SFL Archives Volume 22a readthrough update 02

FL Archives Volume 22b

4.1mb raw text file

100% completion, 434 bookmarks

Movies, television shows referenced: CONTACT, LIAR LIAR, SPECIES 2, METROPOLIS 1927, MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: THE MOVIE, EVENT HORIZON, CAPRICORN ONE,  ROSSUM'S UNIVERSAL ROBOTS (PLAY), STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (tv-series), SLIDERS (tv-series), LEXX (tv-series), 20000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (tv-series), WYRD SISTERS (tv-series), THE SHINING (tv-series), MILLENIUM (tv-series), DARK SKIES (tv-series), INVASION (tv-series), CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, CYBORG 2: GLASS SHADOW, JOHNNY MNEMONIC, HONEY I BLEW UP THE KID, XTRO 1, XTRO 2, TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, SUPERMAN RETURNS, LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY, LOST IN SPACE 1998, MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, NEVERENDING STORY 3, THE FIFTH ELEMENT, STAR TREK: VOYAGER (tv-series), BABYLON 5 (tv-series), THE ODYSSEY (tv-series), BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (tv-series), TWISTOR, THE ARRIVAL, JURASSIC PARK 2, ALIEN NATION (tv-series), RED DWARF (tv-series), HBO'S PERVERSIONS OF SCIENCE (tv-series), STARGATE SG-1 (tv-series), THE COMPANION.

SF&F stories referenced: BEYOND THE BEYOND, TIME BREAKERS, SMALL GODS, JOHNNY AND THE DEAD, LIFEHOUSE, THE SPARROW, A HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN PRAYER, INFINITE JEST,STAR OF THE UNBORN, SOLDIER OF THE MIST, THE DARK SHORE, EXCESSION, AGAINST A DARK BACKGROUND, ROSSUM'S UNIVERSAL ROBOTS, WIZARDS FIRST RULE, DEMON RIDER, A CROWN OF SWORDS, WIZARD AND GLASS, STRATA, INTERESTING TIMES, SPARES, IN ENEMY HANDS, THE TIME SHIPS, FOUNDATIONS FEAR, IMMERSION, THE ROSE AND THE SCAPEL, MOVING MARS, 3001: THE FINAL ODYSSEY, CHILDREN OF AMARID, HELIX: GEMINI BLOOD, ASSASSINS QUEST, COUNT GEIGERS BLUES, THE SECRET ASCENSION, SHADOW RISING, REMNANT POPULATION, REDLINE THE STARS, THE GOLDEN COMPASS, PAVANE, SOFTWARE, WIZARD IN RHYME, BRITTLE INNINGS, TRADER, THE KILLING DANCE, KING DAVIDS SPACESHIP, DOGLAND, HOLY FIRE, DEATH GROUND, MENACE OF THE SAUCERS, MINING THE SKY: UNTOLD RICHES FROM THE ASTEROIDS COMETS AND PLANETS, ETERNITY ROAD, OTHERLAND, QUICKER THAN THE EYE, BROKEDOWN PALACE, FALCON, CYTEEN, FINAL ENCYCLOPEDIA, DORSAI!, DISTRESS, DHIAMMARA, PRINCE OF SUNSET, CAGEWORLD 1: SEARCH FOR THE SUN, WHEN THE GODS ARE SILENT, HUNTING THE CORRIGANS BLOOD, HELL ON HIGH, DESTINYS ROAD, WITNESS OF GOR, THE AFFIRMATION, THE MAGEBORN TRAITOR, THE SERPENT GARDEN, MAGE HEART, THE CHILD GARDEN, LADY OF AVALON, MEMORY, QUEEN CITY JAZZ, GALATEA 2.2, RED MARS, BLUE MARS, THE LOST WORLD, CARRION COMFORT, RISE OF ENDYMION, MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA, THE BLABBER, ACORNS, THE ALCHEMICAL MARRIAGE OF ALISTAIR CROMPTON, THE IRON DRAGONS DAUGHTER, A PURSUIT OF MIRACLES, WANDERING STAR, JIPI AND THE PARANOID CHIP, BOOK OF ENCHANTMENTS, ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE, GLOBALHEAD.

