SFL Archives Volume 20a readthrough

SFL Archives 

3.7 mb raw text file

100% completion, 138 bookmarks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-OMNI magazines switches to a quarterly release schedule. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SFL Archives Vol 15b readthrough 01

 SFL Archives Vol 15b

3.4 mb raw text file

100% completion, 86 bookmarks

-SFL Vol 15b Book mentions: PHULES COMPANY, ZORK CHRONICLES, SEA OF GLASS, THE FACE OF MINE ENEMY, GAMEPLAYERS OF ZAN, WIZARD OF THE PIGEONS, RED STORM RISING, THE LEAKY ESTABLISHMENT, THE LAST WHALES, SPACE BY THE TALE, DHALGREN, TWO PLANETS, MOON PROSPECTOR, THE PUBLIC HATING, THE IRON STAR, DEATHGATE (book  series), BORDERTOWN & BORDERLAND, ISHMAEL, CYTEEN, PARTICOLORED UNICORN, PHOENIX, VAMPIRE$, JURASSIC PARK.

-Pop Culture mentions; the soap opera GUIDING LIGHT,  whatever "ERBitis" is, non-American SFLer's ask "Who is Mr. T?", Multi-User Domains (MUDs), Saddam Hussein, the Watchung Mountains of New Jersey, the EMPIRE OF THE PETAL THRONE rpg, "California-In-Space" syndrome, the re-release of a semi-restored version of METROPOLIS 1927, BARDS TALE 1, the Chewbacca Star Wars Holiday Special, I DAMIANO the cRPG, 

SFL movie & TV series mentions: CHERRY 2000, GHOST 1990, ARANCHNAPHOBIA 1990, WICKER MAN 1973, QUEEN OF BLOOD, FLATLINERS, DARKMAN 1990, Japanese anime LENSMAN, THE FLASH 1990 tv series, the 1980's COSBY show, the SIMPSONS, MONSTERS tv series, PREDATOR 2, METROPOLIS 1927, Chewbacca Star Wars Holiday Special, IT 1990 tv-movie, DARK STAR,  ROBOT JOX, MISERY, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS

-SFLer's continue to discuss the terrible and toxic behavior of fans and authors at SF&F conventions. Examples given of terrible, or inciting conduct on both sides. Jerry Pournelle gets revealed as one of the "screaming at fans/constantly drunk" bad conduct SF&F authors at SF&F conventions. 

-Discussion of EE Smith's life and SF writing career during the gold age - post World War 2 pulp SF era, while other SFLers try to explain away the creepier elements in Jack Chalker's stories, and other SFLers start seeing 10 layers of allusion and meta-commentary in Samuel R Delany's DHALGREN.

-More Raymond E Feist series chat, more Steven Brust series chat, more Bujold story chat, more Mercedes Lackey story chat, more Stanislaw Lem story chat, lots of CYTEEN theory-crafting, more gilding of John W Campbell's editorship skills driving SF to it's higher points. 

-The BOSKONE convention in Springfield MA gets downsized again for the 3rd straight year while the totally new convention ARISIA run by the same group doing BOSKONE gets 15 miles closer to the holy land aka Boston MA on year 2.

-SFLers mention the time when Scientologists alleged did a mass harassment campaign vs L Sprague DeCamp after DeCamp debunked some Scientology related concepts and beliefs.

-Paperback book pricing in 1990: $5.95

-TSR pulling a 2020 Disney tactic and deciding to not pay out royalties for any of the DRAGONLANCE sequels written by Margaret Weis & Tracey Hickman, which explains why those two suddenly started producing new not-Dragonlance/not-Star Wars fiction. SFLer's also mention Fizban, uh NABZIF? appearing in the DEATHGATE series books.

-The BBC refuses to schedule DOCTOR WHO for a 27th season in 1990, effectively putting the tv series into a timeless limbo forever.

(2020 note: Yes, I know the 1996 Paul McGann DOCTOR WHO movie happened, and that DOCTOR WHO  eventually got rebooted in 2005, however that was 6 & 15 yrs in the future, respectively.)

-Barbara Hambly grafting the DOCTOR WHO universe onto her STAR TREK novel ISHMAEL, Stephen Donaldson is quoted as mentioned that he is working on a new science-fiction trilogy called the GAP CYCLE, and a essay-introduction by  Kevin J Anderson on writing the GAMEARTH Trilogy gets reposted in full to the SF-LOVERS mailing list.

-1st casting news for THE TERMINATOR 2 comes out, along with rumors of office buildings already being leased out for movie location shooting. 

-"What defines a Cyborg?" chat kicked off by Terminator 2's announcement, which leads to STAR WARS chat, and other fiction that has humanoid robots/body part replacement, body part enhancements like eyeglasses.

-The emergence of more HP Lovecraft scholars, and modern 1980s-1990s fiction embracing the CTHULHU MYTHOS wholesale

-Jean Airey(?) allegedly being ripped off by a book publishing company and issuing a open letter about sending fans a photocopy of the work if they send her a self-address envelope with the correct postage on it.

-STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION discussion. SFLer's were excited with Shelby and had hopes of Shelby taking the 1st officer permanently w/ Riker as the new Captain of the Enterprise 1701-C. StarFleet ships not having bombs slash nuclear missiles. The UK gets the 1st season of ST:TNG as the 4th season of ST:TNG airs in the US, and the UK SFLer reactions to season 1 are interesting reads. Certain episodes of ST:TNG being banned in the UK, like the episode with a throwaway line about Irish reunification.

-The RPG EMPIRE OF THE PETAL THRONE having a extremely hardcore magic system that involved gouging out eyes, bathing in mothers blood, sacrificing dozens of virgins.

-A weird aside about the portraits in the recent Illustrated Guide to AMBER being the IRL people who Roger Zelazny based a bunch of AMBER series characters on....and those IRL people forming a AMBER SOCIETY SCA group and becoming next-level stalker invested in their AMBER counterparts to the point of physically shunning someone who Zelazny killed off in the AMBER stories.

