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 13 readthrough update 04

 SFL Archives Vol 13

5.9 mb raw text file

100% completion, 198 bookmarks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-The surprisingly deep back catalogue of SCHOLASTIC PRESS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SFL Archives Vol 13 readthrough update 01

SFL Archives Vol 13

5.9 mb raw text file

15% completion, 25 bookmarks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 (2020 note: This story sounds amazingly bad.)

SFL Archives Vol 12a readthrough update 03

61% completion, 50 bookmarks.

-William Shatner shares his concept pitch for STAR TREK 5 in a 1987 interview with PLAYGIRL magazine. (2020 note: Maybe 1 in 5 of the ideas in William Shatner's concept pitch made it into the 1989 STAR TREK 5 movie.)

-April Fools Day jokes, 1987 edition: The meta-joke is 99% of the April Fools jokes getting sent out on March 30th & 31st 1987, with their original sent dates of a week or two back. One Aprils Fool email manages to successfully troll people into angry responses. Robots are serious business and Isaac Asimov/Fred Saberhagen fans repeatedly throw down challenge gauntlets vs each other and the April Fool's joke emailer.  

-More BOSKONE discussion. Sometime in late March 1987, the Boskone management committee (NEFSA) sends out a requirements-for-entry to 1988's upcoming BOSKONE 25, and roughly 90% of the people who attended previous Boskone conventions would be excluded from attending Boskone 25. The SFLers who attended previous Boskone's/planned on attending Boskone 25 are extremely angry about being pre-excluded, which goes against many of the tenets of SF fendom is about. IE being a open, non-judgemental and welcoming lot to everyone who likes SF.

The people for shrinking BOSKONE conventions in scope are mostly NEFSA members, and resort to personal attacks on the most vocal opponents of shrinking Boskone conventions. From a 2020 standpoint, the NEFSA people never flat out say "We are extremely burnt out and could not handle dealing with as many people that attended BOSKONE 24. Therefore the next Boskone convention, Boscone 25, is shrinking massively in scope.", which would have immediately ended the anger postings of the SFLer's against BOSKONE 25 shrinking in scope and may have added dozens of now-eager-to-pitch-in volunteers to the BOSKONE 25 infrastructure. 

BTW, The requirements list to attend BOSKONE 25 has a lot of staggering  "wait a second, this convention ran 24/7, and they weren't doing basic things like restricting access/requiring convention badges to be displayed at all times/having a no alcohol on convention floor rules before?" things in it.

-Someone posts a 3 part STAR WARS 3 movie draft that is 100% fan-fiction under the guise of stolen draft notes from Skywalker Ranch, and yet this 1987 Star Wars fan-fiction is better plotted and thought out than George Lucas managed to do regarding STAR WARS: REVENGE OF THE SITH.

-Roger Zelazny fans keep comparing his LORD OF LIGHT, and CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS together. (2020 note: I had absolutely no recollection of CoLaD even existing before reading about it in the 1987 SFL Archives.)

-Books/Authors SFLers recommend: A VOYAGE TO ACTURUS (David Lindsay), the novella FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON (Daniel Keyes), SOAP OPERA (Alan Nelson), THE BIG U (Neal Stephenson), IN THE DRIFT (Michael Swanwick), KITEWORLD (Keith Roberts), THE SILENT TOWER (Barbara Hambly), THE UPLIFT WAR (David Brin), and the works of Doris Lessing. 

-Timothy Leary, desperate for attention slash validation as a guru in the 1980's, glooms onto the Cyberpunk movement as his new meal-ticket.

-Racism in the STAR WARS movies and what source's George Lucas ripped off making STAR WARS. Examples given like: Droid's being inferior, Chewbacca slave-subservient to Han Solo, Lando being a traitor, everyone hating Jawa's (even droids). HIDDEN FORTRESS, THE SEARCHERS, HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, THE DAMN BUSTERS, etc.

