83% completion, 70 bookmarks
-Ralph Bakshi and his habit of ripping off other artists without credit. Vaughn Bode & NEKRON-99, Holst, Ian Miller, etc.
-Most of Alan E Nourse's stories being set in a "Hospital Earth" universe, where Earth is one of the few planets that has thought of medicine and medicine is Earth's ticket into the galactic community. (2020 note: Very ironic circa 2020. And yet...given all the various terrible things that 2020 has delivered,...still very possible.)
-DREAM GAMES (the sort of direct sequel to WARGAMES 1983), terrible movie BIOHAZARD, the SF stories of Ian Wallace, THE LEAGUE OF GREY EYED WOMEN, terrible movie SUPERGIRL, George RR Martin WILD CARDS anthology discussion. Raymond Chandler supposedly writing a few fantasy stories before his death, belated A. Bertram Chandler death notice.
-IMAX discussion. What theaters have IMAX circa 1987, the history of IMAX, various IMAX movies regularly shown at various museums/IMAX installations, the limitations of IMAX films, everything IMAX hardware related coming from one Canadian(?) company.
-Robert Heinlein chat pt 95: Comparison's of Heinlein's default viewpoint characters.The lost juevinile stories of RAH. TMIAHM: are earthers or the loonies the real barbarians? Women's equality Heinlein character defense. Heinlein writing on homesexuality. SFLer's dropping way-too-revealing details defending Heinlein such as: "I was a feral kid, Heinlein's work in many ways raised me (instead of my parents)". or "I am in a group marriage, and see no problems with Heinlein".
-EE Smith discussion. For the most part, even the majority of 1987 SFLers found them terrible and beyond sexist and wooden and r=a=c=i=s=t. The skeevy thing about inbreeding in the Lensmen books comes up and up and up, much like the people in 1987 & now reading about Smith's view on race, gender equality, you name it, it all dated super-bad by 1987 and even worse to a 2020 reader of EE Smith's work.
-Orscon Scott Card writing the script for the ANIMATED STORIES FROM THE BOOK OF MORMON....source is a SFLer who read an ad for it in the University of Utah student newsletter.
-C.S. Lewis NARNIA chat. SFLer's reminscing about the series, the hidden or not so hidden Christian analogues in the Narnia stories. Talking animals without sin, no concept of whatever "a neevil" is. Arguing about who died in the Narnia stories, who got too old to return to Narnia, etc. The SFLer who thinks they know LORD OF THE RINGS lore better than J.R.R. Tolkien is pulling the same crap here.
-First mention of ROADSIDE PICNIC by the Strugastki brothers in the SFL Archives.
-SFLer's briefly start to theory-craft the PERFECT CREATURE that could live in the most environments of the universe, as it exists circa 1987, as possible. (2020 note: I nominate HP Lovecraft's Shoggoth.)
-STAR TREK 4 nitpicking...why didn't the universial translator work on the alien vs the alien cloud thing in TOS episode Metamorphis, why there is Klingon markings on Romulan ships, etc. plus normal STAR TREK: TOS nitpicking about Khan, the Eugenics war, time travel, etc.
-BOSKONE 25 update. The NEFSA finally releases their "we are burned and shrinking all future Boskone's. Here's what is changing" letter. Anger of SFLer's at being excluded fades, now chat on the subject has morphed into how SFLer's would run SF&F conventions, ignoring many things like licensing fees and state labor laws in the process.
-Harlan Ellison chat pt 37a: Harlan Ellison career trivia. Ellison's continued issues dealing with Hollywood. Harlan Ellison has no money because it all goes to cover lawyer fees. Harlan Ellison is loaded and sues out of righteous fury. Lawsuit Settlement money. Harlan Ellison cleverly cornering the market on audiobooks of Harlan Ellison's stories by cutting out all the middle-men and voicing/producing/selling the cassette tapes(audiobooks) via mail-order or direct phone calls.
-First mention of WHITE DWARF magazine in the SFL Archives. White Dwarf is/was the magazine Games Workshops ran/runs as a loss-leader to promote their line of wargaming products/supplemental materials for wargaming.
