SFL Archives Vol 15b
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-SFL Vol 15b Book mentions: PHULES COMPANY, ZORK CHRONICLES, SEA OF GLASS, THE FACE OF MINE ENEMY, GAMEPLAYERS OF ZAN, WIZARD OF THE PIGEONS, RED STORM RISING, THE LEAKY ESTABLISHMENT, THE LAST WHALES, SPACE BY THE TALE, DHALGREN, TWO PLANETS, MOON PROSPECTOR, THE PUBLIC HATING, THE IRON STAR, DEATHGATE (book series), BORDERTOWN & BORDERLAND, ISHMAEL, CYTEEN, PARTICOLORED UNICORN, PHOENIX, VAMPIRE$, JURASSIC PARK.
-Pop Culture mentions; the soap opera GUIDING LIGHT, whatever "ERBitis" is, non-American SFLer's ask "Who is Mr. T?", Multi-User Domains (MUDs), Saddam Hussein, the Watchung Mountains of New Jersey, the EMPIRE OF THE PETAL THRONE rpg, "California-In-Space" syndrome, the re-release of a semi-restored version of METROPOLIS 1927, BARDS TALE 1, the Chewbacca Star Wars Holiday Special, I DAMIANO the cRPG,
SFL movie & TV series mentions: CHERRY 2000, GHOST 1990, ARANCHNAPHOBIA 1990, WICKER MAN 1973, QUEEN OF BLOOD, FLATLINERS, DARKMAN 1990, Japanese anime LENSMAN, THE FLASH 1990 tv series, the 1980's COSBY show, the SIMPSONS, MONSTERS tv series, PREDATOR 2, METROPOLIS 1927, Chewbacca Star Wars Holiday Special, IT 1990 tv-movie, DARK STAR, ROBOT JOX, MISERY, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS
-SFLer's continue to discuss the terrible and toxic behavior of fans and authors at SF&F conventions. Examples given of terrible, or inciting conduct on both sides. Jerry Pournelle gets revealed as one of the "screaming at fans/constantly drunk" bad conduct SF&F authors at SF&F conventions.
-Discussion of EE Smith's life and SF writing career during the gold age - post World War 2 pulp SF era, while other SFLers try to explain away the creepier elements in Jack Chalker's stories, and other SFLers start seeing 10 layers of allusion and meta-commentary in Samuel R Delany's DHALGREN.
-More Raymond E Feist series chat, more Steven Brust series chat, more Bujold story chat, more Mercedes Lackey story chat, more Stanislaw Lem story chat, lots of CYTEEN theory-crafting, more gilding of John W Campbell's editorship skills driving SF to it's higher points.
-The BOSKONE convention in Springfield MA gets downsized again for the 3rd straight year while the totally new convention ARISIA run by the same group doing BOSKONE gets 15 miles closer to the holy land aka Boston MA on year 2.
-SFLers mention the time when Scientologists alleged did a mass harassment campaign vs L Sprague DeCamp after DeCamp debunked some Scientology related concepts and beliefs.
-Paperback book pricing in 1990: $5.95
-TSR pulling a 2020 Disney tactic and deciding to not pay out royalties for any of the DRAGONLANCE sequels written by Margaret Weis & Tracey Hickman, which explains why those two suddenly started producing new not-Dragonlance/not-Star Wars fiction. SFLer's also mention Fizban, uh NABZIF? appearing in the DEATHGATE series books.
-The BBC refuses to schedule DOCTOR WHO for a 27th season in 1990, effectively putting the tv series into a timeless limbo forever.
(2020 note: Yes, I know the 1996 Paul McGann DOCTOR WHO movie happened, and that DOCTOR WHO eventually got rebooted in 2005, however that was 6 & 15 yrs in the future, respectively.)
-Barbara Hambly grafting the DOCTOR WHO universe onto her STAR TREK novel ISHMAEL, Stephen Donaldson is quoted as mentioned that he is working on a new science-fiction trilogy called the GAP CYCLE, and a essay-introduction by Kevin J Anderson on writing the GAMEARTH Trilogy gets reposted in full to the SF-LOVERS mailing list.
-1st casting news for THE TERMINATOR 2 comes out, along with rumors of office buildings already being leased out for movie location shooting.
-"What defines a Cyborg?" chat kicked off by Terminator 2's announcement, which leads to STAR WARS chat, and other fiction that has humanoid robots/body part replacement, body part enhancements like eyeglasses.
-The emergence of more HP Lovecraft scholars, and modern 1980s-1990s fiction embracing the CTHULHU MYTHOS wholesale
-Jean Airey(?) allegedly being ripped off by a book publishing company and issuing a open letter about sending fans a photocopy of the work if they send her a self-address envelope with the correct postage on it.
-STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION discussion. SFLer's were excited with Shelby and had hopes of Shelby taking the 1st officer permanently w/ Riker as the new Captain of the Enterprise 1701-C. StarFleet ships not having bombs slash nuclear missiles. The UK gets the 1st season of ST:TNG as the 4th season of ST:TNG airs in the US, and the UK SFLer reactions to season 1 are interesting reads. Certain episodes of ST:TNG being banned in the UK, like the episode with a throwaway line about Irish reunification.
-The RPG EMPIRE OF THE PETAL THRONE having a extremely hardcore magic system that involved gouging out eyes, bathing in mothers blood, sacrificing dozens of virgins.
-A weird aside about the portraits in the recent Illustrated Guide to AMBER being the IRL people who Roger Zelazny based a bunch of AMBER series characters on....and those IRL people forming a AMBER SOCIETY SCA group and becoming next-level stalker invested in their AMBER counterparts to the point of physically shunning someone who Zelazny killed off in the AMBER stories.
(2020 note: I hope this is just next-level bullshit gossip, but I suspect not.)
-PREDATOR 2 pre-release and post-release discussion covers lots of ground, including the Aliens vs Predator teaser, Predator hunting rules, who owned that old pistol, why the US Feds were dumb, etc.
-Requests for Vampire Fiction(alien/fantasy/Sime:Gen/future/Anne Rice/etc), Requests for Avianoid fiction, Requests for science-fiction Cosmic String stories, requests for fiction with Stasis Field elements in them, etc.
-Philip K Dick discussion in 4 parts: SFLers claim PKD threw away a financial windfall to write something else, financial windfall rumor gets hard numbers, financial windfall rumor discredited, and Vonda McIntyre closes out the entire discussion by posting a open letter from PKD's final literary agent Russell Galen about PKD's work.
-Piers Anthony starts their own 800 number, and many of the resident SFL authors are totally cool with that seethe with jealousy.
(2020 note: 800 numbers were a big thing during the 1970s -1990s before social media & texting took away the need to call phone numbers)
-Discussion of ST:TNG spaceship battle tactics in season 3 finale had a weird aside comment about the US Air Forces experiences in Vietnam lead to tactics changes & rebirth of the TOP GUN advanced fighter plane pilot training schools
-Extended discussion of 2 Fred Saberhagen series (EMPIRE OF THE EAST, BOOKS OF SWORDS) in ways that modern SF&F fandom debate the minutia of the GAME OF THRONES & MALAZAN series. Aka what matchup would win, did X character really die, who is this mysterious masked character, etc.
-1950's pulp SF CITIES IN SPACE series discussion, with SFLer's having fond memories of the technology & the wandering space-Okie gimmick.
-Ever since the Netherlands won the WorldCon 1990 hosting gig, Worldcon 1990 notices about how to register for it/what cool things existed there for 3 yrs.Therefore it was pretty disappointing when only one person(a Worldcon 1990 convention organizer) ended up discussing WorldCon 1990.
-Lloyd Abbey's THE LAST WHALES having "..considerable amounts of cetacean sex, which should induce a becoming humility in all human readers.."
-ALIEN NATION the tv-series is officially cancelled by FOX, fans of the tv series start a letter writing campaign to get the decision reversed.
(2020 note: The letter writing campaign would be partially successful..two or three ALIEN NATION tv-movies happened due to the letter writing campaign.)
-EC Tubb's DUMAREST series being brought up, again, as one of the main world-building inspirations for the TRAVELLER RPG.
-SFL reviewer-idiot Mark Leeper completely plagiarizes a newspaper career review of Ray Harryhausen from back when CLASH OF THE TITANS 1981 came out, nobody calls them on their bullshit. Meanwhile Evelyn Leeper was nominated for the 1990 Best Fan Writer Hugo for as recognition for all of her unpaid SF&F media reviewer posts across USENET.
-Return of Tolkienian discussion to the SFL Archives after 2 years of silence. SFLer's debate who delivered the killing blow on the Angmar WitchKing ShadowWraith, what Balrog's canonically look like, the mechanics of elf souls vs mankind souls and where do Tolkien half-elf souls/go when they die?
-The SFWA White Knight Chug Von Rospach was mostly absent from VOL 15B. Vonda McIntyre wiped out alot of his illusionary positionr as a SF&F authority figure when she posted the open letter from PKD's literary agent Russell Galen. However the final insult slash diss to Chuq was probably when someone asked for SF&F fanzine recommendations midway through VOL 15B and no-one, no-one at all mentioned his fanzine, OtherRealms(?).
-SFL VOL 15B closes out with Vonda McIntyre posting the first 3 or 4 pages of her 1990 novel TRANSITION to the SF-LOVERS mailing list.
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