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I didn't take that message from "Starship Troopers," not from the book anyway. In fact I recall the book going out of its way to say that there was nothing wrong about being a civilian, it was just that serving in a military was necessary to be able to vote, and that's because voting is an exercise of force against other people. I found that very interesting to think about and an important insight. People think of voting as some peaceful thing, but it's really not. The book's proposition was that if you presumed to exercise political authority (force) over other people, then you presumed to be a soldier, and carried that to its logical conclusion. The movie played up the "I'm proud to be a citizen" angle for effect but in the book I think the final message is that voting is overrated and not something nice people do anyway. Exercising political authority over other people is something that should be done with more forethought and respect than people do. In the film there's a bunch of wild and crazy uses of force, and some see that as a satire of the right-wing state, but I see it as a satire of voters in general. Good to see another Wayside school fan.

I haven't met any other fans of Heinlein (people I run into seem more interested in Orson Scott Card) but I suppose you're right. From what I've read there is very little if any attention to the complexities of personal relationships for their own sake, which I've heard appeals to women. Whenever Heinlein writes about relationships it's attached to something more abstract. Like in "Mistress" there are plural marriages and an AI and in "Stranger" there's an alien teaching humanity about his culture and in "Starship Troopers" there are simple friendships and camaraderie that survive in a radically different political environment. Maybe men are more likely to cooly think through relationships like logical puzzles in order to solve them and find harmony, and women are more likely to resist that approach and rely on instinct. Just a guess. I don't really know. It's not Fifty Shades, that's for sure. By the way those three books are what Heinlein himself recommended people read. He said that if people only read those three out of all of what he wrote, then they've read most of what he tried to get across. I personally don't care for "Stranger in a Strange Land" but "Starship Troopers" is the most hardcore book I've ever read and I've already said what I like about "Mistress." The worst book I've ever read was probably "As Time Goes By," the official sequel to the film "Casablanca." Ugh, what was I thinking? I was young. People make mistakes! My favorite author as a kid was Louis Sachar. I read every book he wrote for years. They were very silly and modestly intriguing, but I felt I outgrew them, which is a shame because it was only when I became an adult that Sachar made it big with "Holes." I know almost nothing about that book at all or the movie. People say I should read it and I think, yeah, wow, Louis Sachar, of course! But I just haven't for some reason. I don't know. What kind of an author names their book "Holes?" But if anyone would write a book full of plot holes and advertise it that way it would be Louis Sachar.

My favorite book is "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein. I've never read a more challenging narrative that invited me to consider how so many unusual things could be normal for a society given certain conditions, namely living on the moon in the future. In the book people who live on the moon develop strange customs and over time have a culture so different from the Earth that it becomes offensive to them. This occurs along with the development of the first AI on the moon, who first learns from lunar culture. It's not an easy book and I actually stopped at one part because I did not get what was going on. I kept going over the same chapter and each time I would zone out and not understand it. It was months before I went back and decided that I would really slow down and think through that particular chapter, but I'm glad I did, because it paid off.

Thank you for doing all this hard work! I'm sorry if I've forgotten but I don't remember if you've ever said why you don't upload your releases anywhere else? Even the curators here don't want Retromags to be the only download source for any particular magazine.

Good to hear about CGSP! Does Cameron happen to have any of the coverdiscs? I know you're not into those but if he's getting rid of them I might be able to make a home for them. Also keep an eye on the database here for PC Gamer (USA) as I still acquire them every now and then.

I guess I always thought it'd be cool to be a shapeshifter, like the Founders from Deep Space Nine, but that seems maybe overpowered. I mean one of them could transform into a creature that could travel at warp speed and he did that to explore the galaxy on his own, which I'd love to do.

