Issue 17, July 1987 (part 1)

Electronic OtherRealms #17
July, 1987
Part 1

Table of Contents

Part 1

Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach

Why Times are Hard for Hard Science Fiction
James Brunet

The Shattered World/Players at the Game of People
Rich Jervis

Part 2

Much Rejoicing
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

Part 3

Bimbos of the Death Sun
Danny Low

The Biofab War
Danny Low

Dark Seeker
K.W. Jeter

Star of Gypsies
Jim Johnston

Pico Reviews

Part 4

Stuff Received

Letters to OtherRealms

Part 5

Words of Wizdom
Chuq Von Rospach

Alice Sheldon, An Appreciation

Editor's Notebook

Chuq Von Rospach

They're at it again. When last we left the Moral Majority (which is neither, in my eyes) at the Scopes II trial, a few fundamentalist Christians were trying to tell the world, with a straight face, that The Wizard of Oz was unChristian and therefore unacceptable in their schools. After all, it has witches and things in it.

The latest censorship case I'm aware of happened in Bay County, Florida. Among the books that have been banned from classroom use at the High School and Junior High levels are: Dante's Inferno (going to Heck just isn't the same, somehow), Hamlet, King Lear, Animal Farm, Great Expectations, Watership Down (fuzzy bunny rabbits?), The Call of the Wild (no bathrooms in the great outdoors, I guess), and my personal favorite, Fahrenheit 451. After all, you don't want folks reading about what you're doing to them.

Reports show that letters to the local newspaper are running 100-1 against the ban, that when the local library put the banned books on display, there was a steady stream of folks checking them out to read them, and that a bunch of people are putting together a class action suit against the action.

The latest report is that the School Board overruled the Superintendent and removed the ban. A class action suit by the teachers and students is continuing, however. The board stated that this was done not only without the backing of the board, but after the board attorney told him it was legally unsupportable. He did it anyway, because he felt that the word "goddam" was inappropriate to teach children, according to the board public affairs person.

I've personally never heard of a curriculum that teaches cussing to students, but somehow they seem to learn them anyway.

It sounds to me like this man shouldn't be in education -- he should be a minister if he wants to deal with peoples morals. The end result of all of this is that many people are upset, the school system is saddled with a potentially expensive legal suit, and many people have gone out and read the books he was trying to keep them from reading -- which, I guess, is a positive outcome in some ways, since most wouldn't have if he hadn't decided he knew better.

Now, I'll be the first to agree that some material isn't appropriate reading in the classroom, but many of the items being banned these days are being banned not because they're too mature for many children, but for religious or philosophical reasons -- not because they are inappropriate for a person to read, but because the ideas they have disagree with what you want folks to think.

What I find very depressing is that in almost every case, the people involved in the ban have never read most of the works in question. They know it is inappropriate -- don't bother them with facts. These folks are trying to force the schools to do what parents should be doing -- building the moral basis for a child. When I was in school (not that long ago, I like to think) if someone felt a book was inappropriate, the student was given a pass to the library and an alternate assignment. There is no reason (or excuse) to try to ban a book from the entire curriculum -- if you don't like it, don't read it, but don't force your beliefs on others.

So, do yourself a favor, and read a banned book today. And if someone tries to pull this in your area, get involved and get it stopped. If you know of new censorship actions, pass them by me, and I'll get the word out. If you're interested in getting involved in the censorship controversy, you should contact People for the American Way at 1424 Sixteenth Street NW, Suite 601, Washington D.C. 20036. We have nothing to lose but knowledge, and nothing to win but what the Constitution gave us in the first place.

Judy-Lynn Del Rey

The loss of another of the important editors of the field, Terry Carr, has started me thinking of Judy-Lynn again. It looks to me like she's being forgotten already, which is inexcusable, so I'm going to resurrect my call for a Judy-Lynn Del Rey memorial award. See my thoughts in the letter column this issue for my latest view. I really believe that we can't let this person fall from view -- without her, Science Fiction would not be an accepted part of the publishing world, and would not be the quality field it is. So, I'm willing to do whatever needs to be done to get this award off the ground --Jincluding sponsor it, although I'd rather see a major convention take control, since that would lend it more legitimacy than I could. Anyone interested in working with me in founding this award, drop me a line.

Hugo Nominees

I'm sure that many people are going to find things to scream about with this years Hugo Award nominees. At the top of the list has to be Black Genesis by L. Ron Hubbard and the accusations of block voting.

While I will agree with most folks that Black Genesis doesn't match up with a Count Zero or a Speaker for the Dead, I'm going to have to take the (probably unpopular) position that it is just as legitimate an entry as any other. This nomination points out quite clearly what I've felt for a long time -- that the Hugo is primarily a marketing and publicity award, not an award for quality. Marketing and publicity are two things Bridge, the publisher of Black Genesis, is quite good at. Many of the same people I've heard screaming about the nomination are people who don't bother to nominate or vote for the award. These folks got exactly what they deserved. If you don't like the way the nominations went, and you didn't nominate something, you have only yourself to blame.

My personal gripe with the nominations this year is that the committee, for lack of a better place to put it, shoved The Dark Knight into the non- fiction category as an art book. This makes no sense, but it is as logical as any other place on the ballot, since the Hugo currently doesn't handle graphic material well at all. The Dark Knight is, in my eyes, one of the most important publications of the year, and well deserves its rightful place on the ballot, wherever that it. It also has single-handedly legitimized the graphic novel as an art form, so I expect to see more of these problems until the Hugo is tweaked to handle it. The only positive thing about it being placed in the non-fiction category is that it will likely win the award, if it had been placed in the novel category (the other place I think it could have been squeezed into) it would have lost handily to both Speaker for the Dead and Count Zero. So maybe this is for the best, if we learn from it.

Next Issue

Next issue will be out the end of August, in time for Worldcon. It will include an article on Historical Realism by Harry (An Emperor for the Legion) Turtledove, an interview of author Mike (Stalking the Nightmare) Resnick, an Alexis Gilliland cover, and lots of the normal stuff. I'm also planning a new, improved format for the Pico Review section, and with any luck the long awaited review index will finally surface. Submissions need to be in by July 15, Letters by August 1. See you in Brighton!

Corrections

There was a glitch in the electronic version of Books Received that made John Crowley's book AEgypt come out as gypt in issue #14. In issue #16, I claimed that The Stars My Destination won the 1956 Hugo. Not true; Heinlein won the 1956 Hugo for Double Star. Alfred Bester won his Hugo for The Demolished Man in 1953 -- serves me right for not paying closer attention to somewhat misleading cover copy...

Why Times are Hard for Hard Science Fiction

James Brunet

ism780b!jimb Copyright 1987 by James Brunet (A version of this article was originally published in Pyrotechnics)

Like many SF readers, I grew up with an affinity for hard Science Fiction; it was the natural bent of any young science-oriented student in those days before Tolkien became a household word and shelf after shelf of Fantasy innundated your local bookstore. Today, I find very little hard SF that is really good, Sturgeon's Law not withstanding. The demand for hard SF is strong; yet editors and publishers complain that not enough saleable hard SF is being presented to them. And as the quantity of hard SF has fallen, so has the quality. The Bears, Brins, Benfords, Nivens and Vinges are rare. Why, then, the hard times for hard SF?

I suggest three reasons for the dwindling of hard SF: the expansion of the frontiers of science, the literary coming of age of SF, and ultimately, the excess demands placed upon hard SF by its admirers.

**The expanding frontier of science.** Twenty years ago, Scientific American was for the most part accessible to the knowledgeable lay reader; today, most articles are written by specialists for specialists. In a nutshell, this is symptomatic of all science in the past quarter-century.

In 1960, it was possible for the educated layman to have a moderately decent comprehension of what was happening at the boundaries of physics, astronomy, and bio-chemistry. In the interval since, fields of knowledge have converged, merged, and diverged again to form an array of specialties such that it is all but impossible for, say a physicist, to be aware of the the facts, nuances, and implications of more than two or three specialties other than his own, if she bothers to keep up at all.

What are the implications for the would-be writer of hard SF? It is simply impossible to keep up with the new theories of constructs of all science. One can read Science News, Discover (alas, Science 8x being now defunct), and one or two professional journals -- assuming that one has the requisite background -- and still not have more than a superficial understanding of the current view in most scientific disciplines. Assume that additional research will be done on the most salient scientific disciplines of a given story, and there will still be large gaps where the writer will be left to rely on out-dated popular views or dated memories of high school or college lectures.

Hence, it is not at all surprising if we read a story where a writer has gotten the astrophysics and artificial intelligence aspects correct only to bungle the biology or the psycho-chemistry. The writer has ways around this, of course, such as reducing the scope of the story or finessing some questions by stating a technological result with no indication of how it was achieved -- hyperspace travel being a typical example of the latter. And yet there are times that the finessing and hand-waving simply will not do, where the story will wither without a fuller explanation. In such cases, we read out-dated science or science with holes and improbabilities.

Some might say, "Well, do more research." For the novel, this is sometimes a possibility. Greg Bear is one of the best hard SF writers today. As a non-scientist, Greg compensates by doing a copious amount of research; it doesn't hurt that he is also generously endowed with intellectual faculties. Yet Greg has an advantage that most SF writers don't have the luxury of having: his writing career is a full-time pursuit. The great, great majority of SF writers find it necessary to hold part-time or full-time jobs to buy groceries, keep a roof over their head, contribute to the support of a family, etc. In this situation, research time is a direct trade-off with writing time. What profit gaineth the writer if he learns his subjects but hath not the time to produce? After all, the business of a writer is writing, and for most there must be some hope of reasonable economic return for time invested.

If intense research is a difficult proposition for the writer of the SF novel, it is all but impossible for the short story writers. Ugly economic reality again comes into play. To keep the lupine beastie from the portal, short story writers must, in general, turn out their stories quickly. The established pro who writes shorter work needs to produce quickly to justify the income; the aspiring amateur must turn stories out quickly to gain experience and to maximize the possibility of sales. Extensive research is a luxury and time is the excise tax that most short story writers simply can't afford to pay. And because most beginning writers begin with short stories, an entire generation of SF writers is learning its craft without the regular exposure to intense research. These writers face hard choices when they graduate to novel-length work: acquire the inclination to do the research hard SF, or foreswear hard SF for less demanding endeavors.

**SF comes of age.** To some extent, all science fiction is a victim of its own success. Its popularity has meant ever wider audiences, to the point where SF regularly makes the best seller list. With the wider audiences, and with its coming of age as a literary form, the literary standards have risen. No longer is a great plot alone be sufficient to garner praise, justify publication, and -- most important to an editor or publisher -- make money; SF must have the same standards of depth-of-character and deftness of execution as other literary forms.

