OtherRealms 22 — Chuq Von Rospach - Birds - Landscapes

OtherRealms — Issue 22, Fall 1988

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 1)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 1

OtherRealms may not be reproduced without written permission from Chuq Von Rospach. The electronic edition may be distributed or reproduced only in its entirety and only if all copyrights, author credits and this notice, including the return addresses remain intact.

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

Table of Contents

Part 1
Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach

Masthead

Part 2
Behind the Scenes: The Troupe
From Sideshow to Center Ring
Gordon Linzner

The Dragon Never Sleeps
Danny Low

Ivory
Dean R. Lambe

A Splendid Chaos
Neal Wilgus

Orphans of Creation
Michael A. Banks

Part 3
Scattered Gold
Charles de Lint

Part 4

Pico Reviews

Part 5

The Agony Column
Rick Kleffel

Part 6

Just for the Fun of It
Alan Wexelblat

Part 7
Much Rejoicing
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

Part 8
One Writer's Journey
M. Elayn Harvey

Stuff Received

Publishing Notes

Part 9
Dreams of Flesh and Sand
Johhn Zed
Michael C. Berch

Brightsuit Macbear
Neal Wilgus

At Winter's End
Dean R. Lambe

Antibodies
Dean R. Lambe

The Big Lifters
Dean R. Lambe

Part 10

Words of Wizdom
Chuq Von Rospach

Part 11

Interview: Joel Davis

Part 12

No Prisoners!
Laurie Sefton

Part 13

Your Turn
Letters to OtherRealms

Part 14

Your Turn
Letters to OtherRealms (part 2)

Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach

A new fiction magazine in the SF world is a rarity. A successful one worth reading even more so. The last successful SF magazine to start up was Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, and it was long, long ago. Since then, a number have tried, but none have been able to survive the cutthroat market. Even in Science Fiction, there isn't a lot of market to share.

Which makes it nice to see Aboriginal SF make it. The latest issue has encouraging news on circulation and distribution, and the conversion to a full glossy magazine from that early, horribly ugly format seems to be a complete success. Good, solid fiction and a growing readership show that there does seem to be a market for new blood.

The success of Aboriginal seems to be encouraging folks. George Scithers and friends are bringing back Weird Tales. There's a new magazine coming out of the Northwest called Argos that I'm really impressed with. All three of these are well worth the time to track down and look at, especially Argos. It seems to have the worst distribution and smallest circulation right now, so it'll be the hardest to find -- the address is in Stuff Received this issue.

To have three successful magazines show up in a short period of time is a good sign for Science Fiction, especially if they can stick around. But there is more on the horizon.

Not all of it is good, though. The newest magazine to show up, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, has some major problems. I had hopes for this one, because major short Fantasy markets are in short supply. Unless something happens between issue one and the next one, though, this isn't the magazine to fill the void.

MZBFM is a classic example of what happens when Desktop Publishing technology gets in the hands of people whose motivation outstrips their skills. I don't want to sound too negative, but it is obvious that the magazine was put together by people who were learning as they went along. Each story, for instance, shares the same body typeface, but the introduction page, the bylines, most of the major typographic pieces change from story to story and page to page. There are pages where it seems like they had contests to see how many fonts they could use at once (including the ultimate no-no, a bitmap font filled with pixel images).

The result is chaos. The magazine is a classic case of how not to use DTP technology, and a great example that DTP is a tool, not a skill. Just because you have fonts and PageMaker and a scanner and a laser printer doesn't mean you can publish anything. MZBFM is so cluttered it ended up looking more like a ransom note than a magazine.

All that said, I could have ignored the look of the magazine if the contents had been worth it. But the fiction ran from above-average fan-fiction to what-do-I-have-in-my-closet pro fiction -- decent, but not salable to a major market. Nothing really worth reading. The only story that did anything at all for me was Jennifer Roberson's 'Final Exam.'

The other thing that really bothered me about MZBFM was the art. It was scanned in, laid out electronically, and then printed out on their laser printer. For OtherRealms, I've been evaluating scanning technology for over a year -- and I still lay all my art out by hand and wax it into the masters. When you see MZBFM, you'll see why. Even with the best scanning and printing technologies available, you can't reproduce art properly. Scanning line art is possible. Scanning for halftones simply makes the art look horrible. If I were one of the artists in MZBFM, I'd be upset with the reproduction quality. I may be 'just a fanzine' but I'd never do that to my artists.

There's a learning curve to Desktop Publishing, as looking at back issues of OtherRealms will clearly show. If this was a fanzine, I'd say it had promise and suggest you keep an eye on it. But this is a professional magazine, and an expensive ($3.95 an issue, for 64 pages) one at that. Considering the lack of quality of the fiction and the long way these folks have to go to get even close to professional quality. As much as I like supporting new ventures, I can't with any conscience suggest you bother with MZBFM. For the price of four copies of this not-even-fanzine quality magazine, you can get a six issue subscription to Aboriginal, or two years of Argos. Either is a much better magazine and deserves (and has earned) the support.

I'm personally going to wrap my copy of MZBFM in plastic, because I'm going to be hanging onto it for years to come. Not for the collectible aspect, but because when I end up on the obligatory Desktop Publishing panel at conventions, it'll make a great casebook study of how to not

Change in Venue

I'm happy to announce a slight change in venue for one of my editors. Laurie, who's not only one of my columnists but also assistant bottle-washer and typo-catcher (the ones that get through are the ones I put in the night before I paste things up for the printer, when she's asleep and can't proofread). She's also taken on the responsibility as Science Editor here at OtherRealms.

Why? A long running discussion between us has been the inability for authors to get the Science right, especially in non-traditional fields for SF like biology or genetics. We've seen books where the author has obviously gone to a lot of trouble to work out the orbital mechanics of the story, only to take two blond, blue-eyed parents and spawn off a red-headed, green-eyed child (if I were the father, I'd take a close look at the milkman....). In certain scientific fields lots of time is spent getting it 'right,' yet these same authors either make up or ignore sciences from other disciplines. Laurie's going to start looking at the sciences in books more closely from now on, and focusing more on what it takes to get it right across the board.

She has a couple of articles planned, including one on post-holocaust agriculture and the surprises awaiting survivors, courtesy of agribusiness. And when she runs into books with problems, she's going to let you know. Her background is in the biological sciences, with degrees in Zoology and Psychology; she's worked in the Chemical industry, and holds a number of patents in high-density drilling fluids for the oil industry. She's even been licensed to operate a sewage treatment plant -- a function many stories seem to forget is necessary. It's gotta go somewhere when you flush, you know. It doesn't just disappear.

If you find a book with problems in the Science, drop her a note on it. The idea is not to make the author look foolish, but to help improve the field in areas where the knowledge base is a little weak. I think it's going to be fascinating. When you see it, I hope you'll agree.

Femto-Reviews

No, not really. Honest. But I'm going to be starting a new section in OtherRealms. It will be a compilation of what people are reading and what they think about them.

Here's how I hope it will work. If you read a book you want to recommend, drop me a note and tell me. This can be by E-mail or by regular mail. All I need is the title, the author, and the publisher, with either a "recommended" or a "not recommended." If you want to say more, that's fine -- I'll take selected blurbs and print them, space permitting.

What I'll do is take all of the comments and recommendations, tally them up, and publish a list of the most often mentioned books, positive and negative.

The deadline for submissions is six weeks before publication or November 15 for the Winter issue. If you don't get tallied one issue, you'll show up in the next. If you want to make multiple recommendations at once, that's fine (at $.25/letter, I expect most non-E-mail types will appreciate that). We'll see how things go for the next couple of issues.

Spring Announcements

The other new feature I'm announcing is Upcoming Titles. After leafing through the latest Publisher's Weekly Fall Announcement issue (a monster issue full of advertisements and information on books being published in the next few months) I realized that there is less and less coverage of SF.

What I want to try is a special, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror only version of the Spring Announcements. Publishers are welcome to send me their information on upcoming titles for the Spring and Summer (April through September). I'll compile it up and publish it in the Spring issue. Deadline for material is January 30, for publication March 30.

Stuff Received Redesign

I'm planning a format change in the the Stuff Received column because the information in it is complete, and I don't think it is as easy to find things as it should be. I'm not quite sure how it's going to look yet, so I'm asking for some feedback from everyone on what they'd like to see in it.

One thing I am planning on doing is separating titles by publication date first, and then publisher, rather than just by publisher. Another change I want to make is to add a notation for original or reprint; also to show whether the book is a novel, collection or anthology. What I really want to do is make it more useful to readers and, hopefully, easier to create and maintain. I know what I want in the section, but I need to know what information you think is useful as well.

If you have ideas of what you'd like to see in Stuff Received and how you'd like it to look, let me know. We'll see what happens.

Change of Hobbit bookstore in trouble

The Change of Hobbit bookstore's building has been put up for sale, and it looks like it will be unable to continue there after the lease runs out in 1990. This is not just a case of losing another well-run, independent book store. Change of Hobbit not only serves a large part of the Science Fiction world in the Los Angeles area, but is a major resource nationwide by doing mail-order for people without access to a decent local store.

They are looking at ways of keeping the business open past the end of the lease. They have found a new storefront, but will have to raise $40,000 to cover the cost of the move. Various fund-raising efforts are being set up, including a reading/signing extravaganza by Clive Barker, Dean R. Koontz and Robert McCammon on October 23. If you're interested in knowing more or helping out in some way, contact them at 213-GREAT-SF.

Worldcon

I'm going to cover Nolacon next issue, since deadlines on this issue preclude sitting down and doing a good trip report. I've got mixed feelings about Nolacon -- having been home a couple of weeks as I write this, I'm still not sure how I feel about some of the things that happened. In general, I felt it was a better convention than Conspiracy -- and I know of many people who would disagree with me on that. One of these minutes, though, we're going to have to come to the conclusion that Worldcons are simply too large and complex to be run by inexperienced, albeit motivated, amateurs, and turn over the chores of running conventions to the people who do it for a living. next few months) I realized that there is less and less coverage of SF.

Halofacon: the T-Shirt

One of the things we did at Nolacon this year was create a new Worldcon bid: Halofacon, Sri-Lanka in 2001. We had some T-shirts made up, and whenever we wore them around they got lots of attention and interest. Many of the shirts I brought for friends got wrested from me by amused and insistent people who had to have one. The shirt design is on the back cover of this issue, and I do have some left. See the masthead for details on how to get them. I thought it was a kick -- except for the folks who really thought we ought to put the convention together. For me, the best parts of a Convention bid are the T-shirts and bid parties. I'll leave the actual convention to someone else.

Have you backed up your hard disk?

And even if you have, will it do you any good?

Unfortunately, the Stuff Received column held over from last issue disappeared sometime during final production. Worse, I didn't notice until after the file had purged off my backups, so the books and magazines that should have been noted last issue are gone to the great bit bucket in the sky. The damage could have been worse, but it's frustrating to think you have things under control, only to find out Sir Murphy's found a loophole. I've changed my backup procedures to (hopefully) eliminate the chance of this happening again. My apologies to everyone who should have gotten a mention and didn't because of this.

The Editor's Series

This issue starts up a new series of cartoons on the Editor's Notebook page. They're by Marge Simon, and I thought you folks would get a kick out of them. Of course, they're Fantasy pieces -- all the editors I know are nice, kind, patient, generous people. They'd never do anything like this to their writers....

Subscriptions

An single copy of OtherRealms costs $2.85. A one year (4 issue) subscription is available for $11. Complimentary subscriptions to members of the publishing industry are available. OtherRealms is available on a returnable basis to specialty shops and bookstores. Please contact me for details.

OtherRealms is also available for arranged trades with your fanzine or at the whim of the editor.

Is this your last issue?

The number on your mailing list is the issue your OtherRealms subscription dies. Negative numbers indicate complimentary subscriptions. If it is zero, this is a one-time mailing, so if you want to see it again, you should Do Something about it.

Electronic OtherRealms

A text-only version of OtherRealms is available on many different computer networks and bulletin boards. On the Internet, BITnet, CSNet and UUCP networks, send E-mail to chuq@sun.COM for information. On USENET, it is available in rec.mag.otherrealms. It is also available on the Delphi timesharing service.

Submissions

OtherRealms publishes articles about Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. Our primary focus is reviews of newer authors. Material about books and the people that write them are welcome, including interviews, bibliographies and biographies.

Authors are invited to write articles for Behind the Scenes. It allows you to describe the background and research that went into a book and the things that make the book special and interesting to you. Submissions can be made on either Macintosh or MS-DOS disk, via E- mail on the networks listed above, or the old-fashioned ink-on-paper format.

Include a SASE if you want to see your submission returned. I take first serial rights unless other arrangements are made.

Deadlines

Deadlines for all material is the 15th of the month prior to publication. Publication date is the 30th. Next deadline: November 15. Material for the Reader's Column and Pico Reviews may be submitted at any time, and will be used at the first opportunity. Deadline for the Spring Window on the Future is February 1st.

What are you reading?

What are you reading, and what do you think? Submit your thoughts to the Reader's Column. See the editorial this month for details.

Art

I'm always looking for good genre-related artwork, from small clip- art pieces to covers. Originals will be returned after use. I can now handle electronically generated art in EPS format. I ask non- exclusive one time rights.

Publishing news

OtherRealms is interested in publishing news about the happenings in the field -- contracts, promotions, sales or market information. If something has happened you want the world to know about, I want to know.

Window on the future

Publishers are encouraged to submit lists of upcoming books to the Windows on the Future column. This will be a biannual look at coming attractions in the field, similar to the Publishers Weekly Spring and Fall Announcement issues (minus the ads, of course). See this month's editorial for more details.

Sri-Lanka in 2001

OtherRealms supports the Sri-Lanka in 2001 Worldcon bid. The T- shirts that made it to Nolacon this year went quickly, so I'm making them available through OtherRealms for those that could not get them. The Halofacon #1 design (shown on the back cover) is in Royal Blue on a white, 100% cotton shirt in sizes M, L, and XLG. You can have them for $9.00 postage paid ($7.50 in person) or in trade for your own fannish T-shirt. They're available while supplies last.

Letters

OtherRealms solicits your feedback. We want to know what you think about the magazine and Science Fiction. Letters will be considered for publication unless you request otherwise. Letters may be edited for length or content if necessary. Addresses will not be printed unless you let me know you want me to.

Colophon

OtherRealms is published on a Macintosh and a LaserWriter Plus. Software used to generate it include FullWrite Professional, Aldus Freehand and Ready, Set Go! 4.0a. Data-entry is done both in-house and by TypeSmiths. Typos are done exclusively in-house. The body typeface is Garamond. The display faces are Univers in various weights and sizes.

Book ratings in OtherRealms

[*****] Ones of the best books of the year
[****] An above average book
[***] A good book. Recommended
[**] Flawed, but has its moments
[*] Not Recommended
[] To Be Avoided

OtherRealms
Science Fiction and Fantasy
In Review

Editor
Chuq Von Rospach

Science Editor
Laurie Sefton

Contributing Editors
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Charles de Lint
Rick Kleffel
Alan Wexelblat

OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988

One time rights have been acquired from the contributors.

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

OtherRealms is published in March, June, September and December by:

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

USENET: chuq@sun.com
Delphi: CHUQ
CIS: 73317, 635
GENie: C.VONROSPAC

End of Part 1

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Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 2)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 2

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

Behind The Scenes: The Troupe
From Sideshow to Center Ring

Gordon Linzner
Copyright 1988 by Gordon Linzner

The Troupe, which Pocket Books will publish this summer, began as an attempt to update the 'sinister sideshow' theme. The archetype of this tale for me will always be Charles G. Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao. Ray Bradbury and the late Tom Reamy (Blind Voices) now seem best known for it. The usual sub-text of individuals' natures determining their fates is particularly appealing to my sense of drama.

As a born-and-bred New Yorker, I never entirely related to the small town settings common to the sub-genre. My troupe sought their victims in cities, arriving in New York as the book opens. Given the unlikelihood of even a small circus coming out of nowhere to set up overnight in, say, Central Park, I opted for a more insidious infiltration.

The streets became the sideshow (as New York's are, anyway). The troupe adopted various personae to stalk their prey: hucksters, mimes, artists, con men, etc. So that victims could mandate their own fates, the troupe were psychic vampires, who stimulated one's greatest fears, then fed on the subsequent terror. The trauma usually left a lifeless husk.

The New York setting had obvious advantages, among them, the fact that I apparently wouldn't have to do much research. Half my previous novel, The Oni, was set in 7th century Japan; those sections had been slow writing. I wound up doing research anyway, of course: revisiting scenes, reviewing relevant bits of city lore and guidebooks, checking details I thought I knew and finding, as often as not, that I didn't.

Even when memory proved correct, the city wouldn't stand still. A wonderfully decrepit warehouse on the East River, south of 23rd Street and convenient to the Medical Examiner's Office, was turned into a parking lot. I had to move my bag lady to a less interesting spot beneath the Williamsburg Bridge and gloss over a transition to the morgue. As late as the page-proof stage, a copy editor pointed out that Radio City Music Hall no longer showed movies on a regular basis. Fortunately, I acquired a computer after The Oni. Adjustments could be made relatively fast if not wholly without pain.

Even so, I fudged once or twice. Access to the old New York Central tracks, below Eleventh Avenue, isn't as easy as it appears in the book. To correct that meant either an excess of tedious detail, or a switch to some far less moody location, which would have distorted the dynamics of those scenes.

One hundred pages into the manuscript, it became obvious that the sideshow plot, fine for slim books, wasn't enough for the market I had to aim for. The troupe needed an opponent who could meet them on equal footing. I chose what I hope will only seem in retrospect the most obvious possibility. On impulse, I had this character rescue a young man who, arguably, deserved to die. Their unlikely alliance brought a much-needed focus to the book, and provided ambiguity (which many people find frightening indeed!) as predator/prey relations shifted back and forth.

The two protagonists' developing relationship contrasted with the troupe's cold interactions. Oddly, this helped make the vampires individuals, some quite likeable, rather than a monolithic evil force.

Finally, several possibilities for the troupe's origins were considered. None were as satisfactory as leaving them a mystery. That attitude usually seems a cop-out to me in this sort of book, but it seems to work in The Troupe. The final chapter had a perfectly natural spot in which all could be explained, yet my every attempt to do so seemed forced.

The Dragon Never Sleeps [****]

Glen Cook

Questar/Popular Library $3.95 422pp

Reviewed by Danny Low
Copyright 1988 by Danny Low

The "dragons" of the title are the Guardships that for 4,000 years have protected the Canon. However, the long era of peace and prosperity has also brought about decadence and decay. Simon Tregesser, head of House Tregesser, does not like the Guardships because they are impartial and incorruptible which restricts his ability to make his House and himself powerful and secure. He forms an alliance with aliens from Outside the Canon. Simon wants a Guardship of his own so he can deal with the Guardship fleet as an equal. The aliens want to conquer the Canon. This plot sets in motion a chain of events that might end in the destruction of the Canon.

There are three major storylines in this book. The first involves the Guardship VII Gemina and its crew, who comprise the point in the fight against the aliens. The second storyline involves Simon and his plots. The third involves a group of fugitives caught in the middle of the struggle. Within each major storyline, there are minor storylines. For example, three members of VII Gemina, WarAvocat Strate, Colonel Haget and trooper Klass all have their own storylines. The result is a very intricate tapestry of a tale. The only major characters who do not get much time on stage are the Outsiders, even though it is their machinations that drives all the storylines.

