Vremeplov

[PTY]

Dear Mr. Campbell:

I have enjoyed Analog for several years. Although I haven't always agreed with your editorials, they have been interesting, stimulating, and logical.

The article "Giant Meteor Impact" in your March, 1966 issue has started me thinking. An article "Tips and Trends," in the November, 1965 issue of Science Digest, quotes a Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory scientist as saying: "An asteroid named Icarus could collide with the earth on June 15, 1968."

I wonder if the author, J. E. Enever, could give a statement re the collision of Icarus with Earth.

TOM VISHER

1514 Belleau Wood Tallahassee, Florida




. . . A question




Dear John Campbell:

Thank you for passing on the letter from Tom Visher. Icarus is, of course, only one of a dozen or more asteroids which trespass on the inner solar system. The planets have been vacuum cleaning—or better, fly-swatting—space clean for five billion years. See the face of the Moon and the Mariner IV pictures for proof. But the known dozen must be only a small fraction of the true total number of strays.

We don't know the orbits of these mavericks with the same accuracy which applies to the fixes on the major planets. For example, 6,000 years of observation has enabled us to fix the length of the Martian year to better than six decimal places. We even know the length of the Martian day to a split milli-second; it is somewhat as if you found the rate of a good watch by letting it run unaltered for years, checking it daily against the radio time-signal. After a decade you would know the daily loss or gain to a very high degree of accuracy.

We have only been watching the maverick asteroids for half a century or so at most. They are small, and even the long eyes at Palomar and elsewhere lose sight of them: they cannot be checked all the way round their orbits. So we tend to lose them altogether. The stray which wandered closest to Earth was Hermes, in about 1937. Its year is less than that of Mars, and it came within a quarter million miles of Earth—but it hasn't been spotted since the war.

The orbit of Icarus is better known than most. Dr. R. S. Richardson was its co-discoverer. He told about it in an article in Scientific American last year—October, I think; sorry not to be more precise, but I don't file this venerable journal, since the wife makes ructions enough about those piles of "Astounding". Richardson's article is worth digging out: the position seems to be that the orbit of Icarus is so sharply inclined to that of Earth as to make it unlikely that any collision will occur in the next few foreseeable megacenturies. This does not argue that there are no asteroids in circulation which can and therefore inevitably will eventually collide with the Earth. Operation Fly-swat is not complete.

Mark you, the lack of not merely exact knowledge but even of well-computed guesstimation on the origin of the meteorites is little short of scandalous. When that ten-mile diameter radio telescope is orbited, its first job should be an accurate census of interplanetary and interstellar debris. At present, the Late Lamented Planet V seems to be a good bet for the origin of many meteors. But Earth also possesses a halo of comets extending halfway to the nearer stars which must make some contribution.

Nor may we ignore the lively possibility that rare large bodies may track in with the smaller stuff which does zip in from the galaxy at large. This may travel at more than 200 km. per second . . .

This sets me wondering. The Tunguska meteorite in 1908 flattened a 60-mile circle of forest, yet caused no substantial crater. Could this have been something other than a thousand tonner hitting the deck at 30 to 40 km. per second? Suppose it were a hundred tonner, a ball less than 14 feet in diameter, moving ten times as fast. Such a body would carry ten times the punch of the heavier but slower job. Let me see—at over 300 km. per second, the total energy would be well up in the megaton range. Depending on the angle at which it ploughed in, might not such a strike vaporize before it had quite reached the ground? Most of the energy would emerge as plain old ordinary electro-magnetic radiation—in the ultra-violet and X-ray spectrum. . . so far as I can see, the energy transformed into radiation will vary as the eighth power of the speed. .. the possibility definitely deserves examination. A nickel iron a mere hundred yards or so across travelling at 300 k.p.s. would carry IV ergs . . . Cor! ! !

Joe Enever





And some answers.






Dear Mr. Campbell:

Re: "Drifting Continents" by Dr. Robert S. Dietz in the April Analog.

Near the end of the interesting article Dr. Dietz invokes possible negative evidence in support of the theory discussed. This evidence is concerned with the Moon, Mars, and Venus. Should he not look for positive evidence in the planet Jupiter? It is my understanding that huge drifts of quite organized reflectivity (Great Red Spot, et cetera) take place on the visible surface of Jupiter. These drifts take place in years, not centuries or mega years. Being so huge Jupiter must be relatively much more fluid relative to its own gravity than the minor planets. This is without invoking square vs. cube law concerning internal heat due to radioactivity and all that jazz.