What does this mean for hard SF? The scientifically and technically inclined still constitute a small minority in our society. Those who have the literary skills to be good writers, possessing the balance of intellection and intuition, a command of language, and a sensitivity to human character, constitute an even smaller minority. The intersection set of these two groups is smaller still. Raise the literary standards and the set of good writers diminishes even further, making the intersection set even smaller. This is what has happened to hard SF. Just as expanding frontiers of science have made it more difficult for the writer to stay scientifically cognizant, rising literary standards have short-circuited a number of writing careers.

This is not to say that only superior work is being published. There is still a lot of "crud" on the market; as it is, so it ever was. But it does mean that writers who have the hard science handled correctly do not necessarily receive the great recognition, sales, and popularity that they might have in an earlier time. Robert Forward and James Hogan come to mind in this regard. Hogan in particular I desperately want to like. I like his ideas, but his writing has left a lot to be desired. (I haven't read his latest and I'm told that the writing has improved dramatically, so here's hoping.)

Faced with the lukewarm popularity of scientifically correct but literarily weak work, publishers are going to be cautious in publishing same, feeding enough to supply the core demand and no more. The public's tolerance for "weak" Fantasy seems much higher, perhaps because it's more broadly accessible. Hence, the shelf after shelf of Tolkien magic- sword-and-quest knock-offs.

**Excess demands upon hard SF by its readers.** If part of the hard times for hard sf rests with the writer, part with economic realities, and part with changing literary standards, then a final part of the responsibility rests squarely with readers of hard SF who expect to much of their genre. Hard Science Fiction is, first and foremost, fiction. Fiction is an artform, and as such is much more closely akin to painting than, say, photography. The purpose of fiction is not to capture precisely "what is" or "what might be," but to suggest an external reality and through that, develop a psychic landscape in the mind of the reader that includes not only the physical elements of the story, but emotional, moral, and tonal elements. Using the metaphor of impressionistic painting, what matters is not the precise rendering of line and color, but whether or not that aggregate impression conveys not only a reality, but Truth. A cleverly rendered implausibility will be much more satisfying than a clumsily handled certainty, even if the latter is presented accurately to within five decimal places.

Some readers complain about inaccuracies encountered in SF stories. The question that should always be asked is, "Does it matter?" Roger Zelazny wrote "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" in 1965, knowing that the space probe data was going to render his view of Venus obsolete. He wrote the story quickly, wanting to get one good story set on Venus before his view became untenable. The story was an award-winner; was it suddenly transformed from a good story to a bad one when fact and theory changed? No; the story is as fine a read today as it was when it was written.

Readers should remind themselves that SF is fiction. Even David Brin and Greg Benford -- two of the best among contemporary hard SF writers - - have scientific "mistakes" in their work. Brin, for instance, has acknowldged that he overstated the current intelligence of dolphins as imputed in Startide Rising. Does this weaken a wonderful tour de force of a novel? No. The more ambitious and broadly based a story, the more difficult -- both technically and artistically -- it is to have everything technically correct.

Ultimately, fictional reality is not the same as reality. Better anyday to read a well conceived, plausible sounding tale involving realistically complex human beings than any of the flock of sf stories featuring cardboard characters where Noble Engineer (or Scientist, or Brilliant Layman) devises solution to every problem from alien invasion to the heartbreak of psoriasis.

If a reader must have 100% accurate science instead of general accuracy to two significant figures, he is better advised to read a textbook. Better, considering how textbooks become obsolete by the time they appear in print, read the scientific journals instead, taking care to spot the errors appearing there.

Specialists will always nitpick. There is an anecdote about two scientists, an astronomer and an anthropologist, discussing Velikovskian theories. The astronomer says, "Well, his astronomy is crackpot but the anthropology is damned interesting." The anthropologist looks blank for a moment and says, "No, it's the other way around." Chances are, that if a nit picker is pleased with an SF work, either the holes are outside his area of knowledge or the work has a very limited scope. Science Fiction is fiction, not science, and it will remain that way.

**Prognosis.** Despite the fact that hard SF is under siege, I have a sense of optimism about its future. Traditional hard SF survived the New Wave, becoming stronger and more resilient as a result from the encounter. Now, the Cyberpunk Wave is simultaneously challenging traditional hard SF while infusing a new vitality into the field. Thesis-antithesis-synthesis; I feel that hard SF will endure the problems that I've outlined. It may take longer for writers to become competent in the hard SF field, but the impulse will remain and the rewards, both economic and artistic, will guarantee that good hard SF will continue to be written, if not in the quantity that we might like.

The Shattered World

Michael Reeves
Baen Books

Players at the Game of People

John Brunner
Del Rey

Reviewed by
Rich Jervis
c78kck@irishmvs.bitnet
Copyright 1987 by Rich Jervis

A bit of a hit and a miss, if you will, I'm reviewing something old and something... well, not so old. The something not so old is Michael Reaves' The Shattered World and the old is John Brunner's Players at the Game of People.

The first is a Fantasy where some very serious events are taking place, and the second is a real world story that deals with people's Fantasy. I'm happy with both books for the most part, but Brunner's novel lacks something that Reaves' has.

The Shattered World is set in an alternate-earth future where the earth is shattered into fragments by a necromancer. Each fragment is held in orbit around all the others by the combined magic of all the other living practitioners of the time. Now, however, things are falling apart; fragments are starting to collide and the runestones which hold them in orbit and provide independent gravity are disappearing.

The book focuses on Beorn, a thief who has been hired to steal the runestone from Darkhaven fragment, virtually from under the nose of a Sorcerer Supreme. Beorn isn't just a simple thief, there's more to him than meets the eye, and I would bet that Tolkien fans out there have already guessed 70% of the truth. There's a lot going on in this book. In a rare moment of reflection Beorn muses:

No doubt about it, he told himself; if he managed to live through this adventure, he would be assured of free drinks for the telling as long as he lived. Already he had robbed a magician, fought a brace of monsters, survived the Abyss, dodged a falling fragment, leapt from land to land like a man crossing a stream by stepstones, and now, unless his wits served him, it seemed he might pay a call on the Demogorgon himself. Truly his life was anything but dull.

Beorn isn't the only embraceable character in the story, all the principles are clearly motivated and anticipated confrontations are well worth the the wait. Now I turn to the near miss. Perhaps it's not fair of me to place Fantasy and Science Fiction back to back, but they aren't entirely the strange bedfellows they might seem. As an avid reader of authors like Ray Bradbury and M. John Harrison, I can safely say that they not only mix, but blend into an amazing cinnabar-like alloy. So that is my justification. Players at the Game of People grabbed my attention early, had me guessing about the whole picture and I anticipated a strong confrontation when the climax came. I was let down. The confrontation came but was skipped around. I can only allude to what happens, to say more would render the book unworthy of reading. Perhaps I can say that whatever you think a character by the name of Godwin Harpinshield would be like isn't even close to the reality.

The other characters, while from as vast a background as those in The Shattered World, didn't seem to matter to me as much. I have to admit that perhaps only Heinlein could have brought together a more bizarre collection of characters and made them work in real time. The difference is in the final summation, both books had intriguing premises, both have conflicts in which the characters are faced with self doubt and the repercussions of their actions. But when the last page of The Shattered World was turned I was left wanting to know what would happen next, in Players at the Game of People, it was simply wondering what happened?

OtherRealms #17
July, 1987

Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach.
All Rights Reserved.

One time rights have been acquired from the contributors. All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in its entirety only for non-commercial purposes. No article may be reprinted without the express permission of the author.

Issue 17, July 1987 (part 2)

Electronic OtherRealms #17
July, 1987
Part 2

Much Rejoicing

Reviews by
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

Copyright 1987 by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
ptsfa!djo

Count Zero, William Gibson, [****-] Hardwired, Walter Jon Williams, [****] Vacuum Flowers, Michael Swanwick, [**] The Rapture Effect, Jeffrey Carver, [***] War Day, Whitley Streiber and James Kunnetka, [***+] The John W. Campbell Letters Volume 1, Perry A. Chapdelaine, Sr. et al, [****] Cat's Pawn, Leslie Gahdallah, [***+] The Atrocity Exhibition, J.G. Ballard

Off-hand, I would say that books are best insured against oblivion through practice of the auctorial virtues of distinction and clarity, of beauty and symmetry, of tenderness and truth and urbanity. --James Branch Cabell Beyond Life

Episode Two: Encores

Poor William Gibson.

I mean: when your first novel wins the Hugo, the Nebula, and damn near every other award for which it is conceivably eligible, and is taken up as a manifesto for a Movement within your field, you've got a real problem with your second. What do you do for an encore?

Gibson wrote a book called Count Zero [Arbor House, 1986] and it's one hell of an encore. It is, in fact, a better book than Neuromancer, though it probably won't win any awards at all. (For one thing, it came out in paperback too late.)

A better book? Yes. Count Zero has characters you can care about, an element sorely lacking in Neuromancer. I mean, you can understand Case, and maybe even Molly, but in the end, nobody cares what happens to them. Not so here. Count Zero has three separate and distinct protagonists, and each of them is more human than Case and Molly put together. Especially I'd like to call your attention to the Count himself, an ignorant street-kid playing cowboy -- if we'd seen Case like this, Case would make a lot more sense.

Then, too, the plotting in Count Zero is more complex; Neuromancer was basically a non-stop forward motion toward a single goal. Here three characters pursue separate goals through the same world, on a collision course. There are hints along the way of how the three sub-plots connect, but the climax retains the shock and inevitability of a mid-air crash. Finally, Gibson's use of the language has taken a quantum leap. In Neuromancer, he used English language rather clumsily; here, it's like the scalpel in the hands of a skilled surgeon. It produces blood, but the blood is controlled, purposeful.

You'll note that I haven't told you much about what actually happens. This is deliberate. Anything I could tell you would be inadequate or too much; I can only say read this book.

Chuq has said, "there ain't no such thing as cyberpunk, only Gibson and a lot of pretenders to the throne." At any rate, if it's true, the best-known pretenders have to be Walter Jon Williams and Michael Swanwick.

The former's Hardwired [TOR books 1986; pb. 1986 $3.50] is a good example. There are two kinds of people here -- those who live in space colonies, and those who wish they did, because the Orbitals, due to some creative bombing some time back, own everything.

Sarah is one of those who wishes she lived in a colony. She's an assassin- for-hire, with a built-in gadget that sounds like something out of H.R. ("Alien") Giger. Very protective of her little brother (a prostitute), and very disturbed when he gets blown up by someone out to silence her. Cowboy (no relation to Gibson's "cowboys") is a panzerboy, a smuggler who plugs into a high-speed tank to make his "runs." More: he's the best, but he's getting old -- after 28, your reaction time starts to slip.

The inhabitants of Earth, "mudboys" and "dirtgirls," seem ripe for a revolt; Cowboy and Sarah play their parts. The story moves at a breakneck pace through a set of twists and twirls that I frankly lost track of more than once.

