SFL Archives Vol 12a readthrough update 01

16% completion, 26 bookmarks

-Forest J Ackerman is the very first topic of discussion in SFL Vol 12a, with some SFLer's considering Ackerman a annoying dinosaur of SF fen-dom, others enjoying Ackerman's presence at SF conventions, and a smaller set of others lusting after Ackerman's massive collection of SF memorabilia.

-Norman Spinrad takes out a full-page in the SFWA BULLETIN to withdraw all of his future work from Nebula Award nomination, in reaction to his latest book not getting a Nebula Award nomination.

-SFLer's try to figure out all the thinly disguised SF author references & in-jokes from James Blish's BLACK EASTER. 

 -The Alderson (space) Drive in a recent Jerry Pournelle novel annoys a SFLer enough to post about it. Other SFLer's mention a future JPL employee, Dan Alderson, came up with the concept for it while attending CalTech.

-STAR TREK 4's change of tone and abandonment of standard STAR TREK-ian events/plotting frustrates some SFLers who wanted a Khan/Trelane/Balance of Terror stand-off situation in Star Trek 4 vs the save-the-whales eco-conservation that really happened. George Takei starts his hobby of low-key hating on bigger-name/better paid co-actors (this time it's Christopher Lloyd from ST3).

-CJ Cherryh's CHANUR'S HOMECOMING comes out and gets discussed for a few days, while SFLer's solidly ignore Stephen Donaldson's recent book, THE MIRROR OF HER DREAMS, to rehash THOMAS COVENANT being terrible.

-John Varley's BLUE CHAMPAGNE comes out, and most SFLers think it is a massive drop-off in quality compared to John Varley's earlier work. 

-Andy Griffith, SF actor? SFLers remember SALVAGE 1, a lesser know TV show Andy Griffith starred/worked on.

-Douglas Adams DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY is due out May 1987 with a 100k first printing run. 

-Steven Brust's TECKLA comes out, and SFLer's note the drastic tone change in it vs earlier Taltos books, then start to debate Taltos series lore. SKZB chimes in clarify a plot point about the love-interest SFLers got really hung up on about (a murder for hire offer vs actual character intent).

-First mention of Tad Williams, SF&F author in the SFL Archives.

-An SFLer claims that Roger Zelazny's initial plan for the AMBER series was to write one novel from each of the royal sibling's viewpoints, but got bored or frustrated whiteboarding out nine different POV scenarios. Another SFLer puts together a adjusted chronology of AMBER series events now that Merlin appears to be sticking around.  

-Marion Zimmer Bradley DARKOVER series discussion makes a serious return, with 2nd hand anecdotes of how controlling MZB is regarding DARKOVER Live Action RolePlay efforts.

-A Heinlein Defense Squad member says that Robert Heinlein wrote the first "generation ship" story and that everyone else has been copying Heinlein. When presented with evidence that multiple authors had written "generation ship" stories BEFORE Heinlein, the HDS person says that doesn't matter, Heinlein's version was superior and everyone writing AFTER Heinlein published his "generation ship" story used Heinlein as a source, and not those (filthy) non-Heinlein authors.

-St. Martin's Press buys TOR Books. St. Martin's Press also commits to adding two dedicated SciFi & Horror paperback lines effective Spring 1987. 

-SFLer's make a convincing case for the 1958 movie THE LOST MISSILE having a near perfect blend of stock military film footage and SciFi plot. 

-SFL perennial topic of discussion "matter transportation" has a Larry Niven KNOWN SPACE "stepping disks/transfer booths" fixation in late 1986/early 1987. It kicks off with a "why not use those stepping disks/transfer booths to travel across the galaxy?" And the complications that would ensue from the "beyond-complex 300+ digit" dial in codes needed to transfer-skip from your front door to the Lake BoilingHot Resort at Wolf 359. 

Then GODEL NUMBERING numbering(first mentioned in SFL Vol 02's version of "matter transportation chat") gets brought up as a solution to managing those "beyond-complex 300+ digit" codes. Then "what about: having to take account of rotational spin and gravity effect differences at the origin points/destination points" gets brought up, etc.

(2020 note: At the accounting for rotational spins/gravity effects point of this discussion thread, I started thinking of the 1994 movie STARGATE, and how the Stargate did all that via "quantum wormhole" magic. Then I realized the Stargate symbols on the Stargates are actually symbolic beyond-massive Godel Numbers, and everything started clicking together in Stargate SG-1 series lore for me.)  

-1987 SFLer's nitpicking/defending the 1983 movie WARGAMES leads to the first mention of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster in the SFL Archives.

-Polly Freas death notice. Polly Freas was involved in SF&F from the 1940's onward, and edited a few SF&F books along with her husband, SF artist Frank Kelly Freas.

-Anime chat. Lots and lots of anime series chat. The original series vs dubs/adaptions by HARMONY GOLD and whatever Macek is. All the favorite iconic anime series are mentioned. Serious confusion results over protoculture being the dub-word used to tie 3 different anime series together for ROBOTECH.

Special note goes to whoever said: "Of greater interest are other Japanese Series which probably will never make it to the American scene. Mobile-suit Gundam, Zeta-Gundam, Heavy Metal L'Giam, Aura Battler Dunbine and the list goes on."

  (2020 note: The varied usage and definitions of "protoculture" powering everything, being a food source, etc in the ROBOTECH series has September 2020 me ready to offer this fresh take: Protoculture in the ROBOTECH series is THE STUFF. Tagline: "Are you eating it or is it eating you?")  

-The revival of the SF vs SCI-FI vs SKIFFY fandom uh fendom debate from SFL Archives Volume 08.

-James P Hogan is noted as complaining in a interview about how little research most writers do on the subject on which they are writing.  (2020 note: James P Hogan suffered from the opposite of this...he did too much research on made up scientific theories, while comparatively spending minutes at best on the plots/characters/conflicts in his stories.)

-Belated notice of BLUEJAY PRESS going out of business crops up in discussion of Diane Duane's upcoming books/the massive amount of projects Diane Duane is already committed to working on in 1987.  

-A SFLer lists the 4 methods of time-travel that existed in STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES. (2020 note: I only remembered 3 of them, good catch 1987 SFLer.) 

-First mention of George RR Martin's beloved WILD CARDS series in the SFL Archives.

-A SFLer (Steve Chapin) writes an mini-essay about the "disturbing trend in writers of SF these days of writing for the sake of a fast buck". And it gets stupider the longer the mini-essay goes on.

-CYBERNETIC SAMURAI by Victor Milan is one of those "5th generation of computers/Japanophobia" themed post-apocalypse novel I mentioned earlier.

-The optioned movie rights for the STAINLESS STEEL RAT come up again, and which actors/actresses would be perfect fits for a Stainless Steel Rat movie. 

(2020 note: What's the most smug IRL actor/actress you can think of? Good, now double and triple that IRLsmugness factor, and you've barely reached James Bolivar DiGriz on the worst day of his life. This is why any Stainless Steel Rat movie adaption will be terrible.)  

-The two infamous GOR movies, GOR and OUTLAW OF GOR, are in production/pre-production at Cannon Films.

-First mention of Kevin Siembieda and PALLADIUM BOOKS in the SFL Archives. (2020 note: Palladium's major contribution to gaming was the introduction of the MEGAdamage system,)

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 11

 100% completion, 180 ruthlessly curated bookmarks.

-The SIME/GEN stuff I was wondering about way back in SFL Vol 11 update 02 gets clarified. Sime/Gen is post-apocalypse style S&M co-dependency. Fans of Dungeons and Dragons fans, think of mind-flayers and their "protected client" races.

-SFLer's start compiling list of stories with sentient computers in them, lists of post-Apocalypse stories, and lists of exactly what items SFLer's would bring to the past if subjected to time-travel with moderate advanced warning.

(2020 note: This is where fear of Japan's sudden rise as a unstoppable economic superpower in the 1980's starts making it way into SF stories, with Japan's upcoming "5th generation" of computer systems that would change everything (computer-related) ending up as the boogie-man of more than a few 1980's post-apocalypse novels. 1980's Japan's rise to economic superpower status being built on skyscrapers full of deferred debt plus the "5th generation" of computer systems being 110% vaporware weren't understood until the Japanese economic Bubble burst in the mid 1990's.) 

-Society for Creative Anachronism SFLers chime in on the "weapons policies at conventions" discussion thread, giving examples of how the SCA deals with them in "normal" SCA situations, and anecdotes of real-life PVP combat arena weapons usage.

-One of the sentient computer stories consistently getting mentioned is D.F. Jones 1960's COLOSSUS novels, which did ground-work on the "computer AI takes over the world, thinks Humans massively suck" trope that James Cameron's TERMINATOR movies would make famous.

-Jean Auel's CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR gets mentioned as being her first novel and having mind-breaking huge sales numbers. Which is why the paperback version of Auel's MAMMOTH HUNTERS will have a 2,000,000 copy first printing. The only modern equivalent I can think of regarding those numbers is JK Rowling and the HARRY POTTER series.