All the major characters are sufficiently well-developed to be distinctive. The plot is very intricate. In the beginning, a reader should seriously consider taking notes. There is a tremendous amount of action. At times, the switch to another storyline comes as a relief because the new storyline is so much less frantic. This is one of those books that once one starts to read it, cannot be put down until it is finished.

Ivory

Mike Resnick

Tor Books, 1988, 0-312-93093-3, 374 pp., $17.95.

Reviewed by Dean R. Lambe
Copyright 1988 by Dean R. Lambe

Founding Father Hugo Gernsback wished science fiction to play an educational role for its readers. If Resnick opts for the sciences of human behavior, from anthropology to political science, rather than, say, astrophysics, I don't think Gernsback would mind. In Ivory, when the reader is also treated to firsthand ecological history and tribal ethnology of East Africa, old Hugo's ghost should smile.

As with earlier works in his The Book of Man universe, Resnick tells this tale as an integrated series of vignettes that jump back and forth in time from the end of the last century to over 7000 years in Man's galactic future. As marks a master story teller, these individual scenarios have plot and characters enough to have been published separately, yet they flow together as a unified novel. And the story they tell is a compelling mystery. Who killed the greatest land mammal that ever lived, the Kilimanjaro Elephant, and why does Bukoba Mandaka, more than 7000 years later, insist that he must have this great beast's ivory tusks?

Unifying interludes feature Duncan Rojas, head of research for the galactic source of big game records, as Rojas tries to locate the long- missing 440 pounds of ivory for Mandaka, who claims to be the last living Maasai. Scholar Rojas and his intelligent computer search records on thousands of planets, over seven millennia, as they seek both the lost tusks and the answer to the mystery of Mandaka himself. Their efforts reveal the earlier histories, first in Kenya, then off Earth, as Maasai descendants gain, then gamble away the precious ivory, as thief and scientist, warlord and alien temporarily own the mighty elephant's teeth.

If flaw there be in Resnick's overdue first hardcover, one might quibble that human business 70 years hence, or 7000, is pretty much the same, once the doors have dilated. But no "geewhiz" factor detracts from this solid people story, which will glue you to your chair until the final page. Like Rudyard Kipling, Resnick knows how to count the tribal lays. Buy this one today.

A Splendid Chaos

John Shirley

Franklin Watts, 1988, 359pp, $17.95, 0-531-15065-8.

Reviewed by Neal Wilgus
Copyright 1988 by Neal Wilgus

If Zero and Bowler and Angie and Cisco had been wearing mirrorshades when they were abducted by The Meta, we'd know for sure that A Splendid Chaos is a cyberpunk story. But since they weren't, and since they had no opportunity to do so after they awakened on the alien planet they call Fool's Hope, we'll just have to put aside the genre label and settle for the fact that this gripping novel is a first rate read, regardless of how it's categorized. What a relief!

Zero is the hero -- or at least the main character -- of this story, but there are plenty of other colorful and interesting people in the crew, including Bowler, Angie and Cisco, who had been out with Zero for a good time after college finals that night they were kidnapped. On Fool's Hope they also encounter such desperate characters as Jamie, a lesbian leader of the human population; Yoshio, who joins Zero and Angie on a dangerous mission; Doggo, who stays behind to help defend the humans -- and a strange being called Jack the Baptist who seems to know more than anyone else about what's going on. Then there are the bad guys -- Kelso the pimp, Bella the whore, Solus the sacrificed, Swanee who can fly, and, the worst of the lot, Fiskle, who you know is really bad because he was a follower of "Skinner and Social Darwinism" long before he became a community leader on Fool's Hope.

In addition, there are thirty alien races in competition with the humans for survival, some vaguely friendly, many openly hostile, all deadly in one way or another. There is a trade among the various races and some cooperation, but all are victims of the mysterious Meta, who set the situation up and then pulled back to observe, with little or no interference in the result. The insectoid Whorebugs, the spit-sucking Poolsh, the bear-like Groyn, the argumentative Ki-ips are all among the weird and worrisome aliens that Zero and his friends encounter as the drama unfolds.

Members of two alien races, the taciturn High Clan and the territorial Pezz, become Zero's special allies as a mission gets underway to the Project Station, where the Meta leaves various incentives or bonuses for whoever can get there first. This is behavior modification to the max, Skinner unchained, and it makes the tin soldier fascism of Fiskle, the Social Darwinist unchanged, look puny indeed -- one of the fine ironies here, but not one Shirley hits you over the head with. What he does hit you with is the gut-wrenching double story of Zero's party striking out for the Project Station through a bizarre and deadly landscape, while back at the human colony Fiskle, transformed into an almost supernatural creature called a Twist, plots his gruesome campaign to take over the whole planet.

Considered objectively, A Splendid Chaos has to be labeled science fantasy, using the trapping of science fiction to tell a story of magic, but neglecting to give any convincing science to support it. The magical stuff Shirley calls IAMton, for instance, is just magical stuff, like hyperspace or the franistan, enabling the action to go forward. Similarly, the Meta are literally faceless since only their camera eyes are present, and they have seemingly endless power -- but their purpose and the source of their power is unknown.

And who cares? The source of Shirley's power in this powerful book is in the vivid characters, the bizarre creatures, the colorful environment -- the unique phrasing and outlandish ideas -- the detailed and convincing atmosphere in which the gripping action takes place... In short -- style, which is John Shirley's strength and what makes A Splendid Chaos a splendid read.

Orphans of Creation [****]

Roger MacBride Allen

Baen Books, 1988. 345 pages. $3.50

Reviewed by Michael A. Banks
Copyright 1988 by Michael A. Banks.

At last -- a book that delivers what its cover blurb promises. From the back cover of Orphan of Creation:

In the day after tomorrow, on a backwoods farm in Mississippi, a paleontologist unearths the bones of a creature that could never have lived in that time or place. The incredible find brings its discoverers to the deepest forests of western Africa, and face to face with a miracle older than Man.

Indeed, this is an accurate summary of the novel, but Orphan of Creation delivers much more.

The novel's major plot is based in part on a proposition made by Stephen Jay Gould in his book, The Mismeasure of Man. "Suppose," Gould says, "that one or several species of our ancestral genus Australopithecus had survived ... we would then have faced all the moral dilemmas involved in treating a human species of distinctly inferior mental capacity. What would we have done with them -- slavery? extirpation? coexistence? menial labor? zoos?"

The answer to Gould's question is presented adamantly -- and believably -- in Orphan of Creation: slavery.

The book opens at a present-day Thanksgiving reunion of a black family at their ancestral family home in Mississippi. The major cast of characters includes Dr. Barbara Marchando, a paleontologist who works for the Smithsonian Institution; her cousin Livingston Jones, a biochemistry student; and, later, Rupert Maxwell, a white co-worker in the Smithsonian's Paleontology department.

Steeped in post-dinner boredom and drawn to relive her one of her favorite childhood activities, Barbara visits the attic of the house where the reunion is being held. The house is now owned by Barbara's Aunt Josephine Jones. Ironically, Barbara's great-great- grandfather Zebulon Jones -- a former slave -- bought it out from under his former master during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era.

In the attic, she finds Zebulon Jones' journal. An exciting find in itself, the journal presents a mystery involving strange creatures that Zebulon Jones' master had experimented with -- a bizarre group of subhuman monsters who didn't live very long, and who the slaves would not allow to be buried in their cemetery.

It doesn't take Barbara long to realize that there is something big hidden on the grounds of the former plantation. After gaining her Aunt's blessing (no mean task, as the woman is a God-fearing Baptist) and her cousin's help, she begins a minor archaeological dig which yields up perfectly preserved, non-fossil bones of Australopithecus -- the lost ancestor of man. Once she's certain of her find, Barbara moves quickly to enlist the support of fellow paleontologists at the Smithsonian, and events move rapidly from there.

But things don't go as easily as that summary might lead you to believe. Orphan of Creation is at once a detective story and a drama of a major scientific discovery and the social turmoil that follows. The first few chapters deal heavily with Barbara Marchando's detective work in moving from entries in a 120 year-old journal into the discovery of graves containing scientific impossibilities outside a 19th-century slave cemetery. And it is no easy task she faces, even after she realizes what must be hidden in those graves. She must enlist the aid of family members, suffer through the prejudice of the owner of the small-town newspaper owner who will not grant access to old newspaper files so desperately needed, and more.

Woven in among this are Barbara's personal struggles -- not the least of which is fighting the conflicting emotions she has for her soon-to- be ex-husband (an M.D. who is trying to revive their shattered marriage).

The twists and turns that lead an archaeologist and her family first to discover the 130 year-old remains of a species thought long-extinct, and finally to confront living members of the species, are fascinating -- and believable. And Allen neatly balances the reactions to this discovery by individual characters with those of society and various elements of it. (Imagine a fundamentalist evangelist faced with incontrovertible proof of evolution?) And he does the same with the effects of this discovery.

The book's structure is excellent. Allen sticks with the protagonist's viewpoint throughout most of the book, slipping into that of others not as a device to escape the difficulty of showing important information through the eyes of the protagonist, but to allow the reader to experience the events and background without too much filtering through the protagonist only. (These occasional forays into the minds of other major and supporting characters also enrich those characters, bringing to them more life than would otherwise have been there.)

Of particular interest are the "documents" that Allen intersperses throughout the text -- extracts from Zebulon Jones' diary, a pre-Civil War newspaper advertisement touting the merits of a "new breed of slave," contemporary newspaper stories, and the like. Each of these is written in apparent exact emulation, and the technique is not overused. The result is a tantalizing glimpse into the past as well as into the "real" world surrounding this tale.

I at first thought the book might end with the discovery of living members of Australopithecus, but Allen doesn't cheat; he takes the book far beyond the simple discovery -- all the way to its logical conclusion. The ending is slightly diluted by the fact that it points toward a sequel, but this does not detract from the story.

Equal in interest to the novel's story and structure is the writing itself. Allen's writing technique is a well-balanced blend of dialogue, action, description, and narrative -- each in proper proportion to the other. I found in Orphan of Creation a maturity of style and technique that wasn't present in Allen's earlier works. The entire book sports perhaps two stylistic flaws, and those may be the result of a line-edit. (And, to be fair, the flaws are minor: the use of the same noun twice within the same sentence where a euphemism would have been better, and the translation of what had been a character tag in dialogue into narrative.) The bottom line is a smoothly-flowing book with few bumps.

Overall, a fine read, and a book that would receive instant critical and popular acclaim under the byline of one of the better-known writers in the field. As it is, I suspect that word of mouth will bring that same acclaim -- acclaim that is more than deserved.

Recommended, whether you're looking for a few hours' entertainment or some thought-provoking speculation. ---- End of Part 2

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Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 3)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 3

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

Scattered Gold

Charles de Lint
Copyright 1988 by Charles de Lint

Installment #5: In which we explore some futures

Antibodies
David J. Skal
[****]
Congdon & Weed, March 1988; 169pp; $15.95
Hardcover; ISBN 0-86553-199-4

Zero
Eric Van Lustbader
[****]
Random House, 1988; 425pp; $19.95
Hardcover; ISBN 0-394-56576-2

A Splendid Chaos
John Shirley
[***]
Franklin Watts, 1988; 359pp; $17.95
Hardcover; ISBN 0-531-15065-8

A Song Called Youth -- Book Two:
Eclipse Penumbra
John Shirley
[****+]
Questar, May 1988; 322pp; $3.95
Paperback; ISBN 0-445-20508-3

Stinger
Robert R. McCammon
[****]
Pocket Books, April 1988; 538pp; $4.95
Paperback; ISBN 0-671-62412-1

Death in the Spirit House
Craig Strete
[***]
Foundation, August 1988; 192pp; $14.95
Hardcover; ISBN 0-385-17826-3

The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars
Thomas M. Disch
[***]
Doubleday, 1988; 72pp; $11.95
Hardcover; ISBN 0-385-24162-3

Chronosequence
Hilbert Schenck
[****]
TOR, June 1988; 314pp; $17.95
Hardcover; ISBN 0-312-93079-8

Unicorn Mountain
Michael Bishop
[*****]
Arbor House, June 1988; 367pp; $17.95
Hardcover; ISBN 0-87795-953-6

Mona Lisa Overdrive
William Gibson
[*****]
Bantam/Spectra, November 1988; 260pp; $18.95
Hardcover; ISBN 0-553-05250-0

Mostly SF this time around -- for no particular reason except that's what I seem to be reading more of these past months. No spaceships, though. Except for when we talk about sentient household appliances and in the McCammon review, and it's a horror book.

Go figure it.

Antibodies

"Born meat, you'll die meat."

Unless you strike out against your fleshy prison.

The "antibodies" of David J. Skal's second novel are aiming towards what they perceive as the next evolutionary step for mankind: the exchange of their bodily parts -- their "meat" -- for prosthetics until they are merely entities inhabiting machines. The heart of their worship is the Cybernetic Temple, an underground church that has videotapes, loaded with subliminal messages, as its sacrament.

Considering just how pervasive cults already are in Western society, Skal's speculations have the uncomfortable ring of truth about them.

This is not a safe book. Skal experiments with prose styles, particularly in those sections from the cult deprogrammer Julian Nagy's point of view. It has only one likable character who is rarely on stage. In fact, with its subject matter and characters, the book is perverse and unpleasant.

But it is an important work and it should be read. Skal has developed a believable near future society, his speculations are impeccable, and even with his ouroboros ending, maintains a gripping and powerful storyline throughout. You won't necessarily enjoy the experience, but it will make you think. And you won't forget it.

Zero

In certain esoteric Buddhist sects involving swordsmanship, this is the last of nine magical words that are invoked as a form of Taoist meditation after the daily practice session. It means "where the Way has no power," the Way being the Tao of the swordsman.

In Eric Van Lustbader's latest novel, Zero is also the name of what many consider to be an almost supernatural being who sees to the protection of the Taki yakuza clan, yakuza being a kind of Japanese gangster. In part, the novel leads the reader on a search for the identity of Zero; but it also relates to the striving that various of the protagonists make to attain or escape from the attitude of Zero.

The action shifts principally between Hawaii and Japan as Michael Doss sets out to discover how and why his father died. The trail soon leads him to a complex plot amongst warring yakuza that has its roots in post-war Japan and the Cold War between the East and West.

Van Lustbader has made a career out of his Far Eastern novels, staking out the territories of China, Vietnam and especially Japan in a series of engrossing thrillers that are more than just an entertaining blend of spy novel and Eastern mysticism. The author approaches his subject matter with great love and respect, and it's those aspects that the reader comes away with when the final page is turned.

Yes, but it's not SF or fantasy, is it, so why am I talking about it here?

Well, I've got two reasons. Those of you with long memories will probably recall that Van Lustbader began his literary career with the four-book "Sunset Warrior" series, SF novels heavily dependent on Eastern philosophies. So there's the peripheral interest. But it's also a damn fine book, as most of his novels have been, full of "alien" cultures (alien, at least, to most Westerners) and some fine world- building (by which I mean his fictional secret societies) -- although the latter is seamlessly grafted into the histories of our world, rather than set in the far reaches of space.

A Splendid Chaos

A Song Called Youth -- Book Two:
Eclipse Penumbra

Here, after an absence of a couple of years from the shelves of our bookstores, are two new novels by John Shirley -- the writer who, from time to time, has been taking on Ellison's mantle as shit- disturber of the SF field.

Don't get me wrong -- I mean that as a compliment. Sometimes things need to be stirred up. But none of that should have any bearing on the books in hand, except that when Shirley speaks of the quality that the field needs, one can't help but judge his own books by the same high standards he wishes to impose on others.

How does he match up? One near miss and one definite hit.

A Splendid Chaos hearkens back to that old "travelogue" style of SF novel where the protagonist, or protagonists, wander across the planet (or solar system) and come across wonder after wonder -- and it's that, more than the actual plot, which is the hook to keep the reader turning the page. Sort of as in, what can possibly come next?

In Shirley's novel, a native New Yorker -- a would-be filmmaker/punk named Zero -- gets taken away to an odd planet by mysterious aliens and finds himself embroiled in a.) a war between various other alien races brought to this world and some crazed humans who are being turned into "Twists" -- twisted versions of humanity -- and b.) on a quest across this new planet of wonders in which he, and his band of cohorts, run across pretty well the entire gamut of weird beings and situations.

Shirley is highly inventive -- if a little brutal at times -- with his aliens and bizarre situations, but what lifts this book above being merely another retread of Golden Age (whenever that was) space opera is that his characters have real social and political concerns and it's these, as much as their bravery, etc., that allows them to come out ahead in the end.

So you get some Good Thinks, and a fairly entertaining storyline, but it ain't exactly high art -- not as Shirley has yearned for in his essays. And it's not going to make you sit back and questions the wrongs of the world. For that reason -- by Shirley's own criteria -- it's a miss.

And the hit? That's volume two of his "A Song Called Youth" -- Eclipse Penumbra.

It's been three years since the first volume, Eclipse (Bluejay, 1985; recently reprinted by Questar) -- and that's a long wait for a series that's this good. Each book stands on its own, but taken together (at least, so far, when the first two books are taken together) they make a whole that's very much greater than its parts.

Shirley postulates a time in the near future -- 2021 -- when, after a war in Europe, a brutal security force, the Second Alliance, has been hired to keep the peace. Unfortunately, the SA is being run by born- again fascists and racists whose primary goal is to make Earth as WASP as it can be. Coupled to the story of how the New Resistance is battling the SA on all fronts, from war-torn Europe to the subliminal propaganda of the media on the world-linking Grid, is a secondary storyline of the struggles of Earth's first space colony to get out from under the thumb of more of these same SA goons.

Mixed into the brew is some fine characterization -- the personal stories of many of the characters have as much importance as the overall plot; a lot of well-thought-out, and frightening, speculation (because the world really is very close to just this kind of a situation); sections of hard-hitting prose set right beside lyrical sections that literally sing; and it's got a killer of a plot.

You might say, well yeah, but we've already seen Hitler in all his guises -- so how's this any different?

What makes it different is that this situation is drawn from how the world is today and serves as a timely warning. Shirley is using SF as a platform to deal with important issues and he's to be commended for both utilizing the material, and doing so in a manner that's never preachy.

He works the soft sciences -- primarily sociology and psychology -- to show us how the worst horrors mankind has brought on itself can all too easily return, and adds to them those that are particular to our age -- environmental concerns, global politics and the nuclear issue.

The plot's got a really sharp bite, and yes there's a great deal of carefully-worked war campaigning, but this isn't simply more There Will Be War bullshit. It's a tough, hard look at the future, with a bright warning label slapped on the side that reads, "The future's here now." Check out today's TV Evangelists; see what your government's up to right now (governments make war, not people); see what uses our fabulous new technologies are being put to.

I'm no Luddite, but it all scares the shit out of me. Read A Song Called Youth and tell me what it does to you.

Stinger

Robert R. McCammon's Stinger is what Stephen King's The Tommyknockers could have been. That's not to cut down King, but The Tommyknockers wasn't his strongest outing -- probably as much because Misery was just so damn good and how was he supposed to follow it up?

