Newsgroup: rec.autos.tech Date: 04-26-92 To: Stuart Kreitman From: Dave Williams Subj: RE: HOT WHEEL -> Um, do you know where your emergency brake handle is? Um... let's see... I saw it the other day... yeah, there it is to the left of the gas pedal, right where it's always been. The *parking* brake of my '65 Chevy truck is a big racheted lever under the left side of the dash. The one on my '84 B2000 is a pullrod under the right side of the dash. The one on my RX7 is a lever on the console. The one on my old Firebird was a foot pedal on the left, and the one on a friend's Corvette is a lever on the left side of the driver's seat, apparently designed for protcological exploration if you open the door and start to sit without checking the position of the brake lever first. Newsgroup: rec.autos.tech 10-06-92 (08:34) Number: 508 to: WES FUJII Refer#: 498 from: DAVE WILLIAMS Read: NO Subject: Re: HP on a 305 (was re: swapping differential) -> Most -> people do not have the ALL-OUT, DECKED-OUT high performance engines -> in their rigs. Yeah. That's why they think sub-ten-second second 0-60 times are hot stuff. -> That's reserved for the select few that can afford it. Har, har. Afford it? I used to live like Scrooge just to save a few dollars a week toward my ride. The old '72 Capri was three colors of primer and had burlap sacks over the seats to keep the foam from falling out, but it had all the suspension mounting points relocated to change the roll steer and antidive, gumballs on custom wheels (special backspace and bolt pattern), and a 12.5:1 351C-4v with a Reed roller cam and that sort of stuff, with a wide ratio Toploader and a reworked Ford shifter, 'cause Hurst performance shifters suck if you have to downshift. It was my only car during that time of my life, and it got me everywhere I needed to go. *Quite* rapidly. "Afford it" is a relative thing. Lots of people can "afford it" - they wind up getting written up in Car Crap and the like. "Yes, we had a locator service find us a cherry 1973 Super Duty Firebird, then we took it by Lingenfelter's and had them core the guts out and put in a Pro Street subframe and aluminum panel interior, ditched the Super Duty 455 for an RHS all-aluminum 350 Chevy motor with a 330 degree roller cam and two Dominators, had Boyd Coddington whip up an entire suspension out of aluminum billet, had it painted at Posie's and had the interior done by Tony Nancy, yeah, almost sprained a hand writing the checks, but it was worth it... drive it? Well, you can't actually *drive* it, cause it doesn't have any lights or mufflers, and we used the license plate off Bob's van for the cover shots... I tell ya, this hot rodding stuff is really neat, y'know?"posted in bix sf/panel 05/24/92
Most people seem to have forgotten Joe Poyer, probably the first of the techno-thriller writers. "Operation Malacca" was written in 1968, concerning cyborged divers and dolphins who liked to watch Jack La Lanne's exercise show. He followed it with "North Cape", concerning a plane that was very similar to Firefox or Cheetah.
Poyer was constrained by 1960s technology; there was never any consideration that a computer powerful enough for in-flight control could every be fitted into anything less than a C-5A. Poyer's Mach 8 reconaissance plane had to do without computer-assisted stabilization or even effective (by modern standards) auto pilot. Instead, Poyer's pilot was wired intravenously to an automated pharmacy, shooting him full of uppers, downers, and inside-outers as required. Since there wasn't enough computing power to monitor his condition a satellite datalink was established from the plane to the control installation. The plane would remain airborne a week at a time with in-flight refueling; it landed only to change film in the cameras and for a six-week detox and dialysis regimen for the pilot.
I've only seen the two books by Poyer. Maybe he didn't like writing. Maybe he died. But if you like techno-thrillers, they should be high on your list of things to root out in the used book stores.
Like most of the genre, they're not quite military stories, not quite SF. But they ain't bad. If nothing else they'll give you an interesting view of the world as it appeared through the keyhole of 1960s technology.
written 10-15-92
I'd seen a number of references to Attica in my readings, and though I was old enough to remember it, it probably wasn't news where I was living at the time. The book looked interesting, so what the heck.
Wicker was a columnist for the Washington Post. He'd written some columns about the prison system which the inmates at Attica felt were relevant, so they invited him in as an "observer" during the rebellion. Wicker had been a journalist and newspaperman for years, and in 427 pages you'd expect he'd have a razor-sharp picture of what went on after arriving on the scene just hours after the uprising and acting as a middleman between the inmates and prison authorities.
Wrong. Wicker spends about half the book bragging about his "enormous" salary from the Post, reminescing about childhood in good ol' Hamlet, Nawth C'lahna, namedropping to show how well he was connected with the rich and famous, and agonizing over the horrors of racism. 62% (Wicker's figures) of the inmates were black, therefore the uprising was somehow connected to racism, though we're not told how. Judging from Wicker's fragmentary account, the inmates weren't worried about racism. (Note: by 1990s standards, Attica would be a "white" prison)
Basically, Attica was tremendously overcrowded. Many of the inmates had been involved in smaller rebellions at other prisons. Between troublemakers and what even the prison authorities admitted were horrible conditions, a couple of incompetent guards triggered the whole thing.
