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 08 readthrough update 01

 -The SFL person that melted down ultra-hard over WARGAMES 1983 (back in SFL Digest Vol 07) first post in the SFL Digest Vol 08 continued to angrily shit-talk Wargames 1983 then switched to a classic "hahaha I was puppet-mastering you all hahaha" defense all in that first SFL Vol 08 post. Status: Still hyper-mad about Wargames 1983, and is angrily requesting anyone that doesn't have the same views about Wargames 1983 as them to "redirect this discussion to POL-SCI, please!" (usenet). 

(2020 sidenote: Broke a unwritten rule I have to not-google-search doing this SFL readthrough and looked this person up IRL. Their Wargames 1983 meltdown was just the first stages of them getting contrarian, bitter and angry about the '80s and the internet not evolving how they expected/wanted. )

-Normal not-angry discussions about WARGAMES 1983 continued the jokes and references to BURGER KING sponsoring Wargames 1983. Along with wonderment/lust at all the expensive gear MattBroderick had in-movie, and plotpoints that didn't make quite make sense (buying the plane tickets, why entering NORAD base a certain way if everything was so critical, etc). For explanation about the Burger King thing, the war computers name in the movie is WOPR which sounds a whole lot like Whopper when pronounced. Burger King, Whopper.....get it?

-Yet another another scifi author revealed themselves to defend the collective wisdom of SFWA members re: award nominations or not. I don't bookmark the author self-doxxes in SFL archive so maybe it was a previously self-doxxed author posting.

-The 1983 version of being terminally online: your sig file contains multiple USENET server paths+USENET handle, along with a CSNet email address, AND a ARPANET email address

-one of the first mentions of MUDs in the SFL. A request for people to create scenarios + storylines for a post-apoc MUD centering around DAYTON, OHIO. Look this up yourself, keywords: SMAUG Rutgers

-A 2nd request by Robert Forward for CAD artwork assistance in ROCHEWORLD.

-SFL discussion of James P Hogan's THE GENESIS MACHINE sort of makes John Ringo's writing and mary-sue main characters look subtle and restrained. Or maybe James P Hogan was a major influence in Ringo's work.
https://youtu.be/vgk-lA12FBk

-A humorous or not-humorous attempt to poison the well for a 1985 WorldCon hosting bid gets mentioned or is it just a texan tall tale? This story contains many Texas stereotypes so any AYES OF TEXAS megafans or/and Texas residents should pre-emptively calm the f**k down. 

-only mentioning a SCA recruitment ad that hypes up the allure of LARP combat because it contains the perfect synergy of "beating the cream" and GOR.

quote:

From: REDACTED.DETCADER at DETCADER
Subject: SCA
The SCA does not limit itself to any specific time period, it is
simply that most of the members are into the Middle Ages. The choice
of persona and interest is completly up to each person. If more
people who are interested in Tokagawa Japan or other periods would
join the SCA then it would become more generalized, more anacronistic
than it presently is. I am a member of a splinter group associated
with them known as the Tuchux. We are roughly based on the Tuchucks
of the Gor series, and the early German tribes of the pre-Roman Empire
times. This is not the Middle Ages. The best way to generate
interest in different periods is to join the SCA and try to generate
it yourself instead of waiting for others to do it. That is how the
Tuchux evolved and became one of the most feared forces in SCA
military campaigns. At last years War between the East and Middle
Kingdoms the Tuchux were the deciding factor in every battle and were
awarded the War Banner. There were only 60 of us too, but we cowed
hundreds and beat the cream of the fighters of both kingdoms. But
enough rambling the point was that you should join the SCA and try to
build a group suited to your tastes and maybe succeed like us. Somday
maybe I will meet a group of Tokagawa Samurai on the battle field, I
will of course slay them but it would be interesting.

originally posted between July 26th -July 31st in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3

SFL Archives Vol 07 readthrough

 SFL Vol 07 is extremely short. Vol 07 picks up 2  months into 1983(not normal)  with a brand new SF-LOVERS mailing list moderator-maintainer. TCP/IP was a spooky-new technology being tested for SFL Digest distribution versus relying on hardcoded AarpaNet network links on dying 1970's era hardware leading to multiple week long gaps in between SFL Digests being sent out. 

-Dr Robert Forward asked the SFL mailing list for help finding a wizard of CAD to create the illustrations of variable usage robots in Forwards serialized story/upcoming book ROCHEWORLD aka FLIGHT OF THE DRAGONFLY. 

-Yet another scifi genre writer revealed themselves in the SFL archives. (I've done no lookups into any of the self-doxxed authors that have posted in the SFL archives other than Dr Robert Forward/Dr Robert Forward's edgelord son)

-RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983) came out. The shoe-horned in muppets and Ewok's and Lucas being more interested in in cinematography than telling a story are what most of the negative reactions re SFL "Return of the Jedi" posts are about. Very funny reading 37 years later, especially funny given how George Lucas tripled down on those factors for STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE.

-Glen Cook and Gene Wolfe and John Brunner got mentioned and discussed multiple times. Added tracking down Brunner's THE SHEEP LOOK UP, and Wolfe's CASTLE OF THE OTTER to my reading list.

-Mack Reynolds obituary notice. Mack Reynolds is still the best hardcore socialist scifi/fantasy writer I've ever come across. China Miéville and Ken Macleod are weak/terrible sellout in comparison. Mack Reynolds walked the hardcore socialist walk back when going to jail for being a socialist or getting black-balled was a real and omnipresent thing.

-An uber Libertarian mil-fiction series all about Texas and Texans kicking names and taking ass of everyone and everything else in the world got mentioned positively first, then not so positively mentioned.
Daniel Da Cruz is the author, THE AYES OF TEXAS is the series starting book, and the book plot is 100% ripped off from SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO only Texas-ified

-People who "crack-ping" on the Jeffrey Epstein threads will be delighted that Donald Barr, father of the current US Attorney General, gets mentioned for the first time ever by a weird Canadian that liked Donald Barr's writing in SPACE RELATIONS/A PLANET IN ARMS

-Stephen R. Donaldson's THOMAS COVENANT series got discussed repeatedly, but I don't give a fuck about Thomas Covenant at all, and hold to a special theory about the books. It was all a meth-fantasy/it was all a shared meth-fantasy when the secondary main character (Linden Avery) showed up.

-WARGAMES (1983) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/ ended up as the bridge-too-far moment/total user-meltdown topic for a SFL user that had been posting in the SFL mailing since the very beginning (September 1979). The technical inaccuracies in Wargames 1983 made this long-time SFL user snap, and angry post multiple times at length about Wargames 1983. Given that the SFL user's IRL job was/is computer security related, most of the anger/frustration appears to be coming from a unspoken "oh shit this movie is going to inspire a never-ending wave of hacking attempts by phone freaks/arpanet people....on all the systems I support/my friends support"

(2020 sidenotes:
For people not really familiar with the 1970s-80s, malicious phone phreaking and malicious computer hacking were becoming major issues in the 1980s. Prior to the malicious turn, motivation for phone-phreaking in the 1970s-80s was more for the lulz and giving a middle finger to the monolithic omnipresent Bell Telephone Company, and computer systems were isolated mainframes or very open non-networked computer systems.

Google Kevin Mitnick, Kevin Poulsen, both of whom turned legit/as-legit as possible given their history. Poulsen wrote a mostly amusing non-fiction book about another convicted computer hacker titled Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground.)

originally posted between July 22nd -July 24th in the SomethingAwful forums Science Fiction Fantasy Megathread 3