Date: 11 May 86 08:59:05 GMT From: jacob@renoir.berkeley.edu (Jacob Butcher) Subject: Re: Cute SF tie-ins This may be a little out of date, but recently some people were discussing tie-ins in Buck Rogers & Star Trek with traditional SF stories. Well,... In Jack Chalker's _And_the_Devil_Will_Drag_You_Under_, there was a scene in a somewhat fantasyish dimension, where I (think) the woman was trying to steal a gem from a dangerous castle or something of that ilk. At one point Chalker briefly describes a whole slew of strange characters. When I was rereading the book in a fit of boredom (NEVER, NEVER, reread anything by Chalker -- it can't handle the scrutiny. Likewise Hogan. [And anything of Foster's which could handle the scrutiny of the first reading.]) I suddenly realized that one pair of characters sounded an awful lot like Fafrhd and the Mouser. And, hey, this guy could be Conan, and him over here, somebody else famous but obviously not famous enough for me to remember him, and, and, well, I never did figure out who they all were and wouldn't mind being told. But it was fun pondering the surprise. L. Neil Smith wrote a slightly neat book once called _The_Probability_Broach_, which is extremely Libertarian. What makes it less neat is that he keeps rewriting it -- he even went so far as to write a book which was totally unrelated until about halfway through when he wimped out and tied it back in to his standard universe. (Although he did write the Bucketeers book, which was unrelated.) Anyway, the latest that I've seen is about the usual characters going back in time to stop an insidious plot to change history by one "Edna Janof". Now, at a couple of points [uh, oh, deja vu, have I mentioned this before?] she is described as wearing tights, leg-warmers, and a red & black striped body-suit. Sound familiar? I'll give you a hint: Edna Janof is an anagram for Jane Fonda. What would Smith have against the Fondoid? I can't believe this is a coincidence. (Of course, I can't believe HAL was a coincidence either, no matter what Clarke or Kubrick say.) Who is "cargo master Dane Thorson"? jacob Date: Fri, 16 May 86 17:37:48 edt From: cjh%cca-unix.arpa@cca-unix.arpa (Chip Hitchcock) Subject: L. Neil Smith's universe Contrary to a statement in SFL 11.117, HER MAJESTY'S BUCKETEERS (?) is in fact part of LNS's Libertarian alternate universe. In his mercantile novel (KOBAYASHI MARU?!?), which takes place a generation or so after PROBABILITY BROACH and VENUS BELT (and in which the offspring of Win and Clarissa Bear are featured) the good-guy Libertarians rescue a few of the tripeds from their outraged fellows. NB: I was told by Darrel Schweitzer that (putting it mildly) LNS's primary interest is guns; he appears to have to come to libertarianism through being an absolutely whacko gun-lover. It shows in passages in several of his books. Note also that Jane Fonda isn't his only target (given his politics, that's hardly surprising) although the anagram was a rather crude expression compared with Voltaire Malaise in BELT (no bells? hint: a German word for ill-health is "cronkeit" (sp?)). Date: 23 May 86 17:31:04 GMT From: inuxm!arlan@caip.rutgers.edu (A Andrews) Subject: L. Neil Smith vs. Jane Fonda In a recent posting on net.sf-lovers, someone complained that L. Neil Smith had used the anagram "Edna Yanof" as the name of a villainess, and wondered what Mr. Smith "had against" Ms. Fonda/Yanof. This reaction, taken with the comments of the majority of net-landers in various groups, confirms my suspicion that most netters are (1) under the quarter- century mark in age, and (2) woefully ignorant of recent history. Being neither (1) nor (2), I sigh and take it upon myself to enlighten the original questioner and any others who have not pressed the 'n' key: Ms. Fonda, during the late unpleasantness in Vietnam, took a trip to Hanoi and there made propaganda broadcasts for the communists. She posed, smiling, on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. She requested to interview American prisoners in the "Hanoi Hilton" prison camp, and when they refused, the prisoners were beaten. Upon her return to the U. S., Ms. Fonda never apologized for these actions, has never shown any change of heart, nor ever commented upon the millions of boat people who obviously did not share her views. Her greatest moment came, when she was on the Johhny Carson show after the communists violated our peace treaty with them, and conquered the South as they had sworn not to do after our withdrawal. Mr. Carson, in his inimitable way, asked this woman : "How do you feel, now that your side has been proven right?" (sic, sick!) And now, years later, this communist sympathizer is making millions off the fat of Americans. (Of course, socialist countries have very, very few fat people, right?) She has run down this country, supported its enemies, yet makes money using the capitalist system. Her lowbrow husband, one of the Chicago Seven generation of yuppie terrorists, continues to use this money to accomplish her ends by the means of running for office in California. Does this give any of you a hint as to why L. Neil Smith, other libertarians, other conservatives, and just plain ethical folks, want to throw up when Ms. Fonda