SFL Archives Vol 19b readthrough 01

 SFL Archives 19b

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100% completion, 240 bookmarks

Movies, television shows referenced: THE SHADOW (movie), WAR AMERICAN STYLE, PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES, TIMECOP, ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES, STARGATE (movie), STANLEY KUBRICK'S AI, ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT, ROBERT ANSON HEINLEINS THE PUPPET MASTERS (movie), SOLARIS 1972 (movie), JURASSIC PARK 2, THE HIDDEN 2, INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE (movie), SPECIES 1, ROGER CORMANS FANTASTIC FOUR, ED WOOD, WATERWORLD, JURASSIC PARK 1, ELM STREET 7: A NEW NIGHTMARE, NEAR DARK, VAMPIRE CIRCUS, WITHOUT WARNING, PHANTOM 2040, MARY SHELLYS FRANKENSTEIN, EARTH 2, ALIEN NATION (tv series), M.A.N.T.I.S. (tv-series), SEAQUEST DSV, X-FILES (tv-series), GARGOYLES, SPACE PRECINCT, DARKROOM (tv-series),TIME TRAX, THE INVADERS (tv-series), MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS, RED DWARF, THE TOWER OF INVERNESS (radio), LOIS AND CLARK, LOST IN SPACE (tv-series), STAR TREK GENERATIONS, SLIDERS (tv-series), BIONIC EVER AFTER?, THE THING (cartoon), CARL SAGANS CONTACT, THE GREEN SLIME, TEKWAR (tv-series), RUBY: THE ADVENTURES OF A GALACTIC GUMSHOE (radio), JOHNNY MNEMONIC.

SF&F stories referenced: RIFTWAR series, MISTWALKER, DEERSKIN, THE FIRES OF PARATIME, SERPENTS EGG, IRON DRAGONS DAUGHTER, HOMECOMING, A PLAGUE OF ANGELS, A COLLEGE OF MAGICS, 300 YEARS LATER, THE VOYAGE, THE GATE TO WOMENS COUNTRY, CADBURY THE BEAVER WHO LACKED, CHINA MOUNTAIN ZHANG, THE DRACULA TAPES, MALLWORLD, AURIAN, A NEOFANS GUIDE TO CONFUSION (non-fiction?), THE JAGUAR PRINCESS, TERMINAL COMPROMISE, SILICON MAN, BORRIBLES: ACROSS A DARK METROPOLIS, THE FERMATA, GLORY SEASON, A PRINCE AMONG MEN, WARPATH, CITY OF THE IRON FISH, PRINCE OMBRA, UNDER THE MOONS OF MARS, REVENGE OF THE ROSE, ONLY FORWARD, HEAVY WEATHER, GROWING UP WEIGHTLESS, REPLAY, WAY OF THE CLANS, FIELD OF DISHONOR, GODS OF THE WELL WORLD, THE MOUSER GOES BELOW, INVERTED WORLD, WORLDWAR: IN THE BALANCE, LOVE AND SLEEP, TROUBLE AND HER FRIENDS, PARIS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, THE WELL FAVORED MAN, THE BROKEN GOD, THE SHATTERED SPHERE, FALLEN ANGELS, DOWN IN FLAMES, DIAMOND AGE, USE OF WEAPONS, TAM LIN, THE WATERWORKS, FLYING TO VALHALLA, THE TOJO VIRUS, INTERSTELLAR PIG, MAGEWORLD series, GREENTHIEVES, NOT FOR ALL THE GOLD IN IRELAND, THE HANDS OF LYR, GRAVITYS RAINBOW, DANNY DUNN series, MARTIAN TIME SLIP, LONG SHOT FOR ROSINANTE, BROTHER TO DRAGONS COMPANION TO OWLS, MINERVA WAKES, MOTHER OF STORMS, BEGGARS AND CHOOSERS, CHILD OF AN ANCIENT CITY, RED PROPHET, WHAT IF? 1. 

Pop culture references: TEKMUMEL RPG, TRAVELLER RPG, PARANOIA RPG, GURPS UPLIFT, MAGIC: THE GATHERING card game, Geraldo breaking into Al Capone's vault, River Phoenix being cast in BROKEN DREAMS (in-development movie) before overdosing, doing CD-ROM movie projects, Dave Thomas of the WENDY'S food chain appearing in BIONIC EVER AFTER?.