But the real wonderfulness of Hardwired is the language. If Gibson is a surgeon, Williams is a psychotic with an axe. He plays with your mind, makes you work with him to create his world as he spews the mindscape with argot, slang, and advert slogans with no explanation in sight. But even without the slang, the language pulls the reader willing or not into Williams' vision. For example, try this:

It is the girl in the next stall who is weeping, pausing only to draw massive shuddering breaths before bringing the air out again through the tortured muscles of the throat. It hurts to cry that hard, Sarah knows. The ribs feel as if they were breaking. The stall shudders to the impact as the girl drives her head against the wall, and Sarah knows that it is pain the girl is seeking, perhaps to drive out pain of another kind.

Sarah tries not to get between people and what they need. If this doesn't conjure up a powerful image, call the mortician; you're already dead.

Swanwick, on the other hand, has adopted all the piece-parts without seeming to absorb the gestalt. In Vacuum Flowers, [Arbor House, SF Book Club, 1987] he's taken concepts more-or-less equally from Varley and Gibson and sprinkled them liberally with Heinlein, comes up with a goulash.

The protagonist is a large part of the problem. She's a wetware construct, a programmed personality placed into someone else's brain, and she knows it before the book is far along; this makes it difficult for me, at least, to care very much about her -- I'm more interested in what happens (happened?) to Eucrasia, the person whose flesh she inhabits.

Her name, incidentally, is Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark. Deep into the book, we discover that she was a person with a body of her one, once, but by that time it's too late; the degree to which I don't care about her has reached terminal levels.

The story begins as a chase (Rebel escapes from the hospital and the Company that wants to copy her wetware), and works quite well on that level. Sadly, it doesn't remain on that level; Rebel becomes involved in interplanetary intrigues involving the People's Republic of Mars (no shit -- Mars is the Red planet) and a corporate man/machine mind that has taken over Earth, and my dontgivadamn index passed the breaking point. Swanwich tries to put too many chickens in one basket, and they laid an egg. Those waiting for a worthy encore to In The Drift will have to wait a little longer...

On to stranger and sillier things. A fellow named Jeffrey Carver has been writing to respectable critical attention for some time now, but until his fifth book, The Rapture Effect [TOR, 1987], I had managed to avoid reading anything by him -- a policy I now wish I had continued.

Really, it's not a bad book; it's just not a good book. It has some major things going for it -- a pointless, mistaken war over a valueless planet; first contact (I'm a sucker for first contact novels, especially if the aliens are alien); an entertaining and engaging AI; competent, unassuming writing. But it doesn't do anything. The background borrows many of the trappings of the cyberpunks but none of the aesthetic, and it just doesn't work. The humans and the aliens make their peace, the AI gets what it wants, and everybody's happy except the evil creatures -- Oh, I didn't mention them, did I? The novel is divided into Parts, each of them prefaced with a short passage in italics about some delightfully malevolent creatures who live in the darkness beneath the surface of the valueless planet mentioned above. Nothing seems to come of this, and the fact that they're still waiting in that darkness at novel's end practically shrieks, "SEQUEL!!"

To which I say, pfui. There is so much good and so much bad about The Rapture Effect that I have trouble grading it. I want to give it high marks, I want to give it low marks -- it comes out average.

Onward, ever onward. Whitley Strieber and James Kunnetka wrote an astonishing book called War Day [Warner paperback 1987, $4.95], the best and most humane projection of the effects of a "limited" nuclear war on the United States I have ever read. Now their encore: Nature's End, which takes a similar look at the probable outcome of Man's continued disregard for the physical health of the planet he inhabits.

They provide a reasonable, not a panicky, look at the combined effects of air and water pollution, deforestation, overfarming, overpopulation, etc., without neglecting the technological gains likely in the same period (some 40 years hence) and come up with a chilling projection.

The story in which all this information is given is the story of a family, two couples, who set out to destroy a demagogue. Gupta Singh is the demagogue in question, and he is arguably the novel's real main character. Singh is successfully promoting a movement called the Depop -- short for depopulation. Singh's program: kill one third of the human beings on Earth. His motivation: He says, to save the world. In fact, to destroy humanity.

Four people set out to expose him (through a computer technique called the "conviction") and find his considerable resources bent on their destruction. Fleeing from Singh, they fall through the "cracks" in their society to find an entire society underneath -- and one more, one very special secret beyond that.

Those of us learning to write science fiction today are laboring under a severe handicap -- there is no John W. Campbell, or, as far as I can tell, any other editor who does what Campbell did: he worked with the writers and writers- in-training, teaching them to be more than they were, more than they perhaps would ever have become without him.

The best substitute, poor as it is, that I have found is The John W. Campbell Letters Volume I. [AC Projects paperback, 1985, $5.95], edited by Perry A Chapdelaine, Sr., Tony Chapdelaine, and George Hay. Even if you aren't trying to become a writer, there is much to delight, entertain, infuriate, and puzzle you here. For example:

% Those who claim that Dune Messiah and Children of Dune suffer "sequelitis" will have to find some other reason for not liking them; JWC discusses Herbert's planned trilogy with him before the publication of the first book.

% Campbell claimed to have suggested to Hubbard that he turn Dianetics into a religion. Of course, he added, Hubbard went about it in the wrong way...

Here is a chance to see Campbell's mind at work, tossing ideas around like there was no future, and it all had to be thought of now. Here is his brilliance, his quirkiness, his humanity, and, I fear, his conservative racism. Here, in short, is Campbell the man.

I do love first novels. You never know when you're going to turn up a Neuromancer or Wild Shore, and even if it's no good, you aren't very disappointed.

So I went into Leslie Gadallah's Cat's Pawn [Del Rey paperback, 1987, $2.95] with a Good Attitude. A very Good Attitude, in fact, which improved as the novel wore on.

Plot: Protagonist is cast away among the Oriani, catlike pacifistic aliens. He gets involved in the underworld of their spaceport, and from there in interstellar politics; he has to stop the Evil War-mongering Empire, and succeeds in his little bit. Also, he discovers the Oriani's Deep Dark Secret, and is never permitted to leave Orion again.

Big deal, right? Well, actually, it is. Bill Anderson is a fine protagonist, knowing enough to get along, naif enough to get into serious trouble. The Evil War-Mongering Empire is actually a believable and chilling menace. And the Deep Dark Secret, though a bit of a cliche, is quite satisfyingly Dark.

Oh. One more thing. Cat's Pawn does not end on a happy note; it ends on a most disturbing note, which implies a very deep lack of hope for the future. Like The Rapture Effect , it leaves much room for a sequel -- however, unlike The Rapture Effect, this room grows organically out of the novel, and is wide enough that the sequel need not be a direct continuation of Cat's Pawn to satisfy.

A damned good first novel.

Closet Classic: Before I go on with this, let's get one issue straight. I want recommendations for this feature. This was recommended to me by Steve Farnum of Oakland, California, for which I thank him greatly. I suggest that the feature is best utilized for works whose authors are still alive, but anything which has been printed only once (or never) in the US, and has been out-of-print here for a long time, is fair game.

So.

Here we have a book that Doubleday bought, printed, and then pulped the entire run. A second American publisher bought it and dropped it unprinted. It was finally released by Grove Press, for a single print run, and has not been heard from on this side of the Atlantic since.

The book is The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G.Ballard (Grove's edition was called Love And Napalm: Export U.S.A.), and it is not hard to see why it has had problems in America. It contains stories called "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan," "Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy," and the classic "The Assassination of JFK Considered as a Downhill Motor Race."

Is this Science Fiction? It is indeed. Where most writers have used physics, astronomy, and engineering; where more recent writers have used anthropology, cybernetics, and bioengineering; Ballard has written the only SF I know whose speculative content is based in the field of abnormal psychology.

The stories which make up The Atrocity Exhibition are disturbing "condensed novels" about the alternative mental breakdowns of a character who may be named Tallis or Trabert, Traven or Talbert, or some other variation thereon. In his psyche, the modern equation of sex and violence has reached its nadir, and films of Vietnam atrocities and the Kennedy assassination are his pornography.

A number of characters are sucked repeatedly into the whirlpool of his disintegrating mind, and some of them are killed. A young lady named Karen Novotny, in particular, seems to be killed in several versions of T's breakdown.

The Atrocity Exhibition is not for the squeamish, and not to be read quickly. It is dense. If you have a stomach for grisly, twisted fiction, it doesn't come better than this.

OtherRealms #17
July, 1987

Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach.
All Rights Reserved.

One time rights have been acquired from the contributors. All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in its entirety only for non-commercial purposes. No article may be reprinted without the express permission of the author.

Issue 17, July 1987 (part 3)

Electronic OtherRealms #17
July, 1987
Part 3

Bimbos of the Death Sun

Sharyn McCrumb

Windwalker Books, 219 pages, $2.95
[***]

Reviewed by
Danny Low
hpccc!dlow
Copyright 1987 by Danny Low

This is a straight forward murder mystery that just happens to be set in a Science Fiction convention. There have been other murder mysteries set in SF cons but this is the first good one that I have read. There are three reasons for this book being superior to its predecessors. First, the mystery is properly done. The clues are presented in a timely manner. They are not grossly obvious and there are sufficient false clues. Second, the SF con is pertinent to the solution to the mystery. The con is not just a backdrop for the mystery. This is a common fault of mysteries of this type. The con setting is not fully utilized so the murder could have been done at any type of convention with no change to the story. Third, McCrumb has a proper knowledge of not only fandom but also of what happens behind the scene at a SF con. As a result, the atmosphere has an air of authenticity to anyone who has ever worked on a SF con. The in jokes are much more extensive although you don't have to know them to enjoy or understand the story.

The murder does not take place until the story is half done. The first half is an extensive study of fandom and fannish personalities. People with thin skins should avoid this book. The commentary is biting and very accurate. However, like any cultural stereotypes, the fan personalities present in the book do not reflect the full diversity of people in fandom, just the ones that tend to be prominent in fandom.

The murder victim is that old cliche, the famous obnoxious writer who hates fans and what he is writing but needs the money. The reaction of the concom (convention committee) to the murder struck me as being very real. Given the love/hate relationship between the victim and the fans, I thought the fannish reaction was also reasonable. The reaction of the mundanes (i.e. non fannish) characters struck me as realistic. I have encountered mundanes at real SF cons who have reacted in a similar manner to what was going on. The solution to the mystery was derived in such a manner that it could have only been done at a SF con. It is a SF variant on the "gather all the suspects in the room and have the hero talk the murderer into confessing" scenario.

The Biofab War

The Battle for Terra Two
The AI War

Stephen Ames Berry

Tor Science Fiction
[***]

Reviewed by
Danny Low
hpccc!dlow
Copyright 1987 by Danny Low

Yes, they do write skiffy like they used to. This continuing series of books is filled with blaster rays lancing through the blackness of space, piercing energy shields in a blaze of pyrotechnics. The series is a modern descendent of the Doc Smith Lensmen series. It is Space Opera in the Grand Ole Tradition. The characterization and dialogue is a bit more modern (i.e. better) but the story line is straight 1930's pulp SF.

