SFL Archives Volume 22b readthrough

 SFL Archives Volume 20b

3.3 mb raw text file

100% completion, 364 bookmarks

Movies, television shows referenced: STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (tv-series), STAR TREK: VOYAGER (tv-series), BABYLON 5 (tv-series), ROAR (tv-series), MILLENIUM (tv-series), CONAN THE BARBARIAN (tv-series), HERCULES THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS (tv-series), XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS (tv-series), X-FILES (tv-series), HIGHLANDER THE TV SERIES (tv-series), TEAM KNIGHT RIDER (tv-series), BAYWATCH NIGHTS (tv-series), THE VISITOR (tv-series), EARTH FINAL CONFLICT (tv-series), NIGHTFLYERS, SCREAM 1, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (tv-series), MIMIC, LOST IN SPACE, MEN IN BLACK 1, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, BATMAN AND ROBIN, CONTACT, MONSTERS (tv-series), MISSION GENESIS (tv-series), HONEY WE SHRUNK OURSELVES, CRONOS, JAMES CAMERONS AVATAR 1, EVENT HORIZON, KULL THE CONQUERER, GATTACA, SPAWN, STEEL, STARGATE SG-1 tv-series), ALIEN NATION tv-series), SLEEPWALKERS (tv-series), LORD OF THE RINGS, STANLEY KUBRICKS A.I., SPACE TRUCKERS, THE POSTMAN, AMAZON HIGH (tv-series), NIGHTMAN (tv-series), TIMECOP (tv-series), NEVERWHERE (tv-series), THE APOCALYPSE, ROCKET MAN, MEN IN BLACK 1, THE DEVILS ADVOCATE, STARSHIP TROOPERS 1, I ROBOT, MORTAL KOMBAT 1, ALIEN RESURRECTION. 

SF&F stories referenced: I AM LEGEND, SHADOW WARS, RAMA 2, DRUM WARNING, LORD OF THE ISLES, FOOTPRINTS OF THUNDER, FIRESTAR, THE CALCUTTA CHROMOSOME, AMMONITE, THE LAUGHING CORPSE, BEYOND THIS HORIZON, FOOD OF THE GODS, CARD MASTER, GOLDEN WITCHBREED, HUMPTY DUMPTY AN OVAL, SEARCH FOR THE SUN, THE TRANSISTION OF HP LOVECRAFT, MAGIC KINGDOM FOR SALE, GATES OF IVORY, THE DUNGEON, GRUNTS!, STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, BEGGARS RIDE, WHO HUNT BY NIGHT, REMNANT MOON, BEYOND THE BLUE GATEWAY, EARTHQUAKE WEATHER, THE GODWHALE, THE SHADOW MATRIX, GAP INTO CONFLICT, EXPENDABLE, THE REALITY DYSFUNCTION, THE PROPHET OF LAMATH, EMERALD HOUSE RISING, BIBLE STORIES FOR ADULTS, THE OTHER END OF TIME, THE GOLDEN COMPASS, THE SUBTLE KNIFE, ANTHEM, WIND FROM A FOREIGN SKY, RED MARS, BLUE MARS, POINT OF HOPES, THE BILLION DOLLAR BOY, CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS, THE FLEET OF STARS, FLUX, WIZ BIZ, DRAGON, HELLSTROMS HIVE, THE PATH OF DAGGERS, COST TO BE WISE, HYPERION, ENDYMION, RISE OF ENDYMION, VIRTUAL DEATH, BOOK OF NIGHT WITH MOON, ZODIAC, NEWS FROM THE EDGE, PROFITEER, CYTEEN, HOGG, BLAMELESS IN ABADDON, BEYOND THE VEIL OF STARS, WATERBORN, A PURSUIT OF MIRACLES, THE OPIUCHI HOTLINE, THE PEACE WAR, MAROONED IN REAL TIME, WITCH AND WOMBAT, PERMUTATION CITY, GAME OF THRONES, DECEPTION WELL, CELESTIS, THE LAST DEADLOSS VISIONS, THE GOLDEN KEY, INFINITE JEST, IN ENEMY HANDS, TAM LIN, THE REVOLUTION FROM ROSINANTE, INTO THE FORGE, THE WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER, SECTOR GENERAL, TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG, ONE FOR THE MORNING GLORY, TITAN, SLANT, HEART OF THE COMET, THE PRACTICE EFFECT, HOW LIKE A GOD, CIPHERS, RALLY CRY, UNION FOREVER, MINDSTAR RISING, A QUANTUM MURDER, THE NANO FLOWER, INTO THE FOREST, THE CAT WHO WALKED THROUGH WALLS, THE WHITE PLAGUE, INHERIT THE STARS, THE GRID, THE BARBED COIL, OWLFLIGHT, MOMENTO MORI, EXCESSION, LOOK INTO THE SUN, LADYLORD, PROPHET, RUNNING WITH THE DEMON, DARK BORDER, ONLY FORWARD, FIRST AND LAST MAN, THE WORLD THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL, STARLIGHT 1, THE POSTMAN, CATCH THE LIGHTNING, ETERNITY, ROGUE MOON, FINITYS END, THE FAIRY OF KU-SHE, 100 WICKED LITTLE WITCH STORIES, 100 VICIOUS LITTLE VAMPIRE STORIES, PRESENT TENSE, DIASPORA, THE CLOAK AND DAGGER, CATARACT, THE LAST WIZARD, STEAL THE DRAGON, SYZYGY, THE PRICE OF THE STARS, TIMESHARE, TREACHERY OF THE DEMON KING, LOOKAWAY, TIGANA, LENS OF THE WORLD, STAR FRACTION, THE STONE CANAL, POWERS THAT BE, ROSE DAUGHTER, THE CHAOS BALANCE, DESTINYS ROAD, INVERTED WORLD, ATLAS SHRUGGED, POSITRONIC MAN, PATRIOTS, STATIONS OF THE TIDE, THE CYBERIAD, THE MOUNTAIN MADE OF LIGHT, THE SERVANT OF THE BONES, TOMOE GOZEN, THE ARMOR OF LIGHT, TEKLORDS, FIRST TO FLIGHT, MALLWORLD, FIRE FROM THE WINE DARK SEA, A KING OF INFINITE SPACE, SCHISMATRIX PLUS, THURSDAY, SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME, HOW FEW REMAIN, THE CENTAUR, THE MERRO TREE, A FOREST LORD, LOOKING FOR THE MAHDI, FARADAYS ORPHANS, FALSE DAWN, THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE, VIRUS, POLGARA THE SORCERESS, NEVERWHERE, THE ALIEN DARK, LEGEND, WIZARDS FIRST RULE, DR ADDER, DERYNI RISING, DREAMSNAKE, ALADORE, SABRIEL, THE DIAMOND AGE, LEGGY STARLITZ, DISTRACTION, YESTERDAYS MEN, OTHERLAND, THE KILLING STAR, THE RISING, MARS UNDERGROUND, WIZARD AND GLASS, DARWINIA, THE INTERIOR LIFE, MIRROR DANCE, DANCERS RISE, EINSTEINS BRIDGE, FOREVER PEACE, MARTIANS IN MAGGODY, A WALK IN THE SUN, RAZORS EDGE, JINGO, PICNIC ON PARADISE, FAMILY TREE, EXORCISMS AND ECSTASIES, STARSHIP TROOPERS, THE DRAGON AND THE UNICORN, THE NEUTRONIUM ALCHEMIST, VOYAGES BY STARLIGHT, EXILE, THE PRESTIGE, JURGEN, THINK LIKE A DINOSAUR, MAGICIANS WARD, FUGITIVE PRINCE, HARVEST OF STARS, SPIDER LEGS, SIN OF ORIGIN, FORTRESS OF EAGLES, CLOUDS RIDER, DUNE MESSIAH, A SONG FOR ARBONNE, WITCH WORLD, RINGWORLD THRONE, FLIGHT OF VENGEANCE, CITY ON FIRE.

