SFL Archives Vol17b readthrough update 01

 100% completion, 173 bookmarks

-Movies & tv-series mentioned: HIGHLANDER THE TV-SERIES, FOREVER KNIGHT, HERMANS HEAD, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, CETACEAN, MAN FROM ATLANTIS, BATMAN RETURNS, COVINGTON CROSS, FROM BEYOND,  TANK GIRL, HUMAN TARGET (1992 tv-series), TIME TRAX, JURASSIC PARK 1993, DEATH BECOMES HER, PROJECT: SHADOWCHASER, PLAGUE 1978, STAY TUNED, HAWK THE SLAYER, MELROSE PLACE (tv-series), MISFITS OF SCIENCE, QUANTUM LEAP, WOOPS! (tv-series), KUNG FU THE LEGEND CONTINUES, MACGYVER, X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, BRAM STOKERS DRACULA, SOLAR CRISIS, PHANTOM EMPIRE (serial), FLASH GORDON (serial).

-Books & stories mentioned: THE CENTAURI DEVICE, ALEXANDRIA QUARTET, REAPER MAN, SAURONS DEFEAT, WAR DAY, THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS, TALES OF POWER, AT WINTERS END, GRUNTS!, CAPTAIN JACK ZODIAC, THE BIOFAB WAR, THE LAST COIN, GARDEN OF RAMA, WORLDS ENOUGH AND TIME, JURASSIC PARK, THE FOURTH R, THE TURING OPTION, CARVE THE SKY, A REBEL IN TIME, BAD VOLTAGE, THE DEEP 1975, A MILLION OPEN DOORS, RED GENESIS, BLOOD MUSIC, 

-Pop culture references: John Boy from the Waltons, having to set binary mode for FTP downloads, Rick Springfield, tension building moments in James Bond films, Franklin Mint figurines, Spike Lee, the Karate Kid movie series, Red Sonja comics, National Unity debates in Canada, Secret Masters Of Fandom, Blockbuster Video, Brett Easton Ellis, Dan Quayle, NORB comic strip, Dick Wolf & TV Crime Procedurals, Dan Rather's KENNETH encounter, Cyberpunk Library, Back to the Future: The Ride!, CD-I systems, the Bosnian War, Wing Commander 1 (pc-game), SLP to SP modes on VCR tapes,

-SFLer unusual requests:

>Underwater Fantasies

>Post nuclear books

>Post plague fiction

>SF Detectives

>SF writers with consistent themes

>Far, far future stories

>Hong Kong SF movies

>1930's science fiction

>Science Fiction Stage Plays

>What makes a good (SF&F) Con

>Tarot SF and Fantasy

>Bio-Science within Science Fiction

>Linguistic SF

>Musical SF & F

>Characters/Books you hate to love

>SF Books that have become movies

>Rational Time Travel

>SF and Fantasy Alternate Sexuality Listings

>Thief main characters/thief stories

Death notices: Fritz Leiber

-A few more "shit-that-didn't-happen" humblebrags about SFLer's encountering non-SF&F fandom at SF&F conventions. Notable mostly because cosplaying convincingly as Avon from Blakes 7 or Vincent from the Beauty and the Beast tv-series or Sam/Al from Quantum Leap was 130% sure to get you laid at SF&F conventions.

-TSR Inc announces the business plan (50% increase in titles annually) that will have them bankrupt by mid 1994.

-A few SF&F Historians working on their PhD theses about Robert Heinlein & Isaac Asimov show up, trying to crowd-source their research/have people do their homework for them. 

-A MILLION OPEN DOORS by John Barnes is published and most SFLers like it. Meanwhile in real time, the Bosnian War enters a phase that will break John Barnes brain 6 years before 09-11-2001 does similar damage to everyone else in the SF author community.

-Misleading covers in SF&F books & discussion of the most accurate/least embarrassing SF&F artists. 

-David Brin had a insane meltdown in 1992 over Ralph Bakshi. Then had a second more insane rant about Bakshi & Censorship & David Brin always being right. Stein Sigurdsson (steinly@lick.ucsc.edu) seems to be David Brin's sock puppet account.