The reason I compare the two at all is that both books are by major writers (who are each considered to be solely horror writers), both dealt with alien first contacts, both were set in small towns, both writers are particularly strong in their characterization....

But that's where the comparisons end. King basically gave us a "sci fi" book -- lovingly based on all the B-movies he watched while growing up, and the book retained a lot of their goofiness. Stinger is firmly based in the current SF tradition -- lots of reasoned-out speculation.

Basically we have two sets of aliens in Stinger. An escapee from an intergalactic prison who takes up lodgings in the body of a seven-year-old girl when her stolen spacecraft crashes on earth, and the bounty hunting Stinger who bears some resemblance to a scorpion and is capable of duplicating any form it wants to. The small Texas town of Inferno, where both aliens land, is cut off from the rest of the world by a force field for the space of approximately twenty-four hours, and away we go.

McCammon has never been in better form. The strengths of his latest novel stem not from his plot (which is a real crackler), nor his ability to create tension (which stays at a high voltage level throughout), but from his ability to create real people and involve his readers in their lives. We don't just see their reactions to the aliens; we live through their day-to-day trials as well.

For Stinger, McCammon has created another large cast and it's to his credit that we never lose sight of who's who. There are shades of grey throughout so that a coward gains bravery, old enemies are forced into uneasy alliances, a drunkard redeems himself....

This is good stuff -- something that will appeal to mainstream and genre readers alike. Once again, if you think you don't like horror, don't be put off by the packaging. This is adventurous SF, set in our contemporary world, and it's got something for everybody without ever once having to take itself down to the level of the lowest common denominator.

Death in the Spirit House

Craig Strete's Death in the Spirit House gives us two Native Americans. One is Red Hawk; a hunter, a killer, an amoral despoiler. The other is John Skydancer; raised by white men since he was seven years old, and more white now than Native.

They come together in the Spirit House -- a sacred mountain. Red Hawk is there to hunt down his nemesis, an enormous black cougar that embodies the spirit of the mountain; Skydancer to push through a bill of goods on the Native people that live in the shadow of the mountain. With the signature of the tribal elders on a legal document, the company Skydancer works for will no longer be held responsible for the radiation poisoning that, unknown to the tribe, is slowly killing them. As a bonus, he gets the boss' daughter and a good position in the company if he's successful.

Things don't quite work out the way either man hopes.

Strete's novel is a simple story, almost a folktale in its sparseness, that gains complexities through its characterization, the seriousness of its underlying themes, and the sense of language utilized to tell the story. Unfortunately, while Strete's language is wonderful most of the time, there are enough moments where its sparseness is too spare, where its simplicity undermines the flow of the storyline.

It's not often, but there is weak prose, and sudden shifts of perspective that don't work, to hurt the mood of the better sections. Death in the Spirit House is a brave attempt, but it doesn't quite match up to the power of his other more recent works such as "The Game of Cat and Eagle" (In the Field of Fire, TOR, 1987) or To Make Death Love Us (under the name Sovereign Falconer).

The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars

Thomas M. Disch writes weird stories -- no question about it. The ghosts of dead businessmen, sentient hair, a very strange episode of Miami Vice, haunted pillows and, of course, his toaster stories.

The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars has the same household appliances as the first story, The Brave Little Toaster (F&SF, August 1980), only this time, rather than going on a quest from the cottage where they were abandoned in search of their master, they're saving the world from an invasion of Martian appliances.

I wanted to like this book, but unfortunately, I have to say that it didn't really work for me. It has a lot of the charm of the first, but it's not really that different. The delight of sentient appliances was already covered in the first story; this one merely has them on a space opera adventure that could have been about pets, people, whatever -- although there are some nice touches, like Albert Einstein's hearing aid and the origin of the Martian appliances that could only fit into the story as it's told.

If you've read the first, you'll probably like this one, but not as much. If you don't have any idea what I'm talking about, do give it a try -- because I can see how this could be most charming if one hadn't met the characters before.

Chronosequence

Hilbert Schenck's Chronosequence begins innocently enough. At a book auction in London, England, Eve Pennington acquires a nineteenth century handwritten bound manuscript describing some odd events in Nantucket, New England, where she spent some of her happiest times holidaying with her family. That innocent purchase soon plunges her into an escalating series of events that has its roots not only in her own past, but goes back two hundred years, to the mysterious hauntings of a creature called the Yoho in Nantucket and a curious orrery discovered in the Scottish highlands that has an extra celestial body in orbit around our planet.

Soon government agencies are chasing Eve and her allies -- a pair of antiquarian book sellers that are as charming a pair of rogues as one could hope to find -- especially the seventy-two-year-old Ed Berry.

Schenck has a lovely prose style -- it has a hint of times past in it, but remains completely contemporary. His characters, too, are both modern and timeless, and if the book veers into Romanticism at times, is that really such a bad thing in these days of rush and bustle?

My only complaint with the book -- and this is not leveled at Schenck, but is inherent in the kind of story that Chronosequence is - - is that once we understand just what the mysterious force behind all the strange goings-on is, when we're no longer wondering and speculating, but actually know, one's left with a vague sense of disappointment.

It's not that Schenck cheated, or did a poor job, either in how he slowly revealed the mystery, or in what it proved to be -- both were done admirably. It's just that the solution to the mystery is never as wonderful as it was when it was still elusive.

But don't let my mumblings put you off -- I'm never satisfied when this kind of mystery is revealed. Do read this book. Schenck's prose is delightful, his characters warm and quirky, and the story has both wit and charm. I know I'll be tracking down some of his earlier works when I have some free reading time.

Unicorn Mountain

Straight away, the cover and title of Michael Bishop's new novel Unicorn Mountain is liable to put some readers off. If you've had it up to here with cute quest fantasies (of which the unicorn has become the symbol as much as spaceships have for SF), you'll undoubtedly want to pass this by. I know I would have except for one thing: the Bishop name.

There's no way, I thought as I held the book in my hand, that the author of The Secret Ascension or Who Made Stevie Crye? is going to approach this subject in a saccharine manner.

And he doesn't.

Unicorn Mountain isn't so much about unicorns as it is about some very real contemporary issues. Such as AIDS and the reactions of both the victims and those around the victim. Or the complex,changing face of Native Americans.

Briefly put, Libby Quarrels and her ranch hand Sam Coldpony are trying to make a go of their Colorado ranch that Libby has won in a settlement from her ex. Enter her ex's cousin Bo Gavin, dying of AIDS. Now Libby has the ranch and Bo to worry about; Sam is coming to grips with his own heritage and the uncomfortable realization that he was wrong to desert his daughter, now sixteen and becoming a novice shaman, when he left his wife; and Bo is dying.

Bishop's novel also has unicorns. They remain otherworldly creatures, a kind of metaphor for the wonder that lies at the heart of the world, the wonder that all the characters are trying to connect with in their own way. Unfortunately, the unicorns are dying of a disease that is very similar to AIDS.

Unicorn Mountain is a complex and absorbing novel. Like the best fiction, it operates on many different levels, all of which resonate to and strengthen each other. Bishop's prose has never been in better form. His characters are real people and immediately recognizable -- not because they are stereotypes, but because Bishop brings them to life with such skill that we can't help but recognize and believe in them. And what's especially good about his work here is that while he's unabashedly embracing one of the most outworn images of fantasy, he has imbued it with an appeal that is at once timeless and fresh.

This book won't appeal to lovers of cute quests -- but they've got enough books of their own anyway. It was long past time that someone sat down and wrote a mature, contemporary fantasy novel for the rest of us.

And Bishop's done just that.

Mona Lisa Overdrive

In Mona Lisa Overdrive, William Gibson returns to the future world of his earlier novels with a vengeance.

All the elements that made Count Zero and the multiple-award winning Neuromancer the forerunners of a new movement in science fiction are present once more: the high-tech, street-wise prose and characters, the hard science thrust that's so seamlessly melded to serious humanistic concerns, and convincing extrapolations of how our contemporary culture will change as it moves into the future.

The viewpoint characters are almost all women this time -- a fascinating collage, chosen from a cross-selection of Gibson's future world. There's the media star Angela, recovering from drug abuse, who hears the voices of voodoo gods in her head; Kumiko, the Yakuza crimelord's daughter; Mona, a hooker whose own addictions draw her into a web from which she discovers escape to be impossible; and Sally Shear, an assassin who proves, more than the others, to have her roots in the earlier books.

The one male viewpoint is that of Slick Henry, a down-at-his- heels ex-con who is dealing with his previous incarceration through the building of huge robotic representations of figures important to his past. It's in the deserted factory that he shares with two other squatters that the various threads of the narrative are drawn together in a satisfying conclusion.

It's then that cyberspace -- a concept that Gibson has chosen as a physical depiction of computer data -- is finally explained in terms that encompasses both the ancient voodoo symbols that Gibson first utilized, and what we know now of Artificial Intelligences. The reader new to the series will find Gibson's speculations provocative and fascinating, while old time readers will be delighted as many of the puzzles that Gibson has dealt with in the earlier books fall neatly into a coherent whole.

Through the vigor of his writing and world-view, Gibson injected a much-needed breath of fresh air into the moribund state in which contemporary SF had found itself at the beginning of the eighties. With Mona Lisa Overdrive, he brings this phase of his career to a close and, like the best practitioners of any craft, moves on to fresh challenges.

His next book is The Difference Engine, a collaboration with Bruce Sterling set in Victorian times that features a steam-driven Babbage computer -- which is about as far from cyberspace and the future world of Neuromancer as an author can get. But if Gibson brings the same originality of vision and clarity of writing that has marked his earlier work to this collaboration, it's likely he'll be at the forefront of yet another new movement in SF.

And justifiably so.
----
End of Part 3

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Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 4)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 4

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

Pico Reviews

Alqua Dreams    [*]
        Rachel Pollack
        Franklin Watts, $16.95, 246pp

This is a disappointing book. Pollack does a very good job of writing about people but she has a serious problem with plotting. This story is properly only a novelette. It is grossly padded out with background development of the alien culture and the character development of the protagonist, Jaimi Cooper. While well done , the mechanism used to provide the excuse for this exposition is a very bad one. Basically, Cooper is made to act in an inexplicably stupid manner. It takes him half the book to discover the obvious solution to his problem when he should have gotten it by the third chapter. He then spends the rest of the book fumbling around trying to implement his solution when he could have done it in two chapters.

The story is an old SF cliche; Cooper has to get the natives to sign a
legal contract allowing his company to mine on their planet, but the
natives want nothing that Jaimi can offer them. What is untraditional
about this story is that instead of figuring out a neat gimmick whereby
Cooper can get the natives to sign on the dotted line, Pollack uses
this old plot to explore the nature of religious fanaticism. The
problem is that she simply could not come with a plausible plot to
allow her to do this without destroying the story.
-- Danny Low
hplabs!hpccc!dlow

Barbary [***]
Vonda N. McIntyre
Ace, $3.50, ISBN 0-441-04886-2

This is a juvenile novel set on an O'Neill colony orbiting Earth. The
plot involves Barbary emigrating to the colony, smuggling a pet cat
along, and a first contact with aliens. If you grew up on Heinlein's
juveniles, this makes for a good afternoon's escape reading. Readers
expecting another Dreamsnake, however, will be disappointed.
-- Chuck Koelbel
chk@cs.purdue.edu

The Belgariad   [****]
Pawn of Prophecy, 1982, 258pp
Queen of Sorcery, 1982, 327pp
Magician's Gambit, 1983, 305pp
Castle of Wizardry, 1984, 373pp
Enchanters' End Game, 1984, 372pp
        David Eddings
        Del Rey books, $3.50 each volume.

I'm giving this five volume set one overall rating because there is no
sensible way to separate the books or read them out of order. I'm very
glad I waited until all five were out before I started reading them,
because it is very much one story, broken into separate parts seemingly
whenever a book's worth of pages were filled. Eddings kept me turning
those pages the whole way through even when I could tell much of what
was going to happen far in advance. While this has the scope and story
line of an epic fantasy, the style isn't the epic poetry/historical
view of the Tolkien-clones but rather a down- to-earth, you-are-there
approach. The sequel, in another five books, has already started, but
I'll wait till they are all available too.
-- Mary Anne Espenshade
mae@aplvax.jhuapl.edu

The Broken Lands        [***+]
        Fred Saberhagen
        Baen, 192pp, Dec, 1987, 0-671-65380-6

Like a book I recently reviewed (Winter's Daughter by Charles Whitmore), The Broken Lands concerns a culture that exists after some war has wiped out a modern technological society. What makes Saberhagen's book much superior is that he has taken the time to let the reader know what his main characters are all about. And two of them make an interesting contrast. Rolf is a simple peasant who hates the local Satrap, whose soldiers killed his sister. The Satrap Ekuman just wants to rule the world. [Satrap is from the Old Persian meaning "protector of the country," but Ekuman is only interested in protecting and promoting himself.]

The plot development is also looked after. Both sides are after the mysterious Elephant; both sides aren't quite sure what to make of ancient technology' when they run across it; both sides have interesting people around them; and both sides are obviously going to come together at the end in a glorious battle. At least here we can happily root for our heroes and hiss the villains.

A final note. This book proclaims it is Book I of Empire of the East.
There is nothing worse than a book obviously written to be the first
book of something, so credit is also given to the author for writing a
satisfying ending. There are enough loose ends to pique interest in the
future of the characters, but the ending is conclusive enough to leave
the reader with a very content feeling when it is all over.
-- Larry Kaufman
lsk@sun.com

A Clockwork Orange      [****]
        Anthony Burgess
        Ballantine, $3.95, 0-345-35443-5

There isn't a lot new you can say about a modern classic. This is, of course, the story of Alex, a nadsat with a taste for ultra-violence and classical music who is caught and "cured" of those tendencies. The reason that the new edition of this novel deserves attention is that it is the first American paperback edition to include Burgess' original ending. (That's right, the editor decided to cut the last chapter of the book!) If you care about preserving the integrity of an author's work, this is the version to buy. If you have not read this book yet, it is highly recommended. Be aware, however, that it is not for the squeamish. If you have read it, the added chapter is probably worth the price of admission, especially if you haven't reread the book in a while. Check to be sure that the copy you buy has seven chapters in Part 3, not six as in previous American editions.

-- Chuck Koelbel

Corpseman       [*]
        Joel Henry Sherman
        Del Rey, 1988, $3.50, 277p

Cyborg Spaceship pilots. Islamic assassins. Drunken sprees and mysterious murders. Slavery for convicted felons. Here we have another issue of the standard cyberpunk novel; mediocre imitation William Gibson. Mr. Sherman has the unfortunate but not uncommon flaw of being unwilling to leave anything to the reader's imagination and describes every detail at excruciating length. Had he stuck to the story, it would have been 150 pages or less. If you absolutely cannot get enough CyberPunk, you may be desperate enough to read this. Otherwise, not recommended.

-- David Shea

David's Sling   [***]
        Mark Stiegler
        Baen, $3.50, 346pp, 0-671-65369-5

Spent too much time trying to decide whether or not to support SDI?
Take a rest and read David's Sling. He has the answers to defense
questions no one has even asked yet. Taking the "crowbars from space"
theme (first seen science fictionally in Footfall) to its logical
extreme and beyond, he posits a world that no longer needs a nuclear
defense force. The world will get there with the help of the Zetetic
Institute, and their advanced grasp of information processing. First
hard science fiction I've seen in quite a while where sociology was one
of the sciences.
-- Sandy Hereld
GODZLA.decnet!CROASDIL

The Door Into Fire      [***+]
        Diane Duane
        TOR, $2.95, 290 pp, 1985, 2.95, 0-812-53671-1

Book 1 in a four part series, this is a most unusual sword and sorcery novel. The most important theme in the book is taking responsibility for your actions, and not accepting guilt for the actions of others. The hero Herewiss is intelligent, charming, and guilt ridden, and his lover Freelorn is feckless, irresponsible and the usurped heir of the next Kingdom over. In this book, Herewiss strives to control the power he feels he has inside him, so that he can help Freelorn take back his throne. Very intricately worked out religion and magic systems; a very nice variation on a theme. It would be 4 stars, but part of the social structure is unlikely in the extreme, and the characters are a bit uneven. If you have read So You Want to be a Wizard, the magic system is totally different, but the fire elemental is back!

-- Sandy Hereld

An Excess of Enchantments       [*]
        Craig Shaw Gardner
        Ace, 180pp, July, 1988, $3.50, 0-441-22363-X

There is nothing more disappointing than a funny book that isn't. I've really enjoyed Gardner's series of books on Ebenezum and Wuntvor, the Eternal Apprentice. An Excess of Enchantments, unfortunately seems to hit a brick wall, and unlike anything else he's done, isn't even remotely funny. It's as if Gardner just ran out of jokes -- and it looks to me like Gardner knew he was in trouble. Some of the attempted jokes are so obvious and weak you can almost see the snare drum in the background. This is definitely a pass, even for the most die-hard Gardner fans.

-- chuq von rospach

Exile's Gate    [****]
        C.J. Cherryh
        DAW, 1988, 414pp $3.95

The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven; but heaven is usually pretty far from those paths where rides Morgaine the White, sealer of worlds, with the doomsword Changeling under her hand and her henchman Nhi Vanye guarding her back. Mercy is a luxury she can but seldom afford. The more things change, the more they stay the same in the infinity of Gate-linked worlds. Morgaine and Vanye, on the latest lap of their infinite journey, find themselves in yet another land where humans and qhalur are at war. Alliances are shaky, identity itself cannot be counted upon, and victorious lords stake prisoners out on the hillside for the wolves.

After several years' lapse devoted to writing in numerous shared worlds, and admittedly several false starts on this novel, the question rose as to whether the author still had her finger on the pulse of the series; whether, indeed, she really wanted to go on with it. This doesn't read like a book that was simply hacked out to satisfy fan demand. There has been growth, change, evolution, as there should be; though Cherryh is still using Nhi Vanye as a viewpoint character, one feels her prying deeper, if with less precision, into the soul of Morgaine. The other characters are equally well drawn, especially a new ally/victim/friend, Chei ep Kantory, in a role analogous to that played by Chya Roh in the earlier books. The writing is consistent in style and feel with the previous books as well, though the prose is not quite so sparse and vigorous.

Exile's Gate is a thoroughly worthy successor to one of the most appealing and successful science-fantasy series in contemporary SF.

-- David Shea

The Fall of Atlantis    [*]
        Marion Zimmer Bradley
        Baen Books, 1987, 500pp, $3.95

Very disappointing. MZB is one of my favorite authors, but I could not get into this book. Maybe the title mislead my expectations as very little of the story concerns Atlantis at all and only the last 50 or so pages take place there. The cover illustration was very obviously taken from the title alone. Magic and secret plots are uncovered within the Temples of the Priests of Light -- unfortunately they are so secret the reader never learns what they are either. Great Mysterious Things happen, but the characters are so awed by them that they forget to describe them, so the reader isn't shown what is happening. The plot of the book was the best kept secret, I couldn't find one anywhere.

-- Mary Anne Espenshade

Falling Free    [****]
        Lois McMaster Bujold
        Baen, 1988, 307pp, $3.50

Leo Graf was an engineer, employed by the giant GalacTech company. His assignment to the Cay Habitat orbiting the world Rodeo was solely as a teacher of welding techniques. He soon grew attached to his bright, energetic -- and perfectly free-fall adapted -- students, the "quaddies," the result of biological experiments, have no legal status as "persons." When another technological development rendered the "quaddies" obsolete, however, it was chiefly Leo Graf who stood in the way of a ruthless executive who wanted to liquidate the project -- and the "quaddies." Trust an engineer to convert an ethical problem into an engineering problem!

