SFL Archives Vol 13 readthrough update 03

 60% completion, 130 bookmarks

1988 technology level: information from the internet about the upcoming WorldCon 1990 involving BITNET, and data being sent in NETDATA format, with IBM & VAX users needing an additional step to get & read the Worldcon 1990 data.

-A bunch of SFL Archives posters reveal their fetish for pregnancy stories, more specificly the many many science-fiction themed takes on the impregnation of Mary by God and the birth of Jesus in science-fiction stories. 

-Someone makes the strong case for Michael Moorcock being directly responsible for the British NEW WAVE of scifi/fantasy stories & authors thanks to Moorcock. 

(2020 note: That indirectly means Michael Moorcock is responsible for Brian Aldiss existing, god damn you Michael Moorcock for that. Brian Aldiss is one of my least favorite editor-authors that held so much power in the fantasy & scifi fields despite having such little talent)

-STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION chat died off immediately after the first 5 episodes. Tasha Yar dying caused 4 or so WTF email-posts. Then the Conspiracy episode aired and about 7 people posted about how unexpected gory the ending was.

-A whole lot of Drama about the 1988 Hugo Award "Other Forms" category kicked off by the SFWA white-knight SFLer.

(2020 note: The SFWA obsessed white-knight SFLer has done more to turn me off the SFWA & Hugo Awards than everything else I've read or previously encountered.

-BATTLEFIELD EARTH book discussion & mild chat about the weirdness surrounding L Ron Hubbard's life and published stories.

-Joining the Friends of Highgate Cemetary to be able to tour/visit the un-maintained sections of Highgate Cemetary that are 110% off-limits to public access.

-The April-June 1988 take on Robert Heinlein is "Are Heinlein's stories pornography?", which drives the Heinlein Defense Squad into overdrive defense mode. The SFWA white-knight mentions that Robert Heinlein is ill in early April 1988, and asks people to funnel all donations/get well letters/gift cards they might send to through him for some reason.

-Filk Song publisher drama that I refuse to recap.

-Official notice to the SFL Archives of a new mailing list slash usenet group dedicated to all things SOCIETY for CREATIVE ANACHRONISM 

-A possible apocryphal story about how Glenn Cook got a fantasy-scifi cover artists professional career started. Also, as of April 1988, someone claims that Frank Frazetta is terminally ill and unable to work.

-The James Tiptree Jr. posing as a man posing as a woman posing as a man posing as a woman posing as a man April Fools 1988 joke-post someone posted to the SF-LOVERS was a bridge too far and close for a bunch of SFLers given that the author had committed suicide within the past year. 

-Another SFLer lamented about 1988's crop of April Fools posts didn't live up to previous years jokes. Special mention was made of the the new arpanet node 'kremvax' joke from a few years back originally posted in another mailing list/usenet group. 

(2020 note: This joke requires some clarification. It implied that the Kremlin/USSR had gotten a VAX system hooked up to the ARPANET and was trawling for information, while the USA/USSR Cold War was still happening.)

-William Gibson's MONA LISA OVERDRIVE comes out, and Gibson fans are pleased mostly.

-The FUSE-BOX DWARF, a throwaway gag by John Bellairs

-Early career mentions of Kevin J Anderson & Neil Gaiman, showing me yet again how long certain fantasy/scifi writers have been around for.

-A story track-down request for something called Combat Football brings up lots of possible stories, and sounds a whole lot like what MUTANT LEAGUE FOOTBALL would be about 5 years in the future.

-Death notices for Clifford Simak & Robert Anson Heinlein. 

-A listing of stories & books about immortality includes the weird side note about one of the symbols of longevity in Korean myth & Korean folklore being a mushroom called "pulloch'o" that doesn't exist in the reality that humankind experiences. 

-The death notice for Robert Anson Heinlein allowed the Heinlein Defense Squad to shout-down all criticism of Heinlein under the "how dare you insult this recently dead man/visionary of SF?", and the Heinlein Defense Squad people have been using the criticism-free time to theory-craft/crowdsource bulletproof reasons why Heinlein's incest fetish and Heinlein's views on consent and sexual relationship dynamics aren't creepy and horrifying to people who didn't grow up reading Heinlein stories like the HDS did.