-More death notices for 1987. SciFi author James Triptree Jr aka Alice Bradley Sheldon. Terry Carr, SciFi editor. Patrick Troughton, most famous for being the 2nd DOCTOR WHO actor. Gardner F Fox, DC Comics writer/SF author.

-Anime discussion intensifies in April 1987. Summer Macross 1984, many anime series I'm not bothering transcribing here, seeking out the hidden "Japantown's" in American cities with large Japanese populations to score manga & non-dubbed Japanimation movies. 

-I finally notice that the Leeper Clan (Evelyn & Mark) has started putting copyright notices on their surface-level-at-best "reviews" of all things SciFi & Fantasy they come across. 

-Montague Summers, UK priest that also wrote encyclopedic reference books on supernatural entities across the world, allegedly so that if they were real, the Church would know exactly what was needed to kill them. THE VAMPIRE: HIS KITH AND KIN, THE VAMPIRE IN EUROPE, THE WEREWOLF, etc. 

-SFLer's wonder why is STAR WARS obsessed with showing only one-biome planets. (2020 note: How quickly people forget Dagobah the Mud (Half-water/Half Forest) planet.) 

-SFLer's start discussing THE KING IN YELLOW by Robert W. Chambers, with the tonal shift of the first half of the stories vs the last half reliably confusing the hell out of non-Victorian era readers reading the King in Yellow for the first time.

(2020 note: THE KING IN YELLOW is the one book I am shocked that Philip Jose Farmer DID NOT attempt to vulture in on. I mean, Farmer vultured in on Vonnegut, and HP Lovecraft and many others....wait a sec. Holy crap. I see it now. The RIVERWORLD series. That was Philip Jose Farmer's take on the KING IN YELLOW....and yes, reading all the Riverworld books did drive me insane.) 

-SFLer's start bringing their worst SciFi movie of all time? Many extremely terrible SF themed movies get brought up,  however I will only bother listing ZARDOZ.

-Initial casting notes for STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION get leaked.  Captain Julian Picard, Lt. Tanya Yar, and you can feel the Gene Roddenberry skeeviness level kick in when it gets to Beverly Crusher and "

BEVERLY CRUSHER -- Wesley's 35 year old mother.  She serves as the chief medical officer on the Enterprise.  If it were not for her intelligence, personality, beauty and the fact that she has a natural walk of a striptease queen, Capt. Picard might not have agreed to her request that Wesley observe bridge activities; therefore letting her son's intelligence carry events further.

-MAX HEADROOM the tv-series discussion. The differences between the BBC pilot episode of MAX HEADROOM vs the American tv-series, what got dumbed down, locations reshoot or totally removed in the American version, and what actors carried over from the BBC pilot episode, and how MAX HEADROOM themselves got less-edgy from when they were doing Coke ads, or interviewing pop-culture celebrities like David Bowie, etc.

(2020 note: The interviewing pop-culture celebrities stuff reminded me of SPACE GHOST: COAST TO COAST. And now I want SPACE GHOST: COAST TO COAST to be revived ASAP, with Space ghost interviewing cans of Fanta or Youtube personalities or TikTok people.)

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 09

 74% completion, 121 bookmarks

Not much visible progress. All the things I had previously bookmarked in Vol 11 but not mentioned before are finally listed. Was able to delete about 90 bookmarks that were duplicates of earlier bookmarks/gibberish phrases/heinlein defense squad posts/clearly stdh.txt material.

-What would be considered "normal not weird gibberish" email addresses start to appear from the BBN & Xerox arpanet nodes. (2020 note: BBN & Xerox were respectively responsible for designing slash building the Arpanet and Ethernet networking).

-Dennis McKiernan explains why his MITHGAR setting exists. (2020 note: McKiernan's explaination give background on why LORD OF THE RINGS knockoffs started appearing everywhere in the 1980's.)

-SFLer's really do not like Vonda McIntyre's novel ENTERPRISE: THE FIRST ADVENTURE. Timelines in it versus the tv-show are off, with McIntyre ignoring lots of fan-canon factoids in favor of fleshing out Yeoman Rand as the main viewpoint character of the book.

