Domain: nesfa.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to nesfa.org.
Comments · 17
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Re:Eric Frank Russell wrote about this YEARS ago
If you want Dead Tree:
New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) publishes an EFR collection entitled "Major Ingredients" that includes "Study in Still Life"
http://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Russell-1.html
His story "Dear Devil" (1951 RetroHugo nominee) is a personal favorite of my own.
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Zena Henderson's People stories
Compiled as Ingathering: The Complete People Stories. Just . . . excellent.
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NESFA - Cordwainer Smith & Cyril M Kornbluth
They have reprinted much of the classic SF and have a website located at http://www.nesfa.org/press. No financial connection, just a satisfied customer. Also reprints by Fredric Brown, Murray Leinster, Anthony Boucher, Algis Budrys and many more.
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Re:First Appearance In An SF Novel
Actually... Permanence kinda beat you to it.
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Re:Publication Bias
No, no, no. It's not the NSA. It's the Laundry that's covering up the proofs that P=NP. (If you haven't read these books, and you think you might like something that blends computer science with HP Lovecraft, then for the love of $DEITY, run, don't walk, to your nearest bookshop and get all three in the series.)
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Re:Back in high school creative writing class ...
summary taken from http://www.nesfa.org/Recursion/recursive_L.htm#LewisJackWhosCribbing
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Re:From Roger Zelazny's "Isle of the Dead"
His short pieces are currently being reprinted in hardcover. I have the four volumes (out of six) which have come out so far.
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Just great.
They're trying to build the Eschaton.
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Re:Hal Clement
What he said. And let's not forget the Mesklin novels and the short stories.
(Full disclosure: I can be found now and then in SF con dealers' rooms selling people nice hardbacks, some of which are collections of his stories -- Trio for Slide Rule and Typewriter has both of Roger_Wilco's recommendations.)
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Re:Thoughts
Sounds like a plot used in Psychohistorical Crisis, which is an awesome book if you liked the Foundation books by Isaac Asimov.
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"The People" series by Zenna Henderson
My vote is for the "The People" series of short stories by Zenna Henderson. It's usually regarded as fantasy, but I've always considered it firmly in the sci-fi camp.
The backdrop of the stories is a spaceship of human-looking aliens ("The People") that crash-lands in the American Southwest, scattering individuals and groups over a large area. The aliens have certain abilities not usually seen in the Southwest (telekinesis, etc.), but have to try to blend in with the local population nevertheless. Not only are the stories largely concerned with interpersonal relationships (the loneliness of feeling different from everyone else and the desire to fit in with the group is a strong theme, something I expect will resonate with early teenage girls), the protagonists are often teenage girls as well.
The stories were collected in a 1995 book, "Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson" (also available at Amazon et al.), and it's a great read. I've always felt that the best introduction to the series is the short story "Ararat," but YMMV. -
Re:I saw one!In Heinlein's Starman Jones (1953) Jones is a youth who takes his uncle's astrogation tables and tries to join the Astrogation Guild. But he's rejected and eventually gets work as a crewman. The rest I crib from here
In the end, Max saves the day when the crazy assistant astrogator destroys the navigation books before dying himself. Max's memory and astrogation skills allow him to take the ship back through a difficult reverse Jump and save everyone. (Now exactly how Max saves the day is ludicrous. Computers are used to navigate the ship, but they're more like giant pocket calculators than anything else and need operators. Furthermore, they can't produce human-readable output, but require translation, so part of the astrogator's tools are books of transformation tables, like binary-decimal conversion tables. Max's perfect memory allows him to navigate once the mad astrogator has destroyed the ship's copies. Well, RAH may have been a great writer, but once again we see that he was a lousy prophet!)
In the 60s when I first read it it was a bit unlikely, now it's a real period piece. In many of Heinlein's space novels of the 40s and 50s slide rules are mentioned, notably "Slipstick Libby" who turned up in several stories, like Methuselah's Children, inventing an FTL drive. Heinlein did catch up with computing later, as with Mike in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. -
Re:Troy!
Phil's death is still something I can't really believe. Someone who made us all laugh that much didn't deserve to go the way he did.
But, on a lighter note... If you like Hartman, get his SNL "Best Of". Granted, it doesn't have classics such as him playing Clinton when he smashes the podium as he learns of 'Spock' endorsing Tsongas, but it has his audition. (BTW, if you have the script for this sketch, please submit it to this site. It's one of my all time favorites.)
He told everyone that he could do, say 100, different dialects and accents but when they name easy ones he says; "Sorry, I can't do that one, next". And proceeds not to be able to do any.
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Re:Spider Robinson on SF? Huh?
What makes Spider Robinson a commentator on SF, Sci-Fi or anything else other than pablum?
You mean besides winning a Locus award for Best Critic? Besides being book reviewer for Galaxy, Analog and New Destinies magazines for nearly a decade, and continuing to write occasional book reviews and a regular Op-Ed column, "Future Tense," for The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper.? Nothing, I guess...
And as for the 'Speculative Fiction', well, he isn't a writer of that either.
The people who voted to award him three Hugo awards (science fiction's top honor), a Nebula award, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the E.E. "Doc" Smith Memorial Award (Skylark), the Pat Terry Memorial Award for Humorous Science Fiction, and a second Locus award for Best Novella would appear to disagree with you. But you can always define 'speculative fiction' to be whatever you want, and set up your definition to exclude what he writes. -
Sounds familiar...
...this is pretty similar to the computer program described in The Jazz by Melissa Scott. A kid stumbles onto a program that can tell him how similar something is to existing works. It goes slightly further - making suggestions also - but the idea is the same. In the book, a major studio uses it for movies.
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Mother of Storms by John Barnes
This is a SF novel from 1994 which covers exactly this scenario. The long-term effects of global warming include the melting of the ice caps, as we know, but this book is about the shorter-term effects. An overall rise in the sea temperature, due to a huge release of clathrate methane, enlarges the hurricane-spawing areas of the ocean (areas above 27C). The result is larger and larger hurricanes, until, well, you can guess the rest from the title.
Ouch. Do you still want to touch those deposits?
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Re:This is wonderful news
Most of her short stories that are not in book form from Baen, are in book form in Dreamweaver's Dilemna from NESFA press.