Oops, didn't see the airplane becoming sub part. On the other hand, the negative bouyancy submarine concept does involve 'flying' under water. And if you had a propulsion system powerful enough, it could fly in the air. You would just have to have VERY adaptable control surfaces.
I seem to recall reading a science fiction story from the late 70's or early 80's involving so called negative bouyancy submarines. The idea was that they were more like underwater fighter planes than blimps.
Of course, if you had a propulsion failure, you would end up on the bottom of the ocean.
In the state of Washington there are a lot of people who wouldn't mind being able to Olympic as part of a business name. They are people who live on the Olympic peninsula and used to have the right to use the name before the IOC/USOC got greedy.
Of course, when he wrote 'Space Cadet', people were a lot more polite. People were actually civil and using profanity was frowned upon, especially by kids.
It doesn't really affect me because I haven't watched TV on a regular basis for a couple of decades. If there is a show I want to watch, I wait for it to come out in DVD. If I want current news, I check the web or read a newspaper. If there is an emergency that requires extremely current information, I listen to the radio.
I do pity those people who rely upon broadcast TV for their entertainment and/or information. But that IS a life style choice that they make and this change has been talked about for quite a few years not.
They'll adjust. I do suspect that there will be a lot of calls to the local TV stations from people that never listen to public service ads warning of the changes. (I wonder how many of these calls will be from channel flippers that never listen to commercials or public service ads?)
The building bricks I had were a hard plastic that actually had little tabs that would allow them to hold together. I think they were American Bricks, circa 1964. (I remember doing a city using the bricks, plus a number of Kenner Building sets and a square log Lincoln Log set at around that time.)
While I remember the old sets, I have a number of the new sets too. (Yeah, I still play with toys, especially those that allow you to build things.)
I've always loved the modular design work that goes into Lego blocks and have often thought that areas like architecture and software design need to do a better job of working in a similar manner. While some efforts have been made, they are rather anemic.
I beg to differ. I grew up with these lego sets and to me, the coolest thing was not just assembling the set the way it was meant to be, but disassembling it and finding out how to create something completely unorthodox by mixing two, or three, or my entire collection of lego's.
Back in 1966 or so, the sets I had available were just boxes with a handful of specialty pieces like wheels, windows, doors and roof pieces, plus a handful of clear blocks. On the box were simple models of some of the things that could be done.
They weren't the fancy ones that have barely enough pieces to build the fancy model on the box.
The summary seems to ignore the possibility of not wanting any packaging and not wanting a user provided 'cloth' bag. And for that matter, boxes are ignored.
Personally, I prefer canvas bags with heavy duty handles. My family has some that has been in use for fifteen or more years and have had their handles replaced a couple of times. Since some of the stores in the area give a five cent a bag credit, we've more than paid for the bags AND the replacement handles.
It might be. I seem to recall the aerospace media calling it Aurora. There were a number of sonic booms over the LA area that were attributed to it that weren't traced to known military planes. And I seem to recall the Brits took a picture of a pulse trail of something attributed to Aurora
It could easily be that Blackswift is the military name for Aurora. It would be kind of like the stealth 'fighter' from a number of years back. I believe it flew for about seven or eight years before the Air Force admitted that it existed. And the Air Force name for the project was definitely not what the aerospace media called it. (Nor was it shaped anything like the Revelle model that was created representing a stealth fighter.)
I seem to recall reading that the Comets had windows with square corners, which greatly increased the stress on the skin of the plane. Frequent pressurization and depressurization due to commercial flight caused the metal to fail.
Square corners in any material, metal, ceramic, or plastic, create points of 'infinite' stress which can then lead to failure. That is one of the reasons why rounded corners are used in modern commercial jets.
David Brin made a proposal like this in a 1980 book called Sundiver. I seem to recall that they used a 'refrigerator' laser as a heat transfer mechanism. It has been a few years since I read the book though. It was part of his Uplift series.
You can also find similarities to Irish mythology, with even closer linkages. Lugh, whose name can be translated by some as 'flashing light', is known as a boy hero among other things, who ended up slaying his father.
I believe that Kenneth C. Flint's Sidhe series retells Lugh's story in a way that makes you think that it was based on Star Wars, or vice versa.
