SFL Archives Vol 12b readthrough update 01

 26% completion, 23 bookmarks

-Tolkienian Lore/LORD OF THE RINGS chat pt 3425: this time it's focused on where Tolkien got the names for the hobbit families? Was it old norse folktales? Was it Wales? Was it from <gasp> American phonebooks? Was it from the sole American friend that made it through World War 1 alive? This version of Tolkienian lore chat is notable for one SFLer disclosing personal information about themselves/family that identity thieves/credit card scammers of any era droll over.

-Sometime in Vol 12b, Evelyn C. Leeper drops the copyright notice from her "reviews" of everything fantasy & science fiction.

-Resurgence of 1967 THE PRISONER tv series chat. Nobody is sure what really happened, or what was "real" in series canon, with a few SFLer's just responding "Information!!" to every THE PRISONER tv-series query.

-1987 SFLer's try to figure out the ending of THE QUIET EARTH movie.

-Animal sentience uplifting in fiction, mostly focusing on Progenitor races intent/goals thanks to David Brin's Uplift universe chat kicking off this discussion thread. H Beam Piper's LITTLE FUZZY stories get mentioned here too, mostly as uplift-impossible? examples.

-SFLer email Signature files containing "cute" and "amusing" topical quotes suddenly become a thing.

-The Americanized version of DYNAMAN does a inverted version of what the Americanized version of the PHOENIX WRIGHT games do.

-STAR TREK chat pt 134658746: SFLer's are confusing by US Navy nomenclature such as rank structure, "the con", "given the con", and "Mister" being used to address both genders in Star Trek movies/episodes.

-A Cthulhu Mythos fan gives their take on how they think the Cthulhu Mythos names are pronounced. (2020 note: Notable mostly for the hard glottal stops/coughs listed, which makes sense given human tongues and human vocal cords aren't meant to be able to pronounce most of the names.) 

-Discussions of what was the earliest Science Fiction written. This being the 1980's the word of editor-hacks like Brian Aldiss and Ben Bova are taken as gospel-guidelines.

1987 technology level: A SFLer humble brags about their Cthulhu Mythos bibliography being stored as LaTeX file.

First mention of Lois McMaster Bujold's VORKOSIGAN SAGA in the SFL Archives.

-SFLer's start guessing what ALIEN 3 will be about. (2020 note: No one, not even the multiple writers of Alien 3 movie scripts expected what the 1992 Alien 3 would turn out to be.)

-SFLer's keep declaring David Eddings BELGARIAD series some of the best fantasy fiction ever written, while the EARTHSEA series gets very mixed reactions (SFLer's either hate it, enjoy it, or have never read it).

-Filksong discussion on many subjects, such as drinking filksongs, regional filksong lyrics causing confusion at SF convention filksong contests, more filksong SF&F fan lyrics get posted, etc.

-A 1987 SF Film quote quiz by Mark Leeper, which was hard in 1987 and  near impossible for anyone in 2020 not googling/internet searching that stuff.) 

-The mathematical poem from Stanislaw Lem's CYBERIAD comes up, with SFLers amazing how well the English translation of it works. (2020 note: Stanislaw Lem wrote exclusively in Polish language.)

-More fantasy and SciFi cover artist discussion. Rowena, Roger Begendorf,  & Darrel Sweet get discussed.

-More CODEX SERAPHIANUS discussion. SFLer's are slowly coming around to the "it's made-up gibberish" vs being some super-enciphered text.

 -AFTER THE ZAP (Michael Armstrong),  the movie ROLLERBALL, Martin Caidin CYBORG series, the STEN CHRONICLES series (Chris Bunch & Allan Cole), TALKING MAN (Terry Bisson), HIGHBROW (Neal Barret Jr), CODE BLUE EMERGENCY (James White), THE SEX MAGICIANS (Sheffield House 1973 porno novel), DOWN TOWN (Viido Polikarpus & Tappan King), ARCHITECT OF SLEEP (Stephen R Boyett), the works of SF author Christopher Anvil, BIMBOS OF THE DEATH SUN (Sharyn McCrumb), THE VELVET MONKEYWRENCH (John Muir), and Joel Rosenberg's fantasy stories.

SFL Archives Vol 12a readthrough update 05

100% completion, 89 bookmarks

-An SFLer attends the Doctor Who USA Tour, and gets info on the upcoming DOCTOR WHO series straight from 7th Doctor Who actor Sylvester McCoy. Trivial details about the 7th Doctor Who costuming and logo/theme songs changes are disclosed.  

