SF-LOVERS Digest Volume 01 100% completion.
SFL Volume 01 started on September 9 1979 and lasted until June 30 1980, with 175 total Digest Issues.
Overall, reading the SF-LOVERS mailing archive has been a good idea. Lots of interesting discussion, with only a few things that aged super badly. The mailing list maintainers (Brodie@PARC-MAXC & DUFFY@MIT-AI) deserved raises or demotions/pay cuts for all the work they put in on it (since the SF-LOVERS mailing ran ontop of 100% taxpayer funded Offical ARPANET networks/servers).
-Distinct posting persona's have emerged. People from UCLA-Security mostly post about non-print scifi media, a SuperMechaGodzilla style troll has appeared along with a tech-fetisher that maps everything to it's equivalent in Larry Niven's stories (lightsabers=variable blades, superconducters, klingons=kzinti, etc). Besides Stallman, Don Woods the godfather of cRPGs + roguelike games started posting in the SF-LOVERS mailing list....am now waiting for the people responsible for creating TCP/IP, HTML, etc to appear.
-MZB/Darkover chat mostly died off at the 48% completion mark, while Zelazny's AMBER series only got mentioned majorly by the guy that triggered jng2058. My back-burnered theory that Philip Jose Farmer was the Neil Gaiman of his era keeps getting fueled up whenever PJF stories come up.
-The burgeoning Star Wars chat in SF-LOVERS got segregated to a special PM-only SF-LOVERS edition where Star Wars spoiler discussions were 100% ok after Empire Strike Back came out. The PM edition Star Wars chat is very skip-able for a 2020 reader, yet I swear 95.999% of the theories brought up there eventually happened in Star Wars Expanded universe fiction.
-The time in Action Comics where "Superman got temporarily brain-damaged by an enemy, and had a TRS-80 think for him"
-Harry Harrison's BILL THE GALACTIC HERO is my favorite novel of all time, so the funniest thing in the final 18% of SF-LOVERS Digest Vol 01 for me was Harry Harrison's BLOATER drive getting mentioned as a FTL travel device. Then, People who outright said that they'd never read the book it came from (Bill the Galactic Hero) and therefore never realized the BLOATER drive was a joke FTL concept in a very funny satirical mil-scifi novel took Harry Harrison's BLOATER drive concept seriously for 3 very detailed de-bunking posts.
-Not wanting to be captured by HUMAN Naturalists if you're an alien(re: discussion thread on Alien Intelligence tests)
-"the giant mechanical turtles of the ice planet of Hoth"
-VIA GALACTICA the musical
-Something about Harlan Ellison taking some of his lawsuit money winnings to put up a billboard dissing the opposing party at their place of work and/or company HQ
Finally jng2058 posted:
It was a garbage opinion in 1980 <re: AQE@MIT-MC and their 03-19-1980 post "Re: Similarities between "World of Tiers" and "Amber"> , and it's a garbage opinion now. :colbert:
Any post that triggers that much indignation 40 yrs later deserves to be quoted in full.
Trigger warning: it's not just a sh*tpost
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AQE@MIT-MC 03/19/80 15:12:49
Re: Similarities between "World of Tiers" and "Amber".
I just finished reading P. J. Farmer's "World of Tiers" series, and it
reinforces my opinion that Farmer should be prevented from writing
anything longer than a short novel. His short stuff is good, but his
novel series just get totally out of hand. Maybe he needs a good
editor.
However, when I was only partway through the series, I started getting
VERY UPSET because of similarities between it and Zelazny's "Amber"
series, which I consider to be an All Time Classic. I figured that
"Tiers" was just a low-grade re-working of "Amber". Then I thought of
checking the copyright dates, and lo and behold, it is the other way
around. "Amber" looks like a high-grade re-working of "Tiers". Here is
a summary:
The "World of Tiers" series by Philip Jose' Farmer:
The Maker of Universes (1965)
The Gates of Creation (1966)
A Private Cosmos (1968) (my edition has an intro by Zelazny)
Behind the Walls of Terra (1970)
The Lavalite World (1977) (dedication: "For Roger Zelazny,
The Golden Spinner")
The "Amber" series by Roger Zelazny:
Nine Princes in Amber (1970)
The Guns of Avalon (1972)
Sign of the Unicorn (1975) (dedication: "For Jadawin and his
Demiurge, not to forget Kickaha."
Jadiwin and Kickaha are characters
from "World of Tiers", and a Demiurge
is the Creator of the material world,
and probably a pun, too.)
The Hand of Oberon (1976)
The Courts of Chaos (1978)
The similarities: (WARNING: THESE PARAGRAPHS CONTAIN SPOILERS!)l
World of Tiers\ Amber
The series concerns the exploits \ The series concerns the exploits
of an immortal race called "Lords", \ of an immortal royal family,
human-looking but of superhuman \ human-looking but of superhuman
speed and strength. They possess \ speed and strength. They possess
the technology to travel between \ an inborn ability to travel between
universes. They almost never trust \ universes. They almost never trust
each other, and often try to kill \ each other, and often try to kill
each other. They are all descended \ each other. They are all descended
from a great artisan named \ from a great artisan named Dworkin
Shambarimen. The series begins with \ Barimen. The series begins with a
a major character (Wolff) living on \ major character (Corwin) living on
Earth and suffering from amnesia. \ Earth and suffering from amnesia.
The character is swept up into an \ The character is swept up into an
odyssey through the universes, and \ odyssey through the universes, and
eventually finds himself to be one \ eventually finds himself to be one
of the supermen. \ of the supermen.
I'm sure there are more that I've missed.
The tone of the dedications and Zelazny's intro seems to indicate that
Zelazny plagiarized Farmer with Farmer's permission. Also, Farmer has
used many characters created by others, so maybe he doesn't mind
sharing his plots.
Does anyone out there know anything else about the relation of these
series to each other, or other "sharing" by Zelazny?
Jef
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Originally posted June 21st -June 22nd, 2020 18:15 in the SomethingAwful forums Book Barn Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3 thread