(2020 note: I hope this is just next-level bullshit gossip, but I suspect not.) 

-PREDATOR 2 pre-release and post-release discussion covers lots of ground, including the Aliens vs Predator teaser, Predator hunting rules, who owned that old pistol, why the US Feds were dumb, etc.

-Requests for Vampire Fiction(alien/fantasy/Sime:Gen/future/Anne Rice/etc), Requests for Avianoid fiction, Requests for science-fiction Cosmic String stories, requests for fiction with Stasis Field elements in them, etc.

-Philip K Dick discussion in 4 parts: SFLers claim PKD threw away a financial windfall to write something else, financial windfall rumor gets hard numbers, financial windfall rumor discredited, and Vonda McIntyre closes out the entire discussion by posting a open letter from PKD's final literary agent Russell Galen about PKD's work. 

-Piers Anthony starts their own 800 number, and many of the resident SFL authors are totally cool with that seethe with jealousy.

(2020 note: 800 numbers were a big thing during the 1970s -1990s before social media & texting took away the need to call phone numbers)

-Discussion of ST:TNG spaceship battle tactics in season 3 finale had a weird aside comment about the US Air Forces experiences in Vietnam lead to tactics changes & rebirth of the TOP GUN advanced fighter plane pilot training schools 

-Extended discussion of 2 Fred Saberhagen series (EMPIRE OF THE EAST, BOOKS OF SWORDS) in ways that modern SF&F fandom debate the minutia of the GAME OF THRONES & MALAZAN series. Aka what matchup would win, did X character really die, who is this mysterious masked character, etc.

-1950's pulp SF CITIES IN SPACE series discussion, with SFLer's having fond memories of the technology & the wandering space-Okie gimmick.

-Ever since the Netherlands won the WorldCon 1990 hosting gig, Worldcon 1990 notices about how to register for it/what cool things existed there for 3 yrs.Therefore it was pretty disappointing when only one person(a Worldcon 1990 convention organizer) ended up discussing WorldCon 1990.

-Lloyd Abbey's THE LAST WHALES having "..considerable amounts of  cetacean sex, which should induce a becoming humility in all human readers.."

-ALIEN NATION the tv-series is officially cancelled by FOX, fans of the tv series start a letter writing campaign to get the decision reversed.

(2020 note: The letter writing campaign would be partially successful..two or three ALIEN NATION tv-movies happened due to the letter writing campaign.) 

-EC Tubb's DUMAREST series being brought up, again, as one of the main world-building inspirations for the TRAVELLER RPG.

-SFL reviewer-idiot Mark Leeper completely plagiarizes a newspaper career review of Ray Harryhausen from back when CLASH OF THE TITANS 1981 came out, nobody calls them on their bullshit. Meanwhile Evelyn Leeper was nominated for the 1990 Best Fan Writer Hugo for as recognition for all of her unpaid SF&F media reviewer posts across USENET.

-Return of Tolkienian discussion to the SFL Archives after 2 years of silence. SFLer's debate who delivered the killing blow on the Angmar WitchKing ShadowWraith, what Balrog's canonically look like, the mechanics of elf souls vs mankind souls and where do Tolkien half-elf souls/go when they die?

-The SFWA White Knight Chug Von Rospach was mostly absent from VOL 15B. Vonda McIntyre wiped out alot of his illusionary positionr as a SF&F authority figure when she posted the open letter from PKD's literary agent Russell Galen. However the final insult slash diss to Chuq was probably when someone asked for SF&F fanzine recommendations midway through VOL 15B and no-one, no-one at all mentioned his fanzine, OtherRealms(?).

-SFL VOL 15B closes out with Vonda McIntyre posting the first 3 or 4 pages of her 1990 novel TRANSITION to the SF-LOVERS mailing list. 

SFL Archives Vol 12b readthrough update 03

 100% completion, 92 bookmarks.

-1987 technology level: How booksellers were able to determine what books were in print/what new titles were coming out before the Internet existed, a phonebook sized catalog released every 6 months named BOOKS IN PRINT.

-1987 technology level: a dismissive SPACE HARRIER arcade game reference, also the first mention of arcade games since the constant PAC-MAN puns back in 1980/1981 .

-The first appearance of "Trelane is Q" regarding STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION in SFL Archives history. There will be more statements and reworkings of this initial post.

-SIGN OF CHAOS discussion kicks off. Motivations of Dara, Jurt, Luke, etc. Merlin being extremely dim aka Roger Zelazny's series planning/lack of series planning, etc.

-STAR TREK chat: TransWarp. Why doesn't the Enterprise wrap everything in Vernor Vinge stasis-field bubbles/bobbles? SFLer's that have only read Larry Niven KNOWN SPACE stories and understand only the Nivenian take on stasis technology start to finally interact with SFLers that have read Vernor Vinge stories/ understand the Vingian bobbles/stasis fields.

-Western business have been increasingly importing (translated) Japanese business books (Kaizen and popular fiction in an attempt to replicate the dominance Japan automotive companies have shown vs Western automotive companies. KAIZEN & THE BOOK OF FIVE RINGS are mentioned.

-The PRINCESS BRIDE movie comes out, the movie adaptation of George RR Martin's THE NIGHTFLYERS comes out, the MAX HEADROOM tv series gets cancelled after two seasons of poor ratings (ironic),  and the now vastly forgotten BEAUTY AND THE BEAST tv series starring Linda Hamilton & Ron Perlman airs in the fall of 1987.

-THE HIDDEN 1987 movie comes out and lots of SFLer's notice the similarities in it to Hal Clement's Needle series about 2 alien life-forms coming to Earth/living inside bodies/1 of alien lifeforms being evil, and the other alien lifeform being a intergalactic cop hunting them down.

(2020 note: THE HIDDEN 1987 movie aged pretty well.) 

