/* ** ************************************************************************* ** ************************************************************************* ** The Non-Sequitur Express ** Published intermittently by Phillip Thorne ** Volume 4, Issue 6: Wednesday, 4 September 2002 ** Previous issue: Thursday, 15 August 2002 ** Next issue: Measuring a system invariably alters it. ** http://nsx.underbase.org/ ** ** "If all your friends were named Cliff, would you jump off them?" ** --Hugh Neutron, "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" ** ************************************************************************* ** ************************************************************************* */ OBS & COGS: Coming issues, Quorn: a mycoprotein you can eat. ERRATA: A facetious and insensitive comparison? BOOK REVIEW: David Brin's _Contacting Aliens_, plus context. UPCOMING TV: "StarGate SG-1" and spin-offs. UPCOMING TV: "Enterprise", "Twilight Zone", "Buffy", "Andromeda", DS9, new FoxKids, "Zim", new TCN: "InuYasha", "He-Man", "Transformers". plus Legalese, acknowledgements and opt-in/out instructions. http://nsx.underbase.org/ - back issues http://nsx.underbase.org/index_plus.htm - synopses, reviews, analyses, etc. http://nsx.underbase.org/tv/ - Philadelphia and network TV listings mailto://nsx-discuss-l@underbase.org - post on this issue (if subscribed) http://www.underbase.org/ - additional databases /* *************************************************************************** ** OBSERVATIONS & COGITATIONS ** ** In coming issues ** Quorn: Revenge of the Nut Hutch? ** ************************************************************************ */ [I] In coming issues: It might not be apparent from the dribbling publication schedule, but at any given time NSX has dozens of reviews, analysis, and tabular comparisons in the pipeline -- and oy, am I grateful for the "recently used files" feature in most apps. You might ask, Why don't I just maintain a blog, and revise each article piecemeal? Because (a) that conflicts with the original philosophy of this *email* newsletter, and (b) it's a lot of work; I can hardly be bothered to keep the NSX Archive *itself* updated. Essays in the works: The US Water Crisis, short-sighted utilities, stupid developers, and arcologies: a pre-doomed plan for sensible growth. Very Long Baseline Interferometry and the World of Work: gaining perspective by temping. Prescription drugs: are they too expensive for *everybody*? Recent issues have concentrated on TV and toys, but my reading hasn't suffered -- book reviews just take longer to write. Physicists who accidentally spawn new universes are pursued by transhumans in Robert Metzger's _Picoverse_, neologisms abound among the mysterious aliens of Alastair Reynold's _Chasm City_ and _Revelation Space_, and Greg Cox grants cameos to every 20cen "Trek" extra in the espionage-ish _Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh_. This week, a friend and NSX reader points me to the ETs in David Brin's _Contacting Aliens_. Back to TV, I've got half-finished reviews of TCN's new "He-Man" and "Transformers Armada" series, and when they become relevant, I'll roll out the getting-up-to-speed primers on "Buffy" and "Andromeda". In films, I need to screen the original "Planet of the Apes" before lambasting the new version, read up on the Hawaiian language before applauding "Lilo & Stitch", and remind you that Trailers Always Lie before ranking "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius". And more! DVD rentals by mail compared; convention coverage of BrickFest 2002, Katsucon 8, and WorldCon 2001; "Farscape" joins the list of shrinking-plots; and just how many times have Trek novels destroyed the universe? [II] Quorn: Revenge of the Nut Hutch? Kibo, who courageously exposes himself to new, unusual, and imported foodstuffs for the edification of his Usenet fans, has made several posts on the topic of a product called Quorn(tm) (on 5-mar, 8-mar, and 13-aug-2002). His summary: "Never eat anything that starts with 'Q'. When in Toronto, don't buy quinces at Queen's Quay. Furthermore, you should never eat anything named by Klingons." Approved for sale in the US by the FDA in mar-2002, Quorn is manufactured by Marlow Foods, a British subsidiary of megapharmaco AstraZeneca. It consists of "fermented mycoprotein" derived from the non-mushroom fungus /Fusarium gramineurum/, and hence, while pronounced "corn", has absolutely nothing in common with cereal grains. Yeast- based foods might be a mainstay of written SF, but Quorn's marketing shows all the expertise you'd expect from a company whose logo resembles a tangled squirt of yellow mustard. Yes, we're finally getting used to soybean-based edibles -- now we're expected to welcome fungus among us? Well, someone has. The coincidentally-named town of Quorndon (in Leicestershire, England) has