Take the limit: The surface of our best little star Sol, is apparently a panic from an earth-bound geological time point of view. Big things happen in minutes there.

It is probably more important for you to know that the April issue of Analog is an absolute dandy, one of the best ever.

HAROLD HALVERSEN

1919 East West Hwy.

Silver Spring, Md.



Under the pressures involved inside the Earth, the materials act as fluids. True, Jupiter's visible surface, and the Sun's are gaseous—but gas is fluid, and the major difference may be time-rate rather than anything else—tar is a liquid.

[PTY]

 

elem, ovaj mali Q&A je iz Analoga 02/10/1966.

Kempbel je, naravno, tu "at his best" genijalno zabavan, pa eto... da malko privirimo u zeitgeist.  

sledi njegov uvodnik iz istog broja:

[PTY]

THE ANCIENT GODDESS

Editorial by John W. Campbell



It has been recognized, since the most ancient times, that the ruler of luck is a Goddess—female, fickle, unpredictable, whimsical, and capable of cruelty and favor with equal irrationality.

NASA has just been experiencing the left-handed blessings of Lady Luck, and, simultaneously, the warm and winning smiles of The Lady. And anybody who tries to sell a NASA scientist on the fact that this world is run entirely by purely rational and simply predictable Laws —that Lady Luck doesn't live in space as well as on Earth—is going to have trouble putting over his point.

Atlas-Agena vehicle combinations are among the most reliable, dependable devices men have yet developed for space exploration. That's why the Atlas-Agena combination was picked for the space-rendezvous and docking maneuvers programmed for the Gemini 9 flight.

So when one after another of their Agena space-docking targets had flubbed, gone wild, and generally misbehaved—they gave up and sent up a gadget originally intended more for use as a mock-up than as a docking target—the ADTA.

That they succeeded in getting into orbit.

Then Gemini 9 was all ready for launch, countdown reached one minute, forty seconds before takeoff . . . and stopped. The computer in the first-stage booster had decided it knew all it needed to know, and wasn't interested in the latest data on where its target vehicle was. Three times they tried to up-date its data—while the five minutes of the launch-window slipped by.

By this time Astronauts Stafford and Cernan had been up and down on that launch-tower elevator so many times they must have been about ready to rename the project Yo-Yo 9 instead of Gemini 9. Stafford claimed he had more launch-pad time than any man in spaceflight history.

The problem of the computer that couldn't digest its data turned out to involve two logic modules; it was fairly simple to plug in a couple of replacement units in time for the retry two days later.

Again the two astronauts suited up, rode up in the tower elevator, crawled into the Gemini capsule . . . and waited.

This time Gemini 9 got a perfect launch, went into the assigned orbit perfectly, and successfully caught up with its target—which turned out to be the henceforth-and-forevermore famed "Angry Alligator". The two half-shell epoxy-fiberglass shroud shields hadn't detached from the target vehicle as per specifications. Moreover, they refused to detach—and made any docking tests impossible.

Since that shroud device was designed to stand up to plowing its way through the atmosphere at a couple thousand miles per hour, it had had to be tough—a 300-pound structure of epoxy-fiberglass can be far tougher and stronger than an equally massive structure of aluminum or stainless steel—it's nothing to fool around with when you're in a fragile shell of titanium skeleton and beryllium "shingles"—and the only habitable volume of space you can possibly reach.

So they had to give up on the docking, and go on to the spacewalk tests.

And that, of course, didn't come off quite right either. Oh, most of it was pretty successful—but the test of the individual astronaut backpack maneuvering unit was a complete bust, because the communication system didn't work properly, and something seemed to be wrong with the oxygen supply system.

Perhaps at this point it was best that Cernan's communication came through only as a grunting gargle; he would have had reason for nonbroadcastable comments on the nature and antecedents of Lady Luck.

Gemini 9 was the thirteenth manned space capsule. Thirteen things went wrong.



Now intermeshed with this whole fiasco was another space-research project—Surveyor I was launched before the Angry Alligator was, and was in flight on its way to the Moon while Gemini 9's computer hiccuped and spit back the up-dated data. It was cruising on toward Luna while Stafford and Cernan had to crawl out of that capsule again, and go back down on the elevator.

While Cape Kennedy and the Houston Manned Space Center were sweating out the problem of why the blasted contraption had refused to accept the data—the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Goldstone Tracking Center out in California were sweating out the landing of Surveyor I, 238,000 miles away.

