From: lalbert1@aol.com   
      
   On Wed, 19 Aug 2020 18:06:18 GMT, usenet@only.tnx (Questor) wrote:   
   >On Tue, 18 Aug 2020 01:32:39 +0000 (UTC), Howard  wrote:   
      
   >>I watched Aliens again after a long while. And though it is still a fun,   
   >>Dirty Dozen-style movie, I couldn't help but think all the way through how   
   >>ridiculous it was. Pretty much everything should have been done by robots.   
      
   >Similarly, think of all the comedies that turn on a misunderstanding.  A   
   simple   
   >phone call would eliminate the premise.   
   >I also note that most science fiction through the '70s completely missed the   
   >microcomputer trend.  Lots of stories mentioned "giant brains," etc.   
      
      
   In early SF stories it was not only missed, but microcomputers were   
   never even imagined .  I can remember part of a story that appeared in   
   Astounding Science Fiction in the early 1950s about time travellers   
   coming into the present day to witness key events.  They had voice   
   communicators that were smaller than a present day smart phones.  One   
   of the characters drops his communicator and it gets stepped on, and   
   he could hear the small pops of miniature vacuum tubes being broken.   
      
      
   >And in the first Alien movie, wasn't there a whole compartment on the   
   spacecraft dedicated   
   >to their computer?   
      
   The Nostromo computer had a lot to do. https://tinyurl.com/yxqznjag   
   It hauled a mile-long ore refinery that, on its final voyage processed   
   20 million tons of raw ore. In addition, it had to navigate the ship   
   through space,  keep the crew alive while they were in a suspended   
   sleep, and maintain the atmosphere.  And if you remember it also had   
   to synthesize food.   
      
   Les   
      
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