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Sunlight Through The Shadows
Volume I, Issue 6 Dec. 1, 1993
Welcome........................................Joe DeRouen
Editorial......................................Joe DeRouen
Staff of STTS.............................................
Special Survey............................................
We're Now Paying For Articles! <Read this>................
------------------ MONTHLY COLUMNS -----------------------
Letters to the Editor.....................................
The Question & Answers Session............................
Upcoming Issues & News....................................
????????????? Advertisement-Channel 1 BBS
------------------ FEATURE ARTICLES ----------------------
Yule.........................................Brigid Childs
State of the Art For a While...................Joe DeRouen
STTS Survey Results............................Joe DeRouen
? Advertisement-Exec-PC BBS
---------------------- REVIEWS ---------------------------
(Movie) Addams Family Values.................Bruce Diamond
(Movie) Mrs. Doubtfire.......................Bruce Diamond
(Movie) A Perfect World......................Bruce Diamond
(Music) Big Times In A Small Town/Various......Joe DeRouen
(Music) Let There Be Peace On Earth/V.Gill ..Wendy Bryson
(Book) Jumper/Steven Gould.....................Joe DeRouen
(Book) Trekking Into Literature...............Robert McKay
(Shareware) Epic Pinball.......................Joe DeRouen
? Advertisement-Legend of The Red Dragon
---------------------- FICTION ---------------------------
Airborne......................................Robert McKay
The Squirrels...............................L. Shawn Aiken
The Caravan.....................................A.M.Eckard
? Advertisement-T&J Software
---------------------- POETRY ----------------------------
A Christmas Trilogy: Enough For Me.............Joe DeRouen
Gray House Cat....................................Jim Reid
Souls Alone................................Shelley Suzanne
Ashen..........................................Gage Steele
Mi'Lord.....................................Patricia Meeks
A Godly Person.................................J. Guenther
Personal Notes In Black Mirrors.............Michie Sidwell
In Time The Heart Will Wander.......................Tamara
? Advertisement-Winterfest '93 BBS Party
----------------------- HUMOUR ---------------------------
Top Ten List...................................Joe DeRouen
Technically The Night Before Christmas......Author Unknown
? Advertisement-Chrysalis BBS
-------------------- INFORMATION -------------------------
How to get STTS Magazine..................................
** SPECIAL OFFER!! **.....................................
Submission Information....................................
Advertiser Information (Businesses & Personal)............
Contact Points............................................
Distribution Sites........................................
Distribution Via Networks.................................
End Notes......................................Joe DeRouen
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Welcome
Copyright (c) 1993, Joe DeRouen
All rights reserved
Welcome to Sunlight Through The Shadows magazine! In this issue, as well
as in the future, STTS will strive to bring you the best in fiction,
poetry, reviews, article, and other assorted reading material.
STTS Magazine has no general "theme" aside from good writing, innovative
concepts, and the unique execution of those concepts.
STTS wouldn't have been possible without the aid, support, and guidance
of three women:
Inez Harrison, publisher of Poetry In Motion newsletter. Her's was the
first electronic magazine I ever laid eyes upon, and also the first such
magazine to publish my work. She's given me advice, and, more
importantly, inspiration.
Lucia Chambers, publisher of Smoke & Mirrors Elec. Magazine and head of
Pen & Brush Network. She gave me advice on running a magazine,
encouragement, and hints as to the kind of people to look for in
writers.
Heather DeRouen, my wife. Listed last here, but always first in my
heart. She's proofread manuscripts, inspired me, listened to me, and,
most importantly, loved me. Never could I find a better woman to live
life by my side, nor a better friend.
Now that that's said and done... Again, welcome to Sunlight Through The
Shadows Magazine! I hope you enjoy it.
Joe DeRouen
STTS Editorial
Copyright (c) 1993, Joe DeRouen
All rights reserved
Changes, changes, changes. There's been a lot of changes at STTS
magazine, most of them good.
* Pen & Brush Network now carries an international STTS Magazine
Conference! Users from all around the US and world can use this
conference to discuss the magazine, submit stories and articles,
and give suggestions and comments.
* Effective January 1st, 1994, we'll be PAYING writers for their works!
That's right, paying. Check out the article STTS NOW PAYS FOR
SUBMISSIONS elsewhere in this issue for more details. The payments
are more or less just honorariums ($2.00 for a fiction piece, $1.00
for anything else) but it's a start. We're also holding a b-annual
(twice a year) contest to judge the best we've published in three
categories: fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The winners in each
category will get a, respectively, $50.00, $25.00, and $25.00.
* Jason Malandro has left the staff of STTS. Though he'll still be
contributing to the magazine from time to time, Jason's studies
have forced him to move to Europe. Good luck Jason, and we all
wish you well!
Yes, there's been a lot of changes with STTS magazine, most of them
good. 1993 has been a great year for electronic magazine publishing, and
I've thoroughly enjoyed being a part of it all.
Have a great Christmas, Yule, or Hanukkah! Heck, while you're at it,
enjoy all three! I'll see you next year!
Joe DeRouen, Thanksgiving 1993
The Staff and Contributing Writers of Sunlight Through The Shadows
------------------------------------------------------------------
The Staff
---------
Joe DeRouen............................Publisher and Editor
Heather DeRouen........................Book Reviews
Bruce Diamond..........................Movie Reviews
Randy Shipp............................Movie Reviews
Gage Steele............................Feature Articles
Tamara.................................House Poet
Joe DeRouen publishes, edits, and writes for STTS magazine. He's had
poetry and fiction published in several on-line magazines and a few
paper publications as well. He's written exactly 1.5 novels, none of
which, alas, have seen the light of publication. He attends college
part-time in search of that always-elusive english degree. In his
spare time, he enjoys reading, running his BBS, collecting music,
playing with his five cats, singing opera, hunting pseudopods, and
most importantly spending time with his beautiful wife Heather.
Heather DeRouen writes software for the healthcare industry, CoSysOps
Sunlight Through The Shadows BBS, enjoys playing with her five cats,
cross-stitching, and reading. Most of all, she enjoys spending time
with her dapper, charming, witty, and handsome (not to mention modest)
husband Joe. Heather's help towards editing and proofreading this
magazine has been immeasurable.
Bruce Diamond, part-time pseudopod and ruler of a small island chain
off the coast of Chil?, spends his time imitating desk lamps when he
isn't watching and critiquing movies for LIGHTS OUT, his BBS movie
review publication (now syndicated to over 15 boards). Bruce started
reviewing movies for profit in 1978, as part of a science fiction
opinion column he authored for THE BUYER'S GUIDE FOR COMICS FANDOM
(now called THE COMICS BUYER'S GUIDE). LIGHTS OUT, now a year old, is
available through Bruce's distributor, Jay Gaines' BBS AMERICA
(214-994-0093). Bruce is a freelance writer and video producer in the
Dallas/Fort Worth area.
Randy Shipp is a sometimes-writer who specializes in half-finished
works, an idea he decided was chic and the sign of genius after
hearing about some unfinished symphony. The generous offer from Bruce
Diamond to join him in publishing (plus free movie passes!) led Randy
to take up movie criticism. When he's not picking movies apart, he's
showing conservative political thinkers the error of their ways,
reading, or playing bass or the guitar (depending on the day of the
week) He occasionally works selling computers, too. When he grows up,
he expects to teach high school history.
Gage Steele, illegitimate love child of Elvis Presley and Madonna, has
been calling BBS's since the early seventies. Having aspired to write
for an electronic magazine all her life, Gage is now living the
American dream. Aged somewhere between 21 and 43, she plans to
eventually get an english degree and teach foreign children not to
dangle their participles.
There is very little known about Tamara, and she prefers to let it
remain that way. She's a woman of mystery and prefers to remain hidden
in the shadows of the BBS world. (Enigmatic, don't you think?)
Contributing Writers
--------------------
Shawn Aiken............................Fiction
Wendy Bryson...........................CD Review
Lucia Chambers.........................RIP Cover
Brigid Childs..........................Feature
A.M. Eckard............................Fiction
J. Guenther............................Poetry
Jim Reid...............................Poetry
Robert McKay...........................Fiction
Patricia Meeks.........................Poetry
Michie Sidwell.........................Poetry
Shelley Suzanne........................Poetry
Author Unknown.........................Humour
L. Shawn Aiken dropped out of college when he realized that they
couldn't teach him the two things he wanted to do, live successfully,
and write. He had to find out these things all by himself on the
road. Thus he became a road scholar. After spending his life hopping
country to country, state to state, he now feels confident in his
abilities and is working on his literary career. His main endevour is
to become successful in the speculative fiction area, but he enjoys
writing all forms of literary art.
Wendy Bryson, the well traveled, well read, and highly exotic music
critic, (most famous for her works of the 1970's) speaks seven
languages, none of which are spoken on earth. If her writings baffle
you a little, don't feel too bad; she's puzzled by them as well.
Lucia Chambers, thirty-something, shares SysOp duties of Pen & Brush
BBS with her husband John. Aside from running a BBS and a network of
the same name, Lucia publishes Smoke & Mirrors, an on-line/elec.
magazine which features fiction, poetry, and recipes. She works as a
consultant in the Washington D.C. area and also writes for a living.
Brigid Childs is a practicing Wiccan solitaire in the Dallas/Ft Worth
area. She holds a master's degree in theatre from the University of
Houston and has worked in the entertainment field. With three
children, ages 16 years to 15 months, she also holds a PhD in
Motherhood. She is married to an aspiring writer of science fiction
and horror novels. Her previous writing credentials include
contributions to Bruce Diamond's LIGHTS OUT and a stint as copy
editor/reporter/chief cook and bottle washer on her company
newsletter.
A.M.Eckard started out writing short fiction and poetry in college and
then drifted away from it for twenty years. He spent that time
enamored of becoming a "Renaissance Man". He became a generalist in a
time of specialists and is finally getting back to writing. He can be
reached through the Internet as arthur.eckard@the-spa.com.
Grant Guenther, sometimes known as J. Guenther, confesses to be from a
long-lost Martian colony, but in-depth investigations reveals that he
was born and raised in a small but well-to-do community called
Hartland in Wisconsin. A senior, he has written several collections
of poems, and won many awards from his high school literary magazine,
including 1st place for poetry and short-short fiction. He is the
editor-in-chief of the school newspaper and writes as a humor
columnist (or at least he thinks so).
Jim Reid is a hard-working federal employee who lives in Virginia with
his lovely wife Kris and two equally pretty daughters. He manages
people for a living, programs shareware for the challenge, and writes
poetry to vent the stresses created by the other two activities.
Robert McKay was born in Hawthorne, California, one of the few native
Californians in existence. He calls the area north of Goffs home,
though he currently lives in Marlow, Oklahoma, and has in fact lived
in Texas and Oklahoma since 1980. The setting for several of his
stories comes from the desert west of Needles, where he grew up. He
has one wife and two daughters, meaning he's seriously outnumbered in
any argument. He writes mostly science fiction, with some horror
thrown in - Lovecraftian horror being his favorite, followed by
non-conventional vampire stories. He's been published in three
elecmags - Sunlight Through the Shadows, Smoke & Mirrors, and Ruby's
Pearls - and is currently waiting on the publication of two science
fiction novels on disk.
Considering herself a "closet writer" Tricia Meeks has spent most of
her life writing stories and poetry that no one ever sees ...until
now! Inspired by her friends, she has finally screwed together her
courage and let her poetry be exposed to the public realm. Outside of
writing, Tricia is a professional psychic, sings at Karaoke Clubs and
has dance for 20 years of her life. Her other interests include
camping, karate, reading, playing the keyboard occassionally, BBSing,
working in finance, and spending time with her dog and cat, Ringo &
B.J. and riding her horse Sudanna in Waxahachie. She is single and
has lived in Dallas all her life.
