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 11 readthrough update 06

 54% completion, 152 bookmarks

-1986 TUCKER AWARDS email clarification comes out. 3 awards: 1 each for SF Professional (writer, editor, or dealer), SF Artist, and SF Fan. 4 people are nominated for each award. VOTING DEADLINE IS 1 NOVEMBER 1986

(2020 note: The 1986 Tucker Award looks to be rigged Hugo Award and Nebula Award style. Surely the 2 people nominated with the last name of Tucker [sarcasm]are there by random chance and not nepotism[/sarcasm]) 

-20th Century Fox is in talks with Paramount Studios to develop and create a new STAR TREK tv-series. SFLer reactions to this news-leak range from excited to doubtful and then to extremely angry. The extremely angry SFlers use the STAR TREK 1 & STAR TREK 3 movies as examples of new Star Trek characters being introduced just to kill them off 40 minutes later.

-Besides (*wink* possibly *wink*) working on a new STAR TREK tv-series, in 1986 ..."20th Century Fox appears to be trying to start a 4th nationwide TV Network. (Ted Turner is too apparently)" . 

-The many SciFi & Fantasy writers that post on the SF-LOVERS mailing list are trying to get a informal writers group going to exchange and critique SF&F stories. Robert J Sawyer chooses to self-doxx himself  2nding the informal writers group idea, and then doxxes a few other incognito SF-LOVERS SF&F writers just for the hell of it.

-Tolkienian debate continues. This time elf reincarnation vs what orcs, dwarves and humans get when they die. More Maiar debates. What happened to Saruman and Sauron after their "deaths" in Return of the King. One of the bigger Tolkenian lore arguers obviously read "death of the author" and now thinks they are deploying secret unbeatable arguments from it to support their hyper-stupid "JRR Tolkien merely translated LotR and is not the original source of it, therefore everything I say re: Tolkienian lore makes sense".

-Lloyd Biggle Jr's SILENCE IS DEADLY, originally mentioned back in SFL Archives Vol 03 or Vol 04 comes up again. 

(2020 note: Repeating this almost verbatim from my 1981 SFL recaps...One of the low-notes of the SFL Archives readthrough was the nasty reaction back in 1981 when deaf SciFi fans made pleas for finding "deaf-friendly fiction" and help tracking down transcriptions of the HitchHiker Guide to the Galaxy BBC Radio broadcasts

Hearing disabled Scifi stories were rare as hell in the 1980's, and probably remain rare as hell now-ish. 2020 people: Please, please disprove me on this. I want to be wrong.)

- I, MARTHA ADAMS by Pauline Glen Winslow. "America has become complacent & surrenders to the Russians after they destroy certain military bases.  One woman fights back.  This book has good ingredients for a movie - pyrotechnics, politics, bad guys beating upon good guys, suspense, and sex.  Oh, yes, let us not forget a strong female lead". 

(2020 note: I have no idea. It sounds terrible in a uniquely libertarian feminist survivalist way.)

-Steve Perry's Matador trilogy (THE MAN WHO NEVER MISSED, MATADORA, THE MACHIAVELLI INTERFACE) comes up, and it is a "martial artist revolutionary takes on an evil empire" space opera mish-mash. 

-GENERAL TECHNICS, "the organization for science fiction fans with an interest in do-it-yourself technology, will be held Friday morning, 29 August 1986, at 10 AM, Constellation in Atlanta." 

-ALIENS 1986 movie chat kicks off big-time. A few SFLers are fascinated by the life-cycle of the Alien xenomorphs, others nitpick the travel time of the USS Sulaco (the SpaceMarines spaceship) vs Ripley's drifting lifepod, which of the survivors possibly got impregnated with Alien zygotes, and how did Ripley not get blown out of the airlock/close that airlock near the end of Aliens 1986, etc.

-Someone asks for erotic SF favorites, and Hank Buurman, the SFLer who doesn't believe in privacy for others, fervently recommends John Varley's Millenium and Titan series for the weird erotic sex scenes in them.

-Gene Wolfe at the 1986 ARCHON SFCon tells people the 5th BotNS book is almost ready, the effort Wolfe puts into finding the right word to evoke the nuances he wants, and that there is two mistakes he knows of in the first 4 BotNS volumes; a proofreader missing a typo resulting in <Artello> instead of <Martello> and one obscure mistake Gene Wolfe doubts anyone else will find.

-Chesley Bonestell, a longtime SciFi cover artist dies in 1986 and a SFL writes a mini-memorial about their work in Scifi and as a normal special effects artist working on movies like CITIZEN KANE and DESTINATION MOON.

 -Chris Foss's science fiction artwork gets mentioned. Besides Foss's better known work painting spaceship cover art, 1986 SFLers think it's amusing that Chris Foss did the artwork for the Joy of Sex.

-SFLer WorldCon parties get mentioned, with  '@!%'  on posters/signs being the secret code SFLers used to self-identify themselves to people in the know. Worldcon SFLer parties have come up before, because I distinctly remember a "Would whoever grabbed the cables I used to hookup the portable computer-terminal at last week's Worldcon, please return them to me" happening at least once.

-SFLer confusion over what SILENT RUNNING other SFLer's keep referencing. Are they referring to the Mike & the Mechanics song "Silent Running"?  Or are they referencing the 1977 movie Silent Running? Or are people conflating the two? (2020 note: Yes. Yes. And Yes.)

-Laserdisc's being bleeding edge technology circa 1986. 

-SFLer Craig Wheeler cuts the bull and directly promotes his upcoming novel THE KRONE EXPERIMENT, due out October 1986.

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.