SFL Archives Volume 20b
4.6 mb raw text file
100% completion, 206 bookmarks
Movies, television shows referenced: JUDGE DREDD, SPECIES 1, DARKMAN 2, WATERWORLD, STANLEY KUBRICKS A.I., LORD OF ILLUSIONS, AFTERSHOCKS, VIRTUOSITY, THE NET, SPEED 1, HELLRAISER 4, HIDEAWAY, THE AMAZING PANDA ADVENTURE, OUTER LIMITS (1990s), DOCTOR WHO, DEADLY GAMES, STRANGE LUCK, SPACE ABOVE AND BEYOND (tv series), LEGENDARY JOURNEYS OF HERCULES, XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS, TOP COPS, NOWHERE MAN (tv series), LOIS AND CLARK, SEAQUEST DSV, THE X-FILES, AMERICAN GOTHIC, W.E.I.R.D. WORLD, ALIEN NATION: BODY AND SOUL, STRANGE DAYS, HALLOWEEN 6, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, SHOWGIRLS, STARSHIP TROOPERS 1, POWDER, GODZILLA VS THE SMOG MONSTER, INVADERS (tv series), WING COMMANDER: THE MOVIE, SCREAMERS.
SF&F stories referenced: KALIEDOSCOPE CENTURY, WIZARDS SHADOW, SOUL OF THE LION, FAMOUS MONSTERS, INITIATE BROTHER, GATHERER OF CLOUDS, EVOLUTION, RESURRECTION MAN, STEEL BEACH, THE MOHOLE MENACE, OUT OF THIS WORLDS, HOMECOMING, RING OF SWORDS, SKIN, FATHERLAND, FLIES FROM THE AMBER, COELISTIS, DEAD MR MOZART, ROBOT CITY (book series), DHALGREN, AXIOMATIC, GREATWINTER SAGA (book series), 1945 (novel), BUTCHER BIRD, THE BASTARD PRINCE, PURAGTORY, THE BIG U, ZAP GUN, A SORCEROR AND A GENTLEMAN, THE ARMLESS MAIDEN, THE AVATAR, NEW LEGENDS, THE LAST STARSHIP FROM EARTH, SECRET IMMORTALS, LOVELOCK, GENELIAN: PLANETFALL, HITLER VICTORIOUS, RATS AND GARGOYLES, KING AND RAVEN, COMING HOME, WELL AT WORLDS END, A BREACH IN THE WATERSHED, THE RUINS OF AMBRAI, ICEWIND DALE TRILOGY (book series), PASTEL CITY, DYING INSIDE, SHOTGUN CURE, THE WEREWOLF PRINCIPLE, FIFTH HEAD OF CEREBUS, THE KO CONSPIRACY, VAMPIRE$, CINNABAR, PRISONERS HOPE, WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW, GUILTY PLEASURES, ISOBEL AVENS RETURNS TO STEPHNEY IN THE SPRING, MILLENIUM, THE BIG TIME, THIS PERFECT DAY, WINTER ROSE, THE SARDONYX NET, THE DEATH OF CHAOS, GRYPHON FEATHER, THE STOLEN GODDESS, THE MIRROR OF HELEN, THE PRESTIGE, CLARKE COUNTY SPACE, HUNTING WABBIT, THE AMTRACK WARS (book series), THE MISPLACED LEGION, I ASIMOV, BRIGHTNESS REEF, THE POSTMAN, EREHWON, WRACK AND ROLL, WIZARDS FIRST RULE, AMMONITE, THE LAST OF THE WINE, THE STAR FRACTION, TERMINAL FREEDOM, SPECULATIONS INC, THE GOLDEN NINETIES, D-99, FOOTFALL, IROSHI, ISLANDS IN THE NET, YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN, STAR OF THE GUARDIAN, CITY OF BONES, ELEMENT OF FIRE, SHRODINGERS CAT TRILOGY (book series), FREE LIVE FREE, CONSIDER PHEBLAS, HEADCRASH, QUASAR, THE WITCHES OF KARRES, THE COLOR OF DISTANCE, WHAT MAD UNIVERSE?, CHICKS IN CHAINMAIL, THE GOD-FEARER, EVOLUTIONS SHORE, PHOENIX AND MIRROR, BAKERS BOY, THE BLOODY RED BARON, SHADOWS END, A FIRE UPON THE DEEP, TRUE NAMES AND THE OPENING OF THE CYBERSPACE FRONTIER, HEIRS OF EMPIRE, HISTORY OF FANNISH ART, ENDYMION, MASKERADE, FREEZE FRAMES, HOT TIME IN OLD TOWN, GATE TO WOMENS COUNTRY, BELGARATH, THE CRYSTAL STAR, CANDLELIGHT, EXILES, HISTORICAL GAMES, A SONG CALLED YOUTH.
