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Jonathan Crocker
12-25-2015
00:42 UT
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And done!
Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.
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Jim Broshot
12-24-2015
23:36 UT
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On 12/22/2015 8:14 AM, QT - David PiperFan Johnson wrote:
> QT| ~ Piper Fans:
>
> I've just paid the annual subscription fee (US$49.00) required to
> keep this list/forum free of advertisements and to provide expanded
> functionality such as the capability to post images. You can support
> the continued ad-free availability of this shared resource by making
> a contribution using the PayPal Donate link at the top of the
> Discussion Forum page linked below. (You don't need a PayPal account
> to make a donation, just a credit card.) Thank you for whatever level
> of support you can afford.
>
> Best wishes for the holidays, however you celebrate them.
And done.
Even though like the other fellow, I don't post much. The discussions are usually fascinating.
Caveat: LITTLE FUZZY is my LEAST FAVORITE Piper book.
Merry Christmas to all.
Jim Broshot
---
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Gilmoure
12-24-2015
21:59 UT
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Hope my bit helps. Been with you guys a long time, even if I don't speak up much.
Glenn
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Tom Rogers
12-24-2015
21:14 UT
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David, For all that you do in keeping this list alive and active, I thank you. My donation is the least I can do to say thanks. To you and to all the Piper fans out there, have a safe, healthy and happy holiday! "Festivus for the rest of us!" Tom Edited 12-24-2015 21:15
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David "PiperFan" Johnson  12-22-2015
14:14 UT
|
~
Piper Fans:
I've just paid the annual subscription fee
(US$49.00) required to keep this list/forum free of advertisements and
to provide expanded functionality such as the capability to post images.
You can support the continued ad-free availability of this shared
resource by making a contribution using the PayPal Donate link at the
top of the Discussion Forum page linked below. (You don't need a PayPal
account to make a donation, just a credit card.) Thank you for whatever
level of support you can afford.
Best wishes for the holidays, however you celebrate them.
David
~
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David "PiperFan" Johnson 12-20-2015
16:43 UT
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~
Jonathan Crocker wrote:
> Of course you'd need to send someone to survey a system to
> get the exact info, but we're coming pretty close from here,
> which is a huge leap from fifty years ago.
Yes, but perhaps still not all that far from what Beam had in mind.
It
seems I was misremembering "When in the Course--." This is all we get
there about the previous explorations of the ~Stellex~:
"We came out to find a Terra-type planet. We spent four years and visited six systems; now we've found one."
No
details about those previous five systems, not even whether or not they
had planets. Nor do we get any details on how they decided to visit
any of those systems, about whether or not they had any information
which suggested they might have planets, Terra-type or not.
What I
was remembering was from "Naudsonce" which occurs even farther out in
the Future History than "When in the Course--." Here's the POV
character, Mark Howell, musing at the beginning of that yarn:
"They
had entered eleven systems, and made landings on eight planets. Three
had been reasonably close to Terra-type. There had been Fafnir;
conditions there would correspond to Terra during the Cretaceous Period,
but any Cretaceous dinosaur would have been cute and cuddly to the
things on Fafnir. Then there had been Imhotep; in twenty or thirty
thousand years, it would be a fine planet, but at present it was
undergoing an extensive glaciation. And Irminsul, covered with forests
of gigantic trees; it would have been fine except for the fauna, which
was nasty, especially a race of subsapient near-humanoids who had just
gotten as far as clubs and _coup-de-poing_ axes."
Even here we
don't know if each of those eleven systems had planets, though that
eight had planets that warranted some sort of landing suggests that they
likely weren't _less_ "Terra-type" than, say, Venus or Mars (at least
as Beam conceived of those planets when he was writing). Clearly, even
by the time of the ~Hubert Penrose~ expedition Federation explorers
couldn't tell at interstellar distances the differences between planets
like Fafnir and Imhotep and Irminsul and those five other planets on
which the ~Penrose~ crew made landings.
None of what we've
learned about actual exoplanets so far contradicts any of this and it
seems unlikely we're going to be able to tell the difference between an
Earth and a Venus or Mars (even as Beam imagined them--with, for
example, primitive fauna living in Martian lowlands)--or a Fafnir or
Imhotep or Irminsul--at interstellar differences any time soon.
Tweedle-eedle-oodly-een!
David
--
"We
talk glibly about ten to the hundredth power, but emotionally we still
count, 'One, Two, Three, Many.'" - Otto Harkaman (H. Beam Piper), ~Space
Viking~
~
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David Sooby
12-20-2015
16:15 UT
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Jonathan Crocker said:
> If I wanted to, I could use equations for temperature and distance and inverse square laws
> and get an estimate of what surface conditions are like, but barring some exceptional
> freakiness on that planet, already that planet would be a poor candidate for a trip in the Stellex.
