(1) SFPA HANDLES CODE OF CONDUCT ISSUE. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) notified members via Facebook that member Bruce Boston has been suspended for a Code of Conduct violation. SFPA President Bryan Thao Worra wrote:
Following a 7-day review and conferral with the SFPA Executive Committee, SFPA member Bruce Boston has been suspended for six months from commenting on the Facebook Group and Yahoo Groups listserv for violation of the SFPA Code of Conduct, regarding egregious remarks beginning on July 4th, 2018, and a failure to retract those remarks in a timely manner. He remains a member of the SFPA and retains all honors and titles. This suspension remains in effect until December 31st, 2018.
In light of this incident, we wish to share the Code of Conduct, which the Executive Committee created and implemented in July 2017. It was shared on the fora, to which it applies, but was not transmitted to every member and new members may be unaware.
Please click on the blue button below to read the document about our expectations of conduct on our forums, Facebook and Yahoo Groups. The rules as well as the consequences for not following them are detailed therein.
To read the SFPA Code of Conduct, click here. [Dropbox file]
SFPA Grand Master Bruce Boston, in comments on a SFPA Facebook group post about the Rhysling winners, publicly insinuated that 2018 short poem Rhysling winner, Mary Soon Lee, must have been the beneficiary of vote stuffing because in his view her poem was unworthy of the honor. As of this writing, Boston’s and others’ comments are still accessible by nonmembers of the group. Here is a screenshot from near the beginning of the exchange.
(2) W76 BUSINESS MEETING SCHEDULE. On his blog, Kevin Standlee previewed his Worldcon article – “Business Meeting & Site Selection Schedules at Worldcon 76”.
For those of you trying to arrange your schedule for Worldcon 76 around the WSFS Business Meeting and Site Selection (as I am rather forced to do by the nature of running the WSFS division), here’s the current state of our plans. For those of you who are veterans of the process, this may all sound boring, repetitive, and obvious, but based on the questions I’ve fielded, there are members — including people interested in WSFS Business — who do not know this stuff.
Linda Deneroff also has posted the start of the agenda for Worldcon 76. You can find it on the Business Meeting page. Click on the “Agenda” link.
(3) ROBOT HOTEL. Grant Imahara (perhaps best know for his former gig on Mythbusters) visits a robot hotel in this Popular Science article (“Mouser Electronics: Generation Robot”). No, not a hotel for robots, but one staffed by robots. It sounds like Henn Na Hotel is trying to avoid — at least in part — the Uncanny Valley. Quoting the article:
Imagine checking into a hotel and handing your luggage to a bellhop, but not seeing another human besides other guests. That’s the reality at Henn Na Hotel in Japan’s Nagasaki Prefecture, where robots have taken over. Robot enthusiast Grant Imaharavisits the hotel to see how the hospitality business can succeed without humans.
During his stay, Grant is surprised by the non-humanoid robot he meets at the check-in desk. Maybe he should have known—Henn Na Hotel loosely translates to “strange hotel” in Japanese. Naomi Tomita, the hotel’s Chief Technology Officer, says that using non-humanoid robots can make the interactions less awkward. The hotel encourages guests to chat with the robots while they work. A robot checks Grant’s coat, and a robotic trolley takes his luggage to his hotel room.
(4) MORE FROM BODLEIAN. Nicholas Whyte tweeted an image from the Bodleian’s Tolkien exhibition.
J.R.R. Tolkien's facsimile of the last page of the Book of Mazarbul, submitted to the publisher but sadly not included in The Lord of the Rings , which I saw yesterday in the Bodleian exhibition. pic.twitter.com/Ajy59CieBL
— ???????????????????????????????? ???????????????????? ???????? ???????? (@nwbrux) July 12, 2018
(5) MOVIE POSTER AUCTION. Heritage Auctions told subscribers that sf movie posters will be featured in its forthcoming Movie Posters Auction July 28-29 in Dallas. A Star Trek poster by illustrator Bob Peak is expected to compete for top-lot honors.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home by Bob Peak (Paramount, 1987) (est. $40,000-80,000) is the largest and arguably the most detailed of all Star Trek posters designed by Peak. A renowned commercial artist whose greatest acclaim comes from his developments in the design of modern movie posters, Peak’s artwork has appeared on the cover of numerous magazines, including Time, TV Guide and Sports Illustrated . The brilliant color used for the evening sky of San Francisco offers stark contrast to the Klingon Bird of Prey flying just over the Golden Gate Bridge. The 40-by-57-1/2-inch poster is done on illustration board mounted on foamcore, is signed by Peak and comes with a gold frame.“Bob Peak was a popular and important movie poster artist who produced a number of posters for various Star Trek films, and this is as dramatic as any of them,” Heritage Auctions Vintage Posters Director Grey Smith said. “His subtle portraits of several of the film’s primary characters offer an extraordinary balance to the bold images of the sunset and the Bird of Prey. This poster is a large and striking image that would be a significant addition to any collection.”
