From: blakes7-d-request@lysator.liu.se Subject: blakes7-d Digest V98 #98 X-Loop: blakes7-d@lysator.liu.se X-Mailing-List: archive/volume98/98 Precedence: list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/digest; boundary="----------------------------" To: blakes7-d@lysator.liu.se Reply-To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se ------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blakes7-d Digest Volume 98 : Issue 98 Today's Topics: Re: [B7L] AFTERLIFE & an intro [B7L] The trials of going to your 1st B7 Con [B7L] Trials of going to your 1st B7 Con cont. [B7L] Visions [B7L] "Deliverance" Convention [B7L] Good news and bad news Re: [B7L] Standard Speeds (an answer.. kind of) Re: [B7L] Standard Speeds (an answer.. kind of) [B7L] Re: AFTERLIFE copy [B7L] Cheryl met Paul Darrow!!! Re: [B7L] Time Lines [B7L] Re: Blake references in B5 Re: [B7L] Good news and bad news Re: [B7L] Standard Speeds (an answer.. kind of) Re: [B7L] Standard Speeds (an answer.. kind of) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 09:31:10 EST From: "Letitia A. Casebourn" To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se CC: reuben@reuben.net Subject: Re: [B7L] AFTERLIFE & an intro Message-ID: <1EFD67F31CF@stew-01.cea.purdue.edu> Reuben -- I'm still unpacking boxes from my last move, but should have a copy in my scifi paperbacks. You're welcome to it. And, if you've already located a copy by the time I find mine, someone else on the list will no doubt want it. info on me --- I've been lurking quietly for about two weeks now. Usually "hang out" on animal-related lists ... but I wanted to get reactions to the con last weekend, since I'm planning on attending my first in Chicago this November. Has anybody else on this list been to the Chicago "Vision" cons? I'm a fan from the U.S.(central Indiana). Of B7, of course, but mostly of science in general (both fact and fantasy). Always dreamed of working "out there" ... but settled for reading books about it. And always wanted to attend a con, though I was mostly interested in the type of con that was heavy on sci-fi *writers*. Still, Chicago isn't too far away ... and their line-up of guests over the years has been pretty impressive. I live out on a creek with a house full of animals. "On a creek" is particularly true right now ... there's been so much rain lately that the creek and river downstream have jumped their banks and one can fish from my back porch (but watch out for power lines!). I work at the university in town as a secretary, but don't hang out in town much unless I'm visiting my daughter. Must admit though, you folks know *way* more about B7 than I can remember. It's been years and years! I've seen some of the cast in other projects since, and may be more familiar with their work as actors at this point than I am with the B7 characters they portrayed. but that's enough about me ... tell me about cons! tisha@purdue.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 15:37:54 GMT From: "Jane Elizabeth Macdonald" To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] The trials of going to your 1st B7 Con Message-ID: Before Friday... I only rediscovered Blake's 7 in January this year when I found out about this list by accident. So many people seemed so keen to go to the Deliverance Con that I decided to go as well to see what all the fuss was about. I though that there would not be much to do or see and that I would probably be bored. So it wasn't worth me booking for all 3 days (how wrong I was!!). I decided that if I stayed 1 night in the hotel then I would see most of 2 days of the Con. So I sent off my application form but by this time of cause the Moat House and all the overflow hotels were all full. Anyway, I was registered for Friday and Saturday and was sent a list of other hotels and guest houses in the area. I then started a very frustrating time to try and find somewhere that wasn't already full, but I eventually found somewhere. Friday I arrived at the Moat House at 11-45am to register as I thought that it might be quiet at that time and I was right! Nothing much seemed to be happening so I sat down and started chatting to some people - 2 from America and 1 from Australia. This is amazing I thought - the 1st people I speak to and they are not even from this country! They were very friendly and told me about the great time they had had at the other cons they had been to. Then a film crew (well 2 men actually) from BBC Midlands Today News came over and said that they wanted some people to pretend to register for the Con as they had come to do a piece for the 6-30pm news and there was no one registering! So we were persuaded to give them 5 minutes of our time and they started filming.... I told the people behind the desk my name and one of them said "But you have