Of course, I believe that Lucas was a fan of George Campbell, who wrote a lot about comparative mythologies. Story writers have been ripping off story ideas for thousands of years, translating the stories into terms and situations that their listeners/readers can under stand. Lucas just did it as a space opera, with lots of special effects.
My first exposure to Star Wars was the book by George Lucas. I found it in the college book store at Cal Poly, SLO. It was NOT the one that came out with pictures of the movie. There may even be a chance that the book came out before the movie. I know that I read it before I saw Star Wars.
The political aspect would be quite appropriate since the awards are meant to promote good SF. There is no sense in 'rewarding' someone who doesn't want to be branded an SF writer, especially when there are lots of good SF writers out there cranking out good reading material.
Now I could see an award for 'Exceptional Science Fiction that is not written as Science Fiction', to be awarded to those writers that don't consider themselves to be SF writers. Said award wouldn't have to be awarded yearly, because it would apply to 'exceptional' work.
If M Atwood is Margaret Atwood, then many people wouldn't consider her to be a science fiction writer.
Of course, some people who write 'speculative fiction', like Atwood, don't want to be called SF writers because the public would reject them. Their books meet the criteria of SF, whether it be science fiction or speculative fiction, but they stay clear of the genre because of the 'taint'.
When you get down to it, there are a number of very popular writers, like Tom Clancy, that write SF involving technology but market them under 'action adventure'.
I suspect that the reason that these, and others, don't make the Nebula Award lists is that the authors wouldn't consider accepting a Nebula because they don't write SF&F from their points of view.
You could say that Science Fiction and Fantasy are two sides of the same coin. Both share the 'What if' premise that divorces them from the 'reality' of mysteries, westerns, modern novels and the like.
On the Science Fiction side, the 'What if' premise is based on science and extrapolations of 'reality', though there are many times when that 'reality' is not our own.
On the Fantasy side, the 'What if' premise is based on 'magic' and the realities portrayed may not have any link to our reality, even in legend.
In some instances, there can be problems telling Science Fiction from Fantasy, especially if the author intentionally crosses genres. I recall a series where a wizard in a fantasy universe 'summons' a computer programmer from our world and sets up a situation where the computer programmer becomes a powerful 'wizard' through his programming abilities. (Spells are programs of a sort. You need to be careful how you write them though. Crashes can be VERY unhealthy.) While the target world uses 'magic', there is a lot of tech stuff brought over. Most would consider it fantasy, but I could see where a tale reversing the situation could be called science fiction.
Personally, having the two lumped together in the bookstore makes it easier for those of us who follow specific authors, especially when those authors write in both genres.
If you are lucky, and the local libraries haven't been gutted by 'cost cutting' programs or 'SF&F is not literature' types, a library can be a decent location to get a feel for good reading. (Unfortunately, the family SF&F library appears to be bigger than the local branch libraries and the downtown library has parking and open hours issues.)
Another good source can be local, regional and national SF&F conventions. There you'll meet a lot of fans and a lot of authors, even with a local con. Attending panels can lead you to a lot of good reading material, especially when authors talk about other authors. (The local con in my area had CJ Cherryh as a frequent attendee before the con faded away. Her commute to the con was less than thirty miles.)
One of my family's favorite techniques for choosing good reading is the 'favorite author' technique. We have a couple of dozen 'favorite' authors that we like a lot and tend to pick up their books through the Science Fiction Book Club when they come out, despite what critics may say. While the books may not be award winning, they keep us entertained, which is what it is all about from our point of view. Thankfully our 'favorite authors' publish frequently enough that we have fresh material coming in every month or so. (And, often, if the new book is part of a series, we'll be rereading favorite parts of the rest of the series.)
Another favorite technique, used when we want to explore new territory, is to go to a bookstore, with cash, and browse. Doing this once every six to ten months is enough to keep up on new stuff from new writers. If combined with dinner out, it can make a nice, economy stimulating day.
My family reads a lot of science fiction and fantasy and has been buying a lot of it through SFBC because they make hardback versions. (Paperbacks are nice but they wear out too quickly.) We have to wait a bit before they come out in SFBC editions, but that is fine with us. We are not the types that need to read the books the moment they are published. We DO reread the ones we like though, which is why we recently bought ten seven foot tall book cases. While not all the shelves are filled with SFBC books, those books do occupy a lot of linear feet.
