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5511 discussions

Re: Zine lists coming up
by JEB31538＠cs.com 29 May '01

29 May '01

Tavia did some zine statistics. > > There have been a total of more than 800 all-Blake's 7 fiction zines > produced. Zine production peaked in 1988, with a total of 73 zines, and has > since trailed off appreciably: > > (Numbers are average per year) > 1978--1979: 14 > 1980--1984: 31 > 1985--1989: 55 > 1990--1994: 36 > 1995--1999: 21 > 2000--2001: 9 > No date avail: 54 (total) > Tavia, thank you ever so much. I knew that zine production had failed drastically since I first got into B7 which was in 1993. But it was interesting to see it spelled out. Since there are a total of 800 zines and I own almost every Blake zine (or have owned it at one time) except for two zines, I see now why I have bankers box after box littering my bedroom and driving my husband crazy. Bankers boxers aren't exactly lovely pieces of furniture--especially stacked three and four boxes high. The upside to this is that the cat can use the stacked boxes as a launch pad to get to the top or our seven foot bookcase (also filled with zines and more zines as well as Corgi and Comet Liberators on display) to then jump to the top of the exposed beams in our 15 foot high bedroom and look out at the birds flying about in front of the house and the deer on the hill behind us. So all my boxes of zines DO serve some purpose, even if they do not add to the decor. The two zines I am still looking for, by the way, are Wallow Plus TWO and Orion's Approach. I have no clue that Blake is in them, but I would like to check them out. I will gladly take copies and, yes, I know that Wallow Plus TWO will be virtually unreadable because it is such an old British zine and the production quality has faded with time. Wallow Plus One is an interesting zine, and I really would like to have the sequel. Orion's Approach is a cartoon book. It's rather sad that I join B7 when the average zine amount is 36 and now the average is down to 9. But it is good for the pocketbook (and there's little B7 offered in general these days that I want to buy ) and for the space problem (as in lack of space) in my bedroom. Thanks again, Tavia. Your entire post was extremely interesting. I would think that Judith Proctor might like this information for her website. You might contact her. Joyce

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Re: Shields
by Steve Rogerson 29 May '01

29 May '01

Helen wrote: "I would love to see this discussion as a panel at the Redemption'03" Just added it to the ideas list, which gives me a good excuse to plug the ideas list. If anyone has any ideas for panels or debates, or other events, at Redemption 03, please let me know either on or off list. -- cheers Steve Rogerson http://homepages.poptel.org.uk/steve.rogerson Redemption 03, 21-23 February 2003, Ashford, Kent Celebrating 25 years of Blake's 7 and 10 years of Babylon 5 http://www.smof.com/redemption

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Re: Shields
by Hellen Paskaleva 29 May '01

29 May '01

Steve: <The first point is how do shields work?> Since their main purpose is to stop the enemy's plasma bolts/ blaster fire/ some sort of electromagnetic emission, I would imagine that themselves they are electro-magnetically based (rather than gravity/antigravity based). My reasoning is that one needs strong gravity field in order to distort even slightly a light beam (that's why the effect in astronomy has been observed only around large objects like the sun and Jupiter). And since nobody in the series has ever suggested that there is an artificial black hole (or it's equivalent, whatever it may be) to produce gravity on Liberator, I'd assume, that there isn't one. If the shields are electromagnetic field, that would explain their interaction with the electrically charged plasma bolts. I have to think a bit more about the mere blasters, though, because they are electrically neutral. <Also, different SF programmes vary on whether you can fire your own weapons when the shields are up. Could a shield be only one way in that it will stop incoming fire but allow outgoing fire to pass through?> Some years ago I read about a plastic material, used for clothes for skiing. The paradox was, that it used to allow the water from inside (the sweat) to evaporate, but the water from outside (the snow, mud or whatever) couldn't penetrate through. The principle happened to be related to the size of the water particles - the small vapour drops easily fly out, while the bigger drops of melted snow remained outside the plastic pores. It is possible, that the shields work the same way - they allow the ship's lasers (with a particular frequency) to fire *out*, but stop everything else (with any other frequency) from penetrating *in*. That could be a reason why every time Vila needed to "clear blasters for firing" manually - for security reasons the "home" frequency has to be changed often. <We learn from Harvest that the Liberator has overlapping shields - what's that about? Why couldn't it have just one big shield? Is there an advantage to overlapping shields?> One explanation could be, that if one of the shields is knocked out during a battle, the ship can turn it's protected side to the enemy fire, until the damage is restored. If the ship has a single shield, the ship would be much more vulnerable in such situations. <Also from Harvest, we learn the shields can be detected, otherwise Jarvik couldn't have spotted the gap. How does that work?> If they are electromagnetically based, I would imagine that a humble police radio would be able to do the job. Metaphorically speaking, of course. I have no explanation handy for how shield protected Liberator from impact with the asteroids in Mission To Destiny. <Any thoughts?> I would love to see this discussion as a panel at the Redemption'03. Hellen. Back to lurk mode now. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Penguins ahoy?
by Harriet Monkhouse 29 May '01

