SFL Archives Vol 13 readthrough update 04

 SFL Archives Vol 13

5.9 mb raw text file

100% completion, 198 bookmarks

-A Pacific Bell newsletter reviews William Gibson's NEUROMANCER. The review is ok, however the constant insertions & defensive rebuttal comments by the SFLer reposting the PacBell newsletter review make it a hard read.

-An outright pitch for the San Diego Comic Convention by a SFL convention organizer/convention merchant, which as of 1988 was a strictly non-profit event.

-An SFLer half remembering a Cordwainer Smith aka Paul Linebargers pen-name, and roughly half of the SFL posters chime in to give corrections/clarification/story recommendations on Cordwainer Smith.

(2020 note: Linebarger's work on a Pysops World War 2 manual comes up briefly)

-Fall 1988 twist on matter transportation chat mostly revolves on what happens to the original body, and souls, soul transference in transported entities.

-Lots of discussion about Roger Zelazny's AMBER series, especially the Pattern & the Logrus ability powers.

-1988 being the year of Roddy Piper movies, with HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN and THEY LIVE. Indepth discussion of PHANTASM 2, and behind the scenes leaks on the sets of BATMAN 1989 & STAR TREK 5.

-Science-fiction stories that focused on THE BEATLES the UK Band.

-Lots of buildup for WorldCon 1988 in New Orleans, Louisiana followed up by mostly hushed up talk about how poorly managed everything at WorldCon 1988 was except the Hugo Award.

-Trinary encoding being faster than binary encoding on custom built computer systems....which leaves out the added effort of rewriting code in trinary, then having to support binary & trinary programming, etc etc. 

-A new twist on ALIEN 1979 & ALIENS 1986 discussion: Are the various Alien lifeforms/lifestages sentient or intelligent because they do/do not engage in tool usage? A person who keeps referring to the Space Jockey thing it as a (alien) "mother" leads to inevitable thread confusion due to the Nostromo's AI in Alien 1979 being called "MOTHER" too.

-A SFLer hypothesizes how the Galactic Empire in Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION series would go about creating planets. Weird things like using only comets for planetary construction, then FTL & notFTL used for moving around comet chunks, and other "uhhh what" stuff. 

-Two instances of HG Wells WAR OF THE WORLDS in 1988. A reboot/decades later mini-series adaptation of WotW, plus a 50 yr aniversary rebroadcasting of the WotW radio drama, with 1988 vocal talent and improved audio special effects.

-The surprisingly deep back catalogue of SCHOLASTIC PRESS.

-The many many issues with Larry Niven's SMOKE RING setting, mostly focused on how that atmosphere stays in place, especially the vast quantity of O2.

-STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION Season 2: Beverly Crusher is out, and fans start a letter writing campaign to bring her back.

-Ed Greenwood, creator of TSR's THE FORGOTTEN REALMS setting gets mentioned for the impossibility of the main character in Greenwood's FR novel SPELLFIRE.

(2020 note: It's never a good sign when the creator of the setting is compelled to create a brand new PnP character class to explain all the bullshit their lead character got away with, which is exactly what Greenwood did for his Spellfire novel.)

-SFLer's bring up the C.S. Lewis story most C.S .Lewis fans wish never existed: THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH.

-Orson Scott Card starts reverting back to Mormon fundamentalism after coming under repeated Latter Day Saints leadership pressure for his SECULAR HUMANIST REVIVALS a few years ago. 

-SFLer Larry Klaes goes through Bjo Trimble's 1969 CONCORDANCE & points out most of the errors in it, like Kirk having two brothers?; which takes up 2.5 dedicated SFL Digests. Bjo Trimble responds positively. Near the end of december 1988, Larry Klaes posts an update with corrections to his original fact-checking review of CONCORDANCE.

-One of the best descriptions of why the YA genre exists, and why it has near universal appeal for readers of all ages.

-Utterly terrible fan behavior at conventions & personal fen-dom gathering f the past 4 years (1984-1988) or recent personal fen-dom gathering, with FANS ARE SLANS being used as a negative meme for bad fen-dom behavior.

-Time machines that only work from the time they were turned on leads to one SFLer throwing out an idea of daisy chaining time machines serially until you find a really really ancient Alien built time machine, then short-cut the entire process.

-Allegations of Hugo Award vote count tampering at WorldCon 1988 happens, with muted silence from people who normally respond immediately to all things Hugo Award related. 

