SFL Vol 05 was a extremely quick read in comparison to the first SFL 4 volumes. Almost every third SFL Digest update started with apologies to the SFL subscribers for extended downtime/missed SFL Digest updates caused by hardware failure.
-Everyone has opinions on the Dean Machine Drive/Analog magazine fiasco, which I am currently 3% clued in about (and climbing) just from reading the ongoing not-Mad posts from BigName people on the subject.
(2020 sidenote: Back in the 19th century, someone claimed to have detected people living on the moon, attributing the discovery of Moon lifeforms to world famous astronomer John Herschel. 19th century hoax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moon_Hoax
The Dean Machine Drive is a similar thing, a fake news event to drive up sales when readers want to know more/debunk the published story. (an Analog Magazine article about a weight reducing prototype spacedrive). Only it was the godfather of pulp scifi, John W Campbell, in full "I WANT TO BELIEVE" mode backing up the Dean Machine Drive bullshit claim. )
-Robert Heinlein's FRIDAY came out, and gets very mixed SFL reviews, even from the Heinlein Defense squad. One particularly virulent Heinlein Squad poster drops the mask completely and blames "incorrect usages of grammar" inside FRIDAY as the *WINK* real reason *WINK* why they hate Heinlein's FRIDAY.....as in "how dare this female main character dare to use feminine pronouns when describing things in book."
-More STAR TREK 2 movie chat, with press tours about Spock dying yes/no driving talk about still a pipe-dream Star Trek 3.
-Someone complains about getting sent 12 duplicate issues of the latest SFL digest, and the impact of having to store 12 copies of the SFL Digest email on their system, even for one day. Remember, the overall computer resources and network bandwidth of 1982 were a rounding error of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the computing power and bandwidth available to the year 2020.
-EMPIRE STRIKES BACK gets scheduled for a 1982 wintertime re-release in theaters, while A NEW HOPE gets teased as being re-released to the theaters for the 3rd or 4th time since it originally came out in 1977
-I originally thought that "FOONLEY" computer system chat was some kind of delayed April 1st 1982 SFL joke, but no. Judging from the series of not-Mad rebuttal comments, I theorized that the Foonley computer architecture was the precursor of what became the RISC/SPARC computer architecture.....however I was doubly wrong. Foonley architecture evolved into MIPS, an also-ran competitor project to RISC.
-STAR TREK 2, E.T. , and POLTERGEIST came out. Many reviews of Star Trek 2 & E.T. have been posted, Star Trek 2 questions, etc.
-A few U.S. based people complain about commercials suddenly being shown in theaters before the actual movie They-Paid-2-see starts. One or two people from Europe reply saying that has been common practice for a while in Europe.
-One of the original SFLers from it's 1979 mailing list inception started up a San Francisco Bay area precursor to Nick at Nite.
-Positive feedback on Spielberg's E.T. came in hard as SFL Vol 05 came to an end
-One thing I failed to mention in the SFL archives was that ever since the movie adaption of Philip K Dick's "DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?" aka "Bladerunner 1982" got announced, there has been massive confusion because the title "Bladerunner" comes from a completely different story/author, aka THE BLADERUNNER, a 1974 novel by Alan Nourse. So half the people discussing Bladerunner have been talking about Alan Nourse's story and getting confused when PKD's Electric Sheep gets discussed and vice versa with PKD's Electric Sheep discussion and Alan Nourse.
(2020 sidenote: Alan Nourse was a actual medical doctor slash scifi writer whose stories tended to involve medical themes. No lies, the plot and storyline of The Bladerunner 1974 seems eerily prescient of what is going on in 2020 right now/what seems to be the future of health care, and I am going to track down a copy of it asap.)
originally posted between July 12th -July 15th in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3
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