ALT.SF4M

  Amusements 8/98

   • j********o@***.com
     30/08/1998 00:00:000 UTC

     Stumbled across these two on Howard Stern but missed the intro: are
     Sissy

     ("Ready ... Set... Cook!") Biggers and Rhonda ("USA Up! All Night")
     Shearer

     _sisters_? They do look very alike side-by-side (of course I prefer
     Sissy for

     a variety of reasons).

     Just read that Persis Khambata, the bald girl in Star Trek: The Motion
     Picture

     and a terrorist in Nighthawks, died (of a heart attack, at 49 years
     old).

     Gorno

       • j********o@***.com
         03/09/1998 00:00:000 UTC

         Just read 3001: The Final Odyssey. OK. A quick read, in bite-sized
         chapters,

         though rather too traveloguey. Everyone in that future seems too
         well

         adjusted, without sufficient comment by the narrator, the revived
         astronaut

         Frank Poole, copilot of the Discovery. The 2001 elements are fairly
         light, and

         somewhat revisionist, and the end is anti-climactic. The technology

         alternates between slightly wimpy (hair-net interfaces) and
         far-fetched

         (artificial gravity), and his take on religion is inadequate:
         indeed, the

         series has a premise that is effectively religious, if technically
         secular. I

         never read enough of Clarke's short stories to realize that a fair
         fraction are

         in a standard future history: to me, this book brings together a lot
         of the

         near-future stories, like The Sands of Mars, etc., and might serve
         as a

         not-unworthy swan-song for the master.

         Gorno

         "Why do you in the Engineering Department need so much expensive
         equipment?

         Mathematics makes do with a black-board and a waste-basket! The
         Philosophy

         Department even makes do without the waste-basket!"

       • j********o@***.com
         03/09/1998 00:00:000 UTC

         Just read 3001: The Final Odyssey. OK. A quick read, in bite-sized
         chapters,

         though rather too traveloguey. Everyone in that future seems too
         well

         adjusted, without sufficient comment by the narrator, the revived
         astronaut

         Frank Poole, copilot of the Discovery. The 2001 elements are fairly
         light, and

         somewhat revisionist, and the end is anti-climactic. The technology

         alternates between slightly wimpy (hair-net interfaces) and
         far-fetched

         (artificial gravity), and his take on religion is inadequate:
         indeed, the

         series has a premise that is effectively religious, if technically
         secular. I

         never read enough of Clarke's short stories to realize that a fair
         fraction are

         in a standard future history: to me, this book brings together a lot
         of the

         near-future stories, like The Sands of Mars, etc., and might serve
         as a

         not-unworthy swan-song for the master.

         Gorno

         "Why do you in the Engineering Department need so much expensive
         equipment?

         Mathematics makes do with a black-board and a waste-basket! The
         Philosophy

         Department even makes do without the waste-basket!"