-SFLer's start to map the characters, and houses and organizations of Frank Herbert's DUNE series to real life analogues and it is not pretty. 

(2020 note: Fascism allegations, Nazi allegations, race sciencing, this entire discussion thread is super skippable for a 2020 reader.)

-Eleven posts about Robert Anton Wilson discussion closes out 1988. 

SFL Archives Vol 13 readthrough update 01

SFL Archives Vol 13

5.9 mb raw text file

15% completion, 25 bookmarks

-1988 technology level: MS-DOS 2.21, COMPUSERVE, dual floppy disks, monochrome monitors, Leading Edge Word Processor software. The SF-LOVERS mailing list has migrated to new hardware and now there is dedicated @EDU email addresses for SF-LOVERS mailing list submissions & SF-LOVERS administrative questions.

-SFL 1988 Pop-culture mentions: TRANSFORMERS, MY LITTLE PONY, and SMURFS cartoon series. Disney children's movie THE POINT. COLES regional bookstores. First mention of author Jo Clayton.

-1988 starts off with heavy Stephen R Donaldson and his THOMAS COVENANT series discussion, with both sides talking past each other loudly. One side is extremely angry about people dissing Donaldson's writing style/hating on the Thomas Covenant series, and the other side keeps explaining exactly why they diss Donaldson's writing style and why they hate Thomas Covenant the character/the book series.

-Poul Anderson explaining how he came up with his YS stories, Larry Niven clarifying the background of the main character in his RINGWORLD series (Louis Wu is not related to Beowulf Shaeffer or Carlos Wu).

-January 13 1988: Brian Herbert starts the rumor that he will be writing the 7th DUNE novel, and that he has more notes that his father, Frank Herbert, wrote regarding the 7th DUNE novel.

-First mention of Jack Vance's CADWAL CHRONICLES stories in the SFL Archives.

(2020 note: Almost all of the standard Jack Vance tropes apply to the Cadwal Chronicles stories. The big twist for the Cadwal stories is that the "good guys" are thinly disguised white South Afrikaners enforcing apartheid rule over the palette swapped black people that do everything in South Africa on the planet Cadwal.)

-Private investigators or just really creepy people glom onto the "Using Social Media to doxx people" concept, and start making a few of those requests to the SF-LOVERS mailing list.

-An anecdote of Marion Zimmer Bradley redacting a goofly dated "human slide-rule"/"Galactic alien slide rule" string of dialogue comparison in reprints of her earlier story THE BRASS DRAGON. 

-Richard Lupoff aka Dick Lupoff is interviewed/gives feedback to comments made about him to the SF-LOVERS mailing list. Lupoff's interview takes up an entire SFL Digest, and covers upcoming projects/stories due to be published, the terribleness of dealing with Philip Jose Farmer properties, what kind of computer Lupoff uses, Lupoff's 1st job in computing, and how Lupoff tries to highlight hypocrisy in his stories with a weird side-comment about what THE SACRED LOCOMOTIVE FLIES is really about (something about future airlines switching to 100% naked stewardess-prostitutes in the near future.)  

-Suzette Hayden Elgin's OZARK stories, PORTAL (Rob Swigart), PELBAR CYCLE (Paul O. Williams), FOLK OF THE AIR (Peter Beagle), COUNTERFEIT WORLD (Daniel F. Galouyle), Craig Shaw Gardner EBENEZUM & WUNTVOR trilogies, LIEGE KILLER (Christopher Hinz), TOMMYKNOCKERS (Stephen King), ONE HUMAN MINUTE & A PERFECT VACUUM (Stanislaw Lem), REALITY MATRIX (John Dalmas).

-A standard seeming recommendation for Mercedes Lackey's existing stories and her upcoming stories get weird when the SFLer making the recommendation keeps referring to Lackey as 'Misty', which knowing nothing about Mercedes Lackey implies heavy previous contact with Lackey.

-Oddball SF&F story request: A SFLer wants recommendations for any F&SF story which occurs in the Southern temperate zone of an alien planet. AKA "when the people go south, it gets colder rather than warmer". 

-The time that Arthur C Clarke & Isaac Asimov formed a self-appreciation society of two back in the 1950's with declaring each other and themselves the 1st & 2nd best writers in the fields of Science Fiction writing and Science Fact writing.