The Confederation has succeeded the Old Empire. It is in danger of being overwhelmed by the alien S'Cotar. In the first book, the true nature of the S'Cotar is revealed. In the second book, an alien race of androids from a parallel universe who want to conquer our universe is discovered. In the third book, the true nature of the AI's, as the androids are known, is revealed. The S'Cotars and the AI's are all part of a conspiracy that is hundreds of thousands of years old involving races from two different universes. This is strongly reminiscent of the Arisian/Eddore rivalry of the Lensmen series. The main difference is that in Berry's series, the age old conspiracy is not revealed to the reader beforehand. The reader uncovers the facts at the same rate as the characters.

There should be at least two more books in the series. The story appears to be going towards a definite ending. The books are not deep books but in the measures that count (heroic characters, fast paced action, Byzantine conspiracies within conspiracies and a universe spanning scope), but they are well done. These books are fun to read and have no social redeeming value other than being fun.

Dark Seeker

K.W. Jeter

Tor Horror, February, 1987

Reviewed by
Davis Tucker
ihnp4!druri!dht
Copyright 1987 by Davis Tucker

This book is not your usual horror fare, with some terrible beast lurking around, or some unexplainable, demonic force wreaking havoc with mundane suburban lives. Or maybe it is -- because the beast Jeter shows us is the beast within, brought out by a strange, psycho-active drug called the Host. We are forced into a demimonde of cult killings, psychiatric rehabilitation, revenge, fear, and attraction to the evil inside us. In this age when everyday news makes Stephen King's most horrific creations seem almost bland and comprehensible, it's good to see a writer treading the familiar ground of "the beast inside" in a manner that is believable, realistic, and matter-of-fact, without resorting to Satanism, demonic possession, and the like.

Michael Tyler was one of the Wyle Group, a cult-like gathering of college students around a famous professor (Wyle), who committed a number of grisly murders five years before the opening of the book. Jeter does a good job of defusing the similarities between these and the Manson killings by having a couple of characters contrast them openly, so the reader isn't being asked to see similarities that aren't there. The Host drug was responsible for a "group mind" effect, or as Tyler's supercilious court- appointed shrink prefers to think of it, the "illusion" of a group-mind. The Wyle Group killed without mercy or meaning, merely for blood, like a crazed animal or a psychotic. Tyler is now under medication that will counteract the Host, dull it, and he will be on it permanently, because like malaria, the Host never goes away, it is permanently in the bloodstream and the brain stem. And like peyote, the Host has a common manifestation to all who take it - not the sometimes benign, sometimes stern Mescalito, but the Host - a beast with sharp, carnivorous teeth set in a wide, mocking smile.

The action is fast-paced, but not as frenetic as some of Jeter's science fiction work (Dr. Adder and The Glass Hammer). Tyler's ex-wife (also a member), on the run for five years, is arrested after another member steals their child. Tyler is forced out of his semi-somnolence and must come to grips with the Host, must go back to it by taking himself off his medication, and try to find his son. The fear of letting go and becoming a psychotic madman combines with an almost irrational drive to find his son and take revenge on the man who stole him. Tyler becomes obsessed and semi-insane even before he begins to contemplate what it would mean to go back to the Host again, with its hallucination of bloody, smiling teeth. He begins to see the Host lurking behind other people's eyes. even those he thinks he loves.

The book is filled with excellent minor characters: a washed-up writer who wrote one sensational book about the Wyle Group murders with Tyler's help, who needs him again now that the story is back in the news; Tyler's girlfriend, Stephanie, who along with her young son lives with Tyler but doesn't really understand him, and maybe doesn't love him; an obsessed ex-policeman who thinks the Wyle Group got off light; and Slide, an evil and manipulative man who steals the boy in a calculated attempt to get the Wyle Group back together again. Jeter fleshes them all out with economical brushstrokes, and tight, terse prose, and they all fit in to the puzzle of plot he has constructed.

Despite the fact that this is obviously a commercial attempt by Jeter, this may well be his best book yet. It is directed, dynamically paced, extremely well-written in a modified Chandleresque style, gritty and unsentimental about the failures of humanity, tight and economical, and with a lot to say about people and the devils inside them. It never lags but it is deliberate when it needs to be; the plot denouement, usually the Achilles' heel of horror, is splendidly worked-out. It often seems in this genre that even the best writers can set up all the elements for the last twenty pages, yet never come through on them. Jeter has done an admirable job for his first attempt at horror.

Star of Gypsies

Robert Silverberg

SFBC Edition, 378 pages
[****-/****+]

Reviewed by
Jim Johnston
ihnp4!icarus!jj
Copyright 1987 by Jim Johnston

Curiously enough, although I'm not much of a fan of Silverberg and I couldn't make it through the Majipoor novels at all, I liked Star of Gypsies quite a bit. It's a good story (hence 4-) written about a really fantastic idea (the 4+) for a story. The reason that I say that it was a only a "good story" is that it is too short. The ideas that provide the basis for the story are wonderfully designed for extensive, almost baroque elaboration on the locales, customs, histories, and so on, all of a fascinating nature, and Silverberg almost manages to provide that sort of description. Although things are described rather completely, the prose sometimes seems disappointing terse, and missing just that extra little bit. Perhaps the realities of publishing enforced a length limit, if so I regret that such happened.

Star of Gypsies is a wanderer's tale. The wanderer is naturally remarkable, although he is a human (maybe, chuckle) with no unusual powers. More to the point, he is a king, an abdicated king, whose abdication hasn't been accepted by his people (or has it now?), even though he has made it quite clear that he'd rather not be king, thank you, and best regards. I really don't want to spoil the tale, so I'm not going to say much more. I do suggest, if you get the SFBC version, that you ignore the blurb until after you read the book! In fact, the art is unremarkable, so perhaps you should just throw the dust cover away and not take the chance of reading the little list of spoilers inside the front cover.

One of the reasons that I like this book is that it is a good tale. The science is secondary, providing necessary mechanics and no more, so Rambo Kinnison fans will be terrifically bored, but those of you who liked Brokedown Palace (Steven Brust), Silverlock (John Myers Myers), and other books where the storytelling was foremost, and the look-wow- science! was barely an accessory will have an entirely good time with this one. I'll have to dig up some other Silverberg and see if it was me, rather than the book.

Pico Reviews

Archer's Goon   by Diana Wynne Jones    [***+]
        Berkley, 1987, paperback, $2.95, 241.

This is a book by an author I'm not familiar with. What initially
attracted me to it was the cover art, a large Goon in a kitchen chair
eating a slice of cake with a switchblade, and sipping a cup of tea
with his pinkie extended. He is the titular character. For once, the
cover is pretty appropriate, and even the short cover blurb captures
the spirit of the story: He was Large, Ugly, and not leaving their
kitchen. He was a wizard's enforcer. He was... Archer's Goon. The
story is (for the most part) told from the viewpoint of a thirteen year
old boy, and its tone is really that of a juvenile. In fact, I think
it'd be a good story for the young adolescent. But it has plenty of
humor and an engaging mystery plot, and is thus interesting to the
adult as well. I liked it quite a lot, and I'm glad, for once, to have
given in to the attractive packaging.
-- Wayne Throop
dg_rtp!throopw

The Black Castle        by Les Daniels  [***]
        Ace, 1978, 232 pp., $2.50

This is a story of good and evil, and the difference (or lack there of)
between them. The story focuses on 2 brothers, one who is the Grand
Inquisitor for the Spanish Inquisition, and the other a vampire. The
story is very philosophical, especially from the vampire's view point.
The book has a few surprises and a generally clever story. Definitely
not a book for people with strong religious convictions who don't like
them questioned, even in fiction, or people who don't like graphic
scenes (the Inquisition was not a fun time). I liked the book and
thought some interesting philosophies were made.
--Jim Winner
winner@cua.bitnet

Chthon  by Piers Anthony        [*]
        Berkley, 1967 232 pp, $1.25 (paper)

This is one of the most confusing and uninteresting books I have ever
read. I am a very big Piers Anthony fan, but this book just doesn't
have anything going for it. The story is about a man who falls in love
and is thrown in jail because of it, and follows his exploits of trying
to get out of jail. The reasons for his falling in love being against
the law are explained, but would constitute a spoiler. The book is
confusing because it jumps between when he is in and out of jail,
bouncing all around the time line, without any smoothness. If memory
serves me correctly, this book was re- released a couple of years ago,
but a couple of chapters were missing. This may have been corrected
(follow the chapter numbering to find out; they chapters in my copy
weren't renumbered when the missing chapters were removed). At the time
I contacted the publisher and was sent another copy with the same
chapters missing, but this may have been corrected by now.
--Jim Winner
winner@cua.bitnet

The Cornelius Chronicles, Volume III    by Michael Moorcock     [**/***]
        Avon, 1987

Once again, the Final Word on Jerry Cornelius and his crewly mots. The
first novel, The Adventures of Catherine Cornelius and Una Persson in
the 20th Century, takes those two characters through an alternative
century of war and violence, with a dubious reversal-ending. The
second, The Alchemist's Question, seems to dispose of the English
Assassin once and for all -- but leaves major questions to be opened if
Moorcock chooses. Both are well-written and witty, but both need an
advanced degree in Moorcock to extract the plot. Not a Sunday
afternoon's good read.
-- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
ptsfa!pbhyc!djo

The Day The Sun Stood Still     [***]
        Thomas Nelson Inc., 1972, 209 pages.