enthusiastically dedicated itself to producing a cookbook of exclusively Quorn-based recipes. (Methinks someone took the 1973 "Doctor Who" episode "The Green Death" too seriously. As a B-plot, it featured The Nut Hutch, a scientific commune of idealistic hippie geniuses in Wales who tricked the Brigadier into eating beef-textured mushroom sandwiches.) May they do better than the Oregon town that renamed itself after Half.com. [ http://www.quorndon-mag.org.uk/archive/_recipies/ -- The Quorndon Magazine ] [ http://www.quorn.com/ aka http://www.marlowfoods.co.uk/ -- Marlow Foods Ltd and Quorn ] [ http://www.astrazeneca.com/ -- AstraZeneca ] [ http://half.ebay.com/town/ -- the Oregon town fka Halfway ] (--"Green Death" details from _The DisContinuity Guide_, 1995) /* *************************************************************************** ** ERRATA & OMISSIONS, ADDENDA & ADMISSIONS ** ************************************************************************ */ In issue 4.4 (1-aug-2002), I made a sequential comparison between several "natural" forms of death, a terrorist attack, and the evaporation of a temp job. That was unnecessarily facetious and possibly insensitive -- but since no one complained, I can only moderate myself by my own efforts. I *still* think the method of death is a subtlety unappreciated by the deceased, but I'm probably missing its relevance to the survivors. /* *************************************************************************** ** BOOK REVIEWS ** ** Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials: Great Aliens from Science Fiction Literature ** The Confederation Handbook ** Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe ** ************************************************************************ */ Publishers sometimes decide a particular series of SF/fantasy books is sufficiently popular to warrant a large-format, lavishly illustrated compendium of the universe's fixtures and fittings -- sometimes even in color. For instance: _The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern_ (1991(?) and 1997), _The Guide to Larry Niven's Ringworld_ (1994), _The World of Robert Jordan's the Wheel of Time_ (1998), and _The World of Shannara_ (2001). Books devoted to media SF ("Star Trek", "Star Wars", Disney films) don't belong in this category, since the respective art departments have already done all the work. Similarly, the slew of {Biology, Computers, Ethics, Metaphysics, Science, etc.} of {Star Trek, Star Wars, X-Files, X-Men, etc.} are ineligible, since their subjects occupy the intersection between the respective fictiverses and conventional thought. Herein I describe the latest entrant to the category, _Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe_, and two others to provide context. *** [I] Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials: Great Aliens from Science Fiction Literature Wayne Douglas Barlowe (illustrator) & Ian Summers & Beth Meacham 1979 Workman, June 1987, 146 pages softcover 7"x10", color 0-89480-324-7 First published in 1979, this is the ur-gallery, the first serious collection of alien portraits (as opposed to story illustrations), and a stunning premiere for 21-year-old artist Barlowe. Classical artists always started with anatomy, and Barlowe's a genius at extending the technique to creatures that've never seen a dissecting slab; he's also an expert at depicting the many textures of flesh, fur, and fabric. The book contains 50 aliens from over 40 authors, carefully selected (the book explains) as being intelligently-designed, truly alien, and not previously visualized. Each entry identifies the alien by author and story, and briefly describes its appearance, physiology, environment, and social relations. Robert Silverberg's foreward to the 1987 edition villifies artists as illiterate cretins, because their illustrations never match his detailed descriptions. He then admits that (a) the artists are rarely *given* his descriptions, let alone the time to consider them; and more importantly, (b) he can't draw. *** [II] The Confederation Handbook Peter F. Hamilton 2000 Warner Aspect, March 2002, 282 pages softcover 4"x6.75", unillustrated 0-446-61027-5 Enthusiastic fans rank Hamilton's "Night's Dawn Trilogy" with Tolkien's _Lord of the Rings_, but the only similarity is that it's a 3000-page story subdivided for sales purposes (into three hardbacks or six paper). Hamilton badly needed an editor to prune his dozen parallel plotlines, or at least a staff of indexers to hyperlink the hundred characters. Serious readers, however, can look past such failures of story to his triumphs of worldbuilding detail. The universe's premise is that human civilization has split in twain: "Edenists" use advanced biotechnology, included telepathy and sentient geneered spacecraft; "Adamists" don't; and a symbiosis/tension derives from the social differences