With her first three novels, Lois Bujold has marked herself as one of the most entertaining of the new generation of SF writers. She plots well, creates entirely believable characters and has a rare talent for pure story-telling. However, those who approach Falling Free expecting the same level of humor and whimsy which prevailed in Bujold's most recent novel Ethan of Athos may be in for a surprise. This book is altogether more serious in tone, and much more technically oriented. This should not be regarded as a bad thing; Falling Free is well up to the high standard Bujold has established for herself. It's just different. Here we see a major writer whose books one buys automatically, the name alone being sufficient guarantee of quality. Falling Free is definitely recommended.

-- David Shea

Final Frontier [****]
Diane Carey
Pocket, 1988, 434pp, $4.50

It's the third giant Star Trek novel and they're continuing to improve -- finally a story that doesn't feel like it's been inflated to fit the longer length. The tie-in to the time period of the original series is much better handled and less intrusive than in the previous volume. The story concerns the very first emergency mission of the not-quite-finished and not yet named U.S.S. Enterprise, with Capt. Robert April in command and a very small crew of the scientists and engineers that built her. Sabotage and Romulans provide assorted challenges along the way.

-- Mary Anne Espenshade

Free Lancers    [****]
        ed by Elizabeth Mitchell
        Stories by Orson Scott Card, David Drake
        and Lois McMaster Bujold
        Baen, 1987 2.95

This is also known as Alien Stars 4, although the logo is getting
smaller and smaller each collection; this is the best one yet. The OSC
story is from an upcoming collection to be called "Tales from the
Mormon Sea," and is set in the Great Smokies, soon after a generic
holocaust. This story tells of a band of Mormons, thrown out of their
town, determined to make their way to Utah, and of the survivor type
that befriends them. The Drake story is a new Hammers Slammers story.
It's part mystery, and part psychological study. One of the better
Slammers stories I've read, it still doesn't live up to the quality of
the other two stories. "Borders of Infinity" is a Miles Vorkosigan
story, set a few years after Warriors Apprentice or Ethan of Athos. I
would say it stands on its own, but barely. Miles is thrown into a
prisoner of war camp with nothing more than the clothes he has on to
try to help a man escape. But the story really gets interesting when he
finds out that the man is already dead. Great puzzle, unfortunately a
fairly downer ending. All in all, a great collection.
-- Sandy Hereld
GODZLA.decnet!CROASDIL

The Grey Horse [***]
R. A. MacAvoy
Bantam, 1987, 247pp, $3.95

This Celtic fantasy is the tale of a horse-fairy who takes human form
to court his chosen bride, an Irish girl with fairy ancestry. A
different slant from the over-supply of Celtic-based fantasy books
available recently, no elves or leprechauns, just one fantastic element
added to everyday life. This appears to be a major point in MacAvoy's
style, as she uses the same approach in the Black Dragon books.
-- Mary Anne Espenshade
mae@aplvax.jhuapl.edu

How Much for Just the Planet    [***]
        John Ford
        Pocket, 1987, 253pp, $3.95

I agree with everyone else on this one -- this book is a fun read. The very idea of a Klingon in a tuxedo gives me a fit of giggles. You too can save your planet by convincing invaders that the whole population is nuts.

-- Mary Anne Espenshade

The Moon Goddess and the Son    [*]
        Donald Kingsbury
        Baen, 1986, 471pp, $3.95

Sometimes a writer can spin a viable novel out of a successful work of short fiction, as Spider Robinson did with Stardance or Anne McCaffrey did with Dragonflight. Sometimes even a good writer just can't make a short work fly at novel length; John Varley's Millennium springs to mind. Occasionally the result of such an attempted expansion is just... well, strange.

This is the only adjective which seems applicable to the long awaited novelization of Donald Kingsbury's well regarded novella of the same name. The novel has all the problems of the original work, but little of its charm. This is a book which is best read in a sort of "fast forward" mode; anyone attempting to read it word for word will still be at the task next February. An interminable 471 pages -- it seems much longer -- Moon Goddess appears to consist in equal parts of dully correct near-future space colonization, and gushy gosh-wowie juvenile romance. Think of it as "Molly Ringwald Meets the Space Station," all in high-polish chromium and bubble-gum pink. The central character ("heroine" is just not appropriate), Diana Osborne, has neither the brains of Heinlein's Podkayne Fries nor the stubborn courage of Alexei Panshin's Mia Havero. She bumbles in and out of misadventures, in search of a saccharine infatuation, while the grown-ups bandy early-Twenty-First-Century megapolitics over her head.

As the product of the author of the justly praised Courtship Rite, this is a major disappointment.

-- David Shea

The Questing of Kedrigern       [***]
        John Morressy
        Ace, 1987, 202pp, $2.95

The further adventures of Kedrigern and Princess, introduced in A Voice for Princess. After attending Wizcon, the annual Wizards convention, Princess is a frog again and Kedrigern must find a new transformation spell to restore her. They get sidetracked many times going to find another wizard to help them -- included in a knight's quest for his lady who has been transformed into a fly, through a dangerous mist of power, into the future, and meeting Death -- who, fortunately, is looking for someone else at the time.

-- Mary Anne Espenshade

The River of Time       [****]
        David Brin
        Bantam, 1987, 295pp, $3.50

A collection of short stories, reprinted and new, with a short reflection on each by the author. All the stories are good, with something for every taste, ranging from almost fantasy (The Loom of Thessaly) to hard SF (Tank Farm Dynamo) to alternate history (Thor Meets Captain America); from very depressing (A Stage of Memory) to very funny (The River of Time). Overall the stories struck me as downbeat. Even the most positive story internally, "Tank Farm Dynamo," is a sad commentary on how far the space program has fallen from the goals it once had.

-- Mary Anne Espenshade

The Romulan Way [***]
Diane Duane & Peter Morwood
Pocket, 1987, 254pp, $3.50

Chapters in this Trek novel alternate between an adventure story centered around McCoy and a history of the developments within Vulcan culture that led to a large group building generation ships to go out and find a new world to settle. After many setbacks they found two, ch'Rihan and ch'Havran, and built what their neighbors came to call the Romulan Empire. I liked the historical sections best. The rest of the plot seemed contrived to include one of the central Trek characters, but at least it was McCoy instead of Kirk or Spock. Good use of characters and plot tie-ins from Duane's previous Trek novel My Enemy, My Ally (especially Naraht, the Horta engineer, one of my favorite original characters from previous novels). The adventure part of the story finally picks up in the last 50 pages, but is distractingly slow moving before that.

-- Mary Anne Espenshade

Shadow [***]
Dave Duncan
Del Rey, 1987, 272pp, $2.95

Sale Harl was a most junior officer of the Royal Guard, an offshoot of the most trivial nobility. He was also a skyman, one who flew the giant hooded eagles. However, a royal summons changed his life forever when he was unexpectedly appointed to the role of Shadow: chief bodyguard, and de facto advisor, to the Crown Prince. Escorting the prince on a tour to a remote stretch of the kingdom, Shadow finds himself involved in a convoluted series of plots in which he finds out much more than he ever wanted to know about the eagles he rides, the prince he serves and the kingdom. Eventually he is faced with a confrontation in which anything he does is liable to be called treason....

The previous description might make you think that Shadow resembles a bad imitation Anne McCaffrey. This is not the case. Duncan has a more cynical and realistic view of both politics and interpersonal relationships. His notions of aerodynamics are a shade more plausible, although I don't find the notion of a flying creature large enough to carry a man in anything approaching normal earth gravity likely. However, Shadow is a novel which deserves to be read on its own terms without false comparisons. In a sense it is primarily a SF vehicle for a political novel, but the characterizations and writing work well enough for it to be readable as a story. Moderately recommended.

-- David Shea

Station Gehenna [***]
Andrew Weiner
Congdon & Weed, Inc. $15.95 216pg.

This is an SF mystery. It is an inverse locked room murder mystery. In this case, everyone is locked in Gehenna station as the environment on Gehenna is deadly. The murder took place outside but there is no indication that anyone went outside or could have gone outside.

As a mystery, the story is written well. All the clues and lots of red herrings are presented. The "locked room" was all too easy to solve. Weiner's style is very much like that of Isaac Asimov when he writes a mystery, but with better characterization. Even so, it is the weakest part of the story. Only the main character is well defined. His character is much like that of Sherlock Holmes unfiltered through the softening of a Watson so you get the full brunt of a rather cold personality.

Since this is a SF mystery, the solution is a science fictional one but
not quite what you might guess. This is a well done puzzle mystery that
does not rise above being formula. People who enjoy this type of
mystery will enjoy this book.
-- Danny Low
hplabs!hpccc!dlow

Strangers From the Sky [***]
Margaret Wander Bonanno
Pocket, 1987, 402pp, $3.95

This is the second "giant" Star Trek novel and is a vast improvement over the first. I found it a very believable scenario within the Star Trek universe for the first contact between Earth and Vulcans... up to a point. There is gratuitous use of time travel here -- I have reached a saturation level with Kirk and Spock being present at every historically significant event in this region of the Galaxy. Hasn't anyone else ever done anything? The story felt expanded to fit the "giant" size. The novel subplot, especially since it had already been used by John Ford to introduce The Final Reflection, seemed to be padding on the real story. I guess Pocket decided all books have to tie in with the "present" (ST movie) time frame or readers won't be able to follow them. Pity. I would have preferred either the first contact story without the Enterprise crew at all (the story within the "novel") or the adventure of Kirk, Spock, Mitchell, Dehner and Kelso in the past without the "dream sequence" tie-in to the ST present. Very nice to see the "Where No Man..." characters used again however.

-- Mary Anne Espenshade

Takeoff!        [*****]
        Randall Garrett
        Starblaze/Donning, 1979, 247pp, $7.95

Takeoff! is the first volume collecting Randall Garrett's parodies of classic SF stories, pastiches in the styles of famous SF authors, book reviews in verse and punny stories. If you're in the mood for some thought-provoking fun, try this. To describe anything beyond the titles, such as "Backstage Lensman," would be spoilers. My favorites were "The Best Policy," "The Cosmic Beat" and "Look Out! Duck!."

-- Mary Anne Espenshade

Takeoff, Too!   [*****]
        Randall Garrett
        Starblaze/Donning, 1986, pp, $7.95

A second volume collecting Randall Garrett's writings, Takeoff, Too is more than just parodies. My favorite stories in this volume were "Cum Grano Salis," ". . . After a Few Words," two with Twilight Zone type endings -- "The Briefing" and "Pride and Primacy," and "The Foreign Hand-Tie" (the characters all have names taken from Marx Brothers movies).

-- Mary Anne Espenshade

Taltos [****]
Steven Brust
Ace, $2.95, 181pp., 0-441-18200-3

The most recent in the same series as Jhereg, Yendi, and Teckla, I think that this could be read first. This story tells how Vladimir first met Morollan and Sethra. Though not as dark as Teckla, it is still more thoughtful and introspective than the first two. This series could be used as a textbook on how to let a series grow and evolve over time.

-- Sandy Hereld

Uneasy Alliances        [***]
        (Thieves' World #11)
        Robert Lynn Asprin & Lynn Abbey, ed.
        Ace, 258pp, August, 1988, $3.50, 0-441-80610-4

I was ready to drop Thieves' World after #10, but I gave it one more. I'm glad I did. Uneasy Alliances gets back to Sanctuary -- not as the gods backyards, but as a place where people live and try to survive. There is some new authors (I was very impressed with both the C.S. Williams and the Robin Wayne Bailey stories) that give the world some new characters and a fresh vision. Not High Art, but it doesn't pretend to be. Good escapist fantasy.

-- chuq von rospach

The Universe    [***+]
        Byron Preiss, ed.
        Bantam, 0-553-05227-6

A mixture of science fiction and fact. Each of the twelve sections is an essay and a science fiction short story. Both fact and fiction are illustrated, the former with photographs and computer graphics and the latter with original art. The themes of the sections range from "Our Galaxy" through black holes to contacting extra-terrestrial civilizations.

The essays were well written, if standard material. The fiction is generally good. The only story I actively disliked was by Greg Benford. Anderson's, Bishop's, and Brin's stand out. They range from extrapolations of the ideas in the accompanying essay to experimental pieces with only tenuous relations to anything in the book. No matter what your preference, you will probably find a story here that fits it.

Illustrations range from poor to excellent. Most of the photos are beautiful and appropriate. The art in the short stories is not as good. Most of it is neither exceptionally interesting technically nor particularly accurate to the story.

-- Chuck Koelbel

Vickers [***]
Mick Farren
Ace Science Fiction $3.50 263pp

This is a standard roguish hero story. Mort Vickers is a professional assassin for Contec, one of the Big Four corporations that rule the Earth. He has been given an unusual mission: to determine if two corporate officials have turned against the company and if so, terminate them. Vickers finds that the two have indeed turned and appear to be instigating World War III.

The plotting is tight and fast paced until two-thirds the way through.
There is some reasonable although two-dimensional characterizations.
The characters are no more than stereotypes and most of them are more
suitable for a comic book. There is a fair amount of humor and in-jokes
in the story. One of the major corporations in this future world is the
Tyrell Corporation. Background development is the strongest point of
this book. The near-future world has the appropriate gritty feel. In
all, this is a pleasant read for those interested in this type of story.
-- Danny Low
hplabs!hpccc!dlow

A Voice for Princess    [***]
        John Morressy
        Ace, 1986, 213pp, $2.95

Fantasy for fun -- I picked this up on an OtherRealms recommendation. Kedrigern is a wizard expert in counterspells but has numerous misadventures in restoring the voice of a princess who could talk as a frog but only "brereep" when spelled back to human form. The side adventures on the way to the main plot keep things interesting.

-- Mary Anne Espenshade

Winter's Daughter       [*]
        Charles Whitmore
        Avon Books, 220, Dec 1988, 0-380-70117-0

Earth is recovering from a war that almost destroyed the planet and we're reading about a family that survived. This is nothing new, but the story is told as saga.

While getting an A+ for following a strict format, he receives a D- in
character development, excitement, and holding the reader's interest.
Nothing really happens, and the plot is weak. Style is fine, but there
must be substance to back it up.
-- Larry Kaufman
----
End of Part 4

↑ Top

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 5)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 5

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

The Agony Column
Rick Kleffel
Copyright 1988 by Rick Kleffel

The Servants of Twilight
Dean Koontz
Illustrated by Phil Parks
Dark Harvest, $18.95, 0-91365-24-7
[*****]

Mirror
Graham Masterton
Tor, $18.95, 0-312-93077-1
[***]

Night Visions 5
Edited by Douglas E. Winter
Dark Harvest, $22.00, 0-913165-27-1
[****]

Silver Scream
Edited by David J. Schow
Illustrated by Kevin Davies
Dark Harvest, $22.00, 0-913165-27-1
[****+]

Prime Evil
Edited by Douglas E. Winter
New American Library, $18.95, 0-453-06572-1
[****]

The Blood Kiss
Dennis Etchison
Illustrated by J. K. Potter
Scream/Press, $22.50, 0-910-489-18-1
[*****]

A Rendezvous in Averoigne
Clark Ashton Smith
Illustrated by J. K. Potter
Arkham House, $22.95, 0-87054-156-0
[*****]

Faerie Tale
Raymond E. Feist
Doubleday Publishers, $17.95, 0-385-23623-9
[**-]

Scare Tactics
Jonathan Farris
Tor, $14.95, 0-312-93085-2
[***]

Toplin
Michael McDowell
Illustrated by Harry O. Morris
Scream/Press, $30.00 Signed, 0-910489-11-4
[****]

The Silence of the Lambs
Thomas Harris
Saint Martin's Press, $18.95, 0-312-02282-4
[*****]

Blood Farm: An Iowa Gothic
Sam Siciliano
Pageant Books, $3.95, 0-517-00660-X
[***]

Over the last few years, there's been a trend in the realm of retail sales that has affected buyers and makers of both books and recorded music -- the emergence of chain stores as the predominant place of purchase. It used to be that the majority of bookstores and record stores were locally owned and operated. This is no longer the case. Accompanying this has been a decline in choice -- to find much beyond the Top 40 records or the Bestselling/New Releases books, one has to search out the so-called "specialty shops." And on the manufacturing side, those who are not constant members of that Top 10/40 group are finding it more difficult to distribute their goods. This doesn't mean that the small guys in the publishing world have faded away -- on the contrary, they have simply resorted to a different tactics to keep their share of the market. The only place one will find these books or records is in the specialty shops.

Horror, in particular, has been well-served by the smaller presses. It is not surprising that the horror field is treated so well, since one of the oldest small publishers started out publishing horror writer H.P. Lovecraft -- Arkham House. This is the grandfather of many smaller houses today. Fifty years after starting up, they're still putting out high-quality, pulp-oriented, artistic (not mainstream) horror and science fiction. But there's always competition.

Scream/Press, brainchild of bad boy Jeff Conner, started off with a bang when it published a limited, illustrated edition of Stephen King's Skeleton Crew, and followed that up with a fabulous illustrated omnibus edition of Clive Barker's Books of Blood, volumes 1 through 3. The illustrators, Jeff Potter and Harry Morris, have set a standard for illustration. Holding any Scream/Press edition in your hands is a truly pleasurable experience -- these are some of highest-quality books being published in the field. But that advantage is diminished by what can be optimistically called elastic publishing schedules. Those who pay in advance for their books may wait until after the paperbacks are available.

Dark Harvest Books specializes in collections of brand-new stories by known authors, and -- timely publishing dates. Witness their ground breaking Night Visions series, and the Silver Scream anthology reviewed this month. The proofreading of some Dark Harvest books leaves a lot to be desired and the typesetting occasionally shows the labors of an inferior computer justification program. But even though the books just don't have the artistic feel of Scream/Press releases, the names are often more familiar and the books are (in general) more accessible than Scream's rather eclectic selection.

Although one might distrust a work written by a major author under a pseudonym, Servants of Twilight by Dean Koontz (originally as Leigh Nichols) is every bit as good as Koontz's more recent work, even though it sidesteps his usual SF/horror themes for straight ahead action, mystery and suspense writing.

The idea behind the book is a large reason. Koontz doesn't come up with startling new ideas, just startling reinventions of old ones. In Servants of Twilight, Christine Scavello is a single mother raising her eight year old son, Joey, in Orange County, California. She's part owner of a fairly successful business, makes her house payments, and goes shopping at a high-class mall. It is here that a disheveled old woman named Grace Spivey first sees Joey and decides that he is the AntiChrist. Unfortunately for Christine and Joey, Grace is the head of a fairly large fundamentalist sect who believe that these are the last days before Armageddon, and that, as the Servants of Twilight, their sacred mission is to destroy the AntiChrist before he can begin a one thousand year reign of terror. A large percentage of the congregation consists of ex-cons who have taken up Grace's violent appeal to hope. What Koontz has done is to create a very clever reversal of that seemingly endless line of books and movies where the AntiChrist returns and fearless believers must locate him, oppose his powers and overcome the Ancient enemy.