Pop culture references: the Social Credit Card political party of British Columbia Canada, Dennis Miller's sprawling referential monologues, Baywatch Nights, George of the Jungle, 

Technology callbacks: "dusty 3 inch A disks(?)", DejaNews the Internet search engine, the fermi paradox

Death notices: Paul Edwin Zimmer, SFF author. G. Harry Stine aka Lee Correy, SFF author and model rocketry industry wunderkin.

SFL requests/discussion topics:

>Re: How much Lem is Lem

>Re: How racist was Lovecraft

>Re: Ringworld Engineers, a daft question

>Re: What ever happened to Mack Reynolds

>Re: RGB Mars trilogy (Kim Stanley Robinson)

>Re: Samuel Delany

>Re: A few thoughts on Ursula LeGuin

>Re: E.E. Smith Lensman - Where to start?

>Re: Has Sliders had TOO MANY chances?

>Re: Handmaid's Tale SciFi?

>Re: A.S. Byatt? What to read?

>Re: Game of Thrones Praises/Gripes

>Re: Stargate SG-1

>Re: Alien Nation question

>Re: Robert Asprin "Myth" series

>Re: David Brin any good?

>Re: Card Problems (Orson Scott Card)

>Re: Storm Constantine

>Re: One-Note Eddings

>Re: Heinlein's CAT WHO WALKED sucks

>Re: Excession a disappointment

>Re: Andrew J. Offutt

>Re: Darkover for beginners

>Re: Rogue Moon (Algis Budrys)

>Re: Is Charles DeLint any good

>Re: Mageworld series

>Re: Clifford Simak

>Re: John Updike? SF?

>Re: Xena and her dad

>Re: Things I learned from Team Knight Rider

>Re: Any STEN fans?

>Re: War against the Chtorr

>Re: Terry Goodkind

>Re: Sterling: Leggy Starlitz

>Re: George Zebrowski?

>Re: Vance - The Dying Earth

>Re: Arthur C Clarke RETIRE!

>Re: Dickson's Childe Cycle reading order

>Re: Style change in LeGuin's fiction

-A SFLer refuses to believe that HP Lovecraft's stories had lots of racism in them, doubling down by saying they've only read the German? translations of Lovecraft when other SFLers go "oh hell yes HP Lovecraft's stories were racist top to bottom".

-SFLer's new to Robert Anson Heinleins work ask what the differences are between the posthumous unabridged version of STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND and the original published version

-John Dos Passos using the "sidebar" literary technique decades before John Brunner & Fredrick Pohl (and Stephen King) utilizied that technique in their stories comes up for the 5th or 8th time since the SFL Archives has existed.

(2021 note: This 5th or 8th reminder that John Dos Passos originated the "sidebar" literary technique finally made set aside the time to read Dos Passos U.S.A. trilogy. That time and effort was not wasted, despite their 70+ year age the U.S.A. trilogy holds up well.)

-The 2nd book in Philip Pullman's Golden Compass series, The Subtle Knife, comes out, and peoples minds start breaking when they discuss the Golden Compass books. Certain SFLer's absolutely cannot handle the mix of technology and sci-fi AND Narnia elements in the Golden Compass books.

-SFLer's note how many modern authors rip off the plot and characters in Rudyard Kiplings CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS story in their adventure and mil-fiction stories.

(2021 note: CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS is a deep cut. Not sure how many people in 2000 - 2021 have read CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS on their own without being forced to read it via a college English literature course.)

-SFLer's start discussing Samuel Delany, and his most controversial published work like HOGG. The same SFLer's who really liked the torture-porn scenes in Terry Goodkind's work really really really like HOGG.

-Claudia Christian's take on why she will not be appearing in season 5 of Babylon 5 gets reposted to the SFL Archives/how Claudia Christian found out she was fired from Babylon 5 season 5 after spending a weekend promoting season 5 of Babylon 5 in London alongside a bunch of other Babylon 5 actors and show producers.

(2021 note: The B5 producers do not come off good, especially JMS's lumping all the blame onto Babylon 5 producer John Copeland for roughly the 600th time.)

-Avid hate-watchers of the tv-series SLIDERS come out in droves when the question "Has Sliders had TOO MANY chances?" comes up in the SFL Archives. Gharlane of Eddore manages to solidify his status as a proto-incel while talking about the all the wrongs things SLIDERS does/why SLIDERS is a abomination.

-Virtually every Star Trek fan in the SFL Archives turns on Majel Barrett Roddenberry when she heavily invokes Gene Roddenberry's name and legacy when promoting the upcoming in Fall 1997 tv-series EARTH FINAL CONFLICT. Even the SFLer who wrote 9000 words defending Majel-Barrett Roddenberry back in SFL Archives Vol 22a does a complete 180 twist andturns against her.

(2021 note: The underlying tone of all the anti Majel-Barrett Roddenberry posts is "how fucking DARE she" promote a non Star Trek tv-series and use the name of her husband/use her husband's notes & failed previous tv-pilot attempts while DS9 & Voyager are still being produced by Paramount.)

-ROAR the short lived 1997 fantasy tv-series starring Heath Ledger comes out on the FOX network and nearly everyone who posts about ROAR spends tons of effort ripping it apart for not adhering to history/technical inaccuracies/not living up to SCA fight standards. Gharlane of Eddore again goes that extra step in new tv show haterdom/incel-dom.

-A SFLer review of HONEY WE SHRUNK OURSELVES makes special note of young actress Alison Mack showing particular promise and how the camera loves her little smiles.

(2021 note: Retroactively funny and creepy given Alison Mack's recent court trail and conviction for co-running the NXIVM sex-slave cult.)

-The first mention of a James Cameron movie project called AVATAR slated for a 1999 release date.

-Almost every SFLer posts a review of the movie GATTACA, however every single SFLer in existence later in SFL Archives Vol 22b will post a review and critique of the 1997 movie STARSHIP TROOPERS and how it does live up to the vision and scope of Robert Heinlein's novel the movie was adapted from.

(2021 note: Roughly 12% of SFL Archives Vol 22b is devoted to STARSHIP TROOPERS 1997 reviews and critiques) 

-Glen Cooks Black Company series gets discussed when SHE IS THE DARKNESS is released. One SFLer jokingly manages to predict Sleepy becoming the next chronicler of the Black Company.

-Harlan Ellison making a funny in retrospect comment in one of his Dangerous Vision collections about how "..if Kate Wilhem is the woman's voice for this genration of speculative fictoon, James Tiptree Jr. is the man's voice."

-SFLers start commenting how one-note David Eddings is, as in every book or story written by Eddings is a thinly revised version of the story he's written 15+ times now.

-Something about Arthur C Clarke hoarding his copy of J. Bernal's THE WORLD THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL and refusing to loan it out to other authors due to it's rarity.

-SFLer's start commenting on Jeri Ryan being a improvement to STAR TREK VOYAGER. SFLer's will later rave about the Voyager 'Year of Hell' and hope that it isn't rolled back like every other Voyager episode involving damage to the ship or a Voyager shuttlecraft being destroyed is.

-SFLer's note there is rumors and speculation floating around the Internet concerning Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS movie adaptation.

(2021 note: Mostly of historical note showing that Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie trilogy had been in movie development hell for years.)

-One of the first standalone mentions of actor Karl Urban in the SFL Archives

-Michael Moorcock saying that for adventure books, it shouldn't take any longer to write than to read them.

-Paul T. Riddell posts a huffy "I'm retiring from writing SF fiction" open letter to the Internet blaming burnout from toxi fans and people not caring about his in-depth SF genre criticism reviews in SF genre periodicals, and absolutely no from the SFL Archives cares enough about Paul T. Riddell to respond.

-SCI-WIRE breaks the news that Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson have signed a contract to write DUNE series prequels and sequels

-SFLer's discuss how awful and out of tone Harlan Ellison's screenplay of I ROBOT was to Isaac Asimov's existing Robot stories.