-It is pointed out that one of the main characters in Michael Moorcock's ETERNAL CHAMPION mythos is directly pulled/stolen/borrowed from a series of children's books written by E. Nesbit around 1900-ish.

-WorldCon 1986 program item "The Forgery of Mike Jittlov's Autograph" was scheduled but never happened, and a SFLer wants to know what the deal is with the forgery + autograph. 

-The BEASTMASTER movie starring Marc Singer vs Andre Norton's similarly titled book comes up again for the 30th time. No they are completely different, and Norton got no settlement money ala Harlan Ellison/Ben Bova/AE Van Vogt.  (2020 note: Marc Singer was the 1980's version of Chris Hemsworth).

-One SFLer makes the case for Edgar Rice Burroughs literally stealing the Mars/Barsoom setting  from Edwin L. Arnold. Books that did Barsoom before ERB are GULLIVER OF MARS and PHRA THE PHOENICIAN. 

-An SFLer complains that Isaac Asimov has been dumbing down his science columns for over a decade, and now it appears pitched at twelve-year olds and says (direct quote): "How many twelve-year-old's read F&SF, I wonder?"

(2020 note: Going from the F&SF threads on the SomethingAwful forums, the answer: MANY OF THEM. MANY MANY MANY twelve-year-old's read F&SF.) 

-Michael Moorcock being heavily connected to the band HAWKWIND and co-writing some of the lyrics of BLUE OYSTER CULT songs came up a few times.

-After being discussed at least 60 times in earlier SFL Archives Volumes, I finally get around to mentioning Sherri Tepper, mostly because Tepper's book DERVISH DAUGHTER finishes off a trilogy and has gotten mostly favorable SFL feedback

-A detailed walkthrough of the 1986 Doctor Who Experience USA Tour. 

(2020 note: It sounded pretty cool, and very good value for $2 in 1986 money, especially since the money the tour raised was allegedly going to local NPR stations.)

-Jim Baen responds to negative feedback about the BAEN BOOK CLUB deal mentioned in a earlier readthrough post. The Book Club deal was always was a limited 6-9 month trial, everything under that Baen Book Club deal was being sold at a loss by Baen Books, and it had a maximum member limit of 500, etc.

-The saga of the SF-LOVERS t-shirts is now complete or almost complete. The person who ran the project is discussing the packing methods/amount of t-shirt orders and all I can see in my mind is ebay sellers of the 21st century going "<snide tone>lightweight".

-Pierre Boulle's lesser known stories comes up. Stories about medical detective work to fight disease are always interesting, especially circa 2020 + COVID19.

-A technology focused SFLer talks about "gravity gradient stabilization" technology being used in space probes and satellites orbiting the earth.  (2020 note: This is definitely on my "look this up" list.) 

-An old SF fan chimes in about SF radio programs from the late 1940's and early 1950's they remember, wonders if anyone else remembers them.

-Don Woods, creator of COLOSSAL CAVE ADVENTURE is unable to find the 2 missing pages in a rumored notoriously bad reprint of Harlan Ellison's PERSISTENCE OF VISION that he owns.

(2020 note: This is Dad-joke funny because Persistence of Vision...being unable to see anything missing.....?!)

-Japanese Kajiu movies start getting discussed, with mentions of international releases adding in extra actors.

-More weird fantasy and SciFi tv-series and movies of the 1950's-1970's:

I Married A Witch

Science Fiction Theater

Commander Cody

Captain Midnight aka Jet Jackson

Flash Gordon

The Man and the Challenge

Way Out

World of Giants

Men Into Space

Far Out Space Nuts

SFL Archives Vol 10 readthrough update 04

-John Varley's short stories "THE BARBIE MURDERS", "PRESS ENTER" and "MILLENIUM" keep getting mentioned. From a 2020 perspective, John Varley's stories and writing aged better than Spider Robinson's work but not by much. 