-Unusual SFLer story requests: A request for "stories with friendly dragons" and a request for "fantasy fiction without Quest elements" in them.

-Pre-announcement of BOSKONE 26 reveals that BOSKONE is stuck in Springfield MA for 1989 after burning all its bridges with hotels/convention centers in Boston, and sticking with a hard attendence limit of 2000 people.

-The SFL Archives "How would you design a Superman" discusion goes into various uber-person physical specs, then verves off course into redesigning pelvic bones, the cranial capacity of newborns, cloning, and mindstate snapshots/mindstate restoration in that order.

-WILLOW & BEETLEJUICE are the major Fantasy movies that have come out recently in spring 1988. Most of the SFLer's posting about WILLOW keep bringing up the Siskbert/Kael naming as take-thats to criticss, while BEETLEJUICE mostly gets ignored, except by the resident reviewer-idiot who hates it.

-Isaac Asimov branded limited theater release movies NIGHTFALL and LIGHT YEARS make it to theaters/tv, and are universally panned by every SFLer who saw them. Also, the tv miniseries SOMETHING IS OUT THERE airs on NBC, and just about SFLer who watched it takes great delight in figuratively tearing the miniseries apart.  

-Harlan Ellison chat makes a resurgence, with comments of the LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS collection STILL being in the works as of 1988, and Ellison working/not working on it. Additional items of Ellison being a thin-skinned ass at conventions towards competitors and sexual assaulting women come up. David Brin comes up as being universally terrible towards women at conventions, joining Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov as people you never want to be alone with if you are a female.   

-Someone finally points out all the poorly written characters and terrible science and nonsense plot that doesn't make sense in Robert Forward's ROCHEWORLD

SFL Archives Vol 13 readthrough update 02

 SFL Archives Vol 13

5.9 mb raw text file

30% completion, 59 bookmarks

-1988 technology level: An SFLer is theory-crafting a electronic time capsule with a variable lifespan of 50-200 years, but can't figure out the KISS timing method used to "activate" slash open the time capsule, or the long term power solution for it. A few SFLer's respond with "use radioactively decaying elements for the timer/power elements"....after all the request was for KISS methods not easy or cheap methods

(2020 note: In this case, KISS stands for "Keep It Simple, Stupid", not the 1970's/80's band.)

-BOSKONE 25 happens and it is a massive karmic letdown. The BOSKONE 25 convention was kicked out of Boston after the hijinks of BOSKONE 24, and took place in downtown Springfield MA in two separate locations. The 2 SFLer's who bothered mentioning BOSKONE 25 noted the anemic attendance, lackluster scheduled convention panels, lack of costumes/cosplayers, and a utter lack of enthusiasm everywhere.

(2020 note: There was a staggering amount of drama about what happened at BOSKONE 24 & the revised convention format for BOSKONE 25 in SFL Vol 12a & 12b.)

-Flying car debate lead to discussion of STOL/VTOL aircraft and what take-off and landing requirements they require vs commercial jet aircraft & military planes.

-One of the first mentions of Ted Nelson and their masterwork COMPUTER LIB/DREAM MACHINES

(2020 note: Ted Nelson basically predicted everything about the Internet back in 1974. Yes, seriously.)

-A weird 1960's movie called THE MONITORS, brief discussion of Dean Ing's mormon-assassin survivalist series, THE JUPITER THEFT as the answer to the identify-this-story request that involved planets moving due to relativistic spacecraft speeds, 1988 book publishers doing 2020 style price rip-offs when releasing Samuel Beckett's THE LOST ONES, now long forgotten TV series PROBE and THE HIGHWAYMEN.

 -SFLer's comment on various republished/newly revised editions of Philip K Dick's work, with explanations as to why two conflicting versions of THE UNTELEPORTED MAN exist.

-Belated SFL Archives death notices for Randall Garrett and C.L. Moore.

-First SFL Archives mention of Tim Powers ON STRANGER TIDES, which most people know vis osmosis of Disney Park rides and the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies.

-RED DWARF the tv-series premieres, and most SFLer's do not like it, but seem interested enough in the premise and the episodes to keep watching it.