-EARTH FINAL CONFLICT airs and everyone who isn't a Star Trek fan comments on how suprisely decent it is, and look forward to new episodes.

(2021 note: Absolutely none of the die-hard Star Trek fan that earlier in SFL Archives Vol 22b verbally ripped Majel-Barrett Roddenberry apart for the audacity of producing a non-Star Trek tv-series ever comments on EARTH FINAL CONFLICT like they do on SLIDERS and ROAR and STARGATE SG-1, etc...)

SFL Archives Volume 20a readthrough

SFL Archives 

3.7 mb raw text file

100% completion, 138 bookmarks

Movies, television shows referenced: A PRINCESS OF MARS (movie), MAKING OF STAR TREK VOYAGER, SEAQUEST DSV (tv-series), OUTBREAK, GODZILLA VS MOTHRA, GODZILLA VS MECHA-GODZILLA, TANK GIRL, SPECIES 1, BUGS (tv-series), SLIDERS (tv-series), VR5 (tv-series), VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1995), XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS(tv-series), HERCULES THE LEGENDARY JOURNIES(tv-series), WATERWORLD, LANGOLIERS (tv-series), DEADLOCK ESCAPE FROM ZONE 14, WHITE DWARF (tv-series), CASPER (1995), LIFEFORCE (1985), JOHNNY MNEMONIC, BATMAN FOREVER, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, THE THING (1982), DOCTOR WHO (1996)..

SF&F stories referenced: THE SECRET OCEANS, THE SPIRIT RING, A PRINCESS OF MARS, MATTERS END, MIDSHIPMANS HOPE, 20TH CENTURY COMPUTERS AND HOW THEY WORKED, THE SURVIVORS, WIZARDS FIRST RULE, TRIPOINT, THE SWORD, STRANGE DAYS, DARKOVER LANDFALL, GLORY SEASON, INTERFACE, LITTLE BIG, GREENTHIEVES, THE PAPER GRAIL, TOMORROW SUCKS, SUPERHEROES, ALIEN SHORES, FUTURE QUARTET, SHERLOCK HOLMES IN ORBIT, SCIENCE FICTION IN THE 20TH CENTURY, PERMUTATION CITY, THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND, THE DYKE AND THE DYBBUK, TOURISTS, PRIMARY INVERSION, VILLAINS BY NECESSITY, RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE, WHITE QUEEN, WEST OF EDEN, WINTER IN EDEN, THE ORDER WAR, VURT, WAKE IN DARKNESS, PORCELAIN DOVE, THE MOUNTAINS OF MAJIPOOR, FIRES OF EDEN, PICTURES AT 11, NOBODYS SON, PROFITEER, RELUCTANT VOYAGERS, A CASE OF CONSCIENCE, INTERRUPT, FLYING DUTCH, KALEIDOSCOPE CENTURY, BEGGARS AND CHOOSERS, PAWNS DREAM, LES GALAXIALES, ONLY FORWARD, APOLLO 13, THE UNUSUAL LIFE OF TRISTAN SMITH, AMMONITE, THE DIAMOND AGE, HEAVY WEATHER, FICTIONAL SPACE ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE FICTION, FLATLANDER, CITY OF BONES, WARLORD OF ANTARES, WALKING ON GLASS, MOONWISE, RAGGED WORLD, METROPOLITAN, WHO GOES THERE? 

Pop culture references: "reminds me of George from Seinfeld. Both the reader and the character know that the lie is going to foul up somehow, but the character goes on and tells it anyhow.", Wing Commander 3 CD "acting", "fang dealers" at SFF conventions, 

Technology callbacks: Pentium 90 CPU's, "negotiations with CD ROM game maker Legend", putting up a new kernel & tweaking TCP timeouts, installing dosemu, Telecommunications Devices for the Deaf (TDD), "I KNOW IT SAYS FTP, AS THE FILES ARE AT AN FTP SITE. BUT IF YOU ENTER THE LOCATION..", 2 terrible Ringworld PC games, RealAudio software.

1995 Death notices: Ian Ballantine, founder of multiple book publisher companies. Roger Zelazny, SF&F author.

-SFL Archives Vol 20a starts off with the mailing list moderator stating the various hardware and software upgrades planned for the server that runs the SF-LOVERS mailing list. Drastic cutbacks on the frequency of sending out SFL Digests are planned. At the 10% in Vol 20a, the SFL Archives comes back from 2 months of unplanned downtime (massive hardware failures), and experiences another couple of "mini" one-week outages throughout Vol 20a.

-Defenders of Jack Chalker appear, and try to explain away all the involuntary body-transformation/gender swapping/creepy sex scenarios inside Jack Chalker's stories since Well World book 1 back in 1977.

-New management has taken over on the literary estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Disney and the ERB estate are mentioned as working on a movie adaptation of A PRINCESS OF MARS.

(2021 note: It will take until 2012 for the much delayed A PRINCESS OF MARS movie adaptation to come out under the title JOHN CARTER (of Mars).)

-Frank Herbert discussion and the Dune series discussion. SFLers try to figure out what the face-dancers at the end of Chapterhouse Dune were planning, and are confused/not-confused by the Golden Path/The Scattering.

-A SFF convention experience blogger whose gimmick is being French-Canadian, posting half of their reviews of SFF conventions/panels/party rooms in American English, and the other half in Québécois.

-This quote could literally describe 90% of the most popular SF&F series of the 1980's & 1990's, however "seems to be a tendency to substitute torture for character building".

-There was another April Fools/April 1st SFL Archives joke this year. Essentially it was a digital POKEMON GO battle-royale based on various long-time SFLers posting styles. E. Leeper REVIEWS A BOOK. Gharlane of Eddore RANTS about a SFF tv-series, etc. 

-SFLer's start discussing Harry Harrison's EDEN fantasy book series which features a alternate timeline where dinosaurs not got wiped by a mass extinction event 66 million years ago, and have evolved into humanoid shapes and starting to interact with early homo sapiens. Some like the thought put into the various dinosaur genetic engineering/bio-technologies, others are creeped out by the lizard/human sex in the first EDEN book.

(2021 note: Harry Harrison wrote one of my favorite books ever. However even as a Harry Harrison fan, his EDEN series is a safe series to skip over. Aka DO NOT READ THEM. I WARNED YOU.)

-SFF author Daniel Keys Moran appears to accuse Paramount Studios/STAR TREK VOYAGER producers of ripping off a spec script he pitched directly to Star Trek producers back in 1993.

(2021 note: Looked this up because Daniel Keys Moran has reliably been proved to be full of shit whenever he posts. The spec script DKM pitched to Paramount/Star Trek producers ended up as the basis for STAR TREK: DS9 season 4 episode "Hard Time". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Time_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine) )

-Lists and lists of mailing server lists serving various interests as of March 1995 - May 1995.

-The Franklin Mint ripping off the creator/being involved in lawsuits with the creator of the rulesets for STAR TREK TRI-DIMENSIONAL Chess Sets.

-Someone tries critiquing James Blish's A CASE OF CONSCIENCE, and gets every single detail wrong in it. 

(2021 note: Sadly that impressive shit-posting effort does not get any responses posted to the SFL Archives.)

-L Sprague De Camp starts getting discussed and the people making arguments towards De Camp being good/salvaging the legacy of certain titles (CONAN THE BARBARIAN) make good sense.

-David Feintuch starts responding to the SFL Archives about his MIDSHIPMENS HOPE/SEAFORT SAGA series about various questions/concerns/homages to Horatio Hornblower SFLers have been discussing.

-John Barnes KALEIDOSCOPE CENTURY comes out, and nobody really feels or sees anything wrong with it intially. One or two SFLers note the vileness of the main character, the weird obsession with memes/social communication tools, but that's it.)

(2021 note: KALEIDOSCOPE CENTURY pioneered the term "SERBING" into SFF fiction. Do not look up that term unless you wantto read real life horror and war-crimes.)

-One usage for Harry Turtledoves alt-Civil War fiction stories, they redeem certain mega-fuckups of the US Civil War by.

