-John Varley's short stories "THE BARBIE MURDERS", "PRESS ENTER" and "MILLENIUM" keep getting mentioned. From a 2020 perspective, John Varley's stories and writing aged better than Spider Robinson's work but not by much.
-People can see the seams where Orson Scott Card's 1977 short story Ender's Game got Bloater-Drive expanded into the 1985 award winning novel ENDERS GAME.-Female writers across multiple genres, and feminist SF gets discussed with Joanna Russ's HOW TO SUPRESS WOMEN'S WRITING getting prominently mentioned
-Isaac Asimov's creepy interactions with women gets brought up repeatedly as Fall 1985 hits. A particularly poorly aged Asimov penned article in the BOSKONE 22 program guide gets brought up. tldr...Asimov
-Scientology starts getting discussed. Much EL RON HUUUUBBBBARRRD weirdness. A weirdly specific promotion contest for the upcoming BATTLEFIELD EARTH movie, to be filmed in Colorado.
(2020 sidenote: There was only one Battlefield Earth movie made, the year 2000 one starring John Travolta. It appears that Battlefield Earth was stuck in development hell for a long long time. For additional amusement factor, think of all the amazing books/book series with optioned movie rights that have been stuck in development limbo forever. Like STARS MY DESTINATION, old-man KING CONAN, CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, CONSIDER PHLEBAS, etc. Now remember that the GOR series managed to have a real movie made starring real Hollywood actors....queue infinite Tidus from Final Fantasy X laugh).
-Really angry feedback happens when the 1985 SFLer whose gimmick is posting 800+ word essays on the "THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE FICTION TODAY" says that Spider Robinson is a hack writer (2020 take: TRUTH), and that Samuel R Delany's DHALGREN is over-rated.
-A SFLer in 1985 manages to predict both the clone army Kill Order 66
gimmick and the Robot Drone armies in the STAR WARS prequel movies.
-Lack of new STAR WARS content has people Zapruder film analyzing Ewok cuteness levels, the uselessness of Storm Trooper armor, ammo clips vs charge-paks on blasters, whether or not blasters are energy weapons vs explosive projectiles, and how lightsabers really work (super polished mirrors, plasma and extending rigid mono-filaments get mentioned)
-A 1985 Paramount Studios press release giving the general real outline of STAR TREK 4 comes out, and ruins the vicarious fun of peoples wild-ass guesses about Star Trek 4's plot.
-A interesting recap-summary of the talk Ellen Asher of the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club (SFBC) gave at a meeting of the New Jersey Science Fiction sometime in 1985. The recap summary mentioned the 7 different genre book clubs Doubleday had running at the time, and how book of the month selections were made, etc.
-Differences between the American & UK editions of the HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY books come up. It is mostly changes to what brand of cars people owned, the names of the Krikkit gate-key items, and Wowbagger the infinitely prolonged insults.
-Bookstore chains B. Dalton's and Waldenbooks (people who grew up in the USA during the 1980s & 1990s will remember these names) versus independently owned bookstores...lots of interesting sounding regional independent bookstores that may/may not/probably do not exist anymore.
-SFL Archives technical minutia chat including the origins of the SF-LOVERS mailing list and the real paranoia one of the longest running SF-LOVERS moderator had about getting called up before a Congressional committee headed by William Proxmire regarding SF-LOVERS leeching from US Government resources.
-Lack of new STAR WARS content has people Zapruder film analyzing Ewok cuteness levels, the uselessness of Storm Trooper armor, ammo clips vs charge-paks on blasters, whether or not blasters are energy weapons vs explosive projectiles, and how lightsabers really work (super polished mirrors, plasma and extending rigid mono-filaments get mentioned)
-A 1985 Paramount Studios press release giving the general real outline of STAR TREK 4 comes out, and ruins the vicarious fun of peoples wild-ass guesses about Star Trek 4's plot.
-A interesting recap-summary of the talk Ellen Asher of the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club (SFBC) gave at a meeting of the New Jersey Science Fiction sometime in 1985. The recap summary mentioned the 7 different genre book clubs Doubleday had running at the time, and how book of the month selections were made, etc.
-Differences between the American & UK editions of the HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY books come up. It is mostly changes to what brand of cars people owned, the names of the Krikkit gate-key items, and Wowbagger the infinitely prolonged insults.
-Bookstore chains B. Dalton's and Waldenbooks (people who grew up in the USA during the 1980s & 1990s will remember these names) versus independently owned bookstores...lots of interesting sounding regional independent bookstores that may/may not/probably do not exist anymore.
-SFL Archives technical minutia chat including the origins of the SF-LOVERS mailing list and the real paranoia one of the longest running SF-LOVERS moderator had about getting called up before a Congressional committee headed by William Proxmire regarding SF-LOVERS leeching from US Government resources.