-A few SFLer's are confused by the concept of SPACE ELEVATORS in David Brin's SUNDIVER novel. 

(2020 note: To be fair, space elevators are a rare geeky subject in 2020, especially so circa 1987.)

-The Winter 1987 version of now forgotten weird SF&F themed tv-shows: CAPTAIN POWER the lightgun focused tv series, the Andy Griffith SALVAGE 1 tv-show comes up again, HERCULOIDS, TEEN FORCE, OTHERWORLD, THUNDARR, THE PEOPLE, SHAZAM!, BATMAN AND THE SUPER SEVEN, CLIFFHANGERS, etc.

-One of the first mentions of M John Harrison in the SFL Archives. The VIRICONIUM series and THE CENTAURI DEVICE are discussed. First mention of Brian Herbert(son of Frank Herbert) and his GARBAGE CHRONICLES series

-SPACE EATER (David Langford), DOOMSDAY EFFECT (Thomas Wren), REINDEER MOON (Elisabeth Marshall Thomas),  Change War stories by Fritz Leiber, WORD-BRINGER (Edward Llewellyn), EC Tubb's DUMAREST SAGA, IT: THE TERROR BEYOND SPACE movie, TRAVELLERS REST (David J Mason), URTH OF THE NEW SUN/EMPIRES OF FOLIAGE AND FLOWER (Gene Wolfe).

-SFLer's debate future policing methods of the 2030's in fiction and what they think will happen IRL and the IRL predictions are so far off the target from a 2020 viewpoint it is painful to even mention.

-Upcoming Convention notices in the SFL Archives break out of the moratorium they have been under since 1983. This leads to the first standalone posting of the NECRONOMICON convention in the SFL Archives.

-MORIGU: THE DESECRATION illustrates the differences of opinions SFLer's have on books. One SFLer loves it and recommends it to others because the dwarven behavior in it is such a amusing loutish contrast to the uptight Elves also in it. Another SFLer found it dark and brooding and filled with way too much blood, gore and hyper-violence to enjoy MORIGU or bother reading any sequels to it.

-First mention of a Net interview occurring with crowd-sourced questions for the interviewee in the SFL Archives. Vonda McIntyre is the interviewee and the SFLer requesting unique questions lays out the now standard ground rules of "don't be an asshole/don't doxx their personal life/don't be sexist". 

-A slight uptick in why F&SF books get published over others leads to mentions of Judy-Lynn Del Rey's (rip) efforts to get some older iconic fantasy and science fiction stories republished, which lead to SFLer Chuq Von Rospach establishing themselves as the 1987 SFLer who knows everything book publisher/author/SFWA related.

-I find myself agreeing with Mark R. Leeper on certain books/movies (LIFEFORCE). Turns out that Evelyn & Mark Leeper are capable of delivering good critiques and reviews on things F&SF related, if they take the time to do so. Unfortunately, Evelyn & Mark Leeper prefer posting extremely rushed "First Impression" 60 second reviews of everything Fantasy & Science Fiction they come across. 

-Vampire stories/Dracula focused stories suddenly becomes a thing for 3 or 4 dedicated SFL Digests. Dracula backstory/future history after resurrecting, with Anne Rice's LESTAT series and her earlier under a pen-name vampire stories coming up.

-A SFLer wants to know the rules to the PYRAMIDS poker game variant in the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 1978 tv-series. 

-SFLer Tim Iverson establishes themselves as the SFLer willing to throw down 24/7/366 over William Gibson/NEUROMANCER criticism.

-Raymond Feist RIFTWAR series discussion. Feist has come up a few times before but nothing serious that lasted beyond 2 posts until now. Raymond Feist writing his novels for audiences pre-conditioned to understand the references and monsters that Feist brings up, but never describe in detail. Feist's RIFTWAR series being based on a real RPG setting, with Feist working at a few RPG development companies while planning out/writing the RIFTWAR books.

-7th Doctor DOCTOR WHO series feedback trickles in as 1987 closes out. SFLer's who post about the 7th Doctor episodes really cannot stand Bonnie Langford, with the final Doctor Who related post in SFL Vol 12b being about a new female Companion called Ace replacing Bonnie Langford. 

-The 2nd thrugh 5th episodes of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION come out in the fall/winter of 1987. SFLer's initial to the 2nd episode are still mostly complaints/nitpickings, with mild hopes Q was/is a one-off character. Proto-Incels start referring to Troi as BETAMAX. Mild complaints about Data and Wesley being over-powered in the 2nd episode. Hating on Tasha Yar tapers off,  SFler's note Troi not really having a function on the bridge. The infamous flower-hippies episode airs, and then the mildly racist Ferengi episode, then the creepy Traveller -that-has-grooming-plans-for-Wesley airs. By the time the 5th TNG episode airs gradual acceptance of most of the TNG cast except for Wesley Crusher has sent in. A vocal subset of the SFLer's who watch ST: TNG start  theory-crafting ways Wesley Crusher could be killed/aged up and sent to StarFleet Academy ASAP, etc.  

-A SFLer reposts an infamous circa 1987 open-letter to Gene Roddenberry about STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION and the canned response it got.

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

Date: Fri,  6 Nov 87  11:56:59 EST

From: NCC1701%UMASS.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu

Subject: The letter...

                                                Linda Peterson

Mr. Gene Roddenberry

"Star Trek"

ABC

Dear Sir:

  Although I am not a confirmed "Trekie", I looked forward to the

new Star Trek television series.  My overwhelming disappointment

caused me to write this letter.

  My concerns:

       Do you really believe in white male supremacy?  Surely the

       future will be more equitable - such as...

          An "Asian type" captain (we are outnumbered now by Asian

          peoples).  Also, baldness in the future?  I doubt it.

          Jonathan Frakes just does not have the face of a strong,

          aggressive "Number One" - perhaps a Latino, or a Jimmy

          Smits type.

          Do you really see "Miss Emotion" going into battle in a

          mini-skirt?!  The costumes in general lack imagination.