-1987 FAKE NEWS or FACT? Secondhand report of a Santa Cruz CA health food restaurant, McDharma's being sued to death by McDonalds over name similarities. The upcoming 1988 movie COMING TO AMERICA will have a similar sideplot going on with McDowells.
Don’t forget that McDonald’s is nothing like McDowell’s. While McDonald’s has the golden arches, McDowell’s has the golden arcs. McDonald’s has the Big Mac, but McDowell’s has the Big Mick. They both have two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions. But McDonald’s buns have sesame seeds. McDowell’s buns have no seeds.
-CODEX SERAPHINIANUS comes up again. SFLer's who have copies of it relate their efforts to decode it, one SFLer goes deep into the national library system (including microfilm hunts) looking for details on it, and one SFLer starts going conspiracy theory/"what-does this mean??" when finding a cut-out from a magazine "31" in the backcover of their copy.
-The murder-suicide details of Alice Bradley Sheldon aka James Tiptree Jr's get revealed to the SFL Archives.
-Barry Warsaw from the US National Bureau of Standards (aka the NIST) wants to crowd-source the naming convention/names for the next cycle of computer workstations coming into the US National Bureau of Standards, and asks the SF-LOVERS mailing list for suggestions.
-Joan Vinge and her work discusion pt 3. A looooooong article about Joan Vinge is posted to the SFL Archives, so long that it takes up 4 complete SFL digests, and the beginning of a 5th SFL digest.
-STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION stuff. David Gerrold roles the dice on getting a better contract with Paramount and Gene Roddenberry over his ST:TNG work. SFLer's start doubting on why WESLEY CRUSHER exists in ST:TNG, and how much a drag Wesley Crusher will be in the ST:TNG episodes. Finally the casting announcements for the ST:TNG cast comes out, and you can see exactly where Gene Roddenberry's skeeviness intervened in the casting decisions.
(2020 note: The May 1987 SFLer's were on the right track regarding Wesley Crusher. ST: TNG casting announcements & Gene Roddenberry skeeviness explained: the 3 previous acting roles/movies attributed to Marina Sirtis in the ST:TNG casting announcement all featured toplessness+ from Marina Sirtis.)
-FIASCO by Stanislaw Lem.
(2020 note: Buy FIASCO ASAP, read it. FIASCO throws away dozens of plot-points, situations, and technology concepts that SF authors following in his wake have expanded into pentalogies of content.)
-Banned books discuusion thanks to a few SFLer's noting that Florida Bay County School added a book to their regional banned book list, with other SFLer's responding with what other books have been banned in the USA, previously or right-now circa 1987.
List of banned books follows to close out this readthrough update summary.
Three Comedies of American Life
Shane
The Great Gatsby
A Separate Peace
The Red Badge of Courage
A Farewell to Arms
Intruder in the Dust
Lost Horizon
Oedipus Rex
Watership Down
Deathwatch
Death Be Not Proud
Animal Farm
Tale Blazer Library
Best Short Stories
Twelfth Night
Arrangement in Literature
After the First Death
The Crucible
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Long Day's Journey Into Night
The Outsiders
The Pearl
Fahrenheit 451
Alas, Babylon
The Prince and the Pauper
The Emperor Jones
Winterset
The Man Who Came to Dinner
The Little Foxes
The Glass Menagerie
Mister Roberts
A Separate Peace
Adventures in English Literature
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies (Casebook Edition)
The Call of the Wild
Great Expectations
The Canterbury Tales
Brave New World
The Mayor of Casterbridge
The Merchant of Venice
Player Piano
In Cold Blood
The Inferno (Ciardi translation)
Promethius Unbound
Oedipus the King
Hippolytus
King Lear
Ghosts
Miss Julie
On Baile's Strand
Desire Under the Elms
Wuthering Heights
Hamlet
Major British Writers
Growing Up
A Raisin in the Sun
The Old Man and the Sea
To Kill a Mockingbird
Exploring Life Through Literature
The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles
McTeague
The Fixer
Of Mice and Men
Never Cry Wolf
About David
I am the Cheese