Science fiction fans also will be drawn to The War of the Worlds (Paramount, 1953). Half Sheet (22″ X 28″) Style B (est. $20,000-40,000), a rare Style B half sheet that is one of the most iconic and elusive images in the genre. Featuring Martian warship imagery not included in many other posters for the original release of George Pal’s powerful adaptation of H.G. Wells’ science fiction novel.
…Widely considered to be among the greatest film posters of all time, a Things to Come (United Artists, 1936) one sheet (est. $15,000-30,000) was inspired by another science fiction film based on another H.G. Wells-inspired screenplay. The film is based on his 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come and his 1931 non-fiction The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind. Among the always-rare posters for this early sci-fi epic, this one stands out in part because of the 1930s deco-designed version of the future.
(6) RECORD SETTING. Seattle’s Sub Pop Records is taking preorders on Bandcamp for The Rick And Morty Soundtrack, a 26-track collection of music from the animated series on Cartoon Network. Two vinyl LP packages (“Deluxe” and “Loser”) and a digital version are available.
This release is the first official collection of music from Rick and Morty. All formats feature 26 songs, 24 of which are from the first 3 seasons of the show, and 18 of which were composed by Ryan Elder specifically for the show. The album also includes songs by Mazzy Star, Chaos Chaos, Blonde Redhead, and Belly, all of which have been featured in the show, as well as two new tunes from Chad VanGaalen and Clipping inspired by the show. The box set includes a special bonus track on a 7”.
(7) JOHNSON OBIT. Somebody has to think these things up, you know — “Alan Johnson, 81, ‘Springtime for Hitler’ Choreographer, Dies”. Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times:
Alan Johnson, a choreographer renowned for his campy movie collaborations with Mel Brooks on the “Springtime for Hitler” goose-steppers-and-showgirls extravaganza in “The Producers” and the “Puttin’ On the Ritz” tap dance in “Young Frankenstein,” died on Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 81.
Mr. Johnson had danced in the original Broadway production of “West Side Story” and begun his career as a choreographer when he started working with Mr. Brooks, whom he had already met through a friend, the lyricist Martin Charnin. Mr. Brooks, best known at the time for his work with Carl Reiner on the “2000 Year Old Man” records, was developing “The Producers,” about a producer who schemes with his accountant to create a certain Broadway flop and steal the money invested in it by unsuspecting old women.
…In his role as producer, Mr. Brooks gave Mr. Johnson the chance to direct two films. The first, “To Be or Not to Be” (1983), was a remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s 1942 comedy with Mr. Brooks and Ms. Bancroft in the roles played in the original by Jack Benny and Carole Lombard. Three years later Mr. Johnson directed “Solarbabies” (1986), a science-fiction story about roller-skating orphans fighting for a solution to a worldwide water shortage. It was widely panned.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
- Born July 12, 1923 — James Gunn
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- That’s some potion in Bizarro.
- Frazz asks how a reader can like wildly disparate writers.
- Bliss contains a space navigation tip.
(10) MOVIE AD ADAPTATIONS. These cat pictures may not display properly here, however, they are certainly worth clicking through to see.
Movie leaflet and Cat pic.twitter.com/sdac6s8Z1D
— ???? (@tatuya01) July 11, 2018
(11) ANCIENT MONUMENT. Science journal Nature covers the “Mystery of buried children at German ‘Stonehenge’”.
Scientists scrutinize monumental complex of ditches and posts built more than 4,000 years ago.
