SFL Archives Vol 15b readthrough 01

 SFL Archives Vol 15b

3.4 mb raw text file

100% completion, 86 bookmarks

-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. 

SFL Archives Vol 12a readthrough update 05

100% completion, 89 bookmarks

-An SFLer attends the Doctor Who USA Tour, and gets info on the upcoming DOCTOR WHO series straight from 7th Doctor Who actor Sylvester McCoy. Trivial details about the 7th Doctor Who costuming and logo/theme songs changes are disclosed.  

-SIGN OF CHAOS, the 3rd new Roger Zelazny AMBER book is due out October 1987, and Zelazny has signed a contract for two more Merlin of Chaos sequels. Announcement for Robert Heinlein's upcoming TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET in July 1987. (2020 note: TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET is a trap book. Do not read this book, Do not read this book.)

-SFLer's relate the first SF stories that they read/the SF&F fiction they grew up reading pt 35: this time it's TOM SWIFT and DOC SAVAGE coming up in SFLer's memories. And now being able to catch the un-named cameo appearances of Tom Swift and Doc Savage that F&SF authors like Zelazny  put in some of their lighter stories of the 1960's-70's.  

-SF&F book cover artists not researching their work/having a clue about the content inside the book complaints. (2020 note: Don't this line of complaint will really take off until 1990-ish when Robert Jordan's first WHEEL OF TIME novel comes out. I still have fond memories of Rand(?) using invisible ski's and ski-poles on one particularly terrible WoT book cover.)

-Reviews of Douglas Adams 1st DIRK GENTLY series book start coming in, and I won't bother recapping them. You will either enjoy the Dirk Gently books or hate them. Reviews/discussion of David Brin's UPLIFT WAR start coming in. Michael Crichton's SPHERE has come out, as well as the very creeepy-in-retrospect REPLAY by Ken Grimwood.

-More DOCTOR WHO series discussion. Incarnations of the TARDIS control room, female Timelords, Companion comparisons, Doctor Who novelizations quality, fan Cosplay efforts at SF conventions often being better than official Doctor Who efforts, etc

-There has been periodic David Eddings and BELGARIAD chat through SFL Vol 12a, along with speculation to the upcoming 5 part sequel to the Belegariad series due out soon-ish. Given David Eddings child-abusing background, I choose to mention him as little as possible.

-Robert Heinlein chat continued: What was THE CAT WHO WALKED THROUGH WALLS main character's race (black/white/mixxed), and the mismatched color leg transplant, and Lazarus Long interactions with TCWWTW main character 

-HP Lovecraft stories and mythos starts getting discussed as June 1987 closes out, with SFler's trying to classify Lovecraft's work: is it fantasy, is it horror, is it cowboy fiction (NO)? What do SFLer's like about the stories, what movie of HP Lovecraft's stories do they recall? 

-LORD OF THE RINGS pt32553a: How racist is the LotR series since the majority of the enemies in it are dark-colored? Chosen roles of LotR via destiny or Gods mandate. Accusations of seeing things via "an American viewpoint"?

-SF&F convention discussion that is Boscone: Should "hucksters aka convention vendors" pay flat fees for access to conventions selling arenas, what membership modes are recommended for vendors, what tax-code stuff should amateur convention managers be looking at if they want to incorporate/go professional, etc.

-Balancing out the fantasy series discussion, Christopher Stasheff's WALOCK OF GRAMARYE series comes up again. Power-creepage on Gwen the wife, vs the new powers constantly being discovered in the children. The King Kobold novel story total-rewrite and how it does/doesn't fit into established Warlock series canon.

-STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION chat starts building up once official casting news has filtered out to the general public. And people have issues with some of the casting choices and worries of how real ST:TNG episodes will sync up to established STAR TREK canon, and more importantly, how will ST:TNG affect fan-canon? Warp Speed changes from ST:TOS, communicators as badges? Un-named Klingon to be part of the crew as per Majel Roddenberry.

A SFLer tours the STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION soundstages, and notes the carpeting/wall design changes from ST:TOS and breaks down the layouts of the bridge sets, engineering, transporter room, and the one generic living quarters set. Physical TNG uniform changes including color coded changes for Engineering & Command Staff, etc.

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 10

 87% completion, 170 bookmarks

-STAR TREK 4's release date gets moved up to November 1986 thanks to positive test screening results.

