1981 was a murders row of now-iconic movies. John Carpenter's THE THING just got teased for a mid 1982 release(stoked for SFL reactions), while Dino DeLaurentis DUNE got mentioned as recently entering pre-production. In addition to the movies already mentioned in SFL Vol 03 posts, CONAN THE BARBARIAN 1982 was initially slated for a December 1981 release date.
-The pre-release press announcement of BLADERUNNER came out, and Bladerunner chat has already started breaking SFL poster's brains.
-Additional RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK chat focused on how long the Nazi submarine trip took to the sub-base island and how Indy stayed in place outside the sub and WHY did the sub go into dive mode before the movie switched into map view.
(my take: Because the Nazi's just raided a ship and wanted/needed to run the f**k away undetected before any Sea-cops arrived, )
-Reated chemistry nerd debates about non-digestable reversed pair chemical compounds entering FDA testing that I am guessing will officially be known to history as "NUTRASWEET"
-Release of proposed HDTV specifications causes similar heated debate among the SFL hardware enthusiasts. In Yoda speak, "Begun the graphics wars have".
-In August 1981 someone worries about/predicts whatever the f**k the Sad Puppies attempt a few decades later with the Hugo Award
-The trickle of barely disguised ad product-reviews in SFL archives kicked off by the sneery toned MENSA recruitment ad has turned into a stream
-The first occurrence of Flame On/Flame OFF in SFL archives
-DolphinF**ker discusses immortality and the various goals they have left to accomplish before dying....interspecies sex with aquatic mammals is oddly (or not so oddly) left off their life-goal list
-(august 1981) 3 spaceprobes are currently in the works for the upcoming close swing-by of Halley's Comet
-The runaway growth of STAR WARS fandom continues to mark it's mark in the SFL archives. Despite a murderer's row of fantasy and scifi movies being released in 1981, discussion about Star Wars lore/character lineage/bounty hounters/spoilers/naming conventions and Star Wars trivia grow and grow in the SFL archives, often requiring special SFL Digest SPOILER tags.
-Graphics fans will be interested to know that "aliasing" and "anti-aliasing" get mentioned for the 1st time in the SFL archives (that I can recall) when SFL users post their SIGGRAPH 1981 attendance reviews.
-Spoilers about the upcoming STAR TREK 2 movie where Spock dies/not dies, and the SFL talk that ensues. Gene Roddenberry the Bitter continues a decades long "notMad" pout.
-A few self proclaimed Cinematographic Historians start offering trivia challenges to see what earlier movies Lucas/Spielberg/others ripped off in certain visually stunning scenes Lucas/Spielberg/etc shot. No one cares, almost no one responds; especially after the 1st round of trivia question answers prove to be really stupid, even for 1981.
-Special effects people who worked on Star Wars 1977 + maybe also Star Wars 1980 notice that Star Wars fandom isn't subsiding and start pimping themselves/scamming SW fans at SIGGRAPH 1981 with faked Return of the Jedi "test" footage.
-In the year 1981 SFL chat has been bringing up a long long dead fantasy author. This decades dead author was supposedly more than a slight influence on JRR Tolkien. Besides that. the only reason why I mention this is because the same phrases and wordings people use to describe Gene Wolfe's writing style and stories are getting mentioned in similar ways for this long long dead fantasy genre author. For people interested, the long dead fantasty genre authors name is E.R. Eddison.
-The mailing list maintainers fessed up to lots of behind-the-scenes admin stuff about failing hardware, mis-configured scripts resulting in delayed/missing/duplicate/erroneous SFL Digests being published. Since bandwidth/computing power back in 1981 was a rounding error of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the bandwidth/computer power the year 2020 have, these were serious issues.
-Using RotLA examples, Film insurance/film insurance payouts got explained.
-Hardware failure explained why '50s/'60s/'70s juvenile entertainment chat got cut off so abruptly in the SFL Vol 03 archive. 2 special makeup issues of the SFL Digest were sent out, composed entirely of March 1981-June 1981 'juvenile entertainment' SFL submissions
-A small digression into sharing and listing out the various known Pseudonyms genre authors had used up. Much of this info will be found at https://www.isfdb.org
-An upsurge in discussions of Marion Zimmer Bradley published work, and MZB in general, which I power-skimmed over heavily.
-Every San Francisco resident/former resident of San Francisco chimed in when someone asked the SFL Digest if EMPEROR NORTON was made up.
-The SFL archives message that inspired me to re-read the SF-LOVERS Digest from the beginning, this time taking notes
quote:
Date: September-ish 1981
From: REDACTED at RE-DAC-TED
Subject: SF-Lovers Query
My 13 year old son is reading the GOR series.
I have heard that it is not only badly written (which I expect), but also overly sexist, Sado-masochistic, and violent.
Has anybody read it? Any comments on it?
REDA CTED-
originally posted between July 6th -July 12th in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3
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