Shelley Suzanne lives in the Dallas area with her rock musician
husband Tom and their three kids Ralphie, Waldo, and Gretchen.
When Shelly isn't writing poetry, she travels the globe digging up
rare artifacts and works part time modeling for Dillards.
Author Unknown (oddly enough, his real name) has had several stories,
poems, novels, plays, and pieces of artwork published throughout the
world dating back to the dawn of man. So far, he hasn't received one
red cent in royalties.
STTS Survey
Copyright (c) 1993, Joe DeRouen
All rights reserved
NOTE: Yes, this is the same survey that was in last month's issue.
I've decided to keep it in until the end of the year in hopes
of more responses. If you haven't already replied, please do
so today.
Please fill out the following survey. This article is duplicated in the
ZIP archive as SURVEY.TXT. If you're reading this on-line and haven't
access to that file, please do a screen capture of this article and
fill it out that way. If all else fails, just write your answers down
(on paper or in an ASCII file) and include the question's number beside
your answer.
Everyone who answers the survey will receive special mention in an
upcoming issue of STTS.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1. Name: _____________________________________________________________
2. Mailing address: __________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________
3. Date of birth: (Mm/Dd/YYyy) _______________________________________
4. Sex: ______________________________________________________________
5. Where did you read/download this copy of STTS Magazine? (Include BBS
and BBS number, please)
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
6. Do you prefer to read STTS while on-line or download it to read
at your own convenience? ( ) On-Line ( ) Download
7. Are you a SysOp? ( ) Yes ( ) No (if "No", skip to 10)
8. If so, what is your BBS name, number, baud rate?
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
9. Do you currently carry STTS Mag?
( ) Yes ( ) No ( ) I don't carry it, but I want to
I carry STTS: ( ) On-Line, ( ) For Download, ( ) or Both
10. What do you enjoy the MOST about STTS Mag?
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
11. What do you enjoy LEAST about STTS Mag?
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
12. Please rate the following parts of STTS on a scale of 1-10, 10 being
excellent and 1 being awful. (if no opinion, X)
Fiction ___ Poetry ___ Movie reviews ___
Book reviews ___ CD Reviews ___ Feature Articles ___
Question&Answers ___ Editorial ___ ANSI Coverart ___
Misc. Info ___ Humour ___ RIP Coverart ___
13. What would you like to see (or see more of) in future issues
of STTS Mag?
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Return the survey to me via any of the following options:
A) Pen & Brush Net - A PRIVATE, ROUTED message to JOE DEROUEN at site
->5320. In any conference.
B) RIME Net - A PRIVATE, ROUTED message to JOE DEROUEN at site ->5320,
in the COMMON conference
C) WME Net - A PRIVATE message to JOE DEROUEN in the NET CHAT
conference.
D) Internet - Send a message containing your complete survey to
Joe.DeRouen@Chrysalis.org
E) My BBS - (214) 629-8793 24 hrs. a day 1200-14,000 baud. Upload the
file SURVEY.TXT (change the name first! Change it to something like
the first eight digits of your last name (or less, if your name
doesn't have eight digits) and the ext of .SUR) Immediate access is
gained to my system via filling out the new user questionnaire.
Alternately, logon with the handle STTS SYSOP and password: STTS and
skip the new user questionnaire and upload the file.
F) U.S. Postal Service - Send the survey either printed out or on a disk
to: Joe DeRouen
14232 Marsh Ln. # 51
Dallas, Tx. 75234
Newsflash!!
Sunlight Through The Shadows On-Line/Elec. Magazine is now offering
payment for stories and articles!
In a bold move, STTS has decided to offer an incentive for writers to
submit their works. For each accepted submission, an honorarium fee
will be paid upon publication. Premium access to STTS BBS is also
given to staff and contributing writers.
In addition to the monthly payments, STTS will hold a bi-annual "best
of" contest, where the best published stories and articles in three
categories will receive substantial cash prizes.
These changes will take effect in January of 1994, and the first
bi-annual awards will be presented in the July 1994 issue.
Honorariums, bi-annual cash awards, award winners selection
processes, and Contributor BBS access is explained below:
HONORARIUM
Each and every article and story accepted for publication in STTS will
received a cash honorarium. The payment is small and is meant as more
of a token than something to reflect the value of the submission.
As the magazine grows and brings in more money, the honorariums will
increase, as will the bi-annual award amounts.
Fiction pieces pay an honorarium of $2.00 each.
Poetry pieces pay an honorarium of $1.00 each
Non-fiction* pieces pay an honorarium of $1.00 each
You have the option of refusing your honorarium. Refused funds will be
donated to the American Cancer Society.
Staff members ARE eligible for honorariums.
* Non-fiction includes any feature articles, humor, reviews, and
anything else that doesn't fit into the fiction or poetry category.
BI-ANNUAL CASH AWARD
Twice a year (every six months) the staff of STTS magazine will meet
and vote on the stories, poems, and articles that have appeared in the
last six issues of the magazine. Each staff member (the publisher
included) gets one vote, and can use that vote on only one entry in
each category.
In the unlikely event of a tie, the winners will split the cash award.
Winners will be announced in the July and January issues of the
magazine.
Anyone serving on the staff of STTS magazine is NOT eligible for the
bi-annual awards.
Bi-annual prize amounts
-----------------------
Fiction $50.00
Non-fiction 25.00
Poetry 25.00
The winner in each category does have the option of refusing his cash
award. In the event of such a refusal, the entire sum of the refused
cash awards will be donated to the American Cancer Society.
STTS BBS
Staff members and contributing writers will also receive level 40
access on Sunlight Through The Shadows BBS. Such access consists of 2
hrs. a day, unlimited download bytes per day, and no download/upload
ratio. A regular user receives 1 hr. a day and has an download/upload
ratio of 10:1.
Staff and contributing writers also receive access to a special
private STTS Staff conference on the BBS.
LIMITATIONS
STTS will still accept previously published stories and articles for
publication. However, previously published submissions do NOT qualify
for contention in the bi-annual awards.
Furthermore, previously published stories and articles will be paid at
a 50% honorarium of the normal honorarium fee.
RIGHTS
As always, the rights of stories and articles published in STTS
revert back to the author immediately upon publication. STTS
reserves the right to possibly reprint the story/article for the
bi-annual awards issue, as well as a possible year-end "best of"
issue.
HOW DO I SUBMIT?
Send queries, questions, and submissions to: Joe DeRouen via
any of the following avenues:
STTS BBS (214) 620-8793 14.4k baud 24 hrs.
Pen & Brush Net - Any conference
RIME - Common or Writers conference
World Message Exchange - Net Chat or Poetry & Prose conference
On the internet, send mail to joe.derouen@chrysalis.org
(Refer to CONTACT POINTS elsewhere in this issue for more details)
Thanks for your interest in the magazine,
Joe DeRouen
Publisher STTS On-Line/Elec. Magazine
???????????????????????????????????????????????????
? ???
? Monthly Columns ? ?
? ? ?
??????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?
???????????????????????????????????????????????????
Letters To The Editor
Send any and all comments you have concerning STTS Magazine to Joe
DeRouen, via any of the routes covered under CONTACT POINTS, listed
elsewhere in this magazine.
Now, on to a few letters . . .
[ Do to a message base crash, there are no letters this month. We
apologise for any inconvenience. ]
The Question and Answers Session
Copyright (c) 1993, Joe DeRouen
All rights reserved
Each month, we'll ask a (hopefully) interesting question to users on
various nets and BBS's across the world and include the best answers
we get in this column.
The question we asked for this month was: "What Christmas gift would
you like to give to someone else? To whom would you give it and why?"
This seemed like an appropriate question to ask for the December issue
of STTS. Apparantly, at least a couple people didn't think so.
Originally I'd planned to include Hanukkah, Yule, and other seasonal
holidays. I decided not to, so as to not clutter the message. I thought
that people, regardless of their belief system, would see the intent of
the message. A couple didn't, and one man was actually offended.
If my using "Christmas" as a cover-all for seasonal holidays offended
anyone else, I apologize. Take it as it was meant to be. Oh, and have a
great holiday season, regardless of whatever you happen to be
celebrating! <G>
The original message and responses are reproduced here in their
entirety, (Minus some quoting of the original question) with the
permission of the people involved.
========================================================================
<PUBLIC><HAS REPLIES>
Number : 53 of 61 Date : 11/07/93 02:49
Confer : STTS On-Line Magazine
From : Joe Derouen
To : All
Subject : Christmas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
People,
For the Dec. issue of Sunlight Through The Shadow's monthly Question
and Answers column, I'd like to pose this question:
"What Christmas gift would you most like to give someone else? To whom
would you give it and why?"
As always, replies to this question will be printed, in their entirety,
in the December issue of STTS Magazine. Anyone replying to this message
gives permission for us to use the reply in the magazine.
Many thanks,
Joe
========================================================================
========================================================================
<PUBLIC><RECEIVED>
Number : 55 of 61 Date : 11/07/93 09:15
Reply To: 53
Confer : STTS On-Line Magazine
From : Lisa Tamara
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : Christmas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
One thing I've always loved about christmastime is that it is the one
time of year you can freely give to others without making them
embarassed or ashamed. So often being the giver is touted and people
dont know how to graciously accept a gift.
There are folks who dont feel comfortable being given
anything......perhaps they feel they shouldnt *need* gifts....that they
dont deserve it......that they must *pay* for it in some way. Only at
christmastime do they relax and allow the world to bless them.
That freedom......to express caring thru giving & receiving....is what
I would give...and receive.
========================================================================
========================================================================
<PUBLIC><RECEIVED>
Number : 58 of 61 Date : 11/13/93 04:59
Reply To: 53
Confer : STTS On-Line Magazine
From : Shawn Aiken
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : Christmas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joe,
Hmm, what, whom, and why. Left a lot open on this question, didn't
you?<G> Ah, MOST LIKE TO GIVE. That kinda narrows it. I guess I
would give my mother a satellite dish that could pick up the BBC
channels. She's a BritCom fanatic and I think it would really make her
day. Or year. Or life. She'd like it alot.
Shawn
========================================================================
========================================================================
<PUBLIC><ECHO><RECEIVED>
Number : 11342 of 11392 Date : 11/08/93 17:10
Reply To: 10969
Confer : Writers <P&BNet>
From : John Blakeney
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : Christmas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The one gift I've always wanted to give is "A well stocked Limo trip
across the U.S. for 2." and I'd give it to Myself and Whom ever
happened to be special to me at the time.
---
? TLX v1.50 ? A fool and his money are some party.
* SLMR 2.1a *
* Pen and Brush (703) 644-6730
* PostLink(tm) v1.11 PANDB (#1742) : P&BNet(tm)
========================================================================
========================================================================
<PUBLIC><ECHO><RECEIVED>
Number : 11359 of 11393 Date : 11/08/93 18:38
Confer : Writers <P&BNet>
From : Michael Hahn
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : Christmas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sappy, but serious:
I'd like to give a family member an effective cure for the neurochemical
disorder, schizophrenia. It's heartbreaking to watch this person
struggle through life day after day, trying to get by with a brain that
sends garbled signals.
.\\ichael
---
? QMPro 1.51 ? Contents may have settled out of court.
? RNET 2.00m: P&BNet: * The CAD Duck * 703-631-2559
* Pen and Brush (703) 644-6730
* PostLink(tm) v1.11 PANDB (#1742) : P&BNet(tm)
========================================================================
========================================================================
<PUBLIC><ECHO><RECEIVED>
Number : 26174 of 26247 Date : 11/08/93 14:10
Confer : Writers <RIME>
From : Bobb Waller
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : Christmas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
JD> "What Christmas gift would you most like to give someone else?
The knowledge that the universe is not made up totally by Xtians.
JD> To whom would you give it and why?"
Anyone who forgets that fact, such as people who ask the first question.
Why? Because I spent more than 3/4 of my 32 years fighting for
recognition that I as a JEW am here in this country.