As prehistoric Britons gathered at Stonehenge, people living in what is now Germany were erecting their own grand monument: a complex of nested circular ditches, pits and rows of posts, interspersed with the remains of women and children, who might have been human sacrifices…
(12) GRIST FOR THE MILL. Sean T. Collins argues “The only good online fandom left is Dune” at The Outline.
Beyond that, Dune is not a corporate cash cow, and being a fan doesn’t carry with it that icky feeling you’re doing an unpaid PR internship for Disney or AT&T Time Warner. You’re not being cultivated when you make a Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohaim Appreciation Thread, the way you are when you do something similar for, like, Harley Quinn or Groot. Nor are you helping billionaires whitewash their crimes if you point out politically positive aspects of the series, like its environmentalism or its bone-deep skepticism of leader cults. People who quite reasonably respond favorably to long-overdue representation of non-white-dudes in movies like The Last Jedi and Black Panther have to grapple with stuff like Marvel teaming up with defense contractors Northrop Grumman, or its CEO Ike Perlmutter being a noted Trump supporter.
(13) WHERE ROCKS WERE BANGED TOGETHER. BBC summarizes an item from Nature: “Earliest evidence of humans outside Africa”.
Scientists say they’ve found the earliest known evidence of a human presence outside Africa.
Stone tools discovered in China suggest primitive humans – or a close relative – were in the region as early as 2.12 million years ago.
They are about 270,000 years older than the previous earliest evidence, which consists of bones and tools from Dmanisi in Georgia.
The research, by a Chinese-British team, appears in the journal Nature.
The stone artefacts were discovered at Shangchen on a plateau in northern China.
(14) HOO-RAY. A Gizmodo writer is overwhelmed: “The World’s First Full-Color, 3D X-rays Are Freaking Me Out”.
A New Zealand company called Mars Bioimaging has developed a new type of medical imaging scanner that works in a similar fashion, but borrows technology developed for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to produce far more detailed results. The Medipix3 chip works similar to the sensor in your digital camera, but it detects and counts the particles hitting each pixel when a shutter opens….
It will be years before the new Spectral CT scanner receives all the clearances and approvals it needs so that it can be used in hospitals and clinics. But it’s well past the research stages at this point, and clinical trials are expected to get underway in New Zealand in the coming months.
So (posits Daniel Dern), it’s no longer too dark inside a dog to read?
(15) ACTION FIGURE REVIVAL. SYFY Wire makes note of several new lines of action figures coming soon from a company known for them in the 70’s and 80’s (“Mego toys is staging a comeback with new line of action figures from DC, Star Trek, and more”). The figures will be exclusive to Target and are being debuted at San Diego Comic-Con. They’ll appear in stores a little later this year.
Quoting the SYFY Wire article:
One of the earliest pioneers in the world of action figures is prepping a nostalgic resurrection, promoting a new line of toys at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con […]
Mego Corp., the company that innovated some of the earliest cross-merchandising action figure toys for cartoon, comics, and pop culture fans throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, is launching a new line of figures based on characters from DC, Star Trek, Firefly, Charmed, The Wizard of Oz, and more […]
Quoting the Target website:
Ready for a blast from the past? Toymaker Mego and industry legend Marty Abrams, co-founder and CEO of Mego Corporation, are recreating the company’s famous action figure line, and Target will be the exclusive retailer. The new line of collectibles hits stores and Target.com July 29, but fans will get a first look next week during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con—one of the largest gatherings of comic, movie and science fiction fans in the world….
Target’s exclusive line of Mego collectibles will be available in stores and online July 29 at prices ranging from $14.99 to $29.99. Check out our full assortment of collectibles at Target stores nationwide and Target.com.
[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Mark Hepworth, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Cat Eldridge, Rob Thornton, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, Daniel Dern, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Anna Nimmhaus.]
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First?
Hugo-wise, I finished And Then There Were (N – 1), about which I knew pretty much nothing going in, and I quite enjoyed it; and now I’m starting my final novella, Binti: Home.
And I just finished watching the recent adaptation of Annihilation (the VanderMeer novel) and found it unsettling and creepy and intense and often beautiful and occasionally horrific; so: A rousing success.
And now it’s scrollin’ time again,
You’re gonna file me…
NOW WITH 20% MORE PIXELS!
