Hey all,

I'm on vacation for another week or so but have a chance to send off a
quick email today. I've been reading some new (to me) classic sci-fi.
The past few days have been James Blish's very enjoyable "Earthman,
Come Home" (1955) where some cities of the future have taken to the
skies with anti-gravity technology and move from star system to star
system to find work. They've also cured the aging problem, and so have
to deal with how to get rid of needless tidbits stored in the ol'
bean. The result is to store processes and have machines store facts.
And finally, the reference:

"In some cases even processes were wiped from human memory to
make more room if there were simple, indestructible machines to
replace them --- the slide rule, for instance. Amalfi wondered
suddenly if there was a single man in the city who could
multiply, divide, take square root, or figure pH in his head or
on paper."

Interestingly, the book does mention transistors, p-n junctions, and
even digital computers. However, the antigrav machines are run using
gigantic tubes. Hard, I guess, to truly break free of the present...

Ok, back to the beach and on to "Legions of Space." :-) I won't have a
chance to catch up on the list or respond to any emails for another
week and a half. Hope the summer is going well for everyone!

Mike Markowski