Pop culture references: the 1950's british radio comedy series the Goon Show, the Carry On movie franchise, whatever the hell  "Mark Rothko Clothing Encounter" is, Dogbert, Scott Adams & Harlan Ellison making cameo appearances in Babylon 5.

Technology callbacks: telnet vs GUI internet browsing choices, bringing a notebook laptop to a convention to catch up on usenet in convention downtime.

Death notices: Alexander Salkind, Hollywood movie producer. Samuel Mosokowitz, SFF author & editor. Lou Stathis, High Times editor-in-chief, Vertigo Comics managing director.

SFL requests/discussion topics:

>Re: Tim Powers: is Ashbless real?

>Re: why I don't like Terry Pratchett

>Re: Different versions of Metropolis 1927

>Re: Iain Banks Culture series (SPOILERS)

>Re: Michael Bishop's newest: opinions?

>Re: Names in Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

>Re: David Eddings

>Re: Pavane

>Re: Sliders (why doesn't Quinn go on strike?)

>Re: New Thomas Covenant Trilogy

>Re: Zelazny's Amber

>Re: How is Diamond Age?

>Re: Odo committed Genocide -DS9

>Re: Bujold meets Sayers

>Re: Jack Chalker

>Re: Harlan Ellison: Where to start

>Re: Is Sterling Lanier still around?

>Re: Sequel to Martin's "A Game of Thrones"

>New Gor Novel and Gor Magazine

>Re: Tim Powers Questin

>Re: Dan Simmons

>Re: Vernor Vinge

>Re: Not crazy about Tau Zero

>Who was/is the Youngest Published SF Author?

>Re: Ringworld Engineers, a daft question

>Re: Neal Stephenson SF in Forbes

>Re: A Question about Jack Vance's Work

>Re: Gene Wolfe, certain books any good?

-1997 is when SFLers start feeling safe enough online to start saying that Orson Scott Card, Dan Simmons, and Arthur C Clarke work has all sucked for a while.

-Lee Goldberg, the author of BEYOND THE BEYOND/DEAD SPACE, responds to the huge angry negative review a SFLer posted of his book. Lee Goldberg explains that he is an actual tv screenwriter/tv producer, Star Trek wasn't being parodied, the book is a satire of events he's experienced and that everyone whose real names were used in the book were asked & clued in to the contents of the book before it got published.

(2021 note: The SFL person who posted the huge angry negative review posts almost exclusively about STAR TREK tv series/is a massive Star Trek fan, so that explains their intense anger The SFL reviewer took the corrections from Lee Goldberg in good faith and everyone moved on after a day.)

-More people respond to the "Why I don't like Terry Pratchett" discussion thread offering various Young Adult novels Pratchett wrote. A smaller amount of people respond back that Terry Pratchett fails to land for them too, despite liking classic British humor things like the Carry On movies.

-Another retroactively painful in 2020/2021 comment from way back in 1997 about "It's nice to now SOMEBODY can get away with publishing novels under 250 pages. Painful because TOR Books has been getting away with charging $10-$14 for 120 page or smaller novellas since at least 2016.

(2021 note: The first time book price complaints came up in the SFL Archives was circa 1980/1981 when it was people complain commenting on the price jump from $0.50 to $1.00 for paperback books.)

-One of the first mentions of the Annotated Pratchett File website, which lists and explains more than 1300 references and obscure jokes in Pratchett's book as of 1997.

-Films mentioned in SFL Vol 22a that have been in production hell for years as of 1997: JOHN CARTER, SUPERMAN RETURNS, ENDERS GAME, SPIDERMAN, JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, LORD OF THE RINGS

-More SFLers chime in about really enjoying Terry Goodkind's WIZARDS FIRST RULE series, especially the torture-porn elements in it.

-11 weeks of downtime for the SFL Archives mailing list caused by multiple server hardware failure events and mailing list moderator vacations/moderator sickness leave. SFL Archives Volume 22a covers 26 weeks (Jan 1 - June 30th 1997).