(Funny how it says I have 15 seconds, but then it denies that I can still make changes. I wonder when it really runs out of time.)
5
That’s a nice poster, but it can’t be the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset, as it’s a north-south bridge in our universe and presumably in the 23rd century Trek universe.
I coulda been first, but I realized I had nothin’.
So I though, maybe if I wait for second I’ll have somethin’.
I waited too long. Still got nothin’.
@Russell
You have first 5th. That’s something!
@1: a two-fer! He’s not only rude to a fellow SFPA member but also wrong about the WFA. (He could be confusing it with the Hugo, but he’d still be wrong.)
I thought the piece by Grant Imahara about the robot hotel was really interesting. Thanks for the link!
I loved “And Then There Were (N-One)” and all its delicious multiverse goodness. If only I’d had a Rick and Morty soundtrack to enjoy while reading it life would have been perfect.
Instead I read it on the Muni bus, much like Kirk and Spock in ST4, except you no longer need exact change because the farebox slurps up dollar bills unless you’re a local and have a Clipper card secreted on your person that you can bump against the sensor. No doubt tricorders could spoof that.
Thought. I thought I might have somethin’.
Still got (got!) nothin’. Though an empty fifth might suggest I did but have forgotten.
(Does that lame attempt at a joke lose even more in a world of 750 ml. booze bottles? Fax me your answers. . . .)
I liked the choice of weapon in N—1
14) Wow! This future place is pretty neat sometimes, eh?
15) That “I Dream of Jeannie” figure has an insanely small waist by the look of the picture, even taking into account the fact that the loose trousers make it look smaller. I wish they wouldn’t. There are enough eating disorders out there as it is.
First of all, I must announce that my long-suffering cat is now CONE-FREE and we’re all happier. Much skritching and bathing has happened.
2) It’s true. Worldcon has an agenda. Just not an exciting, world-changing one.
10) The giant-killer one is best.
12) Ooh, it’s a hot take. I don’t have to take it. (Except pointing out that he’s deliberately ignoring that the books/movies/games too are owned by multi-national conglomerates, the lack of non-white-dudes at all, much less with agency or not evil conspiracies, or…)
Also, has he heard of this thing called AO3? Not real corporate.
And can you really talk about it without at least mentioning DOON and the Kumquat Haagendasz?
15) This is relevant to my interests.
It doesn’t, really. She’s wearing a belt with white braid to it, and it’s creating an illusion. Larger picture here:
https://corporate.target.com/article/2018/07/mego
Meredith Moment with a caveat: I’ve picked the first two up based on the concept, but haven’t cracked the cover to check the quality of the writing. That said, at least for those two, the price sure is right…
Currently free on Amazon are the first two books in a YA “dark/humorous fairy tale series,” and I’ll quote the author on the impetus for the series:
First is Sinful Cinderella, followed by Sneaky Snow White. A third book, Rotten Rapunzel, is available for $3.99 – not linked because (a) I don’t want to send the post into moderation and (b) it’s easy enough to get there from either of the existing links. I am not sure whether RR is the end of the series or simply the most recent volume.
Seems close enough, really, though I’d be tempted to translate it as “straange hotel” to match the misspelling.
3) I’ve not read “The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge” since I was a kid, but I’m absolutely thinking of the Dosodan-Glup Robotnik now.
@James Moar: I imagine it’s more properly called 変なホテル and the mis-spelling is an artifact of the ? sound (the first character is read へん – “hen”?being typed with a double-n in most Japanese IMEs
(4) MORE FROM BODLEIAN
That’s a beautiful, ehm, facsimile. (I had to look twice to see that it’s not an actual damaged manuscript page.)
Godstalk…
click!
(15) ACTION FIGURE REVIVAL
Action figures, despite the death of Toys ‘R’ Us largely from horrible mismanagement, are a vast and weird industry ranging from 3.5” Star Wars figures to life size depictions of DCU characters. I used to collect a fair number of the DCU 6” inch scale figures but only have a few currently, mostly of Groot and Rocket Raccoon. Almost all of these are boots from China acquired off eBay.
3) I’m not sure why they need a check-in robot instead of just a kiosk?
