SFL Archives Vol 06 readthrough

 -SFL Vol 06 immediately reminded me that I mind-wiped away the existence of a terrible scifi book no-one in 2020 should EVER read, even for ironic purposes. Alfred Bester's THE DECEIVERS is so terrible and mega-racist and stupid a KKK Grand Wizard would be "uh, this is too much for me, turn down the racism dial".

-The more things change in the publishing industry, the more things fail to change in the publishing industry.

SFL Archives
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Date: 20 Sep 82 17:11:03-EDT (Mon)

From: David Axler <axler.upenn@UDel-Relay>

To: sf-lovers at Sri-Csl

Subject: Sequel Failure

An entry in a recent issue of SFL tried to answer M. Melkar's question

as to why sequels are often less good than the initial books. Without

knocking the answer propounded, I'd suggest that a major reason is that which

Norman Spinrad has discussed at length in his column "Stayin' Alive," which

appears in LOCUS (and, I've heard, will soon be turned into a book). Spinrad's

thesis, essentially, is that the current state of the sf publishing industry

(which differs in some ways from the "normal" publ. ind.) is pushing authors

into writing novels which have the potential for extension via sequels, and

that the necessity of creating such sequelae when one is (a) sick of the

characters and/or (b) has said all one wanted to say with them is a problem

that needs curing. He feels that all segments of the sf world (authors,

readers, fans, publishers, agents, other media, &c.) are to blame for this,

though in differing degrees; the basic agent of the trouble, though, is the

need for the author to pay his or her bills.

thesis, essentially, is that the current state of the sf publishing industry

(which differs in some ways from the "normal" publ. ind.) is pushing authors

into writing novels which have the potential for extension via sequels, and

that the necessity of creating such sequelae when one is (a) sick of the

characters and/or (b) has said all one wanted to say with them is a problem

that needs curing. He feels that all segments of the sf world (authors,

readers, fans, publishers, agents, other media, &c.) are to blame for this,

though in differing degrees; the basic agent of the trouble, though, is the

need for the author to pay his or her bills.

I know that some SFL readers are involved in the creation of sf in its

many forms, and would be interested in hearing their opinions on Spinrad's

theory (which I've severely compressed, though hopefully w/o misstatement).

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-SFL Vol 06 featured hostile takeover attempt on the SF-LOVERS mailing list moderator-maintainer position (that succeeded). The SFL person who had previously submitted 3 entire digests of cherry-picked and 100% not faked content from a non-arpanet connected host named SU-LOTS ended up as the new mailing list moderator. Suspiciously, those SU-LOTS cherry picked submissions -> SFL dried up the instant the hostile mod takeover happened, no mention of the SU-LOTS discussions made the SFL mailing list again, whle many long-time SFL posters suddenly stopped appearing in the SFL Digests after the hostile moderator-position takeover.

-A solid 9 weeks of posts about SciFi/fantasy themed music albums/songs/bands

-From: addresseses evolving into long!strings!of!text!separated!by!exclamation!points @ illustrating how computer email morphed through many stages before the internet became the Internet

-1st instance of someone begging for free access codes to the ARPANET because their boss was defunding the on-site ARPANET hookup

-a 5+ part serialed fan-story about the internet using HitchHikersGuideToGalaxy characters and computer/ARPANET terms

-December 1982 was pretty much pure STAR WARS discussion (aided in no small part by Empire Strikes Back getting re-released in theaters for the 1st time ever).

originally posted between July 15th -July 22nd in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3

In the beginning, there was a dark void -The secret history behind the SF-LOVERS mailing list

In the beginning, there was a dark void, where computers were 70 ton one-off designs that worked via punch-cards or thousands of toggle switches (aka the vacuum tube era). During the Cold War era, lots of computer research and one-off computer systems got funded by the US government and crazy things like transistors, magnetic tape storage and 5-kb RAM modules weighing 7kg got invented(aka the transistor era).

People at the US Department of Defense got tired of having 5 computer terminals or more in their offices to use the many US government funded computer systems that dealt with national security/cold war research and said "F**K THIS. I want one computer terminal in my office, and I have the funding to make this possible. ANYONE INTERESTED?"

The DARPA, who lost out bigly in the Army/Navy Department of Defense turf-wars over control of funding-dollars for the 1950's various rocketry projects, went all-in on ownership of the "one computer terminal per office/I HAVE FUNDING" proposal, and after much consultation with smart people, and design proposals the ARPANET project was proposed and approved.

The ARPANET project basically invented computer routers(IMP node's) and computer routing, only this was the 1960's-1970's and everything was secret, so IMP's initially only went out to a select few places like major college universities/us govt sites where lots of Cold War related research happened. Eventually IMP nodes went out to other sites, and the ARPANET was born, and so was computer EMAIL.

The ARPANET continued to grow even placing a few IMP nodes overseas, until national security issues and funding concerns popped up, so the MILNET was created to host vital-to-US-national-security data, while the ARPANET continued to host the less critical to national security stuff.

After the ARPANET/MILNET split, the long-term purpose of the ARPANET was being evaluated (should it be commercialized?), meanwhile people using ARPANET email started using email for non-official purposes, and adhoc mailing lists like SF-LOVERS, HUMANS-NET got created on the down-low.

All these adhoc mailing lists were run ontop of 100% US government funded routers and hosted on mostly US government funded computer systems, and were not officially approved by anyone involved in ARPANET management. If people started mentioned mailing lists like HUMANS-NET, SF-LOVERS, etc willy-nilly, word would eventually reach government auditors/Congresspeople/spies/unstable spamming douchebags and the hammer-of-god would come down hard on everyone involved.


tldr: This all happened in the before-before times, when things like Congressional investigations into wastes of tax-payers money mattered. SF-LOVERS and other major mailing list were unofficial/non-approved efforts leeching off of US government funded system resources and networks.