SFL Archives Vol 10 readthrough update 04

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

quote:

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

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

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

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

SFL Archives Vol 10 readthrough update 03

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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