Despite the lack of a supernatural premise, there are three types of terror in this novel. The first is the fear of the uncaught killer, which has, of late, become a popular theme in horror writing. However, while many "splatterpunk" books rely on graphic violence, Koontz scares us with his perception of the ease with which a relatively incompetent murderer can go about his or her business in our society. Even if Christine and Joey survive, will Joey be permanently scarred by this experience? It's to Koontz's credit that he can create tension in this fashion. It can only exist if we really care about the characters.

Koontz shows us the terror the killers themselves feel in their pursuit of the AntiChrist; the monsters may be in their minds, but the fear is real. The Servants' perception of the devil around them is more frightening 1than it would have been had the kid really been the AntiChrist.

The devil may be absent in Servants of Twilight but he's very much present in Mirror, the latest horror novel by Graham Masterton. This novel offers all the things that big commercial books are expected to have: a fast moving plot, well-defined, easily remembered characters, graphic horror, a slick foil-printed cover and easy-to-read prose.

But beneath the slick surface you'll find a sly, satiric look at how "the Satan worshipers of Hollywood" have sold their souls for a maximum profit. Ostensibly, this is the story of Martin, a hardworking screenwriter who is grinding out rewrites of television shows like "The A Team" and "Eight is Enough" while working on his own pet project, a musical based on the life of a child movie star ('Boofuls') with whom Martin is obsessed. Unfortunately, the name Boofuls closes doors around Hollywood because of his untimely and unseemly death; he was chopped into pieces by his Grandmother in front a mirror that Martin can't resist buying from a run-down old woman living in a bad part of the Big Town. In this mirror he eventually sees Boofuls, who lures a child playing in Martin's apartment into the mirror world. Boofuls explains to Martin that he just wants to finish up some work left undone in this world. He doesn't explain that it's the devil's work, of course.

There aren't a lot of surprises here, but there are thrills unstoppable. You know a rollercoaster is going to scare you but you still scream, and that applies here as well. Underneath it all, the author is disemboweling Hollywood, not just the priest who knows too much. As hinted at by the title, Graham Masterton weaves a web of Lewis Carroll, the Book of Revelations, Hollywood premieres -- the whole nine yards of occult science. And if the book isn't deeply disturbing, it is certainly entertaining.

Night Visions V and Silver Scream, each from Dark Harvest, showcase the small press releases -- finely-crafted books, generously illustrated and nicely printed. Night Visions V is likely to get the attention of the vast reading public because of Stephen King's contributions, but it will remain in their minds because of the contributions of the other writers. Douglas Winters shows off his skills at writing the non-apologetic introduction, the critical look at horror that the genre really benefits from. It's a promising start.

Stephen King's stories are really a letdown. King's longest story, "Dedication" is both shocking and memorable, but not all readers will consider this a good thing. That's because this story showcases King in a mode that will offend those sensitive to issues of racism and sexism. And gross -- it might be suitable for a sort of KKK-meets- Hustler magazine -- scary, and disturbing all right, but not at all in the same that, say, The Stand is scary and disturbing.

Especially when compared to Dan Simmons, who blew away the world a couple of years ago with Song of Kali. His three contributions to this book could all be serious contenders for Best Story the next time the "Bram Stoker" awards are distributed. "Metastasis" is a terrifying look at the world of terminally-ill cancer patients, while "Vanno Fucci is Alive and Living in Hell" is a hilarious look at the dark side of evangelism. And "Iverson's Pits" is a Nathaniel Hawthorne-like horror story set around the Civil War.

Finally, George R. R. Martin cooks up an entertaining and imaginative rethinking of the Werewolf legend in "The Skin Game." It's probably too late to catch the hardback of Night Visions V -- things with King's name sell like lightning -- but not too late to sign up in advance for the next in the series, and certainly a good time too keep an eye out for the paperback.

Reviewed last issue was David Schow's The Kill Riff, and he's back this time at the helm of an anthology called The Silver Scream, which is an anthology of cinematic horror fiction. Is that horror about the cinema or about the cinema? The answer is -- delightfully -- both.

There's an introduction by Tobe Hooper, in the form of a script -- and it's priceless, especially for those of us who have admired his movies. Schow restricts himself to a thoroughly entertaining "Endsticks," where he gets down, dirty and funny in quotes, episodes and arguments with the contributors.

Between these two, you'll find some inventive and entertaining fiction. The illustrations, by Kevin Anderson, are sometimes disappointing, especially for "Son of Celluloid," which was so evocatively illustrated by Potter in Scream/Press' Books of Blood.

In the selection of new stories, there are some brilliant contributions -- my favorites were Joe Landsdale's "Night They Missed The Horror Show," a hilarious update of the Flannery O'Connor school of horror, and Mark Arnolds's "Pilgrims to the Cathedral," a spectacular crazy quilt of humor, horror, and action that "explodes on the big screen" of the reader's mind. Stephen Boyett contributes "The Answer Tree," an inventive story that speculates on the artistic output of a Luis Bunuel-type talent who happens to work for Nazi Germany, and not to be missed is Douglas Winter's "Splatter: A Cautionary Tale," which shows that the editor can terrify the reader with the best of them in a subtle and surprising way. This book is one worth pestering your local store about.

Then there's Douglas E. Winter's Prime Evil. It's got the big names -- King, Straub, Barker, Streiber. Doug Winter's introduction is wonderful, but once we get to the fiction, King's work, "The Night Flier," is definitely inferior -- in fact, it almost seems incomplete. It's well written, but somehow lacking.

Clive Barker just reaffirms his mastery of prose and fiction with "Coming to Grief," a gentle, sentimental horror story that would delight and chill the readers of Redbook as well as Grue. Peter Straub's story is rather similar to his "Blue Rose," another terrifying tale of child abuse that is not recommended for sensitive parents.

Whitley Streiber's contribution is yet another puzzling addition to what appears to be a creeping psychosis. Like "Pain" in Cutting Edge, this is not much of a story, but a rambling, not-very-well-written recollection. In other stories, the spectre of Arthur Machen rears its head in a way that duplicates one of Machen's titles -- "The Great God Pan." For those who might have doubted that David "Rambo" Morrel is a good horror writer, there's "Orange is for Anguish, Blue is for Insanity," a fabulously well-written story of something hidden deep inside the paintings of a tortured artist. Ramsey Campbell makes the usual excellent contribution and there are notable appearances by Thomas Tessier and Paul Hazel.

There's never been much doubt that Dennis Etchison is one of the major figures writing horror today and The Blood Kiss reaffirms it. Joining forces with illustrator J. K. Potter and designer/publisher Jeff Conner, he has produced perhaps the best work of "cinematic fiction" of the 1980's. Paging through this collection of short stories is like immersing yourself in a terrifying, surreal, minimalist movie. You begin to suspect that razor blades are hidden between the bindings, ready to slice the fingers of the unwary reader. The prose is sparse, the design is simple, elegant and the illustrations are disturbing. As a total published book package, this is the best buy of the year.

If you're looking to stock your shelf with the best there's no better place to start than with Arkham House's newest release, A Rendezvous in Averoigne by Clark Ashton Smith. This volume collects all of the best writing by this contemporary of H. P. Lovecraft into one omnibus bargain illustrated by the incomparable J. K. Potter. There aren't many writers who can survive over time, but this book proves that Clark Ashton Smith is one of them. This is because his "lapidary prose" is applied to a humorous brand of horror-fantasy that just can't be duplicated.

In "The Colossus of Ylourgne" a local sorcerer begins to raise the dead, creating an army of ghouls. But this is not his ultimate goal -- he intends to fuse the flesh of these dead creatures to create a huge, unstoppable being with which to conquer the kingdoms. Smith infuses his fantasy with an element of horror that keeps his ornate writing and fantastic kingdoms from becoming cloying and precious. There's a knowing, tongue-in-cheek feeling to many of the stories, an element of self-satire that again keeps this writing from falling victim to the pitfalls of predictability that turn today's fantasy into literary bonbons. For those who have never encountered this unique writer's work this is the key to a thousand worlds, lost in unremembered dreams. Arkham House has put together a package that will be back-listed for years to come.

Those who think of horror as a sub-genre of fantasy will doubtless be pleased with the big-press publication of Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist. In his first horror novel, Feist relocates the Little People from Ireland to up-scale, upstate New York. One suspects that a horror novel by a fantasist would be strong on fantastic invention and weak in tension. Curiously enough, the thriller and tension elements in this novel are well handled, but the fantasy seems like pallid retreads from the Brothers Grimm and Arthur Machen. But if your beach reading must be hardback.....

Meet the Hastings, the typical American family -- as pictured in glitzy TV shows. Phil is a rich writer who's made his million writing some sort of "Star Wars"-like saga for the movies. He's relocated his family to this huge, rambling rural house, complete with gargoyles, buried gold, trap-doors and secret compartments. His twin sons, Sean (the strong one who becomes sensitive) and Patrick (the sensitive one who becomes strong) rapidly meet the areas "other" residents. As one "Bad Thing" after another appears, Barney Doyle, the local Irish drunk and legend keeper, and Mark Blackman, the local supernatural lore expert, help Phil and the boys save their souls from a fate worse than death. Secret societies and shining fairies -- no problem! Broken bargains with supernatural forces and post- hypnotic suggestion that helps the characters forget anything that happened -- no problem! But a filthy rich, happy family that ends up richer and happier -- well, at some point the reader begins to balk at all that happiness, fairy tale or no. Unfortunately, after all that relentless page turning, the reader will probably forget what happened without the aid of post-hypnotic suggestion. One would hope one's memories of the book would last longer than the suntan one gets while reading it.

Scare Tactics, another new hardback release from Tor, is the latest effort by John Farris, who may be recognizable to some readers as the author of "The Fury," which was made into a better-than-average horror movie by Brian DePalma. This book serves forth a short story, a novelette and a short novel, all rather different from one another, and all gripping reading. "The Odor of Violets" is a short story that successfully mixes humor and horror, while the novelette "Horrorshow" pits a rambling psychic against a rural psycho, in a plot-heavy story that leaps off the pages. In "The Guardians," we have a full-blown mysterious thriller, set in the deep South, a fast-paced, stripped-down "All the King's Men." Led by Jack Practice, the governor's aide, we are plunged into a past of political arm twisting, unreported accidents, drunken blackouts, illegitimate children, jazz bands, drug dealers, sequestered slum sculptors and halfway house habitues. It's an expertly handled, atmospheric thriller, even though the reader does guess fairly early on who's responsible for the savage violence.

Novels of "obsession" usually feature characters of extremes, and in the horror genre, characters of extreme violence. With the emergence of "splatterpunk," there has been a surfeit of high-profile, violent novels about maniacal killers on blood-soaked sprees. Toplin, by Michael McDowell is a curious exception to this trend -- not surprisingly, since it was first released in 1985. In it, collaborators McDowell and Morris, with the help of Scream publisher Jeff Conner, have created an unsettling, but low-key and largely non-violent character whose surreal perceptions will disturb most readers more than the buckets-of-blood approach that is now so popular.

The novel begins when the narrator is forced from his routine because a grocery store is closed. As a result, he stumbles into the Baltyk Cafe and comes into contact with "the most hideous human being I have ever seen." He decides that he will do her the favor of killing her, and thus this unsettling novel is set on its meandering way. This is a novel of obsession, but not grand obsession. In Toplin, the little rituals of cleaning one's body and one's environment are here examined under a clear, unsparing magnifying glass. It may be a bit too low-key and weird for the average horror readers. The disturbing, almost grating normality is abetted by Harry O. Morris' photo collages and Jeff Conner's hipper-than-thou design. But these are precisely the elements that make this a required reading experience for the aficionados of strange. Like The Blood Kiss, the design of the book is nearly as important as the prose, and it's an enjoyable book to hold in one's hands, a book that could not survive the translation into paperback. The sparse prose by "Beetlejuice" co- writer McDowell is a pleasure to read aloud. It's not for everyone, but then the limited supply will ensure that it won't get to everyone. For those who like the sounds of their own thoughts and their own body, however, this is a book that will bear repeated listening.

In 1981, Thomas Harris unleashed Red Dragon, easily one of the most terrifying books of this decade. Seven years later, he's produced a sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, a book that equals or surpasses Red Dragon as it evokes both terror of and sympathy for the disturbed people it portrays.

The Silence of the Lambs brings back some of the best characters from Red Dragon -- Dr. Hannibal Lecter, evil, insane, utterly brilliant; Jack Crawford, the tired FBI Division Chief on the edge of retirement; and Dr. Chilton, the head psychiatrist at the hospital/jail where Lecter is interned, jealous of Lecter's brilliance, dangerously incompetent in his lust for recognition. We're introduced to Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee who is asked to interview Dr. Lecter to gain his opinions on a series of murders now being committed by a man called Buffalo Bill. Jack Crawford engineers the interviews, certain that Lecter will not speak to him, hoping that he might, if presented with a challenge, speak to Starling. When Buffalo Bill kidnaps another girl, a fuse is lit on an already explosive situation. What follows is certain to keep readers awake.

But what we have here is much, much more than another suspense thriller. Harris, once a crime reporter, writes his book in a plain, journalistic prose that is sparse, leaving the reader feeling that he is experiencing an artful documentary. Each character comes alive and becomes a three dimensional person, even the minor characters who appear in one scene. Hannibal Lecter becomes, in The Silence of the Lambs perhaps the most complex, fearful, and sympathetic character ever to grace the pages of horror, suspense or crime fiction. And Clarice Starling is a woman worthy of P.D. James: thoughtful, realistic, never sensationalized. This is, in fact, the strength of this book. It never stoops to sensationalism or forced artistry. The reader is shown, not told, the characters' reasons for acting as they do -- we are able to read between the lines of their dialogue. The occasional touches seem that more forceful, interspersed as they are. It didn't seem likely that anyone could improve on Red Dragon as a book to scare and disturb the reader -- but Thomas Harris has done it himself.

It's been said a million times by people as diverse as H. P. Lovecraft and Christopher Lee -- "you can't keep a good man down." Lovecraft had little love for the vampire, but Christopher Lee certainly had enough fun with it, and the discount racks of your local grocer will soon be blooming with fresh blood. Pageant Books will present Blood Farm: An Iowa Gothic by Sam Siciliano. Anyone can see why it'd make Lovecraft frown and Lee smile... baring his fangs.

Blood Farm has an unpromising beginning, as a girl hitchhiking is picked up by a dope-smoking ex-veteran driving a hearse on a dark and snowy night. A series of jokes strike the characters as hilarious but left me cold. Once it got past this rough spot, though, Blood Farm plants its tongue firmly in its cheek and lives up to its subtitle, that is, a "corn-fed gothic," complete with a heroine trapped in a dark and dangerous place, torn t-shirts (no bodices in the 1970's, the curious time setting of the novel), tainted priests and flawed rescuers. Happily, the main character, although a veteran, is no superman in disguise, and the implementation of the "vampire infection" is clever and exciting. There's even a mystery woman who is, in fact, mysterious. The book is easy and fun to read. ---- End of Part 5

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Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 6)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 6

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

Just for the Fun of It

Alan Wexelblat
Copyright 1988 by Alan Wexelblat

Consider Phlebas
Iain M. Banks
St. Martin's Press, 0-312-01752-9, 467pp, 1987
[***]

The Forge of God
Greg Bear
Tor, 372 pp, 1987
[****+]

Computers in Battle: Will They Work?
edited by David Bellin and Gary Chapman
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
0-15-121232-5, 362pp, 1987
[****]

Chanur's Homecoming
C. J. Cherryh
DAW, 349pp, 1986
[****+]

FirstFlight
Chris Claremont
Ace, 0-441-23584-0, 243 pp, 1987
[***]

On Stranger Tides
Tim Powers
Ace, 312pp, 1987
[*****-]

Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology
edited by Bruce Sterling
Ace , 0-441-53382-5, 239pp, 1986
[*****]

Involution Ocean
Bruce Sterling
Ace, 0-441-37206-6, 179 pp, 1977
[****-]

The Crown Jewels
Walter Jon Williams
TOR, 0-812-55798-0, 247pp, 1987
[****]

This summer has been hot. The local paper is running cartoons about the devil taking a plane flight out of town because of the heat. It's far too hot to do much serious reading, if you ask me. I don't know how you deal with the heat where you live; around here we like to kick back and relax with some iced tea and some books that are just plain good reading. This month we'll take a look at several of those, as well as couple of more serious endeavors.

The Crown Jewels

This offering from Walter John Williams is not, according to the list inside the front cover, a novel. It is, we are told, one of his "divertimenti;" literally, a diversion.

The Crown Jewels is a light-hearted science fantasy set in the far future. Humanity has been conquered by a race called the Khosali. These aliens are so immeasurably superior to all the other races that their conquests are ho-hum affairs. As conquerors go, they're not that bad. They allow the subject species a great deal of freedom, asking only that they accept the Khosali Imperial System and the hereditary aristocracy that goes along with it. In return, the conquered get access to the advanced Khosali technology and to the many other races that the Khosali have conquered. However, the ungrateful humans manage to pull off a galactic first by staging a successful revolution.

The story opens in the time of an uneasy peace between the Khosali Empire and the human Constellation. Our hero, Drake Maijstral, is a thief. Not a criminal -- the law allows him to steal provided he takes care not to actually get caught. And provided, of course, that he does it with sufficient style. Maijstral always gets points for style. Unfortunately, that's about all he's been getting lately; consequently, he's almost broke.

He doesn't hesitate (more than style requires, anyway) to take on a seemingly-insignificant job for Amelia Jensen. All she wants is a sealed box from a collection of war-era antiquities. Nothing could be simpler. Unfortunately, a lot of other people from both sides of the Khosali-Human border seem to want that box as well, and Maijstral finds himself in the middle of a complex jumble of robbery, kidnaping, and... well, let's not give too much away.

The Crown Jewels is a lot of fun to read. Williams' style lends itself easily to the humorous situations he sets up. From the ear-sniffing greetings of Khosali High Custom, to the Elvis-impersonator performances which are one of the only relics left of Old Earth culture, the tone of the novel kept me just below the level of a constant giggle. The characters are realistic, fun people. They are not quite stereotypes and not quite self-parodies, but they tread humorously close to both.

Speaking of the characters, there are quite a number of them. The supporting cast numbers close to a dozen, and I am impressed at how well Williams handles them. In particular, he manages to introduce most of the major players in the first chapter via a complex dance sequence that allows the reader to quickly become familiar with most of them.

Don't be fooled into thinking that the fun of this book indicates a lack of writing skill. On the contrary, the writing is excellent as I have come to expect from Williams. Put this one on your must-read-some- weekend list.

On Stranger Tides

Now this is a fantasy. Listen up, all you fantasy lovers who've been numbed by Generic Fantasy Trilogies. This book is for you. Tim Powers is ready to take you on a swashbuckling ride over the Caribbean seas. And what a ride!

On Stranger Tides is the story of John Chandagnac -- how he sails for Jamaica, how he is captured by pirates and becomes Jack Chandy, a pirate in his own right. And how Voudun magic and mystery lead him closer to and farther from Beth Hurwood, the woman he loves. Her father, it seems, is some kind of serious wizard, and he has plans for his daughter that certainly don't include Jack Chandy.