Surveyor had taken off only three years behind schedule; the Planning Department of NASA somehow seemed to have got its foot in its mouth, its fist stuck in its ears, and its mind in a dense California smog. The Surveyor program had demonstrated one of the high points in fouled up bureaucracy of all time. If any program deserved to achieve a complete and total bust for Ingrained Confusion—Surveyor was It.

On the other hand . . . maybe the bureaucrats were so busy crossing each other up they were too busy to interfere with what the engineers on the job were doing?

In any case, Surveyor I got off to a perfect launch shortly before the Angry Alligator went into orbit, and headed for the Moon on exactly the calculated orbit.

There was one slight—and extremely worrisome—hitch; Surveyor had two extensible antennas, which were to erect themselves once the machine got out into space, beyond atmosphere resistance. One of the two did; the other didn't extend itself properly. Since the two were each capable of handling the full load of radio communications, electronically this was no problem. But from the viewpoint of the laws of mechanics it could be disastrous.

The problem is equivalent to that of the ice skater who's doing one of those fancy pirouettes. She extends her arms, and kicks herself into a spin on one toe, then draws her arms into her sides; conservation of angular momentum then makes her spin three to five times as fast because of the drastically reduced radius of rotation.

Surveyor's radio antenna that was not extended did not have the same angular momentum the one that was extended did—nor did it have the angular momentum their calculations were based on. Moreover, the center of gravity was not where they'd designed it to be. What would Surveyor do when they called for its mid-course maneuver—and when the powerful thrust of the soft-landing retrorocket cut in? Tip? Wobble? Go into a tumbling spin?

The only thing they could do was go ahead and hope.

The midcourse maneuver was ordered—and Surveyor responded with perfect precision. It oriented itself properly on the Sun and Canopus and Earth, turned precisely the number of degrees ordered, yawed precisely as commanded, and thrust with exactly the required force for the computed time.

It was about 1:45 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time when the Moment of Truth for Surveyor I really began; the orders for the soft landing on Luna began to go out from the great Goldstone Tracking facility. The roll, yaw, and roll maneuvers necessary to align Surveyor's thrust-axis with the Moon were made with perfection. The altitude sensing radar was activated—the flight-mode control circuits were activated. As each command went out from Goldstone at the speed of light, Surveyor faithfully reported back the computer-language equivalent of, "Roger; command received and executed," two and two-thirds seconds later.

Surveyor came closer to being a true science-fiction style robot than anything we'd launched before; it could accept and carry out over two hundred fifty different commands. Since it was operating at a distance so great commands from Earth were necessarily 1.3+ seconds delayed in transit, control from Earth would have been impossible. Surveyor had to control its own landing.

Now so far as determining the angle of descent was concerned—that was simply a problem in celestial navigation. The problem of measuring the speed of descent wasn't too tough; Doppler radar could handle that fairly well. But the problem of altitude was a very nice one; as of 2:15 a.m. that morning, we did not know the radar-reflection characteristics of that area of the Moon's surface. Suppose there was an area of some dusty material that was radar-black—that soaked up radar beams the way a mass of carbon black would soak up a light beam. No reflection—no radar echo—no measure of altitude.

Or suppose there was a fifty-foot depth of something that was quite transparent to radar overlying a layer of solid igneous rock. The altitude over the radar-reflecting surface would be read accurately—which wouldn't do much good for Surveyor, crashing into a solid-but radar-invisible surface fifty feet above it!

At a time some two seconds short of the calculated time for activating the main retro-engine, the JPL crew gave Surveyor's on-board control system complete control of the landing maneuver. During the next few seconds, naturally, they sweated copiously—but some 2.6 seconds after the rocket should have turned on, Surveyor reported back in clear computerese, "I have reached the predetermined altitude, and have activated my retro-engines for landing. The main solid-fuel retrorocket, and all three vernier engines are thrusting properly."

Now came the tension as to whether that unbalanced, unextended antenna would make Surveyor go into a fatal tip, tumble, or wobble.

The three vernier engines had as a major part of their function correcting for any slight unevenness of thrust of the main solid-fuel engine; apparently Surveyor's on-board control system and inertial guidance mechanisms sensed any imbalance the antenna did produce, and simply so controlled its vernier engines as to cancel it out perfectly.

At 2:17 a.m., Surveyor touched down on the surface of the Moon. It touched down so gently that the special shock-absorbing crushable foot-pads weren't crushed. The computed target touchdown speed was to have been 12 ft./sec.—the actual touchdown speed was 13 ft./sec. The target-area on the Moon's surface was reached with such accuracy that the discrepancy was measured in feet rather than miles.

