Aucbvax.1398 fa.sf-lovers utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!JPM@MIT-AI Sat May 23 07:25:46 1981 SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #129 SF-LOVERS AM Digest Saturday, 23 May 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 129 Today's Topics: SF Books - Cyber SF & Outland, SF Movies - Outland, SF Topics - Children's stories (Mushroom Planet and Alan Garner and Tom Corbett) & Children's TV (Rocky and His Friends) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 22 May 1981 at 0024-CDT From: hjjh at UTexas-11 Sender: LRC.SLOCUM at UTEXAS-20 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ CYBER-SF (AND INCOMMUNICADO-NESS) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ UTEXAS' connection to the ARPANET has been inoperative for most of the past 2 weeks, so my communications have been frustratingly curtailed. 2 or 3 messages DID get thru (but \not/ SF-L itself) inwards, tho Heaven only knows how. They must have had pretty persistent mailers. Anyhow, don't give up on me, please. The info I \have/ gotten on robots has been so useful. If "the part" for the IMP doesn't get here by next week, I'll find another helpful friend's account like the one I'm using for this message and be able to have minimal communication. RE-- the Tin Woodman and Major Metal. Evidently they are magical and EX-CYBORG in Type. Thanks for the explanation. RE-- animal robots. The list has grown (yet remains overwhelmingly canine and avian): Bunch, D.R., MODERAN Dick, P.K., DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? __________, DR WHO Goulart, Ron, AFTER THINGS FELL APART [dogs] Goulart, Ron, CALLING DR. PATCHWORK Goulart, Ron, HAIL HIBBLER Goulart, Ron, WHIFF OF MADNESS, A [guard dogs, horse, birds] Harrison, M.J., PASTEL CITY; [birds] Heath, P., MIND BROTHERS; [nightingale] Heath. P., ASSASSINS FROM TOMORROW [hound-like tracking device] High, P.E., INVADER ON MY BACK [birds, dogs] High, P.E., MAD METROPOLIS; [insects] High, P.E., NO TRUCE WITH TERRA Larson, et al., "Battlestar Galactica" series (Laumer, K., LONG TWILIGHT;) ? Leiber, F., SILVER EGGHEADS; [auto-dog] Saberhagen, F., (Berserker novel) [wolf] Sheckley, R., JOURNEY BEYOND TOMORROW Stasheff, C., WARLOCK IN SPITE OF HIMSELF; Zelazny, R., CHANGELING; [birds+] Any others? ------------------------------ Date: 22 May 1981 13:26:25-PDT From: CSVAX.william at Berkeley Subject: OUTLAND My roommate bought an OUTLAND paperback last week. I had to put it down after 20 pages because it was totally obnoxious to read. It seems like the writer has outdone himself again, creating a worthless story & no plot. I seem to remember a story by A. Clark concerning Jupiter V. It had a situation where someone was thrown off the moon and they were able to reach him by waiting one full orbit of the moon for him to return to the same spot. It takes an impressive amount of energy to move between the moons of Jupiter, and you can't fall into Jupiters gravity well just by jumping off the moon. You have way too much kinetic energy... Bill Jolitz. ------------------------------ Date: 22 May 1981 1737-PDT From: Jim McGrath Subject: Outland Review OUTLAND By VINCENT CANBY c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK - ''Not many people here have both oars in the water,'' says flinty Dr. Marian Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen), to Bill O'Niel (Sean Connery), the newly arrived federal district marshal who has been assigned to the remote mining camp to maintain law and order. Doc Lazarus is no easier on herself, being aware that the kind of physicians who take jobs in remote mining camps usually are, as she puts it, one step ahead of a malpractice suit. Doc Lazarus is an exception, as is Bill O'Niel, who refuses to wink or look away when strange things start happening at the camp, even though production is up and profits are soaring. When the showdown comes, as it must, it's Bill O'Niel and Doc Lazarus against the world, as represented by the mining company's greedy agents. Peter Hyams's ''Outland'' may be the oddest-looking western you've ever seen, being set not on the American frontier, where it's always 1870, but in outer space, specifically on Io, the third moon of Jupiter, some time in the not-too-distant future. It's also a movie of unexpected pleasures, including some uncommonly handsome science-fiction sets, a straightforward narrative that recalls ''High Noon'' without that film's holy seriousness, some wonderfully effective chases through the darkest interiors of this huge, hermetically sealed moon camp, plus two staunch, robust performances by Connery and Miss Sternhagen. ''Outland'' is what most people mean when they talk about good escapist entertainment. It won't enlarge