? SMRead 3.3 #S185 ? No one's god says,"Hate your neighbor!"
? BCSUTI Version 1.0
---
* FIAWOL/MSCONNECTIONS BBS (214)-790-6472
* PostLink(tm) v1.11 FIAWOL (#977) : RelayNet(tm)
========================================================================
========================================================================
<PUBLIC><ECHO><RECEIVED>
Number : 26195 of 26247 Date : 11/08/93 22:44
Reply To: 25797
Confer : Writers <RIME>
From : Marty Weiss
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : Christmas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The ability to be empathetic.
Everyone.
If we each knew how most things felt to others, we would all
suffer less.
---
? KingQWK 1.05 ? I tried switching to gum but couldn't keep it lit
* DSC * Ivyland, PA * (215) 443-7390 5,000 Sigs * LIVE FTP/TELNET!
* PostLink(tm) v1.11 DSC (#308) : RelayNet(tm)
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<PUBLIC><ECHO><RECEIVED>
Number : 319 of 320 Date : 11/10/93 10:23
Confer : News <P&BNet>
From : Michael Loo
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : xmas retry
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 11-08-93 (11:12) Number: 117 of 118 (Refer# 115)
To: JOE DEROUEN
From: MICHAEL LOO
Subj: Christmas!
Read: NO Status: RECEIVER ONLY (Echo)
Conf: News-PB (615) Read Type: GENERAL
If I cared about someone, I'd try to give them one day of happiness that
they would otherwise not have had. Less than one day is cheap and
paltry; more than one day reaches into the realm of the gods.
---
? KingQWK 1.05 # 187 ?
* Channel 1(R) * 617-354-7077 * Cambridge MA * 85 lines
* PostLink(tm) v1.07 CHANNEL1 (#15) : P&BNet(tm)
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<PUBLIC><ECHO><RECEIVED>
Number : 26663 of 26664 Date : 11/12/93 15:27
Reply To: 25797
Confer : Writers <RIME>
From : Nate Orzoff
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : Christmas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Personally I would make it a chanakah gift being Jewish but here is my
answer...
Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men... to everyone. Why? Because at
xmas time it seems that people act 1 day a year the way people should
act all year round. We hypocritically pretend that we do, but EVERYONE
including myself act like jerks the rest of the world. It makes me
wonder why? Because the Human condition is full of hypocrites and liars.
We smile and give money to the salvation army santas and help out the
poor and meak one month a year. The day after thanksgiving to Christmas.
Then Dec. 26 we revert to the Bundys or the Bunkers or the Fox's etc. It
could take years to figure everything out. Instead, I suggest that we
just try and help each other all year round... People throw away
perfectly good equipment, food, etc. because they are bored or don't
want it anymore. Why not give it to an organization? Why not help out
your neighbor when he/she/they needs it? Why not help everyone all year
round? It might catch on and we might be just a little less hypocritacal
the rest of the year....
That is my answer... I hope you do print it... it need saying and most
people will not admit it....
* SLMR 2.1a * "I am afraid of Nothing!!!!" "He's in Denial" Croow MST3K
---
* Treasures <HUB-ORLANDO> Longwood, FL 407-831-9130
* PostLink(tm) v1.11 TREASURES (#69) : RelayNet(tm)
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<PUBLIC><ECHO><RECEIVED>
Number : 312 of 312 Date : 11/13/93 09:02
Confer : DFW Chit-Chat <PlanoNet>
From : Paul Atherton
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : Christmas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would like to give my mother's eyesight back to her. I am a 28 year
old and my mother has just finished putting me through college. Two
years ago, my mother lost her eyes to Diabetes Retinopathy and has still
supported me through the remainder of her education. This, being the
only thing that she would really like to have, is what I would like to
give to her for all the support and love she has shown me through the
past 28? years.
Paul Atherton
---
? -PlanoNet- Ideas & Innovations Mt. Dora, FL (904) 383-6957
* Lunatic Fringe BBS*Richardson TX*214-235-5288*USR DS*QWK Central
* PostLink(tm) v1.11 LUNATIC (#1282) :
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<PUBLIC><RECEIVED>
Number : 60 of 61 Date : 11/17/93 07:11
Reply To: 53
Confer : STTS On-Line Magazine
From : Heather Derouen
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : Christmas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
JD> "What Christmas gift would you most like to give someone else? To wh
JD> would you give it and why?"
This is an extremely difficult question to answer. There are so many
things I would like to give so many people. Well, I guess first off I
would like to give my husband all the presents that I've ever wanted to
get for him but couldn't afford, such as a 28.8k baud modem, a CD-ROM
multi-multi-multimedia kit, an 18-CD disk changer/player, and a variety
of other things. I would like to give it to him because I think he
would be really surprised by it, and it would be neat to see the look
on his face.
And to everyone, I would like to give a bit of the spirit of the season
to carry with them all year long - the time of year when we seem to be
able to forgive one another more easily, seem to get along with each
other a little bit better, seem to enjoy being around one another a
little more than other times. Pardon me for getting mushy, but I
really love this time of year.
Heather
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<PUBLIC><RECEIVED>
Number : 61 of 61 Date : 11/19/93 07:12
Reply To: 53
Confer : STTS On-Line Magazine
From : Grant Guenther
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : Christmas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
what i would like to give and to whom by j. guenther
My favorite gift of all is happiness. It's impossible to judge
material things for how much happiness they can give, because different
people appreciate different things. There is no guarenteed way of
giving happiness, but I know a joke is a good. So my favorite gift
would be making everyone smile for Christmas....
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<PUBLIC><ECHO><RECEIVED>
Number : 1240 of 1247 Date : 11/24/93 05:57
Reply To: 1236
Confer : STTS Mag <P&BNet> <P&BNet>
From : John Chambers
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : Christmas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I could afford it, you mean? To Lucia: I would give a multiple disk
CD/ROM changer. Why? So that she could play 6 CD/ROM based games at
once!
To Howard Palmer I would give a nice toupee. Why? So he would no longer
be accused of trying to look like someone from ZZ Top.
---
? QMPro 1.51 ? Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a tagline writer.
* Pen and Brush (703) 644-6730
* PostLink(tm) v1.11 PANDB (#1742) : P&BNet(tm)
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<PUBLIC><ECHO><RECEIVED>
Number : 1261 of 1263 Date : 11/25/93 08:04
Confer : STTS Mag <P&BNet> <P&BNet>
From : Melanie Byas
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : Christmas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joe,
I keep seeing these questions. I've given them some thought but the
same thing keeps coming to mind.
I'd give my parents the mature, responsible, self-supporting,
kind, well-balanced, talented, considerate, adult, etc... person
they hoped I'd be.
Why? Because it would make them feel sooo good!
ciao...
Melanie
---
? SLMR 2.1a ? Nuthin' is simple sometimes...
? TriNet: [P&BNet(tm)] Inkwell * Alexandria VA * 703.548.1507 V.32bis
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<PUBLIC><RECEIVED>
Number : 16 of 16 Date : 11/27/93 09:53
Reply To: 8
Confer : STTS On-Line Magazine
From : Anastasia Alexander
To : Joe Derouen
Subject : Argh!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I could give ANYTHING, I would give a cure for headaches and body
aches to my father. He is my very best friend and has migraine
headaches a lot and had surgery on his stomach and back and he gets a
lot of aches and pains from that, especially during cold weather.
========================================================================
A lot of good answers. Many thanks to all of the people who replied.
Your replies were very much appreciated!
Now, I'll attempt to answer my own question . . .
If I could give anything to anyone, as a Christmas gift.. I'd give
everyone health. Take away all diseases and sickness, and let everyone
start out with a clean slate. Specifically, I'd cure my wife's cancer.
Sadly, this is something that I cannot do. In lieu of this, I choose to
give her as much love, support, understanding, and caring as I possibly
can. It's a cheap Christmas gift, but perhaps one worth more than
anything I could ever buy her. Then again, maybe she'd prefer that
Mercedes. . . <G>
Thank you everyone for reading, and special thanks to those of you who
responded. Have a great holiday season!
Upcoming Issues & News
Copyright (c) 1993, Joe DeRouen
All rights reserved
THIS ISSUE...
Check out Brigid Child's feature article on Christmas/Yule. A few facts
about everyone's favorite holiday might surprise you . . .
We're now paying for accepted submissions! Check out selection # 5 for
more details.
Merry Christmas to all, and many, many thanks for reading and
supporting STTS all year long. See you next year!
NEXT ISSUE...
With the January issue of STTS, we'll introduce two new columns. The
first, MY VIEW, will feature a different writer each month doing a guest
editorial. The second, ANSWER ME!, will showcase Liz Shelton (a new
addition to the STTS staff) answering questions about BBSing and the
world of computers.
FUTURE ISSUES...
The long-promised "Round Robin" story will DEFINITELY start with the
January issue.
Also look for more monthly columns as well as guest editorials and more
ANSI art.
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? 110 Nodes * 4000 Conferences * 30.0 Gigabytes * 100,000+ Archives ?
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???????????????????????????????????????????????????
Toll the Ancient Yuletide
Copyright (c) 1993, Brigid Childs
All rights reserved
Toll the Ancient Yuletide - by Brigid Childs
Deck the malls with boughs of holly! T'is the season for Christmas
trees and evergreens, for kissing under the mistletoe, for joy to a
world of sugarplums and candycanes. T'is a season of wonder and
miracles. T'is also the time of the Winter Solstice, the shortest day
and longest night of the year and in pagan tradition the time of the
rebirth of the Sun King, celebrated and decorated with evergreens,
holly and mistletoe - sound familiar? Many ancient Yule traditions
have been incorporated into the festivities of Christmas.
The Christmas tree is the most recognizable holiday symbol; where
does it come from? The earliest references available indicate that the
first recorded "Christmas tree" appeared in 1510 in Riga in Latvia when
a local merchant guild set up a decorated evergreen in their town
square. Here they danced and capered about it, finally setting it
ablaze - a combination Christmas tree/Yule log. In pagan times,
however, the cult of Cybele decked their evergreens with violets and
white drapery, the violets representing the blood of Attis shed at the
time of his death. The German word for Christmas tree is Tannenbaum;
liguistically this relates to a species of European evergreen oak and
in the pagan traditions of this region, the Solstice is the time of the
birth of the Oak King and the death of the Holly King, although it is
only on the female holly that the bloodred berries grow.
Mistletoe was sacred to the Druids and was involved in many of their
rituals including the Solstice rite. This botanic had a peculiar place
in the plant pantheon growing as it does only in the boughs of other
plants without a firm root system in the earth. Mistletoe was gathered
at midwinter when it was carefully cut with a golden sickle and even
more carefully kept from touching the ground, thus losing its magickal
potency. At the Yuletide harvest, the mistletoe has clusters of white,
translucent berries which resemble droplets of semen; the herb gathered
at this time of year was used in charms of fertility. (When Druids
kissed under the mistletoe, they were serious about it!)
Winter Solstice is a solar festival concerned with the rebirth of the
Sun, with the passing of the old and with new beginnings, and the Yule
log symbolically embodies this aspect of the celebration. Ritually lit
with a brand from last year's fire, the log itself is traditionally oak
(oh, Tannenbaum redux?) and is decorated with seasonal evergreens
before flaming on the hearth. In some pagan circles, each celebrant
writes those things he wants gone from his life on a scrap of paper and
then drops it into the blaze, chanting "Take the old and burn it...burn
and let it go!"
There is an obvious message there. Yule is a festival of the return
of light to a world of darkness, darkness not only of the mundane
physical world, but also of the mind and spirit. Modern paganism
focuses on enLIGHTening the spirit to allow the individual to grow
unto the infinite: it focuses on healing the earth of the ecological
excesses to which we have subjected our Mother; it focuses on the love
and understanding of our fellow beings on this planet. The Anglo-Saxon
toast appropriate to the season sums up this emphasis neatly. They
gathered about the wassail bowl as we still do today, and they raised
their flagons to the cry, "Wes Hal!" Translation? "Be Whole!"