(2021 note: Google US Civil War & the Crater for one of the really terrible mass-death mega-fuckups of the US Civil War.)

-Noted SFL shitposter Gharlane of Eddore makes a series of spectacularly wrong predictions about what upcoming tv-series XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS will be about. 

-Something about the dreaded CHTHON AWARD which I'm not going to even bother writing a year 2021 aside about.

-A whole bunch of tv series get cancelled. Space Precinct, Sliders, VR5, Earth 2, Langoliers, and fans of those cancelled tv-shows immediately start sharing mailing addresses of TV network executives in efforts to grass-roots renew those cancelled tv shows.

-A few SFLers try to man-explain the "real story" behind Apollo 13's explosion to the rest of the SFL Archives.

-OMNI magazines switches to a quarterly release schedule. 

-Cyberpunk fanzine CHEAP TRUTH gets mentioned again, with various SFLers trying to define what is "cyberpunk", and who wrote/writes cyberpunk stories.

-Heavy Robert Adams discussion, especially the hearsay factor behind the narrator of Adam's HORSECLAN setting trying to describe things to a audience decades and decades later.

-Harlan Ellison on journalists: "I am not a journalist! I do not give blow-jobs to chickens!"

-GOR series discussion. Fans of GOR bring up that many of the most popular 1980s & 1990s SFF stories are deeply more fucked up than John Norman ever got, and that GOR novels are still selling well.

-Alfred Bester discussion. WHO HE, THE COMPUTER CONNECTION, Bester burning out hard, etc.

-BABYLON 5 stuff. Insanely huge amount of Babylon 5 series discussion. I am 110% burnout on Babylon 5 fandom & reading JMS flameout/humblebrag/bus-throw/humblebrag/bitch at 100% accurate fan predictions at this point, and not going to bother writing about Babylon 5 or what JMS posted to the SF-LOVERS mailing list in detail anymore.

(2021 note: My 110% burn-out on BABYLON 5 was something I never expected to happen.)

-Charles Platt is totally not-resentfull that Octavia Butler won a MacArthur Fellows Program grant. Charles Platt is also totally not claiming the only reason Octavia Butler won a MMacArthur Fellows Program grant is because she is female and black. Oh wait, I was wrong. Charles Platt is totally resentful and extremely racist.

(2021 note: Word search SFL Archives Vol 20a for "13 Jun 1995 20:14:58 -0400" cp@panix.com (Charles Platt) to find Charles Platt's hateful email post.) 

-Gregory Benford outs himself as a "the (US Confederate States of America) South will rise AGAIN" SFF author in his GALACTIC CENTER SAGA.

-Introduction of the Changling Race aka the Dominion has more than a few 1995 SFLers seeing rip-offs from John W Campbells WHO GOES THERE short story, which of course skews into John Carpenters THE THING (1982).

-First tentative discussions of the DOCTOR WHO (1996) tv-movie. Casting still undecided, plot undecided, it will involve the BBC though.

-The SFLer who melted the fuck down about WARGAMES 1983 returns to the SF-LOVERS mailing list for the first time in 11 years to post about a Forrest J. Ackerman interview with Professor Neon(?) available via RealAudio streaming.

SFL Archives Vol 16a readthrough update 01

 100% completion, 151 bookmarks

-1991 is the year when both the Robert Jordan WHEEL OF TIME books and Stephen R. Donaldson's GAP CYCLE series start being discussed in the SFL Archives.

Pop culture mentions: EXXON VALDEZ, Calstate Central Cyber system(BBS?), MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, the 1991 Gulf War/DESERT STORM 1, CNN's nonstop coverage of DESERT STORM 1, USA TODAY, JET JAGUAR, INFOCOM SOFTWARE, VMS 3.5 documentation, STAR WARS Expanded Universe, Zoetrope Studios, Ultima 5, Church of the Sub-Genius, Borders bookstores

Movies & TV series mentioned: DANCES WITH WOLVES, AKIRA, SOLARIS 1972, ICE PIRATES, DRAGON WARRIOR, ROBOCOP 2, HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN, MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, NEVER ENDING STORY PT2, FREE-JACK, GODZILLA VS MEGALON, EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS, THE LITTLE MERMAID, ROLLERBALL, THE TRANSFORMERS, THE SEVENTH SIGN, THE PEOPLE, YOUNG INDIANA JONES, THE THIRD EYE, FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND, KNIGHT RIDER 2000, THELMA & LOUISE, MORTAL THOUGHTS, SWITCH.

-SF&F books mentioned: ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER DUNGEON, GOLDEN FLEECE, JACOBS LADDER, EXPEDITION TO DARWIN FOUR, GAP INTO CONFLICT: THE REAL STORY,  BETWEEN DRAGONS, BY THE SWORD, THE SILVER BRANCH, CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, MY PRETTY PONY, FANCIES AND GOODNIGHTS, DOOMSMAN, PANDORA BY HOLLY HOLLANDER, DYDEE TOWN WORLD, CHUNG KUO BOOK 1, SEERESS OF KELL, THE RUBY KNIGHT/DIAMOND THRONE, TOM BROWNS SCHOOLDAYS, PYRAMIDS, EQUAL RITES, REAPER MAN, THE DESTINY MAKERS, ECCE AND OLD EARTH, THEIR MASTERS WAR, ARMAGEDDON CRAZY, C.O.R.P.S.E., WHIPPING STAR, FRANK HERBERTS EYE, TH GREEN BRAIN, FLAG FULL OF STARS, MOONWISE, MONDAY BEGINS ON SATURDAY, WAR: 1974, RING OF CHARON, TALES OF TAORMIN, HARD TO BE A GOD, FOOL ON THE HILL, HEIR TO EMPIRE, THE PORTABLE PHONOGRAPH, SOLO COMBAT, CHERNOBYL SYNDROME, PULLING THROUGH, CHILD OF ALL AGES, NECROM, VOR, LOVES THROBBING BOB, BEYOND APOLLO, BECOMING ALIEN, BEING ALIEN, HIGHWAYS IN HIDING.

-SFL Death notices: John Bellairs, Joyce Ballou Gregorian.

-Lots of very specific requests for sub-genres of SF&F such as:

>anti-religious SF&F

>religious SF&F 

>enhanced IQ fiction

>Isaac Asimov stories about aliens

>SF about the Net(Internet)

>native non-English SF

>SF maps of planets

>gender swapping stories across movies, books, tv series

> transformation/body changing stories across movies, books, tv series

>cats in SF&F stories

>evolved humans

-Discussion of Robert Anton Wilson's co-authored ILLUMINATUS! series and the follow-up Historical Illuminati Chronicles

-Fans of Katherine Kurtz's DERYNI series going overboard and creating "Michaeline" lay orders inside SCA gatherings/outside of SCA gatherings.

-Discussion of Michael Moorcock & his ETERNAL CHAMPION stories, with SFLer's attempting to make series specific timelines.

-The Peter Cushing DOCTOR WHO tv movies, and how they differed/matched up to the tv-series version.

-News of a movie novelization of A PRINCESS OF MARS being in the works/SFLer's wondering when it come out.

(2020 note: The answer is:  Roughly 21 years later under in 2012 the title JOHN CARTER)  

-SFLer Gregory R Weiss sees extreme similarities in certain aspects of ULTIMA 5 and Stephen Donaldson's CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT.

-QUANTUM LEAP the tv-series discussion. SFLer's either loathe the premise/actors entirely or horny post about the situations Sam Beckett gets put into every new episode that allow Scott Bakula to sing/dance/show off his body.

-The first mention of people visiting HP Lovecraft's gravesite in Providence RI, and leaving offerings to him on the gravestone.

-The time when there was "a plethora of "chimpanzee stories" in various SF mags including one story containing human/chimp sex." 

-Gene Roddenberry's various attempts to get non-STAR TREK SF&F series going.

(2020 note: Lots of the plot elements and names would be recycled. GENESIS 2, Dylan Hunt, the Pax, etc.)