Yes,
we should be able to make an estimate of whether or not a given
exoplanet is within the "life zone" of the star; the region where water
is liquid. Exactly how accurate that estimate will be, I couldn't say,
and it likely depends on a lot of factors, such as how far away the star
is.
But, for example, if the orbits of Terra and Mars were
swapped, Mars would still be a dead planet, at least according to
current theories.
We can go further in applying current theory,
if you like. The more information we get about conditions on exoplanets,
the more it looks like Terra is a "Goldilocks" planet; not too hot, not
too cold... just right! For example, according to theory, our outsized
moon is responsible for stabilizing Terra's orbit, which has helped
greatly in keeping the ecosystem's average temperature from wandering
too far into the "too hot" or "too cold" realms, which could kill off
everything more complex than a microbe.
This would make fully
inhabitable planets quite rare indeed. And that might not be a bad
thing, as a constraint on the Piperverse. Even late in the Piperverse
history, one gets the impression that fully habitable planets are rare
and valuable things. This is not a "Star Trek" universe, where seemingly
every 2nd or 3rd stellar system has an intelligent native life form!
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Jonathan Crocker
12-20-2015
12:09 UT
|
Of course you'd need to send someone to survey a system to get the exact
info, but we're coming pretty close from here, which is a huge leap
from fifty years ago.
If you take a look at the list of known exoplanets at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exoplanets
they have a lot of physical information on most of them already.
So
for example, if I look at the 9th planet on the list at
OGLE-05-whatever, I can see the stellar temperature (about 2/3 that of
our star) and the fact that the planet is so far from the star that it
takes 3500 days, almost ten years, for it to complete one orbit around
the star.
If I wanted to, I could use equations for temperature
and distance and inverse square laws and get an estimate of what
surface conditions are like, but barring some exceptional freakiness on
that planet, already that planet would be a poor candidate for a trip in
the Stellex.
Roughly 20-25% of the planets already have a temperature listed, which helps eliminate bad prospects.
And this is just the 'confirmed' list - there's another few thousand potentials that Kepler found, awaiting confirmation.
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David Sooby
12-20-2015
09:55 UT
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David Johnson said:
> We may know which stars have planets but we're still a long way from being able to tell if
> those planets are more like Earth than like Venus or Mars.
Well
said. What I read about current astronomical observations of exoplanets
sounds like there's a lot of conjecture going on. We may be able to
tell the rough mass of a planet, but I don't think we can tell what kind
of atmosphere a terrestrial planet (like Mercury, Venus, Mars, or
Terra) has, even in the relatively rare cases we have been able to
detect the presence of a planet smaller than a gas giant.
In other words: It makes sense that in the Piperverse, they really do need to visit the system to properly survey the planets.
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David Johnson
12-20-2015
05:13 UT
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~
Jonathan Crocker wrote:
> Funny how the technology has
> changed in fifty years - "When in
> the Course" has the Stellex going
> from system to system hoping to
> find a decent planet, and now we
> have over 2000 known
> exoplanets without a single
> working hyperdrive.
I
have always assumed that early Federation era explorers like those
aboard the ~Stellex~ were using some sort of long-range observations to
choose the star-planetary systems they visited. Thus, for example, the
~Stellex~ explorers did find _some_sort_ of world at each of their prior
destinations. (I suppose it's possible they'd also visited stars that
turned out not to have planets, though there's no mention of that sort
of thing in the yarn itself.)
So, fifty years hasn't quite yet
brought us to another "~Sputnik~ moment" in Beam's Future History. We
may know which stars have planets but we're still a long way from being
able to tell if those planets are more like Earth than like Venus or
Mars. That doesn't seem to be too much different from what things must
have been like for the crew of the ~Stellex~ before they left Terra. . .
.
Ptosphes!
David
~
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Jonathan Crocker
12-19-2015
20:41 UT
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I don't know if "Goldilocks" or "Little Fuzzy" would pass muster for the
naming committee - from some of the other names that got picked, I
wouldn't bet any money that they would be accepted, though, even if you
could demonstrate they weren't pets.
Funny how the technology has
changed in fifty years - "When in the Course" has the Stellex going
from system to system hoping to find a decent planet, and now we have
over 2000 known exoplanets without a single working hyperdrive.
I'd swap in a minute, of course.
Interested
"screed" - I saw a documentary a few years back claiming the exact
opposite, that "Pluto" was a big commercial bandwagon at the time, and
Walt wanted a piece of that pie.
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David Sooby
12-18-2015
05:22 UT
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Tom Rogers wrote:
>>(He ducks...)
>
> Shouldn't that be, "He Donalds ..."?
:) I did think of changing my post to read "(He (Donald) Ducks...), but decided to let my readers think of that pun themselves.