(2021: Both those David Brin rants have been posted in-full on this blogsite at https://nothing2seeherepleasedisperse.blogspot.com/2021/01/remember-time-david-brin-melted-hell.html ) 

-More GODZILLA & Kaiju genre movie discussion.

-Wizard of Space and Time creator Mike Jittlov posts on the SFL Archives again to complain about more piracy of his film occurring and about his nemesis organizing conspiracies versus him. This time the piracy is a 15 second clip brodcast in Russia under another name

-Marvin Minsky reappears in the SFL Archives after 7 years to promote THE TURING OPTION, a book he cowrote with Harry Harrison. Minsky shares details of what inspired the book/share FTP links to the chapters Minsky wrote that got cut from the final published version. 

-QUANTUM LEAP discussion. Most QL fans are not thrilled how series creator Donald Bellisario is changing up the formula by inserting real-life people/real events into the series. Same thing goes for the reveal of an alternate Quantum Leap program.

-With a REBEL IN TIME Harry Turtledove goes fullbore into the alternate history mil-fiction & mil-scifi stories that he will spend the next 28 yrs/80+ books writing about.

-After almost 10 years as a moderator of the SF-LOVERS mailing list, Saul Jaffe starts to life-blog about his vacations & the various SF&F themed conventions he has attended.

-The passage of the Electronic Fan Writing Hugo Ammendment at WorldCon 1992.

-Security enforcement at conventions/Tips and advice on how established SF&F conventions interact with actual Law Enforcement during conventions. Usage of radios & walkie-talkies at conventions by convention staff & convention attendees.

-More discussion of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED tv series. X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES premieries and almost everyone asks "Who is Morph?"

-HIGHLANDER THE TV SERIES discussion. Differences of the series between the movies, Adrian Paul, new crops of Immortals, Duncan being a pacifist yet happier than Connor, Joan Jett, etc

-WHEEL OF TIME discussion. Lots of detailed theories and guessing as to what plot elements/characters/lore are evolving, none of which I am going to repost here. BTW, some people guessed right.

-COVINGTON CROSS tv-series discussion, and how nothing in it makes sense other than Nigel Terry still looking good while riding horses.

(2021 note: One of Nigel Terry's most famous roles was as King Arthur in EXCALIBUR 1981.)

-THE TAEIS PROJECT:  a co-operative internally realistic shared fictional world

-SFLer's discuss what Steven Spielberg has planned for the upcoming movie JURASSIC PARK 1993. Lots and lots of CGI work is getting teased, and SFLer's start debating the "science" in Crichton's novel JURASSIC PARK.

-Computer data Disaster Recovery procedures "modern" 1992 organizations use or rather should be using. Storage rot and the need for off-site storage of data backup media & the hardware required for that data backup media is discussed.

-Jim Butcher in way at all read THE LAST COIN by James P Blaylock before coming up with his own spin on the Christian Mythos in the DRESDEN FILES. I repeat no way at all.

-Why more Slow Glass style stories never got written or published.

(2021: Someone writing into ANALOG magazine noted that the way Slow Glass worked; chipping or breaking or even erasing a Slow Glass installation would be releasing a nuclear bombs worth of energy all at once.)

-New SF&F shows HIGHLANDER THE TV SERIES, KUNG FU THE LEGEND CONTINUES, and TIME TRAXX all premiere in the fall of 1992.

-A few SFLers are getting tired of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, others are not. 

-Charles Stross randomly popped in to recommend people looking for fun SF&F fiction to check out UK SF&F author Dave Langford

-Daniel Keys Moran randomly appeared to give a status update to his fans and listed out every single story/novel/novella he planned on writing in the CONTINUING TIME series, which was around 13 novels & 20+ short stories/novellas

(2021 note: The status update also contained a very sanitized version of why the editor who worked on his books got fired from Bantam Spectra. DKM slept with his book editor, got his book editor pregnant, married his book editor, then wondered why Bantam Spectra fired his book editor 5 months after she had her(and his) baby.)

-Did you know that in the Dewey Decimal catalogue system that glass manufacture is listed under 666?