Within a few minutes, Surveyor started obeying Goldstone's commands to start about the business of surveying the lunar surface; in every possible respect the machine was behaving with perfect precision. Even the incompletely extended antenna had been jarred sufficiently by the added G-loading as the main retrorocket fired that it extended itself fully!

Unlike any previous television camera probe, Surveyor was designed for a long-continued series of observations; the TV camera was equipped with a complex system of Earth-controlled adjustments. The camera had a zoom lens, which allowed the men at Goldstone to change the focal length at will; the lens could be focused from four feet to infinity, and the lens diaphragm could be opened or closed down by command from Earth. Moreover, the camera itself could be swiveled through 360°, while the mirror by which it looked around could be controlled to allow it to look at the zenith, or down at its own feet. The camera could, in addition, be switched to a 200-line scan or to a 600-line scan. The 200-line scan allowed transmission of picture signals with lower power—the mode used immediately after Surveyor landed, before it had had time to erect its "sunflower"—the spread of solar cells would gather enough power to charge its batteries.

Every single function of Surveyor I performed to perfection. Every single mechanism and circuit did precisely what the engineers had planned that they should do if everything went well.

The first picture Surveyor sent was one of the most crucial of the whole series—the one picture which would, even if it had been the only picture Surveyor had ever sent, have been a full pay-off on the entire project. It was simply a picture of Surveyor's own foot-pad sitting firmly on the surface of the Moon. On, not in. That one piece of information was worth millions to the whole space program. Surveyor's "flotation loading" in terms of pounds per square foot of supporting pad, was designed to equal the planned flotation loading of the LEM—the manned Lunar Excursion Module. In almost every respect, Surveyor was designed to be a model, unmanned equivalent of the LEM.

Since that first photograph from the surface of the Moon, Surveyor has been sending them at a rate of a couple hundred every night.

Goldstone's tracking facility is the only station adequately equipped to command and receive information from Surveyor; therefore Surveyor is busily working during the hours that the Moon is above the horizon as seen from Goldstone, but is quiescent during the rest of each Terra-Lunar day. (Which is not quite the same length as the solar day, due to the Moon's orbital motion around Earth.)

Surveyor was landed on the Moon in an area that was in the "early-morning" phase of the lunar day—the result is that there will be some twelve days of sunlight in Surveyor's environment before the night-phase settles in. They have already got hundreds of pictures of the surface appearance around Surveyor, under the long, slanting rays of early morning sunlight. During the hours Goldstone can't contact Surveyor, sunlight is busily charging the storage cells on board Surveyor. (Presumably they're nickel-cadmium storage cells; the Ni-Cd cells can endure more heat than almost any other type, and can stand more cycles of charge-discharge than any other type of sealable cell.) Surveyor has a main bank of storage cells and an auxiliary battery—whether the auxiliary battery was a rechargeable type, or a high-intensity primary cell type, isn't stated as yet.

By local noon, the sunlight temperatures are going to be too high for operation of the electronic equipment; most of the silicon semiconductor devices—transistors, diodes, field-effect transistors, voltage-variable capacitors, et cetera—can be operated at temperatures up to about 155°C.

The Texas Instrument Co. makes a series of transistors (and presumably other silicon semiconductors to match) with a "storage temperature" rating of —195 to + 300°C.

What this means is that a semiconductor device may be able to stand up to 300°C. provided it isn't, at the same time, being made to control an electric current—i.e., it can't operate at 300°C., but can survive in operable condition.

The temperature on the surface of the Moon at local noon runs to about 250-275°C.; the high-temperature silicon semiconductors can't be used while they're being baked at that temperature, but after noon-local, the temperature will begin to fall off as the Sun's rays begin to slant more. As the temperatures get down, the electronic equipment can be put to work again.

Then the entire series of pictures taken by the long, slanting rays of the morning sun can be repeated with the slanting afternoon illumination, making possible a far greater amount of data and understanding of the objects pictured.

One thing I'm extremely curious about, however; the Ni-Cd cells can stand more heat than any other type of sealable storage cell—but they do use a water-solution electrolyte, and if the batteries get up to some 250° C. it'll take some fancy pressurization to keep the electrolyte from baking out! I know they've done some slightly miraculous things in the way of cryogenic storage systems that are so well insulated that a 20-liter liquid helium flask can be used to store the liquefied stuff at 4°A. for a week or so. Maybe they can keep a battery bank in a sort of cryogenic insulated tank that's insulated well enough to keep it from boiling over during a several-days exposure to the unshielded noon sun on the Moon. But it'll be a good trick!