is accorded wealth and honors by the society that she hates? End of lesson. arlan andrews, Analog irregular; libertarian; one who would not watch a Jane Fonda movie other than one of her funeral. Date: Fri 30 May 86 14:10:40-PDT From: James McGrath Subject: Re: L. Neil Smith vs. Jane Fonda To: inuxm!arlan@CAIP.RUTGERS.EDU In general I agree with everything you said about good old Jane Fonda. However, I disagree with the following for two reasons: arlan andrews, Analog irregular; libertarian; one who would not watch a Jane Fonda movie other than one of her funeral. First, I have always tried to treat purely commercial transactions (such as seeing a movie) in a non-political manner. Fonda is a good actress - I have enjoyed many of her performances. It is precisely on those occasions when she is NOT acting that I find her to be grossly unqualified to intelligently comment on the state of the world. Second, I think you would enjoy watching Barbarosa (sp?), a fantasy/science fiction movie she starred in during her "sex kitten" phase (it begins with Jane stripping down to the buff). I hear that she now would like to buy all the prints and burn them, but luckily "art" is not that easy to suppress. Jim Date: 1 Jun 86 11:22:44 GMT From: hull@glory.dec.com Subject: Jane Fonda's titillating early career >From: James McGrath >Second, I think you would enjoy watching Barbarosa (sp?), a >fantasy/science fiction movie she starred in during her "sex >kitten" phase (it begins with Jane stripping down to the buff). Just to set the record straight, the above-mentioned movie was titled "Barbarella", and was indeed as much fun to watch then as her workout tape is nowadays. Barbarosa was the infamous pirate "Red Beard". Al Date: 1 Jun 86 20:23:06 GMT From: duke!crm@caip.rutgers.edu (Charlie Martin) Subject: Re: L. Neil Smith vs. Jane Fonda >From: James McGrath >In general I agree with everything you said about good old Jane >Fonda. However, I disagree with the following for two reasons: > > arlan andrews, Analog irregular; libertarian; one who would not > watch a Jane Fonda movie other than one of her funeral. > >First, I have always tried to treat purely commercial transactions >(such as seeing a movie) in a non-political manner. The question of whether or not one should let political beliefs alter commercial transactions is a personal one, and I don't want to suggest what I think *you* should do -- but it's pretty clear that Jane Fonda uses her personal income as a movie actress to finance her political activities. So it is certainly reasonable that someone who is strongly against her political activities wouldn't want to watch (and pay for) one of her movies, for fear that they would be contributing to the political activities indirectly. I can certainly understand the original poster's messages, since I had friends getting shot up in Viet Nam at about the same time Jane Fonda was making propaganda films for the NVA. *I* wanted the Gvt to try her for treason at the time, although I've moderated those views slightly now.... It's not easy to be as fanatical as I am about Free Speech sometimes. >Second, I think you would enjoy watching Barbarosa (sp?), a Barabarella... Barabrosa was someone entirely different. >fantasy/science fiction movie she starred in during her "sex >kitten" phase (it begins with Jane stripping down to the buff). I >hear that she now would like to buy all the prints and burn them, >but luckily "art" is not that easy to suppress. I still wonder occasionally why it is that stripping in Barbarella was Politically Incorrect, but bouncing around in revealing tights in an exercise tape is Politically Correct. Charlie Martin (...mcnc!duke!crm) Date: Friday, 4 Jul 1986 12:25:20-PDT From: mccutchen%pennsy.DEC@decwrl.DEC.COM (R. TERRY MCCUTCHEN From: 289-1428) Subject: F. Paul Wilson F. Paul Wilson has at least two "Horror" novels out. They are "The Keep" and "The Tomb". Tomb takes place in New York, involves an Indian (as in Visnu) monster and a "Fixer" (quite an interesting character). Keep takes place in Central Europe (Romania?) durring WWII and involves a group of German soldiers occupying a "keep" along with two ancient "Powers". I rather like both books. BTW, L. Neil Smith and F. Paul Wilson seem to have similar political views. Could someone comment on this? Terry McCutchen Date: Thu, 18 Dec 86 22:26:34 EST From: "Keith F. Lynch" Subject: Changing history To: frog!sc@RUTGERS.RUTGERS.EDU From: frog!sc@rutgers.rutgers.edu (STella Calvert) >And _somehow_ (I haven't done the research, so I'm not sure what >the best trick would be) I'd like to ensure that the anti-taxers >won the Whiskey Rebellion. ... Several of L. Neil Smith's books (_The Probability Broach_, _The Nagasaki Vector_, _Tom Paine Maru_, etc) are mostly set in a parallel universe in which the Whiskey Rebellion succeeded. It turns out that the original difference between their world and ours is an extra word in their Declaration of Independance: "...deriving its just power from the unanimous consent of the governed...". The word "unanimous" does not appear in OUR Declaration of Independance. If you have a time machine and really want them to win, a few dozen machine guns should also do the trick. How about giving a