From: blakes7-d-request@lysator.liu.se Subject: blakes7-d Digest V99 #327 X-Loop: blakes7-d@lysator.liu.se X-Mailing-List: archive/volume99/327 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 99 : Issue 327 Today's Topics: [B7L] History and Critical Analysis of" Blakes [B7L] New B7 Photos for the holidays! Re: [B7L] the Federation Re: [B7L] 1999 zines Re: [B7L] the Federation Re: [B7L] the Federation [B7L] Another 1999 zine ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 22:07:35 +0100 From: Chris To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] History and Critical Analysis of" Blakes Message-ID: <3839B094.1DB11FC0@cityweb.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hi Hi I recently found this book on a B7 book list. I am not quite sure whether it is published or not, but for me it looks as if itīs available. History and Critical Analysis of" Blakes 7" , the 1978-81 British Television Space Adventure Has anybody ordered the book so far and is it worth the high price they charge for it?? Thanks Christina -- °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° Carry on, my sweet survivor, carry on my only friend donīt give up on your dreams, donīt you let it end. Carry on my sweet survivor, though you know that somethingīs gone For everything that matters carry on ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 07:34:33 EST From: Bizarro7@aol.com To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se, freedom-city@blakes-7.org Subject: [B7L] New B7 Photos for the holidays! Message-ID: <0.99344c03.256be3d9@aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi, guys! Now that we're back from merry olde England, we're reactivating our eBay auctions with some great new items for the holidays, including many rare Blakes 7 photos, pins, magazines and the like. We've also already posted many items from other fandoms like Star Wars, Magnum PI, Forever Knight, Robin Hood, various videos, and more to come, including some more of our gorgeous Celtic art prints (which would make lovely Christmas presents). We'll be adding more items by the end of the week and continuing onward, as before. Bookmark us and keep checking back! Remember that registering to bid on eBay is free and very easy. Good luck! Here's our eBay home page: http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/ashton7 Annie & Leah ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 19:42:36 -0000 From: "Neil Faulkner" To: "b7" Subject: Re: [B7L] the Federation Message-ID: <000601bf35e5$a9fa4f80$9a19ac3e@default> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Andreew wrote: >What I am saying (apparently very badly) is that although certain people in >the Federation are blacker than a black hole at night, that does not >necessarily mean that the Federation as such is any worse than regimes that >we either follow today, or respect from history. I was beginning to think it was about time the original argument was reclarified. The trouble with bandying around such terms as 'better' or 'worse' is that you first need to establish the criteria by which a regime is being evaluated, and that leads you into a level of complexity that demands in-depth authoratative knowledge (which I at least wouldn't lay claim to in any case I can think of). Simply focussing on isolated aspects of a regime loses sight of the whole picture. If you're arguing that a tendency to corruption is inevitable within a regime, then you may well be right. If you're suggesting that the Federation can act as a =symbolic= representation of 'Everygovernment', then you maybe have a case, though it probably helps to be either a cynic or an anarchist, if not both. But if you try to insist on establishing a point-for-point correlation between the Federation and whichever regime you choose to lambast, you probably don't have much chance. There are individual points of correlation, but this reflects the historical sources drawn on by the scriptwriters when depicting the (fictional) Federation. Terry Nation used the Nazis as a primary inspiration (in such simplistic terms that the Federation almost became an unintentional parody of Nazism), though there are also echoes of Cold War machinations in Bounty. Allan Prior (in Horizon) clearly drew on Britain's colonial heritage. Chris Boucher (Shadow) alludes to the lies and hypocrisy of the post-war West (I have heard a certain former governor of California cited in respect of this episode) but also shows the flipside of the Federation's power in Star One, reflecting the ambivalence many of us might feel towards the modern western democracies we live under. (I did wonder if Star One was written as a critique of western pacifist unilateralism, but Chris himself denied this when I asked him.) We should also remember that the correlations we draw between the Federation and the Real World are limited by our own knowledge and interests. For example, in Trial I see echoes of the scapegoating trials that followed public awareness of My Lai, which would be in line with the post-war resonances that pervade Boucher's scripts, but an equally strong if not stronger case might be made for other historical incidents (such as the Dreyfus affair) of which I know next to nothing. Neil ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 07:18:20 +0000 (GMT) From: Judith Proctor To: Lysator List Subject: Re: [B7L] 1999 zines Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Mon 22 Nov, Jakx wrote: > > Gen standalone > > VEM QUEST (round robin story by various authors; UK, 1999.1) > > > *Vem Quest*? came out a a zine? Really? > where can I get a copy, and how much? I`d love to see how it ended. I think the details are on my web site. The editor prints copies to request rather than keeping a stock now, so except a delay of a couple of weeks. Judith -- http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7 - Fanzines for Blake's 7, B7 Filk songs, pictures, news, Conventions past and present, Blake's 7 fan clubs, Gareth Thomas, etc. (also non-Blake's 7 zines at http://www.nas.com/~lknight ) Redemption '01 23-25 Feb 2001 http://www.smof.com/redemption/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 22:33:33 -0000 From: "Andrew Ellis" To: "b7" Subject: Re: [B7L] the Federation Message-ID: <008d01bf3608$c75a85e0$e4d8ac3e@leanet.futures.bt.