already registered". I had to tell her what we were doing in a whisper because no one else had told her that we were filming. Then we all fell about laughing so they couldn't use that bit of film after all. After this we had to do silly shots pretending to see the Liberator flying over the hotel. We got some very funny looks while we were doing this! Finally, we had to 'see' the reporter teleport away. It was a good job that nothing was happening at this time as we were filming for an hour and a half. I don't know if anyone saw it on the T.V. just before 7pm but it only lasted for a few minutes. (If anyone taped it can they send me a message, please) I thought this was a good start to my first con; I had only been there for quarter of an hour and I was already a T.V. star! It couldn't possibly get more embarrassing I thought but there was worse to come..... More later Cylan ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 16:12:08 GMT From: "Jane Elizabeth Macdonald" To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] Trials of going to your 1st B7 Con cont. Message-ID: Friday After a slow start the video room eventually got going at 2-30pm (2 1/2 hours late) and all of a sudden everything started happening at once! I couldn't decide what to go and see because for every hour of the rest of the weekend (or so it seemed) there were 3 things going on simultaneously. Why did no one warn me that I would have no time to eat any meals? At 10pm I finally got time to eat my lunch and tea combined (it was the last dry ham sandwich left). The non-eating of meals did not get any better the following day either. I found time to go to the dealers room and the Horzon room where I was relieved of vast quantities of money and all of a sudden my bag was very heavy. I didn't find out until later that I could have left it at Reception and so lugged it round with me for the rest of the day. The 1st timers' meeting was held at 9pm and I wish it had been earlier as I was somewhat at a loss as to what was going on before that. I went to the pub quiz which I found very hard as I have only got half the episodes on video and I was having to remember back to when B7 was originally on TV. I got to bed very late after a hectic but very enjoyable day. Saturday Got up at 7am to have a hearty and much needed breakfast and be in time for the start of Saturday's activities - I didn't want to miss anything. Tried to go to some of the Fan Workshops but alot of them were cancelled as they clashed with other things that were more popular. Turned up to 'Pin the Stud on Avon' but there were not enough people there so we played B7 pictionary instead. That was when the 2nd unexpected thing happened. I was informed that only 1 person had so far put their name down for Mastermind and they were desperate for more people. I explained that my knowledge of B7 was nil but they still 'pursuaded' me to 'volunteer'. When Mastermind time came round they had managed to scrape together 7 contestents. Showing my lack B7 knowledge in front of an audience was even more nerve racking than I thought it would be, but still fun at the same time. I managed to score 4 with 12 passes! But I didn't come last. It was a pity that the Mastermind was on at the same time as the 1st photo shoot as it consequently was poorly attended and I missed my only chance to get some good photos (poor me!). So I had now been a TV star and on Mastermind but still worse (not possible you are thinking) was to come... More later Cylan ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 19:46:07 +0100 (BST) From: Judith Proctor To: Lysator List Subject: [B7L] Visions Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Thu 02 Apr, Letitia A. Casebourn wrote: > I've been lurking quietly for about two weeks > now. Usually "hang out" on animal-related > lists ... but I wanted to get reactions to the > con last weekend, since I'm planning on attending > my first in Chicago this November. Has anybody > else on this list been to the Chicago "Vision" cons? I went to Visions a couple of years ago when Paul and Gareth were guests. I'm probably going to go again this year to see Gareth again. It's very much a guest con with little else to do when the guest talks are not on. They do have a good guest line up though. There's one or two con reports for Visions on my web page - take a look and see. Two other US cons that I've been to are Ecclecticon and Mediawest. Both are non-guest cons and highly enjoyable. There's con reports for those on the web too. Of the three, I think Ecclecticon was the one I enjoyed most. Small, friendly and lots to do. I also managed to visit a friend in the US who lived near the con (who has unfortunately moved to another part of the country now) Of course, there's always Redemption if you fancy crossing the pond. We're trying to combine the bits we like best from guest cons and non-guest cons. Judith -- http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7 Redemption 99 - The Blakes 7/Babylon 5 convention 26-28 February 1999, Ashford International Hotel, Kent http://www.smof.com/redemption/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 02 Apr 1998 21:37:13 +0100 From: JMR To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] "Deliverance" Convention Message-Id: <3.0.2.32.19980402213713.0069ba20@clara.