Pop culture references: "..our culture's Madonna-whore complex" (from a SFLer review of SPECIES 1), alt.sex.stories, a whole field of metaphysics devoted to the study of memes, the VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT, 1990's pop culture's fixation on the 1960s, BORDERS bookstores, the standard price of a paperback SFF novel being $5.99, "Minneapolis-based gothic folk-duo THE FLASH GIRLS, "van Dannikin-style cults", the Carnegie Mellon Tartan college newspaper, a cancelled 1995 (OJ) Simpson interview on NBC, GODZILLA BATTLES GAMERA IN OSAKA.
Technology callbacks: a virus protection program called GateKeeper being referenced in the 1995 movie THE NET, floppy disks, Video Toaster CGI rendering, BITNET networking, David Wingrove of Chung Kuo series co-authoring a MYST the CDROM game novelization, AOL.COM SFF web portals, the etaoin shrdlu keyboards on Linotype machines, the Martian Chronicles CDROM game.
1995 Death notices: John Brunner, SFF author. Jack Finney, SFF author & SFF-Horror scriptwriter.
SFL requests/discussion topics:
> Baudino: series
> Roger Zelazny
> Sex in Mercedes Lackey Novels
> The amazingly weird plotlines in the JUDGE DREDD comics
> The publishing ethics of Larry Niven, Piers Anthony, etc
> L. Ron Hubbard
> Dan Simmons HYPERION series
> David Weber/Honor Harrington
> David Wingrove/Chu Kuo defense squad posting
> SF adapted to comicbook format
> Gregory Benford works
> ???Piers Anthony??? Good Books?
> L'Engle's books banned??
> Computer Sentience
> Philip K. Dick and why's he so great?
> Nicola Griffith's AMMONITE
> What Happened to John Norman and the Gor Books
> (Larry) Niven Starter Request
> Martha Wells books
> Gene Wolfe discussion
> Harlan Ellison Vapor-books
> Sime/Gen series
> (Greg) Bear Does Not Suck
-People start commenting on how extremely messed up John Barnes KALIEDOSCOPE CENTURY is. When the iron-gutted people of SFL Archives 1995 think a SFF story is deeply messed up, it is going to be extremely beyond deeply heavily messed up by 2021 SFF standards.
-The six dreaded words that doom many reading attempts in fiction: "I DIDN'T CARE ABOUT THESE PEOPLE".
-Throughout the history of the SFL Archives, this question has been asked more times than anything STAR WARS or STAR TREK or BABYLON 5 related.......Does anyone know what happened to David Palmer, author of EMERGENCE/Did David Palmer write a sequel to EMERGENCE?
-Periodic HONOR HARRINGTON book series discussion. Mostly notable for 3rd party hearsay of Weber having signed a 16 book contract with BAEN BOOKS sometime in late 1995, and the existence of the "DO NOT KILL LIST" for certain Honorverse side characters.
-Russian SF: A Candid Recent History explaining why most of the Russian SFF published during the 1990s is reprintings of Russian samizdat era SFF.
-DRAGON-CON 1995 & the 1995 NASFIC conventions were scheduled together to run at the same time and same site in Atlanta Georgia USA. SFLer NASFIC attendees were not prepared for the amount of games & comics at DragonCons & the lack of handicapped access, and most everyone noted the bad culture between DragonCon managed panels/artwork sales vs NASFIC managed panels/artworks. Some of the more hysterical NASFIC SFLer's swear they witnessed pornstars giving autographs in the dealers room/saw hardcore porn being sold in the dealers room. Other more stable SFLer's noted the alleged "pornstars giving autographs" were B-Movie stars and the tapes were B-Movies.
-LYONESSE aka Ermonie aka Parmenia being the legendary lost land between Cornwall UK and the Scilly Isles in lots of UK folklore & myths, which many SFF authors have implemented in their own stories.
-WORLDCON 1995 aka INTERSECTION 1995 happens and no-one who attended it was happy. The site choosen for Intersection 1995 was a massive compromise/test to see if the bid committee behind Intersection 1995 could actually reserve a site of such a size, the site was massively handicapped unfriendly at all levels, beyond terrible Worldcon event scheduling, ultra beyond terrible placement of Worldcon events, unfriendly convention venue staff. Unfriendly security guards, hotels blocks apart, hotel party corkage fees, and the disconnect between USA style convention parties with free food and the EU/UK convention goer reactions to "free food" convention parties (hoard of vultures descending and elbows being thrown like being in a rugby match at the free food tables got mentioned hard). Finally, the Intersection 1995 management people tried shaming local aka "living in the UK" convention attendees into volunteering extremely hard during convention id signins, demotivating many casual UK SFF fans while managing to piss off a bunch of dedicated hardcore UK SFF fans. Plus something about the filk room having a superb rendition of the American Princess Cat Song.
-SPACE ABOVE AND BEYOND premieres and many SFLers post about it. SAAB is one of the vaguely remembered SFF tv-series that I have been waiting to see appear in the SFL Archives. Many SFLers tear apart the pilot episode & first two normal episodes of SAAB, pointing out various things that don't make sense. (The F-18's, non USMC haircuts, the short boot camp for pilot-commandos, the tankee clone underpeople, the viewpoint character being a massive fuckup, et). Some SFLers gradually warm up to SAAB over the fall/winter of 1995, while others continue to rip it apart.
-Neil Gaiman headlining a COMIC BOOK LEGAL DEFENSE FUND event to fight censorship at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco CA USA on Halloween 1955.
-Notes on the 1995 WSFS Business Meeting Report.
-First mention of the upcoming 1996 Olympic Games to be held in Atlanta Georgia USA.
(2021 note: Distant echoing horns played in my mind when the 1996 Olympic Games got mentioned. Wondering what the SFL Archives reaction will be to the domestic terrorist bombing of the 1996 Olympic Games and the heroization then demonization of Richard Jewell by CNN.)
-David Feintuch returns to the SFL Archives to respond to various SFLers comments on his SEAFORT SAGA series. Turns out Feintuch was massively depressed when he originally wrote the series, so he wrote what he knew and and made the main character in his SEAFORT SAGA series a massively unstable person that kept screaming at people wanting to help/stopping people from doing basic spaceship safety related things, then always pulling a "IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN!! (not to scream at people wanting to do their spacejobs)" later on. Supposedly Feintuch wrote all 4 Seafort stories at once before getting a publishing contract, and alleged Seafort was much much worse/way more unstable in the original versions of the SEAFORT SAGA stories that Feintuch wrote.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 95 03:39:33 -0500
From: Dave Feintuch <midave@delphi.com>
Reply-to: sf-lovers-written@Rutgers.Edu
Subject: Re: Prisoner's Hope by David Feintuch
Don Croyle <croyle@fwi.com> writes:
>Yes. The foreshadowing is more heavy handed and Seafort is still having
>major self esteem problems.
Seafort's self-esteem problems were so much a part of the original
writing (remember all four books were completed before the series was
bought) that it was impossible to remove it completely, even though by the
time Prisoner came out, I had toned it down considerably.
>One nice thing is that it's set mainly on a planet so we see more of the
>background society in general. Looks to me like even in this world
>Seafort is considered to have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.
Absolutely. But I never claimed he hadn't... :) It is one of his flaws
that he can;t seem to do much about.
Hope you liked it.
Dave Feintuch
MIDAVE@DELPHI.COM
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 95 03:46:33 -0500
From: Dave Feintuch <midave@delphi.com>
Reply-to: sf-lovers-written@Rutgers.Edu
Subject: Re: Prisoner's Hope by David Feintuch
John Peterson <jpeterso@panix.com> writes:
>I don't know what it is about these books. The last two have been real
>depressing, but I just couldn't put them down. Am I alone in this?
Interesting... Things were not going all that well in my life when I
wrote this. (See the preface to the Science Fiction Book Club edition for
elaboration.) The depression, which fits in with the story, seemed quite
natural to me at the time.
>I think Seafort makes Thomas Covenant look like Mr. Self Esteem.
Hehe. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I DID tune down the lack of self
esteem considerably from the early versions. He was a complete basket
case, as originaly written. I think, though, that you'll see where all
this is headed when you read the final novel, FISHERMAN'S HOPE. There is,
believe it or not, a reason for his feeling as he does.
Dave Feintuch
MIDAVE@DELPHI.COM
------------------------------
-Slight weirdness over who originally published the M John Harrison story ISOBEL AVENS RETURNS TO STEPHNEY IN THE SPRING, with Ellen Datlow offering corrections on it's published history.
-Rutgers University, hosting site of the SFL Archives mailing disables BITNET networking support.
(2021 note: BITNET was a 1980's New England regional computer network.)
-Weirdness about Allen Steele writing HUNTING WABBIT in response to fanzine criticism, and the best way to annoy Allen Steele at SFF conventions
(2021 note: Call Steele Jonathan Frakes/ask for Frakes autograph or point behind him and yell "It's Steve Brown and he's GOT A GUN!")
-XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS the TV series continues to win over SFLers initially doubtful over it. The horniness factor for Lucy Lawless keeps coming up.