between the two. Human governments and the three known spacefaring alien species have formed a Confederation (after 400 years, numbering some 600 worlds) to promote trade and security. The trilogy's premise is that Hell does exist -- or rather, a universe devoid of sensation where your mind goes when you die, if you haven't made peace with the universe. Furthermore, gateways can be created to the living world, through which deceased minds can possess living bodies; and the dimension twist between the two realms gives the possessors impressive energy-manipulating powers. (One sharp-tongued Internet reviewer dubbed it "the oversexed space pirate versus the living dead".) _The Confederation Handbook_ addresses the universe first, and the characters of the trilogy second. It describes the features of the Adamist and Edenist societies, starships and weapons (including the life cycle of the symbiotic geneered "Voidhawks"), 12 Confederation star systems, and the known "xenoc" species. Each system includes multiple worlds, many with multiple moons; the descriptions are unnecessarily detailed, often with implausible dimensions, and the table layouts are inconsistent. The Confederation includes three xenoc members, but the book adds two more and certain details discovered during the course of the Trilogy -- but not the extinct Laymil or the briefly-seen Ly-cilph. Finally, there's a timeline through 2582 (the Trilogy is set in 2611). The book is not illustrated. (See below for my own notions.) [ http://freespace.virgin.net/martin.burcombe/ -- author's official site ] [ http://members.tripod.com/~NightsDawn/beings.htm -- my own xenoc visualizations ] *** [III] Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe David Brin (author) & Kevin Lenagh (illustrator) 2002 Bantam Spectra, July 2002, 191 pages softcover 6"x9", B&W 0-553-37796-5 David Brin's popular "Uplift" saga (six novels and several short stories[1]) is about people (only some of them /H.sapiens/), and he provides only brief, tantalizing descriptions of the dozens of exotic alien races in the background. Now, for readers who don't compulsively scribble notes and who lack confidence in their visual imaginations, comes a near-comprehensive compendium: _Contacting Aliens_. The bulk of its 191 pages describe 124 races in 16 clans (plus 14 isolated races, not including Clan Terragens). It also describes the 8 major Institutes[4], 12 galactic languages, and 7 known orders of life[4], and includes an 8-page timeline spanning 3.1 gigayears of galactic history. It does not cover characters, technology, cosmology, or religious alliances[4]. The book's conceit is that it's a secret training manual for Terragens operatives, printed in archaic hardcopy to conceal it from Galactics who've never considered such a primitive format. Each entry considers that race as threat or ally, and advises the student how to handle contact (usually, it's "refer to a senior agent"). Each entry also features a candid snapshot of one or more members of that race: shipboard, planetside, conferring with other species. These are "RPG"-quality illustrations: black-and-white line drawings, with stippled and hatched accents. Lenagh's aliens are appropriately bizarre, but his compositions are imperfect, and many a subject is overpowered by its busy background. *** Powered by a renewable form of enlightened self-interest, a multi- galactic multi-species civilization has endured for over two billion years, preserving lifebearing planets and domestic harmony[2]. According to the tradition of Uplift, worlds are left vacant to evolve promising new pre-sentient species, which are then adopted into clans and geneered to full tool-using intelligence, eventually to repeat the cycle. The discovery of humans, with no Patron in sight, is an affront to every decent member of galactic society -- and only the recent enhancement of chimpanzees and bottlenose dolphins earns us the status to remain independent. This isn't a saga of heroic humans imposing Truth, Justice, and the Terran Way on the greater galaxy by force of ingenuity, arms, and cogent argument. Like it or not, Clan Terragens is part of a larger society and must adapt to its customs, apply all its cunning to avoid forcible adoption or destruction, and remember to puncture its preconceptions only when safe... ...Unfortunately, an obscure discovery made by a Terragens survey ship throws every religious alliance into fanatic warfare, pursuing the vessel and holding Earth's colony worlds as hostages, while moderate species plan to protest in a century or two. The spine of the latter five books is the flight/plight of _Streaker_ and its primarily-dolphin crew: to an ocean world where they make yet more discoveries, to a Dyson sphere[3] of powerful elder races, to a hidden planet where half-a-dozen races have illegally immigrated. *** [1] 1980 Sundiver 1983 