-Larry Niven's KNOWN SPACE/RINGWORLD chat derails intense AMBER series slash Roger Zelazny trivia chat. The Winter 1986 version of Niven chat is about the technology of the Known Space/Ringworld settings and some anecdotes of Niven being bad at math in the Ringworld books.

-HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY discussion kicks off with wondering about Zaphod B.'s extra body parts/anecdotes of Douglas Adams having a hard time being identified as THAT Douglas Adams IRL.

-STAR WARS fans start trying to figure out what eras the upcoming prequel & sequel trilogies will focus on.

-Death notices for Ian Marter (DOCTOR WHO series actor) and Roger C. Carmel (original actor of STAR TREK character Harry Mudd). 

-Iain Banks WALKING ON GLASS gets recommended, which marks the first appearance (I think) of Iain (M) Banks in the SF-LOVERS mailing list. 

-1986 SciFi personality David Gerrold talks about what he knows about/what will happen with the upcoming STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION tv-series at the 1986 LosCon.

-Two books that share a theme of first contact with alien intelligence manage to come out within months of each other. The books are CONTACT by Carl Sagan and THE HERCULES TEXT by Jack McDevitt. Diane Duane's SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD has been out in hardcover for a while.

-Colin Baker retires as the 6th DOCTOR WHO actor in December 1986.

-The 1980's version of TWILIGHT ZONE series is cancelled by CBS in December 1986, and the BBC's TV adaptation of the TRIPODS by John Christopher also gets cancelled.

-STAR TREK 4 comes out and SFL reaction is mostly positive but confused by the small amounts of normal Star Trek content in it. So SFLer's focus on what Starfleet spaceships got murked by the Alien probe, which Starfleet spaceship was deploying a (Solar) Sail, why that SF Golden Gate park trash-can didn't blow away when the cloaked Bounty landed, why ionization made the Klingon transporters on the Bounty fail, why/how the 20th century engineer knew 6 inch thick plasteel slabs were needed to hold back that specific amount of water, time-loops, and which of the many Constitution class Starfleet vessels murked by the Alien probe got rebranded as Enterprise NCC-1701-A

-Women constituting 90 percent of the fanzine writing/publishing population in Star Trek fandom is brought up and confirmed by people deep into Star Trek fanzine lore.

-Camille Bacon-Smith's moderately deep dive into Star Trek fanzine culture, Spock Among the Women, is transcribed and shared for educational purposes to the SF-LOVERS mailing list (Spock Among the Women originally appeared in the November 16th 1986 Sunday edition of the New York Times newspaper).

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 10

 87% completion, 170 bookmarks

-STAR TREK 4's release date gets moved up to November 1986 thanks to positive test screening results.

-Roger Zelazny Amber series discussion kicks off hard. Readers new to the Amber series have questions regarding BLOOD OF AMBER, long-time Amber series fans respond. Everyone wants to know why Dara needed to walk the Pattern if a Chaos equivalent existed, what's up with Luke, etc. One very special SFLer has a unique take of  "Dworkin f**ked the Unicorn, the Unicorn is secretly Oberon's mother and this is why the Unicorn keeps popping up to fix the Amber Royal families many many f**k-ups".

-Paramount releases an official press release that STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION is real and scheduled for a Fall 1987 premiere. Gene Roddenberry becomes a divisive figure, some SFL Star Trek fans refer to him as the sole source responsible for all things old and new Star Trek related, other SFL Star Trek fans tend to credit the many Star Trek producers, writers, and so on that Gene Roddenberry overshadows/steals credit from.     

-Stephen Donaldson has a new book out (THE MIRROR OF HER DREAMS), David Brin has a new book out (THE POSTMAN), Gene Wolfe has a new book out (SOLDIER OF THE MIST), Kim Stanley Robinson has a new book out (THE PLANET ON THE TABLE).

-A request for for help finding the earliest modern werewolf story brings up lots of examples. WAGNER THE WERE-WOLF by G.W.M. Reynolds. LE MENEUR DE LOUPS by A. Dumas. Chapter 39 in Fredrick Marryat's THE PHANTOM SHIP. Hugues: the Wer-Wolf: A Kentish tale of the Middle Ages. The Severed Arm by Anonymous in TALES OF ALL NATIONS.

-Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's series about a 2000+ year old vampire named Ragoscvy Saint Germaine sounds interesting strictly for the various historic eras the stories take place in.

-BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (original series) discussion with people thinking the Cylon Imperial leader is organic or in-organic or soul-transferred into a cyborg body or something

-BLAKES 7 discussion gears up again, with behind-the-scenes details and series trivia that makes it understandable why Blake's 7 was such a iconic groundbreaking scifi tv series.

-R.A. McAvoy's work comes up again. TWISTING THE ROPE is seen as a major disappoint by SFL readers, because it drops all of the fantasy elements and low key charm of TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON and instead goes all in on Celtic touring band drama.

-Tech-trivia about the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY has a legit callback to groundbreaking 1930's digital audio generation that lead to creation of physical vocoder technology.   

-David Hartwell, SciFi editor?, auctions off his clothing at a convention to raise money for ill and temporarily homeless author George Alec Effinger.

-Taboos in STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES have SFLers fixating on homosexual situations, drug use/abuse, and jailbait scenarios "allegedly" in original drafts of Star Trek: TOS shooting scripts.

-The Saga of Fuzzy Pink aka MITSFS's "my roommate Fuzzy Pink".  

-DANGERMOUSE and DANGER MAN /THE PRISONER discussion.

-SFLer's try to describe the art-styles and significance of anime character design, facial tics, eye size, etc. and how the various anime art-styles are not-racist stereotypes of Japanese/Americans/etc like some very vocal SFLer think so.

-Home-improvement projects the SFLer way: someone is converting a garage into a dedicated library room and wants tips on how to manage the humidity level in a non-cooled/non-heated former garage.

-The trope about "infinite monkeys in a room with the goal of typing out Shakespeare's work" and the many SciFi story takes on this trope. Murder, murder-suicide, and mass monkeycide are usually the outcomes in those SciFi story takes.

-The canonical SF Music list of 1986. Mostly lists of bands, artists, albums, songs, song lyrics, song lyric discussion, context to certain lyrics.

-Daniel F Galouye's THE INFINITE MAN may enrage or delight mathematics fans and possibly conspiracy theory nuts obsessed with Pi.

-A question about (cosplay) weapons and (cosplay) weapons policies at conventions brings up lots of anecdotes, peace-bond situations, and eyebrowing raising situations convention security usually deals with. Basically some cosplayers act like idiots 24/7 especially in costume.

-VOLPA, a short story about a mad scientest creating a bunch of intelligent winged creatures complete with fake backstory and invented language, just to f**k with future archeologists or historians who stumble across them.

-The first mention of WORLDS OF IF SciFi magazine in the SFL Archives. (2020 note: If magazine has been fully digitized and is available at the internet archive project.)

-Timothy Zahn's THE BLACKCOLLAR/THE BLACKLASH MISSION stories sound like source material DC Comics used when coming up with the supervillian BANE.

-3rd email announcement about the 1986 TUCKER AWARDS, this time recapping the prizes/need to be physically at the convention to win, with the rigged nomination slate carried over from the 2nd TUCKER AWARD email announcement.

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 09

 74% completion, 121 bookmarks

Not much visible progress. All the things I had previously bookmarked in Vol 11 but not mentioned before are finally listed. Was able to delete about 90 bookmarks that were duplicates of earlier bookmarks/gibberish phrases/heinlein defense squad posts/clearly stdh.txt material.

-What would be considered "normal not weird gibberish" email addresses start to appear from the BBN & Xerox arpanet nodes. (2020 note: BBN & Xerox were respectively responsible for designing slash building the Arpanet and Ethernet networking).

-Dennis McKiernan explains why his MITHGAR setting exists. (2020 note: McKiernan's explaination give background on why LORD OF THE RINGS knockoffs started appearing everywhere in the 1980's.)

-SFLer's really do not like Vonda McIntyre's novel ENTERPRISE: THE FIRST ADVENTURE. Timelines in it versus the tv-show are off, with McIntyre ignoring lots of fan-canon factoids in favor of fleshing out Yeoman Rand as the main viewpoint character of the book.

-It is pointed out that one of the main characters in Michael Moorcock's ETERNAL CHAMPION mythos is directly pulled/stolen/borrowed from a series of children's books written by E. Nesbit around 1900-ish.

-WorldCon 1986 program item "The Forgery of Mike Jittlov's Autograph" was scheduled but never happened, and a SFLer wants to know what the deal is with the forgery + autograph. 

-The BEASTMASTER movie starring Marc Singer vs Andre Norton's similarly titled book comes up again for the 30th time. No they are completely different, and Norton got no settlement money ala Harlan Ellison/Ben Bova/AE Van Vogt.  (2020 note: Marc Singer was the 1980's version of Chris Hemsworth).

-One SFLer makes the case for Edgar Rice Burroughs literally stealing the Mars/Barsoom setting  from Edwin L. Arnold. Books that did Barsoom before ERB are GULLIVER OF MARS and PHRA THE PHOENICIAN. 

-An SFLer complains that Isaac Asimov has been dumbing down his science columns for over a decade, and now it appears pitched at twelve-year olds and says (direct quote): "How many twelve-year-old's read F&SF, I wonder?"

