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Wednesday,
January 19, 2000 I have been experimenting with using
Spamcop ( www.spamcop.net ) to report
spam. The problem is that to get all the headers I must: open the spam; do
view/options; copy the headers; paste into Spamcop form; go back to the
spam; highlight and copy the SUBJECT, which in neither the headers nor the
body; past that into Spamcop's form; go back to the spam; select and copy
the body of the spam; paste that in to the Spamcop form; submit the spam;
wait; select the places the spam complaint goes to; send it. None of this
is difficult but with 30 spams it becomes tedious. I am going to try next
time to open the spam; get and paste the headers; hit forward on the spam,
and select and paste everything from there. That ought to get the subject
and save a step. But it is still tedious. Mere forwarding doesn't send the
header information.
There are apparently people out on the web in places
I don't have access to who are quoting me as saying things about David
Brin that I have never said, and also quoting remarks made 10 years ago as
if current. Let me get some things on record.
First, my differences with Brin are political, not personal, and mostly
have to do with SDI, particularly views he held or was reported to have
held prior to 1991. They were not rare or unusual views -- most of the
liberal establishment had precisely the same views. That is the entire
difference I have with him. As far as his works, he is a fine writer of
good stories. Some people like his Uplift Wars series better than any
other science fiction. That's high praise. He has won well deserved
rewards, and anyone reporting me as saying they were not deserved is
trying to promote a fight: I certainly never said any such thing
seriously. I may well, when he won and I didn't, have said something I
should not have said, but I don't recall any such thing, and it would have
had to be many years ago.
Second, my recent references to a writer for whom I have little regard
most certainly did not refer to David Brin.
Third, I took part in a joke at the North American Science Fiction
Convention last fall that apparently David resented; it was a widespread
joke, I thought it only a joke, and apparently I did not understand that
some of those involved did not think it a joke. David has my apology for
my being involved. I would not have done it if I had thought it other than
a harmless joke.
In general, if you hear people tell stories about things I supposedly
said about David Brin, you may take them as false, with two exceptions: a
story about SDI which I am going to retire as long past retirement, and
another involving Jimmy Carter, which again is so long out of date that it
is silly of me to repeat it any longer. My opinion of David Brin is that
he's a good writer, demonstrably an admirable parent -- I was very
favorably impressed by the interaction between him and his children at
NASFIC, and the children were well behaved, polite, inquisitive, all the
things people want their children to be -- and for that matter I think he
did well with his movie. The Postman was a good short story. I didn't care
for it as a novel, but the movie was taken from the short
story and did it well. I liked it.
There are other stories being told that I can only characterize as
vicious, most of which I first heard only when it was reported that I had
said them. Anyway, if you hear stories about me and Brin, please tell me
the sources; I think someone is trying to stir up trouble between us,
because I am told that he is very unhappy about things I supposedly said
about him. I would be unhappy too if someone had said those things about
me. But I didn't, and he didn't, and since I don't know the sources there
isn't much I can do except make the public record straight.
Incidentally, I have the opinion that almost all
movies ARE short stories, in structure and plot, and have to be: it takes
many hours to read a novel and 2 hours is a long movie. Filming a real novel
with subplots is extremely difficult, and most attempts to make a novel into
a movie are doomed from the beginning: and most novels written to be made
into movies are not novels as all. Odysseys can be made into movies, but
real novels have subplots and complexities that take TIME to develop and
there is never enough time on screen to do that. But that's my view, and
should be considered an aside and not part of this statement.
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