SFL Archives Vol 12a readthrough update 01

16% completion, 26 bookmarks

-Forest J Ackerman is the very first topic of discussion in SFL Vol 12a, with some SFLer's considering Ackerman a annoying dinosaur of SF fen-dom, others enjoying Ackerman's presence at SF conventions, and a smaller set of others lusting after Ackerman's massive collection of SF memorabilia.

-Norman Spinrad takes out a full-page in the SFWA BULLETIN to withdraw all of his future work from Nebula Award nomination, in reaction to his latest book not getting a Nebula Award nomination.

-SFLer's try to figure out all the thinly disguised SF author references & in-jokes from James Blish's BLACK EASTER. 

 -The Alderson (space) Drive in a recent Jerry Pournelle novel annoys a SFLer enough to post about it. Other SFLer's mention a future JPL employee, Dan Alderson, came up with the concept for it while attending CalTech.

-STAR TREK 4's change of tone and abandonment of standard STAR TREK-ian events/plotting frustrates some SFLers who wanted a Khan/Trelane/Balance of Terror stand-off situation in Star Trek 4 vs the save-the-whales eco-conservation that really happened. George Takei starts his hobby of low-key hating on bigger-name/better paid co-actors (this time it's Christopher Lloyd from ST3).

-CJ Cherryh's CHANUR'S HOMECOMING comes out and gets discussed for a few days, while SFLer's solidly ignore Stephen Donaldson's recent book, THE MIRROR OF HER DREAMS, to rehash THOMAS COVENANT being terrible.

-John Varley's BLUE CHAMPAGNE comes out, and most SFLers think it is a massive drop-off in quality compared to John Varley's earlier work. 

-Andy Griffith, SF actor? SFLers remember SALVAGE 1, a lesser know TV show Andy Griffith starred/worked on.

-Douglas Adams DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY is due out May 1987 with a 100k first printing run. 

-Steven Brust's TECKLA comes out, and SFLer's note the drastic tone change in it vs earlier Taltos books, then start to debate Taltos series lore. SKZB chimes in clarify a plot point about the love-interest SFLers got really hung up on about (a murder for hire offer vs actual character intent).

-First mention of Tad Williams, SF&F author in the SFL Archives.

-An SFLer claims that Roger Zelazny's initial plan for the AMBER series was to write one novel from each of the royal sibling's viewpoints, but got bored or frustrated whiteboarding out nine different POV scenarios. Another SFLer puts together a adjusted chronology of AMBER series events now that Merlin appears to be sticking around.  

-Marion Zimmer Bradley DARKOVER series discussion makes a serious return, with 2nd hand anecdotes of how controlling MZB is regarding DARKOVER Live Action RolePlay efforts.

-A Heinlein Defense Squad member says that Robert Heinlein wrote the first "generation ship" story and that everyone else has been copying Heinlein. When presented with evidence that multiple authors had written "generation ship" stories BEFORE Heinlein, the HDS person says that doesn't matter, Heinlein's version was superior and everyone writing AFTER Heinlein published his "generation ship" story used Heinlein as a source, and not those (filthy) non-Heinlein authors.

-St. Martin's Press buys TOR Books. St. Martin's Press also commits to adding two dedicated SciFi & Horror paperback lines effective Spring 1987. 

-SFLer's make a convincing case for the 1958 movie THE LOST MISSILE having a near perfect blend of stock military film footage and SciFi plot. 

-SFL perennial topic of discussion "matter transportation" has a Larry Niven KNOWN SPACE "stepping disks/transfer booths" fixation in late 1986/early 1987. It kicks off with a "why not use those stepping disks/transfer booths to travel across the galaxy?" And the complications that would ensue from the "beyond-complex 300+ digit" dial in codes needed to transfer-skip from your front door to the Lake BoilingHot Resort at Wolf 359. 

Then GODEL NUMBERING numbering(first mentioned in SFL Vol 02's version of "matter transportation chat") gets brought up as a solution to managing those "beyond-complex 300+ digit" codes. Then "what about: having to take account of rotational spin and gravity effect differences at the origin points/destination points" gets brought up, etc.

(2020 note: At the accounting for rotational spins/gravity effects point of this discussion thread, I started thinking of the 1994 movie STARGATE, and how the Stargate did all that via "quantum wormhole" magic. Then I realized the Stargate symbols on the Stargates are actually symbolic beyond-massive Godel Numbers, and everything started clicking together in Stargate SG-1 series lore for me.)  

-1987 SFLer's nitpicking/defending the 1983 movie WARGAMES leads to the first mention of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster in the SFL Archives.

-Polly Freas death notice. Polly Freas was involved in SF&F from the 1940's onward, and edited a few SF&F books along with her husband, SF artist Frank Kelly Freas.

-Anime chat. Lots and lots of anime series chat. The original series vs dubs/adaptions by HARMONY GOLD and whatever Macek is. All the favorite iconic anime series are mentioned. Serious confusion results over protoculture being the dub-word used to tie 3 different anime series together for ROBOTECH.