-SIGN OF CHAOS, the 3rd new Roger Zelazny AMBER book is due out October 1987, and Zelazny has signed a contract for two more Merlin of Chaos sequels. Announcement for Robert Heinlein's upcoming TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET in July 1987. (2020 note: TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET is a trap book. Do not read this book, Do not read this book.)

-SFLer's relate the first SF stories that they read/the SF&F fiction they grew up reading pt 35: this time it's TOM SWIFT and DOC SAVAGE coming up in SFLer's memories. And now being able to catch the un-named cameo appearances of Tom Swift and Doc Savage that F&SF authors like Zelazny  put in some of their lighter stories of the 1960's-70's.  

-SF&F book cover artists not researching their work/having a clue about the content inside the book complaints. (2020 note: Don't this line of complaint will really take off until 1990-ish when Robert Jordan's first WHEEL OF TIME novel comes out. I still have fond memories of Rand(?) using invisible ski's and ski-poles on one particularly terrible WoT book cover.)

-Reviews of Douglas Adams 1st DIRK GENTLY series book start coming in, and I won't bother recapping them. You will either enjoy the Dirk Gently books or hate them. Reviews/discussion of David Brin's UPLIFT WAR start coming in. Michael Crichton's SPHERE has come out, as well as the very creeepy-in-retrospect REPLAY by Ken Grimwood.

-More DOCTOR WHO series discussion. Incarnations of the TARDIS control room, female Timelords, Companion comparisons, Doctor Who novelizations quality, fan Cosplay efforts at SF conventions often being better than official Doctor Who efforts, etc

-There has been periodic David Eddings and BELGARIAD chat through SFL Vol 12a, along with speculation to the upcoming 5 part sequel to the Belegariad series due out soon-ish. Given David Eddings child-abusing background, I choose to mention him as little as possible.

-Robert Heinlein chat continued: What was THE CAT WHO WALKED THROUGH WALLS main character's race (black/white/mixxed), and the mismatched color leg transplant, and Lazarus Long interactions with TCWWTW main character 

-HP Lovecraft stories and mythos starts getting discussed as June 1987 closes out, with SFler's trying to classify Lovecraft's work: is it fantasy, is it horror, is it cowboy fiction (NO)? What do SFLer's like about the stories, what movie of HP Lovecraft's stories do they recall? 

-LORD OF THE RINGS pt32553a: How racist is the LotR series since the majority of the enemies in it are dark-colored? Chosen roles of LotR via destiny or Gods mandate. Accusations of seeing things via "an American viewpoint"?

-SF&F convention discussion that is Boscone: Should "hucksters aka convention vendors" pay flat fees for access to conventions selling arenas, what membership modes are recommended for vendors, what tax-code stuff should amateur convention managers be looking at if they want to incorporate/go professional, etc.

-Balancing out the fantasy series discussion, Christopher Stasheff's WALOCK OF GRAMARYE series comes up again. Power-creepage on Gwen the wife, vs the new powers constantly being discovered in the children. The King Kobold novel story total-rewrite and how it does/doesn't fit into established Warlock series canon.

-STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION chat starts building up once official casting news has filtered out to the general public. And people have issues with some of the casting choices and worries of how real ST:TNG episodes will sync up to established STAR TREK canon, and more importantly, how will ST:TNG affect fan-canon? Warp Speed changes from ST:TOS, communicators as badges? Un-named Klingon to be part of the crew as per Majel Roddenberry.

A SFLer tours the STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION soundstages, and notes the carpeting/wall design changes from ST:TOS and breaks down the layouts of the bridge sets, engineering, transporter room, and the one generic living quarters set. Physical TNG uniform changes including color coded changes for Engineering & Command Staff, etc.

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 11 readthrough update 08

 70% completion, 208 bookmarks

-SFLer's start discussing Bill Mumy, and Mumy's crazy career as a child actor. Mumy appeared in lots of now forgotten and now classic SF tv shows AND Mumy being the first male actor a famous sex symbol of 1960's-1970's (Bridget Bardot?) was recorded kissing on-camera.

-A crazy amount of 1950's - 1970's SF themed tv shows/TV movies half remembered by 1986 SFLer's get mentioned and discussed. LIST OF OLD SF TV SHOWS/TV Movies STARTS

The Immortals

Mr Terrific

Captain Nice

Astro-Boy

Giganor

The 8th Man

Speed Racer

Sheriff John

Space Cadet

Clutch Cargo

Colonel Bleep

Space Ghost

Marine Boy

Star Blazers

Stingray

Ultraman

Avengers

It's About Time

Space Cruiser Yamato

Tom Terrific

My Living Doll

Gerald Mc BoingBoing

Crusader Rabbit

Time Tunnel

Dark Shadows

Ultraman

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Land of the Lost 

The Invaders

Star Maidens 

U.F.O.