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi All. As one of the trio who organised the "Deliverance" convention in Stoke last weekend, I'd be interested to hear any comments and/or complaints (be gentle!). I can attempt to answer any questions anyone has (ie Why were things moved/cancelled) about the way the convention was organised and run. That's about all for now as I'm still too tired to think straight. Hope all attending had a good weekend. Judith J.M. Rolls jager@clara.net ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 00:08:19 +0100 From: "Dangermouse" To: Subject: [B7L] Good news and bad news Message-Id: <199804022312.AAA01837@gnasher.sol.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The good news is that Brian Lighthill said at Deliverance that there *will* be a second B7 radio show towards the end of the year! The bad news is that he also said that Barry fucking Letts will be writing it. (even though my boss at Enterprises said this wouldn't be allowed after last time... Still at least he's trying to get the rights to do a book series someday.) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 23:25:34 +0100 From: "Tom Forsyth" To: "B7 Lysator" Subject: Re: [B7L] Standard Speeds (an answer.. kind of) Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian Lay said: > If Standard by 1 equals TD4 then STD 2 would equal TD5, yes? So why does > STD 7 equal TD 11. Shouldn't it be TD 10? Or am I not thinking straight? Well, STD1 might be TD3.8 or something like that, and it's just rounded up to TD4. The thing I never got with this system, i.e. STD1=TD4, STD2=TD5, STD3=TD6 is that it's daft. Surely STD2 is twice as fast as STD1? "Standard by two" - twice standard. I mean, if you follow it back a step, STD0=TD3. Standard by zero is obviously stop. So TimeDistort 3 is stopped? Bizarre. The only thing that I can think of is that TD is a non-linear measurement. My pet argument is that TD is the amount that they have to re-stretch time to match the shrinkage caused by going very fast. As you go faster, time passes faster for ... er ... someone (my brain still can't work out which of you ages faster, despite doing this for a year at uni). This is obviously a bad idea, and the Feds fitted a time stretcher to compensate. So TD1 is stopped (because you don't need to distort time), TD2 is the speed at which time for you passes at half the speed it should, so you need to distort it by a factor of two to compensate. I could dredge out of the archives of my brain the equations for how much time distorts at various speeds, and it's something like 1/(1-sqrt(v/c)) or 1/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2) (my bet's on the latter), and then go on to calculate exactly how fast TD2 was. Except that we all accept that TD2 was definately a lot faster than light, and at the speed of light, no time passes so you need an infinite distortion, so that doesn't work, because you'd start getting into negative time, because at faster-than-light speeds, time goes backwards. Hmmmm. Doesn't mean it can't be something similar, though. So, given a couple of data points, and assuming STD is a linear scale (as the name implies), we could make up some sort of equation for TD that fits. First data point is STD1 = TD4. Second data point is either STD0 (stop) = TD1, or STD0=TD0. Your choice. I'd go for TD1 is stop, because non-linear scales are usually logarithmic, and so don't go through 0. Anyway, all we need is a third and we can start conjecturing wildly! Tom Forsyth. (Oh Gods - was I rambling about obscure pseudo-science again? Sorry about that) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 11:17:27 +1000 From: Bill Billingsley To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Standard Speeds (an answer.. kind of) Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19980403111727.006a8dfc@rabbit> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 23:25 2/04/98 +0100, Tom wrote: > >I could dredge out of the archives of my brain the equations for how much >time distorts at various speeds, and it's something like 1/(1-sqrt(v/c)) or >1/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2) (my bet's on the latter), and then go on to calculate >exactly how fast TD2 was. Except that we all accept that TD2 was definately >a lot faster than light, and at the speed of light, no time passes so you >need an infinite distortion, so that doesn't work, because you'd start >getting into negative time, because at faster-than-light speeds, time goes >backwards. Hmmmm. > Well, no actually. If v becomes greater than c, the solution to the equation becomes imaginary, not negative. The other solution: The Liberator's speed system is actually a really strange and inconsistent scale created by a drunk scientist called Stan Dardby. :-P -------------------------------------------------------- The Loch Mess Monster (occaisionally mistaken as Bill Billingsley) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 21:11:49 -0500 From: natlyn@mindspring.com (Natalie Barnes) To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] Re: AFTERLIFE copy Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Reuben wrote: >>>Any leads on obtaining a copy? > Carol McCoy advised: >I've seen used copies for sale at cons on occasion. Other possibilities: >used bookstores, place a "Want" ad in Horizon Newsletter. A good >possibility is The White Hart (Baltimore-area, I think, bookstore; >the owner frequents many cons where she both buys and sells fannish >publications). I don't have an address for it, but perhaps you >could find it on one of those Web yellow pages or perhaps a fan in >the D.C.-Baltimore area could get it for you. > Tales from the White Hart has recently changed hands. Kathy Sands still does conventions, but the store is now run by Charlie Kimbrough and Melissa Horn. I'm sure if you call the store, they will be able to help you. Tales from the White Hart 3360 Greenmount Avenue Baltimore, MD 21218 (410) 889-0099 I hope this helps. Natalie a fan from the DC-Baltimore area ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 02 Apr 1998 21:28:57 EST From: penny_kjelgaard@juno.com To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] Cheryl met Paul Darrow!!! Message-ID: <19980402.182213.9647.0.Penny_Kjelgaard@juno.com> Hey, everyone! Our list member and Northwest Rabble member Cheryl Marks is off in England and sent me a post card which she wants me to pass on to the rest of the Rabble and the list. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 3/20/98 Dear Penny, I'm here in Blackpool - sort of a combination Coney Island/Reno for the blue collar worker. Here to see Paul Darrow in "Guards! Guards!" Of course, Paul was mobbed after the show so I ended up meeting the rest of the cast. They told him about me so on Thursday (I guess they were impressed that I came all the way from Seattle AND was seeing the show 4 times) he came over and said hello - I almost fainted! The con is in 1 week! Cheryl >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Needless to say I am grinning from ear to ear since I have the impression that Cheryl absolutley adores PD. Peace, Penny _____________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 22:48:13 +0100 (BST) From: Judith Proctor To: Lysator List Subject: Re: [B7L] Time Lines Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Thu 02 Apr, Don Trower wrote: > IMHO > > When Blake and co. boarded the ship for the first time it was called DSV > what ever it was called by The System from the episode Redeption, Zen's > security systems scanned their minds to use their thoughts and memories > against them. Hence DSV ??? being renamed by Jenna to The Liberator by > Zen from her thoughts. DSV = Deep Space Vehicle. Don't ask me where I got that from though. Zen certainly took the name 'Liberator' from Jenna's mind. > > Wouldn't a clever computer then use her's and Blake thoughts and terms > of reference to re calibrate the ships speed mesaurements. So standard > would be the standard speed that they were used to ? Not necessarily. IT would seem that the ship didn't have a number before, only a number. I think Liberator was DSV2. Thus, Zen would retain his existing terminology for everything else. (If you've ever tried converting units between systems, you'll appreciate that it can throw all sorts of things out) > > Or (sitting on the fence) the standard speed of the ship, which I think > is a better answer as it is clear that Blake is suprised that they get > to CA so fast, the clothes is just a continuity cock up. I think Raiker's mention of 8 months was the cock-up - but I rather like the idea mentioned last week that he was lying to the prisoners to make them mistime any escape attempt. After all, it does make sense to try the escape as far away from Earth as possible. Judith -- http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7 Redemption 99 - The Blakes 7/Babylon 5 convention 26-28 February 1999, Ashford International Hotel, Kent http://www.smof.com/redemption/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 17:04:45 +1000 From: Sven Klinge To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] Re: Blake references in B5 Message-ID: <35248A0D.A017363F@zeta.org.