-6 years after it came out, the movie BLADERUNNER 1982 is now considered prescient and worthy of discussion in the SFL Archives. SFLer's are confused by the plot, the differences in the Philip K Dick story vs the movie, golden eye glows due to replicant-status? or just byproducts of the lighting effects used to film Bladerunner 1982?, etc.

-The (long anticipated by me) FLYING CAR debate finally kicks off in the SFL Archives.

(2020 note: One of the truly surprising things in the SFL Archives readthrough is that it took over 9 years to finally get around to discussing flying cars, which are a common element in SciFi stories of the 1930's - 1970's.) 

-SFL Mark Leeper creates a ASCII flowchart of Zombie movies trying to explain the George Romero & John Russo Zombie movies.

-Oddball 1988 SFLer movie & book request: Any SciFi movies/books made within the past 25 years or so that were made in Spanish. That is no Spanish subtitles, or Spanish language translations of existing books.

-Press release announcement for the upcoming GAYLAXICON 1988. GAYLAXICON 1988 is "a relaxacon/minicon for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Science Fiction Fans and their Friends." No dealers room, or art shows; limited attendance/hotel registration required for attendance.

-A unknown title/author SciFi story where a spaceship going at 99.9999% the speed of light passes through the Solar System, and the relativistic mass effect of that spaceship's speed somehow causes the Earth to suddenly move 10 feet North, and all the effect it has on humans/human environments globally.

 (2020 note: This story sounds amazingly bad.)

SFL Archives Vol 12b readthrough update 02

54% completion, 35 bookmarks. 

-Issue 12 of the WATCHMEN comic written by Alan Moore comes out and so far the SFL Archives reaction to it has been to start mentioning other SciFi stories that did the faked alien invasion scheme earlier than the Watchmen comic.

-Robert Heinlein chat pt 325211321 brings up oddball Heinlein fans that really love NotB, Heinlein's JOB possibly being a homage to the work of James Branch Cabell, Speedtalk, and other synthetic languages such as Loglan. Some of  the SFLer's in the Heinlein discussion thread wanted to create their own unique language for the Internet.

(2020 note:  Nobody ended up predicting LEET SPEAK which is everything the 1987 SFLer's participating in this discussion thread wanted and more.) 

-DARKSWORD, the first non-DRAGONLANCE related series by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman comes out in 1987.

-SFLer's still fixated on the earliest published Science Fiction story continue debating things, with the trips to the moon and interstellar warfare in Lucian of Samosata's really old story A TRUE STORY finally coming up.

(2020 note: By really old, I mean 1700+ years old. Lucian of Samosata lived and died in the 2nd century AD.

-A new Orson Scott Card book, SEVENTH SON, comes out and SFLer's notice that OSC tends to follow the same plot beats in each of stories (gifted child, gifted child trained hard by amoral teachers, gifted child deals with world ending/society ending menace no-one else could deal with, etc.) Additionally, SFLer's note the Mormon influence is getting stronger and stronger in everything new OSC writes.

-An 1987 SFLer makes the comment "While I am a wargamer (for going on 20 yrs), even I find it unbelievable that wargaming would become a worldwide sport of such proportions as described, much less become a replacement for courts".

(2020 note: Valve and their 9 years plus DOTA tournament would have exploded that quoted SFLer's brain.)

 -SIGN OF CHAOS, the 8th Roger Zelazny AMBER book comes out early. SFL reaction is mixed, more than a few SFLer's are catching onto the Arthurian mythos elements in the new AMBER books.

-Larry Niven KNOWN SPACE chat pt 235747: this time it's about Louis Wu, and how Niven's A WORLD OUT OF TIME ties in with/does not tie in with the KNOWN SPACE series and the Integral Trees series.

-The first 7th Doctor DOCTOR WHO episodes starring Sylvester McCoy come out, and SFLer's note how the Doctor Who episodes are being aired the in same timeslot as mega-popular long running British tv series CORONATION STREET. 

(2020 note: The legacy of John Nathan-Turner being an exceptionally bad people-person and divisive Doctor Who showrunner accelerates.)

-Rumors of a bunch of Californians and Oregon people trying to buy up land and get a private road with no speed limits/no-law enforcement stretching from Northern California to mid-Oregon.

(2020 note: While amazing sounding. this is probably a urban myth.)

-Eric S. Raymond, a relatively well known computer field personality in the 1990's, starts posting in the SF-LOVERS mailing list. 