(2021 note: SFL Archives Volume 22a covers 26 weeks (Jan 1 - June 30th 1997). So the SFL Archives was down and unavailable to users and subscribers for roughly 42% of SFL Archives Volume 22a. No idea if outages will happen in the back half of 1997/SFL Archives Volume 22b, but do expect at least one outage event due to the past 7 yrs of SFL Archives history.)

-SFLers start commenting on Gregory Benford's habit of repeatedly whole-sale recycling previously written set-pieces by himself into new stories, and selling everything as new content. SFLer's note that the Benford written FOUNDATIONS FEAR HAS two examples of Benford recycling content: The primitive portion of FF is Benford's IMMERSION with a few name changes, and Benfords THE ROSE AND THE SCAPEL is inserted into large portions of FF with minor name changes as well.

-Philip Pullman's THE GOLDEN COMPASS comes up for discussion again.

-LEXX the SFF tv-movie/tv-series is set to premiere sometime in the back half of 1997 on cable television. 

-The 5TH ELEMENT comes out and seemingly everyone in the SFL Archives writes a glowingly positive review of it.

-BALTICON 1997 Balticon 1997 reviews mostly focus on the age of the hotel, the inconsistent no-smoking policy enforcement throughout the hotel and slightly improved handicapped access; along with convention staff willing to help out handicapped people unable to deal with the weird multi-floor art auction setup Balticon 1997 had.

-Minicon 32 convention report: Notable for a endless drum circle throughout Minicon 32, the 5-20 pounds of  meat falling from the 7th floor that almost brained a hotel guest hanging out in the convention hotel's atrium incident, and gross hygiene at open-food-buffet convention parties.

-Intervention 1997 held in Liverpool England was notable for the "Make Your Own Badge" project that other future conventions hit up for hundreds of free badges, lots of theft running from stealing of money tins from convention stands to literal breaking into and robbery of multiple hotel rooms with fire extinguishers, along with tons of SFF fandom interactions and meetup that Dave Langford's Ansible issue about Intervention 1997 probably covered in detail, and finally for teaching me a new unit of liquid measurement.

(2021 note: That new measurement being "kils/kilderkin". 1 kilderkin equals 18 gallons of liquid, 2 kilderkin equals 36 gallons, etc.

-The 1997 Sci-Fi Collectibles Show Cherry Hill NJ convention report was notable for a in-depth transcript of Gil Gerald giving commentary on his experience on the BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY (tv-series). Gil Gerald preferred the 1st season vs the 2nd season of the show, mentioned his favorite episode of the show, liked Hawk the actor, related how hard it was acting vs colored lighting taking the place of to-be-created-special effects, and noted how production staff kept tweaking set design and ignoring his input on scripts. 

 -Jeff Vogel, the Spiderweb Software game developer returns to the SFL Archives to post on "Re: Harlan Ellison: Where to start" using his official Spiderweb Software email account.

-The person who made a career of posting about naked people on the Internet, Mr Skin, posts about the return of the GOR books and a new GOR magazine, and then later on posts a highly positive review of AMMONITE...but is disappointed that lesbianism wasn't explained or explored more in the book.

-The first casting details for STARGATE SG-1 drop, people have no comments so far.

-Jeri Ryan is announced as joining the next season of STAR TREK: VOYAGER.

-An SFLer brings up the question: "Who was/is the Youngest Published SF Author?" and name-drops Michael Moorcook as creating fanzines at age 11 and being a published professionally at age 18.

(2021 note: This is a discussion thread I hope gets picked up again on in SFL Archives Volume 22b.)

-Neal Stephenson writes a science-fiction story for Forbes Magazine called JIPI AND THE PARANOID CHIP, featuring yet another idea and concept that Neal Stephenson has stolen from the Cypherpunks CYPHERNOMICON.

(2021 note: No-one ever mentions this Neal Stephenson story when discussing Stephenson's work. For people who don't feel like looking it up, Jipi is about AI instances trained to be paranoid, then a Silicon Valley startup decides to use paranoid AI Instances as improved car alarms, then someone has the bright idea to wire explosives to the Paranoid AI car alarms, and everything gets stupider and stupider from that point. 

As I have stated previously, all of Neal Stephenson's ideas and cutting edge scenarios in his stories ultimately come from the CYPHERNOMICON FAQ. The CYPHERNOMICON is a large FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) text file listing the most common topics of discussion and bleeding edge ideas that had come up in the Cypherpunks mailing list as of September 10 1994.)