Mind you, this is not highfalutin' magic we're talking about here. This is down-in-the-dirt, gut-wrenching Caribbean magic: spit and mud and the blood of beheaded chickens. Loas with real totems that any man can use, if he knows how. Bocors that can summon up the spirits of the dead. No outright miracles, but power enough to stop a pistol bullet, if you take the right precautions. For me, this magic has a certain, if you'll pardon the word, reality to it. I can imagine myself, like Chandy, slowly learning to believe in and to use this sort of magic. This sense of "that could be me" is one of the things I liked best about this book.

It's hard to say much about the plot of this book without spoiling it for the reader. Powers writes extremely good swashbuckling non- stop action. Just when you've forgotten a plot thread, he weaves it back in. It's exciting and involving and lots of fun.

As with the Williams book, Powers doesn't take the lightness of the book as a chance to slack off. His writing talent is evident throughout. Jack Chandy and the other characters are well-rounded human beings. They grow and develop and we cheer (or boo) them in large part because they are so real. Powers also has a keen eye for historical detail; he has done his homework and it shows in the rich background fabric of the story.

This one is a page-turner; don't start reading it just before bedtime.

Chanur's Homecoming

Let's see... the last time we checked in with Pyanfar Chanur and her crew, they were riding the crest of the wave of conquest spawned by the war between Akkhtimakt and Sikkukkut. They had managed somehow to avoid being squeezed between the Hani secret policewoman Rhif Ehrran and her intended quarry, the pirate Hani Dur Tahar. But now Ehrran was running for the main Hani port, Gaohn station, and her report would finish off the politically crippled Chanur clan.

They had also managed to get back the human, Tully, though they were not sure what secret message he bore. That message had gone on to the Mahen homeworld of Maing Tol with the hani captain Banny Ayhar. Tully and the Pride of Chanur's junior crewwoman, Hilfy, had been returned by Sikkukkut in return for Pyanfar's promise to help him take Kefk station -- and act of outright piracy that would be sure to upset the already-jittery Stsho.

Meanwhile, the mahen hunters Jik and Goldtooth have had some sort of falling out, resulting in Goldtooth heading for gods-know-where, possibly bringing a fleet of human ships into Compact space.

If you're getting a mental image like that of the surfer riding the tsunami in Lucifer's Hammer, you're on the right track.

Chanur's Homecoming is the final chapter in the story started in The Pride of Chanur, and continued in Chanur's Venture, and The Kif Strike Back. If you haven't read those books yet, go out and get them.

If you have read them, you know what a treat it is to visit Compact space with Cherryh as tour guide. This book is by far the most hair- raising of the quaternary. The tension runs high throughout the story, and the pace just keeps getting faster. I am continually amazed at Cherryh's ability to handle all the elements of the narrative. The things I mentioned above are only some of the major plot elements.

The characters are equally numerous, and equally well-drawn. Despite their numbers, Cherryh allows each one room enough to grow. There are no stereotypes, no two-dimensional players on this stage. I also like the way Cherryh shows us the female (some would say feminist) point of view of her protagonist without engaging in male-bashing.

I think I've said before that I consider the alienness of Cherryh's different species to be excellently done. Her work is a yardstick against which I compare other authors' efforts. These are not just humans in funny skins; these are four distinct races of sentients who think and act in their own self-consistent, but very unhuman, ways.

As with the Powers book, it's hard to say much about the plot without spoiling it. It's a wild ride, and a fun one. There are so many irons in the fire it's impossible to say who will survive. And, take my word for it, I think you'll like the ending. It's logical. The loose ends are tied up in a believable way. This one's another page-turner, guaranteed to keep you up past your bedtime.

FirstFlight

Many of you know Chris Claremont as the author of Marvel Comics' phenomenally successful series of X-Men comics. FirstFlight is his first foray into non-graphic, novel-length material. Coincidentally, C.J. Cherryh is quoted as giving it an "...enthusiastic recommendation." And considering the poor quality of many of the first novels I've seen recently, I'm inclined to agree with her.

Certainly Claremont has the wisdom to draw on his strengths. Many of the characters will be easily recognizable to X-Men readers as analogues of characters he's developed in the past.

The protagonist, Lt. Nicole Shea, is an extremely talented young space pilot. She's so talented that NASA administrators are willing to overlook her occasional carelessness in the hope that experience will mature her and her talents will shine through.

In the not-too-distant future of FirstFlight, humanity has established outposts on the moon and in the asteroid belts. A newly-developed FTL star drive makes visiting nearby systems practical, and development of colonies there is beginning. However, the solar system is so poorly mapped that using the high-power, high-speed starships in-system is dangerously impractical. Shea is given captaincy of the conventional-drive spaceship Wanderer and its crew with a mission to chart a volume of the solar system and leave marker buoys along the way, allowing the starships to navigate safely.

Now you just know this is far too tame a scenario for Claremont. First our heroes tangle with a mess of asteroid-hopping pirates. As you might expect, the long arm of the law barely touches the uncharted outbacks of the asteroid belt beyond Mars. Then the aliens arrive. Yes, this is a first-contact novel, too. The aliens have their own problems, and they team up with Wanderer's crew to solve them.

The plot is pretty simplistic. Claremont's strength has never been in the kind of intricate intrigue that Cherryh is so adept at. However, his talent with the novel's characters is not to be taken lightly. He has trouble dealing with the large number of them, but Shea and the other major players are well-handled. He deals with complex themes of love (including sex) and responsibility, and allows his major characters to grow together in a team.

His aliens are about what you'd expect. They are technologically slightly more advanced that the humans. Since they come from closer to the center of the galaxy, their transmissions were lost to us against the background noise. Earth, seen against the relative quiet of inter- galactic space, stood out like a beacon for them. Claremont has clearly put some effort into making them real; unfortunately there's only one major alien character.

The real weakness of the novel is the villains. They are one- dimensional cutout bad guys with cliche motives who act in standard bad-guy ways. I almost expected them to chortle evilly.

This is not a great novel by any means, but it is a respectable first effort and is fun to read. I'm looking forward to seeing if Claremont continues writing in this universe. There are some obvious loose ends left over at the end of the book that make me think he's got at least one more related story up his sleeve.

Mirrorshades

It's hard to know what to say about a book that purports to define a movement which many deny the very existence of. However, the debate over the existence and/or meaning of cyberpunk inevitably acknowledges the force and importance of the introduction to this collection.

The essay, written by anthology editor Bruce Sterling, is an attempt to define a movement by taking a kind of snapshot of it. By attempting a coherent articulation of principles that had guided writers yet remained unexplained to many readers, he drove a stake into the ground around which a debate could be built. His compelling vision and the collection of stories accompanying it form a portrait of a new dynamic in science fiction.

With any dynamic process, static representations are doomed to be incomplete. Just as no one Beethoven symphony presents the entirety of orchestral composition, no single story or collection of them presents the entirety of that thing Gardner Dozois dubbed "cyberpunk" and Bruce Sterling calls simply the "Movement."

As I noted, the preface to the collection is a seminal explanation for the mass-market public of what it is that makes up the Movement. Sterling touches on many of the themes and many of the inspirations for the mirrorshades group. He acknowledges their debt to many who came before, as well as to many who are still at work in the field today. He tries to explain what is new and compelling about this thing called cyberpunk. He also coined the phrase that has become symbolic of a great deal of the Movement, and grail-like to its imitators: "...the realm where the computer hacker and the rocker overlap." If you read nothing else in this volume, read the preface.

For those who venture on, there's a wealth of good material, from Gibson's "Gernsback Continuum," which is really an embodiment of the principles in their starkest form, to the Sterling/Shiner collaboration "Mozart in Mirrorshades." In my opinion, there's not a bad story in the lot.

There are ones that qualify as hard-core cyberpunk, like Tom Maddox's excellent "Snake Eyes" -- about a human mind forced into an interface it's not equipped to handle -- and John Shirley's rock- and-roll Eclipse excerpt titled "Freezone." Then there are ones that, in addition to being good Movement stories, are almost philosophical treatises on the themes of the movement, like Greg Bear's beautiful but disturbing story about the death of God, "Petra," and the Sterling/Gibson collaboration "Red Star, Winter Orbit," about the real movement of humanity into outer space.

In between are other sorts of Movement stories: In Pat Cadigan's "Rock On," the rock ethic and the business ethic collide to the detriment of a rock and roll sinner. Rudy Rucker's "Tales of Houdini" is a nail-bitingly exciting short about Harry Houdini, alive in an alternate history. "The 400 Boys" brings together the worlds of post- nuclear mutations and street gangs in a bizarre combination that would be totally hokey if done by someone less talented than Marc Laidlaw. James Patrick Kelley's entry, "Solstice," is a sad story of love and loss set against the background of a pharmaceutical Wonderland. Similarly, Lewis Shiner's "Till Human Voices Wake Us" is about love and loss, but it is set against a background of corporate politics. The same sort of politics gives Paul Di Fillipo's "Stone Lives" its hard edge. "Stone Lives" is perhaps the prototypical cyberpunk coming-of-age story.

I think this is an excellent collection with a wealth of good material. It's not easy reading by any stretch of the imagination, but it repays the effort ten times over.

Involution Ocean

Some of you may be wondering why the preface to Mirrorshades is in the back of this book. Well, it's sort of complicated... The original edition of Involution Ocean was an Ellison Discovery novel. It was prefaced with an essay written by Harlan describing Bruce Sterling, as Harlan saw him in 1977. That essay is somewhat dated by now and doesn't bear reprinting. So when Ace went to republish the book in anticipation of the imminent releases of Mirrorshades and Islands in the Net, they found themselves with a rather slim volume. In order to expand it (and to promote Mirrorshades), they included the Mirrorshades preface. Naturally, they didn't bother to consult Sterling about any of this. So goes the merry world of publishing! (Actually, Sterling tells me he doesn't mind, though the juxtaposition is a little odd.)

Involution Ocean begins as the story of John Newhouse's search for the source of syncophine, the drug to which he is addicted. The drug is produced only by refining portions of the viscera of a unique creature -- the dustwhale of Nullaqua. Nullaqua is a planet without water. It has no oceans of liquid; however, it does have a large ocean of fine dust, in which live a number of creatures, including the dustwhale. These whales are carefully harvested by the whalers of Nullaqua -- for each whale taken, three fertilized eggs are dropped into the ocean.

However, the whalers' interest is not in syncophine; in fact, the planet's rulers have made the drug illegal. Thus, in order to get the raw materials to make the drug, Newhouse must sign on to a whaling ship himself, steal the needed whale parts and create the drug himself.

He rapidly becomes caught up in what can only be called the 'Ahab-like' insanity of the ship's captain, Desperandum. The captain is certain that great mysteries lurk in the dust sea, and is determined to prove himself right. He leads the ship into danger time and again, holding on to his crew and command by force of personality and physical strength.

Newhouse must walk a tightrope between offending the captain, an unpredictable temper, and offending the xenophobic crew. Inevitably, he is forced to choose sides and become deeper enmeshed in the insanity aboard ship.

Involution Ocean is certainly a significant cut above the average first novel. Despite its obvious homage to Moby Dick, there are a number of interesting new ideas in the story. The characters are burdened a bit by being symbols -- everything in this book is symbol-laden, even down to the names. Still, they manage to exist in three dimensions. Even Desperandum has an originality beyond the stock mad-sea-captain character.

The story is interesting. Newhouse's struggles to survive and succeed make good reading. However, it suffers from a weak opening and an unbelievable ending. The ending in particular seems out of control. Sterling throws in a number of new ideas and events and expects the reader to keep up -- a task I found difficult. Still, Involution Ocean was fun and interesting.

The Forge of God

I confess, I have a tendency to hate end-of-the-world novels. They're usually full of impossibly heroic or impossibly stupid people doing stereotypically heroic or stupid things. And the reasons given for world destruction, if any, are usually pretty strained. On these counts alone, Greg Bear deserves a round of applause. He has managed to put together an end-of-the-world story with real people acting in real ways. And he's got a frighteningly good scenario for blowing up the Earth.

There's a current in SF thought that hypothesizes that we might be doing ourselves a disservice by broadcasting as noisily as we do out into the interstellar medium. What if, they ask, there were not just aliens out there, but hostile aliens? Perhaps these aliens are Mongol-like and bent on conquest, or xenophobic like late feudal Japan, and actively resent contacts with other cultures, or... well, you get the idea.

The Forge of God starts off with a bang. Except that it's in the vacuum of space, so there is no sound. On June 26, 1996, Europa -- Jupiter's sixth moon -- disappears. Gone without a trace. There's no explanation possible except extra-solar effects. Arthur Gordon, astronomer and retired science advisor to the president can only wonder "... maybe somebody's collecting moons."

Three months later Edward Shaw, a geologist from the University of Texas, is leading a hiking party through Death Valley when he spots a hundred-meter tall cinder cone that isn't on any of the maps of the area. It's too big to have been missed by hikers and by satellite surveys; therefore it's new. The problem is that no one seems to have any record of an eruption or impact that might have produced it. The mound appears to have no life forms of any kind until Edward and his companions stumble onto what appears to be the first honest-to- god alien being on the planet. Naturally, they and it quickly wind up in the custody of the US Air Force and government, who set about trying to figure out just what the alien is and how it got there and what it wants. Naturally, they can't just let Edward and his group wander around telling the world what they'd seen.

Three days later, the Australians announce to the world that they, too, have some sort of extraterrestrial visitor, ensconced in a duplicate of Ayres Rock.

From there the action moves at a considerable clip as Bear begins to bring the threads of the plot together, blending them in with the background of a cynical, post-presidential-assassination America. There are a number of first-class supporting characters: there's Harry Fineman, a brilliant scientist now fighting a battle with cancer; there's Trevor Hicks, a mainstream author and journalist, now riding a small wave of fame from his publication of a science fiction novel about first contact. These two come to play important parts in the investigation of the aliens and in helping shape America's reaction to it.

As I said above, the real strength of this novel is in the characters. There's not much doubt for most of the book that the earth is going to be destroyed. Even though the aliens' technology is only a couple centuries beyond ours, it's enough that we don't have a way to stop them. What matters in this story is how the people deal with that impending event.

Bear's writing style is very involving. He draws you in first by the simplicity of his scenes and backgrounds. They are comfortable, almost down-homish, even when he's talking about alien settings like military bases and the inside of the White House. His characters are enhanced by the settings, and you are drawn further in by the combination.

It's also noteworthy that the 'bad guys' of Forge of God really don't appear on-stage. It's a tribute to the strength of Bear's talent that he doesn't need evil aliens in stormtrooper suits to make his tale work. Oh, and don't walk away thinking I've given away the plot of the book; I haven't. There's an ending that I think will rock your socks off.

Consider Phlebas

A four-hundred-seventy page novel is pretty daunting to start with. When I open up to the table of contents and find three appendixes, two purporting to give the "Reasons" for the two sides of a war and one purporting to be an "abstract of main text" of the novel, I get the shivering willies. But I have to at least give it a try, right?

Fortunately, the prologue is pretty good. Sentient ship-guiding machines called Minds, produced by a star-spanning confederation called the Culture; hyperspace; Planets of the Dead. Hmmm... this might not be so bad after all.

In fact, it's not nearly as bad as it might have been. Iain Banks has produced a fairly good science fantasy about the very distant future and a war between the communistic Culture and the fanatically religious Idirans.

The story revolves around the actions of one Bora Horza Gobuchul, a mercenary in the service of the Idirans. Horza is a member of a race called Changers, so named because they have the ability to change their form and appearance. This ability makes them dangerous infiltrators and assassins, and Horza is a well-trained assassin. His employers rescue him from almost certain death at the hands of a Culture-allied group called the Gerontocracy. He had been exposed by a Culture agent, Perosteck Balveda, who is captured when he is freed. His employers want him to go to a Planet of the Dead called Schar's World and capture a Culture Mind that has managed a previously- impossible feat -- warping from outer space into the tunnel system under the planet's surface.

Planets of the Dead are normally forbidden places. They are maintained as monuments to the races that occupied them and exterminated themselves. The maintainers are an extremely advanced race called Dra'Azon whose technology allows them to establish impenetrable energy fields called Quiet Barriers around these Planets of the Dead. On occasion the Dra'Azon, for their own unfathomable reasons, will allow lesser races to visit these planets. Changers have been allowed to maintain a research outpost on Schar's World; in the past, Horza served at that outpost. The Idirans hope that the Dra'Azon will allow Horza back onto the planet where he can retrieve the now-trapped Mind and its unique knowledge. The Culture has no comparable agents, but they can attempt to stop Horza until they can persuade the Dra'Azon to allow them to retrieve the Mind. Consider Phlebas is the story of Horza's attempts to get to Schar's World and capture the Mind, and of the Culture's efforts to stop him.

It's a complicated story. There are lots of obstacles to be overcome. Banks throws one sidetrack after another into the plot, visiting several strange cultures and giving us glimpses of the unusual universe he has constructed. Unfortunately, Banks overcomplicates things. There are whole sections and irrelevant characters that could easily have been deleted, bringing the novel down to more reasonable size.

The other problem with Consider Phlebas is that Banks is concerned with more than just writing an SF novel. He is also interested in producing a socio-political treatise and he feels free to use long passages of the words of the characters to express his premises. It's deadly dull, and only marginally relevant to the action of the book.

There's some rip-roaring action and lots of good writing at the heart of it all, but wait for the paperback.

Computers in Battle

There's a lot to be said for knowing your science. Many SF readers will debate with authors over the minutest details of physics in the stories they read. Yet they continue to accept much sillier fictional suppositions about the capabilities of computers. I suppose this has something to do with the large overlap between those who work with computers and those who read SF, particularly what we like to call hard SF.

Working with them, we see computers as our 'babies' and gloss over their flaws. We are also aware that computers are not bound by the same sorts of laws as physics. What today seems computationally impossible may be solved by a faster processor tomorrow or a new learning algorithm next year. Past leaps in the field make it seem like nanotechnology and true artificial intelligence are just around the corner.

And in our optimism, we forget that there are some realities that have been brought home to us by experience and by the mathematics associated with computer science. Bellin and Chapman's book is a good cure for that sort of overoptimism.

In the eleven essays that comprise this volume, thirteen authors take a hard look at the realities of computer capabilities as we see them today. They probe the use of computers by and for the military with an eye toward questioning the 'accepted wisdom' about the burden computers will be able to bear in the near future, and perhaps for an indefinite time beyond.

The book is aimed at the general public; it assumes that the reader knows almost nothing about computers or about the military's use of them. The first essay, "Computers in Battle: A Human Overview" by Severo Ornstein, gives a detailed look at some of the principles of what computers can do, at the basics of software engineering, and gives a simple, but good, explanation of what the past can and cannot teach us about the future. Paul Edwards follows this up with a short history of the interaction between computers and the military, listing and giving the background of some of the systems that will be talked about in later chapters.

Gary Chapman then dives into the world of the next war, the one that's supposedly going to be fought by and with a new generation of high-tech weapons. His essay gives broad coverage to the programs underway in the Army, Air Force, and Navy. Unfortunately, most of these systems are still not combat-tested, so all we (and the Pentagon) can do is speculate based on the results of tests and war games. However, Chapman shows some principles that might help to predict success or failure.