This book has three original novellas, one by Poul Anderson, one by
Robert Silverberg, and one by Gordon R. Dickson. All three have the
same starting premise: as the troubles in the world mount, someone
comes forth and gets the world to pray as a whole for a sign by God to
show that He truly exists, and God grants the sign, He makes the Sun
stand still for one day. The first two stories were not very
interesting and the authors did exactly what would be expected. The
third story, by Gordon R. Dickson, however, is something else all
together. In itself, "Things Which Are Caesar's," is worth getting the
book. This story doesn't focus on the prophet who got the world to pray
(though he does make a cameo), instead it focuses on a group of people
who meet at the time for the miracle and we watch these strangers face
the miracle and its after effects together. This different perspective,
coupled with the interesting characters created make this one of the
best short stories (or novella technically) I have read in a long time.
--Jim Winner
winner@cua.bitnet

Dreadnought!    by Diane Carey  [**-]
        Star Trek #29 Pocket, 1986, 251 pp, $3.50

This was my introduction to the line of Star Trek novels, and a
disappointing introduction it was. The story is about a young
Lieutenant who is a captaincy candidate. When the new ultimate weapon
(designed and created by the Federation) is stolen, she and her friends
must save the day. The story has the feel of a Wednesday After School
Special where the Junior High School students solve the crime for the
police. I never got the feel that any of the main characters was over
the age of about 17 (thought one is stated as being 35). The old crew
of the Enterprise does make some very excellent cameo appearances, and
the Lieutenant's impressions of the old crew are often amusing, but the
scenes when the old crew were off stage were, as the song says, "not up
to contemporary professional standards". I would like to see the
author's next book concentrate more on the old crew, whom she
characterized well.
--Jim Winner
winner@cua.bitnet

The Riddle Of The Wren  by Charles de Lint      [****]
        Ace, 1984, 289 pp, $2.75

This is a wonderful fantasy story. It is a quest story of a young lady
who becomes a traveller of worlds, worlds which are linked through the
Standing Stones (where would fantasy literature be without them?). Her
quest is to save a man she once met in a dream, so that he may save the
worlds from the evil Dream-master, Ildran. This story has much of the
beauty of true epic fantasies, with the simplicity of stories such as
the Wizard of Oz. A nicely written, pleasant story.
--Jim Winner
winner@cua.bitnet

The Source Of Magic     by Piers Anthony        [**]
        Del Rey, 1979, 326 pp, $1.95

This is the second book of the Xanth series. In it we follow the
further adventures of our heroes from the first book, A Spell For
Chameleon. In this book they go in search of the source of the magic in
the land Xanth. While it is occasionally amusing, and is in general a
simple light read, it does not have any great merit or interest to
recommend it. It is by no means as good as the first book, and lacks
the puns of the later book (though it does have some). This makes a
good book for people who like the characters of Xanth or who just want
to read a simple quick book in between heavier reading material. But do
read A Spell For Chameleon first, it is a better book, it will help
explain and introduce what is happening in this book.
--Jim Winner
winner@cua.bitnet

A Spell For Chameleon   by Piers Anthony        [*****]
        Del Rey, 1977, 344 pp, $1.95 (paper)

The first book in Piers Anthony's famous best selling Xanth series.
This is one of my favorite books of all times (and was my introduction
into modern non-epic Fantasy). It is the story of Bink, a young man
about to be exiled from his home land because he could not demonstrate
a magic talent. As the plot thickens we become more and more convinced
that he has magic, and strong magic at that, but he can't show it. So
we follow his exploits as he learns to cope with his problems. The
story is well wrapped up (ignoring the fact that there are now about 7
or 8 sequels to it, following chronologically), has a number of nice
surprises, interesting characters, and good humor. The puns which make
the Xanth series so popular do not drown out the plot as they do in
some of the later books, but are still present to give humor to the
story. All in all, probably my second favorite book, surpassed only by
The Silmarillion by Tolkien. You must read this book before reading any
of the other Xanth books.
--Jim Winner
winner@cua.bitnet

Wizard War      by Hugh Cook    [***+]
        Popular Library (Questar), 1986, paperback, $3.50, 447 pages.

This is a book originally published in England under the title The
Wizards and the Warriors. The original title is a little more apt,
since most of the time the plot concerns relations between (oddly
enough) wizards and warriors. On the other hand, the new title isn't
totally inept, since the basic hook of the story is a conflict between
members of the Confederation of Wizards. But the nice thing about this
book is that it isn't just a simple little quest story, with a big
confrontation at the end where the Good Guys triumph. No, there are
multitudinous plot twists, and the original quest becomes somewhat moot
halfway or so through, and the end sort of trails off a little. You
know.... like real life does. And it is largely the homey real- life
quality and the interesting characters that make this book worthwhile.
I rather liked it.
-- Wayne Throop
dg_rtp!throopw

OtherRealms #17
July, 1987

Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach.
All Rights Reserved.

One time rights have been acquired from the contributors. All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in its entirety only for non-commercial purposes. No article may be reprinted without the express permission of the author.

Issue 17, July 1987 (part 4)

Electronic OtherRealms #17
July, 1987
Part 4

Stuff Received

Books

Ace/Putnam

Farmer, Philip Jose. Dayworld Rebel, 317 pages, $17.95. Sequel to
Dayworld.

Avon Science Fiction

Baker, Sharon. Journey to Membliar, 247 pages, $3.50.

Zelazny, Roger. Blood of Amber, 215 pages, $3.50. Sequel to Trumps of
Doom now in paperback, second (of five) books in the second Amber
Trilogy. Highly recommended.

Bantam Fantasy

Ryman, Geoff. The Unconquered Country, 131 pages, $2.95. 1985 British
and World Fantasy awards winner, first U.S. edition. Reviewed
in OR 13, highly recommended.

Bantam
Science Fiction

Cook, Paul. On the Rim of the Mandala, 246 pages, $3.95.

McQuay, Mike. Memories, 400 pages, $3.95.

Tyers, Kathy. Firebird, 265 pages, $3.50. A first novel.

Space and Time
138 West 70th St. (4B)
New York, NY 10023

Mayhay, Ardath. The Wall, 121 pages, $6.95. Mystery/horror cross
genre novel.

Tor
Fantasy

Cook, Glen. Reap the East Wind, 213 pages, $2.95. A new Dread
Empire novel.

Norton, Andre and Miller, Phyllis. House of Shadows, 250 pages, $2.95.
Reprint of a 1984 novel.

Springer, Nancy. Madbond, 214 pages, $2.95. Book 1 in the Sea King
Trilogy.

Tor
Horror

Campbell, Ramsey. The Hungry Moon, 360 pages, $4.50. First
American printing.

Farris, John. The Uninvited, 276 pages, $3.95. Reprint of a 1982 novel.

Monteleone, Thomas F. The Magnificent Gallery, 248 pages, $3.95.

Tor
Science Fiction

Anderson, Poul. Past Times, 288 pages, $2.95. Reprint of a 1984 novel.

Pournelle, J. E. Guns of Darkness, 406 pages, $3.95. There Will Be
War, Volume VI, an Anthology series.

Saberhagen, Fred. Berserker Base, 316 pages, $3.95. An anthology of
Berserker stories. First mass market printing.

Fan and
Other Zines

The Dillinger Relic 52. Arthur D. Hlavaty, editor. Bi-monthly, $1/issue
or trades from 819 W. Markham Ave, Durham, NC 27701.

Ouroboros 6. Erskine Carter, editor. Fiction and Poetry magazine.
Subscriptions $12.00/4 issues from University Publications, The
University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut. Also
available: The Rock Pile, a poetry collection by Eddie
Robbert. No pricing information given.

Robert Sheckley will be signing at Dark Carnival, 2812 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, Ca 94705 on June 11 from 6-8PM. Piers Anthony will sign June 10 from 6-8PM and Persia Wooley on June 13 from 2-4PM. For more information, call (415) 845-7757.

The Other Change of Hobbit, Berkeley, CA 94704, celebrated their 10th anniversary of existence on Saturday, June 6th.

Ace Books has scheduled publication of Dave Smeds sequel to The Sorcery Within for the Fall of 1989. This is the first indication that, despte Ace's comments that the coming Ace/Berkley merge would only affect reprints, new books are being delayed, sometimes with devastating effect. Realistically, how many people are going to be interested in waiting three years for the sequel of a book? Worse, since Smeds is a new (and very talented, I might editorialize) writer, this delay has cut his writing income, forcing him to take a mundane job for the time being. It seems to me that Smeds has gotten a raw deal here, and I hope some other publisher is smart enough to make sure that his next book comes out under another imprint where his talents will be appreciated. The delay also seems to imply that Ace/Berkley has excess inventory -- is it possible, with all of the other mergers and problems SF publishers have seen, that we're on our way into a down-cycle in publishing?

The paperback rights to Clare Bell's books Ratha's Creature and Clan Ground have been sold to Dell, who will publish the first volume this fall.

Joel Rosenberg has signed a two book contract with Ace for An Acrobat of D'shar, a Fantasy Murder Mystery, and its untitled sequel. The agent was Eleanor Wood, and Beth Fleisher will be editing. Also, Not For Country, Not for King has been rescheduled as a March hardcover instead of an April paperback. It is also going to have the title changed.

C.S. Friedman's In Conquest Born has been bought by the Science Fiction Book Club as a Main Selection this fall.

Letters to OtherRealms

Chuq:

There are persistent rumours that lots of Americans who are attending the Worldcon are coming to Europe earlier this summer. For those who want to see Scandinavia I've got a great offer.

Attend Intercon, the biggest Scandinavian con this year! (Well, we may get 400 people -- fandom is still pretty small around here; on the other hand, that is one Norwegian in 10,000)

The Con is July 10 - 12, and non-Scandinavian residents get in for free. GOHs are Stephen Donaldson, M. John Harrison, and Norwegian Thore Hansen. There will be an art show, masquerade, filmes, dealers' tables, a RuneQuest tournament, rock concert and many other activities. This is your opportunity to meet Norwegian and Swedish fans -- very nice people indeed!

The Convention will be held at the University of Oslo, so there is no official convention hotel. There are lots of good hotels in Oslo, or you can stay with a fellow fan. Camping is also a possibility.

Visitors who are unable to attend the Intercon but would like to see Oslo anyway are welcome to contact us. We can arrange accommodations and entertaining company for visiting fans. Drop us a line either at my address or at Intercon, C/O Egil Haraldson Stenseth, Thv. Meyersgt. 45, N- 0555 Oslo 5 Norway.

Come and see us, won't you?

Heidi Lyshol
Maridalsvn. 235 A
N-0467 Oslo 4
Norway

[An offer I wish I didn't have to refuse, but my schedules don't allow me to be in Europe that long -- this time. Now, once I get to be a rich, best selling author.... Seriously, if you're going to take an extended tour in Europe, this looks like a good way to see a fascinating part of the world and meet folks with similar interests at the same time. If you can be there, drop them a line. -- chuq]

Chuq;

Thanks as usual for OtherRealms. I enjoyed it quite a bit, as usual, and find it useful. In the context of generally praising you, I would like to strongly request that when books are mentioned in articles, such as John Wenn's "Non-Western Mythologies in Fantasy" piece, full information be given as to publisher, copyright date, publication date, and price/format, if not ISBN#. I'm sure there must be others besides myself who feel that this would add immensely to the usefulness of these mentions.

Thanks for the mention of the Henderson books. We all love them from out childhood, but they can use all the publicity they can get for the reissue, considering how long ago they were done, and that she is hardly in the public eye, being dead.

I could kill Terry Carr for leaving us, and removing my role model from a phone call away to a place rather harder to communicate with. I do hope, however, that he was only the first book editor to win a Best Editor Hugo, not the only one forever. If you want to do a public service, you could run a list of who is at what house; the info is available in the Locus and Science Fiction Chronicle Market Reports.