(2020 note: Eric S. Raymond wrote an essay called THE CATHEDRAL AND THE BAZAAR which anyone who has dabbled in software development in the past 20 years has probably heard of.)

-That rumored in-the-works California-Oregon private road kicks off discussion of Harlan Ellison writing a similar themed story named ALONG A SCENIC ROUTE. 

(2020 note: The details of this short story heavily reminded of Steve Jackson Games CAR WARS, and the videogame series CARMAGEDDON.)

-A Writers guide to STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION leaks out, as does news of Gene Roddenberry being moved to a purely advisory role Star Trek: TNG, and Leonard Nimoy leaves himself open to appearing on any future STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION episodes. Walter Koenig writing 2 episodes/guest-starring in one episode of the forgotten 1970's SciFi series THE STARLOST comes up.

-Julian May starts her "near-modern day" prequel series to her totally batshit-insane PLIOCENE EXILE series with INTERVENTION coming out in 1987.

-A few SFLer's feel brave enough to start posting that Piers Anthony isn't that great and keeps slightly rewriting the same book over and over (same as Jack Chalker) getting more pervy all the time (same as Jack Chalker), while Steven Brust's work is getting praised more and more.

-Frank Herbert CHAPTERHOUSE DUNE discussion. with the weirdness of the last 2 books being noted, and some wondering at the what the 7th book DUNE Frank Herbert never started would have been about.

-An SFLer makes a case for Roger Zelazny borrowing from Michael Moorcock ELRIC stories when originally creating Amber and Prince Corwin. Other SFlers comment on this theory adding in other Michael Moorcock stories and other authors such as Poul Anderson. 

-HERBIG-HARO (Harry Turtledove), the work of James Branch Cabell, WIZARD OF THE PIGEONS, the novella EIFELHEIM (Michael Flynn), STAR BRIDGE (Jack Williamson), IT (Stephen King).

-1987 Canada being a powerhouse of relatively cheap television production vs the USA, if only more people, companies, Hollywood, etc would notice it. 

(2020 note: Oh people did catch on fast. Around the 1990's lots of lower-budget tv series started to relocate to Canada, only it was Vancouver Canada everyone went to , and not Toronto Canada like the SFLer who posted this preferred.)

-Alfred Bester, author of SciFi classics like THE STARS MY DESTINATION and THE DEMOLISHED MAN, death notice. 

-The pilot episode of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION comes out. SFLer's mostly enjoy it while commenting on the weakness of the plot and the giant jellyfish and Trio seeming useless, and the tired romance plot from STAR TREK 1 being recycled for Troi & Riker. The Leonard McCoy cameo was nicely received, with SFLer's wondering how many other main ST:TOS cast will be appearing on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

However the saucer separation sequence of the Enterprise NCC-1701-D in the pilot episode is something new and unexpected and SFLer's start wondering how often that will happen in future ST:TNG episodes along with the Warp Speed scale changes. The previews of the upcoming 2nd ST:TNG episode have SFLer's noting the extreme similarities to the Star Trek: TOS episode the NAKED TIME and wondering how many TNG episodes will be recycled TOS /ST movie content.

-SFLer's live-blog their WorldCon 1987 convention with a least of at least 24+ SF-LOVERS attending the SF-LOVERS @ party. Also SFler shout-outs happen for the Netherlands who will be hosting WorldCon 1990.

SFL Archives Vol 12a readthrough update 02

 39% completion, 40 bookmarks

-Evelyn C. Leeper posts an exhaustive POV-review of attending BOSKONE 24. Buried in this POV-review was that going forward Boskone 25 & all future Boskone conventions will be massively cutting down on the big media presentations Boskone conventions are known for in favor of emphasizing the literature, art, and fan elements of "normal SF&F conventions".

 Does the organization running Boskone have the obligation to keep the big media presentations that made earlier Boskone conventions such must-attend events?  Vs "what would smaller less professionally run conventions do given the same circumstances" discussion.

A few attendees/big media organizers of earlier Boskone conventions respond to the E. Leeper review Boskone 24 saying Boskone built up a rep doing big media presentations/many people attended Boskone solely to watch the slate of movies & tv-series that Boskone conventions air on-site.