SFL Archives Volume 22a readthrough update 01

 SFL Archives Volume 22a

4.1mb raw text file

59% completion, 238 bookmarks

Movies, television shows referenced: STARWOLF (tv-series), STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (tv-series), STAR TREK: VOYAGER (tv-series), BABYLON 5 (tv-series), STAR TREK FIRST CONTACT, MACROSS PLUS (tv-series), THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, THE BURNING ZONE (tv-series), THE PRETENDER (tv-series), POLTERGEIST: THE LEGACY (tv-series), FRIDAY THE THIRTEEN THE TV SERIES (tv-series), SAPPHIRE AND STEEL (tv-series), STANLEY KUBRICKS A.I., STAR WARS SPECIAL EDITION, STRANGE DAYS, SPAWN 1997, SPAWN (tv-series), GATE TO THE MINDS EYE, RELIC, THE FIFTH ELEMENT, THE SATAN BUG, HACKERS 1995, BEYOND REALITY (tv-series), EERIE INDIANA (tv-series), THE CAPE (tv-series), NOWHERE MAN  (tv-series), THE PROFILER (tv-series), SLIDERS (tv-series), RED DWARF (tv-series), BURNING ZONE (tv-series), X-FILES (tv-series), THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD 1996, LAND BEFORE TIME 4, STARSHIP TROOPERS 1, SEAQUEST DSV  (tv-series), HERCULES THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS (tv-series), XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS (tv-series), HIGHLANDER THE TV SERIES (tv-series), PSI FACTOR (tv-series), MARS ATTACKS!, FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON (tv-series), SHE-WOLF OF LONDON (tv-series), POLTERGEIST THE LEGACY (tv-series), BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (tv-series), DEEP IMPACT, MEN IN BLACK 1, DARK SKIES (tv-series), MEN IN BLACK: THE SERIES (tv-series), 20000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA 1997.

SF&F stories referenced: NEMESIS, CRUX OF BATTLE, PRELUDE TO FOUNDATION, INFINITIES SHORE, THE DUBIOUS HILLS, THE SECRET COUNTRY, THE HIDDEN LAND, GAP INTO RUIN, TIME STATION LONDON, STARQUAKE, ONE KINGS WAY, MEMOIR FROM ANTPROOF CASE, THE ODYSSEUS SOLUTION,MAGNIFICAT, SPACE OPERA, THE HANGMANS BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER, REMNANT POPULATION, AUTOMATED ALICE, SPACE VIKING, ENCHANTMENTS, LOVE AND SLEEP, FARNHAMS FREEHOLD, HELLSPARK, FIONVAR TAPESTRY, WEYRS OF PERN, VENDETTA, THE EIGHT, A CALCULATED RISK, INITIATE BROTHER, TERMINAL EXPERIMENT, BEGGARS IN SPAIN, ARMOR, VAMPIRE$, ASCENDANCIES, HAL'S LEGACY: 2001'S COMPUTER AS DREAM AND REALITY, THE TWO GEORGES, PARIS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, A FIRE UPON THE DEEP, HONOR AMONG ENEMIES, THE OUTCASTS OF HEAVEN BELT, ROCK OF AGES, CHUNG KAO, EXCESSION, EON, MARTIAN CHRONICLES, ZIMIAVIAN, PERMUTATION CITY, KINGS DRAGON, WILDSIDE, MOTHER OF STORMS, THE FAIRY OF KU-SHE, THE PUPPET MASTERS, ETERNITY ROAD, ANCIENT SHORES, THE WORLD AT THE END OF TIME, THE PRESTIGE, DIAMOND AGE, THE COLOR OF DISTANCE, ECCE AND OLD EARTH, HOW TO PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD, SOLDIER OF ARETE, EXCESSION, BEARS DISCOVER FIRE, A FISH DINNER IN MEMISON, MEMORY, IDORU, MOTHER OF WINTER, A SONG FOR ARBONNE, SAILING BRIGHT ETERNITY, THE TRUTH MACHINE, BOOK OF EARTH, FEET OF CLAY, THE MAGEBORN TRAITOR, FLIGHT ENGINEER, LIQUID DIET, BOOK OF THE NEW SUN, POINT OF HOPES, AFTERMATH, INFECTRESS, THE SHADOW OF THE SHIP, GLIMMERING, LUCK IN THE SHADOWS, NATURE OF SMOKE, SONG IN THE SILENCE: THE TALE OF LANEN KAELAR, A GIFT FROM EARTH, THE SYNDIC, THE SPARROW, CONTACT, ENDYMION, THE DIG, FOUNDATIONS FEAR, TOO LONG A SACRIFICE, XENOCIDE, STARSHIP TROOPERS, THE DAY THE MARTIANS CAME, MAN OF STEEL WOMAN OF KLEENEX, THE SHIP AVENGED, BRAIN WAVE, BLEAK LANDS, HAIR OF THE DOG, ONCE A HERO, MAYBE I WILL CALL ANNA, OTHERLAND, FREEDOM AND NECESSITY, VURT, WORLDS APART: THE UNHOLY WAR BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE, SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS, ZOD WALLOP, THE COCKATRICE BOYS, THE CRYSTAL CROWN, HOW TO LIKE A GOD, GAWAIN AND LADY GREEN, CELESTIAL MATTERS, AGAINST NATURE, ENGINES OF THE NIGHT, LIFEHOUSE, TOMORROW AND TOMORROW, THE GUNS OF THE SOUTH, LES REVES DEL LA MER, DARWINIA, PROMISED LAND, WAKING BEAUTY, COSMIC CRITIQUES: HOW AND WHY 10 SCIENCE FICTION STORIES WORK, THE EYES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS, CHOOSERS OF THE SLAIN, THE TOO READY WRITER, MIDSHIPMANS HOPE, BEYOND THE BEYOND/DEAD SPACE, THE REALITY DISFUNCTION, PATH TO OTHERWHERE, THE DOPPLEGANGER GAMBIT, FLAG IN EXILE, 20000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, THE SUN THE MOON AND THE STARS, TOP DOG.

