Sunday, October 18, 2020

SFL Archives Vol 13 readthrough update 01

SFL Archives Vol 13

5.9 mb raw text file

15% completion, 25 bookmarks

-1988 technology level: MS-DOS 2.21, COMPUSERVE, dual floppy disks, monochrome monitors, Leading Edge Word Processor software. The SF-LOVERS mailing list has migrated to new hardware and now there is dedicated @EDU email addresses for SF-LOVERS mailing list submissions & SF-LOVERS administrative questions.

-SFL 1988 Pop-culture mentions: TRANSFORMERS, MY LITTLE PONY, and SMURFS cartoon series. Disney children's movie THE POINTCOLES regional bookstores. First mention of author Jo Clayton.

-1988 starts off with heavy Stephen R Donaldson and his THOMAS COVENANT series discussion, with both sides talking past each other loudly. One side is extremely angry about people dissing Donaldson's writing style/hating on the Thomas Covenant series, and the other side keeps explaining exactly why they diss Donaldson's writing style and why they hate Thomas Covenant the character/the book series.

-Poul Anderson explaining how he came up with his YS stories, Larry Niven clarifying the background of the main character in his RINGWORLD series (Louis Wu is not related to Beowulf Shaeffer or Carlos Wu).

-January 13 1988: Brian Herbert starts the rumor that he will be writing the 7th DUNE novel, and that he has more notes that his father, Frank Herbert, wrote regarding the 7th DUNE novel.

-First mention of Jack Vance's CADWAL CHRONICLES stories in the SFL Archives.

(2020 note: Almost all of the standard Jack Vance tropes apply to the Cadwal Chronicles stories. The big twist for the Cadwal stories is that the "good guys" are thinly disguised white South Afrikaners enforcing apartheid rule over the palette swapped black people that do everything in South Africa on the planet Cadwal.)

-Private investigators or just really creepy people glom onto the "Using Social Media to doxx people" concept, and start making a few of those requests to the SF-LOVERS mailing list.

-An anecdote of Marion Zimmer Bradley redacting a goofly dated "human slide-rule"/"Galactic alien slide rule" string of dialogue comparison in reprints of her earlier story THE BRASS DRAGON

-Richard Lupoff aka Dick Lupoff is interviewed/gives feedback to comments made about him to the SF-LOVERS mailing list. Lupoff's interview takes up an entire SFL Digest, and covers upcoming projects/stories due to be published, the terribleness of dealing with Philip Jose Farmer properties, what kind of computer Lupoff uses, Lupoff's 1st job in computing, and how Lupoff tries to highlight hypocrisy in his stories with a weird side-comment about what THE SACRED LOCOMOTIVE FLIES is really about (something about future airlines switching to 100% naked stewardess-prostitutes in the near future.)  

-Suzette Hayden Elgin's OZARK stories, PORTAL (Rob Swigart), PELBAR CYCLE (Paul O. Williams), FOLK OF THE AIR (Peter Beagle), COUNTERFEIT WORLD (Daniel F. Galouyle), Craig Shaw Gardner EBENEZUM & WUNTVOR trilogies, LIEGE KILLER (Christopher Hinz), TOMMYKNOCKERS (Stephen King), ONE HUMAN MINUTE & A PERFECT VACUUM (Stanislaw Lem), REALITY MATRIX (John Dalmas).

-A standard seeming recommendation for Mercedes Lackey's existing stories and her upcoming stories get weird when the SFLer making the recommendation keeps referring to Lackey as 'Misty', which knowing nothing about Mercedes Lackey implies heavy previous contact with Lackey.

-Oddball SF&F story request: A SFLer wants recommendations for any F&SF story which occurs in the Southern temperate zone of an alien planet. AKA "when the people go south, it gets colder rather than warmer". 

-The time that Arthur C Clarke & Isaac Asimov formed a self-appreciation society of two back in the 1950's with declaring each other and themselves the 1st & 2nd best writers in the fields of Science Fiction writing and Science Fact writing.

-6 years after it came out, the movie BLADERUNNER 1982 is now considered prescient and worthy of discussion in the SFL Archives. SFLer's are confused by the plot, the differences in the Philip K Dick story vs the movie, golden eye glows due to replicant-status? or just byproducts of the lighting effects used to film Bladerunner 1982?, etc.

-The (long anticipated by me) FLYING CAR debate finally kicks off in the SFL Archives.

(2020 note: One of the truly surprising things in the SFL Archives readthrough is that it took over 9 years to finally get around to discussing flying cars, which are a common element in SciFi stories of the 1930's - 1970's.) 

-SFL Mark Leeper creates a ASCII flowchart of Zombie movies trying to explain the George Romero & John Russo Zombie movies.

-Oddball 1988 SFLer movie & book request: Any SciFi movies/books made within the past 25 years or so that were made in Spanish. That is no Spanish subtitles, or Spanish language translations of existing books.

-Press release announcement for the upcoming GAYLAXICON 1988. GAYLAXICON 1988 is "a relaxacon/minicon for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Science Fiction Fans and their Friends." No dealers room, or art shows; limited attendance/hotel registration required for attendance.

-A unknown title/author SciFi story where a spaceship going at 99.9999% the speed of light passes through the Solar System, and the relativistic mass effect of that spaceship's speed somehow causes the Earth to suddenly move 10 feet North, and all the effect it has on humans/human environments globally.

 (2020 note: This story sounds amazingly bad.)

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