-People can see the seams where Orson Scott Card's 1977 short story Ender's Game got Bloater-Drive expanded into the 1985 award winning novel ENDERS GAME.

-Female writers across multiple genres, and feminist SF gets discussed with Joanna Russ's HOW TO SUPRESS WOMEN'S WRITING getting prominently mentioned

-Isaac Asimov's creepy interactions with women gets brought up repeatedly as Fall 1985 hits. A particularly poorly aged Asimov penned article in the BOSKONE 22 program guide gets brought up. tldr...Asimov probably most definitely sexually harassed Shawna McCarthy out of her job as editor-in-chief of a little known SciFi magazine called "Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine". Keep in mind, this is 1985 SFL posters saying the Asimov Boskone 22 article aged poorly and to further clarify things Boskone 22 happened back in February 1985.

-Scientology starts getting discussed. Much EL RON HUUUUBBBBARRRD weirdness. A weirdly specific promotion contest for the upcoming BATTLEFIELD EARTH movie, to be filmed in Colorado.

(2020 sidenote: There was only one Battlefield Earth movie made, the year 2000 one starring John Travolta. It appears that Battlefield Earth was stuck in development hell for a long long time. For additional amusement factor, think of all the amazing books/book series with optioned movie rights that have been stuck in development limbo forever. Like STARS MY DESTINATION, old-man KING CONAN, CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, CONSIDER PHLEBAS, etc. Now remember that the GOR series managed to have a real movie made starring real Hollywood actors....queue infinite Tidus from Final Fantasy X laugh).

-Really angry feedback happens when the 1985 SFLer whose gimmick is posting 800+ word essays on the "THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE FICTION TODAY" says that Spider Robinson is a hack writer (2020 take: TRUTH), and that Samuel R Delany's DHALGREN is over-rated. 

-A SFLer in 1985 manages to predict both the clone army Kill Order 66 gimmick and the Robot Drone armies in the STAR WARS prequel movies.

-Lack of new STAR WARS content has people Zapruder film analyzing Ewok cuteness levels, the uselessness of Storm Trooper armor, ammo clips vs charge-paks on blasters, whether or not blasters are energy weapons vs explosive projectiles, and how lightsabers really work (super polished mirrors, plasma and extending rigid mono-filaments get mentioned)

-A 1985 Paramount Studios press release giving the general real outline of STAR TREK 4 comes out, and ruins the vicarious fun of peoples wild-ass guesses about Star Trek 4's plot.

-A interesting recap-summary of the talk Ellen Asher of the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club (SFBC) gave at a meeting of the New Jersey Science Fiction sometime in 1985. The recap summary mentioned the 7 different genre book clubs Doubleday had running at the time, and how book of the month selections were made, etc.

-Differences between the American & UK editions of the HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY books come up. It is mostly changes to what brand of cars people owned, the names of the Krikkit gate-key items, and Wowbagger the infinitely prolonged insults.

-Bookstore chains B. Dalton's and Waldenbooks (people who grew up in the USA during the 1980s & 1990s will remember these names) versus independently owned bookstores...lots of interesting sounding regional independent bookstores that may/may not/probably do not exist anymore.

-SFL Archives technical minutia chat including the origins of the SF-LOVERS mailing list and the real paranoia one of the longest running SF-LOVERS moderator had about getting called up before a Congressional committee headed by William Proxmire regarding SF-LOVERS leeching from US Government resources.

-DOCTOR WHO had a extended 18 month hiatus announced earlier in 1985 that threatened to be a permanent series ending hiatus. Mail in efforts, call in efforts to the BBC, and elected British officials got the hiatus window shrunk. One of the downsides or bonuses of the SFL Archives read-through is witnessing hubris destroying and wrecking more and more bits of the Doctor Who franchise every time John Nathan-Turner opens his mouth and drives away more Doctor Who actors, writers, budget planners.