The article doesn’t mention cleaning staff – they are most of the humans in a hotel and it isn’t clear if they have been replaced by robots?
The impression I get is more of a robot theme park hotel rather than a real product of automation.
12) Dune is probably the first SF I encountered that wasn’t a children’s movie or a Saturday morning cartoon (Robotech and E.T. were my first two SF encounters), and I still absolutely love it. Which is not to say it isn’t a huge mess in about a billion ways. I really enjoyed this article, but wish it had gone a little deeper into both the work and the relationship fandom has with it. There’s a really good discussion going on over at Metafilter, though it also has the usual wrangling and digressions that all MeFi threads have.
Joe H- Also recently watched Annihilation and thought it was a good adaptation, however I also thought it showed too much, part of my love for the series is the hauntingly hypnotic atmosphere of the increasingly strange but yet familiar. The movie was a good adaptation of the book but it felt like it could’ve been weirder and never really had that tension of a movie like Get Out or The Invitation where everything is slightly off and potentially dangerous.
Also watched The Shape of Water and that was a good time but while I can watch horror movies and weird movies and others with no problem, the scene with the SJW credential getting hurt though? Uh-uh, I’m team cat fish-man.
In the end I couldn’t face going to see The Shape of Water because of that credential-related scene, which people warned me about. I can happily take gore, rape, torture and abuse, but not credentials getting hurt, nuh-hu, no way.
1) CWAA.
5) I have that poster! Framed, but not currently hanging.
9) The idea that if you like one thing you can’t also like another thing that’s very different from it is something I associate with junior high school, where classmates were shocked to discover that I liked both rock and classical music.
Yeah, I don’t care for animals being killed or abused in movies either. There’s a website where you can check on that in advance. I can deal with shit happening to adults, but once I decide a writer’s trying to pull my chain by being rotten to kids/pets because they’re incapable of building emotion any other way, the experience is broken.
4) SAw that. That looks amazing.,
12) We’ll see if this new movie actually comes to pass and see how fandom reacts to it…the lack of adaptations and franchising on screen does work for it being relatively untainted. For now.
“The Dune Cinematic Universe” he said, laughing.
Lurkertype on July 12, 2018 at 11:30 pm said:
Right, just a sometimes annoyingly nitpicky, pedantic one. And I do not exclude myself from the pedants.
Personally, I hope there’s some restraint on new proposals* and a desire to debate everything to death, because I’d sort of like to have at least part of Monday available. Also, I currently appear to be on tap to host Match Game SF on Saturday night after the masquerade, so I’m a little stretched. At least I didn’t try to run any of the areas within my division. In 2002, I rather foolishly held on to two area head folios while co-chairing, mainly because the only Worldcon job that I really enjoy doing is chairing the Business Meeting, and that led to a lot of stress at-con.
*And yet I’ve already co-sponsored two standing rule amendments this year, glutton for punishment that I am.
A Meredith Moment:
Serialbox have two different promotions going. Go to https://www.serialbox.com/redeem and enter the code SUMMER18 to buy 1 season of a serial for $1.99.
The code FriendOfTrem18 will let you buy season 1 or season 2 of Tremontaine for the same price. This is for both ebook formats and audio.
Is he thinking of the *British* Fantasy Awards?
@Matt Y — One of the things I really liked about the Annihilation film adaptation is that they didn’t try to make Area X grotesque — with a few notable [bear] exceptions, everything was lush and green and vivid with that prismatic filter; even the swimming pool wall was kind of pretty until you started noticing exactly what it was made of.
@Joe H.
Oh my, that bear was the best/worst element of portraying the Area.
That bear will be marked as one of the most iconic monsters, thats sure.
On other news: I finished the ninefox-triofoxology. Im happy to report, that this is one of the very few examples of a triology, with a very good start, a very good middle and a very good end. So good its worth being spelled out like that.
@Peer
I like “triofoxology”
@ Peer
The triofoxology reminds me of Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen, where you get tossed in the deep end of the story and are expected to find your way without much help. But in both cases, I found it rewarding.
(12) I could comment on the guy’s tunnel vision, but I think it would be more interesting to simply start a discussion about some of the more interesting online fandoms I’ve encountered.