          Mr. Data looks like PeeWee Herman with his off-white skin

          and slicked back hair.  All the hairstyles seem to some

          from yuppie America.

          Do we really need another TV show with the young wiz-kid,

          who will obviously save the day.  Heck, why not add Lassie

          to the cast.

  Yes, the show did have some strong points.  The storyline fit the

mold.  The Klingon and "Blind" crew member are interesting.  Surely

the show will progress.  Maybe there will be an accident and some of

the crew will have to be replaced.  I won't change the channel yet.

  Thanks for listenning.

                                   Sincerely,

                                   /s/ Linda Peterson

10/5/87

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

Date: Fri,  6 Nov 87  11:57:40 EST

From: NCC1701%UMASS.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu

Subject: The Reply...

Paramount Pictures Corporation

October 27, 1987

Ms. Linda Peterson

Dear Ms. Peterson,

Thank you for your recent letter to Gene Roddenberry.  Although his

schedule doesn't permit him to respond to you personally, he has

taken the time to read your comments.  He is glad you felt strongly

enough about STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION to let him know your

thoughts about it.

Many of the suggestions we received in letters such as yours have

merit and may influence future episodes.  We hope you will continue

to watch STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION to see these developements.

Sincerely,

/s/Susan Sackett

Susan Sackett

Assistant to Gene Roddenberry

SS:akd

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

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 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 12a readthrough update 03

61% completion, 50 bookmarks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 10

 87% completion, 170 bookmarks

-STAR TREK 4's release date gets moved up to November 1986 thanks to positive test screening results.

-Roger Zelazny Amber series discussion kicks off hard. Readers new to the Amber series have questions regarding BLOOD OF AMBER, long-time Amber series fans respond. Everyone wants to know why Dara needed to walk the Pattern if a Chaos equivalent existed, what's up with Luke, etc. One very special SFLer has a unique take of  "Dworkin f**ked the Unicorn, the Unicorn is secretly Oberon's mother and this is why the Unicorn keeps popping up to fix the Amber Royal families many many f**k-ups".

-Paramount releases an official press release that STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION is real and scheduled for a Fall 1987 premiere. Gene Roddenberry becomes a divisive figure, some SFL Star Trek fans refer to him as the sole source responsible for all things old and new Star Trek related, other SFL Star Trek fans tend to credit the many Star Trek producers, writers, and so on that Gene Roddenberry overshadows/steals credit from.     

-Stephen Donaldson has a new book out (THE MIRROR OF HER DREAMS), David Brin has a new book out (THE POSTMAN), Gene Wolfe has a new book out (SOLDIER OF THE MIST), Kim Stanley Robinson has a new book out (THE PLANET ON THE TABLE).

-A request for for help finding the earliest modern werewolf story brings up lots of examples. WAGNER THE WERE-WOLF by G.W.M. Reynolds. LE MENEUR DE LOUPS by A. Dumas. Chapter 39 in Fredrick Marryat's THE PHANTOM SHIP. Hugues: the Wer-Wolf: A Kentish tale of the Middle Ages. The Severed Arm by Anonymous in TALES OF ALL NATIONS.

-Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's series about a 2000+ year old vampire named Ragoscvy Saint Germaine sounds interesting strictly for the various historic eras the stories take place in.

-BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (original series) discussion with people thinking the Cylon Imperial leader is organic or in-organic or soul-transferred into a cyborg body or something

-BLAKES 7 discussion gears up again, with behind-the-scenes details and series trivia that makes it understandable why Blake's 7 was such a iconic groundbreaking scifi tv series.

-R.A. McAvoy's work comes up again. TWISTING THE ROPE is seen as a major disappoint by SFL readers, because it drops all of the fantasy elements and low key charm of TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON and instead goes all in on Celtic touring band drama.

-Tech-trivia about the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY has a legit callback to groundbreaking 1930's digital audio generation that lead to creation of physical vocoder technology.   

-David Hartwell, SciFi editor?, auctions off his clothing at a convention to raise money for ill and temporarily homeless author George Alec Effinger.

-Taboos in STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES have SFLers fixating on homosexual situations, drug use/abuse, and jailbait scenarios "allegedly" in original drafts of Star Trek: TOS shooting scripts.

-The Saga of Fuzzy Pink aka MITSFS's "my roommate Fuzzy Pink".  

-DANGERMOUSE and DANGER MAN /THE PRISONER discussion.

-SFLer's try to describe the art-styles and significance of anime character design, facial tics, eye size, etc. and how the various anime art-styles are not-racist stereotypes of Japanese/Americans/etc like some very vocal SFLer think so.

-Home-improvement projects the SFLer way: someone is converting a garage into a dedicated library room and wants tips on how to manage the humidity level in a non-cooled/non-heated former garage.

-The trope about "infinite monkeys in a room with the goal of typing out Shakespeare's work" and the many SciFi story takes on this trope. Murder, murder-suicide, and mass monkeycide are usually the outcomes in those SciFi story takes.

-The canonical SF Music list of 1986. Mostly lists of bands, artists, albums, songs, song lyrics, song lyric discussion, context to certain lyrics.

-Daniel F Galouye's THE INFINITE MAN may enrage or delight mathematics fans and possibly conspiracy theory nuts obsessed with Pi.

-A question about (cosplay) weapons and (cosplay) weapons policies at conventions brings up lots of anecdotes, peace-bond situations, and eyebrowing raising situations convention security usually deals with. Basically some cosplayers act like idiots 24/7 especially in costume.

-VOLPA, a short story about a mad scientest creating a bunch of intelligent winged creatures complete with fake backstory and invented language, just to f**k with future archeologists or historians who stumble across them.

-The first mention of WORLDS OF IF SciFi magazine in the SFL Archives. (2020 note: If magazine has been fully digitized and is available at the internet archive project.)