-Douglas Adams being iconic and various things about HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, DIRK GENTLY, movie adaptation, failed computer games, etc.

-Trivia about what the "third button" in the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Vipers actually did.

-A few SFLers try mapping STAR WARS 1:1 onto ARTHURIAN MYTHOS, but are already combining Arthurian Mythos roles by the 2nd sentence.

-First SFL mention of the Arkady & Boris Strugatski 1964 book HARD TO BE A GOD.

(2020 note: This book got adapted into a movie twice and a cRPG/RTS game series.) 

-A Paramount Studios grass-roots survey asking what STAR TREK 6 should contain: A new cast? The TOS series recast? A TNG movie?

-Two years after DOCTOR WHO was unofficially canceled, Doctor Who fandom starts to demand answers, and blame everyone tangentially involved with the Doctor Who series except for John Nathan-Turner.

-Discussion of Terry Pratchett's DISCWORLD books covering things like PYRAMIDS being a parody of TOM BROWNS SCHOOLDAYS, etc

-Timothy Zahn's HEIR TO EMPIRE formally makes the STAR WARS Expanded Universe series official canon.

(2020 note: The Star Wars EU stories would bounce in and out of canonity depending on how George Lucas felt every day. As per December 2020, a bunch of Star Wars EU stories are now canon again thanks to the season 2 of THE MANDALORIAN)

-More Harlan Ellison discussion. Ellison's behavior when asked to sign copies of DOOMSMAN, the long delayed Last Dangerous Visions collection, why older Harlan Ellison books are out of print, etc

-Who should be blamed for poor quality/terrible voice-acting dubs when Japanese Anime gets exported to Europe/Americas/Africa/etc: The original producers, the regional importer, or the fanbase for continuing to buy poorly translated anime?  

-The final book in David Eddings MALLOREON series comes out, and going by the reaction, 70% of the SFL had almost everything figured out. Then SFLer's started to mention how much a carbon copy Eddings new fantasy was.

-The blink and miss it "Avoid Orion Meetings" visual Easter-Egg in ROBOCOP 2.

-Editors misprinting Isaac Asimov's name early in his career leading to the various homages to "ASENION, a quasi religious philosopher" in Asimov's later books.

-More Philip K Dick discussion: Was PKD a misandrist? How mentally troubled was PKD? PKD's obsession with the Dark Haired Girl archetype. PKD's depiction of women being more driven than the lead male characters in 95% of PKD's stories. Plus PKD's literary agent returns to show what PKD novels are getting re-released.

-SCI FI channel pre-launch status update: Badly needs subscribers, might go bankrupt fast once officially launched in 1991.

-STAR WARS discussion becomes a major thing again. A few people working on their Literature PhD try making the case that Stars Wars maps 1:1 onto Arthurian legend, but are stacking combinations of Arthurian characters onto Star Wars characters by the 3 sentence of their thesis.

-SFLer Laurie Mann shows how bad author conduct/bad fan conduct during SF&F conventions gets ignored or actively covered up. Convention organizer do a combination of the "I see nothing. I hear nothing. I know NOTHING!" Corporal Schultz from the HOGANS HEROES tv-show behavior while engaging in white-washing away terrible author & fan behavior at conventions for $$$$/attendence rea$on$. 

Let me provide some context. 

SFLer Laurie Mann was heavily associated with the NEFSA fandom organization, and was the co-head of the 1988 BOSKONE(BOSKONE 25) management committee. tldr summary: Laurie Mann was deeply involved in SF&F convention management at all levels, especially the regional yearly BOSKONE convention.

Back in 1985 Isaac Asimov wrote an memorial essay for the outgoing head editor (Shawna McCarthy) at his self-titled magazine(Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine). This memorial essay was published in/written for the BOSKONE 22 year book. Shawna McCarthy had worked at IASFM as an associate executive editor for a few years under the 1st female head editor IASFM employed. Asimov's BOSKONE 22 memorial-essay about Shawna McCarthy's time at IASFM was filled with sexual harassment start to finish, bottom to top.

BOSKONE people & Isaac Asimov fanatics never mention that Asimov written BOSKONE 22 essay for the same reasons that Robert Heinlein fanatics never seem to mention Heinlein's I SHALL FEAR NO EVIL or Edgar Allen Poe scholars never publicly discuss the orangutan in THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE.

-First mention of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 in the SFL Archives.

 -The 1990 version of matter transportation chat goes unique places: how many copies/matter transportations can be made before irreversible cellular degradation takes place? And a really unique take about matter transportation equaling time travel.

-"Slow Glass" story discussion crops up in the SFL Archives again 11 years after the "slow glass" concept was originally discussed back in SFL Archives Vol 01

SFL Archives Vol 15a readthrough

SFL Archives Vol 15a

4.3 mb raw text file 

100% completion, 93 bookmarks

-SFLer Chris Siebenmann on the main character in Robert Heinlein's THE CAT WHO WALKS THROUGH WALLS:

Actually, I think it did an excellent job of telling you Col.  Campbell's

race in a very underhanded and easily overlooked fashion.  If you look at

the cover again, you'll see that Campbell is VERY dark for a caucasian; one

can see this either as a very deep suntan (what most people will probably

automatically think it is, especially when combined with the white hair) or

an indication of his race (his last name strong implies he's somewhat of a

crossbreed, after all).

-A recap of Iain (M) Banks published books based on a 1989 interview with JOURNAL WIRED. 

(2020 note: That interview is a nice "slice-in-time" find for seeing how Iain Banks viewed his own work back in 1989)

-Glen Cook porno novel THE SWAP ACADEMY (@1970 published under the pen-name Greg Stevens).

-Chuq Von Rospach continues their streak of listing Chuq Von Rospach's fanzine as the sole mailing address all SF-LOVER reader correspondence to sick/ill/dying SF&F authors should go through.

(2020 note: This is one of the many reasons why I find Von Rospach, aka the SFWA White Knight, so grating doing this SFL Archives readthrough)

-Much discussion of the movie TOTAL RECALL 1990, and exactly what was "real" and what was "fake" in it. Since TOTAL RECALL 1990 contained female nudity, Mark Leeper automatically gave it +2 rating despite hating everything in it.

-SFL Archives technology mentions: GEnie, the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), Citadel BBS Network, SSI cRPGs CURSE OF AZURE BONDS, CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN, COMPUTE GAZETTE, Apple HYPERCARD

-TOR Books never actually gets around to doing the corrected reprint runs of Walter Jon Williams 1989 novel ANGEL STATION that they publicly pledged to do in 1989, leaving people/bookstores with a lot of mutilated useless books they can't resell. 

-Weapons Policies at SF&F conventions & bringing real Weapons to SF&F conventions debate, because Loud Radios (at night?) briefly got added to the banned item lists at certain 1989-1990 conventions.

-SFL Archives pop culture 1st mentions: Steve Jackson Games, Steve Jackson Games Illuminati getting seized by the FBI, GURPS, WILD CARDS GURPS, WHO'S THE BOSS, Kirk Cameron, PALLADIUM RPG, STEAMPUNK fiction, ALIENS VS PREDATOR comic series, Dark Horse Comics, Batman series character JASON TODD getting killed off by reader voting, Clive Cussler self-inserting himself into his DIRK PITT novels, the 1986 movie SPACECAMP.

-1990 Death notices: SF&F author Robert Adams, actor David Rappaport, actress Susan Oliver, Jim Henson (creator of the Muppets), SF&F artist Elizabeth Pearce.

-Naomi Mitchison's MEMOIRS OF A SPACEWOMAN which uh involves lots of emotional/erotic hookups with alien life forms. 

-What are the Most Realistically designed Aliens in Science Fiction stories?

-TOR Books stacking the decks for the 1989 Nebula Award novel category and missing all 5 times being the highlight of the "How do you know who to vote for in Best Professional editor category for the Hugo/Nebula Awards?" discussion thread.