Responses on this trickle in through at least mid-March 1987. Regardless of their stance on downsizing Boskone, or preferring professionally run conventions vs 100% volunteer conventions, everyone agrees that aa future Boskone PR releases/pre-ticket sales for BOSKONE 25 better mention the deemphasizing on big media presentations OR ELSE...fans will riot (worse than they already do partying at previous Boskone's).

-More than a few 1987 SFL Digests devoted strictly to the DERYNI series by Katherine Kurtz shows that Ursula Le Guin's underhanded attempt to gank a competitor had little long-term impact.

-SFLer's correct people who conflate the ALAN QUATERMAIN fantasy adventures & the QUATERMASS SF serials are about the same person, but just renamed for International markets. They are not.

(2020 note: I admit to being one of the people who conflated the two series (damn that almost identical name), then the SFL Archives let me know I was being an idiot.)

-Terminology discussion over SF vs SCI-FI vs SKIFFY fandom terms intensifies with multiple SFL Digests dedicated to hashing over meanings and intent and dismissive reactions fueling more splintering of SF fendom. Plus I learn a new new terms like SER-FEN, SER-CONS (Serious fans/Conventions). Some STAR TREK fans prefer being referred to as Trekkies or Trekkers or Trekists,etc. 

(2020 note: All of this terminology discussion is very passionate and has remained a running topic of discussion ever since 1987 started, and I do not see terminology discussion dying away anytime soon).

-SFLer's have an evil-genius idea of creating SF Literature course assignments dedicated to comparing Cordwainer Smith's NORSTRILIA to Frank Herbert's DUNE. 

-A 1987 SFLer is tired of computers in the DOCTOR WHO series always being bad, and wonders if it is a legacy of the tv-show being created at the peak of Cold War nuclear war fears, or if computers are a easy punching target.

-One of the weirder characters in the 1st THIEVES WORLD shared fantasy world anthology novel gets discussed by 1987 SFLer's. The many implication factors and weirdness of Lythande the cross-dressing Blue Mage, created by Marion Zimmer Bradley. SFLer's keep comparing Lythande to Red Sonja, and the many creepy implications in the backstory  Roy Thomas created for Red Sonja.

-Stovington Preparatory Academy being one of the more obscure cross-references linking late 1970's - 1980's Stephen King stories together. (2020 note: this would qualify as a good JEOPARDY final question.)  

-The first appearance of government coverups of UFO's conspiracy theories in the SFL Archives. 

(2020 note: I expected more of a reaction than what happened. Instead it was just two people parachuting into the SF-LOVERS mailing list trying to drum up interest and then bailing out when no-one globally responded to them.)

-Tanith Lee has been consistently recommended to fantasy genre fans ever since SFL Vol 01, I just never got around to mentioning her work before until some SFLer described one of her series "the flat earth series" . 

-Discussion of what is the worse Robert Heinlein story ever written. SFLer's respond with replies going across the entire gamut of Robert Heinlein's writing career.

(2020 note: Charles Stross, John Scalzi, and John Ringo, who have all written/rewritten Heinlein stories would disagree with everyone posting on this subject.)

-Death notice for Richard Sapir, co-creator of the THE DESTROYER series pulp martial arts-men's adventure novellas.

-BUSSARD RAMJETS maybe being impossible in real life, as per a  3rd hand report about a Usenet person named Gary Allen checking R.W. Bussard's original paper on the subject and finding errors in it.

-SFLer's discuss the final book in the GANDALARA CYCLE written by Randall Garrett and his wife.  (2020 note: The Gandalara Cycle was a serviceable total-ripoff of the BARSOOM/JOHN CARTER stories, however the final book shit the bed hard. Having it take place in the distant past, and the Mediterranean Sea reveal was bad, even before it went with the "we will climb out of the Mediterranean basin over generations and evolve into future homo-sapiens" ending. 

-LOOKING BACKWARD by Edward Bellamy, a 1888 futuristic utopian SF/fantasy book about what a transported through time main character discovers in the far future.  

-First mention of Terry Pratchett's DISCWORLD series in the SFL Archives, with the SFLer really enjoying EQUAL RITES, and noting that Fantasy addicts will probably enjoy the (parodic content in) COLOUR OF MAGIC & LIGHT FANTASTIC.

 -A article from the St. Louis Dispatch newspaper about the in-production movie SPACEBALLS, with a description of how a certain scene is being shot and a brief interview with Mel Brooks about Spaceballs. 