Pop culture references: Duke Nukem, boardgame version of H Beam Piper's SPACE VIKING, www.altavista.com, Marvel Comics Conan the Barbarian stories, SFF fans getting tattoos of their favorite SFF characters, a cartoon series of SPAWN being in pre-production, Thomas Dolby music videos, Rush Limbaugh attacking liberals on his radio show, casually bombing Baghdad, Jeff Conway in Taxi (tv-series), the Saturday Night Live verion of 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, 

Technology callbacks: The Dig (videogame), a SFF convention gaming room having 3 Playstations and Sega Saturns strictly for competitive play,

Death notices: Terry Nation, UK television producer/showrunner. Martin Caidin, author and originator of the Six Million Dollar Man tv-series. Seth Goldberg, Hugo Awards administrator, SFF fandom bigwig.

SFL requests/discussion topics:

>Re: The Gap into Ruin -Donaldson

>Re: P.J. Farmer Riverworld series

>Re: Space Viking/H. Beam Piper

>Farnhams Freehold: Bizarro Heinlein?

>Re: L. Sprague deCamp influence on the SFF genres

>Re: Heinlein newbie - what next?

>Re: Julian May - IWADASN

>Re: Walter Jon Williams (was Re: REVIEW: "Rock of Ages")

>Re: Levar Burtons AFTERMATH

>Re: Is Poul Anderson still alive?

>Re: Known Space is out of control

>Re: Fire on the Deep, zones?

>Big Stupid Ring explosions in SF movies

>Re: Octavia Butler

>Re: Dune - how far do you go?

-More SFLers start chiming in on John Barnes increasingly overt tendency to write in extreme violence and violent sex in whatever story he writes

(2021 note: Seriously, it's became a fetish for John Barnes. The Bosnian-Serbian war of the 1990's really broke his brain.)

