Jump Back! Quatro-Decadal Review, Looking Ahead to November 1989
The Holy Trinity
With the 1969 and 1979 magazines behind me I prepare to delve into 1989. A problem with the decadal review is that, well, it comes in decade intervals. I was 10 years old in 1979, but in 1989 I was a well-seasoned 20. The answers? I had them. In the intervening decade I had gotten a car, a job, started taekwondo, finished high school, and was deep into college.
Unlike 10-year-old me, 20-year-old me had a full handle on SF/F in popular culture. In fact, the 80s were a watershed decade for SF/F — the promise of green screen special effects and the progress of practical effects really come to fruition in the 80s. Television was more hit and miss, but the decade that started with The Phoenix, progressed through V and Knight Rider and ended with Star Trek: The Next Generation. What started with Adventure Atari 2600 ended with Wizardry and The Bard’s Tale. I discovered Dungeons and Dragons in 1982 and never looked back. My awareness of SF/F books started with Asimov’s juveniles Lucky Starr through Andre Norton and C.J. Cherryh and into Tolkien, Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame and the discovery of REH, Fritz Lieber, Richard and Wendy Pini (which ties into the first round of graphic novels into the public imagination).