-KNIGHT LIFE by Peter David, a reimagining of the Arthurian Mythos taking place in the 1980's, with all the expected Arthurian Mythos betrayals/drama/etc.  

-The HORSECLAN series is brought up by SFLer Bruce. Says that the Horseclan series is readable fun SF, but then mentions tackiness levels similar to GOR, before going on to mention the flashback within a flashback within a flashback with a flashback the author uses to pad out the word count of sequels.

-Roger Zelazny fans note the DAMNATION ALLEY movie adaptation as being why Zelazny stopped selling the movie rights to his work. 

-A rare mention of German language SF&F. Wolfgang Hohlbein and their DER STEIN DER MACHT series. 

-Dean Koontz used to be known for writing SF stories, 1986-1987 marks Koontz's shift into suspense-horror stories.

 -Review of a new DISNEYLAND park ride called STAR TOURS, which takes guests on a STAR WARS tour to the planet Endor. (2020 note: The review contains things that are mostly of interest to amusement Park ride fans, and amateur Disney Kingdom historians.)

-A director, production company, and a few actors are signed up for an movie adaptation of George RR Martin's NIGHTFLYERS novella.

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 01

Current status: 10% completion, 21 bookmarks on SFL Archives Volume 11 readthrough 

This is going to be a shorter than normal update, but it's all fresh material. SFL Volume 11 is about half a Megabyte shorter than SFL Volume 10, and lots of interesting and terrible movies are coming out circa 1986. LABYRINTH! SPACE CAMP! COBRA! ALIENS 2! STAR TREK 4! BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA! etc, etc.

Actual SFL Volume 11 weird, bizarre, horrifying and retroactively interesting things:  

-Should books be marked scarlet letter style regarding the sexual slants in them? (gay/lesbian/cis/pedophile/dolphin/centaurs/etc)...

-Sexual slant chat lead to SFLers commenting on Anne McCaffrey's DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN books, with how most of the dragon-riders seem to be forced into being bisexual by mental-links with their dragons. Lots and lots of Pern chat, with "impress" being mentioned a whole lot. Having never read any of the Pern books, guessing "impress" is a Pern universe stand-in word for non-consent.

-The 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster happens. Thankfully, none of the usual SFL edgelords do their expected edgelord takes. Instead the SFL reaction to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster is universal horror and condolences for everyone directly affected by the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster....and within hours, one SFLer has Zapruder Film analyzed the Space shuttle launch tapes and detected flames shooting out of one the solid-fuel boosters. 

The reason why the Challenger disaster got me so mad on the SA forums/gets me so mad IRL is that the Challenger did not have to launch then; there was a massive political push to launch the Space Shuttle Challenger ASAP. 

Why? So that the TEACHER IN SPACE project's scheduled broadcast of 2 15-minute science lessons from the Space Shuttle in orbit to all the children in the USA would happen on schedule and bring the USA/NASA/President Reagan much prestige.  Instead, rules got ignored and bypassed, and tragedy happened. 

Although it's kind of old, Diane Vaughan's THE CHALLENGER LAUNCH DECISION is my preferred recommendation to other people because the book goes into great detail about the many factors to the Challenger Space Shuttle launching when it did, AND Diane Vaughan flat-out admitted in the introduction that she had a canned conclusion ready, but all the evidence and interviews she did as research made her change her mind.

 -Frank Herbert, original DUNE series author death notice.  

-Peri (Nicola Bryant), a original DOCTOR WHO TV series Companion triggered a few proto-incel SFLers hard and the triggered proto-incels get rock-hard/cheer when Nicola Bryant is dropped from the Doctor Who series.

-The DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN weirdness discussion IMPRESSES more SFLers into posting about Dragonriders of Pern series weirdness in a vicious feedback loop.

-The crime Roj Blake gets framed for in iconic SciFi tv-series BLAKES 7 gets mentioned and it is extremely terrible in a "why did you pick that crime, BBC/Blake's 7 showrunner for the main character?"

-Someone tries to get the SF-LOVERS mailing list moderator-maintainer nominated for a 1986/1987 HUGO AWARD, category: Best Professional Editor; since the SF-LOVERS mailing list goes out to over 1200 people. The SF-LOVERS mailing list moderator-maintainer then explains, in small words suitable for children, why that would be a BAD IDEA. something something federal investigation something stealing government resources something something Hugo Awards get more press than discussion groups at Boskone conventions.