The inmates originally presented five demands. Wicker doesn't consider them worth mentioning, so they're relegated to an appendix. This later expands to 28 demands. Wicker gets around to mentioning most of them several chapters later.
The observers become intermediaries. Things don't go anywhere, and the prison commandant orders his troops to go in and (basically) kill anything that moves. This would all be interesting stuff, except it's right at the end of the book, where good ol' Tom evidently was getting tired of writing, so it's glossed over while he really puts his back into crying over how it's all a big misunderstanding. There would seem to have been a number of options available; the authorities' "kill 'em all" orders should have been a last-ditch attempt.
The recapture of the prison was bloody and violent. Wicker sat in the orderly room and santimoniously tells us he "didn't look".
All through the book are hundreds of superscript numbers referring us to documents or accounts of various happenings. Most of the referrals are to private letters or accounts, unverifiable.
The book has:
No interviews with prisoners.
No interviews with prison authorities.
No interviews with other observers.
No useful maps.
No timetable of events.
No followup of events.
Much of the action was on videotape and film according to Wicker, and
he mentioned lots of cameramen. We get a few grainy, out-of-focus
black and white pictures of seemingly random scenes.
There is no clear beginning, end, or even attempt at stream-of-events. Wicker jumps back and forth like a cat on a griddle, and it's hard to pick out the happenings at Attica from his childhood stories.
Two, three, or maybe eight of the hostages were shot by the police "marksmen." We can't be sure from Wicker's account since he contradicted himself.
The prisoners dug an enormous trench diagonally across the prison yard, along with foxholes and some other stuff. We never find out why, nor do we find out why they stay outside in the mud and rain rather than going into the buildings. Wicker throws in lots of gratuitous anti-gun barbs, even though guns aren't a factor (except at the end, where Wicker didn't watch the massacre.)
If you want a coherent tale of what happened at Attica, read elsewhere. I'd say the book gives a pretty clear picture of what kind of person Wicker is, but who'd care?
written 07/09/92
I'm glad I didn't have to pay money for it.
The first 71 pages detail a London tart and a dandy she hooks up with. The characters are identical to the ones in "Mona Lisa Overdrive," only the names and settings have been changed. I kept waiting for the tart to kill a catfish by sticking a straw in its head, or some other Gibson-esque irrelevancy. Instead she takes off for Paris. You don't have to worry about it, since the entire section has no real relevance, with only a gratuitous reference near the end of the book.
The book next picks up on a paleontologist named Mallory, who wanders around doing nothing much until he's handed a mysterious box of punch cards by Lady Lovelace on page 95. The cards will only work on a specific French machine. Now we have a plot of sorts. Mallory just happens to be a crackerjack programmer, even though he's a specialist in an entirely different field who's just returned from a dig in Wyoming. We're never offered any explanation for his competence. Indeed, he never does anything with an Engine at all, even though we're told about his abilities in several places.
Various bad guys attempt to obtain the box of cards. Some stuff happens, drawn out over the next 275-odd pages. Interspersed in the stuff are little vignettes that don't connect to much, and short sections that look more like notes than prose. At this time we flash forward to 1905, when Mallory suffers a stroke while looking at what appear to be fossils of Lovecraftian monsters.
We flash back to eighteen fifty-something, picking back up with a minor character, who moves around doing not much, jumping to another minor character. We're told Mallory went to China. The end degenerates into a collection of notes, vignettes, and random mumbling, then flashes forward to a description of a futuristic London in 1991, then ends.
Zip.
The story, if that's what you would deign to call it, jumps back and forth around 1855 or so. There were several times I wasn't sure when things were happening in relation to other things. Some of the times that are mentioned don't match up to other pieces of the story. Throughout the latter half of the book are references to a mysterious "Eye" which is never explained. We never find out what the box of cards was for. We never find out much of anything, actually. And the authors never bother to give us a chronology of the Difference Engine's alternate world, which appears to have separated from ours considerably before 1855, judging from the map in the frontispiece.
For something that took two people two years to write, it sure looks like trash to me. Perhaps the editor gave up on trying to get anything useful out of them and simply published what they submitted without bothering to review it. Judging from the prose, it looks like Sterling actually wrote the bulk of the book and someone tried to fit in the pieces Gibson wrote. It stands out like a roach on a countertop. Didn't these guys even outline this thing? Didn't someone proofread it? It looks like it was assembled out of bits written on file cards.
Official dave2 rating: Boo, hiss!