(2020 note: Going from the F&SF threads on the SomethingAwful forums, the answer: MANY OF THEM. MANY MANY MANY twelve-year-old's read F&SF.) 

-Michael Moorcock being heavily connected to the band HAWKWIND and co-writing some of the lyrics of BLUE OYSTER CULT songs came up a few times.

-After being discussed at least 60 times in earlier SFL Archives Volumes, I finally get around to mentioning Sherri Tepper, mostly because Tepper's book DERVISH DAUGHTER finishes off a trilogy and has gotten mostly favorable SFL feedback

-A detailed walkthrough of the 1986 Doctor Who Experience USA Tour. 

(2020 note: It sounded pretty cool, and very good value for $2 in 1986 money, especially since the money the tour raised was allegedly going to local NPR stations.)

-Jim Baen responds to negative feedback about the BAEN BOOK CLUB deal mentioned in a earlier readthrough post. The Book Club deal was always was a limited 6-9 month trial, everything under that Baen Book Club deal was being sold at a loss by Baen Books, and it had a maximum member limit of 500, etc.

-The saga of the SF-LOVERS t-shirts is now complete or almost complete. The person who ran the project is discussing the packing methods/amount of t-shirt orders and all I can see in my mind is ebay sellers of the 21st century going "<snide tone>lightweight".

-Pierre Boulle's lesser known stories comes up. Stories about medical detective work to fight disease are always interesting, especially circa 2020 + COVID19.

-A technology focused SFLer talks about "gravity gradient stabilization" technology being used in space probes and satellites orbiting the earth.  (2020 note: This is definitely on my "look this up" list.) 

-An old SF fan chimes in about SF radio programs from the late 1940's and early 1950's they remember, wonders if anyone else remembers them.

-Don Woods, creator of COLOSSAL CAVE ADVENTURE is unable to find the 2 missing pages in a rumored notoriously bad reprint of Harlan Ellison's PERSISTENCE OF VISION that he owns.

(2020 note: This is Dad-joke funny because Persistence of Vision...being unable to see anything missing.....?!)

-Japanese Kajiu movies start getting discussed, with mentions of international releases adding in extra actors.

-More weird fantasy and SciFi tv-series and movies of the 1950's-1970's:

I Married A Witch

Science Fiction Theater

Commander Cody

Captain Midnight aka Jet Jackson

Flash Gordon

The Man and the Challenge

Way Out

World of Giants

Men Into Space

Far Out Space Nuts

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 08

 70% completion, 208 bookmarks

-SFLer's start discussing Bill Mumy, and Mumy's crazy career as a child actor. Mumy appeared in lots of now forgotten and now classic SF tv shows AND Mumy being the first male actor a famous sex symbol of 1960's-1970's (Bridget Bardot?) was recorded kissing on-camera.

-A crazy amount of 1950's - 1970's SF themed tv shows/TV movies half remembered by 1986 SFLer's get mentioned and discussed. LIST OF OLD SF TV SHOWS/TV Movies STARTS

The Immortals

Mr Terrific

Captain Nice

Astro-Boy

Giganor

The 8th Man

Speed Racer

Sheriff John

Space Cadet

Clutch Cargo

Colonel Bleep

Space Ghost

Marine Boy

Star Blazers

Stingray

Ultraman

Avengers

It's About Time

Space Cruiser Yamato

Tom Terrific

My Living Doll

Gerald Mc BoingBoing

Crusader Rabbit

Time Tunnel

Dark Shadows

Ultraman

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Land of the Lost 

The Invaders

Star Maidens 

U.F.O.

Matthew Star

Prince Planet

Dark Shadows

Star Prince

LIST OF OLD SF TV SHOWS/Movies ENDS

(2020 note: I plan on tracking down most of of the lesser known shows. Some of them have amazing sounding concepts, and would have run for multiple seasons or years on Netflix/AdultSwim/Hulu/HBOGo/Amazon's Prime TV if they had come out within the past 15 years.)  

-The Heinlein Defense Squad reappears to fight off rumors & pesky facts on paper that Robert Anson Heinlein loved fascism and many fascism adjacent things.

-WorldCon 1986 happens and the SFL members who attended WorldCon 1986 meet up and live-post from a portable computer terminal appliance a SFLer brings from work/college. 

-A Heinlein Defense Squad member dismissively recommended John Steakley's ARMOR if RAH's view of interstellar warfare grated on you. This counts as one of the first mentions of John Steakley's ARMOR in the SFL Archives.

-One SFLer wants to know if anyone has a recording or transcript of Orson Scott Card's WorldCon 1986 seminar "Secular Humanist Revival Meeting".

-BLOOD OF AMBER, the 2nd Merlin book of Roger Zelazny's new Amber series comes out, not much SFL Archives reaction to it so far. 

-A profile on David Lindsay, author contemporary of Jules Verne and HG Wells. As per 1986 SFLers, David Lindsay was practically required reading for a certain subset of UK culture during the 1950's - 1970's. 

-Discussion of 1960's -1970's SF themed tv shows also results in more than a few tv-show song lyrics being posted.

(2020 note: These tv show song lyric re-postings are excellent for generating tricky SF trivia questions.)

-A "Was PAN-AM offering tickets to the moon after 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY came out real or just a urban myth?" question is asked.

-Gerry Anderson tv-show U.F.O. and the details SFLer's give on it make it a prime influence/inspiration on the original X-COM game computer strategy game. 

-Someone with their hands on a legit copy of the STAR TREK 4 shooting script posts a point for point synposis, ruining the circa-2020 fun of reading wild-ass 1985/1986 guesses as to why/what/who SFLers think is in Star Trek 4.

-1986 SFL missed a lot of clues regarding Stephen Hawking & his ALS/Lou Gehrig disease. 1986 was when Stephen Hawking adopted many of the things he would be stuck in/associated in the public view with for the next 32 years

-SFLer's who know nothing about guns start to theory-craft how the caseless ammo worked in ALIENS 1986, IRL laws of physics/thermodynamics only apply when the SFLers involved in theory-crafting remember them.

-The Clint Eastwood movie FIREFOX gets mentioned mostly for Eastwood's lack of skill in speaking Russian (language).

-ACE BOOKS pirating the LORD OF THE RINGS series in the 1960's for the US paperback market comes up again. 

-Tom Clancy's RED STORM RISING gets mentioned and recommended by the what would now be classified as the resident SFL mil-fiction/mil-scifi fans.

-Reviews of the 1986 THE FLY remake focus on the extreme "gore and death"  in it compared to other movies also released in 1986.

-MISSION IMPOSSIBLE the TV 1960's series sometimes featuring near-possible gadgets, totally impossible gadgets that do impossible things, and the magic face-masks come up regarding implausiblity in films/SF tv.

-An SFLer starts to seriously read Philip K Dick's "DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP", and lists the many things in it that don't hold up when whiteboarded out.

-A notable out of context quote: "If you can make a case for GREEN ACRES being SF, you can certainly do the same with DARK SHADOWS" marks one of the first times Dark Shadows the tv-series is mentioned in the SFL Archives and leads to moderate Dark Shadows discussion.

(2020 note: Dark Shadows had a phenomenonal following & cult tv show status that only really died out when the X-FILES came out.)

 

 

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 07

62% completion,  180 bookmarks

-HOWARD THE DUCK, FLIGHT OF THE EXPLORER, THE FLIGHT OF THE DRAGONS tv-movie, THE FLY, all come out in the summer of 1986.

-Anticipation for the December release of STAR TREK 4 builds, with SFLer's rewatching the earlier ST movies and re-reading the ST movie novelizations. Saavik being a half-Vulcan/half-Romulan as per the ST2/ST3 novelizations and Saavik getting recast in Star Trek 3 comes up a lot. 

-The rumored STAR TREK tv-series remains just that, rumors and mostly guesswork. 20th Century drops out of the tv-series project and 1986 SFLer's think the upcoming Fox television-network launch is the reason.

-A weird event from 1836 gets mentioned, and yes 1986 SFLer who posted it, a short story about why rats looted 28 bottles of Uranium Oxide from a Hatton-Garden chemical storage warehouse and what exactly the rats were doing with them for 2 years would be amazing.

(2020 note: Please don't be fake news, "The Magazine of Popular Science and Journal of the Useful Arts" (published by John W. Parker, West Strand, London) Volume the First (1836) page 208: Unaccountable Theft of Chemicals by Rats.)

-Arlan Andrews provides the first instance of "You'll have to wait until my story is published" to fully find out why you are WRONG happens in the SFL Archives. 

(2020 note: The Hephaestus Mission, Analog magazine if anyone is interested in finding out more.)

-More 1977 SILENT RUNNING movie discussion brings up that the body-actors for the ultra-cute robots in Silent Running 1977 were disabled people missing major body parts, bringing up a rare case of Hollywood not being total dickbags regarding hiring disabled people.

-Orson Scott Card's 1986 novel SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD has come out and finally gets discussed

-1960's/1970's Science Fiction tv-shows get brought up. LAND OF THE LOST, LOST IN SPACE, MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, LAND OF THE GIANTS, THE TIME TUNNEL, THE WILD WILD WEST, THE VISITORS, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, the JOHNNY QUESTcartoon, etc. 