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

SFL Archives Vol 09 readthrough update 02

Vol 09 covered all of 1984, which explains why Vol 09 never seemed to end. Reading SFL Vol 10 is going to be much worse, since Vol 10 covers the entirety of 1985 while being twice the size of the endless seeming SFL Vol 09.

 -A request from the current mailing list mod for SFL subscribers to cut back on outright ads/product reviews/pricing/prices, since the SF-LOVERS mailing list runs ontop of government funded ARPANET networks/nodes and absolutely must not be seen to be selling things.

-BackStabMod can't stop posting thinly disguised product reviews about what amazing things BackStabMod has encountered recently in SFF. 

-anticipation for the upcoming DUNE movie has (mostly) overriden Stars Wars chat in the SFL archives towards the end of 1984, similar to the 3 or more dedicated Dune 2020 movie threads scattered around the SA forums. Dune comes out at end of 1984 and gets very mixed SFLer reactions. Same thing happens with 2010, but with lesser buildup, and more anger since 2001 the movie set such a high bar.

-lots of Thomas Pynchon chat, with how readable you find Gravity's Rainbow or how far you managed to get into GRAVITY'S RAINBOW being a litmus test for true literature fans.

-circa November 1984 Harlan Ellison discussion brings up the pitfalls of being an author, with stalker fans, asshole fans, kleptomaniac fans, fans doing "ironic hate crimes" on author property, etc.

-the movie BRAINSTORM (1983) gets mentioned again after literal years closing off a dangling thread-topic from earlier SFL archives chat (way back in Vol 3 or 4 I think). Brainstorm 1983 getting delayed lead to an interesting-to-me SFL segue into "insurance polices as applied to Hollywood movies/tv production" that I found deeply fascinating because those topics never get mentioned much.

-If you liked Iain Banks FEERSUM ENDJINN, you may want to check out Russell Hoban's "RIDDLEY WALKER", which did something similar 14 yrs before Feersum Endjinn came out.

-Fans of Tim Powers and Steven Brust: ANUBIS GATES and JHEREG both get mentioned for the first time in the SFL archives.

-heated "Is Richard Bachman a pen-name of Stephen King?" debate kicks off. The answer is Look it up yourself

-Someone does a big part-1 effort-post describing and charting out Jorge Luis Borges' "LIBRARY OF BABEL", but gets no feedback on it so the SFL effort-poster never posts part 2. 

(2020 sidenote:  I feel you brother from 16 yrs ago, f**k them.)

-Anger and debate movie book novelizations not matching up 1:1 to the movie, or vice versa has been a running theme since 1979(SFL Vol 01). BUCKAROO BANZAI (1984) breaks this trend, with the book setting the tone the movies budget/casting/directing could not match

-TERMINATOR 1 came out, starting the rise of 1980's one-liner action movies

-SFLer's bring up one of MAD MAGAZINE's earlier attempts to branch out into non-print media: the 1967 Mad Monster Party movie slash cartoon.

-Much to my disappointment, David Eddings does get mentioned for a 2nd time in SFL Vol 09. To add to the pain, a spirited defense of MZB's strongly written female characters also happens.

-1980's_BotL/Duntemann continues to troll and hate on published fiction authors, especially R. A. MacAvoy. 1980's_BotL/Duntemann also outed themselves as an author (or re-doxxed themselves since I don't keep track of all the SFL author self-doxxes) and stuff now starts to makes sense. Why? The published fiction authors being trolled and hated on managed to get book deals, while Duntemann up to this point has been unable to get book deals at all.

-the running joke "Yngvi is a louse!!" gets cited and expanded upon but never quite nailed down before SFL Vol 09 ends

-fittingly, SFL Vol 09 ends with a "Boskone XXII Filksong contest" announcement, completing the "stuff I hate seeing in the SFL archives" disappointment trifecta. 

originally posted August 8th - August 10th in 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 04 readthrough

1981 was a murders row of now-iconic movies. John Carpenter's THE THING just got teased for a mid 1982 release(stoked for SFL reactions), while Dino DeLaurentis DUNE got mentioned as recently entering pre-production. In addition to the movies already mentioned in SFL Vol 03 posts, CONAN THE BARBARIAN 1982 was initially slated for a December 1981 release date.

-The pre-release press announcement of BLADERUNNER came out, and Bladerunner chat has already started breaking SFL poster's brains.