-Timothy Zahn's THE BLACKCOLLAR/THE BLACKLASH MISSION stories sound like source material DC Comics used when coming up with the supervillian BANE.

-3rd email announcement about the 1986 TUCKER AWARDS, this time recapping the prizes/need to be physically at the convention to win, with the rigged nomination slate carried over from the 2nd TUCKER AWARD email announcement.

SFL Archives Vol 10 readthrough update 02

 -First and second appearance of  posts with the Subject Line: "JAPANESE ANIMATION" in the SFL Archives.

-Robert Heinlein's JOB gets discussed, mostly about it being slightly better than Heinlein's NUMBER OF THE BEAST thanks to Heinlein's carotid bypass surgery.

-the SFL poster whose gimmick was hiding behind the mask of his sister or possibly his wife posting his offline shit-talking to the SFL mailing list (mostly) abandons the gimmick and starts posting as themselves aka M*** L**p*r...but sometimes M*** L**p*r forgets and will still occasionally post under the old email address on the same topics.

-A murderer's row of THE PRISONER/SECRET AGENT aka DANGER MAN tv series discussion. Waves and waves of posts about the Village being filmed in Wales, with a few meta-conflicting reviews of the In-Real-Life area/resort/hotel where the Prisoner was filmed at. The Prisoner novelization discussion. Lots of theorizing how various tidbits confirm that Secret Agent aka Danger Man John Drake was really Number 06. More people answered and re-answered and replied and re-replied about the Prisoner TV series being shot in Wales than the time anyone who ever spent more than 96 hrs in San Francisco replied to the person asking if "Emperor Norton 1 of America" was real or made up.

-Steven Brust qualifies his GOR series recommendation. Sort of. Brust argument: Tolkien was popular and fantasy genre defining because Tolkien's stories sold a fuckton. Therefore, John Norman's GOR stories must be considered similarly. If you want more details, look it up yourself in SF-LOVERS Digest Volume 10, I refuse to recap or mention Steven Brust anymore.

-BACK TO THE FUTURE 1, and THE GOONIES are slated for future 1985 release. People guessing at the plot to STAR TREK 4: Voyage Home are worth noting, simply because ST4 went in a direction no-one and I mean NO ONE circa 1985 expected. V the series has it's final episode, and Silent Running (1972) becomes a subject of discussion: the robots, the nature pods, the American Airlines spaceships, the reusage of footage for the original BSG tv series, etc.

-Someone wants Advice for a new author trying to get published 1985 edition, and a few people respond . The advice is different from what got posted earlier circa 1982/83? so I will dedicate a entire post to the advice given, simply because I know there is a bunch of current and aspiring authors who read this thread 

(2020 sidenote: will do a separate blog post on this)

-More and more 1000+ word posts in the SFL Digests, you can tell who had the expensive Wangs and who didn't back in 1985. 

(2020 sidenote: that was a reference to the forgotten WANG LABS series of Wang computers/Wang computer terminals)

-Someone who missed out on the 6 solid months of SFL music chat back in 1982?/83? asked why no-one talks about music in the SFL mailing list, but it's cool because no one has mentioned filksongs in response...so far. :ninja:

-Piers Anthony non-xanth and Orson Scott Card are frequent topics of discussion....back in 1985 both those authors hadn't become what they now are. Piers Anthony had the deep-seeming Avatars series while ENDERS GAME was Card's biggest accomplishment to date

-THE GOONIES, THE EXPLORERS, COCOON, LIFEFORCE and BACK TO THE FUTURE 1 have come out. Weirdly, the goonies isn't being discussed much while the same grown-up people were falling over themselves crying discussing E.T. when it came out.

-Disney animation movie the BLACK CAULDRON is getting some chat, but mostly because it doesn't follow the source material 100% which is an omnipresent hang-up for certain SFF fans (this has happened many times, usually over Arthurian mythos, and it will happen again).

-An Arthurian series focusing on Gawain using the Welsh spelling of his name comes out, and people mistake the Welsh spelling as being a new self-insert character into the Arthurian Mythos and got very angry.

-Slams on SPACE 1999. The actors in it, the acting in Space 1999, the feasibility of Lunar colonies, the introduction of the shape-shifting character in season 2, the time loop?

-Roger Zelazny's continuation of the Amber series book comes out, and 1985 SFL reaction is thirsty for more/damn you Zelazny write faster. This resulted in heavy topical to 1985 Roger Zelazny chat, which can be boring to discuss and recap.

-Philip Jose Farmer: Even back in 1985, people were getting tired of PJF's role as self-appointed chronicler/perpetuator of a number of "mythologies" where PJF would write the imaginary books other authors referenced in their stories, like for example HP Lovecraft's Cryptonomicon and/or write completely unauthorized sequels/prequels to other authors books. 

(2020 sidenote: In modern terms, this would be like PJF writing "Mithra the Sixth" in Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth setting, or the Secret Annals of Baru Cormorant, or vulturing into N. K. Jemisin's work, etc.)

originally posted August 23rd - August 27th in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3

SFL Archives Vol 08 readthrough update 02

 -Reading the SFL archives chat about SUNDIVER and STARTIDE RISING has softened my views on David Brin. The David Brin of 37 yrs/30 yrs/20 years ago is not the bitter boomer CHUD David Brin of 2019, clever and tolerant David Brin died off over a decade ago.

David Brin's Uplift universe stories are worth reading for the galactic species and Interstellar Universal Library concept in them. For a 2020 reader new to David Brin's Uplift stories, yes there is awkward interspecies sex scenes in each of the Uplift books that can/probably should be skipped over.. ....always skip the awkward interspecies sex scenes/sexual harassment scenes in Brin's Uplift universe stories. What's that?...... *high pitched clicking and squeaking*....... DolphinF**ker heavily disagrees with that last statement.