(2020 note: 5 of the 6 nominated novels for the 1989 Nebula were published by TOR). 

-A rare case of non-PERN Anne McCaffrey fiction getting discussed, this time it's about McCaffrey's Crystal Singer stories and the cowriting attempts with Elizabeth Moon and other female authors.

(2020 note: This was a good discussion thread about female SF&F authors, and I bookmarked about every third mention while this thread was going)

-A Japanese SFLer poster gets tired of waiting for Samuel R Delany's work to be translated into Japanese, and requests help finding all of Delany's published work.

-SFLer's ask: Did you catch the DOCTOR WHO reference in Diane Duane's 1990 book HIGH WIZARDRY

(2020 note: I now have the mnemonic "Diane Duane, fan service is her game" etched into my memory.)

-Only 281 ballots being received for 1990 Hugo Award voting at ConFiction 1990. 

-The soap opera ONE LIFE TO LIVE having a extended sequence in a underground city called "Eterna" in 1989.

-"How does everyone in netdom define what Cyberpunk is?" discussion leads to Walter Jon Williams being a hack/visionary chat, precursors of cyberpunk fiction, and the very first requests for Steampunk fiction in the SFL Archives.

-AI Characters in Fiction. Some SFLers go deep referencing TALOS as the first AI character, most people stick with the golden age of scifi - through William Gibson style cyberpunk for their references. 

(2020 note: This discussion chain is worth reading for a SF&F historian or people simply interested in AI Characters featured in Fiction.)

-BATMAN 1992 casting decisions talk (Danny Devito? Michael J Fox?), along with some SFLers believing the Joker never died in BATMAN 1989 with a body-double. And finally will Two Face or Robin the boy wonder show up in Batman 1992/who will play them? discussion 

-Michael Moorcock ETERNAL CHAMPION discussion, 1990 edition: This time it's focused on Jerry Cornelius, and his various powers, storylines, weaknesses, incest fixation, etc.

-The creator and the producer of the 1988 movie WIZARD OF SPEED AND TIME squabble over money, embezzlement and Intellectual Property theft via the Internet and lawsuits.

-The 1990 movie adaptation of Margaret Atwood's HANDMAIDS TALE finally gets the SFL Archive discussing the book/the movie adaptation.Since there was female nudity in the movie adaptation, Mark Leeper automatically gives the movie a +2 rating.

-HIGHLANDER 2 is pre-production during 1990, and people are confused yet excited by Sean Connery being cast in it. Various guesses are made as to the plot, and one person leaks the real plot of Highlander 2 but is ignored because it is total gibberish and makes no goddamn sense.

(2020 note: The reaction to Highlander 2 in 1991 aka SFL Vol 16a/16b should be interesting/)   

-Someone who claims to work in the marketing department of a book publishing house explains why certain books get reprinted, and certain books never seem to get reprinted.

-The book reprint discussion expands into the costs/mechanics of doing "small" press print runs of only 1000 books using 1989 book production cost numbers. The SFWA White Knight barges in to clarify things and hate on small book publishing houses for driving up the cost of books/price gouging while failing to mention anything about big book publishing houses price-gouging and author lockdowns.

-The Larry Niven techno-fetishist from SFL Vol 01 starts a NANOTECHNOLOGY usenet group/internet mailing list in cooperation with the FORESIGHT INSTITUTE 

-How witch-moss in the Christopher Stasheff WARLOCK series makes no sense beyond the initial book.

-First mention of Games Workshop Press aka THE BLACK LIBRARY, and the first mention of dedicated WARHAMMER novels.

-STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION discussion. Why certain keystone writers left TNG after the first season, why Picard is unique, why did Crusher return, why TOS is better/worse, lists of TOS & TNG starship classes, YESTERDAYS ENTERPRISE episode discussion, etc.

-SFLer's scoff at the technological feasibility of ebook readers in Ben Bova's CYBERBOOKS

-One SFLer notes Steven Brust's fixation with the number seventeen(17), noting that every book Brust has had published up to 190 has had 17 chapters, the 17 houses in the Vlad series, etc. Also as of 1989, Steven Brust was well-known for randomly walking into bookstores and signing copies of his work on the racks.

-Larry Niven acknowledging in a 1981 essay that the "Belter Civilization" in his KNOWN SPACE series was lifted almost directly from one of Randall Garrett's short stories.

(2020 note: Making the educated guess it was Niven "borrowing" from Randall Garrett's stories A SPACESHIP NAMED MCGUIRE & ANCHORITE)

-Someone in the 1990 SFL Archives brought up the gimmick behind the Eric Frank Russell TEST PIECE short story. The gimmick in it involved 2 forbidden words which would result in instant death if spoken. Eric Frank Russell & OTHER WORLDS magazine got hundreds of SF fans (& at least one author) to out themselves as hyper-chuds/racists over a slate of 51 prizes ranging from artwork/lump sums of cash/magazine subscriptions/all expenses paid 1 week vacation retreat. The contest was to most accurately guess the missing three two words in Eric Frank Russell's short story TEST PIECE.

(2020 note: One of the best bits about that Eric Frank Russell/OTHER WORLDS magazine contest is that all this happened back in 1951, so you & I can only guess at the hyper-racist/giga-chud phrases people sent in that OTHER WORLDS magazined refused to publish.)

-SFWA White Knight Chuq Von Rospach continued their trend of being 150% in-the-tank/taking-a-dive for the SFWA & every established SF&F author whenever negative statements about anything comes up, especially SF&F author-editors in existence.....except for Kurt Vonnegut & Piers Anthony.

(2020 note: Kurt Vonnegut refuses to be a SFWA member which Chuq sees as a heresy equaling excommunication, and as for Piers Anthony, well Piers Anthony openly said that Chuq fucking sucks in personal correspondence between the two.)

-The return of juvenile fantasy & science fiction story discussion: only this time it's what SF&F stories would you read to a 4yr old - 9yr to get them interested in the SF&F genres.

(2020 note: Worth checking out for parents who want to share their love of SF&F with their children. Raid the back catalogs of Scholastic Press for hidden juvenile SF&F gems.)

-Orson Scott Card's work continues to be discussed in detail, and a year 2020 reader can visibly see how OSC is retreating back into Mormon fundamentalism with every new story/project OSC works on.

(2020 note: A few 1989/1990 SFLer's claim that Orson Scott Card got threatened with excommunication from the Church of Latter Day Saints after his touring Secular Humanism debate panels, and that is why Mormonism is becoming more and more overt in OSC's work since that excommunication threat.) 

-1990 SFLers start discussing the KNOWN SPACE setting and bring up a interesting point: Why did the Human Protectors never take out the Pierson Puppeteers who were known to fuck around with Earth/Humanity in general. Was the Man-Kzin war incited to wipe out any survivors of the Human Protectors vs the 2nd/3rd/4th/5th waves of the Pak Protector "rescue" fleets?

-Simon Hawke and their TIME WARS series discussion. Simon Hawke is a pen-name, and the author self-doxxed themselves to stop someone else impersonating them at SF&F conventions. Simon Hawke also gets mentions as one of the "authors with bad conduct at conventions" people when Harlan Ellison's XENOGENESIS essay gets discussed/torn apart/defended in June 1989.

-Eric S. Raymond randomly decides to start posting reviews of everything SF&F he runs across to the SFL Archives ala the Leeper clan. Shockingly, from day 1 ESR's reviews are light-years more coherent, detailed and less biased than the Leeper clans reviews of everything S&F they have run across, despite having 6 more years of experience. 

(2020 note: Not saying that ESR's reviews were great, there is a heavy bias in the reviews ESR posts, while the Leepers tend to go with first impression/clickbait style reviews...and have repeated the same review under "different bylines a few times now. Also, if there is female nudity in a movie, Mark Leeper automatically gives the movie a +2 rating, no matter what.) 

-More periodic repeats of people stumbling across the credits thanking Harlan Ellison in THE TERMINATOR 1984, or half-remembering the details of a Outer Limits episode/short story Ellison wrote about a time traveller with amnesia needing to kill robots stalking them to fill out a glass hand.