-DOCTOR WHO had a extended 18 month hiatus announced earlier in 1985
that threatened to be a permanent series ending hiatus. Mail in efforts,
call in efforts to the BBC, and elected British officials got the
hiatus window shrunk. One of the downsides or bonuses of the SFL
Archives read-through is witnessing hubris destroying and wrecking more
and more bits of the Doctor Who franchise every time John Nathan-Turner
opens his mouth and drives away more Doctor Who actors, writers, budget
planners.
-First mention of the TEENAGE NINJA MUTANT TURTLES comic book in the SFL Archives, the TNMT cartoon series most people are familiar with happened much later
-HARMONY GOLD. MACROSS SAGA. ROBOTECH. HARMONY GOLD. CAPTAIN HARLOCK. Waves of people chiming into add that Robotech is a mere bastardization of 3 different Japanese animation series. Harmony Gold seriously wants their Gold.
-First mention of the TEENAGE NINJA MUTANT TURTLES comic book in the SFL Archives, the TNMT cartoon series most people are familiar with happened much later
-HARMONY GOLD. MACROSS SAGA. ROBOTECH. HARMONY GOLD. CAPTAIN HARLOCK. Waves of people chiming into add that Robotech is a mere bastardization of 3 different Japanese animation series. Harmony Gold seriously wants their Gold.
-New Robert Heinlein book "THE CAT WHO WALKED THROUGH WALLS" gets released and ties everything Heinlein has ever written closer together, which some Heinlein fans like and other people just groan about. Lazarus Long openly acting like the literal mother-fucking douchebag he is makes some of the Heinlein defense squad turn in their "I HEART EVERYTHING HEINLEIN" badges.
-A few SFL edgelords get offended by all the feminist SF being mentioned and start trolling the feminist SF discussion thread by confusing who is a female writer and claiming that GOR and Heinlein are peak feminist SF.
-Steven Brust quits his job that has ARPANET access to become a full-time writer. Farewell SKZB, I will not miss you.
-The 1985 AMAZING STORIES tv series, the 1980's TWILIGHT ZONE reboot, and 1980's Alfred Hitchcock Presents tv-serials all come out around the same time and get discussed heavily. Amazing Stories has amazing visuals but not so much amazing plots or storytelling. 2020 take: this was where Steven Spielberg encountered a rare setback in his career (cashing out on the Medal of Honor videogame series before it hit big was Spielberg's 2nd setback). It turns out producing tv movies under contract is hard, especially since John Landis fucked up everything regarding child-actors with the Twilight Zone movie and malicious negligence lawsuits.
-The SHAVER MYSTERY aka a variation of the HOLLOW EARTH CONSPIRACY THEORY gets mentioned in detail because Richard Shaver was a 1940s scifi writer.
-How to get published as a new SF&F writer part 3: a daisy wheel ink-cartridge worth of SFL self-doxxed authors chiming in to give advice, conflicting advice, overriding conflicting advice and patronizing humble brags.
-A proposal to put the SF-LOVERS mailing list onto microfiche to preserve it for future study. Pretty sure the NSA already has that covered for you, 1985 person.
-Stephen King/Richard Bachman stories get discussed more, THINNER is the latest Stephen King written book being discussed as 1985 closes out
-The variety of mono-sex societies in fiction. Either all female societies, or all male societies, maintained via cloning, artificial insemination, or physical separation after birth to all male/all female zones. Outside forces usually arrive and hijinks happen but not like the creepy shit Star Trek:TNG got up too.
-Greg Bear's past few books (EON, INFINITY CONCERTO, etc) haven't impressed anyone posting about them in the SFL in 1985 and some people wonder if Greg Bear has peaked already or just hit a very very rough spot in his career.
-The movie ENEMY MINE based on a novella of the same name comes out at the very end of 1985. One of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION's best episodes, Darmok, "heavily" borrowed from Enemy Mine.
-"Do decompressing human bodies in outer space explode, implode or other"? discussion...2001 the movie is the main reference point for this discussion
-A insane seeming story about the last fertile man on Earth after a nuclear accident called MR ADAM by Pat Frank. This is how MR ADAM first got mentioned in the SFL
quote:
One of the secretaries here was talking about a book she read called
MR. ADAM. It was apparently written in the late 40's and concerned
a nuclear accident which left the male population of the earth
sterile, except for one man. As she explained it, the book
concerned the government's efforts at repopulation via this one man.
BTW, she said the book was hilarious. (Anyone with a pointer to
finding a copy?)
And that wraps up SFL Volume 10 summaries for me, at least regarding weird, bizarre, horrifying and retroactively interesting things in it.
originally posted September 2nd in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3
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