORD's remark in v3i156, we had a member of Lucas'
Marin Lab come to Berkeley to give a talk some months back (though I
forget his name). Although he spent a lot of time name dropping or
showing "cute computer generated" films he also dropped in a few
interesting remarks. It turns out that the number of chemical and
physical processes involved in the simplest matting shots are pretty
expensive. The switch to all electronic filming would cut down the
expense enormously (once they manage to recoupe research expenses) by
making matting, landscape generation, editting, color control, etc. a
lot easier. It isn't just the fantastic effects that they're shooting
for. As a matter of fact that's a minor side effect, though it is
true that making content-free garbage will also become cheaper and
easier. However, given that soon everyone will be able to make
spectacular effects cheaply, maybe we'll start seeing some good plots
again.
dave presotto
------------------------------
MDP@MIT-AI 6/26/81 00:00:00 Re: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!
The following message is the last in the digest. It gives away part
of the ending to "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Readers who have not seen
this movie may wish not to read any further.
------------------------------
Date: 23 Jun 1981 1357-EDT
From: DYER-BENNET
Subject: SFL responses
Some comments on Lucasfilms and Raiders of the Lost Ark:
I felt that RotLA was an insult to my intelligence. The major
technique for carrying the plot forward seemed to be the "Hackwriter's
Gambit": Put the hero in an impossible situation, then cut to the
beginning of the next action sequence without bothering to indicate
how he escaped.
Did anyone besides me interpret the ending of the sequence in which
the Ark is opened to be God "taking back" the Ten Commandments? This
could have interesting consequences, depending on interpretation.
I also read the Newsweek article, including Lucas' discussion of
all-electronic production. From the sales of TV's and associated
program sources (tape, disk), I appear to be in a small minority...
but unless his "all-electronic" production gives about an order of
magnitude better linear resolution than current broadcast television,
I'm not particularly interested in seeing the results. I suppose he
could be thinking of some form of high-resolution recording for the
production work only, with theatrical prints released on traditional
film. That should be perfectly possible.
------------------------------
End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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