(2021 note: No idea if this is true. Deliberately not looking this factoid up until my SFL Archives readthrough project finishes.) 

-Someone posts up a timeline of how George Lucas came up with the STAR WARS setting/a timeline of the various STAR WARS movie screenplays George Lucas wrote. Leigh Brackett's screenwriting on ESB gets mentioned. The CORELLIAN ARCHIVES, a Star Wars fanzine collected started by George Lucas maintained at the Santa Barbara Science Fiction Alliance.

(2021 note: Star Wars historians probably already know about the CORELLIAN ARCHIVES. If they did not, they will after reading this.)

-Larry Niven KNOWN SPACE discussion: what did Niven mean when he described "dial controls" for the teleport disks in his KS stories. A touchpad, a feedback loop phone rotary disk, a spinning disk, etc?

-Charles Stross randomly appears in the SFL Archives 1992 to promote another UK author.

 "...relatively obscure, although he began publishing at the same time as Pratchett, but he's actually a lot closer to the British funny-bone than TP (Terry Pratchett) who has a kind of transatlantic drawl running through his books. I refer of course to Dave Langford".

-Babylon 5 casting information & Info file guides for BABYLON 5'S initial tv-movie THE GATHERING pilot episode 

(2021 note: All these will be written up in a separate post, still find the casting note about not wanting a pretty-boy actor cast for the Sinclair main character funny, given how Bruce Boxleitner was brought in just for that reason in Babylon 5 season 2) 

-AGRIPPA the self-deleting ebook cyberpunk story by William Gibson and Penn Jillette.

-Casting announcement and setting details for STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE are released to the public. SFLer's start commenting on stuff.

-1992 closes out with BOSKONE drama. More specially Boskone art show display drama vs how the rest of the world's conventions handle art show displays. The managment people behind Boskone tried to enforce their way of handling art shows at an upcoming Worldcons. As usual, any negative feedback, and suggested improvements about how Boskone/Boskone management committees handle things are taken as deadly faux pass insults. tldr: The Boskone Defense Squad are assholes in all their responses/rebuttals.

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 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 11

 100% completion, 180 ruthlessly curated bookmarks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SFL Archives Vol 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 

SFL Archives Vol 03 readthrough update 02

 In my recaps of reading the SFL archives, I tend to not mention: outdated science/physics chat, FTL travel vs STL chat, scifi tv series episode listings, topical scifi/fantasy movie reviews or topical scifi/fantasy book reviews, identify-this story for me requests, childrens tv programming of the 50's/60's/70's chat, religion debates, Hugo/Nebula award nominations + award winners chat, "what is the Force" debates?, and the many listings of upcoming global scifi conventions/results of just finished global scifi conventions.

-Vernor Vinge's age of cyberspace TRUE NAMES came out and was reviewed favorably by most SFL members. Douglas Adams 1st & 2nd HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY series books were released in the US, and had less favorable reviews. No one has really discussed Gene Wolfe's 1981 CLAW OF THE CONCILIATOR or 1980 BOOK OF THE NEW SUN so far, but things might change.

-Back in 1981, Lucas Films and NPR collaborated to make a radio drama out of STAR WARS: A New Hope the movie with Mark Hamill (which maybe kickstarted Hamill's prolific voice-acting career) & Anthony Daniels (C3PO), plus a bunch of ringers. As a moderate Star Wars fan, the existence of the 1981 Star Wars radio drama, and spoiler alert the existence of the other original SW trilogy radio dramas got memory-holed harder than David Proust, the body-actor of Darth Vader

-A profile of Ralph Bakshi, 1970s-80s cartoonist I mostly remember for the unsettling-blobby artwork in Bakshi's Lord of the Rings movies. Bakshi promoted his other animation efforts, including a movie about black America called....uh even posting the movie name will end in a probe so just look it up yourself or if that's too much effort, think of the "badly aged Eric Cartman super-hero persona" and uh make it more racist.

e: I was remembering the unsettling and blobbly artwork from Rankin/Bass animatted movie efforts like the HOBBIT 1977, not Bakshi's work.