However—Surveyor paid off with the very first photograph it sent back. (And for a long-time sciencefictioneer, those shots appearing on the TV set screen with the label "Live . . . from the surface of the Moon" were a kind of pay-off too! And the shots of the JPL lab control center, and of the Goldstone Tracking equipment were obviously movie sets made up from our April 1946 cover for George O. Smith's "Pattern for Conquest"!)

The absolute and total success of Surveyor seems to me to have been about equivalent in probability to the poker player who successfully draws to an inside open in a royal straight flush.

The United States can well claim to have done a magnificent job of designing and constructing some highly sophisticated and astonishingly competent space equipment. And it's obviously true that luck doesn't happen to people who don't do a lot of hard work preparing for it to happen.

But . . . well, let's be reasonably honest.

Surveyor I's incredible success was a Royal Straight Flush sort of hand. We were lucky beyond any rational prediction.

Coming as it did right smack in the middle of the most thoroughly lucked-out space mission we've attempted—the repeated Gemini 9 breakdowns—we really can't claim to be quite as good as Surveyor I would seem to indicate.

And I can't help having a certain amount of wry sympathy for the unfortunate, hard-luck cases in the Russian Space Agency in charge of their soft-landing Lunar probes. Their Lunas #1, 2, 3, et cetera, were duds. They finally did make the first soft-landing on the Moon, had the British steal some of their thunder by releasing the Russian moon-probe pictures before they did, and got nine critically important pictures from the lunar surface before their gadget quit.

There's no argument; the Russians were first to get photographs from the Moon's surface.

But—the first-try absolute success of Surveyor I is a little hard to take. And that it isn't a basketball size gadget that "soft" landed at a couple hundred kilometers per hour, but an immense, complex, highly responsive robot that could have landed a cargo of eggs without cracking a shell, and that it's sent hundreds of magnificent photographs, scanning in all directions on command—well, if you were one of the Russian engineers, wouldn't you feel Lady Luck was anything but a lady?


—The Editor.

[PTY]

Astounding, august 1938. 

[PTY]

[Gaff]

Editorial prvog Astounding Stories of Super-Science (izraslog kasnije u Analog, jelte) iz januara 1930.

Introducing—

                        ASTOUNDING STORIES



           What are  "astounding" stories?
           Well, if  you lived in Europe in 1490, and someone told you the earth was round and moved around the sun —that would have been an "astounding" story.
           Or if you lived in 1844, and were told that some day men a thousand miles apart would be able to talk to each other through a little wire—or without any wire at all--that would have been another.   
           Or if, in 1900, they predicted ocean-crossing airplanes and submarines, world-girdling Zeppelins, sixty-story buildings, radio, metal that can be made to resist gravity and float in the air—these would have been other "astounding" stories.
           To-day, time has gone by, and all these things are commonplace. That is the only--real difference between the astounding and the commonpIace--Time.
           To-morrow, more astounding things are going to
happen. Your children—or their children—are going to take a trip to the moon. They will be able to render themselves invisible—a problem that has already been partly solved. They will be able to disintegrate their bodies in New York and re¬integrate them in China—and in a matter of seconds.
            Astounding? Indeed, yes.
            Impossible? Well—television would have been impossible, almost unthinkable, ten years ago.
            Now you will see the kind of magazine that it  is our pleasure to offer you beginning with this, the first number  of ASTOUNDING STORIES.
            It is a magazine whose stories will anticipate the super-scientific achievements of To-morrow—whose stories will not only be strictly accurate in their science but will be  vividly, dramatically and thrillingly told.
            Already we have secured stories by some of the finest writers of fantasy in the world—men such as Ray Cum- mings, Murray Leinster, Captain S. P. Meek, Harl Vincent, R. F. Starzi and Victor Rousseau.   
            So—order your next month's copy of ASTOUNDING STORIES in advance !


                                                                                                   —The Editor.         

[Gaff]

Iz 1952.



I sadržaj




Iz 1952.




Iz 1951.




Iz 1944.

[Karl Rosman]

Moze li se ovo negde naci u elektronskom formatu? 

[Gaff]

Oktobar 1941.





Ilustracija iz februarskog (1940.) izdanja istog magazina

[Gaff]

April 1939.

[Gaff]

E ovo je iz jula 1948.

[divča]

Moze li se ovo negde naci u elektronskom formatu?  

