SFL Archives Vol 13 readthrough update 01

SFL Archives Vol 13

5.9 mb raw text file

15% completion, 25 bookmarks

-1988 technology level: MS-DOS 2.21, COMPUSERVE, dual floppy disks, monochrome monitors, Leading Edge Word Processor software. The SF-LOVERS mailing list has migrated to new hardware and now there is dedicated @EDU email addresses for SF-LOVERS mailing list submissions & SF-LOVERS administrative questions.

-SFL 1988 Pop-culture mentions: TRANSFORMERS, MY LITTLE PONY, and SMURFS cartoon series. Disney children's movie THE POINT. COLES regional bookstores. First mention of author Jo Clayton.

-1988 starts off with heavy Stephen R Donaldson and his THOMAS COVENANT series discussion, with both sides talking past each other loudly. One side is extremely angry about people dissing Donaldson's writing style/hating on the Thomas Covenant series, and the other side keeps explaining exactly why they diss Donaldson's writing style and why they hate Thomas Covenant the character/the book series.

-Poul Anderson explaining how he came up with his YS stories, Larry Niven clarifying the background of the main character in his RINGWORLD series (Louis Wu is not related to Beowulf Shaeffer or Carlos Wu).

-January 13 1988: Brian Herbert starts the rumor that he will be writing the 7th DUNE novel, and that he has more notes that his father, Frank Herbert, wrote regarding the 7th DUNE novel.

-First mention of Jack Vance's CADWAL CHRONICLES stories in the SFL Archives.

(2020 note: Almost all of the standard Jack Vance tropes apply to the Cadwal Chronicles stories. The big twist for the Cadwal stories is that the "good guys" are thinly disguised white South Afrikaners enforcing apartheid rule over the palette swapped black people that do everything in South Africa on the planet Cadwal.)

-Private investigators or just really creepy people glom onto the "Using Social Media to doxx people" concept, and start making a few of those requests to the SF-LOVERS mailing list.

-An anecdote of Marion Zimmer Bradley redacting a goofly dated "human slide-rule"/"Galactic alien slide rule" string of dialogue comparison in reprints of her earlier story THE BRASS DRAGON. 

-Richard Lupoff aka Dick Lupoff is interviewed/gives feedback to comments made about him to the SF-LOVERS mailing list. Lupoff's interview takes up an entire SFL Digest, and covers upcoming projects/stories due to be published, the terribleness of dealing with Philip Jose Farmer properties, what kind of computer Lupoff uses, Lupoff's 1st job in computing, and how Lupoff tries to highlight hypocrisy in his stories with a weird side-comment about what THE SACRED LOCOMOTIVE FLIES is really about (something about future airlines switching to 100% naked stewardess-prostitutes in the near future.)  

-Suzette Hayden Elgin's OZARK stories, PORTAL (Rob Swigart), PELBAR CYCLE (Paul O. Williams), FOLK OF THE AIR (Peter Beagle), COUNTERFEIT WORLD (Daniel F. Galouyle), Craig Shaw Gardner EBENEZUM & WUNTVOR trilogies, LIEGE KILLER (Christopher Hinz), TOMMYKNOCKERS (Stephen King), ONE HUMAN MINUTE & A PERFECT VACUUM (Stanislaw Lem), REALITY MATRIX (John Dalmas).

-A standard seeming recommendation for Mercedes Lackey's existing stories and her upcoming stories get weird when the SFLer making the recommendation keeps referring to Lackey as 'Misty', which knowing nothing about Mercedes Lackey implies heavy previous contact with Lackey.

-Oddball SF&F story request: A SFLer wants recommendations for any F&SF story which occurs in the Southern temperate zone of an alien planet. AKA "when the people go south, it gets colder rather than warmer". 

-The time that Arthur C Clarke & Isaac Asimov formed a self-appreciation society of two back in the 1950's with declaring each other and themselves the 1st & 2nd best writers in the fields of Science Fiction writing and Science Fact writing.

-6 years after it came out, the movie BLADERUNNER 1982 is now considered prescient and worthy of discussion in the SFL Archives. SFLer's are confused by the plot, the differences in the Philip K Dick story vs the movie, golden eye glows due to replicant-status? or just byproducts of the lighting effects used to film Bladerunner 1982?, etc.

-The (long anticipated by me) FLYING CAR debate finally kicks off in the SFL Archives.

(2020 note: One of the truly surprising things in the SFL Archives readthrough is that it took over 9 years to finally get around to discussing flying cars, which are a common element in SciFi stories of the 1930's - 1970's.) 