The Wild Wild West's many SciFi themed plots despite it being a western themed adventure series gets mentioned a few times, however Land of the Lost and it's time looping weirdness comes up for repeated loops of discussion over and over again. :D

-SFLer's start discussing the FLIGHT OF THE DRAGONS TV-movie, and the 1979 book it was based on(THE FLIGHT OF THE DRAGONS)  by Peter Dickinson. All this made me retroactively realize where Terry Pratchett got the clever stuff about swamp dragons in Pratchett's 1989 novel GUARDS! GUARDS!

-More SFLer recommendations appear for the "recommend me erotic SF stories" request originally posted back to the SF-LOVERS mailing list in June 1986. Shockingly John Norman's GOR series doesn't get recommended until early August 1986.

-A mention of dolphins sort of visually resembling the Alien movie franchise's iconic Xenomorphs in looks and possible communication methods (ultrasonics and echo-location) fails to bring DolphinF**ker back from their longtime SFL hiatus. DolphinF**ker, MIA 1984 - ???  

-The producers of ALIEN 1979 & ALIENS 1986 having to pay A.E. Van Vogt $75,000+ in settlement money for ripping off Vogt's DISCORD IN SCARLET short story comes up a few times.

 -A convoluted discussion about spaceships in the Alien/Aliens 1986 universe having FTL drives leads to a few separate ongoing discussion threads about Stephen Hawking's work on black-hole theories, the physics of time travel in SciFi stories; and of course, mentions of SciFi stories with time travel or time dilation in them.

-BAEN BOOKS and Jim Baen gets brought up a few times. Baen Books re-packing older stories with new titles, and Baen Books offerings not having the best proof-readers gets balanced by anecdotes of Baen Books treating authors fairly and not dicking over authors regarding payments/late payments.

And then there is Jim Baen's 1986 experiment with the "Baen Book Club". Buy 10 or more books directly from Baen and you get a 50% discount, with Baen Books paying the postage costs. Specialist bookstores hated this direct-sales offer they couldn't match. SFL writer-author Robert J. Sawyer wonders if Jim Baen's discount book club offer effects the royalty payouts authors get. 

(2020 note: No idea how this is going to turn out. Guessing Jim Baen is going to end up closing down that Baen Book Club before 1986 ends. This can be seen as a direct precursor to Baen Books movement into direct ebook sales before 98% of the other book publishing companies took ebooks seriously.)

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 06

 54% completion, 152 bookmarks

-1986 TUCKER AWARDS email clarification comes out. 3 awards: 1 each for SF Professional (writer, editor, or dealer), SF Artist, and SF Fan. 4 people are nominated for each award. VOTING DEADLINE IS 1 NOVEMBER 1986

(2020 note: The 1986 Tucker Award looks to be rigged Hugo Award and Nebula Award style. Surely the 2 people nominated with the last name of Tucker [sarcasm]are there by random chance and not nepotism[/sarcasm]) 

-20th Century Fox is in talks with Paramount Studios to develop and create a new STAR TREK tv-series. SFLer reactions to this news-leak range from excited to doubtful and then to extremely angry. The extremely angry SFlers use the STAR TREK 1 & STAR TREK 3 movies as examples of new Star Trek characters being introduced just to kill them off 40 minutes later.

-Besides (*wink* possibly *wink*) working on a new STAR TREK tv-series, in 1986 ..."20th Century Fox appears to be trying to start a 4th nationwide TV Network. (Ted Turner is too apparently)" . 

-The many SciFi & Fantasy writers that post on the SF-LOVERS mailing list are trying to get a informal writers group going to exchange and critique SF&F stories. Robert J Sawyer chooses to self-doxx himself  2nding the informal writers group idea, and then doxxes a few other incognito SF-LOVERS SF&F writers just for the hell of it.

-Tolkienian debate continues. This time elf reincarnation vs what orcs, dwarves and humans get when they die. More Maiar debates. What happened to Saruman and Sauron after their "deaths" in Return of the King. One of the bigger Tolkenian lore arguers obviously read "death of the author" and now thinks they are deploying secret unbeatable arguments from it to support their hyper-stupid "JRR Tolkien merely translated LotR and is not the original source of it, therefore everything I say re: Tolkienian lore makes sense".

-Lloyd Biggle Jr's SILENCE IS DEADLY, originally mentioned back in SFL Archives Vol 03 or Vol 04 comes up again. 

(2020 note: Repeating this almost verbatim from my 1981 SFL recaps...One of the low-notes of the SFL Archives readthrough was the nasty reaction back in 1981 when deaf SciFi fans made pleas for finding "deaf-friendly fiction" and help tracking down transcriptions of the HitchHiker Guide to the Galaxy BBC Radio broadcasts

Hearing disabled Scifi stories were rare as hell in the 1980's, and probably remain rare as hell now-ish. 2020 people: Please, please disprove me on this. I want to be wrong.)

- I, MARTHA ADAMS by Pauline Glen Winslow. "America has become complacent & surrenders to the Russians after they destroy certain military bases.  One woman fights back.  This book has good ingredients for a movie - pyrotechnics, politics, bad guys beating upon good guys, suspense, and sex.  Oh, yes, let us not forget a strong female lead". 

(2020 note: I have no idea. It sounds terrible in a uniquely libertarian feminist survivalist way.)

-Steve Perry's Matador trilogy (THE MAN WHO NEVER MISSED, MATADORA, THE MACHIAVELLI INTERFACE) comes up, and it is a "martial artist revolutionary takes on an evil empire" space opera mish-mash. 

-GENERAL TECHNICS, "the organization for science fiction fans with an interest in do-it-yourself technology, will be held Friday morning, 29 August 1986, at 10 AM, Constellation in Atlanta." 

-ALIENS 1986 movie chat kicks off big-time. A few SFLers are fascinated by the life-cycle of the Alien xenomorphs, others nitpick the travel time of the USS Sulaco (the SpaceMarines spaceship) vs Ripley's drifting lifepod, which of the survivors possibly got impregnated with Alien zygotes, and how did Ripley not get blown out of the airlock/close that airlock near the end of Aliens 1986, etc.

-Someone asks for erotic SF favorites, and Hank Buurman, the SFLer who doesn't believe in privacy for others, fervently recommends John Varley's Millenium and Titan series for the weird erotic sex scenes in them.

-Gene Wolfe at the 1986 ARCHON SFCon tells people the 5th BotNS book is almost ready, the effort Wolfe puts into finding the right word to evoke the nuances he wants, and that there is two mistakes he knows of in the first 4 BotNS volumes; a proofreader missing a typo resulting in <Artello> instead of <Martello> and one obscure mistake Gene Wolfe doubts anyone else will find.

-Chesley Bonestell, a longtime SciFi cover artist dies in 1986 and a SFL writes a mini-memorial about their work in Scifi and as a normal special effects artist working on movies like CITIZEN KANE and DESTINATION MOON.

 -Chris Foss's science fiction artwork gets mentioned. Besides Foss's better known work painting spaceship cover art, 1986 SFLers think it's amusing that Chris Foss did the artwork for the Joy of Sex.

-SFLer WorldCon parties get mentioned, with  '@!%'  on posters/signs being the secret code SFLers used to self-identify themselves to people in the know. Worldcon SFLer parties have come up before, because I distinctly remember a "Would whoever grabbed the cables I used to hookup the portable computer-terminal at last week's Worldcon, please return them to me" happening at least once.

-SFLer confusion over what SILENT RUNNING other SFLer's keep referencing. Are they referring to the Mike & the Mechanics song "Silent Running"?  Or are they referencing the 1977 movie Silent Running? Or are people conflating the two? (2020 note: Yes. Yes. And Yes.)

-Laserdisc's being bleeding edge technology circa 1986. 

-SFLer Craig Wheeler cuts the bull and directly promotes his upcoming novel THE KRONE EXPERIMENT, due out October 1986.

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 05

 43% completion, 140 bookmarks

-Tolkien LORD OF THE RINGS chat intensifies and redoubles. Many theories and misunderstandings about the One Ring occur (was there actually 21 rings of power, not 20 rings?(based on how you parsed out the One Ring To Rule Them All inscription). Did the One Ring corrupt Good-guy Sauron? Did the elf's continuously round-robin their 3 rings to keep Sauron's influence away?). Power rankings for Valar and Maiar, and who fit where in those rankings. Finally, one SFLer tries the Sherlock Holmes Watsonian tactic of claiming J.R.R. Tolkien merely translated the Hobbit and the LotR saga, and wonders who really wrote those stories. 

(2020 note: Pretty much the only thing that hasn't come yet is SFLer's saying that, actually the Balrog's wielded lightsabers(this is my contribution to Tolkienian lore if no one else has come up with it)).

-First mention of Anne Rice and THE VAMPIRE LESTAT in the SFL Archives.

-The Navy Times leaks a story and pictures of STAR TREK 4 filming taking place on the U.S.S. Ranger (CV-61 aircraft carrier).