Oddly
enough, I read not so long ago a longish screed claiming that the
Disney dog was -not- named for the newly discovered planet* Pluto,
despite the fact that the cartoon dog was first called "Pluto" in a film
released just a few months after Pluto's discovery. Personally I don't
buy it, because why in Hades would Disney name a sweet, clownish dog
after a ghod of the underworld? It makes much more sense if the name was
a topical reference to the newly discovered planet.
*It is a planet... but a minor planet, not the major planet it was thought to be when discovered.
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Tom Rogers
12-17-2015
16:29 UT
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David Sooby wrote:
>But isn't Pluto named for Mickey Mouse's dog?
>(He ducks...)
Shouldn't that be, "He Donalds ..."?
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Jackson Russell
12-17-2015
16:27 UT
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I think Kepler 189 (I think that's the number) should be called
Zarathustra. Earth-ish and about 500 light years from Terra. Maybe it
has some furry little hominids scurrying about.
Jack
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David Johnson
12-17-2015
15:47 UT
|
~
Jonathan Crocker wrote:
> The International Astronomical Union had a contest to name a bunch of exoplanets and stars,
>
Huh, in the rules for the process, they specifically state "it is not
allowed to propose: Names of pet animals." These guys are no fun.
You're not suggesting, are you, that an exoplanet couldn't be named "Little Fuzzy" or "Goldilocks"? ;)
Yeek!
David
~
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jbroshot@fidnet.com
12-16-2015
19:44 UT
|
-----Original Message-----
From: "QT - David Sooby" <qtopic-42-tnfVKeAH3s4T@quicktopic.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2015 1:06am
To: "QT topic subscribers" <qtopic-subs@quicktopic.com>
Subject: Zarthani.net's H. Beam Piper List
QT|
"it is not allowed to propose: Names of pet animals."
But isn't Pluto named for Mickey Mouse's dog?
(He ducks...)
______________________________________
To state the obvious, no. Its named after the God of the Underwold
The names of the moons are definitely un-Disney-ish
Beyond Charon orbit Pluto's smaller circumbinary moons, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra, respectively. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto#Satellites ]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto#Satellites )
Jim Broshot
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David Sooby
12-16-2015
07:06 UT
|
"it is not allowed to propose: Names of pet animals."
But isn't Pluto named for Mickey Mouse's dog?
(He ducks...)
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Jonathan Crocker
12-16-2015
05:09 UT
|
The International Astronomical Union had a contest to name a bunch of
exoplanets and stars, since names like "HD 149026 b" are a bit
technical.
Here's the link to all the results -
http://nameexoworlds.iau.org/names
One
of the names, for Ain b (epsilon Tauri b) of course, is Amateru. It
turns out the name originally proposed, Amaterasu, is already used for
an asteroid.
Huh, in the rules for the process, they
specifically state "it is not allowed to propose: Names of pet
animals." These guys are no fun.
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Jim Broshot
12-12-2015
04:21 UT
|
On 12/5/2015 10:54 PM, QT - Jonathan Crocker wrote:
> QT| Those are all good choices - I'd like to have seen what Kirk
> Douglass or Jack Palance would have done with the role - but I don't
> know if we should assume it was be Oscar worthies from the year of
> publication.
> But if you add a few years' wiggle room to it, you get to cast Max
> von Sydow as Carlos von Schlichten, and von Sydow's famous work in
> the Seventh Seal was from 1957. He was only 28 in 1957 (and was
> already working in 1952 in Sweden), but if Hollywood can make a 5'2"
> hero seem taller than a 5'8" leading lady, grey hair is child's
> play.
Better yet
Richard Todd (Academy Award Nominee 1949)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Todd
(starred in "The Dambusters", scenes of which were copied/borrowed for STAR WARS)
Jim Broshot
---
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Spam deleted by QuickTopic 01-19-2016 06:08
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David "PiperFan" Johnson 12-05-2015
23:22 UT
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~
Casting Piper: Uller Uprising, 1952 original
We've often had
discussions over the years about casting actors for characters in
different Piper yarns. I want to come at this exercise a bit
differently, narrowing the range of choices for casting to those actors
who were doing their best work at the time the Piper yarn appeared. We
might try this exercise with the original publications of Piper's works,
and then perhaps again with the reprints in the '70s and '80s.
The
idea here is to work toward a sort of agreement: _that's_ what Princess
Rylla would look like, or _he's_ definitely Lucas Trask. By limiting
the choices from "every actor throughout time" to a group of actors
working in a given period, we're more likely to find actors whom many of
us believe fit the character.
To get started, let's begin with
the first Terro-human Future History yarn, ~Uller Uprising~, first
published in 1952. Our first character to cast, of course, is Carlos
Von Schlichten.
The actors nominated for an Oscar for "Best Actor" or "Best Supporting Actor" in 1952 (at the 1953 Academy Awards) were:
Gary Cooper (High Noon, winner)
Marlon Brando (Viva Zapata!)
Kirk Douglas (The Bad and the Beautiful)
Jose Ferrer (Moulin Rouge)
Alec Guiness (The Lavender Hill Mob)
Anthony Quinn (Viva Zapata!, winner)
Arthur Hunnicut (The Big Sky)
Victor McLaglen (The Quiet Man)
Jack Palance (Sudden Fear)
Richard Burton (My Cousin Rachel)
(See https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1953 )
And the actors nominated for an Emmy for "Best Actor" in 1952 were:
Thomas Mitchel (winner)
Jack Webb
John Forsythe
Charlton Heston
John Newland
Vaughn Taylor
(See http://www.emmys.com/awards/nominees-winners/1953/ )
There are some good choices here. My first: Kirk Douglas. Shave his head, give him a monocle and he's Von Schlichten:
http://www.themoviescene.co.uk/reviews/_img/1736-2.jpg
(Second choices here would be Palance--again, imagine him in 1952 with shaved head and monocle--and Charlton Heston.)
Now on to "small and dark" Paula Quinton.
The actors nominated for an Oscar for "Best Actress" or "Best Supporting Actress" in 1952 were:
Shirley Booth (Come Back, Little Sheba, winner)
Joan Crawford (Sudden Fear)
Bette Davis (The Star)
Julie Harris (The Member of the Wedding)
Susan Hayward (With a Song in My Heart)
Gloria Grahame (The Bad and the Beautiful, winner)
Jean Hagen (Singing in the Rain)
Colette Marchand (Moulin Rouge)
Terry Moore (Come Back, Little Sheba)
Thelma Ritter (With a Song in My Heart)
And the actors nominated for Emmy for "Best Actress" in 1952 were:
Helen Hayes (winner)
June Lockhart
Maria Riva
Peggy Wood
Sarah Churchill
Unfortunately,
not many "small and dark" choices here. (Such was Hollywood in the
early '50s.) Maybe Moore, but she was a bit young at the time and,
besides, who remembers her? I'm going to take a bit wider scan and go
with Jean Peters, who co-starred with Brando in ~Viva Zapata!~:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Viva_Za...screenshot_(17).jpg
Okay,
your turn now. I think you get the drill. Stick with folks who were
working at the time the yarn was published. (No need to stick to Oscar
and Emmy nominees; it's just a convenient way to identify a group of
actors in a given year.)
So who is your Carlos Von Schlichten? Your Paula Quinton?
Once we've seen a few other choices, we'll move on to another Piper work.
Ready! Set! Action!
David
--
"Why
Walt Disney bought the movie rights to ['Rebel Raider'], I've never
figured out. Will Colonel Mosby be played by Mickey Mouse, and General
Phil Sheridan by Donald Duck? It's baffling. However, I was glad to get
the check." - H. Beam Piper, ~The Pennsy~ interview, 1953
~
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David "PiperFan" Johnson 12-05-2015
17:52 UT
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~
Paratimers and Fourth Level, Hispano-Columbian Language
Been
rereading the Paratime yarn "Last Enemy"--to get a sense of how Beam
might have thought about Venus in the Future History--and wondered about
the Paratimers' use of Fourth Level, Hispano-Columbian Sector language
to refer to Earth and other Sol system planets like Venus. So, we have
the Paratimers talking about "_zerfa_," a Venusian crop--apparently on
both Second Level Akor Neb Sector and on Home Time Line--similar to
tobacco with "_zerfa_" written in italics but with "tobacco" written
without any highlighting.
Beam has a challenge here and
throughout the Paratime yarns with the Paratimers' language and his
Fourth Level, Hispano-Columbian Sector readers. Often the Paratimers
refer to Earth--Terra--geography using Fourth Level, Hispano-Columbian
terms, and at times they explicitly note that they are using "out-timer"
language. On other occasions though it's simply "Sicily" or "Europe" as
if those words--unlike "_zerfa_"--were Home Time Line terms.
The
answer, I think, would have been to write terms like "zerfa" _and_
"tobacco" _both_ in italics, drawing attention to their common "exotic"
(read: "out-time") nature. This practice then could have been extended
to geography and other Fourth Level, Hispano-Columbian sector terms.
Thus, Tortha Karf would have retired not simply to "Sicily" but rather
to "_Sicily_."
Assassins' Truce!
David
--
"Oh, my
people had many gods. There was Conformity, and Authority, and Expense
Account, and Opinion. And there was Status, whose symbols were many,
and who rode in the great chariot Cadillac, which was almost a god
itself. And there was Atom-bomb, the dread destroyer, who would some
day come to end the world. None were very good gods, and I worshiped
none of them." - Calvin Morrison (H. Beam Piper), ~Lord Kalvan of
Otherwhen~
~
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