-1988 SFLer's comment on the fascination scifi & mil-fiction authors having with writing Nazi regime alternate history stories/book series, with various Nazi leaders in the "good-guy" roles. 

(2020 note: this trend would note stop for a while, arguably it's still going on.)

-Chuq Von Rospach, SFWA crusader, highly recommends a David Gerrold YA book. And I'm just going to wholesale quote Rospach's recommendation because it goes places.  

The third book is Gerrold's, and it's LOTS of fun. Imagine a YA book with

cussing, cannibalism, orgies, rape, torture, etc. etc. etc. Better, that

stuff is all written in so that kids probably will never see it -- and it's

one of the most fun books I've ever read from Gerrold. Probably a little

too intense for some kids, frankly, but for adults, I'd call this the

sleeper of the year (good, but generally overlooked). It's a Walker &

Company hardback, by the way, ISBN 0-8027-6688-9 (data from otherrealms

#19).

-Including ISBN codes in SFL Archives book reviews/SFL Archives book recommendations suddenly becomes a thing.

(2020 note: One of the SFLer's half-doxxed themselves as a research librarian back in January 1988, offering their help if other SLFer's needed assistance looking up books/stories/authors. Suspect the ISBN codes are SFLer's using them as a look-up source or realizing the beautiful of ISBN code lookups independently.)

-First SFL Archives mention of Richard Kadrey and their cyberpunk story METROPHAGE

(2020 note: This was fun, for various reasons. Circa 2020, Kadrey has been on the SANDMAN SLIM kick for a while, and finding out Kadrey was once able to write characters that didn't revolve around remembering old monster films/old italian grindhouse movies was amusing and informative.)

-C.S. Lewis & NARNIA discussion does the impossible, and drowns out attempts at reviving Robert Heinlein chat, JRR Tolkien chat, AND Stephen Donaldson chat. Narnia and CS Lewis discussion brings up various things, with the christianity ting and JRR Tolkien maybe converting CS Lewis to Christianity coming up.

-The Vonda McIntyre Internet mentioned in SFL Vol 12 readthrough update 01 happens, and some of Vonda McIntyre's more pertinent replies get requoted. McIntyre wrote a STAR TREK novel that focused on the well-known TOS crew as they gradually moved towards serving together on the NCC-1701 Enterprise. SFL & Star Trek fan reaction to that novel was rough to extremely angry when it came out and got reviewed.

(2020 note: McIntyre revealing in the inteview that she relied exclusively on material from Gene Roddenberry and George Takei when coming up with character backgrounds and character names was very very amusing given the very angry reactions from SFLer's about not using fan-canon first names for TOS cast members.)

-ARTHURIAN MYTHOS chat comes up, without any outside influence such as a recent Arthurian mythos movie, or book. Heavy discussion of Arthurian Mythos characters, modern authors takes on Arthurian Mythos, and lots of sources and reading list recommendations for Arthurian Mythos connected works.

(2020 note: Most of these posts are probably old news for Arthurian Mythos devotees, however some of the posts might contain new material or now-forgotten source material.) 

-A SFLer wants to know how fact-based David Drake's HAMMERS SLAMMERS stories are, especially regarding Iridium as being used as armor/construction material in the Slammers hover-tanks. Various SFLer's response, citing Iridium as plausible, but also taking note of the various IRL issues with the Hammer's Slammers company, and the stacked writing David Drake used in the Hammers Slammers stories. 

-APRIL FOOLS DAY 1988, and the SFL Archives April Fools Day jokes/fake news/posts. A slight "no that was a joke" backlash occurs when the SF-LOVERS mailing list maintainer joins in the fun with a "LAST ISSUE/we're getting shutdown due to the U.S. Government" post.

-An SFLer requests U.S. Civil War science-fiction stories. And gets some feedback, including another SFLer giving U.S. Civil War stories recommendations in a Southern American accent for their entire post, including their name.

(2020 note: Harry Turtledove would  go on to fulfill this request for U.S. Civil War science-fiction stories for at least 2 decades.)

SFL Archives Vol 12a readthrough update 03

61% completion, 50 bookmarks.