Matthew Star

Prince Planet

Dark Shadows

Star Prince

LIST OF OLD SF TV SHOWS/Movies ENDS

(2020 note: I plan on tracking down most of of the lesser known shows. Some of them have amazing sounding concepts, and would have run for multiple seasons or years on Netflix/AdultSwim/Hulu/HBOGo/Amazon's Prime TV if they had come out within the past 15 years.)  

-The Heinlein Defense Squad reappears to fight off rumors & pesky facts on paper that Robert Anson Heinlein loved fascism and many fascism adjacent things.

-WorldCon 1986 happens and the SFL members who attended WorldCon 1986 meet up and live-post from a portable computer terminal appliance a SFLer brings from work/college. 

-A Heinlein Defense Squad member dismissively recommended John Steakley's ARMOR if RAH's view of interstellar warfare grated on you. This counts as one of the first mentions of John Steakley's ARMOR in the SFL Archives.

-One SFLer wants to know if anyone has a recording or transcript of Orson Scott Card's WorldCon 1986 seminar "Secular Humanist Revival Meeting".

-BLOOD OF AMBER, the 2nd Merlin book of Roger Zelazny's new Amber series comes out, not much SFL Archives reaction to it so far. 

-A profile on David Lindsay, author contemporary of Jules Verne and HG Wells. As per 1986 SFLers, David Lindsay was practically required reading for a certain subset of UK culture during the 1950's - 1970's. 

-Discussion of 1960's -1970's SF themed tv shows also results in more than a few tv-show song lyrics being posted.

(2020 note: These tv show song lyric re-postings are excellent for generating tricky SF trivia questions.)

-A "Was PAN-AM offering tickets to the moon after 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY came out real or just a urban myth?" question is asked.

-Gerry Anderson tv-show U.F.O. and the details SFLer's give on it make it a prime influence/inspiration on the original X-COM game computer strategy game. 

-Someone with their hands on a legit copy of the STAR TREK 4 shooting script posts a point for point synposis, ruining the circa-2020 fun of reading wild-ass 1985/1986 guesses as to why/what/who SFLers think is in Star Trek 4.

-1986 SFL missed a lot of clues regarding Stephen Hawking & his ALS/Lou Gehrig disease. 1986 was when Stephen Hawking adopted many of the things he would be stuck in/associated in the public view with for the next 32 years

-SFLer's who know nothing about guns start to theory-craft how the caseless ammo worked in ALIENS 1986, IRL laws of physics/thermodynamics only apply when the SFLers involved in theory-crafting remember them.

-The Clint Eastwood movie FIREFOX gets mentioned mostly for Eastwood's lack of skill in speaking Russian (language).

-ACE BOOKS pirating the LORD OF THE RINGS series in the 1960's for the US paperback market comes up again. 

-Tom Clancy's RED STORM RISING gets mentioned and recommended by the what would now be classified as the resident SFL mil-fiction/mil-scifi fans.

-Reviews of the 1986 THE FLY remake focus on the extreme "gore and death"  in it compared to other movies also released in 1986.

-MISSION IMPOSSIBLE the TV 1960's series sometimes featuring near-possible gadgets, totally impossible gadgets that do impossible things, and the magic face-masks come up regarding implausiblity in films/SF tv.

-An SFLer starts to seriously read Philip K Dick's "DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP", and lists the many things in it that don't hold up when whiteboarded out.

-A notable out of context quote: "If you can make a case for GREEN ACRES being SF, you can certainly do the same with DARK SHADOWS" marks one of the first times Dark Shadows the tv-series is mentioned in the SFL Archives and leads to moderate Dark Shadows discussion.

(2020 note: Dark Shadows had a phenomenonal following & cult tv show status that only really died out when the X-FILES came out.)

 

 

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 05

 43% completion, 140 bookmarks

-Tolkien LORD OF THE RINGS chat intensifies and redoubles. Many theories and misunderstandings about the One Ring occur (was there actually 21 rings of power, not 20 rings?(based on how you parsed out the One Ring To Rule Them All inscription). Did the One Ring corrupt Good-guy Sauron? Did the elf's continuously round-robin their 3 rings to keep Sauron's influence away?). Power rankings for Valar and Maiar, and who fit where in those rankings. Finally, one SFLer tries the Sherlock Holmes Watsonian tactic of claiming J.R.R. Tolkien merely translated the Hobbit and the LotR saga, and wonders who really wrote those stories. 

(2020 note: Pretty much the only thing that hasn't come yet is SFLer's saying that, actually the Balrog's wielded lightsabers(this is my contribution to Tolkienian lore if no one else has come up with it)).

