New Issues of Faculae & Filigree and Telegraphs & Tar Pits

Bill Burns has archived several editions of my apazines Faculae & Filigree and Telegraphs & Tar Pits in eFanzines. Now available:

• Faculae & Filigree #12
• Faculae & Filigree #13
• Telegraphs & Tar Pits #19
• Telegraphs & Tar Pits #20
• Telegraphs & Tar Pits #21
• Telegraphs & Tar Pits #22

Thank you, Bill!

Book Review: "Knight Rider" by Glen A. Larson and Roger Hill

Knight Rider by Glen A. Larson and Roger Hill (Pinnacle, 1983)

While recovering after a medical procedure earlier this year, I began to rewatch early episodes of the 1982 television series Knight Rider. A passing mention of artificial intelligence while discussing the Knight Industries Two Thousand vehicle and the pilot’s setting in Silicon Valley made me realize that perhaps Knight Rider was… science fiction—something that had eluded my preteen self when originally watching the program. Now that we’re more firmly in a time of smart cars, collision detection, and other technological developments, I thought it’d be worth learning more about the science behind the TV show.

So I read the first Knight Rider tie-in novel, credited to the series’ creator and producer Larson—who also had a hand in Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries—but written by Hill, a former journalist from Los Angeles and author of three previous novels.

The novelization is largely a straight-forward retelling of the pilot episode, though the book does include additional detail on the science fiction elements of Knight Rider. Knight Industries had previously perfected a use of plastics. There’s a reference to Burke and Hare, as well as a mention of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics. Hill also expands on Wilton Knight’s political viewpoints, which are downright Randian.

And the car itself? The “most expensive car in the world” has a “finish bonded into the molecular structure of the car body itself.” It’s not fiberglass, but a “new substance altogether. An alloy only space technology could produce.” KITT is faster, safer, and stronger than any other car. The car is virtually indestructible. “It is hydrogen-fueled and totally fuel efficient. The microprocessors that control its functions make it impossible for the vehicle to be involved in any sort of mishap or collision … unless specifically ordered to by its pilot.”

But most importantly, the car thinks. “Dr. Miles and I took pains to program KITT’s machine personality for maximum interface value with the pilot-program driver… . As the seat and dashboard are customized to your physical shape, so is the ‘personality’ of the microprocessor in conformity to your psychological profile.” The car learns.

The book is an interesting expansion on the ideas behind the show. Michael Haenlein and Andreas Kaplan’s “A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence” (https://tinyurl.com/bddc8zc5) suggests that early AI efforts date back to the 1940s and Asimov’s story “Runaround.” ELIZA was created in the mid-’60s, and investment waned in the 1970s and 1980s, not to reemerge seriously until the ’90s and more recently.

Pretty progressive ideas for the early 1980s! (This review was previously published in slightly different form in the LASFAPA apazine Faculae & Filigree #11.)

Book Review: "Beyond All Weapons" by L. Ron Hubbard

Beyond All Weapons by L. Ron Hubbard (Galaxy, 2012)

This slim collection—121 pages—is part of Galaxy Press’s Stories from the Golden Age series. The collection of 80 books and unabridged audiobooks compile more than 150 stories written by L. Ron Hubbard, with subsets focusing on air adventure, far-flung adventure, sea adventure, tales from the Orient, mystery, fantasy, science fiction, and western stories. This volume comes from the science fiction sub-series and collects three stories.

The title story, “Beyond All Weapons,” originally appeared in Super Science Stories (January 1950). “Strain” was published in the April 1942 Astounding Science Fiction, and “The Invaders” appeared in the January 1942 Astounding. In the first story, during a rebellion on Earth, several rebel ships break a blockade in order to travel past Mars to Alpha Centauri. After establishing a colony on a habitable world, they return to Earth only to find that more time had passed than expected; they did the math later.

In “Strain,” a military commander changes his plan of attack after two soldiers are captured and questioned as prisoners of war. And in “The Invaders,” a nebbishy member of the Extra-Territorial Scienticorps, a technician—a troubleshooter of some note, apparently—is able to rout the attack of an increasingly formidable force despite every effort to thwart him by the very people he’s working to save.

The stories are a fun read, though the foreword and endnotes are even more fun. If one reads Kevin J. Anderson’s foreword and the brief essay “L. Ron Hubbard in the Golden Age of Pulp Fiction” at face value, Hubbard effectively invented or perfected pulp fiction and science fiction—in fact, any genre he put his hand to. “He could write on any subject, in any genre,” Anderson writes, claiming that Hubbard is the most enduring writer of the era. The end piece suggests that Hubbard’s character-driven stories ushered in the golden age of science fiction. Apparently, Robert A. Heinlein was a protege of his.

In the end, these are fun stories, but nothing earth-shatteringly important, and it’s a risk to believe Galaxy’s own press. Hyperbole aside, Hubbard is interesting, but were it not for Dianetics and Scientology, would he be important? Regardless, I hadn’t known that Hubbard scripted the serial The Secret of Treasure Island, so that might be worth checking out. And I do look forward to reading other volumes in this series, despite my misgivings. Old stories can be good stories, after all. (This review was previously published in slightly different form in the LASFAPA apazine Faculae & Filigree #11.)