I'm surprised to see that Paul Chisholm doesn't recognize Terry's accomplishments from the 1960's and 1970's. Did Ben Bova really publish better material than The Left Hand of Darkness; Pavane; The Year of the Quiet Sun; Other Days, Other Eyes; the other Specials, and all of the other books Ace bought, like Chip Delaney, Dune, Le Guin, Zelazny, etc.? Terry has been professionally influential in Science Fiction from the early 1960's, and his fan work has influenced fans from the mid-1950's.

The size of the loss the field has suffered from Terry's death is measured by the fact that only a few people are sufficiently well-rounded enough to know just how many areas Terry was active in and how large his accomplishments were. I, and others, will be painfully missing him for years: at conventions, for lack of a phone call, a fanzine, a grammatical quibble, a gently acerbic right-on observation. Godfuckingdamn.

Here's for more frequent and larger OtherRealms.

Sincerely,

Gary Farber Avon Books

[[I agree with the need for more complete information. Not all of the material submitted to me has all of the information, and I don't always have the time or resources to track it down. It becomes a footrace between getting the material published on a timely basis (and getting OtherRealms out on time) and getting it complete. Hopefully, the conversion to quarterly will give me enough time to polish up some of these details I've had to leave hanging in the past. Submitters can do me a big favor if they include the following information for the books they're discussing: title, author, publisher, copyright date, publication date, price, type of book, and ISBN, or as much of that material as they can get.

Another related thing that isn't happening due to lack of time that I want to do is make sure that when a paperback edition of a hardcover comes out that some kind of note about a previous review is made. This is another project on hold due to time that I hope to have running for the Winter issue.

I can't recommend the Zenna Henderson People books enough. If you haven't read them, read them. I'm very glad to see them coming back into print, and while the word classic is terribly overused, nothing less qualifies for these works.

The loss of Terry Carr is going to affect the field significantly, more than I think any of us realize. He was our future -- a hell of an editor, but someone who never lost the rocket in the back pocket or the gleam in his eye. He was always searching out the next crack in the ghetto walls -- which many people do, but never with the consistent success that Terry had. I want to echo something Marta Randall said about Terry at Baycon, though: that Terry really isn't gone. He is in our minds and in our hearts, and that his legacy will carry on with us. When you write your next book, write it believing that Terry is standing over your shoulder, clucking his tongue and wagging his finger, and if you write the way you feel an editor like Terry demanded of you, you'll deliver your best work -- the kind of work both you and Terry could be proud of.

-- chuq]]

I am writing to you because I find your Electronic OtherRealms very enjoyable reading. I am on the usenet, uucp, ... networks and get your magazine from the news system. You mentioned that your readership is around 3200 from usenet readers. How did you get that number? From what I know about the network, any news site can pick up the news feed and transmit it to other sites (on and off the usenet network). Thus news does get onto many workstations as well as larger machines. Once the news is on the machine, it is virtually impossible to tell actually how many people do read each article. I consider your 3200 a very conservative estimate, unfortunately I can't give you a better estimate. I would be proud of your electronic readership, you put a very worthwhile magazine on the network. As for me, I print it off and take it to my parents when I go visiting. My mother really likes the reviews and the stories. The next time she visits Palo Alto, she plans on visiting Future Fantasy again and pick up a printed copy of OtherRealms.

As for the technology for including pictures with your electronic version it could be done now. You could digitize the pictures and convert them into a format that could be transmitted with the magazine and then reformatted into the picture. There are several formats the pictures could be transmitted in. If the people that read EOR have a laser printer then pic format would work fine, if they have a Unix system then plot format would also work, otherwise you are limited by the ascii characters. As for getting it into pic/plot format a digitizer could work or a graphics editor could work fine. I'm sure a crude ascii picture would thrill readers enough. The drawback is that not all your readers are going to have access to the same type hardware devices to print the pictures.

Another thing, I started reading your magazine at volume 12. What would be the chances of getting the first 11 issues?

Thank you again for creating a very worthwhile electronic magazine.

Victor Riley
Tektronix CASE Division
tektronix!copper!victorr

[[3,200 is a very conservative estimate. From what I can tell, my total readership might be as high as 5,000, but because of the uncertainty of statistic gathering on the various computer networks I distribute through, I feel I have to keep to numbers I feel comfortable justifying.

There are many reasons why the electronic version is text-only. Some of them are technical; one good reason is that there is no generally available and standard formats for transferring picture data around electronically -- what works for some Unix systems don't work on others; PC systems look at things another way, Macintoshes (my machine) look at things entirely different. While there are glimmers of hope on the horizon (Postscript and my company's extensions of it in NeWS, for instance) they are only glimmers, and I won't get involved in that sort of stuff until a large enough percentage of my electronic readers can benefit. That's, frankly, far enough away that I'm not worrying about it.

Another thing is that the scanning resolution simply isn't good enough for me -- 300dpi (dots per inch) is all you can realistically get, and I don't believe that is good enough -- this is why I still paste art into OtherRealms rather than scan it for the hard copy version. Artists put hard work into making pictures that are pleasant to look at; it isn't reasonable for me to ruin that in the reproduction process because it makes my job a little easier. Maybe when scanners and printers are running at 600dpi or above I'll reconsider it, but I don't believe I can do artwork justice with the currently available technology. It just isn't good enough.

Finally, there is a lot of work put into the art and the layout of OtherRealms. If I posted an electronic version of that work, people wouldn't have a reason to subscribe to the hardcopy. I'm not trying to profit from the printed version, but it would be nice if it broke even eventually (or came close, for that matter -- OtherRealms costs me about $150/issue these days) and I don't want to put myself in a position where I feel I'm competing with myself. If you're interested in the text, the electronic version will serve your purpose. If you're interested in the rest, however, you have to read the printed edition. -- chuq]]

I agree: Judy-Lynn Del Rey was a molder of what SF has become, and needs to be remembered as such. Less than twenty years ago, the common wisdom was that novellas were the genre's perfect medium. Now, the best and most exciting work in the field usually turns up in novels, and SF is getting more of the commercial and critical acclaim that it deserves.

Even as SF fans turn their attention to writers of novels, they've ignored editors of novels. Terry Carr introduced a new generation of SF writers with the revived Ace Specials, and Ms. Del Rey devoted her life to encouraging SF novelist, and both were consistently passed up for Best Editor Hugo's in favor of magazine writers. Now Ms. Del Rey is gone, and it's too late to thank her for what she's done.

I don't know how I'd support a Del Rey Award for Best Novel, except maybe to buy the winning work sight unseen. And I don't know who would be right to give such an award. (Lester Del Rey and Del Rey books seem the only reasonable source, but do you want them to judge novels they publish against the competition? That's putting them in a serious conflict of interest.) But Judy-Lynn Del Rey's books are too disassociated from her name to be an ideal memorial, and we sorely need one.

-Paul S. R. Chisholm psc@lznv.att.com

[[I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and having just lost another great editor in Terry Carr, I've come to realize that the contributions made by editor's is simply not recognized by the general public. My current thought is that an award celebrating Judy-Lynn Del Rey should be given to a member of the publishing community for their contributions to the field. I believe this award needs to be a panel award as well -- the general public simply can't be aware enough of the entire field to see what an editor is contributing.

If there is enough interest, I'd be willing to set this up, although I still feel that this award needs to be sponsored by a major convention to give it some legitimacy. The panel I'd suggest would be the people that watch the industry year round -- the reviewers. For the initial panel, I'd hope to get A.J. Budrys (Fantasy & SF Magazine), Baird Searles (Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine), Tom Easton (Analog), Debbie Notkin (Locus) and Don D'Ammassa (Science Fiction Chronicle). There are a number of names in publishing that I see pop up constantly in my watching the field, names the average reader probably aren't aware of, but which to me are an indication of quality and (more importantly) consistency. Beth Meacham at Tor is publishing what I feel is the highest quality line of books in the industry -- over 10 books a month, and rarely a clunker. Anything that comes out from Tor these days is likely to be a good book to read, for which Beth deserves most of the credit. The Wollheims (Don, Betsie and Elsie) at DAW books are publishing some of the most innovative and risky books in the industry -- major advertising pushes for first novels, for instance, that might have languished on the midlist elsewhere. They're taking chances nobody else is doing, and they're making it work. Expect the best new voices to be coming from DAW in the next few years. David Hartwell at Arbor House and James Frenkel at the late Bluejay Books have also published a lot of good, innovative material. These folks rarely get the credit they deserve, preferring rather to stand in the sidelines and enjoy watching their authors succeed. I hope we can do something to let these folks know we appreciate their work.

-- chuq]]

Hello, Chuq!

I'm writing this by way of follow-up to my review on the folk group Golden Bough that appeared in OR #3. Chatting with them at a concert, I learned many readers followed my suggestion and ordered albums, and to them and others who are interested in modern folk ("fantasy set to music") I direct the following.

GOLDEN BOUGH ON CD!

Succumbing to the pleas of their fans, the folk group Golden Bough has released their new album, Winding Road in album, cassette and CD format! Winding Road continues in the tradition of highest quality evident in the group's other three albums (Winter's Dance, Boatman's Daughter, and Flight of Fantasy), mixing sounds and themes traditional and quite modern.

Reappearing is "The Wizard," an evocative and complex tune. The balance of voice and instrument, lively and contemplative, is excellent, more than an equal match for the big name folk groups such as The Chieftains and Silly Wizard, and augmented by the recording quality of West German engineering. If you distrust my prejudicial praise, my husband discussed Golden Bough with a vendor at BayCon. At the close of the conversation Russ asked, "Would you recommend any other groups as equivalent or better?" The vendor glanced over his extensive stock and shook his head. "Nope."

For those of you just discovering Golden Bough, my highest recommendations go to Winding Road and Boatman's Daughter, with Flight of Fantasy and Winter's Dance just a nose behind. Golden Bough, their first recording (available only on cassette), is farther down the list. Although it shows the potential of the later recordings and contains some very lovely music (The Wizard and Green Fields of France in particular), it lacks the vitality and soul that raise the later four above the crowd. If you can't find Golden Bough in your friendly record store, write the group directly at:

Golden Bough
P.O.Box 11288
Oakland, CA 94611.

Currently available are: Winding Road [****] album/cassette/CD, Boatman's Daughter [****] album/cassette, Flight of Fantasy [****] album/cassette, Winter's Dance [****] album/cassette, Golden Bough [***-] cassette only, Songs & Stories from Norway [***-] cassette only [A solo cassette from Lief, featuring music and song from Norway, as well as a humorous folk tale. I think I would enjoy it rather more if I understood Norwegian], Troubador; Songs & Poems [I haven't seen this, but the flier describes it as "a songbook of original compositions by Paul Espinoza, from the Golden Bough recordings; The Wizard, Black Jack Davy, etc., along with poems, illustrations & beautiful calligraphy."]

Enjoy!
Barbara Jernigan
barb@oliveb.ATC.OLIVETTI.COM

OtherRealms #17
July, 1987

Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach.
All Rights Reserved.

