Insert Knob A in Hole B
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I was raised on his books and have read the (original) Foundation series many times. Only Clarke or Niven/Pournelle (Ringworld) come close.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me me, in pictures
Clarke was overrated. His Rendezvous with Rama was good but the sequels really dragged on... and on... Harry Harrison - Now there was a writer of good, fun Science Fiction.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Oh, you didn't? Well, I bet he wouldn't like yours either! Happy New Year!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
:thumbsup:
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me me, in pictures
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Clarke was overrated. His Rendezvous with Rama was good but the sequels really dragged on... and on... Harry Harrison - Now there was a writer of good, fun Science Fiction.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
Clarke's writing is a little dry but some of his stories are brilliant. In particular, The Sentinel which was the basis for 2001. Yes, didn't Harrison write a story about a transatlantic train tunnel? Of course, let's not forget the classics like Wells and Verne and other greats like Orwell and Wyndham.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me me, in pictures
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Damn it. I really have a dirty mind.
"Bastards encourage idiots to use Oracle Forms, Web Forms, Access and a number of other dinky web publishing tolls.", Mycroft Holmes[^]
Yes, you Googled "Insert tab A into Slot B". Dave.
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Clarke was overrated. His Rendezvous with Rama was good but the sequels really dragged on... and on... Harry Harrison - Now there was a writer of good, fun Science Fiction.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
Agreed. Dave.
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Clarke's writing is a little dry but some of his stories are brilliant. In particular, The Sentinel which was the basis for 2001. Yes, didn't Harrison write a story about a transatlantic train tunnel? Of course, let's not forget the classics like Wells and Verne and other greats like Orwell and Wyndham.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me me, in pictures
mark merrens wrote:
Yes, didn't Harrison write a story about a transatlantic train tunnel?
He did: A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah![^]
Never underestimate the power of stupid things in large numbers --- Serious Sam
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Clarke's writing is a little dry but some of his stories are brilliant. In particular, The Sentinel which was the basis for 2001. Yes, didn't Harrison write a story about a transatlantic train tunnel? Of course, let's not forget the classics like Wells and Verne and other greats like Orwell and Wyndham.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me me, in pictures
And don't forget the "Stainless Steel Rat" stories.
Never underestimate the power of stupid things in large numbers --- Serious Sam
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Clarke was overrated. His Rendezvous with Rama was good but the sequels really dragged on... and on... Harry Harrison - Now there was a writer of good, fun Science Fiction.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
Agreed - but so did Asimov's Foundation series as well.
Never underestimate the power of stupid things in large numbers --- Serious Sam
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And don't forget the "Stainless Steel Rat" stories.
Never underestimate the power of stupid things in large numbers --- Serious Sam
Oh yes: they were very good. :thumbsup:
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me me, in pictures
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Yes I did read this story, in 1957 as a matter of fact. In the story the space travelers were being supplied with instruments they needed, but the instruments were packaged dis-assembled, with a set of confusing instructions about how to re-assemble the instruments. They requested a robot that knew how to assemble the instruments. It was shipped, and came dis-assembled, with a confusing set of instructions about how to re-assemble the robot. I was given a package which I couldn't open because the plastic was too tough to open with my bare hands. Whet I needed was a good pair of shears. The package contained those very shears. I know, once you explain a joke it is no longer funny. Dave.
you should have posted photo
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OBTW, you missed Heinlein in your list. Dave.
I have Starship Troopers on the desk right now. It's what I'm reading on the way to work in the morning.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
I hold an A-7 computer expert classification, Commodore. I'm well acquainted with Dr. Daystrom's theories and discoveries. The basic design of all our ship's computers are JavaScript. -
you should have posted photo
About like this one, just a bit thinner: http://www.codeproject.com/Messages/4734928/Re-Insert-Knob-A-in-Hole-B.aspx[^]
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I can relate to that scene, but I've found a better way. I have one of those big syringes used to inject chickens with marinade before cooking. I fill it with water, inject the package, then toss the lot into the microwave. A couple minutes on High generates enough steam pressure to blow any package open. The product inside rarely survives, but it's usually still under warranty, and after enough destroyed products are returned, someone will change the packaging, I'm sure. :-D
Will Rogers never met me.
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Today the wife gave me a package and said "Open this". It was a plastic container holding a pair of Chef's shears. I'm the one around here who has to open all packaging or bottles, etc. The plastic was too hard to open with my bare hands. I immediately thought of Asimov's story. Dave.
I thought I'd start another thread within this one. "What did you know and when did you know it?" When did all of you start reading science fiction, at what age and not necessarily the year? In my case, I broke my lower leg at the beginning of the summer between grade school and high school (1953). I couldn't do any of the normal things, so I walked to the bus stop on my crutches, transferred to another bus to get to the library, and started reading juvenile SF. I would get 6 or 8 books and take them home under my arms (between my arms and the crutches). I started out taking three days to read the books, but later was finishing them by the next day. I soon read the entire lot on the shelves and graduated to the hard core of SF. I read all of that as well. I then took to bringing several books to the librarian at the desk and showed her the lists of "other books by Doubleday" and asked her if she could order these books from some other library. She did. She did this many times. One day (toward the end of the summer), she started quizing me about the plot and characters of several of the books I had just returned, thinking that I was not really reading them. I knew the plots and main characters. She kept ordering more books until the end of the summer and my starting high school. Let me tell you, the ability to read fast and retain the information for extended amount of time sure helped me in my education career. Wish I could read that fast now, or even retain it for half of the old time. Dave.