I have had a really shitty past few weeks. eBay gave me a refund for my HutchColor target that never came, so at least there's that. I managed to scan the other target by cutting the thick cardboard backing away so it would go through the scanner, but the profile software can't make a profile because the dmax is so bad (some of the dark blacks came through looking the same as black). That's not a showstopper for scanning magazines because the dmax of magazine printing is also pretty low, but not as low as the dmax of my scanner. For the most part a lower dmax is only noticeable when scanning dark ad pages with space ships or shadowy medieval art. Brightly-colored magazines and anime style ads with no shadow gradients still look fantastic. Even magazines that aren't so brightly-colored can still come through with solid blacks that make for a pleasing contrast. Not every extremely dark gray needs to be preserved, especially when magazine printing is inconsistent and some pages come out looking grayer than others. Still there are a few pages here and there I know would look better scanned on a flatbed with a higher dmax. Just one of the little trade-offs when prioritizing speed. I think it's acceptable, just as long as there are one or two people out there still using flatbeds.

Here you go—all my Next Generation CDs. https://archive.org/details/NEXTGenerationDiscs I do actually have an issue 36 CD but I can't get a good rip from it. I even brought it to a video rental store that has a disc cleaning machine and had them clean it. Still no good. But I ripped what I could and uploaded it anyway, still being mindful I need to get a good rip later. Unfortunately I do not have any of the CD covers.

Update on discs. PCXL 01 disc PCXL 02 disc PCXL 03 (missing) PCXL 04 disc (art missing) PCXL 05 disc (art missing) PCXL 06 discs PCXL 07 (both discs missing) PCXL 08 discs PCXL 09 discs PCXL 10 discs PCXL 11 discs (disc 2 is missing) PCXL 12 (both discs missing) PCXL 13 discs PCXL 14 discs PCXL 15 discs PCXL 16 discs PCXL 17 discs PCXL 18 (missing) PCXL 19 (missing) PCXL 20 disc PCXL 21 disc PCXL 22 (missing)

Retromags Presents! Electronic Entertainment Issue 6 June 1994 Retromags Database Entry Download from Retromags Download from The Internet Archive

I missed Ultra Game Players #103 before. It's been scanned and uploaded to the previous link now. I've also edited two of the old stapled Game Player's Sega Genesis Strategy Guides (later simply called Game Player's Sega Guide).

Well if the only evidence is that they disappeared and shared a belief in God, combined with existing scripture saying that would happen, then in such matters where an all powerful being operates, a "one time deal" might be hard for some people to believe. You'd be asking them to take it on faith. And I'm sure some wouldn't see it as simply disappearing, since energy can't be created or destroyed, but as possibly being transported or changed somehow. Being the imaginative sort of fellow I am, I would imagine they were all beamed by some alien race as part of an experiment and prepare for the coming invasion.

Hard to imagine given that "devout" can mean many things and "faith" isn't that precise of a word either. Would it include people who worship sports or their country's flag or have unquestioning loyalties to other institutions? Then there's the evidence left behind that people disappeared from the face of the planet because they believed something. Would other people see this evidence and then conclude that they might leave too if they believed strongly enough? You might have more religion left behind than you think!

When I was in high school I fantasized about everyone disappearing and what it would be like to wake up in the morning with everyone gone. What would I do? How long would I survive? What would I think? When I was finally liberated from schooling I stopped imagining that sort of thing, but when I do think about the end of the world, I think about it in terms of an asteroid impact or a supervolcano eruption. How would day-to-day life and economics change? Then there's the real terrifying scenario of a magnetic pole reversal or solar storm that wipes out the electrical grid for years at a time. There would be so much fear and panic. As far as which one I would choose, obviously a robot uprising or alien invasion, which I imagine would be the same thing.

Now that all the issues are scanned, here's our progress on the discs Edit: See below.

The guy who sold me the HutchColor has not shipped it and is not responding to my emails. Just one of many annoying things recently, but I have a lot of time off now and will get back to scanning. Here are 20 unedited scans of Game Player's at 300 DPI. If I drop out of existence, it'll give people something to do. https://archive.org/details/UneditedGPScans I'll edit two more on my own.

There was a news article in one of the Computer Games Strategy Plus issues that Kiwi scanned recently about Trump Castle II Deluxe edition being limited to 2 million copies. The headline was "Trump extremely limited" which I thought sounded funny. 2 million isn't THAT limited even by today's standard's.

Retromags Presents! PC Accelerator Issue 1 September 1998 Retromags Database Entry Download from Retromags Download from The Internet Archive