Technology callbacks: a True Type font-set used to print artist Real Musgrave's runes on computers, the CERN WWW Virtual Library Subject Index, the Jack Vance World Wide Web Archive, "nootropics and a file of brain-stimulating VR", files being available in ASCII LaTEX and PostScript versions, extended ellipses breaking Macintosh word-processing software, the 2nd Conference On Computers Freedom And Privacy, owning a notebook computer with a pen interface and 250mb of disk, radio shows using the Neumann Ku81 Kunstkopf "dummy head" to produce binaural audio, the JPL and High Altitude Observatory reporting that when the Pioneer probe broke the speed of sound it registered the bow-shock of a sonic boom "while in space", "BOO programs" which were utilities for converting binary files into a format that was only printable characters, the SMOFBase Project, "sail" the multiplayer sailing game that used to come with BSD systems.

1994 Death notices: Robert Lansing, TV and movie actor. Robert Bloch, SFF & Horror author.

SFL requests/discussion topics:

>Crossover Fantasies & Multi-volume books

>the golden art of creating a conspiracy/hundred+ year plots to dominate humankind stories

>Wide World Web SF/F/Horror Links

>Significant inventions predicted in SF

>Dated Science Fiction

>Science Fiction with Specific Dates

>SF for Children

>Is Kurt Vonnegut considered SF?

>Libertarian SF

>Russian SF is the best!

>First SF Heroine of Color

-SFL Archives Vol 19b starts off with a mea culpa about extended SF-LOVERS mailing list downtime. Server hardware failures, mailing list problems, 8k backlog of email messages to go through, etc.

-Extreme amounts of BABYLON 5 content. JMS started posting to the SFL Archives heavily in SFL Archives Vol 19b, so there was a overwhelming amount of Babylon 5 content in Vol 19b, even after drastic pruning out of redundant messages by the SF-LOVERS mailing list moderator. So extreme, the mailing list moderator was getting 5000 emails a week about BABYLON 5, which is insane numbers considering how limited access the Internet was/the small amount of Internet users in 1994. Each new episode of Babylon 5 airing on TV resulted in 4-5 enormous dedicated Babylon 5 SFL Digests as SFLers live-posted their reactions and theories. 

JMS posting directly to the SFL Archives & GEnie online service in 1994 was good and bad from a historic viewpoint. JMS was extremely online even by 2021 standards, and JMS got very involved in responding/posting/debunking/bragging about Babylon 5 in the SFL Archives.

(2021 note: The amount of BABYLON 5 content in 1994 Volumes 19a & 19b burned me out on BABYLON 5 fandom. I started skipping & heavily skimming B5 SFL Digests around September 1994 the same way I skim & skip reading X-Files, SeaQuest DSV, or Earth 2 dedicated SFL Digests.) 

-The internet troll obsessed with hating on Raymond Feist's RIFTWAR series ripping off the Tekumel RPG returns to the SFL Archives. No mentions of their having a 300+ bullet point comparison list of "similarities" between Tekumel RPG & the much later Riftwar books this time though.

-Discussion of the deepness & multi-layered-ness of Samuel R Delany's writing happens sporadically throughout Vol 19b. Delany's tenure as a college professor comes up a few times,as well as a few anecdotes from Delany interviews/personal appearances at events worldwide.

-High level summary of the Hugo WSFS 1994 Business meeting: A bunch of new proposed amendment changes for future Hugo Award categories & nominations: example, should the Hugo's acknowledge the differences between electronic SFF fanzines vs physical SFF fanzines?

-READERCON convention going on hiatus due to organizer burnout, drama and vandalism problems at MINICON 1994. Most 1994 convention drama hinges on the subject of convention "party rooms" and whether or not those "party rooms" should be dry/serve alcohol or allow smoking or card people for admittance. Anti-ghost reservation policies being implemented by hotels. "The Adam's Mark Hotel will not permit any guest to cook in their room." A smaller part of 1994 convention discussion is about Accessible services for disabled patrons, and how most hotel-convention venues fail to implement even the most basic measures for disabled patron access.

(2021 note: From a 2021 perspective, most of these arguments and emotional rebuttals are extremely "WTF -stares intently." tldr: Basic things that would never fly in the modern era of social media kept flying with malicious intent in SFF conventions & events of the 1930s - 1990s.)  

-TSR's brilliant business plan that would lead to bankruptcy within 6 yrs starts delivering dividends: SFLer's start off-handedly mentioning encountering piles of TSR Dragonlance books every time they visit bookstores.

-"Most of the incidents involve far more blood-letting than the law of averages would require, but I suppose that's why carnophiles read carnography" -from a review of David Drake's 1994 novel THE VOYAGE.

-The KIRK POLAND BAD PROSE COMPETITION at READERCON conventions. Essentially EYE OF ARGON readthroughs 2.0 with the same mean-toned malicious established authors "punching down" intent.