T'is the season - and so from me to all of you - "Wes Hal!"
Blessed be - Brigid
State of the Art For Awhile
Copyright (c) 1993, Joe DeRouen
All rights reserved
[This article was originally published in the Nov. issue of
DFW Connects Magazine]
I remember when I got my first modem. I was 16, and it was a 110/300
baud VIC Modem. It plugged into the back of my Commodore Vic 20. It even
worked, most of the time.
That was nearly 10 years ago. The VIC Modem was lost in the move when I
moved from Illinois to Texas in 1985, and, after many fruitless hours
looking for the lost box, I realized I'd have to purchase another one.
1200 baud modems were still too expensive at that point (well over
$100!) so I had to settle for another 300 bauder. At least with this one
you didn't have to dial on the handset of your phone and, when the
carrier answered, plug the cord into the back of the modem. You could
actually dial *through* the modem with this one!
About a year later, I broke down and purchased a Aprotek 1200 modem. It
nearly broke me at $129.99, and that was mail order! Boy, though, it was
fast. Everyone kept telling me that I wouldn't be able to read the
message bases at 1200, but after a few days I was used to it and got
along fine. I'd never get used to that speed, though: I could get a
whole game in under an hour! Talk about progress. It doesn't get any
better than this.
Well, actually, it did. In 1989, I happened onto a great deal on a 2400
baud modem. Now, truly, *this* was state of the art! I downloaded files
day and night, reveling in the speed of the transfers. Why, with Z
Modem, I could get transfer rates of nearly 2000 cps! I'd heard of those
new 9600 baud modems, but that was overkill. Who needs it?
A year later, my wife's company bought her a Twincom 9600 baud modem.
Needless to say, I fell head over heels in love with it. Sure, I still
spent hours downloading. But now I got megs of files rather than bytes.
What could be faster?
Earlier this year, I decided to run a BBS. I tossed the 9600 baud onto
the BBS computer and took the ViVa 2400 pocket modem from the laptop and
put it on the 486 so I could call out while others called in. All was
well until a few months later when tragedy struck: lightning decided to
pay a visit upon my Twincom 9600.
Saddened (she had served me well) I put the Twincom to rest and set about
buying a 14.4k modem. Finally settling on a Zoom fax/modem, I was
impressed at the speed increase over the 9600. It wasn't like going from
2400 to 9600, but there *was* a noticeable speed increase. The long
distance new mail runs also ran better and in doing so cost me less.
Who'd ever need anything more than a 14.4k modem? Once again, I was
happy. 14.4k technology was state of the art, and I had it.
About a week ago, someone on one of the nets I carry sent me a ASCII
text file about a SysOp upgrade offer from Hayes. It was for a 28.8k
modem, and the technology's going to be approved any day now.
Who'd ever need a 28.8k modem, I thought to myself. Why, my 14.4k Zoom
is as fast as I'll ever need . . . *Sigh* It was fun having state of the
art for awhile.
Survey Results
Copyright (c) 1993, Joe DeRouen
All rights reserved
The results are in from the survey in the October and November issues,
and tabulated below for a median score. Due to keeping the survey in the
magazine an extra month, I actually ended up with quite a few completed
surveys. I'm still keeping the survey in until the end of the year.
(IE: This issue) Please respond.
I'd like to thank everyone who responded. Each and every one of your
comments were read and taken into consideration.
In the survey, I asked the readers to rate the sections of the magazine
on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best and one being the worst. Here's
the averages, taken by adding all the scores for an indiviual section
(eg: fiction) and dividing it by the number of survey's received that
scored that section with something other than an "X" for no comment.
Magazine sections are ranked in order of scores, from highest to lowest:
SCORES
??????
Fiction: 9.6
Poetry: 9.4
Book Reviews: 9.0
Editorial: 8.5
Feature Articles: 8.7
Movie Reviews: 8.5
ANSI Coverart: 7.4
CD Reviews: 7.2
Question & Answers: 7.1
Summary: Fiction and poetry seemed to prove the most popular, as I was
sure it would. Nothing really received *bad* scores, though,
which is promising. Of the reviews, the book reviews seemed
to be the most popular, followed very closely by the movies
and, lastly, the CDs.
What the above scores really *don't* tell is that the surveys
seemed to be divided into camps. There were several people that
read STTS mainly for fiction and poetry, and almost as many
people who read it exclusively for the reviews. Both groups
scored their interest group high while X'ing a "No Comment"
on the other sections.
Again, many thanks to those of you who took the time to fill out and
send in your surveys. If you haven't yet filled out the survey, you
still have time to do so. Send it in to me before the end of the year,
and it'll make it into the January issue's final tabulations.
If you haven't already, please fill out the survey. It's article 4 in
this issue of STTS, and it's duplicated in the .ZIP archive as
SURVEY.TXT.
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? ? Over 650,000 files and programs - DOS, Windows, OS/2, Mac, Unix, Amiga ?
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? ? Online Doors / Games / Job Search / PC-Catalog / Online Magazines ?
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Lights Out Reviews
Copyright (c) 1993, Bruce Diamond
All rights reserved
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
? ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES: Barry Sonnenfeld, director. ?
? Paul Rudnick, screenplay. Starring Anjelica Huston, ?
? Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Joan Cusack, Christina ?
? Ricci, Carol Kane, Jimmy Workman, Carel Struycken, ?
? David Krumholtz, Christopher Hart and Dana Ivey. ?
? Paramount Pictures. Rated PG-13. ?
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Your best bet for an out-and-out fun romp this holiday season
is ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES. There's an addition to this lovely
nuclear-fallout family, little Pubert Addams, a boy after Gomez'
(Raul Julia) own heart (he shoots flaming arrows, breathes fire,
and can stop a guillotine blade with two fingers). Along with the
new addition comes a nanny (Joan Cusack), another in a long line
of Sharon Stone-clones this year (see the review of FATAL
INSTINCT, elsewhere in this issue), who plays the femme fatale,
Debbie Jellinsky, with delicious aplomb (and looking better on-
screen than she has in quite a while.)
I had problems with the first film. THE ADDAMS FAMILY TV show
was one of my childhood faves (don't look at me that way -- take
out the laugh track and some of the stupider gags, like the ever-
present lightbulb in Uncle Fester's mouth, and you get a show
that's strikingly refreshing compared to the glut of suburbanite
'60s sitcoms). Although the casting was superb, nay inspired in
the case of Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston (Morticia), I disliked
Wednesday (she acted way too far beyond her years, a fallacy in
many sitcoms and movies that feature *precious* children),
Grandmama was way too flighty and over acted, and Christopher
Lloyd's (Fester) bodysuit made him look like a hairless gorilla.
(He's *not* that big, why stick so tightly to Charles Addams'
designs when it makes the character look so silly?) The
gratuitous dance scene, the whole subplot about bilking Gomez out
of the family fortune, and the addition of Dana Ivey (the evil
"psychiatrist" who had brainwashed Fester into believing he was
her son -- do I need to add that I intensely dislike Dana Ivey in
*every* movie she's in?) muddled what could have been a funny,
character-driven comedy.
Some of the first movies weakness' are repeated (Dana Ivey is
*back*, albeit just in a cameo; Fester still looks badly-designed;
and director Barry Sonnenfeld is still too fond of his high-speed
camera tricks), but the addition of baby Pubert and the evil nanny
plot actually add a new dimension to the wacky proceedings. In a
way, ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES becomes a more successful spoof of the
b*itch-from-hell movies (like HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, 1992)
than HEXED, FATAL INSTINCT, and SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER
combined. Yes, it's true -- Ms. Jellinsky has no intentions of
being Pubert's nanny. She's really after Fester's money,
amusingly brought to light by a scene with Cusack amongst her
clippings about Fester. (He's written up in publications like
Forbes as "America's Strangest Millionaire.") Jellinsky is a black
widow, marrying rich men and then killing them shortly after the
honeymoon. When the kids tumble to her identity, she maneuvers
Morticia and Gomez into sending them to summer camp. "Summer
camp?" Gomez asks, horrified. Jellinsky just nods and smiles
evilly.
The camp is a wacked-out yuppie nightmare. Troublesome
youngsters spend time in the Harmony Hut and watch movies like
HEIDI and THE SOUND OF MUSIC. Wednesday and Pugsley, needless to
say, spend a lot of time in the hut. They make plans, along with
Joel Glicker (David Krumholtz), a nerdy camper who also doesn't
fit in and seems to be developing a crush on Wednesday, to
disrupt the camp's special Thanksgiving presentation. The
production, featuring blond-haired blue-eyed Pilgrims and
everyone else (the minorities, the overweight kids, the Addams
kids, Joel, and a kid in a wheelchair) as the Indians. The
misfits tear the play apart even more splendiforously than
Wednesday and Pugsley's bloody stage debut in the first film.
But do they return home in time to save Uncle Fester from a
fate worse than death? Ah, you'll have to see the movie to answer
that for yourself, although I think you've already guessed the
right answer. Some aspects of ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES bother me,
especially the danger that the kids place baby Pubert in. Some of
the gags cross the line, not of good taste (how can a movie about
the Addamses be accused of having taste?), but of basic decency.
Maybe I'm just being a little too uptight. Despite these reserva-
tions, I can still recommend the film.
RATING: 7 out of 10.
Lights Out
Copyright (c) 1993, Bruce Diamond
All rights reserved
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
? MRS. DOUBTFIRE: Chris Colombus, director. Randy Mayem ?
? Singer and Leslie Dixon, screenplay. Based on the novel ?
? "Alias Mrs. Doubtfire," by Anne Fine. Starring Robin ?
? Williams, Sally Field, Harvey Fierstein, Pierce Brosnan, ?
? Polly Holliday, Lisa Jakub, Matthew Lawernce, Mara Wilson, ?
? Martin Mull, and Robert Prosky. Twentieth Century Fox. ?
? Rated PG-13. ?
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Yep, that's Robin Williams cavorting around under a ton of
makeup and sporting that improbable accent, having a grand time as
housekeeper to his own kids in MRS. DOUBTFIRE, the best live-
action feature he's done since DEAD POETS SOCIETY. (Yeah, I liked
HOOK, even though most critics didn't, but it really was a bloated
picture. TOYS? Don't *even* get me started . . . ) Before you
dismiss this movie as just another excuse for Williams to adlib
his way through two hours of "story," let me hasten to add that
every other performance in this film (despite the unfortunate gay
almost-stereotypes and the huge bit of nothing Pierce Brosnan is
given to work with) is enchanting, entertaining, and solid. Pay
no attention to the simple-minded screenplay -- it's clever, it's
funny, and it even manages to say something about adult relation-
ships. But more about that later.
The marriage has had it. Daniel and Miranda Hillard (Williams
and Sally Field, a quirky-but-amusing pairing) are on the skids
and Miranda wants out. (Watch Williams during this scene. He's
more genuine here, both angry and tear-filled, than he's been in a
dozen pictures.) The last straw is the birthday party, complete
with petting zoo and kids jumping on furniture, that Daniel throws
for his son, Chris (Matthew Lawrence), a party that Miranda had
expressly forbad him due to his low grades in school. Daniel's
out, and to win custody of his kids, he has to find a place to
live and land a job. Well, the apartment's a shambles (kinda
looks like my place), but Daniel manages to land not just one, but
*two* jobs. By day, he's a packer/shipper for a TV station, by
evening, he's Mrs. Iphigenia Doubtfire (thanks to an expert
makeup job done by his brother, Frank, played larger-than-life by
Harvey Fierstein), housekeeper to the Hillard clan: Chris, Lydia
(Lisa Jakub), and little Natty (Mara Wilson, another 'way too
*precious* kid).