-SFL Mark Leeper creates a ASCII flowchart of Zombie movies trying to explain the George Romero & John Russo Zombie movies.

-Oddball 1988 SFLer movie & book request: Any SciFi movies/books made within the past 25 years or so that were made in Spanish. That is no Spanish subtitles, or Spanish language translations of existing books.

-Press release announcement for the upcoming GAYLAXICON 1988. GAYLAXICON 1988 is "a relaxacon/minicon for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Science Fiction Fans and their Friends." No dealers room, or art shows; limited attendance/hotel registration required for attendance.

-A unknown title/author SciFi story where a spaceship going at 99.9999% the speed of light passes through the Solar System, and the relativistic mass effect of that spaceship's speed somehow causes the Earth to suddenly move 10 feet North, and all the effect it has on humans/human environments globally.

 (2020 note: This story sounds amazingly bad.)

SFL Archives Vol 12b readthrough update 01

 26% completion, 23 bookmarks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SFL Archives Vol 12a readthrough update 04

 83% completion, 70 bookmarks

-Ralph Bakshi and his habit of ripping off other artists without credit. Vaughn Bode & NEKRON-99, Holst, Ian Miller, etc. 

-Most of Alan E Nourse's stories being set in a "Hospital Earth" universe, where Earth is one of the few planets that has thought of medicine and medicine is Earth's ticket into the galactic community. (2020 note: Very ironic circa 2020. And yet...given all the various terrible things that 2020 has delivered,...still very possible.)

-DREAM GAMES (the sort of direct sequel to WARGAMES 1983), terrible movie BIOHAZARD, the SF stories of Ian Wallace, THE LEAGUE OF GREY EYED WOMEN, terrible movie SUPERGIRL, George RR Martin WILD CARDS anthology discussion. Raymond Chandler supposedly writing a few fantasy stories before his death, belated A. Bertram Chandler death notice.

-IMAX discussion. What theaters have IMAX circa 1987, the history of IMAX, various IMAX movies regularly shown at various museums/IMAX installations, the limitations of IMAX films, everything IMAX hardware related coming from one Canadian(?) company.

-Robert Heinlein chat pt 95: Comparison's of Heinlein's default viewpoint characters.The lost juevinile stories of RAH. TMIAHM: are earthers or the loonies the real barbarians? Women's equality Heinlein character defense. Heinlein writing on homesexuality. SFLer's dropping way-too-revealing details defending Heinlein such as: "I was a feral kid, Heinlein's work in many ways raised me (instead of my parents)". or "I am in a group marriage, and see no problems with Heinlein".

-EE Smith discussion. For the most part, even the majority of 1987 SFLers found them terrible and beyond sexist and wooden and r=a=c=i=s=t. The skeevy thing about inbreeding in the Lensmen books comes up and up and up, much like the people in 1987 & now reading about Smith's view on race, gender equality, you name it, it all dated super-bad by 1987 and even worse to a 2020 reader of EE Smith's work.

-Orscon Scott Card writing the script for the ANIMATED STORIES FROM THE BOOK OF MORMON....source is a SFLer who read an ad for it in the University of Utah student newsletter.

-C.S. Lewis NARNIA chat. SFLer's reminscing about the series, the hidden or not so hidden Christian analogues in the Narnia stories. Talking animals without sin, no concept of whatever "a neevil" is. Arguing about who died in the Narnia stories, who got too old to return to Narnia, etc. The SFLer who thinks they know LORD OF THE RINGS lore better than J.R.R. Tolkien is pulling the same crap here. 

-First mention of ROADSIDE PICNIC by the Strugastki brothers in the SFL Archives.

-SFLer's briefly start to theory-craft the PERFECT CREATURE that could live in the most environments of the universe, as it exists circa 1987, as possible.  (2020 note: I nominate HP Lovecraft's Shoggoth.)

-STAR TREK 4 nitpicking...why didn't the universial translator work on the alien vs the alien cloud thing in TOS episode Metamorphis, why there is Klingon markings on Romulan ships, etc. plus normal STAR TREK: TOS nitpicking about Khan, the Eugenics war, time travel, etc.

-BOSKONE 25 update. The NEFSA finally releases their "we are burned and shrinking all future Boskone's. Here's what is changing" letter. Anger of SFLer's at being excluded fades, now chat on the subject has morphed into how SFLer's would run SF&F conventions, ignoring many things like licensing fees and state labor laws in the process.

-Harlan Ellison chat pt 37a: Harlan Ellison career trivia. Ellison's continued issues dealing with Hollywood. Harlan Ellison has no money because it all goes to cover lawyer fees. Harlan Ellison is loaded and sues out of righteous fury. Lawsuit Settlement money. Harlan Ellison cleverly cornering the market on audiobooks of Harlan Ellison's stories by cutting out all the middle-men and voicing/producing/selling the cassette tapes(audiobooks) via mail-order or direct phone calls.