"Computer System Reliability and Nuclear War" by Alan Borning looks at the problems that have plagued this country's early-warning systems in the past and tries to give an explanation of why the latest and predicted future systems are not likely to solve the problems. Touchy issues such as "launch on warning" and "limited vs protracted nuclear war" are discussed. Borning shows how political impositions can distort the supposedly-unbiased realities of computer science, for better or worse. Then Eric Roberts and Steve Berlin try, in just twenty pages, to cover the interaction between computers and the newest nuclear war player, SDI. Their chapter is one of the weaker ones in the book; fortunately, it works well in conjunction with Borning's excellent piece.

Jonathan Jacky takes a look at the Strategic Computing Program, an adjunct to SDI that has received comparatively little publicity, despite it's potentially enormous implications.

David Parnas contributes the first of the theoretically-oriented essays, "Computers in Weapons: The Limits of Confidence." Parnas is well known for his public abandonment of $1000/day of SDI money. In this essay he largely avoids SDI, concentrating instead on 'conventional' computerized weapons systems. He shows, in simple non-technical language, how increasingly-sophisticated weapons systems must deal with higher and higher levels of uncertainty and how that uncertainty proportionally reduces the level of confidence we can have in the computerized systems. Parnas is a practiced speaker and essayist and this is easily the best chapter of the book.

Tom Athanasiou looks at "Artificial Intelligence as Military Technology." Unfortunately, he spends too much time criticizing AI in general instead of showing why it will not be able to fulfill the role the military claims it will. While it is true that if AI in general fails to live up to its promise, it will mean failure for many proposed military systems, I would have preferred to see a more focused discussion.

One of the things I find exciting about Movement science fiction, and find depressing about much of what passes for computer science, is their treatment of the interrelations of computer systems and those systems' environments. In the 'classical' computer science I was taught, computer systems are considered separate entities from the environment. In Movement fiction as in so much of reality, high technology is inextricably bound up in the web of life. Lenny Seigel and John Markoff look at an important aspect of this in their chapter, "High Technology and the Emerging Dual Economy." They provide an informative counterpoint to the conventional wisdom that military production 'creates jobs,' 'promotes prosperity,' and 'produces spinoffs' and thus is a beneficial thing to be sought after.

Another facet of the same interaction is examined in Clark Thompson's chapter "Role of Military Funding in Academic Computer Science." Thompson examines the trends in funding over the last ten years and probes into the question of why it has become so hard for non-defense-oriented computer science professors to get funds. Coupled with Seigel & Markoff's essay, this gives us some interesting insights into where our high-tech economy may be heading in the next decade. SF readers who wonder why much speculative fiction these days predicts a rising Japanese sun and a disintegrating American middle class should definitely make a point of reading these two chapters.

The last chapter is John Ladd's essay "Computers and War: Philosophical Reflections on Ends and Means." Ladd compares the approaches to war taken by Carl von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, the two people who most literally can be said to have 'written the book' on war. He contrasts the goals for war each sets forth and reflects on the implications of each set of strategies. He then examines some questions raised by the use of computers to attain these ends. For a philosophical treatise, it's a little lightweight, but it makes thought-provoking reading for the mainstream public.

Overall, I was favorably impressed by the volume. It's no secret that the editors and most of the authors come to this collection with preset points of view. However, this doesn't detract from the quality of most of the chapters, which are heavily footnoted and referenced. If the authors set out to prove a point, they did so armed with a mass of data and experience that makes their conclusions hard to ignore.

I recommend this book to anyone who like to look critically (and knowledgeably) at the scientific premises behind the fiction they read. Despite its flaws, it's a useful book for layman and computer scientist. ---- End of Part 6

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Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 7)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 7

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

Much Rejoicing

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Copyright 1988 by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

Not for Glory
Joel Rosenberg
NAL books, 1988, $16.95, 0-453-00580-2
[**]

The Legacy of Heorot
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes
Pocket Books, 1988, $4.50, 0-671-64928-0
[**+]

Peacekeepers
Ben Bova
TOR books, 1988, $17.95, 0-312-93080-1
[**+]

Heaven Cent
Piers Anthony
Avon Fantasy, 1988, $3.95. 0-380-75288-3
[**}

Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain
Isaac Asimov
Bantam Spectra, 1988, $4.95 0-553-27327-2
[***-]

The Heechee Saga
Frederik Pohl
[***+]

Araminta Station
Jack Vance
TOR 1988, $19.95, 0-312-93044-5
[***+]

High Society
Dave Sim and sometimes Gerhard
Aardvark/Vanaheim
[****-]

There will always have to be bad writers, for they reflect the taste of undeveloped, immature age groups, who have needs as much as the mature do...these people demand satisfaction of their needs with the greater vehemence of youth, and they force the existence of bad authors.

-- Friedrich Nietzche

Episode 7: Off Come the Kid Gloves

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things. For example, some books here that need attention.

Look at this world. It's "a poor world. We have to import all too much; we don't import fur coats. Luxury would be reducing the number of young boys we send offworld to die in other people's wars." And it "relies on credits we earn offworld, and that depends on our reputation. Simply: if nobody will pay [us] to fight, my children will not eat." And, let us not forget, they begin their soldierly careers as teens.

What's that in the back? Jerry?

No, Jerry, I'm sorry. It's not a new Dorsai book by that nice Mr. Dickson. But it might as well be. Oh. Yes, David? Oh, you say it's not a rip-off of Dorsai? Why's that?

Because they're all Jewish? Why, how original. And they named their planet after Masada, where the brave freedom fighters went to death rather than face the oppression of the Romans. How heroic of them, I'm sure. Only these folks aren't fighting oppression; they're fighting an inhospitable planet because they were too dim to keep going until they found a better one.

Yes, David, I haven't forgotten. I was sort of saving it for last. See, they're not just Jewish Dorsai. Our hero is named (are you ready for this?) Tetsuo Hanavi, and he's part Japanese, as is the entire culture. And Tetsuo is not just a Jewish-Japanese mercenary soldier; he's a member of a society of highly trained assassins, famed and feared for their secrecy, silence, and deadliness.

That's right, boys and girls, this is a book about Teenage Jewish Ninja Dorsai. I wish I were kidding, but I'm not. I'm sure it's got simply oodles of interesting things to say about honor and the military nature of mankind and so on, but I couldn't help chuckling and giggling all the way through it. Especially when Hanavi kept trying to impress us with how tough-minded he had to be.

Lest I forget (much though I'd like to), it's by Joel Rosenberg, who is normally a much better writer than this, and it's called Not for Glory. Give it a wide berth.

As long as we're in the neighborhood, let's drop in and say hello to Jerry Pournelle. Hi, Jerry. And, oh, look! He's got company! Kids, this is Steven Barnes, and I'm sure you all know Mr. Niven. They've written a book together.

It's called The Legacy of Heorot, and I'd like to tell you it wasn't half bad, but that's exactly what it is. Beginning with the cover, which depicts a man raising on high a weapon whose weight should break his arm off at the shoulder from the way he's holding it, Legacy caused me grave doubts.

Given the length of time involved in researching, writing, and bringing a book like this to press, I want to emphasize that it is not a rip-off of Aliens. Yes, it's about a colony menaced by incredibly fast, powerful, and cunning killing-machine monsters, but that's a tradition in SF that goes back to when Dan O'Bannon was in diapers. It's an original, tightly and well-plotted book that stands on its own very nicely...on those grounds.

As long as I'm in the praise department, let me mention the monster. Or monsters. They're called "grendels" (eventually) and they're about the nastiest suckers I've run across. They make Coeurl, the generic original of this type, seem like a piker. They're smart, they're ugly, and they like to hurt things. Their biology is also original. If it weren't based on a real Earth critter, I wouldn't believe their reproductive cycle. (And I'm still not sure I believe their "supercharger," but I don't know enough biochem to do more than doubt it).

My gripes are mostly about the characters. I've never read any of Barnes' solo stuff, but the characters are what I think of as archetypical Niven characters, designed to fit a plot worked out in detail before any real thought went into character...if, indeed, any ever does. All but the protagonist, Cadmann Weyland, who is rather more an archetypical Pournelle hero, the Soldier Without Portfolio. The plot and other characters are repeatedly manipulated to allow him to Demonstrate The Value of Soldierly Virtues. The non-military types in the colony are repeatedly Shown The Error Of Their Ways.

Add an otherwise exciting, if not artistically brilliant, adventure story with some excellent and original ideas is dragged into the mud as the writers sell their birthright for, as Ted Sturgeon was wont to say, a pot of message.

Speaking of polemics, here's Ben Bova. Say hi, kids. Now, Mr. Bova is a better writer than the first four we've been talking about rolled up all together and tied up with a pretty pink bow. So his book Peacemakers makes an excellent case study of what happens when you get too busy writing propaganda for your favorite causes to remember that this is a novel, designed to entertain.

Peacemakers is another approach to "We need SDI now!!!", which Mr. Bova handled so entertainingly and well in his marvelous Kinsman Saga. But here the cause he's pushing takes over and small things are forgotten...small things like plotting, characterization, etc. Each of the characters in Peacemakers is a one-dimensional stock character, each with motivations so simple they could have come out of a Doc Savage novel. There's the Fanatical Moslem Terrorist. There's the Wise Old American Indian. There's the Soviet Spy with a Heart of Gold. There's the Mouse who Finds his Manhood to Seek Revenge. There's the Young Man with a Terrible Mistake in his Past. And so on. Each of these is driven by a single purpose, and other bits (love, etc.) are plastered on them as so much decoration.

The plotting is choppy at best. The book is designed as an "unofficial history," which is an excuse for Bova to skip around chronologically, putting glimpses of the late plot in at places where they make no sense but are probably supposed to be tantalizing, and commented on by an anonymous, faceless "official historian" who keeps apologizing for getting ahead of himself. Clearly, Bova understood that his messing around with the order of events was confusing; but for some reason, he chose to patch it rather than fix it.

I suspect that the reason was overinvolvement with the message of the book, which can leave the best of writers completely free of objectivity. Also, Bova managed to mix in other Issues (e.g., the drug trade), thus diluting the impact of the message he was aiming at. Look what happened when Heinlein made the same mistake: we got books like Farnham's Freehold. Bova's Peacemakers, fortunately, is nowhere near as offensive as Freehold -- but it's otherwise nearly as disappointing a book. Go look up the first Orion novel instead.

Lately, I've been treating Piers Anthony's books to Invidious Comparisons. Now, I think, I'll complete my little "invidious trilogy" by comparing his newest, Heaven Cent, to... Heaven Cent, by Piers Anthony.

You see, there's a book in there, screaming to get out. But Anthony wasn't sure what sort of book it was. For years, he's been at those grinks and groinks, the critics, to ignore the light material and take his serious books seriously. And for years, Xanth has epitomized the light material while classics of modern literature like Bio of a Space Tyrant gave us a good idea of what Anthony could do when he really buckled down. (Which gives you a good idea that something has happened to him since he wrote Macroscope, Orn, AND Cthon.)

Well, Heaven Cent is the latest cute furry little Xanth novel, and we grinks and groinks can ignore it.

Except...except...oh, except, Anthony, you has blew it. You actually included some philosophical stuff in there about free will and the relativity of morality that belonged in a serious book.

And if you're going to include that kind of stuff, Anthony, you have a moral and artistic responsibility to take it bloody seriously, in which case you have written a serious book, but a bad one; and if you don't want the book taken seriously, you have done the readers who pay their good money to be entertained with mindless fluff a serious disservice. In other words, Anthony, make up your mind. You can not have it both ways. This ain't Burger King.

Things get better as we progress down the pile. I've planned it that way, actually. From the realm of the half-bad book, we moved up to the merely mediocre, and now we've got a book that's really halfway-decent: Isaac Asimov's Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain.

I approached this with considerable trepidation. Asimov's recent attacks of sequelitis have been nastier and nastier, and I feared that this would be an attempt to tie in the universe of the original Fantastic Voyage with the Robot/Foundation/whatever universe he's been potchkying around with for the past half-dozen or so novels.

No fear. FVII doesn't tie in with anything. It's a much more acceptable book, in many ways, than the original (left to his own devices, Asimov comes up with a decent explanation for miniaturization), and does away with the silly Cold War subplot in favor of a much more believable set of future superpower relationships.

It's not all good. There is an extreme overdose of what I call "the third-order expository lump," and that requires a slight digression.

The classic expository lump is when an author stops the story to tell you what need to know, but wasn't clever enough to work into the plot. The second-order expository lump is when a conveniently well- educated character stops the story to lecture a conveniently ignorant character something the author needs the reader to know.

The third-order expository lump is actually more artificial than the second-order: two knowledgeable characters are talking, and one starts to tell the other stuff the other already knows...and the second character interrupts half-way, and says something like "Don't insult my intellect!" -- and proceeds to finish the lecture.

When your entire cast of characters are defined as knowledgeable, you have only first- and third-order lumps to lean on, and this is what Asimov has set up for himself. Unfortunately, he's long-since learned that the first- order expository lump is a Bad Thing, so a good ten percent of FVII's bulk is third-order lumps.

Sigh.

But it's all worth it for the punch line. Trust me.

Begin at the beginning," the King said, gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop." Jack Vance followed two-thirds of this advice in writing Araminta Station; the problem is that the part he left out was the part about coming to the end.

Araminta is a typical Vance novel -- that is, fascinating, complex, and written in a language that is to English what English is to the grunts of prelinguistic cave people. His words, and those of his characters, positively drip from the page into the reader's ear; if any SF writer alive deserves to be read aloud, it is Jack Vance.

And it's typical in deeper ways. Vance recombines here some of his classic themes: the decadent humans faced with a rising of non- human servants; the secret ruler; the Galaxy that seems to exist for the sake of human tourism. But none is merely repeated, and they come together in ways that you don't and can't predict.

Vance's characters are probably his weakest point as a writer. They all talk exactly alike, in a beautifully stylized and maliciously polite diction which I would happily die to be able to talk in.

Araminta is a story of crime and detection, rebellion and restoration, and coming of age. It is also incomplete. The principle plot lines are, technically, resolved, but when the book ends it is not over, and the result is disturbingly unsatisfying.

Still, that is nearly the only flaw in an otherwise marvelous read. Have fun.

And the best for last. Frederik Pohl keeps writing sequels to his marvelous novel Gateway. From a lesser writer, this would be a disaster. Pohl, however, makes sure he actually has something to write about before he starts sequelizing.

The Annals of the Heechee is the latest in the occasional series. It stands quite nicely beside its predecessors, and it's about abstract life forms, post-human evolution, and other good stuff. For those who haven't followed the series, you need to know that an incredibly dangerous enemy has been discovered living inside a black hole. For those who have... the Assassins come out. What they do when they get into "normal" space proves most surprising, and brings out hitherto unsuspected possibilities inherent in Rob Broadhead's vastened state (no, that's not a typo), and proves once again that Fred Pohl really believes that you can solve problems if you just stop and bloody well think. (I think so, too, but no novel is ever going to prove it -- only that the author thinks so.)

The story begins with a party that (a) reminds me more than a little of Frank Baum's OZ parties, not least because it (b) goes on so long that it drags the plot a bit. After that, things start happening fast and furious, and then people settle down for a space trip and the plot bogs down a bit and then they get there and the story ends.

So the plot is stopped twice -- and you won't mind, because when you come right down to it, Pohl isn't writing a plot, he's writing a by God novel about people, and what they think and do when they aren't being part of a "plot" is at least as interesting as any plot. Things lapse occasionally into "comic book cosmic," but not so badly that any seasoned reader of, say, Arthur C. Clarke can't handle it easily.

Good reading.

Instead of a Closet Classic:

I instituted the Closet Classics to bring books to your attention that had gone unnoticed by the SF community at large. This time, I'd like to do the same, but for a book that's still in print but won't get much attention from the SF community because it's from "outside."

It's Church and State, and it's a 1200-page comic book.

See, back in the '70s, a Canadian fellow named Dave Sim decided to enter the burgeoning field of "Conan satires," and launched a barbarian book called Cerebus the Aardvark. In black and white, the vicious little Earth-Pig's antics quickly won him quite a following, both because he was himself a very funny character and because he tended to be surrounded by characters everyone loved. For example, there's Elrod of Melvinbone (imagine if Elric talked like Foghorn Leghorn); Lord Julius of Palnu (Groucho, in charge of a medieval city- state); and the more obvious barbarian parodies like Red Sophia (a valley Amazon) and Bran Mak Mufin (lord of the Pigts).

So Sim had himself a happy little readership, and was making a little bit of money on his ha-has.

But he couldn't leave well enough alone. He started longer, more complex and serious stories that included the light-hearted characters he'd created -- and soon, by gum, he'd done a story twenty-five issues long, called High Society, in which he dealt with the complex politics of a world emerging from barbarism into early bureaucracy.

And no sooner did he finish that, then he launched into something even bigger and more complex: Church and State, sixty issues long, dealing with political ramifications left over from the first, plus the war between male and female deities on a level that, ultimately, would make "Doc" Smith green with envy.

Church and State is available in two volumes from Aardvark/Vanaheim. You have to order it by phone (from 519-576- 0610), and they cost about $30 a pop (ask them; they'll tell you the current price), but it's worth it.

For one thing, it's amazingly well drawn. We're not talking about Picasso or Van Gogh here, but we're talking about two guys who between them write and draw twenty pages a month, quality black- and-white work. For another, the individual issues of the comic book cost twice that new and a whole lot more on the back issue market. And for a third and last, it's the richest and most complex fantasy story of any sort I've seen in a long, long time.

The story is easier to understand if you've read the first fifty issues of Cerebus, also available in these telephone-book-like volumes, but that's far from necessary. Church and State is an excellent introduction to the state of the art in comics (or as the snobs call them, graphic novels).

Give 'em a try.
----
End of Part 7

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Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 8)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 8

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

One Writer's Journey

M. Elayn Harvey
Copyright 1988 by M. Elayn Harvey

Becoming a professional writer has been a road of painful lessons, but one where I've collected a wayside bouquet of self-discoveries. I started the journey with two certainties and a knapsack full of idealistic expectations. The two things of which I was certain were: I enjoyed the process of writing, and in that, I was a kin to my literary fore-mothers and fathers. And people who read my work enjoyed it. So I was encouraged to consider that maybe I had what it takes to be successful.

Writers have an untiring love for the look and mental texture of the written word. It's an inner compulsion to put words on paper that drives us to get the funny, important, and wonderful things of life on a page. Somehow, writing it down makes it more real. It can be a personal incident, or an overheard conversation, an event related by a friend, a dream, an idea, a single line; we need to write it down before it's lost.

But writing and publishing, I discovered, are two different aspects of the work. The first can be energizing; the second, the business end, can sap our energy. I didn't know this when I started out. I knew only that writing was intimate work. We create from our own personal bedrock of feelings, longings, and desires. We write about what is deeply meaningful to us, the visions we most care about.

Warhaven came from my utopian vision of a people who resisted violence by non-violent means in a unique way. Instead of improving the situation by eliminating the dangerous person, ala Rambo, my people changed the situation by enlightening the awareness of the person. This idea was and is important to me, especially in our times. I feel peace in the outer world will happen only when we can foster peace in our inner world. From each individual's dedication to tolerance and caring it can be done. And I need to write about this.

So, ignorant of the precarious way, I set out. It took me four years to write Warhaven; I was also raising a family. The second book of the trilogy will take one year. I learned the difference lies in dedication to the task. Practicing the craft, writing every day. The harder we work toward our goal, the faster we reach it. So logical, but I had to experience it to know its truth.

