Usenet Review/Discussion of Heir to the Empire c.1991!

I've been looking through the old Usenet archives & this is definitely a classic:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf-lovers/browse_frm/thread/3674a5e65210bbe5/23861a32227052b7?hl=en&q=star+wars+heir+to+the+empire#23861a32227052b7

 

And to think, if we had never bothered to pick up HttE as that first guy suggested, we might not have the EU as we know it today!

 

Damn, I remember Atsushi Kanamori from the USENET days.

He was a big Kevin Anderson groupie. We've had words.

I used to think he actually was Kevin Anderson.

 

Dude, he may have been!! Seriously. Anderson used to troll his own Dune boards calling people who didn't like his books "Talifans" it was seriously weird.

 

You really had to "be there" at that time. I'm sure the archives are all deleted by now. But KJA really lost it for a while. He was seeing conspiracies everywhere, everyone was out to get him & destroy him! It was those dang Talifans!! No one understood the depth of the conspiracy, how it had infiltrated higher levels of government and could topple the very foundations of society itself! He was living in his own private Dan Brown novel. Negative reviews were being removed from Amazon.com, forum members were being banned for making well thought out and polite criticisms of the Dune prequels.

Get a (very) small taste of it here:

http://s10.invisionfree.com/Dune_Forum/ar/t1669.htm

This comes from the end of the "war" when KJA had escalated the thing to really absurd proportions, some of the comments are extreme. But at the time, it was just "wtf?!?" across the board, no one could believe it was happening. I wish I had saved some of his shrieking paranoid tirades, they were priceless!

He seems to have calmed down now. Maybe he was going through something in his personal life. But you know, you put your stuff out there & the public is free to like it or not like it. Thousands of people came forward to say, "Do a better job," and he just had a total meltdown. It was not pretty!

 

I thought Karen Traviss originated the term "Talifans". Is it possible that Anderson stole it from her?

 

No, she got it from someone else (though her LJ entry at the time didn't say who).

 

Yes, it was someone else.

But to actually define people as "Talifans" is just not right. As the author, the professional, you should be above such squabbles. Can you imagine Lucas whining about "Prequel Bashers?" Going on message boards and "firing back" like Kevin Smith? Lucas just laughs it off, he doesn't care. Good attitude to have.

 

Wow, I had no idea about that KJA stuff. I can somewhat understand his anger, I guess, considering how huge a franchise Dune is, people will spit on it no matter what the quality. I have not read the Dune novels, so I really can't comment, though I suspect they really weren't that good.

By the way, what the hell is a talifan? XD I'm sure it's some oh-so-clever take on the word "taliban".

To be fair, Lucas can wipe his tears with spare $1000 bills.

 

Everyone stay on topic, please. This thread isn't here for the discussion of, er, author/fan relations.

 

In his defense, I probably felt the same way - around then I got tired of properties having "tie-ins" that were thinly-disguised "what-if?" stories, and I didn't buy the line of it being THE OFFICIAL CONTINUATION OF STAR WARS as it trumpeted on the back cover. Star Trek was the most egregious.
As an aside, I was on Usenet at the time (although not Star Wars boards - I had a falling out with SW for a time after the Ewok movies) and... man, I miss having mostly college students. And no spam. That was great.

 

It's amazing how civil & intelligent those archived discussions are. I only found a rude remark in 1999...a sign of things to come.

 

There were a few rude remarks well before 1999.

 

Not needed. See RF's warning.

 

Things got heated but I'm noting an absence of emotionally disturbed teenagers writing really foul mouthed, immature responses that do nothing but flame. It seems like before '99 the 'net was pretty free of children! Now, it's all angry, foul mouthed kids everywhere.