-Roger Zelazny Amber series discussion kicks off hard. Readers new to the Amber series have questions regarding BLOOD OF AMBER, long-time Amber series fans respond. Everyone wants to know why Dara needed to walk the Pattern if a Chaos equivalent existed, what's up with Luke, etc. One very special SFLer has a unique take of  "Dworkin f**ked the Unicorn, the Unicorn is secretly Oberon's mother and this is why the Unicorn keeps popping up to fix the Amber Royal families many many f**k-ups".

-Paramount releases an official press release that STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION is real and scheduled for a Fall 1987 premiere. Gene Roddenberry becomes a divisive figure, some SFL Star Trek fans refer to him as the sole source responsible for all things old and new Star Trek related, other SFL Star Trek fans tend to credit the many Star Trek producers, writers, and so on that Gene Roddenberry overshadows/steals credit from.     

-Stephen Donaldson has a new book out (THE MIRROR OF HER DREAMS), David Brin has a new book out (THE POSTMAN), Gene Wolfe has a new book out (SOLDIER OF THE MIST), Kim Stanley Robinson has a new book out (THE PLANET ON THE TABLE).

-A request for for help finding the earliest modern werewolf story brings up lots of examples. WAGNER THE WERE-WOLF by G.W.M. Reynolds. LE MENEUR DE LOUPS by A. Dumas. Chapter 39 in Fredrick Marryat's THE PHANTOM SHIP. Hugues: the Wer-Wolf: A Kentish tale of the Middle Ages. The Severed Arm by Anonymous in TALES OF ALL NATIONS.

-Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's series about a 2000+ year old vampire named Ragoscvy Saint Germaine sounds interesting strictly for the various historic eras the stories take place in.

-BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (original series) discussion with people thinking the Cylon Imperial leader is organic or in-organic or soul-transferred into a cyborg body or something

-BLAKES 7 discussion gears up again, with behind-the-scenes details and series trivia that makes it understandable why Blake's 7 was such a iconic groundbreaking scifi tv series.

-R.A. McAvoy's work comes up again. TWISTING THE ROPE is seen as a major disappoint by SFL readers, because it drops all of the fantasy elements and low key charm of TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON and instead goes all in on Celtic touring band drama.

-Tech-trivia about the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY has a legit callback to groundbreaking 1930's digital audio generation that lead to creation of physical vocoder technology.   

-David Hartwell, SciFi editor?, auctions off his clothing at a convention to raise money for ill and temporarily homeless author George Alec Effinger.

-Taboos in STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES have SFLers fixating on homosexual situations, drug use/abuse, and jailbait scenarios "allegedly" in original drafts of Star Trek: TOS shooting scripts.

-The Saga of Fuzzy Pink aka MITSFS's "my roommate Fuzzy Pink".  

-DANGERMOUSE and DANGER MAN /THE PRISONER discussion.

-SFLer's try to describe the art-styles and significance of anime character design, facial tics, eye size, etc. and how the various anime art-styles are not-racist stereotypes of Japanese/Americans/etc like some very vocal SFLer think so.

-Home-improvement projects the SFLer way: someone is converting a garage into a dedicated library room and wants tips on how to manage the humidity level in a non-cooled/non-heated former garage.

-The trope about "infinite monkeys in a room with the goal of typing out Shakespeare's work" and the many SciFi story takes on this trope. Murder, murder-suicide, and mass monkeycide are usually the outcomes in those SciFi story takes.

-The canonical SF Music list of 1986. Mostly lists of bands, artists, albums, songs, song lyrics, song lyric discussion, context to certain lyrics.

-Daniel F Galouye's THE INFINITE MAN may enrage or delight mathematics fans and possibly conspiracy theory nuts obsessed with Pi.

-A question about (cosplay) weapons and (cosplay) weapons policies at conventions brings up lots of anecdotes, peace-bond situations, and eyebrowing raising situations convention security usually deals with. Basically some cosplayers act like idiots 24/7 especially in costume.

-VOLPA, a short story about a mad scientest creating a bunch of intelligent winged creatures complete with fake backstory and invented language, just to f**k with future archeologists or historians who stumble across them.

-The first mention of WORLDS OF IF SciFi magazine in the SFL Archives. (2020 note: If magazine has been fully digitized and is available at the internet archive project.)

-Timothy Zahn's THE BLACKCOLLAR/THE BLACKLASH MISSION stories sound like source material DC Comics used when coming up with the supervillian BANE.