-First mention of Anne Rice and THE VAMPIRE LESTAT in the SFL Archives.

-The Navy Times leaks a story and pictures of STAR TREK 4 filming taking place on the U.S.S. Ranger (CV-61 aircraft carrier).

-Someone tries to critique and tear down how the fog of war & situational awareness affected real life battles like Waterloo 1815, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, and General Sherman's 1864 March to the Sea. Only by the 3rd paragraph it's clear that Avalon Hill wargaming rulesets and ONLY Avalon Hill wargaming rulesets are being used for the critiques of these IRL battles.  It is hilarious to read, especially when other SFLers respond back.

-Paranoia RPG module YELLOW CLEARANCE BLACK BOX BLUES gets men...#672785  REDACTED BY ORDER OF FRIEND COMPUTER. HAIL FRIEND COMPUTER. 

-The 1986 Seattle International Film Festival had a seminar on how film trailers were cut, and it sounds extremely interesting. Added this to my "track down and read" list.

-BURNING CHROME, the optioned-and-in-the-works film adaption of William Gibson's NEUROMANCER gets mentioned and discussed and mentioned more because Burning Chrome is also the title of a William Gibson cyberpunk short story collection.

-the TUCKER AWARD, an award for SF convention goers gets mentioned. Not sure if the TUCKER AWARD is a grifter scam, partially real, or a one-off SF award that quickly died off due to lack of interest. (2020 note: Not going to waste the time internet-searching it since no-one has responded about it.)

-A few SFL Star Trek fans ask "Why don't any of the official STAR TREK episodes have female captains, it is sexism or worse?" (2020 take: Yes and Yes. Gene Roddenberry applies heavily to both Yes answers.)

-Someone transcribes an entire edition of CHEAP TRUTH, an Austin TX science-fiction newsletter, to the SF-LOVERS mailing list. The edition of CHEAP TRUTH transcribed is decently long, very political, and full of sick burns on many 1986 big-Name SF authors. 

-Some 1986 SFLers start hating on Spider Robinson's stories always including rape, underage jailbait, sexual assault, 30 second pep-talk speeches curing lifelong depressions, and having tragedy being SOMEONE ELSE'S FAULT....2020 me rejoices.

-Andrew M. Greeley's story THE GOD GAME gets mentioned....and guess we now know where Peter Molyneux got the idea for POPULOUS 1 from.

-A SFLer quotes a recent 1986 issue of Scientific American, which discusses the lack of cheetah genetic variance. (2020 note: I listed this just to reference the state of DNA sequencing and precursor warnings of the 6th extinction event, circa 1986. 6th extinction event clarification can be found here  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction )

-Cyberspace and how 1986 SFLers think it will be implemented in the future, using or not using William Gibson's vision of Cyberspace as a non-computer person.

-"How would you repopulate the Earth if 99% of the opposing gender died off?" discussion, Some people participating in this discussion aim high, some go detail oriented wondering about the diet plans & scheduling details needed to rebalance the gender ratio, and others almost but don't quite go into race science mode. 

-MAX HEADROOM comes up again, regarding Max Headroom (Matt Frewer) appearing in Coke commercials before the Max Headroom Cinemax tv series officially starts up.

-First mention of PROJECT ORION in the SFL Archives. Projection Orion was essentially a plan to launch spaceships by detonating nuclear bombs beneath them and using a hyper-massive shock-absorber system to absorb the blasts and "bounce" the spaceships forward.

-NASA waits around five months before starting a grass-roots PR campaign to keep funding manned space exploration projects in response to the details coming out about how NASA f**ked up big-time everyway regarding the Challenger Launch decision.

-Stanislaw Lem's work starts getting discussed, with people being amazed by how good (usually) the translations of Lem's stories into other languages go, usually.

-The movies ALIENS, LABYRINTH, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA all come out within 2 weeks of each other. So far, Labyrinth has the most feedback, with "this children's film was geared towards children and not adults, I don't like it" being the most vocal feedback so far.

-Nanotechnology will change everything. One of the first mentions of Nanotechnology by that name in the SFL Archives.

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 04

34% completion, 135 bookmarks

-Continued LORD OF THE RINGS language chat, with one SFLer going back to the Hobbit and Gandalf being unable to read elfish script correctly.

-The 1985-1986 reviewer-idiotking of the SF-LOVERS mailing list posts a review of the 1958 movie HIDDEN FORTRESS (not being the inspiration for lots of visuals in Star Wars: A New Hope) so brain-dead, everyone starts dunking on him with detailed illuminating reviews of SciFi & Fantasy stories/movies/cartoons/Anime/Manga that they have come across.

