SFL Archives Vol 04 readthrough

1981 was a murders row of now-iconic movies. John Carpenter's THE THING just got teased for a mid 1982 release(stoked for SFL reactions), while Dino DeLaurentis DUNE got mentioned as recently entering pre-production. In addition to the movies already mentioned in SFL Vol 03 posts, CONAN THE BARBARIAN 1982 was initially slated for a December 1981 release date.

-The pre-release press announcement of BLADERUNNER came out, and Bladerunner chat has already started breaking SFL poster's brains.

-Additional RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK chat focused on how long the Nazi submarine trip took to the sub-base island and how Indy stayed in place outside the sub and WHY did the sub go into dive mode before the movie switched into map view.

(my take: Because the Nazi's just raided a ship and wanted/needed to run the f**k away undetected before any Sea-cops arrived, )

-Reated chemistry nerd debates about non-digestable reversed pair chemical compounds entering FDA testing that I am guessing will officially be known to history as "NUTRASWEET"

-Release of proposed HDTV specifications causes similar heated debate among the SFL hardware enthusiasts. In Yoda speak, "Begun the graphics wars have".

-In August 1981 someone worries about/predicts whatever the f**k the Sad Puppies attempt a few decades later with the Hugo Award

-The trickle of barely disguised ad product-reviews in SFL archives kicked off by the sneery toned MENSA recruitment ad has turned into a stream

-The first occurrence of Flame On/Flame OFF in SFL archives

-DolphinF**ker discusses immortality and the various goals they have left to accomplish before dying....interspecies sex with aquatic mammals is oddly (or not so oddly) left off their life-goal list

-(august 1981) 3 spaceprobes are currently in the works for the upcoming close swing-by of Halley's Comet 

-The runaway growth of STAR WARS fandom continues to mark it's mark in the SFL archives. Despite a murderer's row of fantasy and scifi movies being released in 1981, discussion about Star Wars lore/character lineage/bounty hounters/spoilers/naming conventions and Star Wars trivia grow and grow in the SFL archives, often requiring special SFL Digest SPOILER tags.

-Graphics fans will be interested to know that "aliasing" and "anti-aliasing" get mentioned for the 1st time in the SFL archives (that I can recall) when SFL users post their SIGGRAPH 1981 attendance reviews.

-Spoilers about the upcoming STAR TREK 2 movie where Spock dies/not dies, and the SFL talk that ensues. Gene Roddenberry the Bitter continues a decades long "notMad" pout.

-A few self proclaimed Cinematographic Historians start offering trivia challenges to see what earlier movies Lucas/Spielberg/others ripped off in certain visually stunning scenes Lucas/Spielberg/etc shot. No one cares, almost no one responds; especially after the 1st round of trivia question answers prove to be really stupid, even for 1981.

-Special effects people who worked on Star Wars 1977 + maybe also Star Wars 1980 notice that Star Wars fandom isn't subsiding and start pimping themselves/scamming SW fans at SIGGRAPH 1981 with faked Return of the Jedi "test" footage.

-In the year 1981 SFL chat has been bringing up a long long dead fantasy author. This decades dead author was supposedly more than a slight influence on JRR Tolkien. Besides that. the only reason why I mention this is because the same phrases and wordings people use to describe Gene Wolfe's writing style and stories are getting mentioned in similar ways for this long long dead fantasy genre author. For people interested, the long dead fantasty genre authors name is E.R. Eddison.

-The mailing list maintainers fessed up to lots of behind-the-scenes admin stuff about failing hardware, mis-configured scripts resulting in delayed/missing/duplicate/erroneous SFL Digests being published. Since bandwidth/computing power back in 1981 was a rounding error of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the bandwidth/computer power the year 2020 have, these were serious issues.

-Using RotLA examples, Film insurance/film insurance payouts got explained.

-Hardware failure explained why '50s/'60s/'70s juvenile entertainment chat got cut off so abruptly in the SFL Vol 03 archive. 2 special makeup issues of the SFL Digest were sent out, composed entirely of March 1981-June 1981 'juvenile entertainment' SFL submissions

-A small digression into sharing and listing out the various known Pseudonyms genre authors had used up. Much of this info will be found at https://www.isfdb.org

-An upsurge in discussions of Marion Zimmer Bradley published work, and MZB in general, which I power-skimmed over heavily.

-Every San Francisco resident/former resident of San Francisco chimed in when someone asked the SFL Digest if EMPEROR NORTON was made up.

-The SFL archives message that inspired me to re-read the SF-LOVERS Digest from the beginning, this time taking notes

quote:

    Date: September-ish 1981

    From: REDACTED at RE-DAC-TED

    Subject: SF-Lovers Query

    My 13 year old son is reading the GOR series.

    I have heard that it is not only badly written (which I expect), but also overly sexist, Sado-masochistic, and violent.

    Has anybody read it? Any comments on it?

    REDA CTED-

originally posted between July 6th -July 12th in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3

SFL Archives Vol 03 readthrough update 03

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

has proved effective at past conventions to simply post notices

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

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

the Large Lists will remain ignorant. - REDACTED ] 

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

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

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

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

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

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