-Daniel Keys Moran discussion: The Last Dancer, The Long Run, why hasn't Bantam Books re-published any of DKM's work. Near the end of 1994, DKM posts a 1994 status update to the internet, and it is notable mostly for things that failed to happen/things that DKM failed to write/DKM being in absolute denial about Bantam Book's total done-ness with him.

-The weirdness of Philip K Dick stories. If a ending in a PKD story has a coherent ending, you can tell it wasn't written by PKD. CADBURY THE BEAVER WHO LACKED gets brought up. 

-CHUNG KUO series fixation on fake/historical/futuristic/imaginary Chinese culture, and extreme torture-muderporn elements. Anyone who is a Chung Kuo series fan invariably defends the extreme torture-murderporn elements in it as being a core storytelling piece of the setting.

-TRAVELLER RPG plot device of humans on many worlds referenced in relation to Iain Banks Culture series. TRAVELLER RPG also mentioned during discussion of Cherryh's CHANUR series (the TRAVELLER Aslan race being eeriely similar to the Cherryh's hani race.)

-One of Tanith Lee's stories undoing a beheading by talking to a magic sword and convincing it that it had never killed anybody.

-"Did Herbert write any notes for a new Dune book before he died? If so, I would have thought that one of his children (Brian, maybe) would have tried to publish the material by now."

(2021 note: Extreme laughter.)

-A brief appearance of Battletech novel pre-Clan invasion meta-plot discussion.

-Periodic discussion of L Ron Hubbard and his SFF work & his legacy throughout Vol 19b. It was very rare for more than one to four L Ron Hubbard related messages to appear in a month.    

-S.P. Somtow's 1981 short story collection MALLWORLD having references to a space station described as the most fashion and trend oriented spot in the Solar System. That space station: BABYLON 5.

(2021 note: JMS, creator of the BABYLON 5 tv-series, had a "WTF?" response to this message).

-SF author Ken MacLeod appears for the first time in the SFL Archives to post Iain Banks explaining his Culture setting for people unfamiliar with the Culture setting or who wanted technical details behind the Culture settings.

(2021 note: These notes can be found in full at http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm )

-More discussions of SFF professional authors vs fandom interaction, SFF professional authors vs newbie authors, SFF professionals being utter assholes or amazing people depending on when/where/how you interacted with them.

-Artificial womb technology in SFF discussion which started off heavily in Bujold SFF territory peaks with Jo Walton deciding to post her views on pregnancy.

-Mike Resnick starts posting to SFL Archives, and from a 2021 perspective, Resnick's posts to the SFL Archives are mostly humble-bragging about being a editor-author and the strict guidelines he follows (laughs). Katherine Kerr, Jo Walton, Vonda McIntyre, and Peter David also periodically post to the SFL Archives but are way more tolerable. Lev Grossman, author of the Magicians book series also appears to have started posting to the SFL Archives.

-STARGATE 1994 movie discussion, from marketing of the movie to release. Most SFLer's liked the look & gobs of money obviously spent on the production, but hated the actual movie and wanted 100% accurate answers as to how all the technology in the movie worked asap.

(2021 note: The SFL Archives reaction to STARGATE 1994 was one of the things I have been waiting for. Their reactions are funny in retrospect, since everything they wanted answered and more got answered by over 147 hrs of tv-content just counting Stargate SG-1.)

-Periodic discussion of the DEATH GATE CYCLE book series, periodic discussion of David Eddings stories, periodic discussions of Stephen Donaldson, periodic discussions of Brust's Taltos series, periodic discussion of Cherryh stories, and Bujold and Tad Williams, and Neal Stephenson, and Orson Scott Card, and etc, etc.

-Stenn Sigurdsson returns to post another forwarded statement from David Brin to the SF-LOVERS mailing list. This time David Brin talks about his latest novel GLORY SEASON and teases more Uplift series fiction.

(2021 note: I have only noticed Stenn Sigurdsson appearing in the SFL Archives to post forwarded David Brin messages, which is why I referred to Stenn Sigurdsson as a "friendly David Brin sock puppet account" in my past SFL Archives readthrough posts.)

-Robert Anson Heinlein discussion part 43439: Heinlein's legacy, Heinlein's influence, Heinlein writing his wife Virginia into 95% of his later stories, the differences between the RAH Puppet Masters 1994 movie vs the published book versions, etc. Even the most ardent Heinlein Defense Squad poster vehement about defending Heinlein's writing never brings up I WILL FEAR NO EVIL, and IWFNE never gets mentioned in recommended Heinlein reading lists. 

-White Wolf Publishing now owning the rights to Michael Moorcock omnibus reprints.

-PARIS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, Jules Verne's "lost novel" is finally published. SFLers read it, try to tear apart the predictions Verne made, but mostly wonder if the novel is fake similar to Clifford Irving's fake autobiography of Howard Hughes.