The biggest thing you have to worry about is responding to the selection cards they mail out. Not responding means you get the books they offer, whether you want them or not. That can be spendy if you don't take care.
Things have improved since they set up an internet site where you can refuse books online, IF you remember to do it in time. It is all a matter of personal responsibility. (Also check into the Negative Response option so they DON'T send things unless you say otherwise.)
One of the nice things they've been doing as part of their 50th anniversary celebration is bringing out reprints of classic science fiction. In some instances there are several books in a single volume. (i.e. Heinlein juveniles) We've been picking up many of these classics when they come out. It has been filling gaps in our collection.
As far as recent books are concerned, it can get a little hard picking up early volumes in a series, especially if the series has been going on for a number of years. But SFBC does listen to their customers and they will do reprints of what they have put out if there is enough demand. I KNOW that some of the early Valdemar books of Mercedes Lackey, in three-in-one editions, were reissued recently. (I seem to recall that H. Beam Piper's 'Little Fuzzy', a SF classic, was reprinted again after a decade or more of being out of print. They should be due for another round soon.)
As with any book club, there will be negative aspects. But for the most part, SFBC does a good job within limits. And if you are a long time subscriber, who keeps up on the authors you like, you don't have to worry too much about missing things if you are patient and the authors are part of the SFBC stable. (Pratchett, Lackey, McCaffrey, Cherryh, Varley, Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov and others fall into this group...)
I've been a SFBC member for a couple of decades and haven't had the problem you described of getting books that I didn't ask for. Of course, there were times when I failed to send in the cards where you can refuse the books they offered. Since that was my fault, I can't say that I didn't ask for them, indirectly.
I've gotten better at getting my refusals now that I'm doing a lot of the stuff on the web. But if I fail to respond in time, I don't blame SFBC because the failure is mine, not theirs.
I believe that you can go the Negative Response route, asking them NOT to send anything unless you specifically request it.
Slashdot Mirror
I seem to recall seeing something like this in a catalog I got not long ago. It was designed for component testing. It wasn't quite as fancy though.
Oops, didn't see the airplane becoming sub part. On the other hand, the negative bouyancy submarine concept does involve 'flying' under water. And if you had a propulsion system powerful enough, it could fly in the air. You would just have to have VERY adaptable control surfaces.
I seem to recall reading a science fiction story from the late 70's or early 80's involving so called negative bouyancy submarines. The idea was that they were more like underwater fighter planes than blimps.
Of course, if you had a propulsion failure, you would end up on the bottom of the ocean.
In the state of Washington there are a lot of people who wouldn't mind being able to Olympic as part of a business name. They are people who live on the Olympic peninsula and used to have the right to use the name before the IOC/USOC got greedy.
Of course, when he wrote 'Space Cadet', people were a lot more polite. People were actually civil and using profanity was frowned upon, especially by kids.
I'll just let it die of old age.
It doesn't really affect me because I haven't watched TV on a regular basis for a couple of decades. If there is a show I want to watch, I wait for it to come out in DVD. If I want current news, I check the web or read a newspaper. If there is an emergency that requires extremely current information, I listen to the radio.
I do pity those people who rely upon broadcast TV for their entertainment and/or information. But that IS a life style choice that they make and this change has been talked about for quite a few years not.
They'll adjust. I do suspect that there will be a lot of calls to the local TV stations from people that never listen to public service ads warning of the changes. (I wonder how many of these calls will be from channel flippers that never listen to commercials or public service ads?)
Nostalgia. Plus a lot of that other stuff has gone the way of the dodo bird while Legos still survive.
The building bricks I had were a hard plastic that actually had little tabs that would allow them to hold together. I think they were American Bricks, circa 1964. (I remember doing a city using the bricks, plus a number of Kenner Building sets and a square log Lincoln Log set at around that time.)
While I remember the old sets, I have a number of the new sets too. (Yeah, I still play with toys, especially those that allow you to build things.)
I've always loved the modular design work that goes into Lego blocks and have often thought that areas like architecture and software design need to do a better job of working in a similar manner. While some efforts have been made, they are rather anemic.
I beg to differ. I grew up with these lego sets and to me, the coolest thing was not just assembling the set the way it was meant to be, but disassembling it and finding out how to create something completely unorthodox by mixing two, or three, or my entire collection of lego's.