one's perceptions of life by a single millimeter, but neither does it make one feel like an idiot for enjoying it so much. Nothing in Hyams's ealier credits as a writer-director (''Hanover Street,'' ''Capricorn One,'' ''Busting'') prepares the viewer for the unpretentious achievement of ''Outland,'' in which Bill O'Niel takes his stand against a murderous fellow named Sheppard (Peter Boyle), the mining company's chief agent on Io. It seems that Sheppard, with the knowledge of the federal marshal who preceded O'Niel, has been importing from earth and distributing to the miners a synthetic drug that for eight or nine months increases the user's work capacity before turning his mind to oatmeal. Thus the explanation for the high suicide rate at the mining camp. How Big Bill faces this challenge is pretty much the story of ''Outland,'' though a lot of the fun in watching it also comes from the look of the ersatz physical world created by Hyams and his associates, principally Philip Harrison, the production designer, and John Stears, the special-effects supervisor. More interesting even than all the fancy,obligatory gadgetry are the mining camp's surreal living spaces - sleeping quarters that look like stacks of roomy, designer bird-cages, large, shadowless mess halls and a swinging discotheque, featuring sound-and-laser-beam pornography and prostitutes to take the miners' minds (or what's left of them) off the boredom of their work. Hyams doesn't pay too much attention to the private lives of his principal characters. Dear Doc Lazarus has none at all, and Bill O'Niel's wife, Carol (Kirka Markham), flees from Io quite early in the movie. After eight years she's become fed up with living in one space mining camp after another and decides to take their son back to earth, which he's neve seen. From that time on, Carol is no more than a face seen on a television monitor from time to time. The serious business of ''Outland'' is Big Bill's decision to fight Io's traffic in dope and, by indirection, to bring some humanity back to a world made entirely out of synthetics. Hyams has the good sense not to stress that last point. It goes without saying in the action we see on the screen, and in movies like ''Outland,'' action is intellect and sensibility as well as an end in itself. This film is rated R. ------------------------------ Date: 18 May 1981 1451-EDT From: Eirikur Hallgrimsson Subject: Mushroom Planet Author/Publisher While the books must be in a box someplace, somehow my memory has not been effected by the general malaise. There is a fourth book: 'Time and Mr. Bass' written some years later. The series was by Eleanor Cameron, and was published by Little,Brown. I harbor a wistful affection for the atmosphere that she created. --Eirikur ------------------------------ Date: 21 May 1981 1208-PDT (Thursday) From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael Urban) Subject: Juvenilia Some juvenile-marketed fantasies I have first read and enjoyed as an adult: Alan Garner: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen The Moon of Gomrath Garner takes a real locale in Cheshire (I have a copy of the Ordinance Survey Map), a healthy dose of Welsh and other folklore, mixes thoroughly and produces spectacular results. Weak characterizations, though. In fact, he didn't write a third in the series because "I was sick of the little twits," meaning the children who are the main characters. So instead, he wrote Elidor ---- Well, it STARTS as a sort of rip-off of the Irish Book of Invasions, with Childe Rowland thrown in for good measure, but ends up as a passage-to-adulthood story. Pretty good. The Owl Service -- Supposedly, this book is for teenagers. Sure, if the teenager has a degree in Celtic folklore. Superb reworking of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion, and at many levels. Interesting ending. Red Shift -- Three interwoven stories of young people at three points in British history. Sometimes obscure, but rewarding. Again, the "juvenile" label is dumb marketing. Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising This is a series of 5 books, the last of which is a Newberry winner. The first (and weakest) is hard to find as it is from a different publisher. They are reminiscent in some ways of the early Alan Garner, but more original in their imagery. The biggest problem is the lack of real conflict. Characters are constantly reassured that nothing serious will happen to them. In spite of this, Cooper is able to produce some ringing scenes! The titles: Over Sea, Under Stone The Dark is Rising Greenwitch The Grey King Silver on the Tree I should also mention Joy Chant's "Red Moon, Black Mountain" and Ursula LeGuin's "Earthsea" books, which were also originally marketed as juveniles. Mike ------------------------------ Date: 22 May 1981 1028-EDT Sender: PKAISER at BBND Subject: Tom Corbett books From: Peter Kaiser Tom Corbett wasn't just on TV; there was also a series of books. I have one of them, "Tom Corbett and the Space Pirates". It's good! ---Pete ------------------------------ Date: 22 May 1981 1922-PDT (Friday) From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: And now here's something we hope you'll REALLY like... No discussion of television animation and SF can possibly be complete without some serious consideration of the superb J. Ward productions of the 60's. These included such features as ROCKY AND HIS FRIENDS, THE BULLWINKLE SHOW (actually a repackaging of Rocky and His Friends), HOPPITY HOOPER, GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE, and several others. At least one classic live-action program, FRACTURED FLICKERS, also came forth from the creative genius of the facility. Of all these, Rocky and His Friends is deserving of the most mention in the context of this discussion. The classic program, beginning with the immortal: "A loop, a whirl, a verticle climb, and once again you'll know it's time for ROCKY (and his friends). Starring that supersonic speedster, Rocket J. Squirrel. (And his friend, Bullwinkle the Moose)." was clearly produced for an adult audience, and was far ahead of its time. Each half hour program consisted of two episodes of the serial adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, plus additional features such as the wonderful "Fractured Fairy Tales" (narrated by Edward Everett Horton), or the adventures of Peabody and Sherman (and their Wayback machine, which allowed them to visit past eras "as they might have been" (not, necessarily, as they WERE). In the course of a variety of serial adventures, each of which lasted for many weeks, Rocky and Bullwinkle underwent some amazing situations, including: 1) The search for the Moosberry bush. Only Bullwinkle can locate the bush whose berries are needed by the U.S. for use as a rocket fuel additive. Of course, Boris Badinoff and Natasha (the evil agents from Pottslvania) are doing all they can to thwart their efforts.) [Boris and Natasha, by the way, were under the command of "Fearless Leader", who in turn reported to the sinister "Mr. Big".] 2) The Kerwood Derby. A special derby is invented with an unusual property. If you put it on, your mind is reduced to the level of a very young child. A serious brain drain results. 3) HUSHABOOM. A silent explosive. Truly sinister. 4) UPSIDASIUM. An anti-gravity metal is discovered. In fact, an entire mountain of it (floating in the air, of course, where nobody ever noticed it) is found. At the end of this segment, Mr. Big greedily grabs a bullion of upsidasium and disappears into space. 5) The metal munching moon mice. TV antennas are disappearing all over the country. The populace, not having anything else to do when TV's don't work, takes to watching clothes dryers and other related items with glass windows. The economy is at a standstill. Turns out that Mr. Big ended up on the moon, formed a dictatorship over the moonmen, and started building large robot mice that were sent to Earth to eat the antennas and cause the economic collapse. In this series, we meet those two moonmen, Ernie and Floyd. They have an interesting weapon, a "freeze" device known as a "Scrooch" gun: "How long did you scrooch him for, Floyd?" "Uh, I had it set to "10"." "10 what?" "I don't know. It doesn't say." A variety of other episodes, including one in which the economy is thrown into shambles due to masses of counterfeited box-tops, were also produced. --- Hopefully the above is enough to trigger more than a few fond memories. Watching these programs as an adult (when they infrequently re-appear as local fillers) yields an array of humor that was missed as a child: Boris attempts to derail the train on which Rocky and Bullwinkle are riding, by using a crowbar. Unfortunately, it is an ELECTRIC train, and Boris tries to lift the third rail. He ends up sizzling and crackling at right angles from the crowbar as the train passes by. Bullwinkle sees him through the window: "Hey Rocky! I just saw some guy who was all lit up!" Rocky: "He must have come from the club car." --- With the fading of J. Ward from the scene, some of the most sophisticated animated entertainment of the 60's also faded into oblivion... --- "Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" "But that trick NEVER works!" "THIS TIME FOR SURE!" --- [Three cheers for Frostbite Falls!] --Lauren-- ------------------------------ End of SF-LOVERS Digest *********************** ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.