Special note goes to whoever said: "Of greater interest are other Japanese Series which probably will never make it to the American scene. Mobile-suit Gundam, Zeta-Gundam, Heavy Metal L'Giam, Aura Battler Dunbine and the list goes on."

  (2020 note: The varied usage and definitions of "protoculture" powering everything, being a food source, etc in the ROBOTECH series has September 2020 me ready to offer this fresh take: Protoculture in the ROBOTECH series is THE STUFF. Tagline: "Are you eating it or is it eating you?")  

-The revival of the SF vs SCI-FI vs SKIFFY fandom uh fendom debate from SFL Archives Volume 08.

-James P Hogan is noted as complaining in a interview about how little research most writers do on the subject on which they are writing.  (2020 note: James P Hogan suffered from the opposite of this...he did too much research on made up scientific theories, while comparatively spending minutes at best on the plots/characters/conflicts in his stories.)

-Belated notice of BLUEJAY PRESS going out of business crops up in discussion of Diane Duane's upcoming books/the massive amount of projects Diane Duane is already committed to working on in 1987.  

-A SFLer lists the 4 methods of time-travel that existed in STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES. (2020 note: I only remembered 3 of them, good catch 1987 SFLer.) 

-First mention of George RR Martin's beloved WILD CARDS series in the SFL Archives.

-A SFLer (Steve Chapin) writes an mini-essay about the "disturbing trend in writers of SF these days of writing for the sake of a fast buck". And it gets stupider the longer the mini-essay goes on.

-CYBERNETIC SAMURAI by Victor Milan is one of those "5th generation of computers/Japanophobia" themed post-apocalypse novel I mentioned earlier.

-The optioned movie rights for the STAINLESS STEEL RAT come up again, and which actors/actresses would be perfect fits for a Stainless Steel Rat movie. 

(2020 note: What's the most smug IRL actor/actress you can think of? Good, now double and triple that IRLsmugness factor, and you've barely reached James Bolivar DiGriz on the worst day of his life. This is why any Stainless Steel Rat movie adaption will be terrible.)  

-The two infamous GOR movies, GOR and OUTLAW OF GOR, are in production/pre-production at Cannon Films.

-First mention of Kevin Siembieda and PALLADIUM BOOKS in the SFL Archives. (2020 note: Palladium's major contribution to gaming was the introduction of the MEGAdamage system,)

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 11

 100% completion, 180 ruthlessly curated bookmarks.

-The SIME/GEN stuff I was wondering about way back in SFL Vol 11 update 02 gets clarified. Sime/Gen is post-apocalypse style S&M co-dependency. Fans of Dungeons and Dragons fans, think of mind-flayers and their "protected client" races.

-SFLer's start compiling list of stories with sentient computers in them, lists of post-Apocalypse stories, and lists of exactly what items SFLer's would bring to the past if subjected to time-travel with moderate advanced warning.

(2020 note: This is where fear of Japan's sudden rise as a unstoppable economic superpower in the 1980's starts making it way into SF stories, with Japan's upcoming "5th generation" of computer systems that would change everything (computer-related) ending up as the boogie-man of more than a few 1980's post-apocalypse novels. 1980's Japan's rise to economic superpower status being built on skyscrapers full of deferred debt plus the "5th generation" of computer systems being 110% vaporware weren't understood until the Japanese economic Bubble burst in the mid 1990's.) 

-Society for Creative Anachronism SFLers chime in on the "weapons policies at conventions" discussion thread, giving examples of how the SCA deals with them in "normal" SCA situations, and anecdotes of real-life PVP combat arena weapons usage.

-One of the sentient computer stories consistently getting mentioned is D.F. Jones 1960's COLOSSUS novels, which did ground-work on the "computer AI takes over the world, thinks Humans massively suck" trope that James Cameron's TERMINATOR movies would make famous.

-Jean Auel's CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR gets mentioned as being her first novel and having mind-breaking huge sales numbers. Which is why the paperback version of Auel's MAMMOTH HUNTERS will have a 2,000,000 copy first printing. The only modern equivalent I can think of regarding those numbers is JK Rowling and the HARRY POTTER series.

-Larry Niven's KNOWN SPACE/RINGWORLD chat derails intense AMBER series slash Roger Zelazny trivia chat. The Winter 1986 version of Niven chat is about the technology of the Known Space/Ringworld settings and some anecdotes of Niven being bad at math in the Ringworld books.

-HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY discussion kicks off with wondering about Zaphod B.'s extra body parts/anecdotes of Douglas Adams having a hard time being identified as THAT Douglas Adams IRL.

-STAR WARS fans start trying to figure out what eras the upcoming prequel & sequel trilogies will focus on.

-Death notices for Ian Marter (DOCTOR WHO series actor) and Roger C. Carmel (original actor of STAR TREK character Harry Mudd). 

-Iain Banks WALKING ON GLASS gets recommended, which marks the first appearance (I think) of Iain (M) Banks in the SF-LOVERS mailing list. 