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sorry Neil, in my previous post I am somewhat guilty of .... >Simply focussing on isolated aspects >of a regime loses sight of the whole picture. But I hope you will let me off. Andrew ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 22:30:36 -0000 From: "Andrew Ellis" To: "b7" Subject: Re: [B7L] the Federation Message-ID: <008c01bf3608$c64df7e0$e4d8ac3e@leanet.futures.bt.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Neil Faulkner >I was beginning to think it was about time the original argument was >reclarified. Good call Neil. >The trouble with bandying around such terms as 'better' or >'worse' is that you first need to establish the criteria by which a regime >is being evaluated, and that leads you into a level of complexity that >demands in-depth authoratative knowledge (which I at least wouldn't lay >claim to in any case I can think of). You even need to consider issues of whether morality is absolute or relative, and that has baffled our best philosophers since the birth of philosophy. >But if you try to insist on establishing a >point-for-point correlation between the Federation and whichever regime you >choose to lambast, you probably don't have much chance. I would like to focus just on morality and the Federation, and the question is .... Is the Federation "rotten to the core", or is it just a few dominant indaviduals ? It can be "rotten to the core" in two ways. Firstly, the vast majority of the people holding power are corrupt - ie Servalan is just a typical Federation official. Secondly, the very mechanisms of government could be based on morally unsound foundations.(Note the point about morality above). I deflected a thread into this area because I became aware of an underlying assumption that the Federation was simply "bad". It could well be you have all been through this before, but I haven't. Now, I have been doing my recommended reading (Why Blake Fought) from Judith's WEB pages, and I'm going to let you know my opinion later. But just for now, I'm struggling with the morality of one particular scene from Deliverance. This is the one where Servalan gets Marriott posted as a deserter. TRAVIS (the Federation war machine who shows no remorse over dead civilians - just his training - honest) is horrified, because his family will suffer the consequences. What do we get out of this scene. Firstly, and obviously, Travis actually does have a heart. But more importantly, it was an unquestioned result of Servalan's actions against Marriott that there would be severe consequences for his family. So I am asking myself moral questions of a regime where the mechanics of the justice system automatically serve out sentences / fines / punishments on people who's only crime is to be related to a criminal (we don't know if that's a convicted criminal or not, but lets assume that it does). You could put forward arguments about Marriott and his family being within the military (where the standard of living is good), and that to be forced to leave was a really bad step (because the work to reward ratio is so much worse), tantamount to slavery. Appart from being a weak argument, if you accept it, you are left with a situation where a military system that should serve society is actually bleeding it dry for its own benefit. That falls into "rotten to the core" of the second kind. Perhaps joint and several liabilty is the norm within the Federation, being a computers natural extension of the principle that parents should pay for windows their children break, and that wives should pick up the bill for the husbands credit card bill. This is also, in my mind "RTTC II", because justice must always be placed within context, and is not always as simple as applying a few simple rules. Perhaps such actions only apply to certain crimes, where collusion is almost a pre requisite. For example, it must surely be imposible for someones close family to be un aware of a building desire for desertion, and failure to report such a disposition is a crime of equal magnitude. But even there, in Marriott's case the punishment WOULD be metred out. It was NOT the case that Marriott's family would be put on trial. So we have a justice system that operates a "guilty without trial" system, again falling into the RTTC II kind of area. OK so "guilty without trial" may be justified in certain special cases (as in anti terrorism laws), but the application of such special laws to family members falls at best within the grey area of morality (absolute or relative). So, of all the evidence of the Federation being RTTC, this one quick throw away comment is perhaps the most convincing evidence that it is the Federation itself at fault, and not just certain officials, such as Servalan. Of course this does not necessarily mean that all of the officials were corrupt, in fact many of them may be un successfully trying to change the system for the better. Indeed some Federation officials eventually defect to Blake's cause in "Voice", potentially because of their inability to act from within the system. Can ANYONE think of a reason for that scene that does not imply that the Federation is "rotten to the core" ? Andrew ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Nov 99 09:41:00 GMT From: s.thompson8@genie.com To: freedom-city%blakes-7.org%inet02#@genie.com Cc: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] Another 1999 zine Message-Id: <199911241011.KAA22192@rock103.genie.net> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Oops! Sure enough, I forgot (at least) one: Multimedia slash, continued HOMOSAPIEN SUX (AU, 1999.2.14) [Love the appropriate date of publication!] Several people asked where to find ordering info for zines. The best place is Judith's web page, which has info on pretty much everything currently available. Linda Knights carries a huge selection of B7 (and other) zines, and many of the individual publishers have their own web pages now. Sarah T. -------------------------------- End of blakes7-d Digest V99 Issue #327 **************************************