I mean, if we’re talking about a good fandom, I’d have to say that the Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon folks might well lead the list. In honor of the work they like, decided the best things they could be doing online are to A. help people in pain, and B. share puns. And horrifying as the latter might be, I don’t think it’s bad enough to outweigh the former. I’ve never really been involved in the community, but all my second-hand information is overwhelmingly positive.
Beyond that, well, the Discworld fans seem like awfully nice folks for the most part. And they’re certainly not supporting any evil corporate overlords–or at least no more so than the Dune folks. I think they were helped by the fact that Sir Pterry was online and involved years before the web existed. Which set a certain tone right from the start.
And Earthsea fans are awesome. And Vorkosigan fans. And…I’m pretty sure I could go on for a while, but I’d like to leave space for others to suggest things.
3) That was one godawfully lumpy pancake.
@Rob Thornton: Thanks for the tip, will check ou!
@Mark: Thanks!
@ Peer
The Malazan Book of the Fallen is fantasy, it is 10 books long(!), and I have heard that some find it a tough read. I love it to pieces, but be warned. 🙂
Fantasy is no problem. Although I try to avoid long series… but, ill put it on my list and see if I try it out. 🙂
How beautiful are thy files with scrolls, o pixel’s daughter…
Oh, thanks! That looks much better. Good.
Almost done with Hugo reading (not including the Best Series…I’m just not going to go there) with only 2 Novellas (Binti:Home and River of Teeth) and 1 Novelette remaining (Children of Thorns…). So far there are clearly standout winners in each category for me and clear standout losers.
For me, Novel goes to Six Wakes no questions asked. Almost to the point that I might not even rank the other novels, I liked Six Wakes so much more. And, honestly, I didn’t read Raven Strategem. I just didn’t like Ninefox very much, and I started Raven but found myself dreading picking it up. Reading should be fun, so I put it back down and don’t care to try again.
Short Story goes to Martian Obelisk by Nagata. Again, head and shoulders above the rest of the entries, although this is one category where I liked all of the nominees (except Clearly Lettered which was just lame). I think I could debate with myself between Martian Obelisk and Carnival Nine; but Nagata’s story had all the emotion as well as tightness that I loved.
Haven’t finished Novelette, but Wind Will Rove is going to be hard to beat here. And just, no thanks to Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time. Not my thing and won’t be ranked.
Haven’t finished Novella, but this is the toughest category so far. So far my favorite is Black Tides of Heaven. I took my time reading that one because I was enjoying it so much and wanted it to last longer. This is one of the few times I wanted a shorter story to be much, much longer. I don’t know how I’d rank the nominees after this…I liked All Systems Red, but I think people have been over-hyping it. And Then There Were (N-One) I liked quite a bit, but it felt oddly paced. It meandered for a while and then was instantly at the end and conclusion. And Down Among The Sticks And Bones was so much better than Every Heart A Doorway, just so so much. Still, I think I liked the other ones better.
I had comments to make. Then I was interrupted. Hours ago.
I’ll catch up later.
@Xtifr: I used to hang around in alt.callahans, and it was the nicest, kindest place, which you wouldn’t expect from alt groups. Funny. Punny. Sweet. And a far-from-commercial thing. Have also enjoyed Discworld, though never been in the fandom; pTerry set a good tone both in the books and online. Same with UKL.
@k_choll: You are the anti-me. I haated “Six Wakes” and haaaaaaated “Carnival Nine” (maybe it’s okay as long as you’re not a woman or disabled?). “Small Changes” isn’t the best in the group, but I liked it a lot, and I loved Tenfox.
I am still reshuffling my Best Dramatic, Long ratings and probably will right up till the last minute, which is… a couple weeks?
Then onto more reading and making lists for NEXT year. At least since I’m not going to have a membership for 2019 and 2020, I can catch up those years.
@ Lurkertype: a.c. was my first online community, and for some years it was everything you say. But it was an unmoderated group, and eventually it attracted… well, the kind of people you get in unmoderated groups. And then there were alternatives to Usenet, and it slowly disintegrated into the same few dozen trolls and a$$h0l3$ rehashing the same half-dozen arguments over and over again, and everyone else who hadn’t left already did so. I still miss it.
@Lee: I guess I left before that happened myself, for various reasons (not involving Usenet alternatives IIRC).