-Someone goes next level stalker and posts Harlan Ellison's phone number to the SF-LOVERS mailing list; encouraging other people to call Ellison out-of-the-blue like he did. Most of the SFL has a "WTF, dude..seriously WTF" reaction, while the person who posted Harlan Ellison's phone number to the internet triples-down and says that Ellison likes fan contact/gets off on the adversarial phone calls he makes/made to Ellison. 

-Proto-otaku's start to emerge in the SFL Archives with posts like "Congratulations! You have just discovered the world of Japanese Manga (comic books)." and Subject:Japanese Animation: An Introduction for the Uninitiated". Most of the 1986 proto-otaku's/all-things-Japan subject matter experts come from the ARPANET node at the University of Waterloo Canada

-People start complaining about BAEN BOOKS repacking decades old Keith Laumer stories as new content.

-Yet another installment of the "Advice requested for a <1986> new author looking to get published" and the responses.

-SHORT CIRCUIT the movie comes out and someone low-key compares it to John Sladek's story TIK TOK.

-A weird bit of SciFi pulp fiction creeps out. In 1948 or early 1949, a anonymous person sent in a fake review of the upcoming October or November 1949 issue of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION magazine, complete with author & story title listing. John W. Campbell bit, and low-key contacted the authors listed in that fake review ASF review and had them write SciFi stories using those story titles, and then published everything listed in that fake review. JW Campbell then used that gag as a editorial hook-line about how Science Fiction can become a Self-Fulfilling prophecy.

(2020 note: I haven't googled any this so far. Currently hope that it was real and not someone making up a fake story to burnish how amazing JW Campbell was an editor/human being/lover)

-1980's tv series REMINGTON STEEL has been canceled, and it looks like Pierce Brosnan is going to be the next James Bond in "THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS" (2020 note: I know what happened IRL regarding this)

-Another joint Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle book starts getting discussed....this time it is FOOTFALL @1985, and some of the SFLer descriptions of the plot and aliens and actions taken in it sort of has me thinking Footfall is one of canon sources for the ugly-as-fucking-hell scifi Web Comic Shlock mercenary 

-THIS ISLAND EARTH, a 1955 movie starts getting mentioned because it appeared as clips in a recent Steven Spielberg movie (The Explorers or the Goonies, or possibly an episode of Amazing Stories)

-Medicare for all, aka the old pulp SciFi story about "a libertarian being unable to pay the grossly inflated hospital bill for his daughters birth, so he lets the hospital raise her and educate her until the daughter grows old enough to pay it off herself" gets mentioned. (2020 note: I read this story a few years ago and slight spoiler the hospital almost bankrupted itself trying to calculate all the interest due when the daughter-raised-by-the-hospital was about graduate college)

-L Neil Smith, founder of the Libertarian Hugo Award and all the bizarre things that 1986 era SFLers were able to dig up on L Neil Smith, like winning the award he founded 3 times, and writing a libertarian novel where the default libertarian heroes had to travel in time to stop Jane Fonda, in full 1980's exercise mode, from destroying the future's beautiful libertarian utopia

-Bruce Sterling's SCHISMATRIX comes up for one of the first times in SFL Archives history. (2020 note: Schismatrix was a ground-defining book for post-humanity stories...and pretty much everything else Bruce Sterling has written can safely be ignored). 

-HARD TO BE A GOD, the Arkady Strugatsky & Boris Strugatsky Noon Universe setting story about a Progessor agent going undercover in a off-planet medieval civilization comes up for the first time in SFL Archives history. 

-The DOCTOR WHO series possibly maybe casting a female Doctor Who ends up as another fan-baiting "f**k you" rumor by John Nathan-Turner

-First mention of CJ Cherryh's 1985 novel CUCKOO'S EGG in the SFL Archives 

-1986 SFL people continue debating Tolkien lore throughout April 1986 into early June 1986 and gradually come to the conclusion that GANDALF IS ILLITERATE

(2020 take: Thanks to this, 2020 me now thinks of pre-scourging Gandalf the Grey as a Charlie Kelly guy, happy to chill with idiot hobbits because Saruman is Dennis Reynolds. Which would make Sweet Dee Reynolds = Radagast aka the "Bird Wizard". Mac would be the two unknown LotR Blue Wizards, symbolizing Mac before he came out and Mac after he came out. Frank would be Tom Bombadil, with either Gail the Snail or Roxy the whore as Bombadil's bang-buddy Goldberry. The McPoyles are Elrond and his clan. And of course, Rickety Cricket is Gollum) 

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 03

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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