At first wary, the kids eventually warm to Mrs. Doubtfire,
which is the second mistake this movie makes (the first mistake
is a scene in the employment counselor's office where Williams is
allowed free reign to do his comedy schtick -- most of it isn't
funny, as we've seen it countless times before, and the jump cuts
that director Chris Colombus decides to use are unprofessional
and jarring). The kids come to accept the new housekeeper way
too easily, especially with the iron hand "she" uses on them. "I
run a tight ship," she tells them, "not of this loosey-goosey way
you're used to." Sure, sure. She turns off their TV program,
makes them clean the house when they complain, then she sends
them to their rooms to do homework for two hours. And the very
next day, they absolutely *adore* her. Go figger. Why they
didn't just walk out of the house is beyond me. (Yeah, right,
Bruce, then there'd be no movie. Duhhh.)
Two subplots run concurrently in MRS. DOUBTFIRE: Miranda's
awakening "romance" with an old flame, played by Pierce Brosnan,
and Daniel's working relationship with the general manager of the
TV station, played by Robert Prosky. Both of these supporting
roles are pretty much cardboard characters, but as I mentioned
before, the performances are given weight by the acting talents
behind them. Prosky is likeably gruff, and Brosnan is slick
without being oily. I was pleased to see that Brosnan's charac-
ter didn't descend into the too-easy-caricature of the evil
boyfriend, someone the kids would hate and would detest them
back. Williams' reactions to Brosnan (constant, constant in-
sults) seem unmotivated, at times cruel for no reason, until you
remind yourself that he sees Brosnan as nothing more than a
threat to his possibly reuniting with Miranda. Even then, it
seems a bit much, played as it is for the easy laugh.
Parts of the movie are predictable, including the scene at
the restaurant. I knew the moment his boss invited him to dinner
to discuss a possible TV show starring Daniel, that Miranda would
insist that Mrs. Doubtfire go out to dinner with her and the
kids. *At* the same restaurant, *on* the very same night.
Please, this plot twist has been done to death in countless
sitcoms. What's refreshing about the scene, though, is Williams,
and the twists he manages to put on such a hackneyed scenario.
The ending (without giving too much away) is at the same
time coldly realistic and saccharine sweet in resolution. I
can't say anymore, other than to tell you I was very disappointed
at how director Chris Columbus decided to portray it. Sure, it
says something about the reality of adult relationships, but
there's no punch behind it. The final scenes have the dramatic
impact of boiled tofu.
RATING: 6 out of 10.
Lights Out
Copyright (c) 1993, Bruce Diamond
All rights reserved
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
? A PERFECT WORLD: Clint Eastwood, director. John Lee ?
? Hancock, screenplay. Starring Kevin Costner, Clint ?
? Eastwood, Laura Dern, and T.J. Lowther. Warner Bros. ?
? Rated PG-13. ?
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
At an age when many actors and directors become terribly self-
indulgent (witness Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier, and John Wayne,
for three examples), Clint Eastwood keeps getting sharper and
sharper (my negative reaction to UNFORGIVEN notwithstanding). IN
THE LINE OF FIRE, released this past summer, showed us a Clint
that has matured and even mellowed a bit with age. Now, with the
release of A PERFECT WORLD, Eastwood's first directing job since
UNFORGIVEN, we see how much farther Clint will be taking himself
in the future. In a feature that could have easily become a
bloodbath, the guns-n-car-chases scenes are kept to a minimum.
What we're left with is a touching story of surrogate parenthood
and how the cycle of violence merely repeats itself.
Butch Haines (Costner) is a man on run, a convict who's broken
out of stir and determined to make his way north. Red Garnett
(Eastwood) is the Texas State Police chief who's tracking him,
complete with a governor-appointed criminologist (Laura Dern as
the unfortunately-cliched "spunky young woman," Sally Gerber), a
couple deputies, and a Fed in his entourage. He commandeers the
governor's mobile-home campaign headquarters ("But he's taking
that to Dallas for President Kennedy's visit!" someone complains)
to coordinate operations in the field.
Butch has some company of his own: Philip (T.J. Lowther), a
seven-year-old boy he kidnaps as a hostage. At first the boy's
just safety insurance, allowing him to keep running from the law.
What Butch doesn't count on is the bond that develops between the
two of them: Butch identifies with the boy's lack of a father
figure and the implied message that when his father is around,
he's not exactly a model parent. "Me and you are a lot alike,
Philip," he tells the boy. "We're both handsome devils, we both
like RC Cola, and we both have daddies that ain't worth a damn."
That pretty much sets the tone for Butch and Philip's relation-
ship, and is nicely counterpointed by scenes of domestic vio-
lence the two witness in their travels. In fact, one such
situation, a man who whups up on his grandson, leads to the film's
climactic scene, and the faint damning of young Philip's soul.
A PERFECT WORLD unfolds slowly, driven as it is by the
exploration of Butch Haines' character. The idea that Eastwood is
presenting Haines as a saint (as some people have claimed) or even
a person to admire is hooey. That's a shallow interpretation of
what's going on here. You can't help but sympathize with him,
even though he has killed two men in his life (both of them men
who had visited violence on people Butch cared for), but he's by
no means held up as an example for us, or Philip, to emulate. The
boy is entranced by the sheer wildness and freedom that Butch
represents (and the father figure that he never had), but in the
end he realizes, in a surprisingly mature and chilling way, that
this man is seriously flawed. "I ain't a good man," Butch says at
one point, "and I ain't the worst. I'm a breed apart." Even at
the end, Butch himself realizes both the good and the bad he's
done to and for the boy. Could the Eastwood of even 10 years ago
have handled a theme as mature as this?
A PERFECT WORLD is a subtle picture. Don't be misled by the
surface patina of criminal-as-heroic-figure, because that's a
MacGuffin screenwriter John Lee Hancock has deftly woven into the
film's texture. A couple scenes disturbed me (one, a near-child
molestation, the other being the sight of Philip holding a pistol
-- a similar scene in LAST ACTION HERO totally disgusted me, but
here it's presented to make a definite point) in a way that is
both thought-provoking and gut-wrenching. A PERFECT WORLD ain't a
perfect picture, but it's the best Eastwood's done so far.
RATING: 8 out of 10.
Lyrical Leanings
Copyright (c) 1993, Joe DeRouen
All rights reserved
CHRISTINE LAVINE PRESENTS:
BIG TIMES in a SMALL TOWN - THE VINEYARD TAPES
Various artists
Philo/Rounder Records Corp.
1993
BIG TIMES IN A SMALL TOWN is by and far one of the best live recordings
I've ever heard. Taken from the first annual Martha's Vineyard
singer/songwriters'' retreat, all of the songs were performed live at
the Wintertide Coffeehouse with an energy and enthusiasm far surpassing
most live recordings.
The CD boasts some of the brightest names in folk music today - Cheryl
Wheeler, Pierce Pettis, Cliff Eberhardt, Electric Bonsai Band - as well
as several up-and-comers such as Jonatha Brooke, John Forster, and Peter
Nelson.
What really sets this CD apart from other isn't the quality (though
there's lots of that here) nor is it the talent. What sets this
recording apart from other live albums is that it's FUN. Throughout all
the live sets you can sense that the performers are performing not with
thoughts of the next big contract or cash payment, but for the sheer joy
of it.
Some of the highlights of the CD include John Forster's wonderfully
funny ENTERING MARION, Peter Nelson's wistful, poignant recollection of
times lost in SUMMER OF LOVE, and David Roth's self-effacing THE STAR
SPANGLED BANNER AND ME. The other 14 selections are just as good. In
fact, there isn't a bad selection on the disc.
If you enjoy folk music or just think that you might and want a good
sampler CD to check it out, grab this one. You won't find any better.
If you can't find it in your local record store, write to:
M. Lavin
313 Mulberry Street
Rochester, New York 14620
My rating, on a scale of 1-10: 10
CD Review
Copyright (c) 1993, Wendy Bryson
All rights reserved
LET THERE BE PEACE ON EARTH
Vince Gill
1993 MCA Records, Inc.
Not a typical "Country" album by any means, this Christmas CD
by a country singer leans more towards the "Pop" sounds of the late
1970's.
The artist has a very mellow, tenor voice that will brighten
your holiday spirit. There is nothing really spectacular about
this album, it's just a nice collection of Christmas music. We're
even treated to a few new and original pieces by Mr. Gill.
Some of the more impressive selections are:
"Santa Clause is Coming to Town" - Instrumental only. Arranged
in a country/swing style.
"Let There Be Peace on Earth" - Duet with Jenny Gill, a very
sweet voiced child.
"White Christmas" - Guitar with rhythm back up - very nice.
"It Won't Be The Same This Year" - an original. written and
sung by Vince.
I don't think you'll have any trouble listening to this holiday special.
You may even find it rather enjoyable.
My rating (on a scale of 1-10) 8
Merry Christmas,
Wendy Bryson
Book Reviews
Copyright (c) 1993, Joe DeRouen
All rights reserved
JUMPER
Steven Gould
TOR Science Fiction
$4.99 US, $5.99 Canada
In JUMPER, Steven Gould proves that there's no such thing as an idea
who's time has passed. Since the beginning of science fiction (and
before) there's been tales of people who could teleport, leaping from
one place to another in but a second. Steven Gould uses the same
concept, but presents it in a fun, funny, and at times poignant way.
Davy Rice was abandoned by his mother at age 12 and left with his
alcoholic, abusive father. Beatings were often and usually without any
cause, and were usually carried out by his father's weapon of choice - a
large, metal belt buckle. Davy, now 16, seeks nothing more than escape
from his father, and one night - seconds away from a beating - simply
vanishes.
Appearing in the small town's library, Davy isn't sure what happened. He
convinces himself that he somehow managed to escape his father, wandered
to the library, then blacked out. Still, though, he isn't about to go
back. Steeling his courage, he decides to rid his life of his father
once and for all. He runs away to New York.
JUMPER is a novel of escape, of revenge fantasies, and of having the
courage to face down your past and come to terms with who and what you
are. It's also a novel of adventure, intrigue, and romance. Tie all of
that in with a good, flowing writing style and a quick wit, and you have
a definite winner.
My score (on a scale of 1 to 10) 8
Trekking Into Literature
Copyright (c) 1993, Robert McKay
All rights reserved
*Trekking Into Literature*:
a review
by Robert McKay
Copyright (c) 1993 by Robert McKay
Through much of its history science fiction has been regarded by a great
many as not worthy of the term literature. Even today, when there is a large
and well-established science fiction subset of the publishing industry, and
some mainstream works contain elements that can be accurately described as
science fiction, the genre is not always looked upon with an unprejudiced eye.
Within science fiction, there is yet another subset that has, even by science
fiction fans, been regarded as less than respectable. I speak of Star Trek.
Most of us are aware of Star Trek only as a series from the 60s and a few
movies; fewer appear to be aware that there are two Star Trek series currently
in production, with another coming in the future and an entirely new slate of
movies being planned to grow from one of the current series. Even fewer are
aware that since the days when the original series still ran, there has been a
vital and growing Star Trek publishing industry. Ranging from the adaptations
of the original episodes by James Blish (who also wrote the very first Star
Trek novel) through the current Deep Space 9 novels, the total output runs to
scores of volumes and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of words.
It must be admitted that some of this output is worthy of all the scorn
that has been heaped upon Star Trek. I am myself a dedicated Trekkie, and I
have read some Star Trek fiction that quite frankly would have been better
burned before submission. There is a great deal of hack work out there parad-
ing as genuine Star Trek; this is one reason I am glad the novels are not re-
garded as "canon" among those who make and those who like Star Trek. However,
occasional works have been very good Trek, and good science fiction. One, at
least, is in my opinion worthy of the term literature.
The original series (TOS; other abbreviations commonly used in the Trek
world are TNG = The Next Generation; TMS = The Movie Series; and ST = Star
Trek) broadcast an episode called "Mirror, Mirror." This episode postulated a
universe parallel with the one in which the series was set. In this other
universe the Federation was a cruel empire; the crew of the *Enterprise* were
vicious barbarians, and even the logical Spock served the cause of terror and
tyranny. The TNG novel *Dark Mirror*, by Diane Duane, picks up this theme
with the era of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is roughly 80 years af-
ter Kirk's day. Unlike other works which continue themes created by TOS, this
book is *good*.
Briefly, the *Enterprise*, commanded by Captain Jean-Luc Picard, is unex-
pectedly drawn into the parallel universe of "Mirror, Mirror." As it turns
out, the Empire has sent its own *Enterprise*, with its own crew of Picard,
Riker, and company, to by this means capture the Federation ship, massacre the
crew, and infiltrate the Federation. This is merely the prelude to an inva-
sion; due to the distribution of stars in the galactic arms the Empire has run
of areas it can feasibly colonize in its own universe, and seeks *lebensraum*
in the universe of the Federation.
The Empire has long since crushed the Klingons and the Romulans, and the
Vulcans have willingly joined in the cruelty. All that stands in the way of
the planned invasion is the Federation version of the *Enterprise*, and this
fine point is honed even sharper when Geordi LaForge, Deanna Troi, and Captain
Picard secretly beam aboard the Empire vessel to break into the other *Enter-
prise*'s computer and copy the files needed to recreate the universe-crossing
technology, and thus return home with a warning.
Yes, it sounds trite. And in the hands of a lesser writer, it would have
come out that way. But Duane, who has not enchanted me in earlier ST novels
(two were in the pot-boiler category, in my opinion, and only one was really
worth reading), comes through superbly. This is simply the finest writing I
have seen in the Star Trek sub-genre since the death of James Blish in the
70s. No one - whether dealing with the animated Trek series that ran briefly,
the novels surrounding TOS, or the TNG books (I have yet to read any of the
Deep Space 9 novels) - has come near Duane's effort here. She has placed her-
self squarely on a pedestal that now holds just two people. She is not just a
good writer, or a good Trek writer; she is a writer of Trek who, like James
Blish, has taken the Trek universe and characters and written *well* about
them.
I readily grant that Star Trek is not for everyone - the facetious tagline
is that "Star Trek is for those who can't handle reality." Not even all sci-
ence fiction fans like Star Trek. That is fine - if all readers had identical
tastes publishing would be a singularly dull endeavor. However, it is my con-
sidered opinion that no one - whether a Trek fan or not, whether a science
fiction fan or not - will go wrong at least giving *Dark Mirror* a try. Even
if you're not fond of Picard or Data, or don't care a lick for starships trav-
elling a warp 5, the writing, the plotting, the characterization in this book
are well worth the effort. *Dark Mirror* is what writing ought to be - it is
the kind of writing that causes me to read, say, *The Good Earth*, even though
normally I don't have the slightest interest in the kind of writing Pearl S.
Buck did. It is, quite simply, Trek written well enough to be called litera-
ture.
Software Review
Copyright (c) 1993, Joe DeRouen
All rights reserved
EPIC PINBALL
Epic Megagames
1993
The shareware version of EPIC PINBALL comes with but one pinball board
(Android) but it's the best pinball game I've seen in years. It almost
perfectly duplicates the look and feel of a real pinball game. After
playing it a few dozen times, I even found myself wanting to whack the
side of the monitor to get my ball to go away from a place I didn't want
it to go. Fortunately, in EPIC PINBALL, that doesn't cause a "tilt".
The object of the Android board is to hit several different holes and
jumpers and slowly bring your Android to life. So far I've not managed
to do this and I'm not sure what happens when you DO, but getting to
that point promises to be even more fun. The ball movement is
near-flawless and a great deal of care has gone into recreating the
sounds and movements of the old pinball games.
The sound card support and music fits the theme, to create a thoroughly
enjoyable playing experience.
Epic Megagames offers two pinball packs, each containing four pinball
boards. These are $29.95 each. If you buy both together, they go for
$45.00. They also offer a commercial game, Silverball, for $39.99. If
you opt to buy ALL of this (both pinball packs and Silverball) you get
it for $79.99. Who needs this much pinball? I'm not sure, but if the
other games are as good as Android, it just might be worth the price.
The shareware version of EPIC PINBALL can be found on most of your
better bulletin board systems under the filename $PINBALL.ZIP. You can
order directly from Epic Megagames in the United States by calling their
toll-free number 1(800)972-7434. $PINBALL.ZIP includes a list (much too
long to reprint here) of phone numbers you can call to order if you're
in the UK, Japan, Germany, or other countries.
My rating (on a scale of 1-10) 9
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Jan 1st, '94. ??????????? ?? ???????????????????? ????? ??????
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Support BBS: The Darkside (503) 838-6171.
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Airborne
Copyright (c) 1993, Robert McKay
All rights reserved
*Airborne*
by Robert McKay
I
I'm one of the Airborne. While the rest of humanity has to live
down on the dirt in the smog and fog, I live here in the air. I was
born in atmosphere, I've lived here all my life, and I expect to die
here. I can't think of one good reason to leave my ship and go down
to the dirt.
We're a whole culture up here. We have, of course, the huge
residential craft like this one. Let's just look at this one for a
moment; it's pretty typical. The *Billy Mitchell* is formally known
as a Grugoff Type IV Long-term Atmospheric Residential Vessel, Mark X.
We just call it a residential craft, and of course the name
differentiates it from all the other thousands of residential craft
which fly around up here. It's basically an immense flying wing, 70
feet thick, 800 feet from tip to tip, and either 200 or 287 feet from
front to back, depending on whether you measure from the nose to the
center trailing edge, or to the wingtips. In this space we have
quarters for 300 families; engine, flap and slot gear; and the
steering mechanism. There are fuel bunkers, of course, as well as
storage facilities for the commissary outlets aboard.
Most of what we see - although the sky is vast enough that we
don't often come closer than a mile or two - is this type of
residential craft. They're built to last, since they cost a bundle
and a community can't afford to buy a new one every decade or so. The
various models are basically alike. They cruise about the sky like
majestic boomerangs, many of them with a glassed in recreation area on
the top deck, and observation lounges, with their bubble windows,
scattered about the hull. Since we never land, the underside is just
as apt to have windows as any other portion of the hull.
There are also the police vehicles, slim, fast needles with wings
that go zooming around like they own the sky. Of course, the only
time you ever see one is when they're in the way; you can never find a
cop when you want one.
The personal planes come in a great variety of types. There are
cargo trucks, bulk and container lighters, family get-abouts,
speedsters, and all the different kinds of plane you can come up with
when your whole culture has been born and raised in the air for 200
years past.
Even the massive bunkers of a residential craft get low, and we
have to refuel. This is almost the only contact we have with the
dirt. The oil is down there, and the nuclear material, and all the
other items that when properly manipulated become the fuel that keeps
us in the air. The tankers come up from the dirt, and we sink to meet
them. Our craft never touch the dirt once the factory delivers them,
and the only way they can get up from the dirt then is with bolted on
undercarriages and auxiliary engines. They're simply not designed to
operate under 5,000 feet or so, and we try not to get even that low.
The air's too thick down there; give me 15,000 feet and breathable
atmosphere any day.
Anyway, the tankers come gliding up to meet us, and once we're on
a straight and level course they come swooping in over our trailing
edge, maneuvering carefully to avoid losing control in our wash. We
tried coming up behind the tankers, I'm told, when we first began
taking to the air, but as soon as the residential craft got to a
certain size the bow wave began pushing the tankers up and away and
contact was impossible. So they plow into the wave from behind, and
almost sit down on the wall of air to maintain position.
When both planes are satisfied with their position, the refueling
boom flies down, the nozzle hatch bangs open against the wind, and the
boom's snout clunks into the nozzle. It takes one tanker to top off a
residential craft's bunkers, and they charge hefty fees for the job.
I guess it's worth it to stay up here; they have to go back to the
dirt and breath that clogged-up, sticky stuff they call air.
I like it up here; all of us like it up here. We're an
independent nation, according to the UN. While we fly over nearly
every dirt-nation on the planet, few of us have any citizenship other
than Airborne. Our independence is a natural consequence of our life
-no dirt-nation can enforce its laws on us, when we can be on the
other side of the world by the time the officials get all their
papers together.
We've got a president, who we elect every three years. Generally
our presidents are civilians who've come up through residential craft
government, but occasionally one of the military or police types makes
it. The executive has pretty broad powers, which he has to. With a
society as fluid as ours, situations have to be dealt with as they
arise, and that means an executive who can make and implement
decisions on his own. But he's not a dictator - if we don't like his
style we boot him out, and the few presidents who've tried getting
high-handed haven't lasted more than a term.
The president is advised by a council, drawn from all levels of
society. On the dirt I guess they'd get representatives for such a
council from all the regions of the country, but simply to stay in
operation a residential craft has to keep moving, and since cruising
speed is around 250 miles per hour we cover a lot of "regions" in a
day. So we've deliberately included people from all levels - there
are people on the council who in their ordinary jobs don't make enough
to get off their own residential craft, and others who make a living
buying and selling whole fleets, and all sorts in between. This
council is half elected and half appointed, to retain both
accountability and independence. Sometimes people get mad and switch
halves on the council members, and boy, you should see the scramble as
those who thought their seats were secure try to explain their
actions! Although our president has, as I've said, some pretty
impressive powers, the government doesn't bother us much.
There's the
maintenance tax, which is divided between supporting the government
and providing for maintenance of the residential fleet. There are
various local taxes, for schools and whatnot. But government has
learned the hard way that it doesn't pay to interfere too much up
here. The government craft has to remain in touch with the nation, so
it's easy to find out where it is, and a concerted attack by even a
few irate residential craft could put it down on the dirt in a hurry.
There's only been one revolt, though; generally we just elect someone
else to replace an official who thinks he's more important than he
really is, and the one incident didn't send anyone down.
II
Accidents happen, even up here. Even though a residential craft
can go weeks without seeing anyone else, collisions occur. Generally
the accidents are between personal or commercial vehicles, since the
warn-off and collision avoidance gear on a residential craft is
designed to keep them at least a mile apart at all times. The police
are of course trained to fly fast and accurately - I understand the
old dirt-based fighter pilots were trained somewhat like our police.
The worst crash is between a dirt plane and one of ours. They're not
designed to operate continually in atmosphere, and their pilots are
essentially dirt-thinkers, so they've kind of unsafe in our
environment, and our craft can't land, and can't even fly well below
5,000 feet. So when one of theirs hits one of ours, it can be
difficult.
I found this out the hard way. I work in the day shift steering
gear section. We do whatever is necessary to keep the rudders
operational at top efficiency, and we coordinate with the movable wing
surface people to ensure the craft is completely maneuverable. This
is critical when refueling or transferring cargo, since an unstable
craft during these operations can result in great damage and even loss
of life.
I was on a day off when my collision occurred. I hadn't known a
refueling was scheduled - but when you consider that each craft is a
small city, and only a relatively small crew actually deals with
refueling, that's not surprising. I was on the upper observation
deck, up near the forward wind deflector where the glass merges into
the steel shield, when the tanker came up from behind. We were flying
with the sun at our six - directly behind, at six o'clock if the nose
is noon - and so the tanker's shadow came up first. I looked around,
and there it was.
On the ground I suppose a tanker looks big - at least, they're
the biggest things made that can land. But compared with a
residential craft they're not particularly large. Their biggest
feature is their tanks, and those are inside the hull where you can't
see them. A tanker is basically a cylindrical gas tank, divided into
sections to reduce sloshing, with control surfaces, a cockpit, and a
little protrusion on the aft belly for the boom operators. They look
ungainly, and basically they are.