-Additional RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK chat focused on how long the Nazi submarine trip took to the sub-base island and how Indy stayed in place outside the sub and WHY did the sub go into dive mode before the movie switched into map view.

(my take: Because the Nazi's just raided a ship and wanted/needed to run the f**k away undetected before any Sea-cops arrived, )

-Reated chemistry nerd debates about non-digestable reversed pair chemical compounds entering FDA testing that I am guessing will officially be known to history as "NUTRASWEET"

-Release of proposed HDTV specifications causes similar heated debate among the SFL hardware enthusiasts. In Yoda speak, "Begun the graphics wars have".

-In August 1981 someone worries about/predicts whatever the f**k the Sad Puppies attempt a few decades later with the Hugo Award

-The trickle of barely disguised ad product-reviews in SFL archives kicked off by the sneery toned MENSA recruitment ad has turned into a stream

-The first occurrence of Flame On/Flame OFF in SFL archives

-DolphinF**ker discusses immortality and the various goals they have left to accomplish before dying....interspecies sex with aquatic mammals is oddly (or not so oddly) left off their life-goal list

-(august 1981) 3 spaceprobes are currently in the works for the upcoming close swing-by of Halley's Comet 

-The runaway growth of STAR WARS fandom continues to mark it's mark in the SFL archives. Despite a murderer's row of fantasy and scifi movies being released in 1981, discussion about Star Wars lore/character lineage/bounty hounters/spoilers/naming conventions and Star Wars trivia grow and grow in the SFL archives, often requiring special SFL Digest SPOILER tags.

-Graphics fans will be interested to know that "aliasing" and "anti-aliasing" get mentioned for the 1st time in the SFL archives (that I can recall) when SFL users post their SIGGRAPH 1981 attendance reviews.

-Spoilers about the upcoming STAR TREK 2 movie where Spock dies/not dies, and the SFL talk that ensues. Gene Roddenberry the Bitter continues a decades long "notMad" pout.

-A few self proclaimed Cinematographic Historians start offering trivia challenges to see what earlier movies Lucas/Spielberg/others ripped off in certain visually stunning scenes Lucas/Spielberg/etc shot. No one cares, almost no one responds; especially after the 1st round of trivia question answers prove to be really stupid, even for 1981.

-Special effects people who worked on Star Wars 1977 + maybe also Star Wars 1980 notice that Star Wars fandom isn't subsiding and start pimping themselves/scamming SW fans at SIGGRAPH 1981 with faked Return of the Jedi "test" footage.

-In the year 1981 SFL chat has been bringing up a long long dead fantasy author. This decades dead author was supposedly more than a slight influence on JRR Tolkien. Besides that. the only reason why I mention this is because the same phrases and wordings people use to describe Gene Wolfe's writing style and stories are getting mentioned in similar ways for this long long dead fantasy genre author. For people interested, the long dead fantasty genre authors name is E.R. Eddison.

-The mailing list maintainers fessed up to lots of behind-the-scenes admin stuff about failing hardware, mis-configured scripts resulting in delayed/missing/duplicate/erroneous SFL Digests being published. Since bandwidth/computing power back in 1981 was a rounding error of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the bandwidth/computer power the year 2020 have, these were serious issues.

-Using RotLA examples, Film insurance/film insurance payouts got explained.

-Hardware failure explained why '50s/'60s/'70s juvenile entertainment chat got cut off so abruptly in the SFL Vol 03 archive. 2 special makeup issues of the SFL Digest were sent out, composed entirely of March 1981-June 1981 'juvenile entertainment' SFL submissions

-A small digression into sharing and listing out the various known Pseudonyms genre authors had used up. Much of this info will be found at https://www.isfdb.org

-An upsurge in discussions of Marion Zimmer Bradley published work, and MZB in general, which I power-skimmed over heavily.

-Every San Francisco resident/former resident of San Francisco chimed in when someone asked the SFL Digest if EMPEROR NORTON was made up.

-The SFL archives message that inspired me to re-read the SF-LOVERS Digest from the beginning, this time taking notes

quote:

    Date: September-ish 1981

    From: REDACTED at RE-DAC-TED

    Subject: SF-Lovers Query

    My 13 year old son is reading the GOR series.

    I have heard that it is not only badly written (which I expect), but also overly sexist, Sado-masochistic, and violent.

    Has anybody read it? Any comments on it?

    REDA CTED-

originally posted between July 6th -July 12th in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3