-First mention of the internet web search engine www.altavista.com

(2021 note: Altavista was one of the better internet/web crawling search engines on the Internet until Google stole their entire business model of selling ads in search/paid search rankings) 

-SFL people start discussing why Ray Bradbury is so disliked by hardcore SFF fandom. Was it his popularity & success writing outside the SFF genres, anger that Bradbury rose up to become a professional writer while a SFF while other aspiring authors SFF failed to rise up as well, that Bradbury didn't write science-fiction as per hardcore SFF fandom definition of science-fiction, that Bradbury didn't include nods to SFF fandom or other SFF authors in work like virtually every other SFF fan turned professional SFF writer, or that at as a young SFF fan at local/regional SFF fandom meetings Bradbury easily got bored and would give hotfoots at LASFS meetings?

(2021 note: Hardcore SFF fans in the SFL really tried to enforce the "Bradbury is disliked because he was a punk at SFF meetings growing up" narrative but their sheer anger at Bradbury makes it clear that hardcore SFF fandoms hatred of Bradbury boils down to Bradbury's popularity as a professional author in multiple literary genres burns them up hard because they-the-hardcore-SFF-fandom should have had his success not him.)

-A letter to the editor of the newspaper Washington Post complaining about the Washington Post downplaying Paul Linebarger's aka Cordwainer Smith's role in teaching pysops torture techniques during his tenure at the US School of Americas

(2021 note: Paul Linebarger was definitely CIA adjacent throughout his civil servant career with the US Government. And the US School of Americas is now called the The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation)

-The BAEN BOOKS official website gets mentioned again.

(2021 note: This is 1997 so mention of Internet websites existing is still new and rare)

-A SFLer brings up a valid critique of Gene Wolfe's Soldier of the Mist series: why was Latin being spoken by the narrator at the time of Xerxe's invasion of Greece? Latin as a language was extremely regional at that period.

-The STAR WARS SPECIAL EDITION remasters of the original Star Wars movies start hitting their release dates to the public. Fans mostly like the new content but aren't sure of certain additions. The HAN SHOT FIRST meme continues to build up steam.

(2021 note: The really weird thing to me is the SFL Archives concensus that Empire Strikes Back is the worst and weakest of the original Star Wars movie trilogy. Something about George Lucas's vision being diluted and the heroes not winning are the vibes SFLers are telegraphing when disussing why they feel Empire Strikes Back is the inferior movie.)

-Both a SPAWN movie and a SPAWN cartoon series are in the works in 1997.

-Someone describes the 1995 movie HACKERS in comparison to IRL Hackers/Hacker Culture as: "On the Sid and Nancy scale, "Hackers" is the Village People - after they went New Romantic."

-A new bunch of SFF adajacent tv-shows hit American network television: THE PRETENDER, THE PROFILER, SPY GAME 1997, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER etc. Special mention is made of THE PROFILER doing a cross-over episode with THE PRETENDER. SFLers like the BUFFY tv-series pilot but miss Donald Sutherland and Paul Reubens from the original movie version.

-Much SLIDERS the tv-series discussion. John Rhys-Davies leaving the show and the addition of Kari Wuhrer to the cast. The dumbing down of the story plots. The bad science causes much discussion which shockingly hasn't aged too badly. For someone who hates SLIDERS for denying George RR Martin of his own SFF tv-series, Gharlane of Eddore sure does religously hate watch SLIDERS...and he absolutely hates Kari Wuhrer acting/looks/body fat percentage/etc.

(2021 note: People on Something Awful forums book-barn subforum who interacted with Gharlane of Eddore back in the 1990's on usenet have fond memories of him. Me just knowing Gharlane from what he posts in the SFL Archives is where I heavily disagree with those people. Gharlane isn't that great, and giving off big proto-incel vibes anytime he talks about female actors and their acting/looks/movement.) 

-SFLers start tearing apart the extremely contrived setting/plot/technology/characters/motivations in James Halperin's THE TRUTH MACHINE.

-Terry Pratchett's FEET OF CLAY comes out, and a small portion if SFLers find it contrived and that it turns the Flanderization dial up on most of the established Watch characters.

(2021 note: I sort of agree with the SFLers seeing a decline in Pratchett's Discworld writing at this point in time. INTERESTING TIMES was the decline point for me.)