-William Shatner shares his concept pitch for STAR TREK 5 in a 1987 interview with PLAYGIRL magazine. (2020 note: Maybe 1 in 5 of the ideas in William Shatner's concept pitch made it into the 1989 STAR TREK 5 movie.)

-April Fools Day jokes, 1987 edition: The meta-joke is 99% of the April Fools jokes getting sent out on March 30th & 31st 1987, with their original sent dates of a week or two back. One Aprils Fool email manages to successfully troll people into angry responses. Robots are serious business and Isaac Asimov/Fred Saberhagen fans repeatedly throw down challenge gauntlets vs each other and the April Fool's joke emailer.  

-More BOSKONE discussion. Sometime in late March 1987, the Boskone management committee (NEFSA) sends out a requirements-for-entry to 1988's upcoming BOSKONE 25, and roughly 90% of the people who attended previous Boskone conventions would be excluded from attending Boskone 25. The SFLers who attended previous Boskone's/planned on attending Boskone 25 are extremely angry about being pre-excluded, which goes against many of the tenets of SF fendom is about. IE being a open, non-judgemental and welcoming lot to everyone who likes SF.

The people for shrinking BOSKONE conventions in scope are mostly NEFSA members, and resort to personal attacks on the most vocal opponents of shrinking Boskone conventions. From a 2020 standpoint, the NEFSA people never flat out say "We are extremely burnt out and could not handle dealing with as many people that attended BOSKONE 24. Therefore the next Boskone convention, Boscone 25, is shrinking massively in scope.", which would have immediately ended the anger postings of the SFLer's against BOSKONE 25 shrinking in scope and may have added dozens of now-eager-to-pitch-in volunteers to the BOSKONE 25 infrastructure. 

BTW, The requirements list to attend BOSKONE 25 has a lot of staggering  "wait a second, this convention ran 24/7, and they weren't doing basic things like restricting access/requiring convention badges to be displayed at all times/having a no alcohol on convention floor rules before?" things in it.

-Someone posts a 3 part STAR WARS 3 movie draft that is 100% fan-fiction under the guise of stolen draft notes from Skywalker Ranch, and yet this 1987 Star Wars fan-fiction is better plotted and thought out than George Lucas managed to do regarding STAR WARS: REVENGE OF THE SITH.

-Roger Zelazny fans keep comparing his LORD OF LIGHT, and CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS together. (2020 note: I had absolutely no recollection of CoLaD even existing before reading about it in the 1987 SFL Archives.)

-Books/Authors SFLers recommend: A VOYAGE TO ACTURUS (David Lindsay), the novella FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON (Daniel Keyes), SOAP OPERA (Alan Nelson), THE BIG U (Neal Stephenson), IN THE DRIFT (Michael Swanwick), KITEWORLD (Keith Roberts), THE SILENT TOWER (Barbara Hambly), THE UPLIFT WAR (David Brin), and the works of Doris Lessing. 

-Timothy Leary, desperate for attention slash validation as a guru in the 1980's, glooms onto the Cyberpunk movement as his new meal-ticket.

-Racism in the STAR WARS movies and what source's George Lucas ripped off making STAR WARS. Examples given like: Droid's being inferior, Chewbacca slave-subservient to Han Solo, Lando being a traitor, everyone hating Jawa's (even droids). HIDDEN FORTRESS, THE SEARCHERS, HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, THE DAMN BUSTERS, etc.

-More death notices for 1987. SciFi author James Triptree Jr aka Alice Bradley Sheldon. Terry Carr, SciFi editor. Patrick Troughton, most famous for being the 2nd DOCTOR WHO actor. Gardner F Fox, DC Comics writer/SF author.

-Anime discussion intensifies in April 1987. Summer Macross 1984, many anime series I'm not bothering transcribing here, seeking out the hidden "Japantown's" in American cities with large Japanese populations to score manga & non-dubbed Japanimation movies. 

-I finally notice that the Leeper Clan (Evelyn & Mark) has started putting copyright notices on their surface-level-at-best "reviews" of all things SciFi & Fantasy they come across. 