-Sime/Gen callbacks. Interdependency of the two mutated races, the math being way way off if the parastic race doesn't immediately kill off the victim race, etc.

-More David Weber & Honor Harrington series chat. There is a few dedicated SFL Digests exclusively about Honor Harrington near the very end of December 1994.

-More feedback over FALLEN ANGELS, the terrible in every way SF book about how SFF fandom saves the day in a terrible future world where liberals have taken over the world and dumpstered funding of all hard-sciences to instead fight global warming & racism through prayer and telethons. 

-A brief resurgence of Larry Niven KNOWN SPACE chat, mostly focused on the Kzin and the various what-if elements brought up by other authors and Niven's abandoned DOWN IN FLAMES. 

-Discussion of the JURASSIC PARK movie and the various bloopers that made it into the final theatrical cut. Plus SFLers debate which scenes were CGI or physical dinosaur models

-Iain Banks story discussion. Recaps of earlier Banks interviews, heavy discussion of who was who in USE OF WEAPONS, comparisons of Banks non-SF stories, various discussion of Banks Culture stories along with that previously mentioned A FEW NOTES ON THE CULTURE link provided by Ken MacLeod.  

-ROBERT ANSON HEINLEINS THE PUPPET MASTERS comes out and 99.999% of the SFLers who saw it loved it. Only issues they had was that the female lead in it was NOT a Heinlein-ian busty redhead, and that there was not enough nudity in the movie, even though it was a perfect opportunity. Lack of nudity in RAH's PUPPET MASTERS was a subject brought up repeatedly and mentioned more than actual discussion of the movies plot or the twist of exactly when the older scientist character got puppet mastered in the film. 

-The weird background of A.E. Van Vogt including a brief stint of Van Vogt promoting NULL-A, the other-other non-religion religion founded by SFF writers of the 1930s-1950s?

-WITHOUT WARNING, a end-of-the-world tv-movie aired without promotion that invoked WAR OF THE WORLD vibes from people. SFLers tear apart the inaccuracies in it while liking the concept and wishing more types of that series happened.

-THE TOJO VIRUS rivalling Winn Schwartau TERMINAL COMPROMISE in datedness (by 1994 terms) in computer technology, and racism, and Japanophobia. 

(2021 note: Schwartau's TERMINAL COMPROMISE was extremely terrible on all levels. If even 1994 SFLers called it dated and bad, you know THE TOJO VIRUS is something truly terrible.)

-EARTH 2 premieres, and SFL reaction to it is mixed. The plot grabs some, others want hard technical details on everything, others hate/love certain actors, and a few wonder why Steven Spielberg choose Earth 2 versus other more worthy seeming SF tv series.  

-MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS. Why certain characters got recast, why the white ranger appears solo, why the robots do things, how the 3 different Japanese series MMPR pulls from do things better or different.

-RED DWARF actor Craig Charles arrested in the UK. 

-STAR WARS chat returns thanks to George Lucas promoting the Star Wars Episodes 1 through 3 movies he is currently scripting out and doing pre-production work for. BANTHA TRACKS makes it's first reappearance in the SFL Archives since long ago in SFL Archives Vol 01.

-In another callback to SFL Archives Vol 01, Dr. Robert Forward the SF author starts getting discussed. And SFLer's find that their views on Robert Forwards work from way back in 1980 haven't held up, and that Forward is/was laughably terrible at writing people/narratives and only so-so on technology physics/hard science that he's written.

-STAR TREK GENERATIONS comes out and everyone rips it apart. The TOS inclusions seem half-baked, the TNG character work is half-assed and terrible, the plot makes no sense, the Enterprise saucer recovery destroys the no pre-warp contact rule, there should be two or three versions of Picard & Kirk showing up at the finale, and finally the plot makes no sense x30 is the consesus SFL Archives review of GENERATIONS

-SLIDERS the tv-series gets announced and many SFLers wonder if it's based on the similar sounding George RR Martin tv-pilot Portals.

-The SMOFBase Project, a proposed way for SFF fandom to share contact links & convention information via one internet website. The SMOFBase Project is totally not a purity test or way of measuring who has the most SFF fandom contacts. 

(2021 note: Yes, the SMOFBase Project totally sounded like purity test way of measuring who has the most SFF fandom contacts.)

-Winners list for the THE BALROG AWARD gets posted to the SFL Archives.

-Orson Scott Card making a tone-deaf dedication to his grandfather in his Alvin the Maker novel RED PROPHET.

(2021 note: Essentially OSC's great-grandfather illegally colonized the Kainai Nation reservation lands while the Kainai Nation was suffering from a smallpox epidemic that OSC's great-grandfather probably kicked off on them.)