-3rd email announcement about the 1986 TUCKER AWARDS, this time recapping the prizes/need to be physically at the convention to win, with the rigged nomination slate carried over from the 2nd TUCKER AWARD email announcement.

SFL Archives Vol 10 readthrough update 02

 -First and second appearance of  posts with the Subject Line: "JAPANESE ANIMATION" in the SFL Archives.

-Robert Heinlein's JOB gets discussed, mostly about it being slightly better than Heinlein's NUMBER OF THE BEAST thanks to Heinlein's carotid bypass surgery.

-the SFL poster whose gimmick was hiding behind the mask of his sister or possibly his wife posting his offline shit-talking to the SFL mailing list (mostly) abandons the gimmick and starts posting as themselves aka M*** L**p*r...but sometimes M*** L**p*r forgets and will still occasionally post under the old email address on the same topics.

-A murderer's row of THE PRISONER/SECRET AGENT aka DANGER MAN tv series discussion. Waves and waves of posts about the Village being filmed in Wales, with a few meta-conflicting reviews of the In-Real-Life area/resort/hotel where the Prisoner was filmed at. The Prisoner novelization discussion. Lots of theorizing how various tidbits confirm that Secret Agent aka Danger Man John Drake was really Number 06. More people answered and re-answered and replied and re-replied about the Prisoner TV series being shot in Wales than the time anyone who ever spent more than 96 hrs in San Francisco replied to the person asking if "Emperor Norton 1 of America" was real or made up.

-Steven Brust qualifies his GOR series recommendation. Sort of. Brust argument: Tolkien was popular and fantasy genre defining because Tolkien's stories sold a fuckton. Therefore, John Norman's GOR stories must be considered similarly. If you want more details, look it up yourself in SF-LOVERS Digest Volume 10, I refuse to recap or mention Steven Brust anymore.

-BACK TO THE FUTURE 1, and THE GOONIES are slated for future 1985 release. People guessing at the plot to STAR TREK 4: Voyage Home are worth noting, simply because ST4 went in a direction no-one and I mean NO ONE circa 1985 expected. V the series has it's final episode, and Silent Running (1972) becomes a subject of discussion: the robots, the nature pods, the American Airlines spaceships, the reusage of footage for the original BSG tv series, etc.

-Someone wants Advice for a new author trying to get published 1985 edition, and a few people respond . The advice is different from what got posted earlier circa 1982/83? so I will dedicate a entire post to the advice given, simply because I know there is a bunch of current and aspiring authors who read this thread 

(2020 sidenote: will do a separate blog post on this)

-More and more 1000+ word posts in the SFL Digests, you can tell who had the expensive Wangs and who didn't back in 1985. 

(2020 sidenote: that was a reference to the forgotten WANG LABS series of Wang computers/Wang computer terminals)

-Someone who missed out on the 6 solid months of SFL music chat back in 1982?/83? asked why no-one talks about music in the SFL mailing list, but it's cool because no one has mentioned filksongs in response...so far. :ninja:

-Piers Anthony non-xanth and Orson Scott Card are frequent topics of discussion....back in 1985 both those authors hadn't become what they now are. Piers Anthony had the deep-seeming Avatars series while ENDERS GAME was Card's biggest accomplishment to date

-THE GOONIES, THE EXPLORERS, COCOON, LIFEFORCE and BACK TO THE FUTURE 1 have come out. Weirdly, the goonies isn't being discussed much while the same grown-up people were falling over themselves crying discussing E.T. when it came out.

-Disney animation movie the BLACK CAULDRON is getting some chat, but mostly because it doesn't follow the source material 100% which is an omnipresent hang-up for certain SFF fans (this has happened many times, usually over Arthurian mythos, and it will happen again).

-An Arthurian series focusing on Gawain using the Welsh spelling of his name comes out, and people mistake the Welsh spelling as being a new self-insert character into the Arthurian Mythos and got very angry.

-Slams on SPACE 1999. The actors in it, the acting in Space 1999, the feasibility of Lunar colonies, the introduction of the shape-shifting character in season 2, the time loop?

-Roger Zelazny's continuation of the Amber series book comes out, and 1985 SFL reaction is thirsty for more/damn you Zelazny write faster. This resulted in heavy topical to 1985 Roger Zelazny chat, which can be boring to discuss and recap.

-Philip Jose Farmer: Even back in 1985, people were getting tired of PJF's role as self-appointed chronicler/perpetuator of a number of "mythologies" where PJF would write the imaginary books other authors referenced in their stories, like for example HP Lovecraft's Cryptonomicon and/or write completely unauthorized sequels/prequels to other authors books. 