-first book of Roger Zelazny's new AMBER series gets teased for a 1984 release. Looking back at Zelazny's earlier Amber stories,and the wholesale stealing from Philip Jose Farmer's earlier series, am now thinking that the obvious "written for the money" Amber books mostly exist, ironically, as a way for Zelazny to pay off PJF and confuse people into thinking PJF ripped off Zelazny...which then leads to owing PJF another round of settlement money, etc

-Spider Robinson (mega-overrated) gets mentioned for the 872th time as a person of note in the SFF community that every serious SFF fan should be aware of. tldr summary of Spider Robinson: Robert Heinlein was Spider Robinson's God, and Spider Robinson fully embraced the Moses role.

-The mailing list moderator(BackStabMod) who did a hostile takeover of the SF-LOVERS Digest lasted a little over 15 months managing the SFL mailing list before giving up, claiming privacy right concerns (a la DolphinF**ker) with the ARPANET and the inability to manage future SF-LOVERS mailing list Digests if they have no future ARPANET access are the real reasons why they are stepping down as SF-LOVERS mod. BackStabMod's explanations about privacy concerns were unironically accompanied by lots and lots of personal details of BackStabMod's life and future plans.

-Rudy Rucker, 1980s mathematician and scifi author got discussed. Some of the people like RR's work simply because they incorporate mathematics into their stories, others dislike RR for the shoehorned-in mathematics and the kookiness factor in RR's stories. Regardlessly, I had never heard of THE SEX SPHERE By Rudy Rucker before, and really don't plan on reading it.

-Movie chat continued, with WARGAMES 1983 & the upcoming DUNE movie directed by David Lynch being frequent topics of discussion. Nightmares(?) the anthology horror film had a gamer-hell segment that seemed very VR goggles. A weird arthouse movie call LIQUID SKY got mentioned for it's scifi elements and unique take on exploitation/horror/scifi/drugs.

-For the 5th time or so in SFL archives history, someone asked for lists "SF&F Novels of Literary Merit", and then got pissy at the lack of responses/not enough people doing their homework slash PhD thesis research for them. Basic things like the request being a loaded question, the requestor obviously fishing for data for their PhD thesis on Science Fiction Novels of Literary Merit, and the responder requesting all survey answers being sent to a obscure location confused and angered people similar to Arthur Dent and the house demolition notice (It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'). Additionally defending the merit of SFF is a hill SFF Culture Warrior John S Quarterman is willing to die on (John Quarterman requested people get his name right when referring to him so I did).

-Somebodies worse SF novel they can ever recall reading is ARMADA by Michael Jahn, which I have done zero research on,and will probably forget about until the next time I go through my SFL archive Vol 08 bookmarks

-Probably only of interest to me and a select few others, but TRAVELLER RPG gets mentioned a few times and this allows me to mention without any hate in my soul additional filksong lyrics chat along with the 300+ odes or verses to a filk-song about "olde time religion" or something similar. I refuse to bookmark filk-chat so you'll have to dig through SFL Vol 08 yourself to find them

-Private space sector efforts vs government funded space sector SFL archives chat in 1983 aged badly given the 2019/2020 private space sector events

-SF vs Sci-fi vs skiffy. AKA a fans of Science Fiction culture war that boils down to (in 2020 terms) how you refer to Science-Fiction in short-hand terms(SF vs Sci-fi vs skiffy) defining your TRUE FAN STATUS versus other people/other Science Fiction fans.

-Big time DOCTOR WHO chat. Peter Davidson leaving the role so soon after Tom Baker, and American Public access tv repeating the Doctor Who serials more than Star Trek the Original Series got repeated has driven up the SFL Dr Who Chat intensity.

 To give some context, the Five Doctors special just came out, which skewed slightly into Douglas Adams chat when Douglas Adam's as a Dr Who writer came up. John Nathan-Turner has been mentioned multiple times promising many things to Doctor Who fans, of which zero point zero zero zero zero three promises will actually happen (the first person of color companion promise took an additional 34 f**king years to happen)

-EMPIRE OF THE PETAL THRONE, a D&D setting TSR abandoned in lieu of GREYHAWK, then FORGOTTEN REALMS, then MYSTARA, then FORGOTTEN REALMS (again) gets mentioned. Empire of the Petal Throne uses a hybrid China/Japan/Korea/India gameworld setting.

-On the topic of HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, SFL chat was about how the books deviated from the original HHGTTG radio broadcasts and the followup BBC HHGTTG radio sequel programs. Finally Douglas Adams running out of tombstones to swear on while promising each HHGTTG sequel will be the "last one I swear" was the new SFL archives running joke (replacing the previous SFL running jokes of PAC-man puns and before that Indiana Jones sequel pun-names)

-Something called the unofficial Wizards and Warriors unathorized future history continuation has been hyped multiple times by one SFL poster. Suspecting that SFL postergot told to knock it off/stop hosting this on the ARPANET, because the last Wizards & Warriors hype pitch in SFL Vol 08 combines a "lost subscriber/please help me find them" with an acknowledgement of getting kicked off their former ARPANET/CSNet host

-Convention security run by SFF fans gets mentioned, with Robert Asprin of Myth/Thieves World/IRS back-taxes fame getting mentioned as the leader of the DORSAI IRREGULARS aka the Klingon Diplomatic Corps. Am pretty certain doing any kind of research into this group will involve cringe factors and discovering covered-up sexual assault

-MIT's Science Fiction Society slash private library gets mention-pimped in detail for the first time since 1980-1981. No idea if this exists currently or MIT cracked down on it. As I've said repeatedly before, I bookmark things of interest and very rarely look things up because there is so much stuff in the SFL Digest that if I took the time to look up everything mentioned, I would be much further behind in my SFL archive read-through.

-A post about "Death Star population = Imperial Cas" successfully predicts one of the events in "The Last Jedi" aka the hyperdrive suicide bombing.

originally posted July 31st in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3

SFL Archives Vol 01 readthrough update 03

SF-LOVERS Digest Volume 01 100% completion.

SFL Volume 01 started on September 9 1979 and lasted until June 30 1980, with 175 total Digest Issues.