-Larry Niven's DOWN IN FLAMES, the 1968/1977 unofficial abandoned conclusion to the Known Space/Ringworld series finally got described in detail Everything you know about the Known Space setting is a hoax. Down in Flames discussion was interesting enough that I read it myself, and no bullshit it is better than everything Niven proceeded to write about the Ringworld and Known Space setting for the next 8 books.

If you do choose to see Down in Flames as Known Space/Ringworld canon, you can safely abandon the Ringworld series after the 1st Ringworld book aka Ringworld 1970, while the remaining Known Space stories written after 1978 sort-of fit if you don't think too hard about timedates. 

-biology chat becomes the running topic of the fortnight, with DNA encoding, scifi stories about DNA encoding, goats=unicorns (which I will come back to), etc

-MENSA membership gets pimped in the SFL for the first time I can remember. The MENSA membership ad gets a faint sneery tone when mentioning alternate methods of qualifying for MENSA membership (combined SAT results or combined GRE results over certain scores will get you in under limited membership status)

-DolphinF**cker is against proposals for "permanent" assignation of phone numbers to people, for *wink* privacy reasons. *wink*

-the SFL liveposted the first manned Space Shuttle launch attempt on April 10 1981. Keyword being: attempt.

-A reposted article from the Baltimore Sun newspaper brings the 1st mention of space borne telescopes into the SFL archives. These space borne telescopes (due to be launched in 1985) will have sensors/cameras that might be able to detect extrasolar planets. 

(2020 sidenote: those extrasolar planet detecting methods mentioned in the article are still being fine-tuned today/2020 time period.)

-SPECIES movie fans will find Fred Hoyle's 1975 novel A FOR ANDROMEDA uses an eerily similar setup, but Hoyle's book series fails to implement H.R. Giger and instead goes with a deep-state conspiracy.

-the goats=unicorns thing.

Someone I didn't bother bookmarking posted about recent studies of medieval documents/myth had lead to scholars thinking that references to unicorn were really references to one-horned goats. Chapman.ES promotes his friend from the Berkeley area named Morning Glory who showed off a unicorn-goat named Lancelot at the February 1981 Berkeley Fantasy Worlds Convention. When asked about Lancelot the goat-unicorn, Chapman.ES said that Morning Glory and her husband mentioned a careful breeding plan that two years ago resulted in Lancelot. Additionally......something akin to Bonsai helped out, but Morning Glory couldn't go into more details because they were trying to patent the process.

(emphasis mine)

People replied back to Chapman.ES mentioning common farm practices of de-horning livestock. And then other people ran with that and suggested maybe two goat horns got fused together in Lancelot's case, or maybe shortly after birth, one horn got removed totally with the other horn bud moved/shifted over. Chapman.ES flipped the fuck out and went full "I take exception to your slur upon Morning Glory and her husband, and your suggestion that they are charlatans. These are sincere people, who are into mysticism, it is true, but just because you don't agree with their world view doesn't mean you have to insult them."....and so on for another 70-90 lines.

-Didn't think I'd find something to top Bakshi's hyper badly aged 'black america in the south' animated movie within less than 24 hrs, however someone in the SFL mentioned that H Beam Piper's LITTLE FUZZY was ripping off a earlier story.....and they weren't making things up.

A semi-famous World War 2 french resistance member slash author wrote "LES ANIMAUX DENATURES" or "YOU SHALL KNOW THEM" in it's english language translation.

story recap: tribes of "missing link" hominids are found in the jungles of new guinea, and exploited as an cheap workforce similar to "war with the newts". Scientist-perverts or just normal perverts discover that the missing link hominids <ugh> can get pregnant with <ugh> human sperm <quadruple ugh>. One of the scientist-perverts impregnates a missing link hominid with his sperm then kills the baby once it is born; under the reasoning that the ensuing trial will determine if the missing link hominids are human (and therefore deserve human rights) or not.

Adding to the weirdness/wtf factor, a Burt Reynolds movie called SKULLDUGGERY is a loose adaption of "les animaux denatures". 

originally posted between July 1st- July 3rd in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3

SFL Archives Vol 02 readthrough update 01

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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