(2020 sidenote: In modern terms, this would be like PJF writing "Mithra the Sixth" in Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth setting, or the Secret Annals of Baru Cormorant, or vulturing into N. K. Jemisin's work, etc.)

originally posted August 23rd - August 27th in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3

SFL Archives Vol 08 readthrough update 02

 -Reading the SFL archives chat about SUNDIVER and STARTIDE RISING has softened my views on David Brin. The David Brin of 37 yrs/30 yrs/20 years ago is not the bitter boomer CHUD David Brin of 2019, clever and tolerant David Brin died off over a decade ago.

David Brin's Uplift universe stories are worth reading for the galactic species and Interstellar Universal Library concept in them. For a 2020 reader new to David Brin's Uplift stories, yes there is awkward interspecies sex scenes in each of the Uplift books that can/probably should be skipped over.. ....always skip the awkward interspecies sex scenes/sexual harassment scenes in Brin's Uplift universe stories. What's that?...... *high pitched clicking and squeaking*....... DolphinF**ker heavily disagrees with that last statement.

-first book of Roger Zelazny's new AMBER series gets teased for a 1984 release. Looking back at Zelazny's earlier Amber stories,and the wholesale stealing from Philip Jose Farmer's earlier series, am now thinking that the obvious "written for the money" Amber books mostly exist, ironically, as a way for Zelazny to pay off PJF and confuse people into thinking PJF ripped off Zelazny...which then leads to owing PJF another round of settlement money, etc

-Spider Robinson (mega-overrated) gets mentioned for the 872th time as a person of note in the SFF community that every serious SFF fan should be aware of. tldr summary of Spider Robinson: Robert Heinlein was Spider Robinson's God, and Spider Robinson fully embraced the Moses role.

-The mailing list moderator(BackStabMod) who did a hostile takeover of the SF-LOVERS Digest lasted a little over 15 months managing the SFL mailing list before giving up, claiming privacy right concerns (a la DolphinF**ker) with the ARPANET and the inability to manage future SF-LOVERS mailing list Digests if they have no future ARPANET access are the real reasons why they are stepping down as SF-LOVERS mod. BackStabMod's explanations about privacy concerns were unironically accompanied by lots and lots of personal details of BackStabMod's life and future plans.

-Rudy Rucker, 1980s mathematician and scifi author got discussed. Some of the people like RR's work simply because they incorporate mathematics into their stories, others dislike RR for the shoehorned-in mathematics and the kookiness factor in RR's stories. Regardlessly, I had never heard of THE SEX SPHERE By Rudy Rucker before, and really don't plan on reading it.

-Movie chat continued, with WARGAMES 1983 & the upcoming DUNE movie directed by David Lynch being frequent topics of discussion. Nightmares(?) the anthology horror film had a gamer-hell segment that seemed very VR goggles. A weird arthouse movie call LIQUID SKY got mentioned for it's scifi elements and unique take on exploitation/horror/scifi/drugs.

-For the 5th time or so in SFL archives history, someone asked for lists "SF&F Novels of Literary Merit", and then got pissy at the lack of responses/not enough people doing their homework slash PhD thesis research for them. Basic things like the request being a loaded question, the requestor obviously fishing for data for their PhD thesis on Science Fiction Novels of Literary Merit, and the responder requesting all survey answers being sent to a obscure location confused and angered people similar to Arthur Dent and the house demolition notice (It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'). Additionally defending the merit of SFF is a hill SFF Culture Warrior John S Quarterman is willing to die on (John Quarterman requested people get his name right when referring to him so I did).

-Somebodies worse SF novel they can ever recall reading is ARMADA by Michael Jahn, which I have done zero research on,and will probably forget about until the next time I go through my SFL archive Vol 08 bookmarks

-Probably only of interest to me and a select few others, but TRAVELLER RPG gets mentioned a few times and this allows me to mention without any hate in my soul additional filksong lyrics chat along with the 300+ odes or verses to a filk-song about "olde time religion" or something similar. I refuse to bookmark filk-chat so you'll have to dig through SFL Vol 08 yourself to find them

-Private space sector efforts vs government funded space sector SFL archives chat in 1983 aged badly given the 2019/2020 private space sector events

-SF vs Sci-fi vs skiffy. AKA a fans of Science Fiction culture war that boils down to (in 2020 terms) how you refer to Science-Fiction in short-hand terms(SF vs Sci-fi vs skiffy) defining your TRUE FAN STATUS versus other people/other Science Fiction fans.

-Big time DOCTOR WHO chat. Peter Davidson leaving the role so soon after Tom Baker, and American Public access tv repeating the Doctor Who serials more than Star Trek the Original Series got repeated has driven up the SFL Dr Who Chat intensity.

 To give some context, the Five Doctors special just came out, which skewed slightly into Douglas Adams chat when Douglas Adam's as a Dr Who writer came up. John Nathan-Turner has been mentioned multiple times promising many things to Doctor Who fans, of which zero point zero zero zero zero three promises will actually happen (the first person of color companion promise took an additional 34 f**king years to happen)

-EMPIRE OF THE PETAL THRONE, a D&D setting TSR abandoned in lieu of GREYHAWK, then FORGOTTEN REALMS, then MYSTARA, then FORGOTTEN REALMS (again) gets mentioned. Empire of the Petal Throne uses a hybrid China/Japan/Korea/India gameworld setting.

-On the topic of HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, SFL chat was about how the books deviated from the original HHGTTG radio broadcasts and the followup BBC HHGTTG radio sequel programs. Finally Douglas Adams running out of tombstones to swear on while promising each HHGTTG sequel will be the "last one I swear" was the new SFL archives running joke (replacing the previous SFL running jokes of PAC-man puns and before that Indiana Jones sequel pun-names)

-Something called the unofficial Wizards and Warriors unathorized future history continuation has been hyped multiple times by one SFL poster. Suspecting that SFL postergot told to knock it off/stop hosting this on the ARPANET, because the last Wizards & Warriors hype pitch in SFL Vol 08 combines a "lost subscriber/please help me find them" with an acknowledgement of getting kicked off their former ARPANET/CSNet host

-Convention security run by SFF fans gets mentioned, with Robert Asprin of Myth/Thieves World/IRS back-taxes fame getting mentioned as the leader of the DORSAI IRREGULARS aka the Klingon Diplomatic Corps. Am pretty certain doing any kind of research into this group will involve cringe factors and discovering covered-up sexual assault

-MIT's Science Fiction Society slash private library gets mention-pimped in detail for the first time since 1980-1981. No idea if this exists currently or MIT cracked down on it. As I've said repeatedly before, I bookmark things of interest and very rarely look things up because there is so much stuff in the SFL Digest that if I took the time to look up everything mentioned, I would be much further behind in my SFL archive read-through.

-A post about "Death Star population = Imperial Cas" successfully predicts one of the events in "The Last Jedi" aka the hyperdrive suicide bombing.

originally posted July 31st in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3

SFL Archives Vol 01 readthrough update 03

SF-LOVERS Digest Volume 01 100% completion.

SFL Volume 01 started on September 9 1979 and lasted until June 30 1980, with 175 total Digest Issues.

Overall, reading the SF-LOVERS mailing archive has been a good idea. Lots of interesting discussion, with only a few things that aged super badly. The mailing list maintainers (Brodie@PARC-MAXC & DUFFY@MIT-AI) deserved raises or demotions/pay cuts for all the work they put in on it (since the SF-LOVERS mailing ran ontop of 100% taxpayer funded Offical ARPANET networks/servers).

-Distinct posting persona's have emerged. People from UCLA-Security mostly post about non-print scifi media, a SuperMechaGodzilla style troll has appeared along with a tech-fetisher that maps everything to it's equivalent in Larry Niven's stories (lightsabers=variable blades, superconducters, klingons=kzinti, etc). Besides Stallman, Don Woods the godfather of cRPGs + roguelike games started posting in the SF-LOVERS mailing list....am now waiting for the people responsible for creating TCP/IP, HTML, etc to appear.

-MZB/Darkover chat mostly died off at the 48% completion mark, while Zelazny's AMBER series only got mentioned majorly by the guy that triggered jng2058. My back-burnered theory that Philip Jose Farmer was the Neil Gaiman of his era keeps getting fueled up whenever PJF stories come up.

-The burgeoning Star Wars chat in SF-LOVERS got segregated to a special PM-only SF-LOVERS edition where Star Wars spoiler discussions were 100% ok after Empire Strike Back came out. The PM edition Star Wars chat is very skip-able for a 2020 reader, yet I swear 95.999% of the theories brought up there eventually happened in Star Wars Expanded universe fiction.

-The time in Action Comics where "Superman got temporarily brain-damaged by an enemy, and had a TRS-80 think for him"

-Harry Harrison's BILL THE GALACTIC HERO is my favorite novel of all time, so the funniest thing in the final 18% of SF-LOVERS Digest Vol 01 for me was Harry Harrison's BLOATER drive getting mentioned as a FTL travel device. Then, People who outright said that they'd never read the book it came from (Bill the Galactic Hero) and therefore never realized the BLOATER drive was a joke FTL concept in a very funny satirical mil-scifi novel took Harry Harrison's BLOATER drive concept seriously for 3 very detailed de-bunking posts. 

-Not wanting to be captured by HUMAN Naturalists if you're an alien(re: discussion thread on Alien Intelligence tests)

-"the giant mechanical turtles of the ice planet of Hoth"

-VIA GALACTICA the musical 

-Something about Harlan Ellison taking some of his lawsuit money winnings to put up a billboard dissing the opposing party at their place of work and/or company HQ

Finally jng2058 posted:

    It was a garbage opinion in 1980 <re: AQE@MIT-MC and their 03-19-1980 post "Re: Similarities between "World of Tiers" and "Amber"> , and it's a garbage opinion now. :colbert:

Any post that triggers that much indignation 40 yrs later deserves to be quoted in full.

Trigger warning: it's not just a sh*tpost

------------------------------

AQE@MIT-MC 03/19/80 15:12:49

Re: Similarities between "World of Tiers" and "Amber".

I just finished reading P. J. Farmer's "World of Tiers" series, and it

reinforces my opinion that Farmer should be prevented from writing

anything longer than a short novel. His short stuff is good, but his

novel series just get totally out of hand. Maybe he needs a good

editor.

However, when I was only partway through the series, I started getting

VERY UPSET because of similarities between it and Zelazny's "Amber"

series, which I consider to be an All Time Classic. I figured that

"Tiers" was just a low-grade re-working of "Amber". Then I thought of

checking the copyright dates, and lo and behold, it is the other way

around. "Amber" looks like a high-grade re-working of "Tiers". Here is

a summary:

The "World of Tiers" series by Philip Jose' Farmer:

The Maker of Universes (1965)

The Gates of Creation (1966)

A Private Cosmos (1968) (my edition has an intro by Zelazny)

Behind the Walls of Terra (1970)

The Lavalite World (1977) (dedication: "For Roger Zelazny,

The Golden Spinner")

The "Amber" series by Roger Zelazny:

Nine Princes in Amber (1970)

The Guns of Avalon (1972)

Sign of the Unicorn (1975) (dedication: "For Jadawin and his

Demiurge, not to forget Kickaha."

Jadiwin and Kickaha are characters

from "World of Tiers", and a Demiurge

is the Creator of the material world,

and probably a pun, too.)

The Hand of Oberon (1976)

The Courts of Chaos (1978)

The similarities: (WARNING: THESE PARAGRAPHS CONTAIN SPOILERS!)l

World of Tiers\ Amber

The series concerns the exploits \ The series concerns the exploits

of an immortal race called "Lords", \ of an immortal royal family,

human-looking but of superhuman \ human-looking but of superhuman

speed and strength. They possess \ speed and strength. They possess

the technology to travel between \ an inborn ability to travel between

universes. They almost never trust \ universes. They almost never trust

each other, and often try to kill \ each other, and often try to kill

each other. They are all descended \ each other. They are all descended

from a great artisan named \ from a great artisan named Dworkin

Shambarimen. The series begins with \ Barimen. The series begins with a

a major character (Wolff) living on \ major character (Corwin) living on

Earth and suffering from amnesia. \ Earth and suffering from amnesia.

The character is swept up into an \ The character is swept up into an

odyssey through the universes, and \ odyssey through the universes, and

eventually finds himself to be one \ eventually finds himself to be one

of the supermen.  \ of the supermen.

I'm sure there are more that I've missed.

The tone of the dedications and Zelazny's intro seems to indicate that

Zelazny plagiarized Farmer with Farmer's permission. Also, Farmer has

used many characters created by others, so maybe he doesn't mind

sharing his plots.

Does anyone out there know anything else about the relation of these

series to each other, or other "sharing" by Zelazny?

Jef

------------------------------

Originally posted June 21st -June 22nd, 2020 18:15 in the SomethingAwful forums Book Barn Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3 thread