-Montague Summers, UK priest that also wrote encyclopedic reference books on supernatural entities across the world, allegedly so that if they were real, the Church would know exactly what was needed to kill them. THE VAMPIRE: HIS KITH AND KIN, THE VAMPIRE IN EUROPE, THE WEREWOLF, etc. 

-SFLer's wonder why is STAR WARS obsessed with showing only one-biome planets. (2020 note: How quickly people forget Dagobah the Mud (Half-water/Half Forest) planet.) 

-SFLer's start discussing THE KING IN YELLOW by Robert W. Chambers, with the tonal shift of the first half of the stories vs the last half reliably confusing the hell out of non-Victorian era readers reading the King in Yellow for the first time.

(2020 note: THE KING IN YELLOW is the one book I am shocked that Philip Jose Farmer DID NOT attempt to vulture in on. I mean, Farmer vultured in on Vonnegut, and HP Lovecraft and many others....wait a sec. Holy crap. I see it now. The RIVERWORLD series. That was Philip Jose Farmer's take on the KING IN YELLOW....and yes, reading all the Riverworld books did drive me insane.) 

-SFLer's start bringing their worst SciFi movie of all time? Many extremely terrible SF themed movies get brought up,  however I will only bother listing ZARDOZ.

-Initial casting notes for STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION get leaked.  Captain Julian Picard, Lt. Tanya Yar, and you can feel the Gene Roddenberry skeeviness level kick in when it gets to Beverly Crusher and "

BEVERLY CRUSHER -- Wesley's 35 year old mother.  She serves as the chief medical officer on the Enterprise.  If it were not for her intelligence, personality, beauty and the fact that she has a natural walk of a striptease queen, Capt. Picard might not have agreed to her request that Wesley observe bridge activities; therefore letting her son's intelligence carry events further.

-MAX HEADROOM the tv-series discussion. The differences between the BBC pilot episode of MAX HEADROOM vs the American tv-series, what got dumbed down, locations reshoot or totally removed in the American version, and what actors carried over from the BBC pilot episode, and how MAX HEADROOM themselves got less-edgy from when they were doing Coke ads, or interviewing pop-culture celebrities like David Bowie, etc.

(2020 note: The interviewing pop-culture celebrities stuff reminded me of SPACE GHOST: COAST TO COAST. And now I want SPACE GHOST: COAST TO COAST to be revived ASAP, with Space ghost interviewing cans of Fanta or Youtube personalities or TikTok people.)

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 02

Current status: 15% completion in SFL Archives Vol 11, 48 bookmarks. 

-David Eddings apparently ripping off Lloyd Alexander's PRYDIAN series wholesale gets brought up a multiple times by different SFLers using variants of this quoted post:

"I read -and enjoyed- the Belgariad, but

it was an almost exact copy of another five book series, the Prydain

series by Lloyd Alexander (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron,

The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King), up to and

including stubborn red-haired princess!  If I were Lloyd Alexander,

I would have filed for copyright infringement!"

-Talk of scifi & fantasy stories built around time-travel and astrally projected main characters brings up a weird fantasy-slash SciFi story that turns out to be THE NIGHT LAND by William Hope Hodgson (2020 readers: be prepared for lots of repetition and filler text involving the main character eating and drinking and sleeping and eating and drinking and sleeping and eating and sleeping and drinking).

-A SFL Archives post about asking if voice actors that read the SFL mailing are willing to share their work experiences is notable mainly because the person making the request cross-posted it to net.sf-lovers, net.startrek and net.movies

-Jean M. Auel's corpus of work comes up as does her writing one-handed fixation on writing in caveman harlequin romance plots into them.

-SFLers try decoding the alliterative names used to insert other fantasy genre and scifi genres authors in your lighter stories that was the de rigueur thing to do for a while in the 1970's-80's

-Someone recommends Spider Robinson's NIGHT OF POWER for it's inclusion of and I quote "touches on (and occasionally fondles) prostitution, rape, pubescents, adultery, and (gasp) miscegenation."  (2020 readers: These themes crop up in almost EVERY Spider Robinson story I've come across in my "give Spider Robinson a 2nd chance re-read attempt.) 