-Someone tries to critique and tear down how the fog of war & situational awareness affected real life battles like Waterloo 1815, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, and General Sherman's 1864 March to the Sea. Only by the 3rd paragraph it's clear that Avalon Hill wargaming rulesets and ONLY Avalon Hill wargaming rulesets are being used for the critiques of these IRL battles.  It is hilarious to read, especially when other SFLers respond back.

-Paranoia RPG module YELLOW CLEARANCE BLACK BOX BLUES gets men...#672785  REDACTED BY ORDER OF FRIEND COMPUTER. HAIL FRIEND COMPUTER. 

-The 1986 Seattle International Film Festival had a seminar on how film trailers were cut, and it sounds extremely interesting. Added this to my "track down and read" list.

-BURNING CHROME, the optioned-and-in-the-works film adaption of William Gibson's NEUROMANCER gets mentioned and discussed and mentioned more because Burning Chrome is also the title of a William Gibson cyberpunk short story collection.

-the TUCKER AWARD, an award for SF convention goers gets mentioned. Not sure if the TUCKER AWARD is a grifter scam, partially real, or a one-off SF award that quickly died off due to lack of interest. (2020 note: Not going to waste the time internet-searching it since no-one has responded about it.)

-A few SFL Star Trek fans ask "Why don't any of the official STAR TREK episodes have female captains, it is sexism or worse?" (2020 take: Yes and Yes. Gene Roddenberry applies heavily to both Yes answers.)

-Someone transcribes an entire edition of CHEAP TRUTH, an Austin TX science-fiction newsletter, to the SF-LOVERS mailing list. The edition of CHEAP TRUTH transcribed is decently long, very political, and full of sick burns on many 1986 big-Name SF authors. 

-Some 1986 SFLers start hating on Spider Robinson's stories always including rape, underage jailbait, sexual assault, 30 second pep-talk speeches curing lifelong depressions, and having tragedy being SOMEONE ELSE'S FAULT....2020 me rejoices.

-Andrew M. Greeley's story THE GOD GAME gets mentioned....and guess we now know where Peter Molyneux got the idea for POPULOUS 1 from.

-A SFLer quotes a recent 1986 issue of Scientific American, which discusses the lack of cheetah genetic variance. (2020 note: I listed this just to reference the state of DNA sequencing and precursor warnings of the 6th extinction event, circa 1986. 6th extinction event clarification can be found here  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction )

-Cyberspace and how 1986 SFLers think it will be implemented in the future, using or not using William Gibson's vision of Cyberspace as a non-computer person.

-"How would you repopulate the Earth if 99% of the opposing gender died off?" discussion, Some people participating in this discussion aim high, some go detail oriented wondering about the diet plans & scheduling details needed to rebalance the gender ratio, and others almost but don't quite go into race science mode. 

-MAX HEADROOM comes up again, regarding Max Headroom (Matt Frewer) appearing in Coke commercials before the Max Headroom Cinemax tv series officially starts up.

-First mention of PROJECT ORION in the SFL Archives. Projection Orion was essentially a plan to launch spaceships by detonating nuclear bombs beneath them and using a hyper-massive shock-absorber system to absorb the blasts and "bounce" the spaceships forward.

-NASA waits around five months before starting a grass-roots PR campaign to keep funding manned space exploration projects in response to the details coming out about how NASA f**ked up big-time everyway regarding the Challenger Launch decision.

-Stanislaw Lem's work starts getting discussed, with people being amazed by how good (usually) the translations of Lem's stories into other languages go, usually.

-The movies ALIENS, LABYRINTH, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA all come out within 2 weeks of each other. So far, Labyrinth has the most feedback, with "this children's film was geared towards children and not adults, I don't like it" being the most vocal feedback so far.

-Nanotechnology will change everything. One of the first mentions of Nanotechnology by that name in the SFL Archives.

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 04

34% completion, 135 bookmarks

-Continued LORD OF THE RINGS language chat, with one SFLer going back to the Hobbit and Gandalf being unable to read elfish script correctly.

-The 1985-1986 reviewer-idiotking of the SF-LOVERS mailing list posts a review of the 1958 movie HIDDEN FORTRESS (not being the inspiration for lots of visuals in Star Wars: A New Hope) so brain-dead, everyone starts dunking on him with detailed illuminating reviews of SciFi & Fantasy stories/movies/cartoons/Anime/Manga that they have come across.

-Someone goes next level stalker and posts Harlan Ellison's phone number to the SF-LOVERS mailing list; encouraging other people to call Ellison out-of-the-blue like he did. Most of the SFL has a "WTF, dude..seriously WTF" reaction, while the person who posted Harlan Ellison's phone number to the internet triples-down and says that Ellison likes fan contact/gets off on the adversarial phone calls he makes/made to Ellison. 

-Proto-otaku's start to emerge in the SFL Archives with posts like "Congratulations! You have just discovered the world of Japanese Manga (comic books)." and Subject:Japanese Animation: An Introduction for the Uninitiated". Most of the 1986 proto-otaku's/all-things-Japan subject matter experts come from the ARPANET node at the University of Waterloo Canada

-People start complaining about BAEN BOOKS repacking decades old Keith Laumer stories as new content.

-Yet another installment of the "Advice requested for a <1986> new author looking to get published" and the responses.

-SHORT CIRCUIT the movie comes out and someone low-key compares it to John Sladek's story TIK TOK.

-A weird bit of SciFi pulp fiction creeps out. In 1948 or early 1949, a anonymous person sent in a fake review of the upcoming October or November 1949 issue of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION magazine, complete with author & story title listing. John W. Campbell bit, and low-key contacted the authors listed in that fake review ASF review and had them write SciFi stories using those story titles, and then published everything listed in that fake review. JW Campbell then used that gag as a editorial hook-line about how Science Fiction can become a Self-Fulfilling prophecy.

(2020 note: I haven't googled any this so far. Currently hope that it was real and not someone making up a fake story to burnish how amazing JW Campbell was an editor/human being/lover)

-1980's tv series REMINGTON STEEL has been canceled, and it looks like Pierce Brosnan is going to be the next James Bond in "THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS" (2020 note: I know what happened IRL regarding this)

-Another joint Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle book starts getting discussed....this time it is FOOTFALL @1985, and some of the SFLer descriptions of the plot and aliens and actions taken in it sort of has me thinking Footfall is one of canon sources for the ugly-as-fucking-hell scifi Web Comic Shlock mercenary 

-THIS ISLAND EARTH, a 1955 movie starts getting mentioned because it appeared as clips in a recent Steven Spielberg movie (The Explorers or the Goonies, or possibly an episode of Amazing Stories)

-Medicare for all, aka the old pulp SciFi story about "a libertarian being unable to pay the grossly inflated hospital bill for his daughters birth, so he lets the hospital raise her and educate her until the daughter grows old enough to pay it off herself" gets mentioned. (2020 note: I read this story a few years ago and slight spoiler the hospital almost bankrupted itself trying to calculate all the interest due when the daughter-raised-by-the-hospital was about graduate college)

-L Neil Smith, founder of the Libertarian Hugo Award and all the bizarre things that 1986 era SFLers were able to dig up on L Neil Smith, like winning the award he founded 3 times, and writing a libertarian novel where the default libertarian heroes had to travel in time to stop Jane Fonda, in full 1980's exercise mode, from destroying the future's beautiful libertarian utopia

-Bruce Sterling's SCHISMATRIX comes up for one of the first times in SFL Archives history. (2020 note: Schismatrix was a ground-defining book for post-humanity stories...and pretty much everything else Bruce Sterling has written can safely be ignored). 

-HARD TO BE A GOD, the Arkady Strugatsky & Boris Strugatsky Noon Universe setting story about a Progessor agent going undercover in a off-planet medieval civilization comes up for the first time in SFL Archives history. 

-The DOCTOR WHO series possibly maybe casting a female Doctor Who ends up as another fan-baiting "f**k you" rumor by John Nathan-Turner

-First mention of CJ Cherryh's 1985 novel CUCKOO'S EGG in the SFL Archives 

-1986 SFL people continue debating Tolkien lore throughout April 1986 into early June 1986 and gradually come to the conclusion that GANDALF IS ILLITERATE

(2020 take: Thanks to this, 2020 me now thinks of pre-scourging Gandalf the Grey as a Charlie Kelly guy, happy to chill with idiot hobbits because Saruman is Dennis Reynolds. Which would make Sweet Dee Reynolds = Radagast aka the "Bird Wizard". Mac would be the two unknown LotR Blue Wizards, symbolizing Mac before he came out and Mac after he came out. Frank would be Tom Bombadil, with either Gail the Snail or Roxy the whore as Bombadil's bang-buddy Goldberry. The McPoyles are Elrond and his clan. And of course, Rickety Cricket is Gollum) 

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 03

 SFL Archives Vol 11: 25% completion, 78 bookmarks (more than a few bookmarks were redundant and got cleaned up)

-The reason why Alexei Panshin had a decades long break getting stories published becomes clearer. (Panshin apparently signed a multi-book contract for the advance money, Panshin then tried to weasel out of the book contract commitment by submitting stories *co-authored* with his wife...publishers did not react well to shenanigans they normally pulled on authors happening to them)

-One shot SF&F authors of the 1980's get discussed and a few of them/their stories sound interesting (Hilbert Schenck, Barrington Bayley, Denis Johnson, John Sladek, etc)

-COSMOS, a 17 chapter SF round-robin "write your way out of this" serial written almost exclusively by future SF editors/authors inside the 1933 fanzine SCIENCE FICTION DIGEST 

-Some SFLers have devolved into posting lists of books and author bibliographies in response to other SFLers making 1000+ word essay-posts

-SFLers start asking what deeper meaning Ridley Scott intended by costuming Tim Curry in gallons of red paint, a foam bodybuilder suit and fake horns in the 1985 movie LEGEND. (2020 take: Ridley Scott putting 97% of his effort on the visuals of a film & 1% effort on the movie script never gets hypothesized by 1986 SFLers)

-Vernor Vinge's PEACE WAR comes up, and how the bobbles (aka stasis field technology) in PEACE WAR could be used IRL across multiple fields like construction, civilian, military, space exploration, etc.

