Roy.Scam (GB, 4/10/98):  When you go to Springtime at Laughing Pines to re-live parts of your past, do you experience them the way they actually happened or the way you remember them?  This is an extremely important distinction.

oleander (GB, 4/12/98):  I think if Springtime's VR, which I assume, it's just like punching replay on the CD player--but each time you replay it, you're a different person (you know, you never step in the same river twice etc.), so you experience it differently.... now that I think about it, I'd rather have VM (virtual memory) than VR.

Aja Dragon  (Digest, 5/22/98):  "Springtime" has one of my favorite song intros in no small part because the drum work that backs "shimmering" is the aural equivalent of the word.

Don't you love Mr. Fagen's breathy delivery in the beginning?
    "To learn to love all over again/ On that warm wet April night...."  Sigh.

Dunks (10/3/00):  Countermoon
        *       "counterpart" planets are a favourite SF device. One example was the late-60s Gerry "Thunderbirds" Anderson feature, "DOPPELGÄNGER" (aka
"Journey to the Far Side Of The Sun"), in which astronaut Roy Thinnes (star of TV's THE INVADERS) returns to Earth to find that all physical phenomena
are identical but reversed. He eventually realises that he is in fact on the previously undiscovered "anti-Earth" which is hidden by the sun and lies in exact orbital opposition to the "positive" Earth
        *       "spitewaves are threatening" - cf. Gaslighting Abbie: "How can you knock this mighty spitelock?"
        *       "when you see that blue ray" - cf. "Blue Moon", LOST HORIZONS, Eric Rohmer's LE RAYON VERT ("The Green Ray"). The title of Rohmer's film, taken from Jules Verne, refers to an actual atmospheric phenomenon - at sunset and sunrise, under certain conditions, a brief green flash can be observed just as the uppermost edge of the solar disc crosses the horizon. (see http://flzhgn.home.mindspring.com/grnray.htm). According to an  "ancient Scottish legend" (which was in fact invented by Verne in his 1882 novel Le Rayon-Vert) one who has seen the Green Ray is incapable of being "deceived in matters of sentiment" so that "he who has been fortunate enough once to behold it is enabled to see closely into his own heart and to read the thoughts of others." Presumably, a blue ray from the Countermoon has the opposite effect.
        *       "There's a heartquake on the way": cf. Trans-Island Skyway:  "below plates are grinding"