-Dell killed off their entire scifi publishing line, including the prestige labels.
2020 sidenote: Thought this was a result of end-of-year price bumps not getting the sales targets Dell was aiming for. Looking slightly behind the scenes circa year 2020 vision (ha), it seems that the Dell Publishing buyout by DOUBLEDAY had entered "asset stripping mode", maybe to help Doubleday payoff debt from another recent Doubleday acquisition, the NEW YORK METS baseball team.
-EXCALIBUR (1981) the movie came out, and the SFL archive has been full of "I am not angry, I am super-angry that the movie did not adhere 100% to The Whole Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table", or "Hey Arthurian myth has lots of forms and versions, why you so mad?" and "Read more <arthurian myth> dumbasses, the movie adapted multiple arthurian sources", etc.
-Despite live-posting the first attempted manned launch of the Space Shuttle program, absolutely no one seemed to give a f**k when Columbia launched successfully two days later, and landed successfully 2 days after that. Instead it was "What ever happened to the Space Shuttle named Enterprise?" /"It's the prototype test Shuttle, it might get turned into a real boy real Space Shuttle if Congress funds it" Spoilers unneeded, Congress did not fund it.
-I apparently spoke too soon about people not giving a f**k about the first manned Space Shuttle landing. At least 3 SFL subscribers ran into each other at the 1st manned Space Shuttle landing exhibition and recognized each other from overhearing references to a recent SFL verbal meme. This email took a week plus after being sent to finally appear in the SFL mailing list.
-the MENSA ad opened the gateway, and barely disguised product review advertisements have started to creep into the SFL mailing list.
-Newcomers to the SFL mailing list being confused by cryptic messages and unknown acronym usages, and ironically confusing people by their use of unknown acronyms.
-Massive amount of requests for "DOWN IN FLAMES", which circa 1981, had only seen print in a discontinued fanzine (Trumpet #10)
-A "Deaf people are scifi fans too. How about some scifi stories rec's/radio transcript adaptions for deaf people?" request got some very ugly feedback before SFL posters just started to list fiction with deaf aliens/aliens that have no concept of sound. Not a great moment for the SFL archives to be honest.
-Harlan Ellison demonstrates his skillz by writing a short story in the "show window of the B. Dalton Bookstore on Fifth Avenue" live from a image suggested by a person onsite.
-Twenty days worth of scifi themed juvenile fiction chat in the SFL archives means I'm finally dropping juvenile series names that SFL archive posters grew up reading. DANNY DUNN, SPACE CAT, MUSHROOM PLANET, etc. Eleanor Cameron was very highly regarded by SFL posters. Most of the juvenile series would be cartoons today, with the Danny Dunn series being a very very close match to Disney's Phineas and Ferb.
-sexbots, gynoids, heinlein stories, words with *-trix endings (all these are connected)
-Gene Wolfe's BOOK OF THE NEW SUN books start getting discussed.
-Lancelot the goat-unicorn got mentioned a few more times, and so did it's owners/creators. Morning Glory was big into the Aleister Crowley/Donald Trump school of belief that "press mentions are life, bad publicity is better than no publicity at all", and apparently showed up to one fantasy-scifi convention wearing only white body-paint saying that she was a giant bottle of correction fluid.
-you don't talk about Fight Club in public SF-LOVERS, HUMAN-NETS, or any of the Large Mailing Lists directly in any form whatsoever.
[ Everyone planning to meet at NCC '81 should please take care not
to mention SF-LOVERS, HUMAN-NETS, or any of the Large Mailing Lists
directly in any form whatsoever. To do so would violate the
security of these lists, threatening their existence. Rather, it
has proved effective at past conventions to simply post notices
directing people to REDACTED@REDACTED, REDACTED@REDACTED, or REDACTED group.
Please take care to be cryptic so that people who do not know about
the Large Lists will remain ignorant. - REDACTED ]
it was full-bore '50's/60's/70's juvenile print and multimedia entertainment nostalgia chat until RotLA came out, and even then it took CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981), SUPERMAN 2(1981) and DRAGONSLAYER (1981) to derail juvenile entertainment nostalgia chat. Finally RODOF, the twice doxxed son of Dr Robert Forward, came forward (terrible pun but I'm keeping it) to end Vol 03 on a creepy note [Subject: Hymen Hijinx].
-RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK chat was mainly angrily posting unfavorable reviews of RotLA, arguing whether Belloq ate a fly during the Bazooka-Indy standoff, seeing C3P0 & R2D2 in wall inscriptions of the buried city of Tanis, everyone saying that Indy shooting the swordsman got the highest audience reaction, and then trying to break down why in SMG/BotL style, followed by infinite seeming waves of punny RotLA sequel concept titles.
-Clash of Titans chat included 2 profiles of Ray Harryhausen, wooden acting, not sticking to Greek myths as understood/remembered, slams about Harryhausen's work, body doubles...all in all; the people who were the most vocal about Excalibur 1981 (mentioned in earlier Vol 03 recaps) were also the most vocal posters about Clash of Titans.
-Nothing big on Superman 2 chat other than long-exposed to public awareness behind-the-scenes drama involving Donner and Superman 1/2. Dragonslayer 1981 mostly got mentioned for the early CGI/first generation digital optical efforts in it, then...
-RODOF made a series of posts about [Subject: Hymen Hijinx]...........in Dragonslayer (1981). Everywhere you think those RODOF posts probably went re: [Subject: Hymen Hijinx], Yup, you are correct. Bonus correctness points go to people whom also predicted "I wasn't being serious in my earlier posts, I was only joking BUT....".
originally posted between July 3rd - July 6th in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3
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