-Philip Jose Farmer's unauthorized vulturing of other SF&F authors work gets mentioned multiple times, re the PJF authored VENUS ON A HALF-SHELL and the PJF authored Necronomicon

-SFLers note that Jack Chalker's stories all seeming to have involuntary species + gender swaps for main characters and the subsequent kinky sex that happens due to species/gender changes makes me very happy I have only read one of Jack Chalker's stories (it was notable for the extreme speed of the plot movement vs modern fantasy books) and nothing more. 

-Diane Duane's STAR TREK novels get brought up and fans of Diane Duane/fans of STAR TREK fiction might find things of note being discussed that I haven't 

-More SFLer's discover Michael Moorcock and the ETERNAL CHAMPION stories, which [sarcasm mode]Robert Heinlein definitely did not rip off for his Number of the Beast book[/sarcasm mode].

-The SF-LOVERS t-shirt project gets relaunched with a cluttered seeming graphic design (two interstellar aliens reading SF-LOVERS on a terminal with a scarier interstellar alien creeping up behind the reader aliens)

-An SFLer on the hunt for unique for PhD thesis material asks "What is the etymology behind "filksongs/fens/fen?" (2020: I will 110% be skipping all further posts regarding this subject)

-Steven Brust regains ARPANET acess and happily continues posting to the SF-LOVERS mailing list, to my utter non-delight as a avid non-fan of SKZB

-Lots and lots of LORD OF THE RINGS/Tolkien lore chat: Is Gandalf one of the Maia, why didn't Gandalf instantly ace the door-lock "say friend" test trying to get into Moria, was Legolas a backwoods (giggle) uneducated elf-hick or was Legolas just not willing to embarrass Gandalf about elf-language in front of the mortals? (2020 note: I can't remember how many supplemental LoTR books Christopher Tolkien had published up to this point in 1986. Also, RIP Christopher Tolkien)

-Funny SF stories requests. Henry Kuttner gets recommended a bunch, especially Kuttner's "drunk inventor-genius" stories. Spider Robinson's work gets recommended too (2020 take: Spider Robinson is a trap. Do Not Read. DO NOT READ.) BILL THE GALACTIC HERO gets recommended (2020 take: Bill the Galactic Hero IS NOT a trap read.)

- HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster fan recipes and anecdotes of drinking those fan recipes.

-The 1980's reboot of the TWILIGHT ZONE series viability is in doubt, and a doomed Save the Twilight Zone fan-campaign gets started.

-Locus Magazine mentions that Robert Aspirin has signed a multi-book deal for more MYTH stories (2020 take: Aspirin would pull a Panshin 2.0 move, only in Aspirin's case it was (mostly) IRS back-taxes related).

-A SFLer pitches a survey dedicated to filksong *cannonical collections of 'whimsically' regular words* and I promise to skip over any future posts on this just as much as posts about etymology of filksongs/fen/fens

-An PLAYBOY short story article called "TIME IS MONEY" gets brought up and discussed. (2020 take: doing a moderate reworking of that idea circa 2020 might win you the 2020/2021 PROMETHEUS AWARD aka the Hugo Award for Libertarians)

-1985 movie THE STUFF gets brought up again and from a 2020 standpoint it sounds more surrealistic than 1983 movie LIQUID SKY.

-CODEX SERAPHINIANUS gets brought up a few times. Knowing nothing about it  and refusing to google it, the CODEX SERAPHINIANUS sounds alot like the VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript

-Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova suing broadcast television networks & the producers of TERMINATOR 1 over stolen pitched-to-Hollywood ideas to get some sweet sweet settlement money comes up again. 

-A few SFLer's get around to watching Akira Kurosawa's HIDDEN FORTRESS and start noticing similarities/homages/outright scene reenactments of it that George Lucas did in STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE

-the AYES OF TEXAS get reviewed by Mark Leeper, and *even Mark Leeper, master of surface level oblivious reviews* picks up on the TEXAS slant in it.

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 02

Current status: 15% completion in SFL Archives Vol 11, 48 bookmarks. 

-David Eddings apparently ripping off Lloyd Alexander's PRYDIAN series wholesale gets brought up a multiple times by different SFLers using variants of this quoted post:

"I read -and enjoyed- the Belgariad, but

it was an almost exact copy of another five book series, the Prydain

series by Lloyd Alexander (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron,

The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King), up to and

including stubborn red-haired princess!  If I were Lloyd Alexander,

I would have filed for copyright infringement!"

-Talk of scifi & fantasy stories built around time-travel and astrally projected main characters brings up a weird fantasy-slash SciFi story that turns out to be THE NIGHT LAND by William Hope Hodgson (2020 readers: be prepared for lots of repetition and filler text involving the main character eating and drinking and sleeping and eating and drinking and sleeping and eating and sleeping and drinking).

-A SFL Archives post about asking if voice actors that read the SFL mailing are willing to share their work experiences is notable mainly because the person making the request cross-posted it to net.sf-lovers, net.startrek and net.movies

-Jean M. Auel's corpus of work comes up as does her writing one-handed fixation on writing in caveman harlequin romance plots into them.

-SFLers try decoding the alliterative names used to insert other fantasy genre and scifi genres authors in your lighter stories that was the de rigueur thing to do for a while in the 1970's-80's

-Someone recommends Spider Robinson's NIGHT OF POWER for it's inclusion of and I quote "touches on (and occasionally fondles) prostitution, rape, pubescents, adultery, and (gasp) miscegenation."  (2020 readers: These themes crop up in almost EVERY Spider Robinson story I've come across in my "give Spider Robinson a 2nd chance re-read attempt.) 

-The 1985 Controller of BBC 1 explains why the DOCTOR WHO series briefly went on hiatus for ""(being) too violent, plots had become boring and repetitive" reasons, and threatened total Doctor Who series cancellation if the show ratings did not improve.

-L Ron Hubbard dies at a undisclosed location sometime in early 1986, Zenna Henderson death notice.

-Timothy Zahn's COBRA series comes up and gets very mixed to extremely negative reviews. Wondering how much COBRA series content got recycled into Zahn's much better well known STAR WARS EU stories?  

-1st mention of iconic children's cartoon VOLTRON in the SFL Archives. 

-George RR Martin's HAVILAND TUF short stories gets brought up a few times. They sound interesting but I am not dropping my "NEVER READ GEORGE RR MARTIN STORIES" rule

-A Feb 19th 1986 LA TIMES article mentioned how a bunch of local SF writers got together after the Voyager 2 spaceprobe did a flyby of Uranus and started getting very notMad about a Harpers Magazine article called "THE TEMPLE OF BOREDOM" by Luc Sante.

-Someone tries to revive (and commercialize) the SF-LOVERS t-shirt SFL subscribers used to lowkey identify each other at Fantasy and SciFi conventions...aka the thing Robert Forwards edgelord son designed back in late 1980

-The SPACE MERCHANTS series by Fredrick Pohl & Cyril M. Kornbluth gets brought up by 1986 SFLers as a 1984-the-book warning of how bad things could get in the future (2020 take: they had no idea)

-R. Ramsay takes self-promotion to a new stage in the SFL Archives and self-publishes their "best (SF) short story" to the SFL mailing list. (2020: I powerskimmed it and uh.... 'Sam Spade written by William Gibson' is how I would describe it) 

-Someone scoops the on-site location shooting for STAR TREK 4 regarding DeForrest Kelly at a local 20th century hospital

 -Hank Buurman discloses the survey responses he got for "posting on female sexuality in sf/fantasy" in the SFL mailing list. Hank Buurman did get ot a lot of responses, but the responses Hank Buurman received were thoughtful and full of details. Since no one requested anonymity, Hank Buurman includes the login names/email addresses of the people who responded next to extracts of their posts. Since Hank Buurman didn't feel anonymity was cool for people, I returned the favor in kind.

-Excerpts from the HARPERS MAGAZINE article "THE TEMPLE OF BOREDOM" mentioned earlier get re-posted to the SFL Archives. Without the full essay to read....the excerpts given just ramble from topic to topic <rimshot burn on my SFL Archives readthrough in a nutshell I guess> 

-The benefits of subscribing to Locus Magazine for the low low cost of only $24 per year *in 1986 money valuation* Not sure what has changed regarding the Locus Magazine of the 1980s vs the Locus Magazine of modern times (2020 guess: it went digital and costs more is my uneducated, not looking things up at all guess)  

-A "Secular Humanist Revival" panel hosted by Orson Scott Card at the upcoming INCONJUNCTION 6 in July 1986 gets teased.

-Book publishers always seeming to finally publish all the stories and books of authors they could never manage to do when the author was alive...this time it's Philip K Dick getting the post-mortem career boost.

-SIME/GEN Householding and whatever the hell it is comes up a few times. Channels, Rensimes, Companions, Gens, and Sosectu's are name-dropped. Guessing Sime/Gen is some version of pre-Internet LARPing

-TRAVELLER RPG comes up again, with requests for interstellar merchant fiction. GRRM's Haviland Tuf gets recommended again, and my love of the TRAVELLER RPG makes me break my "NEVER READ GEORGE RR MARTIN STORIES" rule and add the Haviland Tuf stories to my reading list. <damn it>

-James Blish's CITIES IN SPACE series also gets recommended to the TRAVELLER RPG fan, however I have read those Cities in Space stories and they are exactly as hypocritical as everything involving 1980's televangelists & money/adultery.

-HIGHLANDER 1 gets released, it rocks, and Sean Connery hits the "kissing on the lips costs more" uh "non-Scottish accents cost more" phase of his acting career

-The "Why do producers keep remaking successful films every couple of decades?" question comes up, and SFLers start mentioning various 1970's-1980's film remakes.

-A small publishing house based in Willimantic CT that seemingly specialized in doing limited publication small print runs of Gene Wolfe books has come up in the SFL Archives over and over again since 1981/1982. *HINT* Given the printing press technology level back then, suspect that Gene Wolfe mega-fan collectors might be able to score physical offset printing plates of Gene Wolfe's work if they contacted that publisher/the estate of the publisher. *HINT*

-KLAATU BARADA NICOTINE: A SFLer makes the observation of how in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL 1951 movie, doctors were smoking heavily when discussing that Klaatu the alien ambassador somehow has a longer lifespan than Earth humans. HMMMM.

-One of the ultimate blue-collar Scifi book series comes up again, STAR RIGGERS by John DeChancie. Despite the subject matter <interstellar Big-BIG RIG trucker> and the wish-fullfilment factors in them, the Star Riggers series isn't terrible.

-April Fools jokes, 1986 edition 

-Judy-Lynn del Rey obituary notice. Judy-Lynn del Rey is mostly forgotten by modern SF fans, however Judy-Lynn del Rey is the person most responsible for dragging Science Fiction out of the sub-sub-genre slums and making SF more accessible to readers of all gamuts and backgrounds. RIP Judy-Lynn del Rey.

-EE Smith's in-novel solution to handling a Grand Fleet of a million spaceships: A large display tank and 200 four-armed telephone switch operators.

-Mark Leeper expands on why he thinks the 1975 BBC tv series THE SURVIVORS is one of the best SciFi series out there (2020 note: the 1975 version of THE SURVIVORS predicts a lot of things that went down in real life re: COVID19)     

-A few SFL people want to know WTF(and how playable IRL) the FENCE game in John Brunner's SHOCKWAVE RIDER is. (2020 take: Now I do too, damnit.)

-Someone finds it impossible to find slack time in the LOTR series if actual movies were made of the LOTR books  (2020 take: Peter Jackson laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs as Tidus from Final Fantasy X chimes in)

-SFLers notice a slew of typographical errors in the books that have been coming out lately. DAW usually comes up regarding this subject. (2020 take: Cutting back on copy-editors is usually a sign that book publishers are in trouble. DAW doesn't exist anymore (or does it?). Coincidence?) 

-THIEVES WORLD series comes up again. Essentially a shared universe for fantasy genre writers, with near free reign for the involved authors to f**k with other authors characters/plots. George RR Martin would adopt a similar method for his most-beloved series, the WILD CARDS setting.

-SKYCAM technology gets mentioned for 1st time or so in the SFL Archives. One SFLer thinks the first movie to use SKYCAM technology was the opening scene in HIGHLANDER 1(1986), while another SFLer thinks it was used in All the Right Moves(?)

-Exponential expansion of the ARPANET/other connected pre-Internet networks and how it all relates scarily to Algis Budrys's 1976 story MICHAELMAS.

-Someone reviews Jack Dann's THE MAN WHO MELTED, and comments that the book revolves around every character having severe psychological problems and Scream therapy being (the cause of?/the solution to?) the central mystery of the book. 

-Some deranged person wants links to the 13 episodes of HitchHikers Guide to the Net previously posted to the 1984 SFL Archives, and I hate them for bringing that hell back on me.

-The SFL Archives mailing list moderator-maintainer posts on 11 Apr 86:

Well, here it is almost 10 days after the beginning of April

and guess what?  I am *still* getting messages from people asking

about the new subscription charges announced in the April 1 edition

(Vol 11, #59) of SF-LOVERS.  For those of you who haven't gotten it

by now, that was the April Fool's issue.  I guess the issue was much

more subtle than I thought it was or else people were confused by

the fact that they received the issue after April 1.  Can you say

"slow mailers and lousy hardware"?  I thought so.  It seems we were

off the network for a few days and that delayed transmission of the

digest even though it was prepared far enough in advance.

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 01

Current status: 10% completion, 21 bookmarks on SFL Archives Volume 11 readthrough 

This is going to be a shorter than normal update, but it's all fresh material. SFL Volume 11 is about half a Megabyte shorter than SFL Volume 10, and lots of interesting and terrible movies are coming out circa 1986. LABYRINTH! SPACE CAMP! COBRA! ALIENS 2! STAR TREK 4! BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA! etc, etc.

Actual SFL Volume 11 weird, bizarre, horrifying and retroactively interesting things:  

-Should books be marked scarlet letter style regarding the sexual slants in them? (gay/lesbian/cis/pedophile/dolphin/centaurs/etc)...

-Sexual slant chat lead to SFLers commenting on Anne McCaffrey's DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN books, with how most of the dragon-riders seem to be forced into being bisexual by mental-links with their dragons. Lots and lots of Pern chat, with "impress" being mentioned a whole lot. Having never read any of the Pern books, guessing "impress" is a Pern universe stand-in word for non-consent.

-The 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster happens. Thankfully, none of the usual SFL edgelords do their expected edgelord takes. Instead the SFL reaction to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster is universal horror and condolences for everyone directly affected by the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster....and within hours, one SFLer has Zapruder Film analyzed the Space shuttle launch tapes and detected flames shooting out of one the solid-fuel boosters. 

The reason why the Challenger disaster got me so mad on the SA forums/gets me so mad IRL is that the Challenger did not have to launch then; there was a massive political push to launch the Space Shuttle Challenger ASAP. 

Why? So that the TEACHER IN SPACE project's scheduled broadcast of 2 15-minute science lessons from the Space Shuttle in orbit to all the children in the USA would happen on schedule and bring the USA/NASA/President Reagan much prestige.  Instead, rules got ignored and bypassed, and tragedy happened. 

Although it's kind of old, Diane Vaughan's THE CHALLENGER LAUNCH DECISION is my preferred recommendation to other people because the book goes into great detail about the many factors to the Challenger Space Shuttle launching when it did, AND Diane Vaughan flat-out admitted in the introduction that she had a canned conclusion ready, but all the evidence and interviews she did as research made her change her mind.

 -Frank Herbert, original DUNE series author death notice.  

-Peri (Nicola Bryant), a original DOCTOR WHO TV series Companion triggered a few proto-incel SFLers hard and the triggered proto-incels get rock-hard/cheer when Nicola Bryant is dropped from the Doctor Who series.

-The DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN weirdness discussion IMPRESSES more SFLers into posting about Dragonriders of Pern series weirdness in a vicious feedback loop.

-The crime Roj Blake gets framed for in iconic SciFi tv-series BLAKES 7 gets mentioned and it is extremely terrible in a "why did you pick that crime, BBC/Blake's 7 showrunner for the main character?"

-Someone tries to get the SF-LOVERS mailing list moderator-maintainer nominated for a 1986/1987 HUGO AWARD, category: Best Professional Editor; since the SF-LOVERS mailing list goes out to over 1200 people. The SF-LOVERS mailing list moderator-maintainer then explains, in small words suitable for children, why that would be a BAD IDEA. something something federal investigation something stealing government resources something something Hugo Awards get more press than discussion groups at Boskone conventions.

SFL Archives: Advice for new authors trying to break into the field circa 1985

Reposting this subject for archival purposes for current/aspiring authors to reference regarding what the SFF publishing field was like circa 1985 for new/established authors, and what has changed/not changed since 1985. 

And mother-f***r, looks like I am unable to escape mentioning Steven Brust again (f**k off forever SKZB).
Scanning forward, mid July 1985 Brust posts:

"I've been asked to supply information about what a plot outline
consists of, as in, what one might send the editor of a publisher.
It has been suggested that I do so on the net rather than by mail."

(Steven Brust plot outline has been added to the very end of this post).


The "advice for a new author" request

------------------------------
Date: Tue, 21 May 85 17:42 CDT
From: Patrick_Duff <pduff%ti-eg.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Wanted: Publisher and Editor reviews

I will soon be contacting a publisher with a story outline and a
few chapters of an SF book I am writing; I am also considering
submitting a short story to one of the SF magazines. Does anyone
have any advice concerning which publisher an unknown author should
contact? How much difference could it make if I waited to submit my
book material until after I've had a short story or two published
somewhere? I'm interested in both positive and negative reviews of
publishers and magazines (or magazine editors). Please give the
source of your information if possible (first- hand experience, from
a magazine or fanzine article, heard at a convention, etc.).

regards, Patrick
------------------------------

The responses
------------------------------

From: lzwi!psc@topaz.arpa (P.S.CHISHOLM)
Subject: Re: Wanted: Publisher and Editor reviews
Date: 22 May 85 17:44:32 GMT

pduff%ti-eg.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa writes:
> Does anyone have any advice concerning which publisher an unknown
> author should contact?

In the November 1984 SCIENCE FICTION CHRONICLE's Market Report,
Bluejay says, "Only looking for published authors". Donning/
Starblaze says, "Willing to review material by new authors": is that
supposed to be encouraging or discouraging? (No matter, this
month's SFC would seem to indicate they haven't been publishing as
fast as they're buying, anyway.)

ALL of the other major publishers will buy a good novel. If you and
Asimov sent them good novels on the same day, they'd buy both.
(Note that for a novel, you should send a query with an outline and
sample chapters, *not* the whole novel. You don't even need to have
the novel finished.)

> How much difference could it make if I waited to submit my book
> material until after I've had a short story or two published
> somewhere?

A dozen stories, published mostly in a single magazine over a period
of a few years, *might* make a difference. However, most book
editors don't read SF magazines. Don't wait.

As to advice on what magazines to submit to: send your stories to
the places you'd like to be published in. ASIMOV'S is pretty
clearly the most respected magazine in the field today. ANALOG is
hungry for stories, especially but not exclusively hard SF. F&SF is
a bit slow. AMAZING seems to be barely surviving, but responds
promptly, and is better than most magazines at giving you some
comments on what's wrong. PLAYBOY and OMNI don't buy much fiction.
There are some other small magazines, too, and original anthologies
looking for stories on a given topic; check market reports in SFC or
LOCUS.

Keep your manuscripts moving. One trick I've discovered is to
address the "next" pair of envelopes when you address the first.
For example, when you type up the envelopes to ANALOG, also type up
a pair to AMAZING. Then, if the manuscript happens to come back,
stuff it RIGHT AWAY in the next set, ship it out again, and prepare
another set. Don't wait for one story to sell before starting (or
even submitting) the next one. If you don't have a next one, write
it.

For more information: SFC and LOCUS are valuable sources of
information, not the least being the occasional Market Reports.
WRITER'S MARKET describes manuscript mechanics, e.g., self-addressed
stamped envelopes, a guide to estimating postage, suggested waiting
times and pay scales. Once you've sold you first story, you can
join the Science Fiction Writer's of America, which has a Handbook
and a newsletter.

Good luck!
-Paul S. R. Chisholm
------------------------------

Date: Wed, 29 May 85 01:32:44 PDT
From: lah%ucbmiro@Berkeley (First Lieutenant Leigh Ann Hussey)
Subject: Re: Publisher & Editor Reviews...

>(Note that for a novel, you should send a query with an outline and
>sample chapters, *not* the whole novel. You don't even need to >have
the novel finished.)

Sorry, but that's a bad piece of advice. I only hope that you haven't
taken it already and suffered an unnecessary rejection. When you have
five books or so out, then you can start thinking about sending
outlines. Most of the writers I know, however, sent their first
novels complete. When an editor knows for certain what he/she is
buying from you, ie, will it sell, they won't care (much) what it's
about. James Hogan said (Baycon '85) that the only myth-making he
does these days is in the writing of his outlines; the subsequent
stories sometimes come out very differently. Hogan, however, is an
acknowledged seller. In addition, he sent HIS first novel in
complete. Meanwhile, an editor can't be sure of what he/she's getting
on the basis of an outline and a few chapters unless he/she's seen
your work before. Send the whole thing, with return postage (unless
you don't want it back), and hope for the best. I'm marketing my
first novel, too. (By the way, the above commentator was right about
stories -- having a short story of my own out does not seem to have
made much difference; what HAS is going to conventions. Know your
editors and colleagues-to-be, get your face seen and your work heard
-- in that case, having a prior short story or two published is good,
as it gets you into cons as a guest and you can meet more people that
way).

Leigh Ann Hussey (lah@ucbmiro.BERKELEY (horatio@ucbmiro.BERKELEY)
------------------------------

From: lzwi!psc@topaz.arpa (Paul S. R. Chisholm)
Subject: Re: selling your first novel
Date: 30 May 85 17:47:13 GMT

> From: lah%ucbmiro@Berkeley (First Lieutenant Leigh Ann Hussey)
>>(Note that for a novel, you should send a query with an outline
>>and sample chapters, *not* the whole novel. You don't even need
>>to have the novel finished.) > Sorry, but that's a bad piece of
advice. I only hope that you > haven't taken it already and suffered
an unnecessary rejection. > When you have five books or so out, then
you can start thinking > about sending outlines. Most of the writers
I know, however, sent > their first novels complete. When an editor
knows for certain > what he/she is buying from you, ie, will it sell,
they won't care > (much) what it's about. > > Meanwhile, an editor
can't be sure of what he/she's getting on the > basis of an outline
and a few chapters unless he/she's seen your > work before. Send the
whole thing, with return postage (unless > you don't want it back),
and hope for the best. I'm marketing my > first novel, too. (By the
way, the above commentator was right > about stories -- having a short
story of my own out does not seem > to have made much difference; what
HAS is going to conventions. > Know your editors and
colleagues-to-be, get your face seen and > your work heard -- in that
case, having a prior short story or two > published is good, as it
gets you into cons as a guest and you can > meet more people that
way). > > Leigh Ann Hussey

As the poster of that advice, I bow to your superior experience. The
idea that going to cons and meeting editors helps sounds especially
right.

-Paul S. R. Chisholm {pegasus,vax135}!lzwi!psc {mtgzz,ihnp4}!lznv!psc
------------------------------

From: duke!crm@topaz.arpa (Charlie Martin)
Subject: Re: Publisher & Editor Reviews
Date: 31 May 85 16:24:24 GMT

>From: lah%ucbmiro@Berkeley (First Lieutenant Leigh Ann Hussey)
>>(Note that for a novel, you should send a query with an outline
>>and sample chapters, *not* the whole novel. You don't even need
>>to have the novel finished.) > >Sorry, but that's a bad piece of
advice. I only hope that you >haven't taken it already and suffered
an unnecessary rejection. >When you have five books or so out, then
you can start thinking >about sending outlines. Most of the writers I
know, however, sent >their first novels complete.

At the Editor's panel at Disclave last weekend, the editors all agreed
that they would consider an outline *first*, over a complete
manuscript, and that they by far prefer to see outlines over
manuscripts.

Now, if you are a new writer, the response to your outline may be
"sounds good, can I see the whole manuscript when it is available?"

For some non-obvious reason, I forgot to put the editors's names into
my notebook, but they were from several big name companies like
Berkely.
Charlie Martin
(...mcnc!duke!crm)
------------------------------
......
...........
............
............
.............
------------------------------

From: hyper!brust@topaz.arpa (Steven Brust)
Subject: plot outlines
Date: 16 Jul 85 22:30:39 GMT

I've been asked to supply information about what a plot outline
consists of, as in, what one might send the editor of a publisher.
It has been suggested that I do so on the net rather than by mail.

Okay. I've never done an outline in this form. I have seen one or
two that have gone to editors, and seen the resulting books. In
general, there is little or no relationship between the outline and
the book that I have seen.

The outline is usually in the form of one paragraph per chapter, and
describes the basic action of that chapter. As in, "Chapter One:
Zwiggle, an adolescent of the dominant race of planet Juju IV,
discovers a strange being, actually a young, adolescent Earthgirl
from an exploratory vessel. He immediatly falls in lover with her,
kills her, and eats her for dinner. Chapter Two: Zwiggle begins to
wonder if he should have eaten her. His best friend, Zwaggle,
convinces him to try to find the rest of the aliens and they set off
to..."

That kind of thing.

Insofar as I've been able to determine, the outline exists so that
the editor, who has already decided to buy the book because he likes
your intense, Hemmingway-esque style (especially during the
cannible-procreation scenes) can have something to wave at the
publishing committee so they will do what he wants them to (either
agree to publish it, give the author more money for it, make it a
lead title, whatever).

My experience is EXTREMELY limited, so don't take any of this as
gospel. There may well be publishers who pay attention to the plot
outline, or use it to decide whether or not to buy the book, etc.

For more information, I would suggest asking David Dyer-Bennet
(whereever on the net he is) to please as his lovely and talented
wife, Pamela Dean, to tell us about her experiences.

That's the best I can do. Hope its some help.

-- SKZB
------------------------------ 

originally posted August 23th in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3