Back in 1966 or so, the sets I had available were just boxes with a handful of specialty pieces like wheels, windows, doors and roof pieces, plus a handful of clear blocks. On the box were simple models of some of the things that could be done.
They weren't the fancy ones that have barely enough pieces to build the fancy model on the box.
You had to use your imagination, which I did.
The summary seems to ignore the possibility of not wanting any packaging and not wanting a user provided 'cloth' bag. And for that matter, boxes are ignored.
Personally, I prefer canvas bags with heavy duty handles. My family has some that has been in use for fifteen or more years and have had their handles replaced a couple of times. Since some of the stores in the area give a five cent a bag credit, we've more than paid for the bags AND the replacement handles.
It might be. I seem to recall the aerospace media calling it Aurora. There were a number of sonic booms over the LA area that were attributed to it that weren't traced to known military planes. And I seem to recall the Brits took a picture of a pulse trail of something attributed to Aurora
It could easily be that Blackswift is the military name for Aurora. It would be kind of like the stealth 'fighter' from a number of years back. I believe it flew for about seven or eight years before the Air Force admitted that it existed. And the Air Force name for the project was definitely not what the aerospace media called it. (Nor was it shaped anything like the Revelle model that was created representing a stealth fighter.)
I seem to recall reading that the Comets had windows with square corners, which greatly increased the stress on the skin of the plane. Frequent pressurization and depressurization due to commercial flight caused the metal to fail.
Square corners in any material, metal, ceramic, or plastic, create points of 'infinite' stress which can then lead to failure. That is one of the reasons why rounded corners are used in modern commercial jets.
David Brin made a proposal like this in a 1980 book called Sundiver. I seem to recall that they used a 'refrigerator' laser as a heat transfer mechanism. It has been a few years since I read the book though. It was part of his Uplift series.
Your general statement has a flaw in it. All you need is one person contradicting you and it is false.
Now if you said 'In the US, not very many people want to buy light cars...' you might be more accurate. A lot would depend upon the region you are in.
You can also find similarities to Irish mythology, with even closer linkages. Lugh, whose name can be translated by some as 'flashing light', is known as a boy hero among other things, who ended up slaying his father.
I believe that Kenneth C. Flint's Sidhe series retells Lugh's story in a way that makes you think that it was based on Star Wars, or vice versa.
Of course, I believe that Lucas was a fan of George Campbell, who wrote a lot about comparative mythologies. Story writers have been ripping off story ideas for thousands of years, translating the stories into terms and situations that their listeners/readers can under stand. Lucas just did it as a space opera, with lots of special effects.
My first exposure to Star Wars was the book by George Lucas. I found it in the college book store at Cal Poly, SLO. It was NOT the one that came out with pictures of the movie. There may even be a chance that the book came out before the movie. I know that I read it before I saw Star Wars.
The political aspect would be quite appropriate since the awards are meant to promote good SF. There is no sense in 'rewarding' someone who doesn't want to be branded an SF writer, especially when there are lots of good SF writers out there cranking out good reading material.
Now I could see an award for 'Exceptional Science Fiction that is not written as Science Fiction', to be awarded to those writers that don't consider themselves to be SF writers. Said award wouldn't have to be awarded yearly, because it would apply to 'exceptional' work.
If M Atwood is Margaret Atwood, then many people wouldn't consider her to be a science fiction writer.
Of course, some people who write 'speculative fiction', like Atwood, don't want to be called SF writers because the public would reject them. Their books meet the criteria of SF, whether it be science fiction or speculative fiction, but they stay clear of the genre because of the 'taint'.
When you get down to it, there are a number of very popular writers, like Tom Clancy, that write SF involving technology but market them under 'action adventure'.
I suspect that the reason that these, and others, don't make the Nebula Award lists is that the authors wouldn't consider accepting a Nebula because they don't write SF&F from their points of view.
You could say that Science Fiction and Fantasy are two sides of the same coin. Both share the 'What if' premise that divorces them from the 'reality' of mysteries, westerns, modern novels and the like.
On the Science Fiction side, the 'What if' premise is based on science and extrapolations of 'reality', though there are many times when that 'reality' is not our own.
On the Fantasy side, the 'What if' premise is based on 'magic' and the realities portrayed may not have any link to our reality, even in legend.