Overall, reading the SF-LOVERS mailing archive has been a good idea. Lots of interesting discussion, with only a few things that aged super badly. The mailing list maintainers (Brodie@PARC-MAXC & DUFFY@MIT-AI) deserved raises or demotions/pay cuts for all the work they put in on it (since the SF-LOVERS mailing ran ontop of 100% taxpayer funded Offical ARPANET networks/servers).

-Distinct posting persona's have emerged. People from UCLA-Security mostly post about non-print scifi media, a SuperMechaGodzilla style troll has appeared along with a tech-fetisher that maps everything to it's equivalent in Larry Niven's stories (lightsabers=variable blades, superconducters, klingons=kzinti, etc). Besides Stallman, Don Woods the godfather of cRPGs + roguelike games started posting in the SF-LOVERS mailing list....am now waiting for the people responsible for creating TCP/IP, HTML, etc to appear.

-MZB/Darkover chat mostly died off at the 48% completion mark, while Zelazny's AMBER series only got mentioned majorly by the guy that triggered jng2058. My back-burnered theory that Philip Jose Farmer was the Neil Gaiman of his era keeps getting fueled up whenever PJF stories come up.

-The burgeoning Star Wars chat in SF-LOVERS got segregated to a special PM-only SF-LOVERS edition where Star Wars spoiler discussions were 100% ok after Empire Strike Back came out. The PM edition Star Wars chat is very skip-able for a 2020 reader, yet I swear 95.999% of the theories brought up there eventually happened in Star Wars Expanded universe fiction.

-The time in Action Comics where "Superman got temporarily brain-damaged by an enemy, and had a TRS-80 think for him"

-Harry Harrison's BILL THE GALACTIC HERO is my favorite novel of all time, so the funniest thing in the final 18% of SF-LOVERS Digest Vol 01 for me was Harry Harrison's BLOATER drive getting mentioned as a FTL travel device. Then, People who outright said that they'd never read the book it came from (Bill the Galactic Hero) and therefore never realized the BLOATER drive was a joke FTL concept in a very funny satirical mil-scifi novel took Harry Harrison's BLOATER drive concept seriously for 3 very detailed de-bunking posts. 

-Not wanting to be captured by HUMAN Naturalists if you're an alien(re: discussion thread on Alien Intelligence tests)

-"the giant mechanical turtles of the ice planet of Hoth"

-VIA GALACTICA the musical 

-Something about Harlan Ellison taking some of his lawsuit money winnings to put up a billboard dissing the opposing party at their place of work and/or company HQ

Finally jng2058 posted:

    It was a garbage opinion in 1980 <re: AQE@MIT-MC and their 03-19-1980 post "Re: Similarities between "World of Tiers" and "Amber"> , and it's a garbage opinion now. :colbert:

Any post that triggers that much indignation 40 yrs later deserves to be quoted in full.

Trigger warning: it's not just a sh*tpost

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

AQE@MIT-MC 03/19/80 15:12:49

Re: Similarities between "World of Tiers" and "Amber".

I just finished reading P. J. Farmer's "World of Tiers" series, and it

reinforces my opinion that Farmer should be prevented from writing

anything longer than a short novel. His short stuff is good, but his

novel series just get totally out of hand. Maybe he needs a good

editor.

However, when I was only partway through the series, I started getting

VERY UPSET because of similarities between it and Zelazny's "Amber"

series, which I consider to be an All Time Classic. I figured that

"Tiers" was just a low-grade re-working of "Amber". Then I thought of

checking the copyright dates, and lo and behold, it is the other way

around. "Amber" looks like a high-grade re-working of "Tiers". Here is

a summary:

The "World of Tiers" series by Philip Jose' Farmer:

The Maker of Universes (1965)

The Gates of Creation (1966)

A Private Cosmos (1968) (my edition has an intro by Zelazny)

Behind the Walls of Terra (1970)

The Lavalite World (1977) (dedication: "For Roger Zelazny,

The Golden Spinner")

The "Amber" series by Roger Zelazny:

Nine Princes in Amber (1970)

The Guns of Avalon (1972)

Sign of the Unicorn (1975) (dedication: "For Jadawin and his

Demiurge, not to forget Kickaha."

Jadiwin and Kickaha are characters

from "World of Tiers", and a Demiurge

is the Creator of the material world,

and probably a pun, too.)

The Hand of Oberon (1976)

The Courts of Chaos (1978)

The similarities: (WARNING: THESE PARAGRAPHS CONTAIN SPOILERS!)l

World of Tiers\ Amber

The series concerns the exploits \ The series concerns the exploits

of an immortal race called "Lords", \ of an immortal royal family,

human-looking but of superhuman \ human-looking but of superhuman

speed and strength. They possess \ speed and strength. They possess

the technology to travel between \ an inborn ability to travel between

universes. They almost never trust \ universes. They almost never trust

each other, and often try to kill \ each other, and often try to kill

each other. They are all descended \ each other. They are all descended

from a great artisan named \ from a great artisan named Dworkin

Shambarimen. The series begins with \ Barimen. The series begins with a

a major character (Wolff) living on \ major character (Corwin) living on

Earth and suffering from amnesia. \ Earth and suffering from amnesia.

The character is swept up into an \ The character is swept up into an

odyssey through the universes, and \ odyssey through the universes, and

eventually finds himself to be one \ eventually finds himself to be one

of the supermen.  \ of the supermen.

I'm sure there are more that I've missed.

The tone of the dedications and Zelazny's intro seems to indicate that

Zelazny plagiarized Farmer with Farmer's permission. Also, Farmer has

used many characters created by others, so maybe he doesn't mind

sharing his plots.

Does anyone out there know anything else about the relation of these

series to each other, or other "sharing" by Zelazny?