-First mention of the TEENAGE NINJA MUTANT TURTLES comic book in the SFL Archives, the TNMT cartoon series most people are familiar with happened much later

-HARMONY GOLD. MACROSS SAGA. ROBOTECH. HARMONY GOLD. CAPTAIN HARLOCK. Waves of people chiming into add that Robotech is a mere bastardization of 3 different Japanese animation series. Harmony Gold seriously wants their Gold.

-New Robert Heinlein book "THE CAT WHO WALKED THROUGH WALLS" gets released and ties everything Heinlein has ever written closer together, which some Heinlein fans like and other people just groan about. Lazarus Long openly acting like the literal mother-fucking douchebag he is makes some of the Heinlein defense squad turn in their "I HEART EVERYTHING HEINLEIN" badges.

-A few SFL edgelords get offended by all the feminist SF being mentioned and start trolling the feminist SF discussion thread by confusing who is a female writer and claiming that GOR and Heinlein are peak feminist SF.

-Steven Brust quits his job that has ARPANET access to become a full-time writer. Farewell SKZB, I will not miss you.

-The 1985 AMAZING STORIES tv series, the 1980's TWILIGHT ZONE reboot, and 1980's Alfred Hitchcock Presents tv-serials all come out around the same time and get discussed heavily. Amazing Stories has amazing visuals but not so much amazing plots or storytelling. 2020 take: this was where Steven Spielberg encountered a rare setback in his career (cashing out on the Medal of Honor videogame series before it hit big was Spielberg's 2nd setback). It turns out producing tv movies under contract is hard, especially since John Landis fucked up everything regarding child-actors with the Twilight Zone movie and malicious negligence lawsuits.

-The SHAVER MYSTERY aka a variation of the HOLLOW EARTH CONSPIRACY THEORY gets mentioned in detail because Richard Shaver was a 1940s scifi writer.

-How to get published as a new SF&F writer part 3: a daisy wheel ink-cartridge worth of SFL self-doxxed authors chiming in to give advice, conflicting advice, overriding conflicting advice and patronizing humble brags.

-A proposal to put the SF-LOVERS mailing list onto microfiche to preserve it for future study. Pretty sure the NSA already has that covered for you, 1985 person.

-Stephen King/Richard Bachman stories get discussed more, THINNER is the latest Stephen King written book being discussed as 1985 closes out

-The variety of mono-sex societies in fiction. Either all female societies, or all male societies, maintained via cloning, artificial insemination, or physical separation after birth to all male/all female zones. Outside forces usually arrive and hijinks happen but not like the creepy shit Star Trek:TNG got up too.

-Greg Bear's past few books (EON, INFINITY CONCERTO, etc) haven't impressed anyone posting about them in the SFL in 1985 and some people wonder if Greg Bear has peaked already or just hit a very very rough spot in his career.

-The movie ENEMY MINE based on a novella of the same name comes out at the very end of 1985. One of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION's best episodes, Darmok, "heavily" borrowed from Enemy Mine.

-"Do decompressing human bodies in outer space explode, implode or other"? discussion...2001 the movie is the main reference point for this discussion

-A insane seeming story about the last fertile man on Earth after a nuclear accident called MR ADAM by Pat Frank. This is how MR ADAM first got mentioned in the SFL

quote:

One of the secretaries here was talking about a book she read called
MR. ADAM. It was apparently written in the late 40's and concerned
a nuclear accident which left the male population of the earth
sterile, except for one man. As she explained it, the book
concerned the government's efforts at repopulation via this one man.

BTW, she said the book was hilarious. (Anyone with a pointer to
finding a copy?)

And that wraps up SFL Volume 10 summaries for me, at least regarding weird, bizarre, horrifying and retroactively interesting things in it.

originally posted September 2nd in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3

SFL Archives Vol 10 readthrough update 03

 Certain topics have cropped up again and again periodically in the SFL Archives read-through.

 Larry Niven's KNOWN SPACE/DOWN IN FLAMES, matter transportation, filkchat, childrens tv shows, etc..luckily each time the discussion on <reoccuring-subject> has focused on something new rather than rehashing old-arguments.