-The 1985 Controller of BBC 1 explains why the DOCTOR WHO series briefly went on hiatus for ""(being) too violent, plots had become boring and repetitive" reasons, and threatened total Doctor Who series cancellation if the show ratings did not improve.

-L Ron Hubbard dies at a undisclosed location sometime in early 1986, Zenna Henderson death notice.

-Timothy Zahn's COBRA series comes up and gets very mixed to extremely negative reviews. Wondering how much COBRA series content got recycled into Zahn's much better well known STAR WARS EU stories?  

-1st mention of iconic children's cartoon VOLTRON in the SFL Archives. 

-George RR Martin's HAVILAND TUF short stories gets brought up a few times. They sound interesting but I am not dropping my "NEVER READ GEORGE RR MARTIN STORIES" rule

-A Feb 19th 1986 LA TIMES article mentioned how a bunch of local SF writers got together after the Voyager 2 spaceprobe did a flyby of Uranus and started getting very notMad about a Harpers Magazine article called "THE TEMPLE OF BOREDOM" by Luc Sante.

-Someone tries to revive (and commercialize) the SF-LOVERS t-shirt SFL subscribers used to lowkey identify each other at Fantasy and SciFi conventions...aka the thing Robert Forwards edgelord son designed back in late 1980

-The SPACE MERCHANTS series by Fredrick Pohl & Cyril M. Kornbluth gets brought up by 1986 SFLers as a 1984-the-book warning of how bad things could get in the future (2020 take: they had no idea)

-R. Ramsay takes self-promotion to a new stage in the SFL Archives and self-publishes their "best (SF) short story" to the SFL mailing list. (2020: I powerskimmed it and uh.... 'Sam Spade written by William Gibson' is how I would describe it) 

-Someone scoops the on-site location shooting for STAR TREK 4 regarding DeForrest Kelly at a local 20th century hospital

 -Hank Buurman discloses the survey responses he got for "posting on female sexuality in sf/fantasy" in the SFL mailing list. Hank Buurman did get ot a lot of responses, but the responses Hank Buurman received were thoughtful and full of details. Since no one requested anonymity, Hank Buurman includes the login names/email addresses of the people who responded next to extracts of their posts. Since Hank Buurman didn't feel anonymity was cool for people, I returned the favor in kind.

-Excerpts from the HARPERS MAGAZINE article "THE TEMPLE OF BOREDOM" mentioned earlier get re-posted to the SFL Archives. Without the full essay to read....the excerpts given just ramble from topic to topic <rimshot burn on my SFL Archives readthrough in a nutshell I guess> 

-The benefits of subscribing to Locus Magazine for the low low cost of only $24 per year *in 1986 money valuation* Not sure what has changed regarding the Locus Magazine of the 1980s vs the Locus Magazine of modern times (2020 guess: it went digital and costs more is my uneducated, not looking things up at all guess)  

-A "Secular Humanist Revival" panel hosted by Orson Scott Card at the upcoming INCONJUNCTION 6 in July 1986 gets teased.

-Book publishers always seeming to finally publish all the stories and books of authors they could never manage to do when the author was alive...this time it's Philip K Dick getting the post-mortem career boost.

-SIME/GEN Householding and whatever the hell it is comes up a few times. Channels, Rensimes, Companions, Gens, and Sosectu's are name-dropped. Guessing Sime/Gen is some version of pre-Internet LARPing

-TRAVELLER RPG comes up again, with requests for interstellar merchant fiction. GRRM's Haviland Tuf gets recommended again, and my love of the TRAVELLER RPG makes me break my "NEVER READ GEORGE RR MARTIN STORIES" rule and add the Haviland Tuf stories to my reading list. <damn it>

-James Blish's CITIES IN SPACE series also gets recommended to the TRAVELLER RPG fan, however I have read those Cities in Space stories and they are exactly as hypocritical as everything involving 1980's televangelists & money/adultery.

-HIGHLANDER 1 gets released, it rocks, and Sean Connery hits the "kissing on the lips costs more" uh "non-Scottish accents cost more" phase of his acting career

-The "Why do producers keep remaking successful films every couple of decades?" question comes up, and SFLers start mentioning various 1970's-1980's film remakes.

-A small publishing house based in Willimantic CT that seemingly specialized in doing limited publication small print runs of Gene Wolfe books has come up in the SFL Archives over and over again since 1981/1982. *HINT* Given the printing press technology level back then, suspect that Gene Wolfe mega-fan collectors might be able to score physical offset printing plates of Gene Wolfe's work if they contacted that publisher/the estate of the publisher. *HINT*

-KLAATU BARADA NICOTINE: A SFLer makes the observation of how in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL 1951 movie, doctors were smoking heavily when discussing that Klaatu the alien ambassador somehow has a longer lifespan than Earth humans. HMMMM.

-One of the ultimate blue-collar Scifi book series comes up again, STAR RIGGERS by John DeChancie. Despite the subject matter <interstellar Big-BIG RIG trucker> and the wish-fullfilment factors in them, the Star Riggers series isn't terrible.

-April Fools jokes, 1986 edition 

-Judy-Lynn del Rey obituary notice. Judy-Lynn del Rey is mostly forgotten by modern SF fans, however Judy-Lynn del Rey is the person most responsible for dragging Science Fiction out of the sub-sub-genre slums and making SF more accessible to readers of all gamuts and backgrounds. RIP Judy-Lynn del Rey.

-EE Smith's in-novel solution to handling a Grand Fleet of a million spaceships: A large display tank and 200 four-armed telephone switch operators.

-Mark Leeper expands on why he thinks the 1975 BBC tv series THE SURVIVORS is one of the best SciFi series out there (2020 note: the 1975 version of THE SURVIVORS predicts a lot of things that went down in real life re: COVID19)     

-A few SFL people want to know WTF(and how playable IRL) the FENCE game in John Brunner's SHOCKWAVE RIDER is. (2020 take: Now I do too, damnit.)

-Someone finds it impossible to find slack time in the LOTR series if actual movies were made of the LOTR books  (2020 take: Peter Jackson laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs as Tidus from Final Fantasy X chimes in)

-SFLers notice a slew of typographical errors in the books that have been coming out lately. DAW usually comes up regarding this subject. (2020 take: Cutting back on copy-editors is usually a sign that book publishers are in trouble. DAW doesn't exist anymore (or does it?). Coincidence?) 

-THIEVES WORLD series comes up again. Essentially a shared universe for fantasy genre writers, with near free reign for the involved authors to f**k with other authors characters/plots. George RR Martin would adopt a similar method for his most-beloved series, the WILD CARDS setting.

-SKYCAM technology gets mentioned for 1st time or so in the SFL Archives. One SFLer thinks the first movie to use SKYCAM technology was the opening scene in HIGHLANDER 1(1986), while another SFLer thinks it was used in All the Right Moves(?)

-Exponential expansion of the ARPANET/other connected pre-Internet networks and how it all relates scarily to Algis Budrys's 1976 story MICHAELMAS.

-Someone reviews Jack Dann's THE MAN WHO MELTED, and comments that the book revolves around every character having severe psychological problems and Scream therapy being (the cause of?/the solution to?) the central mystery of the book. 

-Some deranged person wants links to the 13 episodes of HitchHikers Guide to the Net previously posted to the 1984 SFL Archives, and I hate them for bringing that hell back on me.

-The SFL Archives mailing list moderator-maintainer posts on 11 Apr 86:

Well, here it is almost 10 days after the beginning of April

and guess what?  I am *still* getting messages from people asking

about the new subscription charges announced in the April 1 edition

(Vol 11, #59) of SF-LOVERS.  For those of you who haven't gotten it

by now, that was the April Fool's issue.  I guess the issue was much

more subtle than I thought it was or else people were confused by

the fact that they received the issue after April 1.  Can you say

"slow mailers and lousy hardware"?  I thought so.  It seems we were

off the network for a few days and that delayed transmission of the

digest even though it was prepared far enough in advance.

SFL Archives Vol 10 readthrough update 01

-The Kindle I use to read the SFL Archives decided to suicide itself during yet another blowjob hagiography review of Spider Robinson at the 2% mark in SFL Vol 10, and I didn't blame it.

(sidenote 2020:  In my free time waiting for a replacement Kindle device, gave Spider Robinson's work a re-read after dissing him hard last in my previous SFL Archives read-through posts, because maybe I'd been too harsh towards Spider Robinson previously?)

 -Lots of David Eddings BELEGARIAD discussion, lots of Piers Anthony story discussion, and lots of Spider Robinson story discussion

2020 joke: <Jeopardy buzzer: Alex, what is "Authors whose work aged beyond hyper-badly for $800?" 

Alex Trebek: "CORRECT." >

2020 Joke Explainer: Giving Spider Robinson's work a re-read was a big mistake. Repeated instances of outright sexual assault, jailbait, underaged date rape, non-consentual bdsm, date rape, rape, etc in all of Spider Robinson's short stories & novels.

-Frank Herbert's Dune series continues to be discussed, not so much the DUNE 1984 movie. Much SFL internal amusement comes from reposting an old interview excerpt where Frank Herbert says: "I'm still against the idea of sequels in principle, because it's like watering down your wine all the time until you're left with just water." This is extremely funny given how many Dune sequels/prequels have come out since 1999.

-Piers Anthony had only released 8 XANTH books up to this point in 1985...<shakes head in 2020>...and most of the 1985 SFL readers demand more Piers Anthony stories. More discerning SFL posters noticed that each new Xanth book has upped the perv-factor with female characters in them getting dumber, and younger. 

-someone posts about the 1985 convention BOSKONE 22 being terrible on multiple levels (massively overcharging one-day pass people, overcrowded, terrible panels, worse film schedule, actively hostile venue, etc) with other SFL posters chiming in agreeing. One of the Boskone 22 organizers posts a big-ass "how fucking dare you" crocodile tears effort post that fails to address any of the complaints many SFL people posted about re: Boskone 22.

-Robert Forward's ROCHEWORLD gets held up as a model of good hard science fiction writing, which uh as a first time reader of Rocheworld and it's sequel 2 weeks ago in 2020, I can firmly say; HELL NO. Rocheworld was not good or hard science fiction beyond the light-sail setup.

-book publisher f**kery pt 47: Diane Duane's (who I had never heard of before or totally forgotten about (I really didn't read YA fiction growing up)) book 2 of a existing series comes out, which leads into a digression about book publishers (Dell) cancelling entire print runs, Ballantine Books dying, books being stuff in publishing limbo, Bluejay Press taking up the copyrights, and Bluejay Press as usual utterly f**king up the release dates of books.

-BLUEJAY PRESS is or rather was the anti-matter version of BAEN BOOKS. Bluejay Press  seemed to have good talent scouts and signed lots of amazing in retrospect fantasy & SciFi authors but could never release a book on time, usually missing their own publishing dates by 4 months or more. Meanwhile, Baen Books was the complete opposite in every way.

-pt 57 of me realizing how f**king old/how long certain authors have been around for. Example: George RR Martin & Stephen Donaldson were mentioned as promising up-coming talented authors when the SF-LOVERS mailing list started up in late 1979....this time circa 1984 it's Mary Gentle and Somtow Sucharitkul.

-Theodore Sturgeon death notice (RIP)

-20th century fox (rip, lol disney buyout) tries to get a rocky horror picture show subculture going for it's 1984 movie BUCKAROO BANZAI repeated times in the SFL mailing list.

-1985 marks the first time that April 1st jokes/pranks become the THING to post on April 1st.

-The doxxing of Richard Bachman being Stephen King is completed, and some SFLer's make some extremely notMad posts about it.

-Steven Brust starts posting prolifically in the SFL mailing list about many many things.
Direct quote: "If you really want mainstream quality writing in fantasy, I recommend the Gor books of John Norman." Steven Brust, SFL Archives Volume 10

(sidenote 2020: Have and will continue to re-quote 'Steven Brust recommending GOR' anywhere Steven Brust gets discussed online. The Steven Brust recommending GOR quote also lead to to my working hypothesis of:

If Heinlein inspired a never ending series of libertarian writers, well then John Norman's GOR books inspired and showed that skeevy sex sells in fantasy and scifi. 

originally posted August 11th - August 23th in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3