In some instances, there can be problems telling Science Fiction from Fantasy, especially if the author intentionally crosses genres. I recall a series where a wizard in a fantasy universe 'summons' a computer programmer from our world and sets up a situation where the computer programmer becomes a powerful 'wizard' through his programming abilities. (Spells are programs of a sort. You need to be careful how you write them though. Crashes can be VERY unhealthy.) While the target world uses 'magic', there is a lot of tech stuff brought over. Most would consider it fantasy, but I could see where a tale reversing the situation could be called science fiction.
Personally, having the two lumped together in the bookstore makes it easier for those of us who follow specific authors, especially when those authors write in both genres.
If you are lucky, and the local libraries haven't been gutted by 'cost cutting' programs or 'SF&F is not literature' types, a library can be a decent location to get a feel for good reading. (Unfortunately, the family SF&F library appears to be bigger than the local branch libraries and the downtown library has parking and open hours issues.)
Another good source can be local, regional and national SF&F conventions. There you'll meet a lot of fans and a lot of authors, even with a local con. Attending panels can lead you to a lot of good reading material, especially when authors talk about other authors. (The local con in my area had CJ Cherryh as a frequent attendee before the con faded away. Her commute to the con was less than thirty miles.)
One of my family's favorite techniques for choosing good reading is the 'favorite author' technique. We have a couple of dozen 'favorite' authors that we like a lot and tend to pick up their books through the Science Fiction Book Club when they come out, despite what critics may say. While the books may not be award winning, they keep us entertained, which is what it is all about from our point of view. Thankfully our 'favorite authors' publish frequently enough that we have fresh material coming in every month or so. (And, often, if the new book is part of a series, we'll be rereading favorite parts of the rest of the series.)
Another favorite technique, used when we want to explore new territory, is to go to a bookstore, with cash, and browse. Doing this once every six to ten months is enough to keep up on new stuff from new writers. If combined with dinner out, it can make a nice, economy stimulating day.
My family reads a lot of science fiction and fantasy and has been buying a lot of it through SFBC because they make hardback versions. (Paperbacks are nice but they wear out too quickly.) We have to wait a bit before they come out in SFBC editions, but that is fine with us. We are not the types that need to read the books the moment they are published. We DO reread the ones we like though, which is why we recently bought ten seven foot tall book cases. While not all the shelves are filled with SFBC books, those books do occupy a lot of linear feet.
The biggest thing you have to worry about is responding to the selection cards they mail out. Not responding means you get the books they offer, whether you want them or not. That can be spendy if you don't take care.
Things have improved since they set up an internet site where you can refuse books online, IF you remember to do it in time. It is all a matter of personal responsibility. (Also check into the Negative Response option so they DON'T send things unless you say otherwise.)
One of the nice things they've been doing as part of their 50th anniversary celebration is bringing out reprints of classic science fiction. In some instances there are several books in a single volume. (i.e. Heinlein juveniles) We've been picking up many of these classics when they come out. It has been filling gaps in our collection.
As far as recent books are concerned, it can get a little hard picking up early volumes in a series, especially if the series has been going on for a number of years. But SFBC does listen to their customers and they will do reprints of what they have put out if there is enough demand. I KNOW that some of the early Valdemar books of Mercedes Lackey, in three-in-one editions, were reissued recently. (I seem to recall that H. Beam Piper's 'Little Fuzzy', a SF classic, was reprinted again after a decade or more of being out of print. They should be due for another round soon.)
As with any book club, there will be negative aspects. But for the most part, SFBC does a good job within limits. And if you are a long time subscriber, who keeps up on the authors you like, you don't have to worry too much about missing things if you are patient and the authors are part of the SFBC stable. (Pratchett, Lackey, McCaffrey, Cherryh, Varley, Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov and others fall into this group...)
I've been a SFBC member for a couple of decades and haven't had the problem you described of getting books that I didn't ask for. Of course, there were times when I failed to send in the cards where you can refuse the books they offered. Since that was my fault, I can't say that I didn't ask for them, indirectly.
I've gotten better at getting my refusals now that I'm doing a lot of the stuff on the web. But if I fail to respond in time, I don't blame SFBC because the failure is mine, not theirs.
I believe that you can go the Negative Response route, asking them NOT to send anything unless you specifically request it.
'Vat' grown meat and body parts have a long science fiction history. It is about time they are doing research into this on the military side.