-First mention of WHITE DWARF magazine in the SFL Archives. White Dwarf is/was the magazine Games Workshops ran/runs as a loss-leader to promote their line of wargaming products/supplemental materials for wargaming.

 -1987 FAKE NEWS or FACT? Secondhand report of a Santa Cruz CA health food restaurant, McDharma's being sued to death by McDonalds over name similarities. The upcoming 1988 movie COMING TO AMERICA will have a similar sideplot going on with McDowells.

Don’t forget that McDonald’s is nothing like McDowell’s. While McDonald’s has the golden arches, McDowell’s has the golden arcs. McDonald’s has the Big Mac, but McDowell’s has the Big Mick. They both have two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions. But McDonald’s buns have sesame seeds. McDowell’s buns have no seeds. 

-CODEX SERAPHINIANUS comes up again. SFLer's who have copies of it relate their efforts to decode it, one SFLer goes deep into the national library system (including microfilm hunts) looking for details on it, and one SFLer starts going conspiracy theory/"what-does this mean??" when finding a cut-out from a magazine "31" in the backcover of their copy.

-The murder-suicide details of Alice Bradley Sheldon aka James Tiptree Jr's get revealed to the SFL Archives.

-Barry Warsaw from the US National Bureau of Standards (aka the NIST) wants to crowd-source the naming convention/names for the next cycle of computer workstations coming into the US National Bureau of Standards, and asks the SF-LOVERS mailing list for suggestions. 

-Joan Vinge and her work discusion pt 3. A looooooong article about Joan Vinge is posted to the SFL Archives, so long that it takes up 4 complete SFL digests, and the beginning of a 5th SFL digest.

-STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION stuff. David Gerrold roles the dice on getting a better contract with Paramount and Gene Roddenberry over his ST:TNG  work. SFLer's start doubting on why WESLEY CRUSHER exists in ST:TNG, and how much a drag Wesley Crusher will be in the ST:TNG episodes. Finally the casting announcements for the ST:TNG cast comes out, and you can see exactly where Gene Roddenberry's skeeviness intervened in the casting decisions.

(2020 note: The May 1987 SFLer's were on the right track regarding Wesley Crusher. ST: TNG casting announcements & Gene Roddenberry skeeviness explained: the 3 previous acting roles/movies attributed to Marina Sirtis in the ST:TNG casting announcement all featured toplessness+ from Marina Sirtis.)

-FIASCO by Stanislaw Lem. 

(2020 note: Buy FIASCO ASAP, read it. FIASCO throws away dozens of plot-points, situations, and technology concepts that SF authors following in his wake have expanded into pentalogies  of content.)

-Banned books discuusion thanks to a few SFLer's noting that Florida Bay County School added a book to their regional banned book list, with other SFLer's responding with what other books have been banned in the USA, previously or right-now circa 1987.

List of banned books follows to close out this readthrough update summary.

Three Comedies of American Life

Shane

The Great Gatsby

A Separate Peace

The Red Badge of Courage

A Farewell to Arms

Intruder in the Dust

Lost Horizon

Oedipus Rex

Watership Down

Deathwatch

Death Be Not Proud

Animal Farm

Tale Blazer Library

Best Short Stories

Twelfth Night

Arrangement in Literature

After the First Death

The Crucible

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Long Day's Journey Into Night

The Outsiders

The Pearl

Fahrenheit 451

Alas, Babylon

The Prince and the Pauper

The Emperor Jones

Winterset

The Man Who Came to Dinner

The Little Foxes

The Glass Menagerie

Mister Roberts

A Separate Peace

Adventures in English Literature

Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies (Casebook Edition)

The Call of the Wild

Great Expectations

The Canterbury Tales

Brave New World

The Mayor of Casterbridge

The Merchant of Venice

Player Piano

In Cold Blood

The Inferno (Ciardi translation)

Promethius Unbound

Oedipus the King

Hippolytus

King Lear

Ghosts

Miss Julie

On Baile's Strand

Desire Under the Elms

Wuthering Heights

Hamlet

Major British Writers

Growing Up

A Raisin in the Sun

The Old Man and the Sea

To Kill a Mockingbird

Exploring Life Through Literature

The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles

McTeague

The Fixer

Of Mice and Men

Never Cry Wolf

About David

I am the Cheese

SFL Archives Vol 11 readthrough update 05

 43% completion, 140 bookmarks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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