One time rights have been acquired from the contributors. All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in its entirety only for non-commercial purposes. No article may be reprinted without the express permission of the author.

Issue 17, July 1987 (part 5)

Electronic OtherRealms #17
July, 1987
Part 5

Words of Wizdom

Reviews by
Chuq Von Rospach
Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach

The Riddle of the Wren, Charles de Lint, [***+] A Night in the Netherhells, Craig Shaw Gardner, [****] The Pig, The Prince & The Unicorn, Karen A Brush, [***+] Archer's Goon, Diana Wynne Jones, [**] Beyond Wizardwall, Janet Morris, [***] Mage, The Hero Discovered, Volume 1, Matt Wagner, [**+] The Net, Loren J. MacGregor, [****] The Death of King Arthur Jackbird, Bruce Boston, [***] She Comes when You're Leaving & Other Stories, Bruce Boston, [***] Ascian in Rose, Charles de Lint, [***+]

It's been an interesting month. It started by being late to press with the last issue, with some projects at work all coming due at the same time, and a new cockatoo that decided that it was more fun to pull books out of my hand and chew on them than let me read. Between all of these endeavors, it was impossible to concentrate on reading anything involved, so I decided it was a good time to work on my Fun pile. I went looking for escapism, long a part of Science Fiction. And I'm happy to announce that SF escapism is alive and well.

One thing I've been meaning to explain is how books get chosen for review. I'm only going to cover what I do -- each contributor handles their own books differently. I get books from two sources: directly from the publisher in the form of review copies, and books that I buy.

With review copies, everything gets checked in to the Stuff Received column, the publicity material, blurbs, cover info gets read. I generally retire reprints because there are too many new books to devote space to older works. First novels go into the review pile, as do works from the authors that most people are interested in (Steven Brust, R.A. MacAvoy, Larry Niven and Gene Wolfe as examples). Anything else that looks interesting goes into the pile as well. Depending on the month, 50-60% of the books I get don't make the first cut.

Each editor has favorite authors -- Alan reads Crowley, Dan'l reads Moorcock. These are put in the appropriate places. From what's left, I try to come up with a reading schedule for myself, usually about half a dozen books, depending on how strong the month's titles are. The rest I either farm off to a contributor or put on the shelf. Out of about 30 review copies a month, around 10 get scheduled.

Not all of them get reviewed. Sometimes a book goes to an person who either hates it or finds that it isn't to their taste and they feel they can't give it a fair review.

I also toss books I buy into my reading queue. At any time, my in-box holds about 45 books that I want to read -- and in at least one case, there is a book on that shelf that has been there for three years, waiting for the right moment (it is Don Quixote). Generally, I add 6-8 books from the review lists and a similar number from the store every month, and I read between 10 and 15 books a month. The queue tends to grow over time, so every so often the books that never made it out get retired.

If I have a choice between reading a "name" book and a promising or unknown author, I tend to read the latter. I never read book two (or three, or seventeen, or...) unless I've been following the series -- partly because I don't have time to read all the previous volumes and partly because I don't think most multi-book series ought to be -- they're a convenience to the author and publisher, but they tend to be crutches as well.

If you think that it's tough to get a book through the maze of my in-box, you should see what happens to them when they come out. I'd like to have a moment of silence for The Riddle of the Wren by Charles de Lint (Ace Fantasy, 295 pages, $2.95). This book was unfortunate enough to be the one being read when things went crazy -- over a period of two weeks, it got carried around work, sat on, stuck in backpacks, carried around Baycon, watered in the garden, roasted in the sun, and given the worst possible reading environment. The cover is torn, half the pages (literally) have fallen out of the binding, and the book need to be painlessly destroyed and put out of its misery. Few books I've read recently would fare well against this kind of neglect, but despite the treatment it was given, I enjoyed this and it kept pulling make back into the story until I finished it.

This is a standard High Fantasy quest story -- a fourteen year old urchin is sent a Quest in a dream, meets Important Folk, fights Nasty Foe, and finally wins the Great Battle for Peace and Apple Pie. There is no original theme or action in this book, except that de Lint made the protagonist female. Even in this, he never does anything with the sex of the child -- she's really neuter in action.

The lack of originality isn't a problem though. De Lint is purposefully taking a familiar story and writing it well. It kept my attention when lesser books would have been shelved and it succeeds in what it sets out to be. It is a Good Read, and if you're looking for a diverting and enjoyable book, comes highly recommended.

If you're looking for Fun, you need look no further than Craig Shaw Gardner and his Ebenezum trilogy. The third book, A Night in the Netherhells (Ace Fantasy, 185 pages, $2.95) is just out, and it keeps up the frenetic pace set in the first two books. Ebenezum, master wizard with an unfortunate allergy to magic, his apprentice Wuntvor and their entourage (Hendrek, the Conan clone; Snarks, a demon kicked out of the Netherhells because he has to tell the truth, Norei, witch and love-interest for Wuntvor; Alea, vaudeville singer and love-interest for Wuntvor; and Hubert, the singing dragon) have made it to Vushta, city of ten thousand delights, where Ebenezum can be cured. Unfortunately Guxx Unfufadoo, the rhyming demon, has sucked Vushta down into the Netherhells. Our intrepid explorers must go and get it back, foiling at the same time the plot by the demons to take over the Earth.

Gardner succeeds where many authors fail -- he takes a silly premise and keeps it silly for the entire book. Just when you think you've got things figured out, he throws in a ferret. If one ferret isn't funny enough, how about 60? At the same time he is telling a good story without ever letting the jokes get in the way. Many authors in the same situation run out of jokes before they run out of pages, and the book falls flat. Gardner actually did a trilogy, with the final book as crisp and silly as the first chapter. It is, shall we say, a hell of a book.

Imagine, if you will, a Tolkien clone, where Bilbo is a pig. That's the basis of Karen A. Brush's first novel, The Pig, The Prince & the Unicorn (Avon Fantasy, 216 pages, $2.95). The Pig is Quadroped, straight from Charlotte's Web, chosen to be the Key Bearer when a bird drops the Key on his nose. The Prince is Glasgerion, Prince and Bard, who hopes to escort the Key Bearer to the Gate so it can be locked. The Gate keeps the Black Unicorn, a nasty beast, locked in Chaos where it can't do any harm. Unfortunately the magic of the Gate needs to be renewed once every hundred years by the Bearer, who must re-lock the Gate, or the Unicorn will return to reclaim his lands of Ravenor and lay waste to the wonderful Kingdom. In Quadro's path (of course someone has to be in his path...) are the Warlords, leaders of the Black Unicorn's kingdom, and their friends the Pitch Fiends, the Water Demons, the Death Wings, and the nasty Manslayers.

Almost surprisingly, this book works. I found it strange that even though most animals couldn't talk to humans, nobody really found a talking pig with a magic Key unusual. Quadro is allowed inside, and brought to table to eat with the rest of the folks, carrying on conversation all the while, without anyone seeming to realize that they're talking to a (hopefully housebroken) pig. There are Many Adventures, and Quadro seems to spend a lot of time saving the lives of his protectors, and he is captured, and he escapes, and he reaches the Gate in time. Does he lock it? I won't tell -- JBrush carefully works in several moral questions as to whether it is the right thing to do, and I won't ruin it for her. By doing so, she takes a Quest book and gives it some complexity and flavor, making it a Good Story and Fun.

He was Large, Ugly, and not leaving their kitchen. He was a Wizard's Enforcer. He was Archer's Goon. So says the blurb to Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones (Berkley Fantasy, 241 pages, $2.95). This is her second novel, and is the least successful of the books this month.

12 year old Howard Sykes comes home one day to find Archer's Goon in the kitchen. He won't leave until he gets the 2,000 words his father owes. Suddenly, this normal British community is engaged in open warfare between seven wizards and Howard's family. It seems that a series of 2,000 words have been used by one of the seven to keep the rest from leaving the city limits for the last 13 years, and suddenly they all want to break the spell so they can take over the world.

A major problem: nobody seems to know how the words work, and nobody knows which wizard is entrapping them all. So, suddenly, after 13 years, everyone tries to get the words at the same time.

Jones seems to be trying to write a satire on Government -- each wizard owns a specific segment of the city: public works, policy, sewers, utilities, recreation. Each uses their own power to try to bend the will of Mr. Sykes into writing them the 2,000 words. The tear up the street, dig ditches, turn off the power and gas, send bagpipe bands to serenade them, and sit in their kitchen and refuse to leave.

This book, while it tries to be Fun, fails. There are many plot holes large enough to drive trucks through that kept me from enjoying the humor. The worst is the Haunted House syndrome that plagues many horror books: a family is besieged by evil spirits in a house. Any sane family would get out and then figure out how to deal with the problem. But no, rather than leave the city and get away from all these nasty wizards (after all, they can't leave the city -- that's what they're trying to fix), this family cowers in its house, taking all this abuse and going "What do I do? What do I do?" The answer is simple: get out. But if they do, it's a forty page book. In other words, Archer's Goon suffers from idiot plot complex -- the people involved have to be idiots, because any rational person would have acted in such a way that the story is over in 10 minutes.

Another problem is the wizards. Five of them show up early, and it becomes obvious early on that once you figure out who the two missing people are and why they're missing, you've figured out what's going. To be fair, it isn't exactly easy to do this, but I also felt the ending was somewhat arbitrary and patched on.

If you can read around the plot holes and enjoy the book for what it is, I think it can be enjoyable. I couldn't.

The Thieves' World anthology series has spawned a series of novels by author Janet Morris, who has taken the characters to the Wizardwall. I've never been overly impressed with Morris' writing, but Beyond Wizardwall, the third in the series (Ace Fantasy, 250 pages, $2.95) is significantly better than its predecessors, and it shows a polish that I haven't seen before. She takes Tempus, Niko, Randall and the various gods and other denizens and builds up a complicated plot as everyone vies to either grab or protect Niko's soul, save the Empire, and free Nisibisi. This book is of interest only to folks who follow Thieves' World, but well worth reading, even if you've skipped the first two novels.

Mage, The Hero Discovered, Volume 1 by Matt Wagner (Starblaze Graphics, $12.95 color graphic novel) is the first five issues of the comic book Mage issued as a color graphic novel. It's well written -- Wagner has a dry sense of humor, and his protagonist, the savior of the people and full of super powers, doesn't believe this is happening to him. The graphic novel is a different format than most people are used to, and to some degree is an acquired taste. My big problem with this volume is that it stops at a bad point -- like most multi-volume stories the reader is left hanging, something I find distasteful. You might want to wait on this until future volumes are out so that you can read the complete story.

The Net, by Loren J. MacGregor (Ace Science Fiction Special, 225 pages, $2.95) is the first of the second series of specials edited by the late Terry Carr, and one of the last books he bought and edited. The Special series was designed as a showcase of the best first novels -- previous books included William Gibson's Neuromancer and the first novels by Lucius Shepard and Kim Stanley Robinson. A tough act to follow, especially since this is MacGregor's first professional sale, not just the first novel.