-I ASIMOV revealing that Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein loathed each other personally, but kept it professional and never discussed their personal views at SFF events.
-SFL Archives reviews of David Brin's BRIGHTNESS reef bringing up references to "van Dannikin-style cults" ??
-Heavy discussion of Nicola Griffith's AMMONITE and gender roles and sexuality, etc.
-What Happened to John Norman and the Gor Books? brings up that John Norman alleged had a No Editing clause on his books published by DAW Books up until new upper management came in at DAW Books.
-"The rastafarian who becomes a death machine by eating yogurt" in Bruce Sterling's ISLANDS IN THE NET.
-Absolutely no-one being able to predict the ending in Gene Wolfe's FREE LIVE FREE from it's opening chapters.
(2021 note: I have never read FREE LIVE FREE so the mention of it's ending involving "giant secret plywood propeller-driven airplanes that have been cruising around in the upper atmosphere since World War 2" sounds utterly insane.)
-An Iain Banks interview where Iain describes the inspiration for the title and plot of CONSIDER PHLEBLAS sounds amazing, but the original link at Iain Banks website shared to the SFL Archives is long-dead.
(2021 note: Think I found the interview: https://synergetics.io/phlebas/text/banksint02.html )
"Phelbas is the drowned Phoenician sailor in T.S. Elliot's `The Waste Land' which is my favorite poem, if you exclude Shakespeare. Not that I like what Elliot stood for, but he was a genius and `The Waste Land' is his masterpiece. Well, his and Pound's, also of iffy political leanings. I just always like the words, `Consider Phlebas'. They looked good, they sounded good. They just looked like a title somehow. I tried all sorts of titles for the story before I settled on Consider Phelbas, but they all sounded too much like Star Wars. I knew it was a weird title but I though well, if it works it'll just become right for the book. I put in the bit about the sea-change - when Horza is undergoing a Calvin-like transmogrification on top of the crashed, awash shuttle - and in a sense, the whole book is just a yarn about a shipwrecked sailor who falls in with a gang of pirates and goes in search of buried treasure, so the quote-cum-title seemed to fit, and the idea was to hint at a tragic stature to Horza and at a kind of futility."
-Possible hearsay about Fredric Brown allegedly typing a bunch of his stories on a Linotype machine versus a normal typewriter, because allegedly that's what he was most familiar with due to his early career as a Linotype typesetter.
-SFLers start discussing THE WITCHES OF KARRES stories, and no lie, the Witches of Karres books sounds like one of the rare mil-scifi story series that aged gracefully in the decades since they first came out.
-The Ted White edited issues of Amazing and Fantastic being house-fire disasters/massively entertaining.
(2021 note: I have no damn idea.)
-GODZILLA BATTLES GAMERA IN OSAKA which is a anecdote of the body-actors wearing the GODZILLA & GAMERA kaiju suits cage-fighting during a Osaka Expo convention around the time GODZILLA VS THE SMOG MONSTER came out.
(2021 note: GAMERA came on strong but GODZILLA won...something about the Gamera kaiju suit being really damn heavy.)
-BucConeer convention aka "Baltimore WorldCon in 1998 Inc." officially becomes a 501c(3) non-profit educational organization.
-Something about D West's (SFF artist) HISTORY OF FANNISH ART article being so outrageous that LAGOON 7 (a fanzine) spent half it's space defending/explaining the HISTORY OF FANNISH ART article.
-Organizers of the ConCom 1995 convention issue a alert to be aware of the wording in your contracts with hotels hosting SFF conventions/SFF convention venues. Aim for "24 hour use", not "24 hour access" in your contracts. ConCom 1995 also had Filksong drama.
(2021 note: My hatred of filksong & filksong chat remains strong.)
-Being published by ZEBRA BOOKS apparently being a scarlett letter situation.
-Daniel Keys Moran and his always moving goalposts of bullshit excuses. As of September 1995, DKM claimed his latest novel, PLAYERS: THE AI WARS has 30 edit notes left and expects it to be published in 1996.
(2021 note: It took until 2011 for THE AI WARS part 1 to be self-published by DKM.)
Then later on when asked why EMERALD EYES, THE LONG RUN, and THE LAST DANCER haven't been reprinted by Bantam Spectra like he said they would be, DKM moves his bullshit excuse goalposts again to now claim that Bantam Spectra is waiting until they have THE AI WARS manuscript in-hand before doing reprints, and that his literary agent is waiting to hear back from Bantam Spectra.
(2021 note: Half expecting it to turn out that DKM's wife was also his literary agent in addition to her previous jobs as a Bantam Spectra talent scout/Bantam Spectra contract negotiator/Bantam Spectra book editor.)
No comments:
Post a Comment