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I thought I'd start another thread within this one. "What did you know and when did you know it?" When did all of you start reading science fiction, at what age and not necessarily the year? In my case, I broke my lower leg at the beginning of the summer between grade school and high school (1953). I couldn't do any of the normal things, so I walked to the bus stop on my crutches, transferred to another bus to get to the library, and started reading juvenile SF. I would get 6 or 8 books and take them home under my arms (between my arms and the crutches). I started out taking three days to read the books, but later was finishing them by the next day. I soon read the entire lot on the shelves and graduated to the hard core of SF. I read all of that as well. I then took to bringing several books to the librarian at the desk and showed her the lists of "other books by Doubleday" and asked her if she could order these books from some other library. She did. She did this many times. One day (toward the end of the summer), she started quizing me about the plot and characters of several of the books I had just returned, thinking that I was not really reading them. I knew the plots and main characters. She kept ordering more books until the end of the summer and my starting high school. Let me tell you, the ability to read fast and retain the information for extended amount of time sure helped me in my education career. Wish I could read that fast now, or even retain it for half of the old time. Dave.
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Wish I could read that fast now, or even retain it for half of the old time.
Me too. I started reading "real books" when I was 3 1/2, adventure stories mostly, and then graduated to science fiction at 5 - my dad made sure I started with Asimov of course, I skipped all the juvenile stuff, the first book was "I, Robot" which I read around 1964ish. I then rapidly consumed all his robot books and the the Foundation stuff and just about everything he had written by then. Heinlein and deCamp followed. I first met the Stainless steel rat by Harry Harrison around the mid eighties when they came out in paperback - and I've never looked back. I wrote my first [fiction] book in 1975ish but it was never published, 35 years later I tried to give it another go but haven't got past basic plot planning, and re-planning, and re-planning, and.... ho hum, one day maybe.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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I thought I'd start another thread within this one. "What did you know and when did you know it?" When did all of you start reading science fiction, at what age and not necessarily the year? In my case, I broke my lower leg at the beginning of the summer between grade school and high school (1953). I couldn't do any of the normal things, so I walked to the bus stop on my crutches, transferred to another bus to get to the library, and started reading juvenile SF. I would get 6 or 8 books and take them home under my arms (between my arms and the crutches). I started out taking three days to read the books, but later was finishing them by the next day. I soon read the entire lot on the shelves and graduated to the hard core of SF. I read all of that as well. I then took to bringing several books to the librarian at the desk and showed her the lists of "other books by Doubleday" and asked her if she could order these books from some other library. She did. She did this many times. One day (toward the end of the summer), she started quizing me about the plot and characters of several of the books I had just returned, thinking that I was not really reading them. I knew the plots and main characters. She kept ordering more books until the end of the summer and my starting high school. Let me tell you, the ability to read fast and retain the information for extended amount of time sure helped me in my education career. Wish I could read that fast now, or even retain it for half of the old time. Dave.
My Dad had shelves full of the original SF pulps - and I started reading them almost as soon as I could read at all. My problem is that I can never remember which authors wrote what (which is great if I want to re-read a story!) Best Authors? I loved Asimov's robot series most of all (mainly because Dad was a Cybernetic Engineer I think) I adored Stanislaw Lem's short stories. Iain M Banks probably tops my list - I shed a tear when he died. these days I go to the library, and just grab SF books I don't recognise off the shelf (they are kind enough to stick a 'planet' sticker on them in my local library) and read 'em. I also listen to audio books in the car while commuting - but the choice is severely limited (indeed the one I am listening to now has a narrator with a speech impediment (or really bad false teeth))
MVVM # - I did it My Way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
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I thought I'd start another thread within this one. "What did you know and when did you know it?" When did all of you start reading science fiction, at what age and not necessarily the year? In my case, I broke my lower leg at the beginning of the summer between grade school and high school (1953). I couldn't do any of the normal things, so I walked to the bus stop on my crutches, transferred to another bus to get to the library, and started reading juvenile SF. I would get 6 or 8 books and take them home under my arms (between my arms and the crutches). I started out taking three days to read the books, but later was finishing them by the next day. I soon read the entire lot on the shelves and graduated to the hard core of SF. I read all of that as well. I then took to bringing several books to the librarian at the desk and showed her the lists of "other books by Doubleday" and asked her if she could order these books from some other library. She did. She did this many times. One day (toward the end of the summer), she started quizing me about the plot and characters of several of the books I had just returned, thinking that I was not really reading them. I knew the plots and main characters. She kept ordering more books until the end of the summer and my starting high school. Let me tell you, the ability to read fast and retain the information for extended amount of time sure helped me in my education career. Wish I could read that fast now, or even retain it for half of the old time. Dave.
Aged 11. Started with "Dr Who and the Zarbi" and several Andre Norton novels ("Sargasso of Space" is the only one that I recall now), then moved on to "The Infinite Worlds of Maybe" by Lester Del Rey. After that was introduced to E.E.Doc Smith and the "Lensman" series, and went from there to Asimov.
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I've tried Kindle. I liked it. But I prefer the real thing. Besides, what sort of a home doesn't have books?
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me me, in pictures
mark merrens wrote:
what sort of a home doesn't have books?
One with Kindles? I'm working myself up to thin out my book collection but despite my shelves containing a large selection that haven't even been opened in years, let alone read, it's hard to let them go. :sigh:
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Agreed - but so did Asimov's Foundation series as well.
Never underestimate the power of stupid things in large numbers --- Serious Sam
Foundation was more social commentary than SciFi, IMO.