Startide Rising 1985 The Uplift War 1995 Brightness Reef 1996 Infinity's Shore 1998 Heaven's Reach "Temptation" [ http://www.davidbrin.com/temptation1.html ] (Put self-parody story here, once located.) [2] Everything's fine and peachy in the Five Galaxies -- aside from the odd non-carbon-based invasion, pan-galactic civil war, ecological collapse or hyperspace disaster every hundred megayears or so. [3] Entire species recapitulate the career of individuals: childhood, parenthood, and retirement. Elderly Patron races usually retire to so- called Fractal Worlds, star-enclosing shells built of branching world- sized needles. This "Criswell Sphere" design modifies the familiar solid Dyson Sphere, so as to increase surface area to a ridiculous degree. [4] Major Institutes: Uplift, Civilized Warfare, Great Library, Migration, Navigation and Trade, Progress, Foresight, Coexistence. Orders of Life: Oxygen, Hydrogen, Machine, Retired, Transcendent, Memetic, Ergovore; but not Quantum. Religious alliances: Abdicator, Inheritor, Obeyor. The entry on the Institute for Foresight reads, "This organization has functions that we've been unable to clearly determine [...] they protect Galactic society against competition by self-reproducing machines." This sounds suspiciously like a homage to (and possibly a jab at) the real-world Foresight Institute, founded by nanotech pioneer K.Eric Drexler to consider the impact of future advanced technologies. [ http://www.sjgames.com/uplift/ -- Steve Jackson Games: GURPS Uplift ] [ http://www.io.com/~stefanj/uplift_gateway_home.html -- Stefan Jones, author of above ] [ http://www.foresight.org -- Foresight Institute ] [ http://www.davidbrin.com -- author David Brin's personal site ] [ http://www.lenaghalienfactory.com -- artist Kevin Lenagh's gallery site ] /* *************************************************************************** ** UPCOMING: STARGATE ** ** "StarGate SG-1" season 6 ** "StarGate SG-1" feature film ** "StarGate Atlantis" ** "StarGate Infinity" ** ************************************************************************ */ In 1994, RPI was selected as a sneak-preview location for the movie "StarGate", and with my college SF friends I eagerly awaited (based on the TV ads) unsuspecting Terran explorers to stumble into an interstellar dynastic conflict on the order of "Dune". Instead we got a single interstellar wormhole link, one foppish godling in his flying pyramid-palace, and a sandy planet of cowed tribal miners speaking ancient Egyptian... This merely demonstrates the value of patience. Three years later (1997), the TV series "StarGate SG-1" premiered on the cable network Showtime, and a vacant universe was rapidly populated. The Egyptian- styled Ra of the first movie (we learned) was actually only one of many competing System Lords of the parasitic Goa'uld species[1], dominating a subset of the StarGate network established by an unknown prior race. Human offshoot cultures were spread across the galaxy, transplanted as slaves by the Goa'uld (and often forgotten during internecine conflict), some technologically in advance of Earth. Buried within Cheyenne Mountain, the USAF's secret StarGate Command steadily expanded its exploration and diplomatic efforts, slowly collecting technology and killing off major Goa'uld, while keeping a rein on more rapacious branches of the US military. Alongside "Farscape", "SG-1" assumed the mantle of "best SF on TV" from "Babylon 5", thanks to its excellent characters, intelligent plots, minimal technobabble, and a subtly-played continuing storyline -- one not so tightly integrated as to exclude new viewers. Repeats of "SG-1" soon moved to syndication, and production of the sixth season (2002) was assumed by the Sci Fi Channel (SFC). On-air announcements referred to the fri-23-aug ep (611-"Prometheus") as the "season finale", but that's merely the midpoint of the 22-ep season. SFC's original series are, as usual, going on hiatus to avoid competing with the big network fall premieres -- "Farscape" is in the same boat. The sixth season is planned as the last, with a feature film to be released in 2003; or 2004, should a seventh season be purchased. The film will set up the premise for the spinoff series "StarGate Atlantis". Dean Devlin, maker of the original 1994 "StarGate" film, might have notions for a sequel, but they'll come to nought so long as MGM owns the copyright. Details are sketchy, but "StarGate Atlantis" will be a live-action series featuring a new non-military team, a new villain-race, and the premise that the Ancients (the builders of the StarGate network) might also be responsible for Atlantis. It might go directly to syndication. "StarGate Infinity" is a second spinoff, a 30-minute animated spinoff premiering this fall (sat-14-sep-08:00) on the FoxBox (fka FoxKids). The makers of "StarGate SG-1" are not involved, and the series is