-Levar Burton's 1997 SFF novel AFTERMATH comes out and gets lots of closeted racists/C.H.U.D.'s/and "actually I have a black friend so I can't be racist" SFLer's to self-out themselves in seeing various things that exist/do not exist in Burton's 1997 book AFTERMATH.

-SFF authors start nakedly self promoting their work on SFL Archives again. 

(2021 note: The SFL mailing list moderator has a inconsistent stance on these kinds of posts. Yes, I am still kind of pissed that the SFL mailing list moderator banned the Del-Rey Internet newsletter from being reposted to the SFL Archives. The Del-Rey Internet newsletter was full of factual details of how a mid-sized book publisher operated in reality and was the single best thing/most interesting and anticipated read for me in the SFL Archives before it got banned.)

-Foundation and Empire being the red-haired unacknowledged book when Isaac Asimov's Foundation series gets republished by a new book publisher.

-In 1997 a good resource for writers of all kinds was the WRITERS DIGEST series.

-Sam Raimi's 1997 tv-series SPY GAME comes out and everything about it sounds unreal and a shared collective joke that I broke my do-not-look-things-mentioned-up-on-the-internet readthrough rule for the 11th and confirmed that: Yes, SPY GAMES 1997 was real.

(2021 note: To be fair to Sam Raimi, he has been attached to many bizarre sounding tv shows. CLEOPATRA 2525 for example, somehow CLEOPATRA 2525 existed for 2 seasons.)

-Tom Hanks the actor enters the producer "I've got fuck you money" stage of his professional career when he becomes the producer of the upcoming 12 part miniseries FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON  

-Warner Brothers announces they are working on a live-action JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA tv-series, which never gets past the pre-production stage.

-A extremely not-Mad SFLer posts a review of Lee Goldberg's satiric parody of the television industry and SFF fandom novel BEYOND THE BEYOND aka DEAD SPACE that is so long and meandering the SFL mailing list moderator has to break it up into 3 parts. SFL Posts having to be broken up into multiple parts has happened before, but those SFL posts usually involved talking about multiple subjects or things in the SFF genres.

(2021 note: The review of BEYOND THE BEYOND/DEAD SPACE gives off the same extremely hurt-feelings vibe/"how dare he have a career while I don't" vibes that Ray Bradbury invokes in hardcore SFF fandom. I solidly believe the author of the 3 part review spent 5 hours screaming this essay at top volume outside of whatever television production studio Lee Goldberg spends the most time at and also that the reviewer has at least 5 active "stay 100 feet away at all times" restraining orders versus various SFF authors and television production people. JMS for sure.)

-A SFLer relates a discussion they had with David Weber regarding the Honor Harrington series that includes lots of incoming spoilers and explanations for certain actions that I am not sure happened or not for real in the Honor Harrington series.

(2021 note: Stuff ranging from treecat intelligence, to various looming gambits, bonding and treecats, new spaceship technologies, and backstory Weber will be retconning into future HH stories.)

-Internet famous reviewer-savant Alan Sepinwall posts to the SFL Archives in 1997 strictly to negatively comment on Sam Raimi's SPY GAME tv-series premiere.

-The Kelsey Grammer/20,000 leagues under the sea bit from Saturday Night Live season 19 being a pedants delight in every shape and way.

-A SFLer reposts the highlights from a Armin Shimerman guest of honor appearance at SFF convention Vulkon 1997. Armin Shimerman  talked about various things DS9 and Star Trek related, both in-front of camera and BTS stuff that would be of deep retrospective interest to any fan of DS9.

-The SFL mailing list moderator promotes The Alexandria Digital Literature website, which comes off in 2021 as a very early version of the Good Reads book review/book recommendation website before it's buyout by Amazon.com

-One of the first mentions of the Internet Movie Database in the SFL Archives.

(2021 note: As I said earlier, mentions of websites was still new and rare in 1997. A website mentioned in 1997 still being around in 2021 is exponently more rare.)

-The author of BEYOND THE BEYOND/DEAD SPACE responds back to the reviewer who posted that so-long-it-had-to-broken-up-into-3-segments-for-inclusion-in-the-SFL-Archives negative review of the n BEYOND THE BEYOND stating that everyone in entertainment industry whose IRL names that got used in the book were clued-in by the author before publishing and gave their assent.