copy of Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_ to each of the founding fathers in 1775? Keith Date: Mon, 29 Dec 86 11:09:58 EST From: Kathy Godfrey Subject: Female Authors and Star Trek I received this in response to the NY Times article on ST fanzines: From: "Keith F. Lynch" Have you read any of Ayn Rand's books? She explores the relationships between individuals very closely. She wrote: _We The Living_ in 1936. A woman in the Soviet Union has a love affair with a commissar in an attempt to gain medical care for he true love. _Anthem_ in 1937. A man in a collectivised future society seeks his own identity. He is hampered by the lack of all personal pronouns. _The Fountainhead_ in 1943. A young architect in the 1920s and 1930s struggles for the integrity of his work against every form of social oppression. _Atlas Shrugged_ in 1957. This story follows the lives of several men and women as they gradually realize why everything is going to pieces, and what they can do to stop it. It is set in the "present" though it often feels more like the 1930s than the 1950s. She did not regard herself as a science fiction writer, though some science fictional elements do appear in most of her stories. She considered herself a romantic writer, not in the sense of the mass produced romances one finds in the supermarket, but in the nineteenth century sense of the word. She explains this at great length in her nonfiction book _The Romantic Manifesto_. A major philosophical/political movement was founded, based on _Atlas Shrugged_. In support of this movement, called Objectivism, she wrote several nonfiction books including _For the New Intellectual_, _Philosophy: Who Need It_, _Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal_, and _The Virtue of Selfishness_. There is also a videotape lecture series on Objectivism taped shortly before her death in 1982. With regard to Star Trek, I have never understood what anyone sees in it. There are so many much more believable and consistent series, such as Heinlein's future history, Asimov's recently combined Robot series and Empire/Foundation series, Niven's known space, Pournelle's CoDominium, L. Neil Smith's _Probability Broach_ series, Varley's series in which Earth was long since taken over by extraterrestrial whales or whale sympathizers (which is probably where ST IV stole its ideas), and Vernor Vinge's bobble books. Not to mention the far greater number of excellent stories which are NOT part of a series. The only thing different about Star Trek (other than it being blatantly inconsistent, redundant, unscientific, and childish) is that it is on TV. I don't see what is so great about that. And if that is the standard of value, why no similar hullabaloo over Lost in Space? How can I get anything but comic relief from a series in which humans can interbreed with aliens (which is about a trillion times less likely than humans interbreeding with oak trees, which are related to us after all) or in which almost all aliens look like white Americans and speak perfect English with a California accent (except for the aliens which consist of "pure energy" (as if matter were something else) and look like glittering sparks, and which every time they see one of these commonplace critters they profoundly proclaim they have "never seen anything like it before"), or in which several earthlike planets are so earthlike that they share Earth's continents and even most of Earth's history, or in which there is a wall at the edge of the galaxy which causes psychic powers, or in which Vulcan has seven moons in one episode and none in another, or in which Spock proclaims excitedly that they are "caught in a space-time continuum" as if they were ever anywhere else, or in which mankind has faster-than-light travel for decades before realizing that this allows time travel - something that educated people have known since Einstein proved it in 1905, or in which Earth, Vulcan, Romulus, and the Klingons are all nearly evenly matched, despite all having had completely independent multi-million year histories, or in which the destruction of a few fragile tiny crystals can cripple the starship, but they never bother to carry spares, or in which (we are lead to believe) Truth, Justice, and the American way have long since prevailed, but the only examples of private enterprise we get to see are the notorious Harry Mudd, and various traders on primitive planets. The silliest part of the whole charade was Spock. We are told that he is totally logical and has no emotions. To begin with, that doesn't make any sense. Emotions ARE logical. And if he had no emotions he wouldn't bother to get out of the bed in the morning, much less work so hard to save the Enterprise, showing considerable loyalty to Kirk. And in any case, he is shown in nearly every episode to be the most emotional individual on the ship. Perhaps it would have been reasonable had they done it once, but they showed him "crack" in episode after episode, until he was an object more of pity than anything else. And in one episode Kirk warned that he gets very upset (!) and depressed (!) when he gets emotions. Sound to me like he needs a shrink. Star Trek has done more to make logic look ridiculous since Kant.