-Relative newcomer to the book publishing field BAEN BOOKS (established 1983) is getting referenced more and more.

-V the series. SFLers still can't get over why the Visitor's came to Earth for H20 aka water when water is freely available in so many other places. 

(2020 take: Replacing water with biologicals would have worked better. Think of how coffee plants originally only grew in South America, or how tasty spices mostly grew in the tropics, and the Mace/Nutmeg spice island being traded 1:1 for the city-island New Amsterdam aka New York City. Now make that intergalactic, and the Visitors are coming for this rare delicacy called "potatoes" or "crab-apples".)

-Sometime in late 1985 Samuel Delany's DHALGREN starts being used a test for the top tier of SFF fandom or "fendom" (a mispelling of fans/fandom which SFF fans adopted similar to "filksongs")

(2020 sidenote: Everyone involved in filksongs, I hate you. Entirely.)

essentially the Dhalgren test is:
If you managed to read Dhalgren completely and like it, you pass the test. -Samuel Delany megafans.
If you think Dhalgren is overblown and/or garbage, f**k you you goddamn fake fen -also Samuel Delany megafans.

(2020 Sidenote: Someone in the SFL Archives stated that Samuel R Delany circa the 1980s had multiple health issues ranging from no short term memory, epilepsy, seizures, [sarcasm]Assassins Creed Eagle Sense, the power to turn water into mead[/sarcasm], etc. Contributing to why Delany's writing and stories do not follow normal storytelling conventions, and why they found Delany so inspiring.
How much of that (outside of my sarcasm tags) was bullshit or real? I don't really follow Samuel R Delany because he creeps me out hard on a "acclaimed French Writer Gabriel Matzneff" level. )

-BRIDGE OF BIRDS gets mentioned for the first time in SFL archives as well as similar themed stories

-Someone in late 1985 mentions a bunch of "intelligent dolphin" stories that aren't David Brin's Uplift setting and wants more. DolphinF**ker is inexplicably not the author of those posts.

-Matter transportation comes back as a topic of discussion in late 1985, but focuses on souls/who is the original in 1985 vs the earlier "how do they transmit all that data" and "how do they *STORE* all that data" debates.

-The 1985 version o KNOWN SPACE/DOWN IN FLAMES discussion focuses on how Larry Niven's Protector book syncs up with the rest of the Known Space series and the Ringworld. lots of interesting ideas and theories that Niven will never deal with sadly.

-A throw-away reference to female fans being advised to avoid Isaac Asimov if encountered alone at scifi-conventions

-BACK TO THE FUTURE 1 came out in July 1985, and discussion about time-line split-offs with Marty 1 timeline, Marty 1955 timelines, and who goes where/who gets replaced kicks off. Definitely seen identical arguments on this same subject on SA threads.

-November 5th being a frequent "go to/execute/the movie happens now" date for time travel stories comes up and never gets resolved (so far)

-Author nepotism, SFL authors dissing other SFL authors, SFL authors arguing about Hugo & Nebula awards, more author self-doxxes

-Book publisher f**kery part 36: publishers f**king up basic things like getting the authors name spelled correctly (or listed at all!), and f**king up the book title on book spines/title pages on 1st printing runs

-The 2nd hand story of how Jerry Pournelle lost his guest account arpanet access. Pournelle did *something* and "refuses to suck up to the post-grad" managing the ARPANET node to get his ARPANET guest account back.

-Reminisces about Theodore Sturgeon's career brought up the cringy-amusing time a fan invoked STURGEON'S LAW at Theodore Sturgeon during a SciFi convention panel by directly quoting excerpts from some of Sturgeon's crappier stories at him.

-Part two of people asking how to get in contact with authors. This time some of the self-avowed/self-doxxed SFL authors respond back on the best methods to do so(contact publishing company/ask a research desk librarian). Think I skipped mentioned part one which happened circa 1982? because back then it was clear the people asking weren't satisfied with merely sending letters, they wanted direct no limits one on one access.

originally posted August 27th - September 2nd in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread