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Selachian
Oct 9, 2012

quantumfoam posted:

-the goats=unicorn thing.
Someone I didn't bother bookmarking posted about recent studies of medieval documents/myth had lead to scholars thinking that references to unicorn were really references to one-horned goats. Chapman.ES promotes his friend from the Berkeley area named Morning Glory who showed off a unicorn-goat named Lancelot at the February 1981 Berkeley Fantasy Worlds Convention. When asked about Lancelot the goat-unicorn, Chapman.ES said that Morning Glory and her husband mentioned a careful breeding plan that two years ago resulted in Lancelot. Additionally......something akin to Bonsai helped out, but Morning Glory couldn't go into more details because they were trying to patent the process.
(emphasis mine)

Lancelot was also shown off, with much hype, by the Ringling Brothers Circus in 1984. It was a flop because they were promising an amazing, magical, beautiful unicorn, and then brought out what was obviously a goat.



Full story here.

Unicorn breeders Morning Glory and Oberon Zell-Ravenheart (no, really!) were interesting folks too.

Selachian fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Jul 3, 2020

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anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
The wikipedia just keeps on giving:

quote:

Morning Glory and Zell married at the Gnosticon of Easter 1974, the well-attended ceremony performed by Archdruid Isaac Bonewits and High Priestess Carolyn Clark.

quote:

This group was known for the "living unicorns" they created by minor surgery to the horn buds of goats, a technique he was granted a patent for in 1984.

quote:

In 1999, the Zell-Ravenhearts moved to Sonoma County, California, where Oberon started the Grey School of Wizardry, which as of 2014 is the world's only registered wizard academy

...And of course they'd base their church on Heinlein.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Jul 3, 2020

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

quantumfoam posted:



-SPECIES movie fans will find Fred Hoyle's 1975 novel A for Andromeda uses an eerily similar setup, but Hoyle's book series fails to implement H.R. Giger and instead goes with a deep-state conspiracy.

He was an interesting fellow, brilliant scientist, shameless self promoter and crackpot conspiracy theorist.
Coined the phrase big bang but disputed it's existence.

tildes
Nov 16, 2018

anilEhilated posted:

The wikipedia just keeps on giving:




...And of course they'd base their church on Heinlein.

This whole thing is amazing

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

Adding the "les animaux denatures" aka "you shall know them" in all it's weird/perverted/social commentary to last nights SFL Vol 03 recap.
I meant to do so but getting the right tone of sneering disdain in the MENSA ad distracted me, then describing unicorn-goat drama totally derailed me.
"Les animaux denatures" will be old news to people who read the offsite #sf-and-fantasy channel regularly

SFL Vol 03 update -supplementary


Didn't think I'd find something to top Bakshi's hyper badly aged 'black america in the south' animated movie within less than 24 hrs, however someone in the SFL mentioned that H Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy was ripping off a earlier story.....and they weren't making things up.
A semi-famous World War 2 french resistance member slash author wrote "les animaux denatures" or "you shall know them" in it's english translation.

story recap: tribes of "missing link" hominids are found in the jungles of new guinea, and exploited as an cheap workforce similar to "war with the newts". Scientist-perverts or just normal perverts discover that the missing link hominids <ugh> can get pregnant with <ugh> human sperm <quadruple ugh>. One of the scientist-perverts impregnates a missing link hominid with his sperm then kills the baby once it is born; under the reasoning that the ensuing trial will determine if the missing link hominids are human (and therefore deserve human rights) or not.
Adding to the weirdness/wtf factor, a Burt Reynolds movie called Skullduggery is a loose adaption of "les animaux denatures".

Prism Mirror Lens
Oct 9, 2012

~*"The most intelligent and meaning-rich film he could think of was Shaun of the Dead, I don't think either brain is going to absorb anything you post."*~




:chord:

anilEhilated posted:

The wikipedia just keeps on giving:

You missed this one

quote:

In adolescence, her daughter Rainbow left to live with her father Gary, taking the name Gail.

I think it’s sad that Morning Glory died a few years back. I know they were into polyamory but somehow I doubt Oberon can have as strong a bond with someone named Julie as with someone named Morning loving Glory who he surgically altered goats with. How many people can find their perfect match like that in life?

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

anilEhilated posted:

The wikipedia just keeps on giving:




...And of course they'd base their church on Heinlein.

OMG you guys

Gray School of Wizardry has a faculty page

https://www.greyschool.net/

Selachian
Oct 9, 2012

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

OMG you guys

Gray School of Wizardry has a faculty page

https://www.greyschool.net/

Instructor GoldenEagle is clearly not trying hard enough. Polo, khakis, and a stole? Not even close to sufficiently magickal. He's the Colin Robinson of the faculty.

Selachian fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Jul 3, 2020

Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

You can also make unicorns from bulls by moving the "buds" of the horn on the same way. I've only read about it being done once; apparently the bull-unicorn had an incredibly sweet temperament.

I'm just glad to find someone else who knows that unicorns are goats not horses!

Injera
Jul 4, 2005


StrixNebulosa posted:

I was asked if I'd read Cherryh's Rider at the Gate by a friend and I think my response will either sell the book instantly to people or make them back away:

"It's a western, and by western I mean if westerns had horrifying telepathic devil horses."

Well, that sold me instantly so now I get to wait on delivery for it!

pradmer
Mar 31, 2009

Follow me for more books on special!
The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin - $3.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC11GA/

Fortress in the Eye of Time by CJ Cherryh - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1S8Q/

Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko - $2.49
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DB3FSNW/

The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem - $2.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CKDFE9W/

Shaman's Crossing (Soldier Son #1) by Robin Hobb - $2.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FCKCWO/

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



pradmer posted:

Fortress in the Eye of Time by CJ Cherryh - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1S8Q/

Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko - $2.49
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DB3FSNW/

Shaman's Crossing (Soldier Son #1) by Robin Hobb - $2.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FCKCWO/

Anybody have opinions on these three? I've never read a Cherryh but always wanted to, I liked Hobb's Assassin trilogy quite a bit, and I remember watching the (very weird) Night Watch movie, but I have no idea what the book is like.

(I'm not asking about the other two because I already own them, don't @ me)

(also The Dispossessed is fantastic, if you like sociopolitical sci-fi at all)

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

MockingQuantum posted:

Anybody have opinions on these three? I've never read a Cherryh but always wanted to, I liked Hobb's Assassin trilogy quite a bit, and I remember watching the (very weird) Night Watch movie, but I have no idea what the book is like.

(I'm not asking about the other two because I already own them, don't @ me)

(also The Dispossessed is fantastic, if you like sociopolitical sci-fi at all)

I've read Fortress twice and love it. It has two protagonists in a fantasy kingdom: Tristen and Cefwyn. You spend most of the first book with Tristen, as an ancient mage tries to resurrect an ancient, powerful, elven(?) king and fails, getting instead.... well, a twenty-year old body that has the capacity for magic, but the mind is that of an innocent. Tristen starts as a blank slate and grows into a strange person, and the plot starts when an ancient evil kills his wizard father and Tristen is forced out into the world. There he runs into Cefwyn, a local prince and lord. Cefwyn is a go-getter prince who is struggling to deal with a feudal kingdom (every lord has an agenda, the church has its own agenda, the border is full of allies and enemies, and there's scheming EVERYWHERE) and now he's saddled with this weird guy, Tristen. But... he's told to befriend him, so he does.

The first book works as a standalone as it introduces everyone and resolves a great evil magical fight.... but the sequels do something fascinating and become a proto-Foreigner series, in that it looks at the aftermath and the day to day life and adventures of the two heroes.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Fortress is really good but, as is not uncommon with Cherryh, feels like it starts a bit slow. Stick with it, it’s worth it.

Lemniscate Blue
Apr 21, 2006

Here we go again.

MockingQuantum posted:

Anybody have opinions on these three? I've never read a Cherryh but always wanted to, I liked Hobb's Assassin trilogy quite a bit, and I remember watching the (very weird) Night Watch movie, but I have no idea what the book is like.

(I'm not asking about the other two because I already own them, don't @ me)

(also The Dispossessed is fantastic, if you like sociopolitical sci-fi at all)

Fortress is a book I've tried to get into a few times now. I like the beginning quite a lot but for some reason I haven't been able to get into it past a certain point. It's probably just life circumstances and I should give it another shot one of these days.

I picked up Night Watch and Day Watch after the movie came out, and aside from being Russian they just felt like forgettable mediocre urban fantasy and I didn't feel the need to continue or reread.

EDIT: I'm laughing at the contrast between my feelings on Fortress and Kalman's above.

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



Lemniscate Blue posted:

Fortress is a book I've tried to get into a few times now. I like the beginning quite a lot but for some reason I haven't been able to get into it past a certain point. It's probably just life circumstances and I should give it another shot one of these days.

I picked up Night Watch and Day Watch after the movie came out, and aside from being Russian they just felt like forgettable mediocre urban fantasy and I didn't feel the need to continue or reread.

EDIT: I'm laughing at the contrast between my feelings on Fortress and Kalman's above.

tbf I had the same response from a few people when I asked about Assassin's Apprentice, I feel like half said "it starts slow but stick with it" and half said "it starts great but is pretty slow halfway through."

Though with the third book in that trilogy, I feel like both are true, somehow?

Prism Mirror Lens
Oct 9, 2012

~*"The most intelligent and meaning-rich film he could think of was Shaun of the Dead, I don't think either brain is going to absorb anything you post."*~




:chord:

MockingQuantum posted:

Anybody have opinions on these three? I've never read a Cherryh but always wanted to, I liked Hobb's Assassin trilogy quite a bit, and I remember watching the (very weird) Night Watch movie, but I have no idea what the book is like.

(I'm not asking about the other two because I already own them, don't @ me)

(also The Dispossessed is fantastic, if you like sociopolitical sci-fi at all)

The Soldier Son books have an interesting premise (fat people magic), but it feels like a cheap knockoff of the Fitz books. The protagonist is too close in personality, not much happens, and there’s a lack of any memorable/friendly characters, so it’s mostly a depressing dude going around getting even more depressed. Have you read the Liveship trilogy? Those are the best of Hobb’s other books imo.

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



Prism Mirror Lens posted:

The Soldier Son books have an interesting premise (fat people magic), but it feels like a cheap knockoff of the Fitz books. The protagonist is too close in personality, not much happens, and there’s a lack of any memorable/friendly characters, so it’s mostly a depressing dude going around getting even more depressed. Have you read the Liveship trilogy? Those are the best of Hobb’s other books imo.

I haven't, though I have the first liveship book, i'll pass on Soldier Son and read that instead. Thanks!

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

MockingQuantum posted:

I remember watching the (very weird) Night Watch movie, but I have no idea what the book is like.

The movie is an expansion on the first story in the book, which contains two more stories. The book is a bit more pedestrian, and very Russian in that "we are all existentially depressed, so why worry, have a vodka" fashion. I've read and re-read all six volumes in the series and consider them worth recommending to anyone who wants to try something a bit out of their wheelhouse.

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




quantumfoam posted:

someone in the SFL mentioned that H Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy was ripping off a earlier story.....and they weren't making things up.
A semi-famous World War 2 french resistance member slash author wrote "les animaux denatures" or "you shall know them" in it's english translation.

I wouldn't call Little Fuzzy a ripoff of... that. LF is a first contact story with twists, not a "humans will gently caress anything" story with delusions of grandeur. Read Little Fuzzy, pretend the other thing didn't happen.

I like Little Fuzzy. Set on the colony world of Zarathustra, run by a chartered company to exploit its resources. They can basically go full East India Company, but that's okay because there are no natives to get hosed over. Until one day a prospector named Jack Holloway discovers an uninvited guest in his camp, a two foot tall, hairy biped that uses tools, shows facility with mechanisms, but doesn't seem to have a language. He makes friends with the alien and then the rest of its small tribe. Word gets out when he introduces them to some of his scientist friends and the company gets involved, because a sapient native species invalidates their charter and slashes several zeroes off of the potential profits from the planet. The whole thing ends up in court after one of the aliens is killed by a person and the local sheriff charges murder of a sapient being. There are some good twists, but we end up with a happy ending.

Free on Gutenberg, and highly recommended. Piper's stuff generally is, but be advised he started from a very much not-at-all progressive viewpoint and grew out of it over the course of the ten years of his writing career. His first novel had a character named Jefferson Davis Rand as protagonist - not based on Ayn Rand, but the South African Rands. His last novels, the Little Fuzzy stories, had come 180 to where the natives are to be protected and allowed to develop rather than be exploited as subhuman.

Sarern
Nov 4, 2008

:toot:
Won't you take me to
Bomertown?
Won't you take me to
BONERTOWN?

:toot:

Prism Mirror Lens posted:

The Soldier Son books have an interesting premise (fat people magic), but it feels like a cheap knockoff of the Fitz books. The protagonist is too close in personality, not much happens, and there’s a lack of any memorable/friendly characters, so it’s mostly a depressing dude going around getting even more depressed. Have you read the Liveship trilogy? Those are the best of Hobb’s other books imo.

This was my impression of the Soldier Son books as well. I liked all the Hobb books I've read, but "depressing dude going around getting even more depressed" describes most of them. The Fitz books in particular were constant parades of misery where occasionally something non-depressing happens, usually at the end of a trilogy.

ToxicFrog
Apr 26, 2008


MockingQuantum posted:

Anybody have opinions on these three? I've never read a Cherryh but always wanted to, I liked Hobb's Assassin trilogy quite a bit, and I remember watching the (very weird) Night Watch movie, but I have no idea what the book is like.

I bounced off Fortress something like three times before I finally got into it, and while I did really enjoy it in the end, it's definitely one of her harder books to get into entirely due to the glacial pace of the first act. Like, a lot of her books start out fairly slow and take a while to really get going, especially stuff she wrote from the 90s onwards, but Fortress takes that to extremes, IMO.

I think I also enjoyed it more in the end due to having read Foreigner, which it has some parallels with.

So I would say -- worth checking out, but also not really representative of the Chanur and Alliance/Union stuff that I keep recommending in this thread, so if you don't like it don't let that put you off The Pride of Chanur or Serpent's Reach or the like.

Ccs
Feb 25, 2011


Fuckin who wrote this blurb for that Fortress book?

quote:

Deep in an abandoned, shattered castle, an old man of the Old Magic muttered almost forgotten words. His purpose -- to create out of the insubstance of the air, from a shimmering of light and a fluttering of shadows. that most wonderous of spells, a Shaping. A Shaping in the form of a, young man who will be sent east on the road the old was to old to travel. To right the wrongs of a long-forgotten wizard war, and call new wars into being. Here is the long-awaited major new novel from one of the brightest stars in the fantasy and science fiction firmament.C.J.Cherryh's haunting story of the wizard Mauryl, kingmaker for a thousand years of Men, and Tristen, fated to sow distrust between a prince and his father being. A tale as deep as legend and a intimate as love, it tells of a battle beyond Time, in which all Destiny turns on the wheel of an old man's ambition, a young man's innocence, and the unkept promised of a king to come.

Hey publisher, you guys gonna bother to edit your own blurb?

ToxicFrog
Apr 26, 2008


Ccs posted:

Fuckin who wrote this blurb for that Fortress book?


Hey publisher, you guys gonna bother to edit your own blurb?

:lol:

I'm pretty sure my hardcopy doesn't have these issues, but I can't find it, just the ebook, which does.

This is, honestly, about the level of care and attention to detail I expect from big-name publishers when it comes to ebooks.

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

This was my reaction the last you posted about Little Fuzzy in this thread mllaneza.

quantumfoam posted:

I loving despised the Little Fuzzy stories. Not really a fan of H Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy and the followup stories to it (both the H Beam Piper ones & John Scalzi 25+ yrs later ones).

H Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy universe stories are pure Young Adult genre fiction, with precursors to Ewoks or Pokemon as the titular "Fuzzies". If you like reading novelized middle-schooler after-school tv specials about the dangers of discrimination/exploitation of others, then the Little Fuzzy stories are must read fiction. Otherwise, give them a hard pass.

My feelings about the Little Fuzy stories remain mostly unchanged.
Totally agree that H Piper Beam was changing towards the end of their life, it would have interesting to see the final outcome if Piper hadn't killed themselves.
H Beam Piper and John Kennedy Toole are both in my "what if's" author list.



SLF Vol 03 recap part

-Dell killed off their entire scifi publishing line, including the prestige labels. Thought this was a result of end-of-year price bumps not getting the sales targets Dell was aiming for. Looking slightly behind the scenes circa year 2020 vision (ha), it seems that the Dell Publishing buyout by Doubleday had entered "asset stripping mode", maybe to help Doubleday payoff debt from another recent Doubleday acquisition, The New York Mets baseball team.

-Excalibur (1981) the movie came out, and the SFL archive has been full of "I am not angry, I am super-angry that the movie did not adhere 100% to The Whole Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table", or "Hey Arthurian myth has lots of forms and versions, why you so mad?" and "Read more <arthurian myth> dumbasses, the movie adapted multiple arthurian sources", etc.

-Despite live-posting the first attempted manned launch of the Space Shuttle program, absolutely no one seemed to give a gently caress when Columbia launched successfully two days later, and landed successfully 2 days after that. Instead it was "What ever happened to the Space Shuttle named Enterprise?" /"It's the prototype test Shuttle, it might get turned into a real boy real Space Shuttle if Congress funds it" Spoilers unneeded, Congress did not fund it.

quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Jul 3, 2020

Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.

MockingQuantum posted:

tbf I had the same response from a few people when I asked about Assassin's Apprentice, I feel like half said "it starts slow but stick with it" and half said "it starts great but is pretty slow halfway through."

Though with the third book in that trilogy, I feel like both are true, somehow?

The start of Assassin's Apprentice was positively lightning fast compared to the start of Liveship Traders, which was both slow and seemed to be a competition among the characters to determine who could be the biggest piece of poo poo. Kyle was the clear winner early on but everyone else was just awful until like... certain groups encountered each other and then it got better. Well, until you find out the backstory of the liveships which is pretty :stonk:

Especially Paragon. I'm glad the final series nicely ties up that loose end (though it still has its tragedies).

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

Will be taking a SFL recap break for the holiday weekend, getting burned out doing these recaps.

SFL Vol 03 recap 00024?/i have no idea anymore

-I apparently spoke too soon about people not giving a gently caress about the first manned Space Shuttle landing. At least 3 SFL subscribers ran into each other at the 1st manned Space Shuttle landing exhibition and recognized each other from overhearing references to a recent SFL verbal mem. This email took a week plus after being sent to finally appear in the SFL mailing list.

-the MENSA ad opened the gateway, and barely disguised product review advertisements have started to creep into the SFL mailing list.

-Newcomers to the SFL mailing list being confused by cryptic messages and unknown acronym usages, and ironically confusing people by their use of unknown acronyms.

-Massive amount of requests for "Down In Flames", which circa 1981, had only seen print in a discontinued fanzine (Trumpet #10)

-A "Deaf people are scifi fans too. How about some scifi stories rec's/radio transcript adaptions for deaf people?" request got some very ugly feedback before SFL posters just started to list fiction with deaf aliens/aliens that have no concept of sound. Not a great moment for the SFL archives to be honest.

-Harlan Ellison demonstrates his skillz by writing a short story in the "show window of the B. Dalton Bookstore on Fifth Avenue" live from a image suggested by a person onsite.

-Twenty days worth of scifi themed juvenile fiction chat in the SFL archives means I'm finally dropping juvenile series names that SFL archive posters grew up reading. Danny Dunn, Space Cat, Mushroom Planet, etc. Eleanor Cameron was very highly regarded by SFL posters. Most of the juvenile series would be cartoons today, with the Danny Dunn series being a very very close match to Disney's Phineas and Ferb.

-sexbots, gynoids, heinlein stories, words with *-trix endings (all these are connected)

-Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun books start getting discussed.

-Lancelot the goat-unicorn got mentioned a few more times, and so did it's owners/creators. Morning Glory was big into the Aleister Crowley/Donald Trump school of belief that "press mentions are life, bad publicity is better than no publicity at all", and apparently showed up to one fantasy-scifi convention wearing only white body-paint saying that she was a giant bottle of correction fluid.

-you don't talk about Fight Club in public SF-LOVERS, HUMAN-NETS, or any of the Large Mailing Lists directly in any form whatsoever.

[ Everyone planning to meet at NCC '81 should please take care not
to mention SF-LOVERS, HUMAN-NETS, or any of the Large Mailing Lists
directly in any form whatsoever. To do so would violate the
security of these lists, threatening their existence
. Rather, it
has proved effective at past conventions to simply post notices
directing people to REDACTED@REDACTED, REDACTED@REDACTED, or REDACTED group.
Please take care to be cryptic so that people who do not know about
the Large Lists will remain ignorant. - REDACTED ]

John Lee
Mar 2, 2013

A time traveling adventure everyone can enjoy

Evil Fluffy posted:

The start of Assassin's Apprentice was positively lightning fast compared to the start of Liveship Traders, which was both slow and seemed to be a competition among the characters to determine who could be the biggest piece of poo poo. Kyle was the clear winner early on but everyone else was just awful until like... certain groups encountered each other and then it got better. Well, until you find out the backstory of the liveships which is pretty :stonk:

Especially Paragon. I'm glad the final series nicely ties up that loose end (though it still has its tragedies).

Liveship Traders is real slow to start, but halfway or two-thirds through the first book, it really picks up the pace and stays there. I like it a lot!

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

Finished Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel. It's baffling that a book written entirely in epistolary format in the form of a series of interviews was this popular. Like, that's not it's only problem, but around the time I was reading a transcript of a one-sided telephone conversation by somebody live narrating an action scene I realised the whole thing felt like fan fic.

tildes
Nov 16, 2018

quantumfoam posted:

-you don't talk about Fight Club in public SF-LOVERS, HUMAN-NETS, or any of the Large Mailing Lists directly in any form whatsoever.

[ Everyone planning to meet at NCC '81 should please take care not
to mention SF-LOVERS, HUMAN-NETS, or any of the Large Mailing Lists
directly in any form whatsoever. To do so would violate the
security of these lists, threatening their existence
. Rather, it
has proved effective at past conventions to simply post notices
directing people to REDACTED@REDACTED, REDACTED@REDACTED, or REDACTED group.
Please take care to be cryptic so that people who do not know about
the Large Lists will remain ignorant. - REDACTED ]

Do you have a sense of why they wanted to keep it secret? Just to avoid a flood of new users?

Also glad you’re doing this but definitely no pressure to keep to a schedule!!

Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.

John Lee posted:

Liveship Traders is real slow to start, but halfway or two-thirds through the first book, it really picks up the pace and stays there. I like it a lot!

Pretty much. I think I posted in this thread (or some other thread) back when I started reading it and mentioned something to the effect of the first... 100-150 pages being a slog then it was good after that. Still, having that long to get going is asking a lot of readers no matter what the series is.

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

tildes posted:

Do you have a sense of why they wanted to keep it secret? Just to avoid a flood of new users?

Also glad you’re doing this but definitely no pressure to keep to a schedule!!

It has been explained previously in the SFL, but I now realize I that I never explained it here.


In the beginning, there was a dark void, where computers were 70 ton one-off designs that worked via punch-cards or thousands of toggle switches (aka the vacuum tube era). During the Cold War era, lots of computer research and one-off computer systems got funded by the US government and crazy things like transistors, magnetic tape storage and 5-kb RAM modules weighing 7kg got invented(aka the transistor era).

People at the US Department of Defense got tired of having 5 computer terminals or more in their offices to use the many US government funded computer systems that dealt with national security/cold war research and said "gently caress THIS. I want one computer terminal in my office, and I have the funding to make this possible. ANYONE INTERESTED?"

The DARPA, who lost out bigly in the Army/Navy Department of Defense turf-wars over control of funding-dollars for the 1950's various rocketry projects, went all-in on ownership of the "one computer terminal per office/I HAVE FUNDING" proposal, and after much consultation with smart people, and design proposals the ARPANET project was proposed and approved.

The ARPANET project basically invented computer routers(IMP node's) and computer routing, only this was the 1960's-1970's and everything was secret, so IMP's initially only went out to a select few places like major college universities/us govt sites where lots of Cold War related research happened. Eventually IMP nodes went out to other sites, and the ARPANET was born, and so was computer EMAIL.

The ARPANET continued to grow even placing a few IMP nodes overseas, until national security issues and funding concerns popped up, so the MILNET was created to host vital-to-US-national-security data, while the ARPANET continued to host the less critical to national security stuff.

After the ARPANET/MILNET split, the long-term purpose of the ARPANET was being evaluated (should it be commercialized?), meanwhile people using ARPANET email started using email for non-official purposes, and adhoc mailing lists like SF-LOVERS, HUMANS-NET got created on the down-low.

All these adhoc mailing lists were run ontop of 100% US government funded routers and hosted on mostly US government funded computer systems, and were not officially approved by anyone involved in ARPANET management. If people started mentioned mailing lists like HUMANS-NET, SF-LOVERS, etc willy-nilly, word would eventually reach government auditors/Congresspeople/spies/unstable spamming douchebags and the hammer-of-god would come down hard on everyone involved.


tldr: This all happened in the before-before times, when things like Congressional investigations into wastes of tax-payers money mattered. SF-LOVERS and other major mailing list were unofficial/non-approved efforts leeching off of US government funded system resources and networks.

quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Jul 4, 2020

pradmer
Mar 31, 2009

Follow me for more books on special!
The Wizard Hunters (Fall of Ile-Rien #1) by Martha Wells - $2.49
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FCKI9Q

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC11AQ

The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E6HYNGE

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PI181JI

Poldarn
Feb 18, 2011


That's fascinating.

tildes
Nov 16, 2018
Ohh I knew bits and pieces of that but having it all laid out is really helpful. That’s amazing that this whole thing had to be so clandestine. Also curious how so many apparent authors got on there given the limited access.

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




pradmer posted:

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC11AQ

Pro-read right there. The Five Gods books are at least as good as the Vorkosigan series, and not just because she's writing them as a fully-realized grandmaster of the craft.

Lemniscate Blue
Apr 21, 2006

Here we go again.

pradmer posted:

The Wizard Hunters (Fall of Ile-Rien #1) by Martha Wells - $2.49
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FCKI9Q

I greatly enjoyed the Raksura books and I've been meaning to check out her other work, this seems like a good place to start. Thanks.

pradmer posted:

The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E6HYNGE

This book. I read this as a teenager and it flew way over my head and I didn't know what to think, but a lot of elements from it stuck in my head. I read it again a few years ago after seeing it recommended to someone else and I enjoyed reading it, but I'm still not sure I really get the book. I may try it again, but I can't help but feel it flew up its own rear end more than a little. Did anyone else have a similar experience with it?

I understand it's got at least one sequel now and I have no idea how that would work.

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

tildes posted:

Ohh I knew bits and pieces of that but having it all laid out is really helpful. That’s amazing that this whole thing had to be so clandestine. Also curious how so many apparent authors got on there given the limited access.

All the people I mentioned (Forward, Stallman, Don Woods, Pournelle) as communicating in the SFL archives had legit access to the ARPANET email system.
Robert Forward was an active professor/teacher in California. Pournelle was a govt think-tanker with guest accounts on a few IMP connected systems.
Don Woods, creator of Adventure the text-adventure game was a computer researcher at Stanford, while Stallman worked in the MIT Artificial Intelligence research lab.

Marvin Minsky also appeared once or twice in the SFL archive. And a 1981 SFL comment Minsky made about "bowing entirely to culturally transient peer pressure" is 100% on point for last years revelations about Minsky's deep ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Sad King Billy
Jan 27, 2006

Thats three of ours innit...to one of yours. You know mate I really think we ought to even up the average!
I'm looking for new books to read. What I'd like is something that deals with humanity's early exploration or colonisation of local stars. N

I've read Proxima by Baxter and Aurora by KSR which are more colony-ship based.

Thanks

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pradmer
Mar 31, 2009

Follow me for more books on special!
The Fellowship of the Ring (Lord of the Rings #1) by JRR Tolkien - $2.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007978NPG/

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien - $2.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007978NU6/

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - $2.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JFJHTS/

A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea #1) by Ursula K Le Guin - $2.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008T9L6AM/

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick - $2.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005MZN2B2/

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