This tanker came up rather slowly. I looked at the condition
indicator on the forward glass, and saw the weather was fine, but this
pilot flew like he was dealing with a gale. He kept inching up, and
inching up, and I wondered if he was trying to sneak up on the cockpit
crew. Finally he got out ahead of us, riding our bow wave, and
commenced to "sit down." This is the trickiest part of the operation,
since the tanker has to fly nose-up, fighting the tendency of our bow
wave to push him away, while ensuring that he doesn't over-control the
plane and fly into our hull.
The boom came down, the nozzle hatch opened, and then it
happened. I still don't know for sure, but it looked like the boom
snagged in the hatch coaming. It bent slightly, quivered, bent again,
then shattered. The force threw the tanker out of control for a
moment, and as big as a residential craft is, I felt ours lurch upward
when the pressure from the boom suddenly let off. The tanker "sat
down" alarmingly, and then their tail slammed down into our hull.
Luckily the refueling hatch is aft of the cockpit, or we would have
had a dead crew. As it was, a frightening area of hull was smashed
in, the skin crumpling like paper. The entire tail of the tanker was
broken off - as it bounced upward again I could see the boom
operator's compartment had been crumpled -and the main fuselage
pitched down with flame pouring from the broken rear as spilling fuel
ignited. Our craft had been knocked nose-down by the impact, and our
crew, seeing the nose of the tanker plummet by, dived. This is all
that saved us; as it was, flame from the stricken tanker washed over
the forward part of the hull, and had the refueling hatch not
automatically closed when the drastic alteration from the proper
flight path took place, we would have gone up too.
Once the tanker's smashed hull had gone by, the cockpit crew
pulled the nose up and brought the craft around in a sharp port turn,
to get away from any falling wreckage that might still be above us.
We turned so sharply - well outside the recommended turning list -
that I could look down through the side of the glass and see the
tanker twisting apart as it fell. It was engulfed in fire, and the
smoke left an oily black trail down the sky.
I didn't have to wait for the emergency alarm to sound. I was
running full tilt before the screech began, and by the time those who
hadn't witnessed the crash were beginning to charge through the
corridors I was below decks and on my way to the steering gear. The
craft was shuddering, and while the movement was in all directions,
there was a lot more down involved than up. We were already down at
8,000 feet when the crash occurred, making it easy for the tanker, and
we couldn't afford to lose much altitude. Judging from the drops, we
had suffered a lot more damage than just a smashed upper hull.
I slammed into the steering gear compartment at full blast,
pushing through others in the same hurry, getting to my station and
quickly scanning the readouts. Hydraulic pressure in the main system
was down by 50 percent, and the backup system had an intermittent
electrical failure. That was scary news, since without hydraulics the
control surfaces were very difficult to move, and without control
surfaces the craft wasn't flyable. If we didn't get the hydraulics in
operation, we would probably crash, and that was that.
I got the basic situation at my station down while putting on my
headset, jacking in, and strapping into my seat. As soon as I knew
what I needed to for a station-manned report I flicked on my
microphone, and passed on the bad news. Apparently I didn't have the
only unpleasant report, for my supervisor didn't even groan; he just
acknowledged the report and cut me off. Chuck's got good manners, and
he doesn't foul up on network procedure unless it's serious.
Until I had pressure to work with, there wasn't much I could do,
so I started hitting other channels, trying to find out what was going
on. It wasn't encouraging. The tanker had ruptured the upper main
hydraulic reservoir, which accounted for the drastic loss of pressure,
and parted a number of backup hydraulic lines. That was just for
starters, though. The sudden blow had sent shards of metal flying in
all directions, and we'd had three engines FODded. FOD stands for
Foreign Object Damage, and with jet engines it's the worst thing that
can happen. With turbines whirling at thousands of rpms, it doesn't
take much - a nail, a rock, a piece of shrapnel, even a little bird -
to smash blades to splinters, wreck the engine, and maybe even send
more shrapnel out to FOD other engines. That was how one of the
engines had gone, and we weren't sure that all the others had escaped
without damage that just hadn't gotten noticeable yet.
The cockpit was a shambles, I learned as I flicked through the
net, with consoles shorted out from the jarring they'd received.
Several of the cockpit crew had been bruised in the collision, and two
had been burned in the sudden electrical fires that had broken out
before they were smothered by the automatic extinguishers. The main
windshield had cracked from the shock, and if it went out the cockpit
would be unusable. The fumes from the extinguishers and the smoke
from the fires was caught inside, for with the emergency the
environmental control system was restricted to absolute minimum
requirements and didn't move the air as fast as normal. In addition,
some of the ducts had been smashed and others shaken loose,
compounding the circulation problem.
To add to all this, our fuel problem was as great as ever. We
hadn't taken on a pound of fuel before the crash - the boom was trying
to hit the nozzle when it happened - and so our bunkers were nearly
dry. And with the hull damage and hydraulic difficulties, we were
having to use the remaining engines harder to keep us up, on an even
keel, and steering a straight course. I caught a report, as I hurried
past, that indicated we didn't have enough fuel for more than five or
six hours of flight, and the absolute minimum reserve under normal
circumstances is 24 hours. The report didn't say, but if we were down
that low I expected we had a fuel leak as well.
Things didn't look good. Boy, was that a cliche mixed with an
understatement! If they'd looked much worse, we would have been
trying to solve the situation from the dirt, for we were barely
flyable as it was.
III
As I sat there at my post, flipping through the channels hoping
for a good report, Chuck came by and tapped me on the shoulder.
Looking around, I saw him flick a finger at me and move on, tapping a
few others as well. I jacked out and hung my headset on the hook, and
followed.
We wound up in his office, me, him, and about 15 other people.
He didn't waste time. "You know that we've lost hydraulic. Normally
the mechanical steering gear would compensate, but we're taking a lot
of buffeting thanks to the torn hull plating topside. The motors for
the mechanical gear are taking too much strain, and if they have to do
it alone we won't be up here much longer.
"You're a rudder crew. Other crews with take the main port and
starboard rudders; you get the main midships rudder. Your job is to
see that it answers helm commands. You're going to have to work.
You'll be fighting dead hydraulics, plus keeping the motors running,
plus assisting the mechanicals in any way necessary. It may come to
using the manual apparatus. Richards," here he pointed at me, "as the
senior hydraulics man on this crew, you're in charge. Keep that
rudder operational."
"Yes, sir," I replied; I could say nothing else. Turning to my
crew I said, "All right, let's go. This isn't just a plane we're on -
it's home and we've got to keep it up."
We rushed through the service corridors. Our feet pounded
hollowly on the steel deck as we charged along, for we weren't as much
interested in being quiet as we were in getting there. Steering one
of these giant flying wings is not easy task, not when you've got to
do it with less than optimum equipment, and that was certainly where
we were. If the manual steering crews, of which we were one, didn't
get to our stations it could very well mean the end of the craft.
We could hear the groaning of the strained mechanism before we
arrived. Normally the rudders don't make any noise at all, except for
an odd clank now and then, or a hiss as the hydraulic pressure moves
the rods and pistons about to change the rudder setting. The
machinery is never supposed to groan like steel in agony; when we
heard it, we looked at each other in alarm.
The hatch was dogged tight, and it took two of us to spin the
wheel and get it open. When we did, a thin haze of smoke spurted out,
and we could smell the odor of burned wiring. Things weren't good.
If the electric motors of the mechanical steering gear went out it
would be almost impossible to move the rudder, and we certainly
wouldn't be able to execute helm commands with any kind of speed.
There were four critical positions in operating the manual
steering gear - two sets of push-rods and pull-rods, one on each side
of the massive flap of metal. Each rod was operated manually by means
of cranks and handwheels. I kept one man with me to act as a runner
if necessary, which left me with 14 men to divide up between four
positions. Since each position had room for only two men at a time,
unless things got really desperate and we simply had to try to put as
much muscle on the wheels as possible, I put eight men to work right
away, leaving six as roving relief. They were to keep an eye on those
who were at work, and whenever a man appeared to be lagging, or
requested a break, they were to jump in and take over. This way the
job would get done, and at the same time everyone would get a rest
eventually.
It quickly became apparent that the electric motors were dying by
degrees. The groaning lessened as the men threw their muscle into the
problem, but it didn't stop, and we'd only been at it five minutes or
so, with me checking equipment, jacking in to report on occasion, and
generally keeping an eye on conditions in the compartment, when a
balancer motor blew up in a shower of sparks. This was bad, since
without the balancer it was much harder to maintain control of the
rudder. It would be no harder to get the thing moving, but it would
be much more difficult to stop it in the right position, and over-
control became a real possibility - a possibility we didn't need. The
balancer had two motors, so it wasn't completely out yet, but it
wasn't working right either.
I jacked in as soon as I saw the situation was under as much
control as we could have it, and got Chuck on the horn. "Boss," I
told him, "it's worse down here than I thought. We've just lost the
#2 balancer motor, all the other electrical gear is smoking and
burning out slowly, and the air in here's foul with the smoke. Plus
we've got a slick of hydraulic fluid on the floor, and if it gets to
be a real straining match we'll have men slipping. That won't just
lessen the effectiveness of their work, but it'll get someone a broken
bone for sure."
"Is there anything you can do?"
"Not without electrical. If you could break loose an electrician
and get him to us we'd sure appreciate it. Maybe he could slow down
the burning."
"All right, I'll see what I can do. I warn you, though, that our
electricians are spread pretty thin. We've had burnouts all over the
ship, and they've been grabbing my people to run off up to the cockpit
even."
As I jacked out something let go inside the rudder with a
tremendous bang. I was sorely tempted to swear; I don't use that kind
of language, but if the rudder itself went I wouldn't want to stake my
life on the craft staying off the dirt. I grabbed my runner and
climbed the access stairs. The access platform was a grillwork semi-
circle that allowed maintenance people to get inside the rudder itself
and work on the skin, struts, braces, and equipment there. Just now
the rudder was swinging slowly - painfully slowly - to starboard,
bringing the access door toward the ladder. We waited for it, opened
up, and stepped inside. We didn't have to watch for the change in
floor motion, for the rudder was barely moving.
At first the source of the noise was invisible. The lights were
out, and I had to fumble for a moment to find the emergency switch.
When I got the lights back on, I realized with horror that the whole
rudder was in danger. I spun to the runner. "Get to a jack. Tell
Chuck that the main transverse brace has broken loose on the port end.
It's dangling by the starboard weld and the midships suspension
brace." The man darted out the door. The brace fascinated me; I
couldn't take my eyes off of it. As I picked my way along the
fore-and-aft catwalk that ran down the center of the rudder, I
gazed upward at the massive beam. The starboard weld was cracked
- I could see that with my naked eye - and the midships
suspension brace wasn't designed to take the full weight of the
beam. The thing weighed nearly three tons - if the cracked weld
let go completely, it would pull the brace out of the rudder's
ceiling and smash through the other supporting structures and the
various items of equipment, and go right through the bottom of
the rudder.
While I had been easing along the catwalk, the rudder had
continued its swing. Now it halted, and jerkily began moving back, no
doubt to an amidships position. The skin of the rudder flexed where
the strut had come loose, and a chunk of broken-off weld came loose
and whistled down. It hit the bottom with a crash, knocking a hole in
the skin of the rudder and nearly going on through. Glancing over at
the remaining weld, I could see the skin pulling away and flexing
back. The brace was going to go, unless we could do something.
The runner was back. "Boss says he's sending a crew. He said he
doesn't know where he'll get the men, or what they'll be able to do,
but if possible that strut's got to be put back, he says."
"Yeah. Look, stay here and keep an eye on that thing. Stay back
by the door; right here under it you'd never have a chance if it came
down. Report to me if it shows signs of getting worse. When the
repair crew gets here I'll send them up, and you can fill them in on
the details and then get back to me."
