SFL Archives Vol 10 readthrough update 02

 -First and second appearance of  posts with the Subject Line: "JAPANESE ANIMATION" in the SFL Archives.

-Robert Heinlein's JOB gets discussed, mostly about it being slightly better than Heinlein's NUMBER OF THE BEAST thanks to Heinlein's carotid bypass surgery.

-the SFL poster whose gimmick was hiding behind the mask of his sister or possibly his wife posting his offline shit-talking to the SFL mailing list (mostly) abandons the gimmick and starts posting as themselves aka M*** L**p*r...but sometimes M*** L**p*r forgets and will still occasionally post under the old email address on the same topics.

-A murderer's row of THE PRISONER/SECRET AGENT aka DANGER MAN tv series discussion. Waves and waves of posts about the Village being filmed in Wales, with a few meta-conflicting reviews of the In-Real-Life area/resort/hotel where the Prisoner was filmed at. The Prisoner novelization discussion. Lots of theorizing how various tidbits confirm that Secret Agent aka Danger Man John Drake was really Number 06. More people answered and re-answered and replied and re-replied about the Prisoner TV series being shot in Wales than the time anyone who ever spent more than 96 hrs in San Francisco replied to the person asking if "Emperor Norton 1 of America" was real or made up.

-Steven Brust qualifies his GOR series recommendation. Sort of. Brust argument: Tolkien was popular and fantasy genre defining because Tolkien's stories sold a fuckton. Therefore, John Norman's GOR stories must be considered similarly. If you want more details, look it up yourself in SF-LOVERS Digest Volume 10, I refuse to recap or mention Steven Brust anymore.

-BACK TO THE FUTURE 1, and THE GOONIES are slated for future 1985 release. People guessing at the plot to STAR TREK 4: Voyage Home are worth noting, simply because ST4 went in a direction no-one and I mean NO ONE circa 1985 expected. V the series has it's final episode, and Silent Running (1972) becomes a subject of discussion: the robots, the nature pods, the American Airlines spaceships, the reusage of footage for the original BSG tv series, etc.

-Someone wants Advice for a new author trying to get published 1985 edition, and a few people respond . The advice is different from what got posted earlier circa 1982/83? so I will dedicate a entire post to the advice given, simply because I know there is a bunch of current and aspiring authors who read this thread 

(2020 sidenote: will do a separate blog post on this)

-More and more 1000+ word posts in the SFL Digests, you can tell who had the expensive Wangs and who didn't back in 1985. 

(2020 sidenote: that was a reference to the forgotten WANG LABS series of Wang computers/Wang computer terminals)

-Someone who missed out on the 6 solid months of SFL music chat back in 1982?/83? asked why no-one talks about music in the SFL mailing list, but it's cool because no one has mentioned filksongs in response...so far. :ninja:

-Piers Anthony non-xanth and Orson Scott Card are frequent topics of discussion....back in 1985 both those authors hadn't become what they now are. Piers Anthony had the deep-seeming Avatars series while ENDERS GAME was Card's biggest accomplishment to date

-THE GOONIES, THE EXPLORERS, COCOON, LIFEFORCE and BACK TO THE FUTURE 1 have come out. Weirdly, the goonies isn't being discussed much while the same grown-up people were falling over themselves crying discussing E.T. when it came out.

-Disney animation movie the BLACK CAULDRON is getting some chat, but mostly because it doesn't follow the source material 100% which is an omnipresent hang-up for certain SFF fans (this has happened many times, usually over Arthurian mythos, and it will happen again).

-An Arthurian series focusing on Gawain using the Welsh spelling of his name comes out, and people mistake the Welsh spelling as being a new self-insert character into the Arthurian Mythos and got very angry.

-Slams on SPACE 1999. The actors in it, the acting in Space 1999, the feasibility of Lunar colonies, the introduction of the shape-shifting character in season 2, the time loop?

-Roger Zelazny's continuation of the Amber series book comes out, and 1985 SFL reaction is thirsty for more/damn you Zelazny write faster. This resulted in heavy topical to 1985 Roger Zelazny chat, which can be boring to discuss and recap.

-Philip Jose Farmer: Even back in 1985, people were getting tired of PJF's role as self-appointed chronicler/perpetuator of a number of "mythologies" where PJF would write the imaginary books other authors referenced in their stories, like for example HP Lovecraft's Cryptonomicon and/or write completely unauthorized sequels/prequels to other authors books. 

(2020 sidenote: In modern terms, this would be like PJF writing "Mithra the Sixth" in Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth setting, or the Secret Annals of Baru Cormorant, or vulturing into N. K. Jemisin's work, etc.)

originally posted August 23rd - August 27th in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3