29 May '01

Una, are you back here yet? -- Harriet Travis: "That your new muscle, Servalan? Looks like a powder puff." -Gambit

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Re: [B7L] B7 movie
by Steve Kilbane 29 May '01

29 May '01

Susan Beth wrote: > The producers have a genius for taking out what we actually enjoyed about a > show, and 'improving' it with state of the action scenes and sfx. Indeed. Just read comments in this month's SFX about how Pern was canned because of what the network were trying to do to the dialogue (sounded like they wanted Buffy or Xena, from the comments). so I dread to think what they'd do to Boucher's dialogue. steve

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Re: [B7L] B7 movie
by Sally Manton 29 May '01

29 May '01

Steve R wrote: <Andrew Sewell was speaking about the planned B7 movie at Eclectic this weekend. The delay has been that the script has undergone a rewrite because he wasn't happy with it.> <sigh> One can't help wishing they would all give up and go and find something else to make a mess of ... Wasn't it supposed to start *filming* last year, though? Must have been a *really* bad script to make that amount of re-writing necessary <veg> <When that's sorted, he is confident that he will get funding to make the movie,> Dunno. The second radio play stiffed; the re-runs were taken off after 1st season; the BBC doesn't appear to me to be any more enthused (possibly less). And the Dr Who movie led precisely nowhere as far as TV is concerned. Sorry and all that to those who are looking forward to the movie, but ... I really am *enormously* more enthusiastic about the DVDs of the series itself. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Chronicles 65 available
by Andrew Williams 29 May '01

29 May '01

Issue 65 of Chronicles, the long-running B7 genzine is now available from Susan Batho. It is the print version of Narrelle M. Harris's 'Phoenix 4'. Although the on-line version is available from her website, the print edition has a little bit extra that you won't find elsewhere. A4 format, 55 pages. The cost (in Australian dollars) is $5 per issue plus p&p as follows: Within Australia: $1.47 To England/Europe: $4.50 To USA: $4.50 All cheques/drafts/money orders must be made in Australian currency, but remember the exchange rate is very favourable for overseas readers. Please send your orders to Susan Batho at: 6 Bellevue Road Faulconbridge, NSW 2776, Australia C66 will appear later in the year and features a fantastic story by Marian de Haan. Submissions are wanted for C67 and future issues (gen only). We are hoping to make issue 67 a Blake-oriented zine, so if you have gen piece looking for a home, please let us know. We will also take Blakeless B7 under consideration for later issues. Art is also most welcome. Regards, Andrew.

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Re: Mapreading for beginners (was: [B7L] Eclectic)
by Sally Manton 28 May '01

28 May '01

Stephen Date wrote: <Just as well Zen was in charge of Navigation really otherwise you could have had the scene where Avon berates Vila for setting the coordinates for Destany (Federation military outpost) rather than Destiny.> What Vila didn't mention, of course, was that Destany was "one of the old Federation Rest Centers. Sensory ecstasy hours, pleasure machines ... ohh." (Avon ain't the only one who's been at the databanks looking for boltholes, but Vila has slightly different ideas on what makes bolting worthwhile. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Geography (was: Eclectic)
by Sally Manton 28 May '01

28 May '01

Penny wrote: <ObB7, um...do you suppose everyone speaks with British accents because North America and Australia got wiped out somehow (but English - the language - continued taking over the world), or at some point did the North Americans etc. all start affecting a British accent in order to sound cool?> It is patently obvious what happened, surely - at some time in the near future, North America, Australia and the rest all decided that an itsy bitsy mistake had been made along the line ... and voted to rejoin the British Empire. And if anyone believes that, I have a slightly damaged Star One I'd like to sell you ... _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Episode review - Cygnus Alpha
by Sally Manton 28 May '01

28 May '01

Iain W wrote: <So Blake, Jenna and Avon are on a new and strange ship. The survival priorities should be air, water, food, heat & light, but they don't even discuss these things. In other episodes we know they don't take these things for granted, so what is going on here?> It's that weird time-line problem again, the bane of Playing the Game in the first few episodes. If they were half-way to Cygnus Alpha when the events in Spacefall took place, then we have to swallow the idea that they were on the Liberator for four months and [a] got the food, water, air etc controls going without meeting Zen (wonder what the food looked like :-)?); and [b] managed to miss the doors to the Treasure and Wardrobe Rooms for the whole time (one hopes they found the washing machine, however, since they only had one set of clothes each). Personally, I'd've much rather gone into the detail of their first few days on the ship, trying to find these essentials before they starved, and with the accompanied risks involved in trying out each new piece of alien technology and hoping it isn't the self-destruct, than met the un-Kryptic Kult. <Even when they are stuck on the planet, Vila is still telling jokes - does he take nothing seriously?> Oh yes (see the start of City); here it's partly a reflex reaction to nerves, I think. <Blakes first LIE. He doesn't tell Jenna and Avon about being assulted. Grrr..> Do be fair to Fearless Leader. At this stage, wouldn't YOU treat what you said to Avon with a fair amount of caution? <We have now gone three full episodes into the show and not one mention of football.> There are some things to look forward to in the future then ? ;-) _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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