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I read somewhere that events from the Blakes 7 series were referred to in Babylon 5. If so, what were they, and which episodes? __________________ Sven avatar@zeta.org.au ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 10:16:58 +0100 From: "Jenni-Alison" To: Subject: Re: [B7L] Good news and bad news Message-Id: <199804030918.LAA29488@samantha.lysator.liu.se> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dangermouse wrote > > The good news is that Brian Lighthill said at Deliverance that there *will* > be a second B7 radio show towards the end of the year! > > The bad news is that he also said that Barry fucking Letts will be writing > it. (even though my boss at Enterprises said this wouldn't be allowed after > last time... Still at least he's trying to get the rights to do a book > series someday.) He also said that next time he'd get a script editor to check out the continuity errors, and that he'd get someone very familiar with the characters to check dialogue more closely. And we asked him to do something a little more scientific, rather than mythic, as it would be truer to B7, and he said he'd seriously consider it. I think that even though BL will be writing, he probably won't have the free hand he seemed to have first time round (we hope). And you never know, if he does a good job this time, we may forgive him ;-) Jenni ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 10:25:24 +0100 From: Ian Lay To: Tom.Forsyth@btinternet.com, B7 Lysator Subject: Re: [B7L] Standard Speeds (an answer.. kind of) Message-ID: <01bd5ee2$6ebde340$f2dadec2@pacific-cc.demon.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Tom wrote: >Well, STD1 might be TD3.8 or something like that, and it's just rounded up >to TD4. > >The thing I never got with this system, i.e. STD1=TD4, STD2=TD5, STD3=TD6 >is that it's daft. Surely STD2 is twice as fast as STD1? "Standard by two" >- twice standard. I mean, if you follow it back a step, STD0=TD3. Standard >by zero is obviously stop. So TimeDistort 3 is stopped? Bizarre. Certianly one of the more plausible explaninations. I certainly don't like merely multiplying which some have suggested. This would mean that STD 12 equals about TD48 and that would mean that generally that the Liberator would be about 5 times faster that the best pursuit ships (top speed TD 10)..... it's like comparing a car with a pedal bike basically. In other words that scale would make Liberator too fast. Yes it is faster than the Federation Pursuit ships but if it were 5 times faster then it would just never ever get cornered.... which has done. I think I've said enough on this particular subject. I don't want to bore people with my unimaginitive views!! :-) ------------------------------------------------------------- Ian "Temperatures of over 101 are NOT fun" Lay /// :-) \\\ Watford Internet Football Club ian@pacific-cc.demon.co.uk or wifc@wfc.net ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 14:35:06 +0100 From: Russ Massey To: Ian Lay Cc: Tom.Forsyth@btinternet.com, B7 Lysator Subject: Re: [B7L] Standard Speeds (an answer.. kind of) Message-ID: In message <01bd5ee2$6ebde340$f2dadec2@pacific-cc.demon.co.uk>, Ian Lay writes > >Certianly one of the more plausible explaninations. I certainly don't like >merely multiplying which some have suggested. This would mean that STD 12 >equals about TD48 and that would mean that generally that the Liberator >would be about 5 times faster that the best pursuit ships (top speed TD >10)..... it's like comparing a car with a pedal bike basically. >In other words that scale would make Liberator too fast. Yes it is faster >than the Federation Pursuit ships but if it were 5 times faster then it >would just never ever get cornered.... which has done. > Neil Faulkner wrote an article on the subject ('Safe at any Speed') in the Horizon Newsletter 28. In it he postulated that 'Standard' was 5,000c and Time Distort 1 was 3,000c. In a later series he used these speeds (increased by 10% for some unexplained reaon) as a basis for calculating the travel times for every episode of the series. Fascinating stuff, but God only knows why he thought it necessary to include the effects of relativity so that time on board was less for the crew than time perceived by planetary-bound individuals. It made roughly a 50% difference overall, so that by the time of Liberator's destruction Neil estimates that 6 years 10 days have passed for the original crew, while 9 years and 5 days have 'really' elapsed. -- Russ Massey -------------------------------- End of blakes7-d Digest V98 Issue #98 *************************************