Počelo dosta toga na Gutenbergu da se pojavljuje, zbog datuma već odlazi u public domain - a što se tiče nezavisnih skenera entuzijasta ovaj je dobar. (Na linku je post sa linkovima ka rapidšeru za skenirane Galaxy časopise, a evo nađoh i Astounding). Bio je i neki ogroman torent sa hrpom tih palpova prastarih, pogledaj malo po pretraživačima.
Inače, ovaj lik detaljno prati i prikazuje sve živo od besplatnog kratkog SF-a što se pojavi na webu, uglavnom tog prastarog.

[divča]

A evo ovde ima sistematizovana arhiva korica palp SF časopisa - nije apdejtovan nekoliko godina, pa sam ga mirorovao na hard disk, ako ispari...

Našo još jedan: Amazing

Edit: nešto ne umem sa ovim tagovima...

[Karl Rosman]

Salji tagove na pm!  Mada iskopao sam vec vecinu...

[Gaff]

Novembar 1939.

[PTY]

 Naš Gaff je veliki poklonik rane faze SFa... 
(a ko i ne bi bi naklonjen tako šarmantnom detinjstvu genijalnog žanra.  )

A kad smo već kod šarma, da se i ja ubacim sa jednom od najdražih mi žanrovskih palp uspomena iz detinjstva:

[PTY]

Da, da... Kosmički Putnici 

Priznajem da mi interpretacija kroz strip nije baš najbliža forma komunikacije, ali sa ovim stripom sam se "pronašla" s onom vrstom lakoće zbog koje čovek ceo život nastavlja da juri žanr i pored svih njegovih 99% mana, sve se nadajući da će opet naići na jedan od takvih tektonskih susreta kojima se inače tepa "ljubav na prvi pogled".   

[PTY]

I pošto ja ama baš ništa o stripu ne znam, mogu samo da iznesem par subjektivnih zapažanja o ovom stripu konkretno, to iz striktno laičke perspektive jednog krajnje pristrasnog konzumenta: genijalan mi je, eto. I danas, ne samo onda: genijalan mi je taj crtež, tako maštovit i pun finesa, genijalan mi je taj ozbiljni pristup neozbiljnoj temi, genijalna mi je sva ta pažnja posvećena detalju, fantastičnim pejzažima i sporednim likovima, genijalna mi je spejs-opera ljubavnog četverougla (mehmeh, 3 žene i jedan muškarac), genijalna mi je i melodrama trivijalne karakterizacije u ekstraneobičnim okolnostima... ma, sve mi je u stripu genijalno. 

(Eto, možda mi brat Muhamed kaže par suvislijih reči o ovom dragulju... tek da shvatim kako me je to strip kupio na ovako duuuge staze... )

[PTY]

(Ah, aj am silisili grl samtajmz...   )

[Mica Milovanovic]

Kad smo već kod početaka, jedan od mojih omiljenih ranih autora je Stanley G. Weinbaum i njegova knjiga



Praktično nepoznat kod nas. Samo su u Hrvatskoj objavljene njegove dve priče "A Martian Odyssey" 7/34 Wonder i "Valley of Dreams" in 11/34 Wonder. Da li ima još nešto ne znam. Živa šteta što je tako rano umro...

[Gaff]

Ima ga i u podosta Astounding-ova.

[PTY]

Jedan od najpoznatijih, najznačajnijih, najvoljenijih, najčitanijih i najsvestranijih bardova SF žanra nudi par zapažanja na brainpickings.com:


"Once we have computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries where anyone can ask any question and be given answers, be given reference materials, be something you're interested in knowing, from an early age, however silly it might seem to someone else... that's what YOU are interested in, and you can ask, and you can find out, and you can do it in your own home, at your own speed, in your own direction, in your own time... Then, everyone would enjoy learning. Nowadays, what people call learning is forced on you, and everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed in class, and everyone is different." ~ Isaac Asimov


Isaac Asimov

[Melkor]

Najbolji komentar na youtube-u

check those glasses.  asimov was totally an original hipster.

Drugi deo, gde govori o obrazovanju, mi je najbolji.

[Perin]

Jedan od najpoznatijih, najznačajnijih, najvoljenijih, najčitanijih i najsvestranijih bardova SF žanra nudi par zapažanja na brainpickings.com:


"Once we have computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries where anyone can ask any question and be given answers, be given reference materials, be something you're interested in knowing, from an early age, however silly it might seem to someone else... that's what YOU are interested in, and you can ask, and you can find out, and you can do it in your own home, at your own speed, in your own direction, in your own time... Then, everyone would enjoy learning. Nowadays, what people call learning is forced on you, and everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed in class, and everyone is different." ~ Isaac Asimov


Isaac Asimov

Ovo je sjajno. Naročito zapažanje koje je Lidija citirala. Maslov i još neki psiholozi upravo govore o tome da je školovanje forsiranje pojedinca u šablon, da je to možda najveća stvar tokom odrastanja koja ubija kreativnost kod pojedinca. Sjajno.