Jef

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

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

SFL Archives Vol 01 readthrough update 02

 SFL Archives Vol 01 42% completion

-Both Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle make the humble-brag claim at a 1980 MIT lecture called "How to get Rich Quick" that "they, and many other experienced authors write without editing their work" (DGSHARP@MIT-AI 02-13-1980). Robert Forward chimed in a few days later to "clarify" Niven and Pournelle's statements  about the  "never editing" or revising their work statements that Niven and Pournelle made at that 1980 MIT Lecture. Robert Forward tosses in the humble-brag of  (literal quote from Robert Forward)"Poul Anderson and me both agonize over each word at least 6 or 8 times before the final draft is sent into the publishers." 

-An early collaborative fantasy-scifi world setting called Darkover keeps getting mentioned over and over again in the SF-LOVERS. However, this is one of the things that have aged super badly because Marion Zimmer Bradley was a major contributor to the Darkover series...and keeps getting praised for writing strong female characters in the Darkover stories. Ughh.

-During discussion of black main characters, SALawrence@MIT-Multics brought up Richard Lupoff's novel THE SACRED LOCOMOTIVE FLIES because of it's sheer weirdness. The Sacred Locomotive Flies had a white main character but almost everyone else in the book was secretly black and appeared to be white-people by taking a weird drug that changed their skin color and also made them obese as a side-effect. This book sounds weird enough that I've added it to my "try to find it" list

-More retroactively weird Star Wars stuff. Fanzines named BANTHA TRACKS (great user name btw) and ALDERAAN. One on one interviews with David Prouse, the body-actor actively erased from Star Wars by Lucas and Disney. Bootleg SW character themes & SW themed albums before John Williams scores became the default Star Wars sound.

-Richard Stallman (RMS@MIT-AI) just popped up on the SF-LOVERS mailing list for the first time ever. Noticed it was him from the EMACS humblebrag and the omnipresent RMS handle. Just checked, RMS only posted 3 times in the Vol 01 SF-LOVERS Digest. 2nd time was debating about Darth Vader really being Luke's father and 3rd time was to nitpick a core piece of Robert Forward's novel Dragons Egg.

-Mentioning Philip Jose Farmer ripping off Roger Zelazny brought some feedback.

SomethingAful user jng2058 posted on June 20, 2020:

   That's a pretty harsh mischaracterization of what went on. I'm holding a third printing of Sign of the Unicorn and it's dedication is "For Jadawin and his Demiurge, not to forget Kickaha." Those being the main characters of "The World of Tiers," of course. You don't dedicate your book to the characters of a novel series you're homaging if you're worried they're going to sue you. For that matter, outside the barest of story beats of "dude on Earth encounters people of great power and then discovers he's one of those people afflicted with amnesia", the stories diverge pretty quickly.

    And it's not like you can sue over general story points anyhow, or else there'd be no end to the lawsuits between "guy with gun shoots a lot of bad guys" authors. Fer f*ck's sake, Paolini's Inheritance Cycle is just Star Wars with Dragons, with the movie for Eragon being even more so, and no one ever sued about that shit, and those are multi-billion dollar corporations with lawyers on staff whose job is to sue over shit like that.

    Perhaps most importantly we should remember that "good authors borrow, great authors steal." Whether you think Amber "sucked and was derivative" or not, the books were very popular and most people here know what you're talking about when you mention them, and a good percentage of us have read them. Far fewer have so much as heard of "The World of Tiers", much less seen a copy to read. Taking an existing story and transforming it and improving it such that no one remembers the original is the mark of a great writer.

    Unless you think Shakespeare adapting the lives of an obscure Danish prince and a thane of Scotland into two of the greatest tragedies in the English language was "derivative". :rolleyes:

My SomethingAwful forums response to jng2058:

Calm the f**k down.

Or get mad at AQE@MIT-MC and their 03-19-1980 post "Re: Similarities between "World of Tiers" and "Amber" which I quoted.

Lots of people in this thread and the previous SF&F mega-thread have commented that Zelazny's Amber series isn't the greatest and was at best written for the paycheck.

Originally posted Jun 20, 2020 18:15 on the SomethingAwful forums Book Barn Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3 thread

SFL Archives Vol 01 readthrough update 01

 Re-reading the SF-LOVERS digests from the beginning, only I'm taking notes this time.

https://archive.org/details/SFLoversDigestArchive

-If you're disappointed that there isn't more black/non-white/female/alt-gender main characters in modern fantasy + science-fiction stories, that has been an ongoing complaint about the scifi + fantasy genres for at least 40 yrs (source: SF-LOVERS Digest Vol 1, late March 1980)

-Posts coming from @UCLA-Security in the SF-LOVERS mailing list were highly readable: lots of interesting behind the scenes info about the Star Trek franchise, prophetic generic statements, and detailed summaries of then current sci-fi themed tv series/tv-movies you can now find at wikipedia/imdb.

-If you thought Roger Zelazny's original content do-not-steal AMBER series sucked and was derivative....you are correct! AMBER series was apparently a direct ripoff of Philip Jose Farmer's "World of Tiers" series. But since PJF ripped off everyone else constantly, no lawsuits happened.

-Even back in 1980 Andre Norton had a staggering amount of published fiction out in the world.

-You can palpably feel the growth of Star Wars fandom as time goes on. A now forgotten part of the "Empire Strikes Back" marketing was phone banks you could call to listen to special teaser audio clips from the ESB cast, and those phone banks being unavailable keeps cropping up. 40 years later I'm wondering WTF was in those phone-bank ESB audio clips.

-Robert Forward was a "hard-scifi author" of his era, and used the SF-LOVERS mailing list as a sounding board/rebuttal forum to hard scifi "that doesn't make sense" questions and statements.

-the ongoing jokes, taunts and dares about computer viruses and network tapeworms in the SF-LOVERS mailing list give some compelling backstory to Robert Tappan Morris's 1988 "breaking of the Internet".

-Hal Draper's 1961 short story MS Fnd in a Lbry was very prophetic, especially for software developers

Originally posted Jun 20, 2020 13:56 in the SomethingAwful forums Book Barn Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3