I backed out of the rudder, still with my eyes on the weakened
brace. I didn't know what there might be about the craft that was
more critical or in worse shape, but I knew one thing - if that strut
went it would put the rudder out of action, and without the rudder the
craft, in its weakened condition, probably wouldn't be flyable.
The next 15 or 20 minutes was a reeking, acrid inferno. The
electrician had arrived while I was in the rudder, and he was rushing
about the compartment trying to keep motors running which, in a
healthy craft, would be ripped out and junked. It was a wonder, he
said, that we hadn't burned out every motor in the compartment. I
went around to all four manual steering stations, noticing how the men
were already sweating and weakened by the heat and smoke and crushing
labor. The rudder banged and creaked, the motors groaned and
sputtered, the men slipped and vilified the failing equipment, and I
did everything I could think of, including pray.
The repair crew's arrival was obvious. Even though the
compartment was big, 10 men and an arc welder take up noticeable
space. The crew's leader, a beefy man with scorched gloves on his
hands, didn't need to be told where the problem was. He took one look
at the rudder, saw the flexing skin and heard the creaking, banging
disintegration in progress, and lifted an eyebrow at me as he pointed
to the ladder. I nodded, deep in a conversation with the cockpit
crew, who were frantic with worry at the poor handling caused by our
rudder's difficulties. The repair crew moved toward the ladder, and
absorbed as I was I couldn't help but notice that they were all soot-
stained and sweat-streaked, and weary.
Half the ten men got up the ladder right away. They let down a
rope, slung from a pulley they rigged on the railing near the ladder.
The five men still on the main floor quickly hooked the welder up and
tailed on to the rope. One man climbed up the ladder, holding on with
one hand and fending the welder off with the other. The operation
obviously was old hat to these men, although if they'd hoisted the
machine much today they probably wanted other employment by now.
Once the welder was on the platform, the rest of the crew swarmed
up the ladder, and manhandled it to the door. The rudder, just then
stopped at a standard port angle, gave the crew no problems as they
hustled the machine inside. Meanwhile, I had managed to convince the
cockpit crew that we weren't quite ready to go down - although I was
only half convinced myself - and took off on another tour of my
compartment.
My people were pitiful. The motors were going out, in spite of
all the electrician could do. The balancer motor that had blown was
beyond hope, and the #1 motor was screeching in the last stages of
decay. It wouldn't last much longer. When it went it would be almost
impossible to avoid over-control, and the added strain on the main
actuating motors would quicken their demise. The electrician was
nearly exhausted from his efforts and the acrid fumes he was forced to
inhale at close range. My people were worn out from trying to ease
the stain on the electric motors; I wasn't sure that if the mechanical
system went they'd be physically able to work the rudder. And yet we
couldn't quit - if we did, the whole rudder would go that much faster.
I was losing control - we all were losing control. The rudder
was getting away from us, and there was nothing we could do about it.
The power of entropy was more than our power to put things together
again. The one accident topside - the crash of the tanker into our
hull - had set in motion events that weakened the fabric of the craft,
and that weakening in turn led to further disintegration. We were
rapidly becoming, instead of capable crewmen who could handle our
problems and keeping ourselves in the air, unwilling passengers on a
sinking ship. I wonder where, if we went down, our rats would go.
Time blurred. I conferred with exhausted men from the welding
team, the cockpit, and my own crew. I struggled to keep the
electrician conscious in spite of the wretched air he had to breathe
as he forced the motors to continue working beyond the limits of their
endurance. The haze of smoke, the penetrating odor of spilled
hydraulic fluid, and the constant noise and activity numbed my brain,
and I lost all sense of time.
I jacked out from yet another conference with the cockpit crew to
find the burly leader of the repair team at my elbow. "We've got the
beam back in place," he said, wiping rivers of sweat from his smeared
forehead. "The welds are good, but I don't know about the skin. We
didn't have the time to properly site the ends on solid metal, and the
weakened condition caused by the initial break may bring it down after
all. But your rudder's not bending like grass in the wind any more."
These last words were said with a kind of tired pride; this man would
do good work even if it meant welding all the way down to the dirt.
"Thanks," I muttered, hardly able to comprehend that something
had gone right for a change. "Do you think the rudder will survive?"
"As long as the beam holds, that rudder'll stay together. It's
this equipment in here I don't know about."
"Look," I asked desperately, "I know that you're not an
electrician, and you may have other jobs to get to. But if you know
anything about keeping motors in line I'd appreciate it if you could
give us a hand down here. The electrician's nearly passed out."
"Sure," he said. "I'm not an expert, but me and a couple of the
boys can stay. Unless something else gives out, there's nothing else
aboard now that needs the full crew, except for some hull damage that
can wait and will take days to fix anyway."
IV
It seemed as though getting our rudder in usable shape, and with
the help of a few men from the repair crew keeping the mechanical
steering gear operational, made a difference throughout the craft.
This isn't to say, of course, that everything suddenly was perfect.
We still had a lot of work to do just staying in the air, not to
mention putting the craft back in normal condition. But the rudder
seemed to be a turning point. Each situation has at least one turning
point - a place or a time or an action which, once passed, is seen to
have either ensured survival or doomed the whole thing to failure. We
never know what the turning point will be until after it's passed, and
there's rarely any reason we can see for that particular thing being
the pivot on which the whole situation revolves. Nevertheless, such
turning points do exist, and our frantic work with the rudder was the
turning point for our craft.
At the time I didn't realize all this, of course. It seemed as
though we got one major crisis safely behind us only to be faced with
a hundred minor problems, that when added together were almost worse
than the crisis. The smoke still seeped from the strained motors, the
hydraulic fluid still slimed the floor and caused us to slip at all
the worst moments, the rudder still sounded like it might come apart
after all. But from the time the strut was welded back in place and
the volunteer electrician's helpers went to work, the overall
situation began, slowly, to change.
Looking back on it now, it seems that our survival was
foreordained. At the time it seemed as though we staggered from one
near-crash to another, with death and destruction only a finger's
length away. But from the perspective of two years, I can see how it
all fit together in a seamless mosaic, each event, each solution, each
difficulty moving toward an inevitable conclusion. I'm glad I didn't
have this perspective then, since our utmost efforts to avoid what we
viewed as imminent death were themselves part of the puzzle that kept
us in the air.
We still fly and live on the same craft. The scars of the crash
and the struggle to stay aloft are hardly visible now. The gaps in
families and tables of organization have been filled, or else have
become part of everyday existence that can be lived with. The hull
plating that was torn and bent, and the equipment that burned out,
failed under the strain, or was simply smashed to pieces, was more
easily repaired, and by now we hardly remember that we're dealing with
"new" materials. We still refuel from tankers that "sit down" on our
bow wave, we still avoid the dirt like the plague, and we still take
care of ourselves. But one thing we don't do anymore - we don't
consider ourselves immortal.
The Squirrels
Copyright (c) 1993, L. Shawn Aiken
All rights reserved
The thick branches of the pecan trees swayed back and forth, their
leaves rustling in the wind. Robert whistled a merry tune as he strolled,
almost skipped, down the path. Gunter plodded along behind him, a bulging
rucksack mounted on his back.
"How long before we get there?" Gunter asked, his gargantuan feet
crushing the brittle leaves below them.
"We're five minutes closer than when you last asked," Robert quipped
and started whistling again, skipping merrily down the trail.
"So how long's that?" Gunter's back was aching with the strain of the
overloaded rucksack.
"It's just over that there ridge," Robert indicated with a skinny
finger. Gunter could easily see over Robert's skinny form, but he could
not make out any geological formations in front of them. he had a feeling
that his short buddy had no idea where they were. Gunter continued along,
the rucksack weighing on him heavily.
"Could you tell me again why I got to carry all the supplies?" the
large man asked.
"I need to be free to navigate properly," Robert said, "Besides,
you're stranger than me."
"Oh," Gunter still didn't understand.
A fork in the trail could be seen up ahead. The right path was wide
and clear of obstructions, while the left was overgrown with vines and
brambles. Robert ceased whistling and stopped in between the two branching
pathways. His fingers stroked his chin as he looked back and forth between
the two.
"So which way?" Gunter asked, standing behind his pal.
"To the left, of course," Robert began to trudge through the
undergrowth. The wind picked up and the leaves in the trees rustled.
"Are you sure?" Gunter asked.
"Hurry up," Robert said, looking back at Gunter, "They are waiting
for us." Gunter sighed and followed the short man. The straps were
digging further into his back.
They continued through the brambles until they came to a clearing.
Blackened trees that looked like burnt match sticks surrounded them. They
saw metal poles standing out of the ground, arranged in triangular
patterns. Bits of something white littered the forest floor. Gunter bent
down and looked at the small white things.
"They kinda look like little bones," Gunter picked one up and
examined it.
"Come on," Robert said, continuing through the blasted area, "we're
late!" Gunter stood and struggled to catch up with him. They soon came to
a rough hewn sign sticking up out of the debris. It bore carved letters
that read:
DON'T MOCK THE SUICIDE ATTACK SQUIRRELS.
"Gol dang," Robert laughed, "What some people do for a practical
joke." The leaves in the trees rustled.
"Uh . . . yeah," Gunter slowly chewed his lip as he followed Robert
out of the clearing and back into the forest.
"Can you believe that someone actually took the time and effort to
set that up?" Robert chuckled. The leaves continued to rustle although
Gunter could feel no wind. He began to notice that small, dark shapes were
making their way through the branches of the trees. The hairs on the back
of his neck stood up.
"Uh . . ." said the large man, staring up at the black masses
accumulating in the trees.
"The more I think about it, the funnier it gets," Robert laughed,
wiping a tear from his eye, "Of all the stupid things they could have
picked, suicide attack squirrels has got to be the stupidest!"
"Uh . . . Robert," Gunter said. Suddenly a small, dark figure fell
from above, hitting the ground with a thud. Robert looked down at it. The
mangled squirrel lay at his feet, its legs twitching spasmodically.
"Uh, Robert . . ." Gunter's eyes widened. Suddenly thousands of
squirrels flung themselves from the trees, hurtling teeth first at the two
men. One grabbed Robert's ear with its tiny jaws and hung from it like a
horrible earring. The small man screamed and began running about with his
arms flailing, trying to avoid the insane rodents. He collided face first
into a tree and collapsed, tiny animals pelting his body.
Gunter ran toward him, trying to save his hurt buddy. Squirrels were
slamming into him, ripping deep gashes with their razor sharp teeth and
claws. Blood ran from his face and arms.
As he tried to pick up his friend a mad rodent crashed into his
forehead. He fell to the ground with a smash. The world grew dim as the
macabre rain continued about him.
The sheriff's mirrored sunglasses captured the aftermath at the burnt
out clearing. One of his deputies walked up to him carrying a rough hewn
sign. His lips moved as he read it, then laughed. The leaves began to
rustle.
The Caravan
Copyright (c) 1993, A.M.Eckard
All rights reserved
The Caravan by A.M.Eckard
I like the veld. What choice do I have? There is nothing but
the veld. It is mostly brown with a little green. It smells of
sage and sand. It is hot in the day and cold at night. The
lexicon in the Feed calls it the Gaia. The lexicon I got from
Dad calls it the veld.
Dad said I should name things according to the Feed when I'm
talking to the people of the clans. Since no one will see this,
I'll call it the veld. That's what Dad always called it before
he left. Dad showed me how to change the lexicon in the Feed,
but he said I shouldn't do it. He taught me a lot of neat things
before he left. I still come across new messages to me in his
lexicon. He was very good with computers.
This is the time of the Winding-Down. That's what both lexicons
call it. This is the time of desert and wind. This is the time
of scarcity and drought. This is the time of hunger and thirst.
The Feed says that this was not always so, but it does not say
what was before. There's a lot in Dad's lexicon about it, but I
find it hard to believe. I've thought of editing it out. I don't
because Dad said that was definitely a bad thing to do.