-1986 SciFi personality David Gerrold talks about what he knows about/what will happen with the upcoming STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION tv-series at the 1986 LosCon.

-Two books that share a theme of first contact with alien intelligence manage to come out within months of each other. The books are CONTACT by Carl Sagan and THE HERCULES TEXT by Jack McDevitt. Diane Duane's SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD has been out in hardcover for a while.

-Colin Baker retires as the 6th DOCTOR WHO actor in December 1986.

-The 1980's version of TWILIGHT ZONE series is cancelled by CBS in December 1986, and the BBC's TV adaptation of the TRIPODS by John Christopher also gets cancelled.

-STAR TREK 4 comes out and SFL reaction is mostly positive but confused by the small amounts of normal Star Trek content in it. So SFLer's focus on what Starfleet spaceships got murked by the Alien probe, which Starfleet spaceship was deploying a (Solar) Sail, why that SF Golden Gate park trash-can didn't blow away when the cloaked Bounty landed, why ionization made the Klingon transporters on the Bounty fail, why/how the 20th century engineer knew 6 inch thick plasteel slabs were needed to hold back that specific amount of water, time-loops, and which of the many Constitution class Starfleet vessels murked by the Alien probe got rebranded as Enterprise NCC-1701-A

-Women constituting 90 percent of the fanzine writing/publishing population in Star Trek fandom is brought up and confirmed by people deep into Star Trek fanzine lore.

-Camille Bacon-Smith's moderately deep dive into Star Trek fanzine culture, Spock Among the Women, is transcribed and shared for educational purposes to the SF-LOVERS mailing list (Spock Among the Women originally appeared in the November 16th 1986 Sunday edition of the New York Times newspaper).

SFL Archives Vol 02 readthrough update 01

 SF-LOVERS Digest Vol 02 is a much harder read than Vol 01 since I am finding lots of things in it more interesting and forcing myself to not get too side-tracked when really interesting stories got mentioned (for example, Clifford Simak's WAY STATION). This where I start short-handing all references to the SF-LOVERS Mailing List Digest into the SFL or the SFL Archives.

-Matter teleportation chat kicked off Vol 02, which then morphed into "how do you transport the data site to site with matter teleportation" chat, which have currently morphed into debates about using Godel numbers for encoding/transmitting/deciphering data across interstellar distances to alien lifeforms/races.

-GODEL NUMBERS aka GODEL NUMBERING is a cool concept. Just not so sure how other races/lifeforms across the galaxies would instinctively "know" to factor down the Godel numbers into their prime components or even understand the numbering scheme used in the first place. 

-20% completion into SFL Archives Vol 02, for the last twenty or so posts in the SF-LOVERS mailing list people have been ripping apart Robert Heinlein and it's glorious. Heinlein's NUMBER OF THE BEAST (@1980) was so self-indulgent it ripped the blinders off the eyes of many post-grad SFL posters that formerly tolerated or had fond memories of Heinlein stories growing up......

(2020 sidenote: Which is retroactively amusing slash interesting because the current tier of Big Name/Big Sales SciFi genre authors like John Ringo, John Scalzi, and Charles Stross were hitting their formative pre-teens - teens around 1980 and all of them ended up loving everything Heinlein has ever written/have rewritten multiple Heinlein stories/Heinlein book series.) 

-Arguments about Larry Niven's KNOWN SPACE setting and Larry Niven's RINGWORLD books being incompatible or (my view) existing in alternate universes. Lots of the Ringworld books weirdness & it not meshing with Niven's Known Space stories passed me by whenever I read any of the Ringworld books because I was very creeped out by all the pervy sex fantasies Niven was one-handedly writing out.

-First SF-LOVERS appearance of Jerry E Pournelle, noted author, dream-weaver, visionary plus actor plus PhD in political science. Pournelle rips apart the 20 yrs in the future environmental forecast GLOBAL 2000 REPORT (a state of the world in 2000 guessimate report).

-Robert Heinlein style Libertarianism starts getting name dropped/espoused more and more. And always used in Heinlein-ian phrasing and pre-constructed Heinlein-ian arguments, nothing original is allowed.

-Someone's friend who never got into scifi watched Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and made the valid arguments that:

"There is no question that George Lucas is creating the mythology which will be coloring the subconscious of the growing generation, just like Walt Disney's characters are forever a part of my psyche. That's why The Empire Strikes Back makes me so angry. It is merely a rehash of old war movies with all their worst cliches and pat killings intact. But even John Wayne and Frank Sinatra, in all their male-buddy-kill-the-Krauts (or Injuns) showed some compassion - if for nothing else than their horses. But the Taun-Taun in TESB doesn't rate such compassion. It has the audacity to freeze to death and stink in the process. The whole film just glorifies killing....."

Many many long-time SF-LOVERS posters rebutted back with, and I am paraphrasing here "No No No. You are wrong, do not insult my Favs, you are very wrong and need to grow up"

(2020 sidenote: For the record, I agree with the someone's friend who never got into scifi viewpoint.) 

originally posted between June 24th - June 25th in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3