(2020 note: That last sentence makes sense if you watched the right Outer Limits tv series episode, or read the Harlan Ellison short story adapted into that Outer Limits episode.) 

-Periodic Mike aka Michael Resnick discussion. SANTIAGO, BIRTHRIGHT, etc.

-1990 Robert Silverberg discussion which focused on Silverberg finally paying off a vicious divorce settlement agreement, and now being able to go back to writing deep non-commercial SF&F fiction stories vs what Silverberg had been churning out since the mid 1970s.

-The April 29th 1990 NY Times essay DOLLAR AND DRAGONS: THE TRUTH ABOUT FANTASY gets SFLers mildly riled up.

-Stories of Larry Niven visibly getting tired of  dealing with weird fans/weird fan conduct at SF&F conventions, which ties into Harlan Ellison's essay XENOGENESIS.

-Christian Science Fiction story discussion, with SFLer's making their cases for slotting certain authors/certain authors stories into the CSF sub-genre. 

-Dan Simmon's 1st book HYPERION finally starts getting discussed in the SFL Archives, along with slight drama about the sequel to Hyperion. Was it a publisher decision to split up the two books, why is a incompetent book proofing editor that half-asses their job at Doubleday allowed to keep their job when every third book they touch requires errata pages to be published/new print runs made.

-Magic & Technology discussion. It started off as misquotes of Arthur C Clarke on technology/magic, then spun off into a few people having very strong opinions on Aleister Crowley and Magik, and will not allow disinformation about Crowley/cheerleading about Crowley to happen without loud dissent and picking apart (line by line) opposing arguments about Aleister Crowley.

-The original version of Stephen King's THE STAND is released, with some SFLer's enjoying the refresh/pop culture updates in it, while other SFLer's seem it as an abomination that shows how Stephen King's popularity put him beyond the control of editors now, and why that is bad for the horror genre/any new Stephen King stories.

-SFLer's start theory-crafting a nonexistent sequel to the LENSMEN series using everything previously published in the Lensmen series along with some grabs from EE Smith's other series/other novels.

(2020 note: This discussion thread gets weird and of course the incest implication in the final Lensmen book gets mentioned over and over again.)

-Tons of B-movie & B-tv series discussion. Some of the movies and tv series were previously mentioned in my SFL ARCHIVES VOL 11 READTHROUGH UPDATE 08, however lots of new stuff has cropped up, and/or got vastly expanded on for people (like me) who had never heard of or seen any of these amazingly bad/innovative/terrible/low-budget/amusing works.

(2020 note: The sheer amount of stuff I have to recap for 1990 means I won't be doing a listing of shows/movies like back in SFL Vol 11 update 08,.............however that Gene Autry singing cowboy/underground civilization mashup movie is something I want to watch now, as well as the first two QUATERMASS movies/tv-serials along with a mostly forgotten Japanese Kaiju/giant robot tv-series called INFRAMAN....and maybe TIME RIDER too.)

-Marc Steigler's 1987 DAVID'S SLING having very good advice for Information filtering on the Internet circa 1989.

(2020 note: The information filtering advice is still sort of valid, so I'm just going to requote in full below.)

 In the Information Age, the first step to sanity is FILTERING.

    Filter the information; extract the knowledge.

    Filter first for substance. Filter second for significance.

    These filters protect against advertising.

    Filter third for reliability.

    This filter protects against politicians.

    Filter fourth for completeness.

    This filter protects from the media.

-Harlan Ellison's 1990 essay XENOGENESIS closes out SFL Vol 15a. XENOGENESIS was Ellison describing the bad, toxic and extremely abusive behavior SF&F fans feel free to display with qualms to SF&F authors like constant harassing anonymous phone calls, death threats, theft of author property, charging items under authors names, throwing vomit and worse directly into SF&F authors faces. Harlan Ellison's driving question is Why do SF&F authors have to put up with that kind of behavior while normal mainstream fiction authors do not?

The overall SFLer reaction to XENOGENESIS was extremely mixed (but mostly anti-Ellison). People involved in running conventions seemed angrier about Harlan Ellison airing dirty laundry and how it would impact their conventions vs the bad behavior being openly discussed, while counter-arguments gave evidence for Ellison's claims, and counter-counter arguments gave extenuating circumstances like vicious author abuse of fans at conventions and counter-counter-counter arguments brought up worse stuff (aka sexual assault, date-rape).

(2020 note: One of Harlan Ellison's claims of fan abuse can definitely be backed up. Someone *cough* pyrla!cracraft@caip.rutgers.edu (Stuart Cracraft) *cough* back in SFL Archives Vol 11 posted Ellison's personal phone number to the SF-LOVERS mailing list, and then humble-bragged about making repeated adversarial phone calls to Ellison).

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 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 11 readthrough update 03

 SFL Archives Vol 11: 25% completion, 78 bookmarks (more than a few bookmarks were redundant and got cleaned up)

-The reason why Alexei Panshin had a decades long break getting stories published becomes clearer. (Panshin apparently signed a multi-book contract for the advance money, Panshin then tried to weasel out of the book contract commitment by submitting stories *co-authored* with his wife...publishers did not react well to shenanigans they normally pulled on authors happening to them)

-One shot SF&F authors of the 1980's get discussed and a few of them/their stories sound interesting (Hilbert Schenck, Barrington Bayley, Denis Johnson, John Sladek, etc)

-COSMOS, a 17 chapter SF round-robin "write your way out of this" serial written almost exclusively by future SF editors/authors inside the 1933 fanzine SCIENCE FICTION DIGEST 

-Some SFLers have devolved into posting lists of books and author bibliographies in response to other SFLers making 1000+ word essay-posts

-SFLers start asking what deeper meaning Ridley Scott intended by costuming Tim Curry in gallons of red paint, a foam bodybuilder suit and fake horns in the 1985 movie LEGEND. (2020 take: Ridley Scott putting 97% of his effort on the visuals of a film & 1% effort on the movie script never gets hypothesized by 1986 SFLers)

-Vernor Vinge's PEACE WAR comes up, and how the bobbles (aka stasis field technology) in PEACE WAR could be used IRL across multiple fields like construction, civilian, military, space exploration, etc.

-Philip Jose Farmer's unauthorized vulturing of other SF&F authors work gets mentioned multiple times, re the PJF authored VENUS ON A HALF-SHELL and the PJF authored Necronomicon

-SFLers note that Jack Chalker's stories all seeming to have involuntary species + gender swaps for main characters and the subsequent kinky sex that happens due to species/gender changes makes me very happy I have only read one of Jack Chalker's stories (it was notable for the extreme speed of the plot movement vs modern fantasy books) and nothing more. 

-Diane Duane's STAR TREK novels get brought up and fans of Diane Duane/fans of STAR TREK fiction might find things of note being discussed that I haven't 

-More SFLer's discover Michael Moorcock and the ETERNAL CHAMPION stories, which [sarcasm mode]Robert Heinlein definitely did not rip off for his Number of the Beast book[/sarcasm mode].

-The SF-LOVERS t-shirt project gets relaunched with a cluttered seeming graphic design (two interstellar aliens reading SF-LOVERS on a terminal with a scarier interstellar alien creeping up behind the reader aliens)

-An SFLer on the hunt for unique for PhD thesis material asks "What is the etymology behind "filksongs/fens/fen?" (2020: I will 110% be skipping all further posts regarding this subject)

-Steven Brust regains ARPANET acess and happily continues posting to the SF-LOVERS mailing list, to my utter non-delight as a avid non-fan of SKZB

-Lots and lots of LORD OF THE RINGS/Tolkien lore chat: Is Gandalf one of the Maia, why didn't Gandalf instantly ace the door-lock "say friend" test trying to get into Moria, was Legolas a backwoods (giggle) uneducated elf-hick or was Legolas just not willing to embarrass Gandalf about elf-language in front of the mortals? (2020 note: I can't remember how many supplemental LoTR books Christopher Tolkien had published up to this point in 1986. Also, RIP Christopher Tolkien)

-Funny SF stories requests. Henry Kuttner gets recommended a bunch, especially Kuttner's "drunk inventor-genius" stories. Spider Robinson's work gets recommended too (2020 take: Spider Robinson is a trap. Do Not Read. DO NOT READ.) BILL THE GALACTIC HERO gets recommended (2020 take: Bill the Galactic Hero IS NOT a trap read.)

- HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster fan recipes and anecdotes of drinking those fan recipes.

-The 1980's reboot of the TWILIGHT ZONE series viability is in doubt, and a doomed Save the Twilight Zone fan-campaign gets started.

-Locus Magazine mentions that Robert Aspirin has signed a multi-book deal for more MYTH stories (2020 take: Aspirin would pull a Panshin 2.0 move, only in Aspirin's case it was (mostly) IRS back-taxes related).

-A SFLer pitches a survey dedicated to filksong *cannonical collections of 'whimsically' regular words* and I promise to skip over any future posts on this just as much as posts about etymology of filksongs/fen/fens

-An PLAYBOY short story article called "TIME IS MONEY" gets brought up and discussed. (2020 take: doing a moderate reworking of that idea circa 2020 might win you the 2020/2021 PROMETHEUS AWARD aka the Hugo Award for Libertarians)

-1985 movie THE STUFF gets brought up again and from a 2020 standpoint it sounds more surrealistic than 1983 movie LIQUID SKY.

-CODEX SERAPHINIANUS gets brought up a few times. Knowing nothing about it  and refusing to google it, the CODEX SERAPHINIANUS sounds alot like the VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript

-Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova suing broadcast television networks & the producers of TERMINATOR 1 over stolen pitched-to-Hollywood ideas to get some sweet sweet settlement money comes up again. 

-A few SFLer's get around to watching Akira Kurosawa's HIDDEN FORTRESS and start noticing similarities/homages/outright scene reenactments of it that George Lucas did in STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE

-the AYES OF TEXAS get reviewed by Mark Leeper, and *even Mark Leeper, master of surface level oblivious reviews* picks up on the TEXAS slant in it.

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 03 readthrough update 03

-Dell killed off their entire scifi publishing line, including the prestige labels. 

2020 sidenote: Thought this was a result of end-of-year price bumps not getting the sales targets Dell was aiming for. Looking slightly behind the scenes circa year 2020 vision (ha), it seems that the Dell Publishing buyout by DOUBLEDAY had entered "asset stripping mode", maybe to help Doubleday payoff debt from another recent Doubleday acquisition, the NEW YORK METS baseball team.

-EXCALIBUR (1981) the movie came out, and the SFL archive has been full of "I am not angry, I am super-angry that the movie did not adhere 100% to The Whole Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table", or "Hey Arthurian myth has lots of forms and versions, why you so mad?" and "Read more <arthurian myth> dumbasses, the movie adapted multiple arthurian sources", etc.

-Despite live-posting the first attempted manned launch of the Space Shuttle program, absolutely no one seemed to give a f**k when Columbia launched successfully two days later, and landed successfully 2 days after that. Instead it was "What ever happened to the Space Shuttle named Enterprise?" /"It's the prototype test Shuttle, it might get turned into a real boy real Space Shuttle if Congress funds it" Spoilers unneeded, Congress did not fund it. 

-I apparently spoke too soon about people not giving a f**k about the first manned Space Shuttle landing. At least 3 SFL subscribers ran into each other at the 1st manned Space Shuttle landing exhibition and recognized each other from overhearing references to a recent SFL verbal meme. This email took a week plus after being sent to finally appear in the SFL mailing list.

-the MENSA ad opened the gateway, and barely disguised product review advertisements have started to creep into the SFL mailing list.

-Newcomers to the SFL mailing list being confused by cryptic messages and unknown acronym usages, and ironically confusing people by their use of unknown acronyms.

-Massive amount of requests for "DOWN IN FLAMES", which circa 1981, had only seen print in a discontinued fanzine (Trumpet #10)

-A "Deaf people are scifi fans too. How about some scifi stories rec's/radio transcript adaptions for deaf people?" request got some very ugly feedback before SFL posters just started to list fiction with deaf aliens/aliens that have no concept of sound. Not a great moment for the SFL archives to be honest.

-Harlan Ellison demonstrates his skillz by writing a short story in the "show window of the B. Dalton Bookstore on Fifth Avenue" live from a image suggested by a person onsite.

-Twenty days worth of scifi themed juvenile fiction chat in the SFL archives means I'm finally dropping juvenile series names that SFL archive posters grew up reading. DANNY DUNN, SPACE CAT, MUSHROOM PLANET, etc. Eleanor Cameron was very highly regarded by SFL posters. Most of the juvenile series would be cartoons today, with the Danny Dunn series being a very very close match to Disney's Phineas and Ferb.

-sexbots, gynoids, heinlein stories, words with *-trix endings (all these are connected)

-Gene Wolfe's BOOK OF THE NEW SUN books start getting discussed.

-Lancelot the goat-unicorn got mentioned a few more times, and so did it's owners/creators. Morning Glory was big into the Aleister Crowley/Donald Trump school of belief that "press mentions are life, bad publicity is better than no publicity at all", and apparently showed up to one fantasy-scifi convention wearing only white body-paint saying that she was a giant bottle of correction fluid.

-you don't talk about Fight Club in public SF-LOVERS, HUMAN-NETS, or any of the Large Mailing Lists directly in any form whatsoever.

[ Everyone planning to meet at NCC '81 should please take care not

to mention SF-LOVERS, HUMAN-NETS, or any of the Large Mailing Lists

directly in any form whatsoever. To do so would violate the

security of these lists, threatening their existence. Rather, it

has proved effective at past conventions to simply post notices

directing people to REDACTED@REDACTED, REDACTED@REDACTED, or REDACTED group.

Please take care to be cryptic so that people who do not know about

the Large Lists will remain ignorant. - REDACTED ] 

it was full-bore '50's/60's/70's juvenile print and multimedia entertainment nostalgia chat until RotLA came out, and even then it took CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981), SUPERMAN 2(1981) and DRAGONSLAYER (1981) to derail juvenile entertainment nostalgia chat. Finally RODOF, the twice doxxed son of Dr Robert Forward, came forward (terrible pun but I'm keeping it) to end Vol 03 on a creepy note [Subject: Hymen Hijinx].

-RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK chat was mainly angrily posting unfavorable reviews of RotLA, arguing whether Belloq ate a fly during the Bazooka-Indy standoff, seeing C3P0 & R2D2 in wall inscriptions of the buried city of Tanis, everyone saying that Indy shooting the swordsman got the highest audience reaction, and then trying to break down why in SMG/BotL style, followed by infinite seeming waves of punny RotLA sequel concept titles.

-Clash of Titans chat included 2 profiles of Ray Harryhausen, wooden acting, not sticking to Greek myths as understood/remembered, slams about Harryhausen's work, body doubles...all in all; the people who were the most vocal about Excalibur 1981 (mentioned in earlier Vol 03 recaps) were also the most vocal posters about Clash of Titans.

-Nothing big on Superman 2 chat other than long-exposed to public awareness behind-the-scenes drama involving Donner and Superman 1/2. Dragonslayer 1981 mostly got mentioned for the early CGI/first generation digital optical efforts in it, then...

-RODOF made a series of posts about [Subject: Hymen Hijinx]...........in Dragonslayer (1981). Everywhere you think those RODOF posts probably went re: [Subject: Hymen Hijinx], Yup, you are correct. Bonus correctness points go to people whom also predicted "I wasn't being serious in my earlier posts, I was only joking BUT....".

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

SFL Archives Vol 01 readthrough update 03

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

------------------------------

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

------------------------------

Originally posted June 21st -June 22nd, 2020 18:15 in the SomethingAwful forums Book Barn Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3 thread