SFL Archives Vol 14
7.5 mb raw text file
30 % completion, 45 bookmarks.
-Robert Tappan Morris's Internet Worm attack of 1988 gets mentioned as a brief sidenote in the SFL Archives.
(2020 note: This has been one of things I've been waiting to show up since Vol 02 or so of doing this SFL Archives readthrough attempt.)
-SFLer's ask "What is the earliest historical fiction that you know of?"
-STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION Picard vs STAR TREK: THE ORGINAL SERIES Kirk comparisons start happening. One SFLer uses the 1988 George Bush vs Michael Dukakis presidental election debates as to how they perceive Kirk & Picard.
(2020 note: This is one of the things I thought would happen ASAP in the SF-LOVERS mailing list once Star Trek: TNG aired. That it took midway through season 2 of TNG to happen is gratifying.)
-Constant re-occurring BLADERUNNER 1982 the movie discussion. The oddball replicant count in the movie, differences in the movie vs the book, Replicant memories, and "are the pictures Deckard looks at in the movie holograms?" given how small things move in them/are visible changing up the viewing angle.
-Stephen King book discussion: The Gunslinger book 2: DRAWING OF THE THREE comes out, and minor discussion of a Stephen King short story about matter teleportation (Jaunt?).
-First rumors of turning the WATCHMEN graphic novel into a movie start up, and some SFLer's think it a Watchmen adaptation might work better as tv-series.
(2020 note: Both possibilities happened, eventually, only extremely later than SFLers of 1989 expected.)
-Background details about why the movie BUCKAROO BANZAI 1984 is never getting a sequel. TLDR: 20th Century Fox f*cked themselves over multiple times, especially selling off ALL the videotape rights of Buckaroo Banzai 1984 for a pittance, then watched in impotent anger as the buyer of the videotape rights made a 2000% profit when Buckaroo Banzai went to videotape.
-An explanation of exactly what roles & duties story/book packagers perform liasioning between literary agents, authors, and publishers; using Byron Preiss as an example.
-Three movies under production in early 1989 all using deep underwater settings/similar sounding plots: DEEPSTAR SIX, THE ABYSS and LEVIATHAN.
-J. Michael Straczynski anecdotes about behind the scenes production problems for the 1980's revamp of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. SFLer's also note Straczynski's work as story editor for the now mostly forgotten CAPTAIN VIDEO childrens tv series.
-SFLer's start discussing "O LUCKY MAN!", a 1973 UK movie, and everything about it/in it sounds extremely bizarre.
-Gay characters in SF (and Fantasy) discussion. Lots of interesting examples come up.
-Philip K Dick discussion, 1989 edition: PKD's paranoia about a home invasion, the ongoing changes of how PKD viewed the home invasion as his mental health declined, and one of PKD's "Dark-Haired Girls" comments on her PKD experiences in the early 1970's.
(2020 note: Not sure, but I think this the same Dark-Haired Girl that commented on her experiences with PKD back in Vol 03?/Vol 04/Vol 05? It was deeply fascinating and amazing when the DHG related PKD's plan to confuse/fuck the narcs that were constantly monitoring him.)
-A unofficial "CAN YOU OUT CYBERPROSE WILLIAM GIBSON/other cyberpunk writers?" SF-LOVERS challenge is issued, and as of mid May 1989, no SFLer has responded to the challenge.
(2020 note: Finished reading SFL Archives 1989, and no one rose to the challenge.)
-People managing the Hugo Awards nominations & vote counting process feel compelled to post about the existing procedures multiple times and insist nothing will go wrong for the 1989 Hugo Awards nomination & vote counting process, like what happened at WorldCon 1989.
-PLAGUE style stoy discussion, which seem very on-point from a 2020 perspective, with a resurgence of juvenile focused novels and television entertainment.
-First SFL Archives mention of the 1989 movie TOTAL RECALL starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
-Julian May's PLIOSCENE COMPANION collection discussion, with special note made of how Julian May had most of the series planned out, and how the entire series setting was inspired by a kickass cosplay outfit Julian May designed/wore at a 1970's sci-fi convention.
-THE TIDES OF GOD by Ted Reynolds discussion causing minor meltdowns by SFL people regarding religion, free will, and the Dark Ages only being European subcontinent based, not global.
-Suzette Haden Elgin's OZARK TRILOGY being written as a direct response to all the sexist and dimissive behavior by male Sci-Fi writers towards women at convention panels.
-1989 anecdotes of how Glen Cook composed and wrote most of his stories/novels while working at General Motors, with special note taken of the timing required to perform his assembly line duties and write while on the assembly line
-A poll of what science-fiction tv series SFLer's thought were the worse of all time results in LOST IN SPACE "winning" the poll. A SFLer notes that no recent sci-fi related TV series got mentioned, and listed out a whole bunch of recentish 1980's sci-fi tv shows that had aired on US network television such as SMALL WONDER and OUT OF THIS WORLD.
-A SFLer who requested stories abut the "introduction of anti-matter in science-fiction" comments on the responses they received from SFLers.
(2020 note: the hurtful note when mentioning how a SFLer told them to look in the OED Supplement Vol 01 for references to anti-matter are the main reason I bothered mentioning this.)
-One SFLer noted the subgenre of "black vehicle scifi tv series of the 1980's" using AIRWOLF, STREET HAWK, and KNIGHT RIDER that all seemed to revolve around similar plots and setups.
-THE DESERT PEACH -a comic book about "The Desert Fox's pretty brother", based on Dona Barr's large fund of insider stories on the German army.
-Color coded convention badges/how various professional & amateur conventions handled convention security.
(2020 note: All these things will seem extremely quaint for people used to wifi networking & RFID badges at "modern" conventions.)
-Anecdotes of using a Larry Niven style RINGWORLD as Wargamer battle-royale setting. And how everything got derailed when one wargamer had howitzer's on their army list, and the opponent protested to the GM about needing special rules to adjust for the "coriolis forces experienced on a Ringworld". Years later, allegedly, these two wargamers are still working out a "general set of equations for computing the trajectory of an object launched from the surface of a Ringworld."
-A college aged Jeff Vogel, who would go on to create the GENEFORGE & AVERNUM & EXILE & AVADON series of games posts about the TSR Dragonlance settings and the Dragonlance novels written.
-RED DWARF tv series part two: which covers most of the events/episodes of Red Dwarf series 1.
-Ed Greenwood at GENCON 1988 explains to a SFLer why his Forgotten Realms novel SPELLFIRE was so disjointed. Apparently, Greenwood wanted to make Spellfire mostly about his author-insert Elminster and Elminster's family in a Nine Princes of Amber way, but the TSR book editors said no.
(2020 note: It would take 6 more years for Ed Greenwood to get the first of his many "The Mary Sue adventures of Elminster" published, during the final stages of TSR's "publish everything, we need the quarterly product release statements to look amazing". 1 year later, TSR went bankrupt and got bought by Wizards of the Coast.)
-John Cramer uses the Internet to post a "open letter reply" to comments made about his "hard SF novel TWISTOR".
(2020 note: Authors posting open letter comments were not a common thing on the Internet at this point in 1989, so I felt this was of special archival interest.)