[Gaff]

Wonder Stories, Septembar 1930.

("The Magazine of Prophetic Fiction")

[Gaff]

Ilustracija, Wonder Stories, decembar 1930.

[Gaff]

Ilustracija priče "The Time Tragedy" Raymond A. Palmera, Wonder Stories, decembar 1934.

[Mica Milovanovic]

U poslednjem UBIQ-u, br. 7, ima zanimljiv tekst Darka Suvina "Weinbaumovi znanstveno-fantastični tuđinci kao nedarvinističke parabole"

[Gaff]

[Gaff]

Fantastic Universe, Novembar 1955.

[Gaff]

Ovo je deo Heinleinovog članka ("Where to?"), objavljenog februara 1952. u Galaxy Science Fiction-u.

"...the curve of human achievement."

[Gaff]

Editorial prvog broja magazina Science Fiction, mart 1939.

[Gaff]

Galaxy Science Fiction, oktobar 1952.








Žurka na nivou! Ko prepozna Asimova, častim ga/je pivom oktobra 2052.

[Gaff]

U međuvremenu...

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/03/birth-of-steampunk.html

[Gaff]

Eto, da znate ko je ko.

[PTY]

Čoveče... nisi nikom dao šanse ni pivo da zaradi... 

[Mica Milovanovic]

Ja sam prepoznao Bočka!

[Gaff]

Galaxy Science Fiction, jun 1951.

[Gaff]

Galaxy Science Fiction, novembar 1952.







(desi se i najboljima)

[Mica Milovanovic]

Misliš "ISSAAC" 

[Mica Milovanovic]

BTW, kakva je ono petokraka? Specijalno komunističko izdanje?

[Gaff]

Misliš "ISSAAC" 

Da, ISSAAC. Mada, možda i nije greška nego je neko predvideo budući naziv Međunarodne Svemirske Stanice (kada je već nešto slično i na naslovnici).

[Mica Milovanovic]

Malo rane erotike u SFu

[Gaff]

Lep primer za to koja im je bila ciljna grupa. Nije to bilo retko.

U detektiv/horor-palpu je toga bilo čak i ranije, češće i "tvrđe". Prikladno, naravno, vremenu. Evo recimo, klasična sado-scena s naslovnice iz aprila 1938.

[Gaff]

If, januar 1953.

[Melkor]

http://geektyrant.com/news/2011/3/9/7-old-school-sci-fi-movie-posters-that-sold-for-2-million-bu.html

[Melkor]

Fred Pohl o Alfiju Besteru

[Gaff]

Galaxy Science Fiction, januar 1952.

[Tripp]

hvala na naslovnicama i sajtovima

MICI >> stvarno je steta sto se Weinbaum nije vise prevodio (njegov pandan, barem kada je u pitanju rana smrt istancanog autora, slobodno moze biti C.M. Kornbluth: samo sto ipak moram reci da je Kornbluth osjetno bolji autor): evo jos par stariteta za razmatranje, sa zbilja izvrsnim pricama/romanima: Algis Budrys (price i romani Michaelmas i Rogue Moon) i William Tenn (price i roman Of Men and Monsters) iznenadili su me originalnoscu svojeg pristupa nekim stvarima. 

Inace, zbilja dosta toga golden age-ovskog i pre-golden age moze se zateci u izvrsnim Asimovljevim antologijama BEFORE THE GOLDEN AGE i THE GOLDEN AGE. Ko ima mogucnosti, citav komplet se za bagatelu moze naruciti sa used-books sajtova (broji vise od 10 knjiga). Mnogo pomazu i ova kabasta NESFA-ina izdanja koja izbacuju komplet price mnogih dobrih starih, zaboravljenih autora. A must-have.   

Btw, da li neko zna dokle su Hrvati stigli sa Sterndzenovim pricama? Ja imam II i III knjigu. Ostatak sam morao nabaviti iz USA. Da li su oni ikada isli preko toma IV koji je najavljen u III knjizi? 