intended to occupy a semi-connected timeline[2]. Set 30 years in the future, a team of cadets from the StarGate Academy (plus a veteran, a human-alien hybrid, and a possible Ancient revived from an Egyptian sarcophagus) are framed for treason, and escape into the galaxy to clear their names. They fight yet another new villian-race. The thirty-second promo trailer I've seen is not encouraging: the cadets wear bright-colored techno-jumpsuits (whatever happened to olive drab?) right out of "B.A.D.: Bureau of Alien Detectors" (UPN 1997) and "Alienators: Evolution Continues" (Fox 2001). Press releases note that production company DIC, is responsible for "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego" (1994) (good) and "Captain Planet" (1990) (not so good)[3]. ("Inspector Gadget" (1983) isn't mentioned). Whatever flaws it displays can probably be explained by its target audience (boys 6-12 years of age) and attempts to satisfy FCC "educational" requirements via story themes of "personal growth and cultural understanding". (Couldn't possibly fit in allusions to ancient Earth cultures, mythology and languages, could they?) *** [1] An adult Goa'uld is an intelligent aquatic serpent about 40-cm long, capable of integrating with the nervous system of a host body. They first parasitized the Unas, a humanoid reptilian race on their homeworld. During their stellar expansion, they encountered Earth prior to 3000 BC, and rapidly adopted humans as a new host species, developing the "Jaffa" incubation process to adapt a larva's biochemistry to its host. SF precedents for body-controlling alien parasites/symbiotes: the Trill in ST:DS9, the memory-critters in B5 s3, the Flying Fried Eggs of ST:TOS:"Operation -- Annihilate!", Heinlein's "Puppetmasters", and the "Old Galactics" of James H. Schmitz's _Legacy_. [2] "SG-1" and "SG-Infinity" will, it seems, be intentionally related in the same way as ST:TOS and "Star Trek: The Animated Series" are now regarded. Ie, ST:TAS (19---) seemed like a logical extension when it premiered, but further live-action sequels have pushed it into obscurity and apocrypha. (For that matter, the general attitude of the production team responsible for TNG et al seems to be: We'll ignore specifics of TOS whenever they're inconvenient.) Similarly, the events of "SG- Infinity" branch from, but are not intended to constrain, any live- action series. [3] The premise of "Captain Planet and the Planeteers": a multinational/ethnic team of kids with magic rings can summon the cheerful personification of the planet to fight villians who despoil the environment not because they're profit-driven industrialists cutting corners, but because they *enjoy* it. Generally regarded as heavy- handed in its moralizing, possibly due to the influence of Ted Turner. [ http://www.stargate-sg1.com -- official site ] [ http://www.scifi.com/stargate/ -- SFC's official site ] [ http://www.gateworld.net -- fan news ] [ http://ozstargate.tripod.com -- fan news ] [ http://us.imdb.com/Title?0167742 -- "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?" 1994 ] [ http://us.imdb.com/Title?0098763 -- "Captain Planet and the Planeteers" 1990 ] [ http://us.imdb.com/Title?0085033 -- "Inspector Gadget" 1983-5 ] /* *************************************************************************** ** UPCOMING TELEVISION ** ** "Enterprise": UPN w-18-sep-20:00 ** "Twilight Zone"(iii): UPN w-18-sep-21:00 ** "Buffy the Vampire Slayer": UPN t-24-sep-20:00 ** "Andromeda": 17 z-5-oct ** "ST:DS9" at 101: 29 - ** FoxKids 2002: FOX z-08:00, premieres z-14-sep with ** "Ultraman Tiga", "Kirby", "Ultimate Muscle", "Fighting Foodons", ** and "StarGate Infinity" ** "Invader Zim": Nik s-16:30 ** "InuYasha": TCN z-23:00, premieres z-31-aug ** "He-Man"(iii): TCN f-18:00, new eps start f-20-sep ** "Transformers Armada": TCN f-18:30, new eps start f-20-sep ** ************************************************************************ */ On UPN, the second season of "Enterprise" premieres at wed-18-sep-20:00, and we'll learn how Cpt.Archer escapes the future after all the time machines are broken before he arrives. It's followed by TV's third incarnation of "The Twilight Zone". Season seven of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" opens the next week, tue-24-sep-20:00. In syndication, season three of "Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda" tesseracts through your floor into your TV (to be shot by Elvis) the week of 30-sep. For months, Philadelphia's WTXF-29-FOX has been airing "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" stripped twrfz-04:00. According to startrek.com, it's cycling back to the first season as of wed-4-sep. Saturday mornings, FoxKids transforms to the "FoxBox", still with four hours of programming. "Power Rangers" is replaced with another live- action Japanese monster-rama, "Ultraman Tiga". "Digimon", "Medabots" and "Mon Colle Knights" are replaced by double helpings of "Kirby: Right Back at Ya!" (featuring the deadly pink creampuff and some really bad CGI) and "Ultimate Muscle" (featuring yet another reluctant hero, but who wouldn't be if forced to wear that mask?), plus "Fighting Foodons" (fka "Food Feud", and apparently a horrible hybrid of "Iron Chef" and "Pokémon"). "StarGate Infinity" is described above. A new incarnation of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" arrives in 2003. On Nickelodeon, "Invader Zim" seems to have vanished from its Friday night timeslot, but reportedly the network is merely rationing the remaining unaired eps, planning to show one per month and finishing with the "Zim Christmas Special" in December. You remember the "Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom", right? Don't expect warm fuzzies from Jhonen Vasquez this winter. On Sundays, it seems to have moved from 13:00, to 12:00, to 16:30. A CD of the series' music (by Kevin Manthei) is reportedly in the works. TCN continues to adjust its schedule of serious toons (ie superheroes and animé), and continues to fail to explain it on the air; but the website is slowly improving in usability. The new "He-Man & the Masters of the Universe" (the franchise's third installment) was half-decent for its genre, but "Transformers Armada" contained every awful flaw/motif that an is-it-anime-if-it's-produced- in-Japan-for-American-use of its genre can have. (All other anime cliché/mofits, such as cute fuzzy animals with no visible digits, or crowds of attractive women competing over a single guy, belong to other genres.) They now air Fridays at 18:00 and 18:30, respectively; they're both working through the three episodes comprising the premiere movies, and will debut new ones fri-20-sep. Saturday Adult Swim finally gets a new import, in the shape of the Japanese feudal-era comedy "InuYasha", by veteran female manga artist Rumiko Takahashi. One of the readers of NSX saw five minutes of it while visiting Tokyo last winter, and is eagerly waiting to discover what the plot actually is. Since Takahashi created both "Urusei Yatsura", in which alien royalty wearing tiger-striped bikinis invade Earth, and "Ranma 1/2", in which half the kung fu-kicking characters are cursed to change into cute girls or animals when doused with cold water, we can only guess. Cartoon Network (TCN) Adult Swim Saturday Late Night New schedule began sat-31-aug-2002 ----- ------------------- ---- ---- -------------------- 21:00 Samurai Jack 21:30 Justice League 22:00 He-Man 22:30 Transformers Armada 23:00 InuYasha 14v feudal comedy 23:30 Yu-Yu Hakusho 1992 pg fantasy comedy-drama 00:00 Cowboy Bebop 1998 14 SF drama 00:30 Gundam 0083 1991 y7fv SF mecha drama 01:00 Mobile Suit Gundam 1978 y7fv SF mecha drama 01:30 Outlaw Star 1998 y7fv SF space opera 02:00 Superman: TAS 02:30 Batman: TAS ----- ------------------- ---- ---- -------------------- /* ************************************************************************ ** Legalese ** Acknowledgments ** Opt-in/out Instructions ** *********************************************************************** */ The set of creative works herein reviewed and analyzed, including the subset {books, movies, TV shows, toys}, are the property of their respective copyright holders. No infringement or endorsement is expressed, implied or intended. The original reviews and analyses are themselves copyright 2002 by Phillip Thorne. In this issue, certain data (possibly not otherwise acknowledged) have been obtained, aggregated and synthesized from: Amazon amazon.com The Cartoon Network cartoonnetwork.com Google search engine google.com news:rec.arts.animation news:rec.arts.sf.tv news:rec.arts.startrek.tech Hasbro's Transformers transformers.com The Internet Movie Database imdb.com TV Tome tvtome.com If you're receiving this newsletter, you've probably intentionally subscribed to it, or possibly you're interested in special topical coverage, or maybe I've sent you a teaser issue. To subscribe and unsubscribe, use the addresses below: Publisher: nsx@underbase.org (human) Newsletter: nsx-l@underbase.org (automated system) nsx-l-subscribe (to subscribe; blank subject) nsx-l-unsubscribe (to unsubscribe) Discussion list: nsx-discuss-l@underbase.org nsx-discuss-l-subscribe (to subscribe; blank subject) nsx-discuss-l (to post) nsx-discuss-l-unsubscribe (to unsubscribe) /* *************************************************************************** ** *************************************************************************** ** The Non-Sequitur Express ** http://nsx.underbase.org/ ** Volume 4, Issue 6: Wednesday, 4 September 2002 ** Copyright 1999-2002 Phillip Thorne, nsx@underbase.org ** *************************************************************************** ** ************************************************************************ */