If this book doesn't raise the ripples of a Gibson or a Shepard, it is because MacGregor doesn't have the short story reputation helping to point people at the book. It's a simple plot, with complex overtones -- there are two companies in fierce competition with each other. The protagonist runs one, having wrested control from her father -- she's honest, works hard, plays fair. The antagonist is the son of the owner of the other company, spoiled, brash, given to excess, trying to wrest what he feels is due from his father.

He makes a bet. If she can steal a jewel from his museum without getting caught, he'll cede certain businesses to her. If she loses, she does the same. Of course, he's sure he'll win, and she's sure that she can take him. The competition is subtle, complex, and the reactions are real.

MacGregor has put a lot of work into building the supporting cast -- Jincluding one major character in a wheelchair; physically hindered but not disabled by any means. This character points out a painful flaw in much fiction these days -- few authors are willing to build a convincing mix of characters or a complex society. Writers should read this book and see what happens when you build real people into the books, even in secondary roles --Jand real people don't always have legs to walk on, or ears to hear with, or eyes to see. Too often we seem to imply physical perfection in the people who will conquer space -- an implication that is a subtle bias that we should work to remove.

This is a good book, not by any stretch of the imagination a Fun book like the ones I reviewed above. It is complex and subtle, it says and implies things that have to be thought about, and it involves the reader at several levels. I don't think it can be recommended highly enough, and MacGregor is definitely someone to watch in the future.

Briefly noted, and for Arthurian fans only, is The Death of King Arthur (Penguin Classic, translated by James Cable, $5.95), an anonymous French work from the 1200's. It's an interesting version of the classic mythos, but not terribly accessible for people who haven't read the field heavily.

Small Press Notes: Bruce Boston has published widely in the small press magazines. Some of his stories, all horror oriented, have been collected and published in two collections through the Berkeley Poets' Workshop and Press [P.O. Box 459, Berkeley, CA 94701]. The first is Jackbird (1976, 85 pages, $2.00), which contains six stories from places such as New Worlds and Fiction. The other is She Comes when You're Leaving & Other Stories (1982, 62 pages, $3.95) which contains eight of his works. They're good, generally as good as the horror I've seen printed in Twilight Zone, and if you like horror, well worth tracking down.

The other small press book I want to bring to your attention is Ascian in Rose by Charles de Lint (The Axolotl Press, 3915 1st Ave. N.E., Seattle, WA 98105). This is actually a novella and a sequel to de Lint's book Moonheart, which I haven't read yet. This story stands on its own for the most part, as an ex-Biker works to protect a young woman from an evil enchantress who wants to sacrifice the girl. This is a limited edition 875 copy print run, signed, and available in leather, cloth, or perfect binding (the first 25 numbered). This book is for de Lint fans, but a good story to read.

Alice Sheldon, An Appreciation

Alice Sheldon, who wrote under the name James Tiptree, Jr. died on May 19, 1987 of self-inflicted wounds after killing her husband and warning her lawyer to notify police. She was 71, her husband was 84. Sheldon was evidently depressed because of the continuing illness of her husband, who was bed-ridden and had recently gone blind.

As Tiptree, she was a critical success and a prolific short story writer. Her most recent work was Starry Rift, published in 1986.

It's hard for me to say much about Sheldon. I've enjoyed her works over the years, but she stayed behind the pseudonym for most of her writing life, which makes it hard to discuss the person. As a writer, she was exemplary, and never got the public recognition she deserved. But her writing lives on, and speaks for itself. There has been a lot of pain and anguish over this death on the computer networks -- many people have had problems accepting the fact that she killed herself. So do I, for I shall miss the times she has shared and enriched my life. But I can also understand, I think, about two people who love each other enough to believe that life without each other is no life, and to take a chance that there will be togetherness on the other side. So I'm hurt that she chose to leave us, but I'm hopeful that she found what she was looking for.

And when you think about it, she really isn't gone. The body has passed beyond us, but open up any of her books, and she can rejoin your life and bring it new warmth.

If only I could tell them how I feel inside, she thinks. So light and free, all duties done.... And at last I know it all; my whole life is my own.... All known. Like a child on a high hill, like a first plane ride --I can see it all from horizon to horizon, and think it all over.

And me ... funny, I'd forgotten myself. I suppose they count this as tragic. Oh, if I only could tell them--all they see is this rotting body; they don't see I'm perched in it like a bird in an old tree. When the tree goes I'll only float away. Maybe, when it crumbles, could I just fly away, free? Flying to death....

But such a beautiful sunrise -- so comfortable, so radiant and limitless! I wish they had time to enjoy. . . . When you're dying you have time. And you don't need help to die. No arrangements. You can just do it, all alone. Right the first time....

Brightness Falls From The Air:
James Tiptree, Jr. (1915-1987)

Brightness Falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair;
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

-- Thomas Nashe

May you find the peace you sought, the togetherness you craved. If there is no quality to life, is there meaning? May you be together, wherever forever is. You leave your family behind, and we grieve, yet you aren't gone, merely frozen in an instant of time. May we have the strength to remember you for what you were and what you meant to us, and may we keep your name before our eyes forever. You are missed, you are loved, you are with us.

-- chuq von rospach

She was one hell of a writer. I hope that if there is anything after this world, then she is being cherished and comforted with the same amount of love that shone from her works. I hope somewhere there is peace.

-- Fred Bals bals%nutmeg.DEC.COM

As you undoubtedly know by the time you read this sentence, Alice Sheldon is dead by her own hand. Her husband had suffered from Alzheimer's Disease for many years; in the end, she took his life, then her own. All evidence leads one to believe that this was a case of mercy-killing in both instances.

Sheldon wrote a great many stories about love, hate, and killing over the years; two of them affected me profoundly. The first was "The Women Men Don't See," whose appearance in F&SF shocked me out of a great deal of what I can only describe as middle-class male complacency. For that story, and many others in lesser degree, I am eternally grateful to Alice Sheldon.

The other affected me in a way rather opposite to the way I believe she intended it -- "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" seems to me a story of misanthropy in the feminist sense, an attitude that I have never learned to live with.

Yet Sheldon lived with her husband, apparently happily, for many years; she was apparently willing to take her own life to end his suffering. Somewhere between the poles of violent antimasculinism and profound love (the latter, also, is expressed in many Tiptree stories) lies a human being.

And that, is what has been lost in Alice Sheldon. A human being. One possessed by love and hate, by good and bad...and incidentally by a talent which allowed her to change my life with one story and enrage me with another. A human being who, like all of us, was ultimately alone, but one who reached out to touch all of us, just a little bit. A human being like you and me.

Rest in peace, Alice Sheldon. You are not alone.
-- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
ptsfa!djo

OtherRealms
Reviewing the worlds of
Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror.

Editor & Publisher
Chuq Von Rospach

Associate Editor
Laurie Sefton

Contributing Editors
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
James Brunet
Alan Wexelblat

OtherRealms #17
July, 1987

Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach.
All Rights Reserved.

One time rights have been acquired from the contributors. All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in its entirety only for non-commercial purposes. No article may be reprinted without the express permission of the author.

OtherRealms is published quarterly
(March, June, September, December) by:

Chuq Von Rospach
35111-F Newark Blvd.
Suite 255
Newark, CA. 94560

Usenet: chuq@sun.COM
Delphi: CHUQ

Review copies should be sent to this address for consideration.

Subscriptions

OtherRealms is available for the usual bribes & trades: a copy of your zine, submissions, letters, comments, artwork or because I want you to see it.

People who don't like to write can still get OtherRealms for money: $2.50 for a single issue, or $8.50 for four issues. Folks in the publishing industry can qualify for a free subscription. Just ask.

OtherRealms is available at Future Fantasy bookstore, Palo Alto, California. Stores interested in OtherRealms should contact me.

Electronic OtherRealms

An electronic, text-only version of OtherRealms is available on a number of different computer networks and bulletin board systems. On the Arpanet, Bitnet, CSNet, and UUCP networks, send E-mail to chuq@sun.COM to subscribe. On USENET, OtherRealms is distributed in the group rec.mag.otherrealms.

It is also available on the Delphi timesharing service and a number of Bulletin Board systems across the country.

Submissions

OtherRealms publishes articles about Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. The primary focus is reviews of books that otherwise might be missed in the deluge of new titles published every year, but the magazine is open to anything involving books.

Authors are welcome to submit articles for the Behind the Scenes feature section, where you want to talk about the research and background that went into your book. I'm also interested in author interviews.

Any thing of interest to the reader of book-length fiction is welcome at OtherRealms. We don't cover shorter lengths, media, or fannish news.

Submissions can be made on either Macintosh or MS-DOS disks (disks will be returned), via one of the computer networks, or the old-fashioned way if you insist. Submission deadline is the 15th of the month prior to publication. Lettercol deadline is the first of the month of publication.

OtherRealms is always on the lookout for genre art, from small clip- art pieces to front and back cover. Cartoons, line art, anything with a genre flavor is welcome here!

Book Ratings in OtherRealms

All books are rated with the following guidelines. Most books receive [***]. Ratings may be modified a half step with a + or a -, so [***-] is somewhat better than [**+]

[*****] One of the best books of the year
[****] A very good book -- above average
[***] A good book
[**] Flawed, but has its moments
[*] Not recommended
[] Avoid at all costs

Back Issues

OtherRealm Back Issues are available. Electronic versions of the previous two issues only are available by contacting me at the addresses in the masthead. Hardcopy versions of the following issues are available:

E-mail format (each $1.50)

#2: Karen Joy Fowler, Wasp, Writer's Workshops

#3: Dervish Daughter, Listening to Science Fiction

#6: SF Magazines, Wizenbeak, The Sorcery Within, A Jungle of Stars

Magazine format (each $2.50)

#9: Reviewing the Reviewers, The Dream Years, Schismatrix, Fiction by
Jim Brunet

#10: The art of paperbacks, It, Dimensions of Science Fiction, fiction by
Fred Bals

#11: The Diadem, Always Coming Home, Broken Worlds, Flamesong

#12: Voice of the Visitor, Silent Tower, Little Big, Agents of
Insight, Quest of the Riddle Master, Echoes of Chaos, Children
of Flux and Anchor

#14: Time Out of Mind, Voice for Princess, The Myth Series, Living in
the Ether, No Safe Place, Borderland, The SF Book of Lists

#15: Darkchild-Bluesong-Starsilk, SF: The 100 Best Novels, The
Regiment, Adventures of Hajii Baba of Isapahan, A Door into
Ocean, With a Single Spell.

#16: Non-Western Mythology, The River of Time, The Flame Key, Liege-Killer,
Battle Circle, The Native Tongue Series, Terry Carr Appreciations.