U ovu svrhu, valjalo bi na ovom mjestu postovati pojedine segmente .doc-ovanih skenova knjige NEW MAPS OF HELL (1960) Kingslija Ejmisa, jedne od prvih ozbiljnijih studija o poslijeratnom SF-u (primjerak te knjige, iz nekog razloga, sve je skuplji u polovnom formatu). U to vrijeme izgledalo je kao da SF knjizevnost propagira jedan Apdajk ili Belou. Mnogo dobrih uvida, ali od izuzetno inteligentnog covjeka koji SF cijeni najvecma zbog svojeg kvaliteta/poriva da zabavi.

S druge strane, Ejmis se jezio od evolucije koju je SF dosegao u tzv. New Wave fazi: on je cijenio samo stare vrijednosti (nije postovao literarna poigravanja sa bilo cime), a polemicka dostignuca ovoga pokreta skoro nimalo.

Docnije je Ejmis sa cuvenim britanskim sovjetologom i svojim velikim prijateljem, Robertom Conquestom, izbacio 5 tomova odlicne SF antologije SPECTRUM (od 1961, pa nadalje), koja je samo pomogla da se u ono doba krene sa daleko znacajnijim SF antologijama. Cak to potvrdjuje i Nicholls u Enciklopediji – na neki nacin, Ejmis je pomogao da SF prohoda i zadobije nesto znacajniji status u ondasnjem svijetu ([New Maps of Hell] "which was certainly the most influential critical work on sf up to that time, although not the most scholarly").

+ Drugo pitanje: Da li neko uopste zna gdje su se pogubili svi oni neprocjenjivi, fascinantni listinzi sa Locusa koji su mi nekada odmah ispadali na prvoj strani kada bih guglovao neku SF antologiju ili zbirku, bilo sta zanrovsko? Nije to valjda negdje sklonjeno i treba vam specijalni pristup? Najednom mi je postalo ekstremno tesko da ih pronadjem, mada, opet, nikada nisam bio ekspert za pretrage.   


Dabome, za kraj, kao slag na tortu, prilazem odlicnu knjigu jednog od, uz Zizeka, najvecih [marksistickih] teoreticara danasnjice Frederika Dzejmisona, o utopiji u SF zanru iskazanu kroz svojevrstan politicki svjetonazor [odlicno koriscenje motiva iz radova K.S. Robinsona, Filipa Dika i Olafa Stejpldona, izmedju ostalih], nesto sto bi trebalo odmah prevesti, da je srece... Vrijedi svake pare koju izmuze iz vas. A od nedavno i na Netu!

Hocu reci, ima smisla kada velikani poput Dzejmisona i Ejmisa pricaju o ovome zanru, kakav god kontekst tom prilikom da odaberu, ako shvatate sta hocu da kazem.   

Archaeologies of the Future (Poetics of Social Forms)
By Fredric Jameson



    * Publisher:   Verso
    * Number Of Pages:   480
    * Publication Date:   2005-10-17
   

Product Description:

In an age of globalization characterized by the dizzying technologies of the First World, and the social disintegration of the Third, is the concept of utopia still meaningful?

Archaeologies of the Future, Jameson's most substantial work since Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, investigates the development of this form since Thomas More, and interrogates the functions of utopian thinking in a post-Communist age.

The relationship between utopia and science fiction is explored through the representations of otherness—alien life and alien worlds—and a study of the works of Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, William Gibson, Brian Aldiss, Kim Stanley Robinson and more. Jameson's essential essays, including "The Desire Called Utopia," conclude with an examination of the opposing positions on utopia and an assessment of its political value today.Archaeologies of the Future is the third volume, after Postmodernism and A Singular Modernity, of Jameson's project on the Poetics of Social Forms.


http://megaupload.com/?d=4QLPO3CI

  password: ebooksclub.org

[Mica Milovanovic]

Ne znam za Sterdžena u Hrvatskoj, ali i ja mislim da su samo tri objavljena. Mogu da proverim za desetak dana kad odem tamo. Stalno sam izbegavao da ih kupujem, jer su prilično skupe, a više me zanima savremena Hrvatska scena, pa ne može sve da se postigne - ni materijalno ni da se pročita. Možda ću sada ipak da vidim da kupim ako je nešto od toga ostalo. Kapitalan projekat, pa treba poštovati.

Weinbaum je, naravno, mnogo zanimljiviji sa istorijskog stanovišta, nego kao pisac. Ipak, ima nešto u njegovom načinu pristupa svetu što mi se sviđa. Šteta što je tako rano umro.

Za Locus možda Melkor zna? I ja sam ti duduk za pretrage.

Hvala za Jamesona. Još da nađem vremena da pročitam