Someone once said, "Writing is ten percent talent, ninety percent work." I've found they were right.

In 1979, I finished the novel. From my Writer's Market, I found a Seattle house that published Science Fiction, and sent them the manuscript. Names and blame isn't important to me, only the wisdom I learned from the obstacles they placed in my path.

Anyway, in a few weeks, the editor called, saying he liked the book and would publish it. We signed a contract. I thought I had it made. I didn't. The publisher went out of business. Looking back over the contract, I noticed there was no obligation to publish clause, nor a time limit. I made certain of these in my future contracts.

It took me a year to get my book back, with the help of the Better Business Bureau. I read my novel again and saw it needed a lot of work. I thought about giving up. But I didn't. I took some writing classes from Green River College and rewrote the book. I learned the valuable lesson of distancing. Now, after I finish a story, I put it away for at least a week. Then reread it. I always see where it could be improved.

In 1982, I made contact with a Seattle agent. She read the book, loved it, and agreed to handle it. We worked with a simple exchange of letters; she agreed to put six months into the project, I agreed to allow her that time for my interests. She had it for a year without success. I got the manuscript back after being surprised with a $200 copying bill (24 copies). Another valuable lesson: always get the details down on paper, especially my financial obligations. I've learned since then that a reputable agent deducts a ten to fifteen percent commission upon the sale, and I'm not responsible for any expenses incurred beforehand.

When I got the book back and reread it, I saw it could use more work. And I thought about giving up. I'd been trying to sell short stories during this period, and getting nothing but rejection slips for my effort. I wrote a good friend, who was living in Guatemala at the time, telling her I was considering shelving my writing muse. She called me long distance (from Guatemala!) and said, "Don't you dare quit!" She'd read the book. "You've got talent, kid. Don't stop." Here's where I learned the value of a supportive friend. If you've got one, cherish her, or him, and take their advice.

Persistence pays. I can't get anywhere letting my failures paralyze me. I had to learn from them, study my mistakes, and use them as stepping stones to better my skill.

In 1986, I entered Warhaven in the Pacific Northwest Writer's Conference contest. To my surprise, it won second place in the adult novel division. How I wish I'd had more faith in my abilities; even after being notified that I was in the top ten, I still wasn't courageous enough to attend the awards banquet. I deprived myself of a rewarding experience simply because I felt I wasn't worthy. I believe in myself a little more, now.

Later that same year, I read in Locus that a New York editor was looking for works by new authors. I sent the first three chapters of Warhaven along with a copy of the award notice (pays to brag in this case) to Charles Platt, who was working for the Franklin Watts publishing house. He called a few weeks later to say Watts had agreed to publish the novel. Within the month, the carefully scrutinized contract was signed.

Did I have it made? Well, no. They wanted the book doubled in size. This was December, and they needed it by March. I was in a state of panic. But by working everyday, 8 to 10 hours a day, I finished it on time. I found that being professional meant sacrifice. Sitting down and working, whether feeling like it or not, doing the job. It took more than I ever dreamed it would. But it was in this test that I found out I had it in me to meet the challenge. For the first time, I felt I'd earned the privilege to call myself a writer.

I sent in the final draft. I thought the work was done? Nothing to do but wait for the money? Wrong. Within two months Watts sent me the galleys, those large-sized copies of what each page will look like in book form. I was asked to check the copy against my original manuscript for accuracy: typos, spelling, and punctuation. Every word of all 62,000 words, every comma, semicolon, and period had to be scrutinized, not once, but twice, three times to be certain. They wanted it back by Federal Express on Tuesday, which meant I had to mail it Monday, and this was Thursday afternoon. A published writer soon becomes familiar with deadlines, something I hadn't had to face before. I learned that meeting them is a mark of being a professional.

So this first novel has been, for me, a journey of lessons on the very real work of writing. Seeing my book in print is my reward. When I held my first copy, I thought of all the times I almost gave up. I'm glad I didn't. Do I think I've "made it"? No. There's no lofty pinnacle, no end to the road, no stopping now. There's another book to write, always another idea popping up for a short story; one day soon I'll break into that market. Despite the business potholes, I haven't lost my love of writing. There's something mysterious and wonderful about starting with a blank piece of paper in the morning, and in the evening finding on that page fascinating people, places, adventure, and love -- an entire world created where one didn't exist before. It's extremely self-fulfilling work.

Praise is quickly forgotten, money is quicker to vanish; only the satisfaction and pride of a well-crafted story stays. I learned that's what keeps us writers writing.

Stuff Received

Ace

Asprin, Robert & Abbey, Lynn. Uneasy Alliances, 258pp, August,
1988, $3.50, 0-441-80610-4. Thieves' World #11.
Robinson, Spider. Time Pressure, 243pp, August, 1988, $3.50, 0-441-80933-2.
Wurtz, Janny. Keeper of the Keys, 269pp, August, 1988, $3.50,
0-441-43275-1. The Cycle of Fire #2.

Avon

Abbey, Lynn. Conquest, 262pp, August, 1988, $6.95, 0-380-75354-5.
Unicorn & Dragon Vol. 2.
Bisson, Terry. Wyrldmaker, 176pp, August, 1988, $2.95, 0-380-75359-6.
1981 reprint.
Broderick, Damien. Striped Holes, 180pp, November, 1988, 0-380-75377-4.
Cover, Arthur Byron. Planetfall, 298pp, August, 1988, $3.95, 0-380-75384-7.
Forstchen, William R. & Morrison, Greg. The Crystal Warriors,
December, 1988, $3.50, 0-380-75272-7.
Gardner, Craig Shaw. Wishbringer, 248pp, August, 1988, $3.95, 0-380-75385-5.
An Infocom/Bryon Preiss book.
Long, Duncan. Anti-Grav Unlimited, 170pp, August, 1988, $2.95, 0-380-75357-X.
A first novel.
Martinne-Barnes, Adrienne. The Rainbow Sword, 211pp, September,
1988, $3.50, 0-380-75455-X.
Preuss, Paul. Maelstrom, 267pp, September, 1988, $3.95, 0-380-75345-6.
Arthur C. Clarke's Venus Prime Vol. 2.
Ryan, David. Haunting Women, 210pp, October, 1988, $3.95, 0-380-89981-0.
Simak, Clifford D. All the Traps of Earth, 278pp, July, 1988, $3.50,
0-380-45500-5. Reprint collection.
Smith, L. Neil. Taflack Lysandra, 230pp, December, 1988, $3.50, 0-380-75323-5.
Sullivan, Tim. Destiny's End, 305pp, July, 1988, $2.95, 0-380-75352-9.
Sullivan, Tim. Tropical Chills, 257pp, November, 1988, $3.95, 0-380-75500-9.
Zelazny, Roger. Sign of Chaos, 217pp, July, 1988, $3.50, 0-380-89637-0.
Zelazny, Roger & Randall, Neil. Roger Zelazny's Visual Guide to Castle Amber,
222pp, November, 1988, $8.95, 0-380-75566-1.

Baen

Adams, Robert. Stairway to Forever, 265pp, September, 1988, $3.50,
0-671-65434-9.
Allen, Roger MacBride. Farside Cannon, 406pp, August, 1988, $3.95,
0-671-65428-4.
Anderson, Poul. Hrolf-Kraki's Saga, 277pp, August, 1988, $2.95, 0-671-65426-8.
Reprint of a 1973 book.
Bretnor, Reginald. The Spear of Mars, 312pp, July, 1988, $3.50, 0-671-65423-3.
The Future at War Vol. 2.
Bujold, Lois McMaster. Falling Free, April, 1988, $3.50, 0-671-65398-9.
Caidin, Martin. Four Came Back, 280pp, September, 1988, $2.95, 0-671-65433-0.
Reprint.
Cherryh, C.J. The Paladin, 383pp, July, 1988, $3.95, 0-671-65417-9.
de Camp, L. Sprague and Catherine. The Incorporated Knight, 245pp,
September, 1988, $3.50, 0-671-65435-7.
Dickson, Gordon R. Beginnings, 282pp, August, 1988, $3.50, 0-671-65429-2.
Drake, David. The Sea Hag, 334pp, august, 1988, $3.95, 0-671-65424-1.
Beginning of the new World of Crystal Walls series.
Gemmel, David. The Jerusalem Man, 343pp, July, 1988, $3.95, 0-671-65421-7.
McLoughlin, John. Toolmaker Koan, 344pp, September, 1988, $3.50, 0-671-69779-X.
Pournelle, Jerry. The Burning Eye, 366pp, July, 1988, 0-671-65420-9.
War World Vol 1.
Sakers, Don. The Leaves of October, 276pp, July, 1988, 0-671-65422-5.
Tremayne, Peter. Bloodmist, 310pp, August, 1988, $3.50, 0-671-65425-X.
Wellman, Manly Wade. John the Balladeer, 306pp, July, 1988, $3.50,
0-671-65418-7. The complete collection of Silver John stories.
Zahn, Timothy. Time Bomb and Zahndry Others, 312pp, September,
1988, $3.50, 0-671-65431-4.

Bantam

Aronica, Lou & McCarthy, Shawna. Full Spectrum, 483pp, September,
1988, $4.95, 0-553-27482-1.
Asimov, Isaac. Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain, 385pp, October,
1987, $4.95, 0-553-27327-2.
Estes, Rose. Spirit of the Hawk. 246pp, September, 1988, $3.95, 0-553-27408-2.
Saga of the Lost Lands volume III.
Farmer, Philip Jose. Venus on the Half Shell, 178pp, September, 1988,
$3.95, 0-553-27531-3. Reprint of a parody novel 'written' by a Kurt
Vonnegut character.
Gerrold, David. When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One, Release 2.0, 287pp, July,
1988, $3.95, 0-553-26465-6. A new version.
Harrison, Harry. Return to Eden, 368pp, August, 1988, $18.95 0-553-05315-9.
End of the West of Eden series.
Harrison, Harry. The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted. 262pp, July,
1988, $3.95, 0-553-27307-8.
Lansdale, Joe R. The Drive In, 158pp, August, 1988, $3.50, 0-553-27481-3.
Lupoff, Richard. The Black Tower, 339pp, August, 1988, $3.95, 0-553-27346-9.
The Dungeon Volume 1.
MacAvoy, R.A. A Trio For Lute, 680pp, July, 1988, $4.95, 0-553-27480-5.
Omnibus edition of the novels Damiano, Damiano's Lute, and Raphael.
Moran, Daniel Keys. Emerald Eyes, 243pp, July, 1988, $3.50, 0-553-27347-7.
Roessner, Michaela. Walkabout Woman, 275pp, September, 1988,
$3.95, 0-553-27545-3.
Spinrad, Norman. Little Heroes, 563pp, August, 1988, $4.95, 0-553-27033-8.
Weis, Margaret & Hickman, Tracy. Triumph of the Darksword, 350pp,
September, 1988, $3.95, 0-553-24706-6. Volume III of the
Darksword Trilogy.
Wylie, Jonathan. The Mage-Born Child, 277pp, July, 1988, $3.95, 0-553-27270-5.
Servants of the Ark Volume 3.

Carroll & Graf

Asimov, Isaac. The Mammoth Book of Classic Science Fiction Short Novels
of the 1930's, 572pp, $8.95, 0-88184-410-1. Works by Lovecraft,
Bates, Russell, Johnson, de Camp, Weinbaum, Gold, Wollrich,
Campbell, Leinster, Williamson.
Dick, Philip K. Dr. Bloodmoney,304pp, $3.95, 0-88184-389-X. Reprint
of a 1964 novel.
Moorcock, Michael. The Brothel in Rosenstrasse, 192pp, September,
1988, $6.95, 0-88184-406-3.

DAW

Asimov, Isaac & Greenberg, M.H. The Great SF Stories 18 (1956),
366pp, August, 1988, $4.50, 0-88677-289-3.
Bradley, Marion Zimmer. Sword and Sorceress V, 284pp, August,
1988, $3.95, 0-88677-288-5.
Bradley, Marion Zimmer. Lythande, 238pp, August, 1988, $3.95, 0-88677-291-5.
1986 Reprint.
Gear, W. Michael. The Warriors of Spider, 367pp, August, 1988,
$3.95, 0-88677-287-7.
Green, Sharon. Mists of the Ages, 317pp, September, 1988, #3.95, 0-88677-296-6.
Hughes, Zach. Life Force, 269pp, September, 1988, $3.95, 0-88677-297-4.
Lackey, Mercedes. The Oathbound, 302pp, July, 1988, $3.50, 0-88677-285-0.
Vows and Honors Book I.
Reichert, Mickey Zucker. Godslayer, 222pp, August, 1987, $2.95, 0-88677-207-9.
Bifrost Guardians #1.
Reichert, Mickey Zucker. Shadow Climber, 300pp, July, 1988, $3.50,
0-88677-284-2. Bifrost Guardians #2.
Roberson, Jennifer. Sword-Dancer, 286pp, September, 1988, $3.50, 0-88677-152-8.
1986 reprint. Recommended.
Roberson, Jennifer. Sword-Singer, 382pp, September, 1988, $3.95, 0-88677-295-8.
Sequel to Sword-Dancer.
Smith, Stephanie A. Snow-eyes, 222pp, July, 1988, $3.50, 0-88677-286-9.

Doubleday/Foundation

Strete, Craig. Death in the Spirit House, 179pp, July, 1988, $14.95,
0-385-17826-3.
Tepper, Sheri. The Gate to Women's Country, 278pp, September,
1988, $18.95, 0-385-24709-5.

Nolacon Press

Resnick, Mike. Shaggy B.E.M. Stories, 262pp, $14.95. Available from
Nolacon II, P.O. Box 8010, New Orleans, LA 70182.

Pageant Books

Black, Robert. Death Angel, 256pp, October, 1988, $2.95, 0-517-00835-1. Kline, Robert Y. Ancestors, 384pp, November, 1988, $3.95, 0-517-00676-6. Siciliano, Sam. Blood Farm, 416pp, September, 1988, $3.95, 0-517-00660-X. Townsend, Tom. Panzer Spirit, 288pp, December, 1988, $3.50, 0-517-00819-X. Woods, Jack. Wolffile, 352pp, September, 1988, $3.50, 0-517-00043-1.

Pocket

Asherman, Allan. The Star Trek Interview Book. 278pp, July, 1988,
$7.95, 0-671-61794-X.
Duane, Diane. Spock's World, 310pp, September, 1988, $16.95, 0-671-66851-X.
Niven, Larry; Pournelle, Jerry & Barnes, Steven. The Legacy of
Heorot, 383pp, August, 1988, $4.50, 0-671-64928-0.
Paul, Barbara. The Three-Minute Universe, 265pp, September, 1988,
$3.95, 0-671-65816-6.
Whelen, Patrick. Monastery, September, 1988, $3.95, 0-671-66187-6. A
first novel.

St. Martin's Press

Datlow, Ellen & Windling, Terri. The Year's Best Fantasy, First Annual
Collection, 491pp, September, 1988, $12.95, 0-312-01852-5.
Easton, M. Coleman. Spirits of Cavern and Hearth, 293pp, December,
1988, $16.95, 0-312-02887-5.
Evans, Christopher, Writing Science Fiction, 97pp, June, 1988, $10.95,
0-312-01849-5.
Ferman, Edward L. & Jordan, Anne. The Best Horror Stories from The
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 403pp, July, 1988,
$22.95, 0-312-01894-0.
Hinz, Christopher, Anachronisms, 304pp, August, 1988, $17.95, 0-312-01729-4.
Nighbert, David E. Timelapse, 294pp, August, 1988, $17.95, 0-312-0835-5.
A first novel.
Shirely, John. Kamus of Kadizhar: The Black Hole of Carcosa,
184pp, October, 1988, $2.95, 0-312-91173-4.

Tor

Bickham, Jack M. Day Seven, 314pp, July, 1988, $17.95, 0-312-93066-6.
Bova, Ben. The Peacekeepers, 337pp, August, 1988, $17.95, 0-312-93080-1.
Cave, Hugh B. Disciples of Dread, 376pp, September, 1988, $17.95, 0-312-93101-8.
Engh, M.J. Wheel of the Wind, 377pp, September, 1988, $18.95, 0-312-93095-X.
Farris, John. Scare Tactics, 310pp, July, 1988, $17.95, 0-312-93085-2.
Ing, Dean. The Big Lifters, 243pp, July, 1988, $16.95, 0-312-93067-4.
Norton, Andre. Tales of the Witch World #2, 376pp, July, 1988,
$16.95, 0-312-93078-X.
Pohl, Frederik & Williamson, Jack. Land's End, 370pp, August, 1988,
$18.95, 0-312-93071-2.
Resnick, Mike. Ivory: A Legend of Past and Future, 374pp,
September, 1988, $17.95, 0-312-93093-3.
Tiptree, James Jr. Crown of Stars, 340pp, September, 1988, $17.95,
0-312-93105-0.
Wilde, Kelley. The Suiting, 239pp, August, 1988, $16.95, 0-312-93069-0.
Wilson, F. Paul. Black Wind, 465pp, September, 1988, $18.95, 0-312-93064-X.
Yolen, Jane. Sister Light, Sister Dark, 244pp, October, 1988, $16.95,
0-312-93091-7.

TSR

Parkinson, Dan. Starsong, 314pp, June, 1988, $3.95, 0-88038-536-7.

Warner Books

Bear, Greg. Eternity, 432pp, October, 1988, $16.95, 0-446-51402-0.
Longyear, Barry. Naked Came the Robot, 213pp, November, 1988.
Watkins, William John. The Last Death Ship Off Antarres, 204pp,
January, 1989.

Westgate Press

Wendell, Leilah. The Book of Azrael, 208pp, August, 1988, $8.95, 0-944087-01-9.
Non-fiction metaphysical work.

Fan and Other Zines

Argos #3, quarterly from P.O. Box 2109, Renton, WA. 98056. Small
professional fiction magazine, this issue includes stories by
Mike Resnick, Keith Laumer, Thomas Easton, a new column by
Keith Laumer, and more. Worth the $3.00 to check out ($2.50
plus p/h) if you can't get enough with the major fiction
magazines. Resnick's The Inn of the Hairy Toad is a real hoot.
Caprician #3, Lillian Edwards & Cristina Lake. A perzine from this
years TAFF winners. Available from Lillian Edwards, 1 Braehead
rd., Thortonhall, Glasgow, G74 5AQ, Scotland or Cristina Lake,
47 Wessex Avenue, Horfield, Bristol, England, B57 ODE.
Delineator #6, Alan White, ed. Irregular from 455 E. 7th Street #4, San
Jacinto, CA. 92383.
The Dilinger Relic #58, Arthur Hlavaty, ed. Irregular from Box 52028,
Durham, NC 27717. Hlavaty is a finalist for the 1988 Best Fan
Writer Hugo.
Extrapolation V29#1, Thomas D. Clareson, ed. $5.00, $15.00/yr (4
issues) from Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio, 44242.
Literary criticism of the Science Fiction genre.
Fosfax, Timothy Lane, ed. $1, or $9/yr (12 issues) from FOSFA, Box
37281, Louisville, KY, 40233-7281. A 1988 Hugo finalist for
best Fanzine. A review oriented fanzine, definitely of interest
to readers of OtherRealms.
Gegenschein 55 & 56, Eric Lindsay, Ed. Irregular from 6 Hillcrest
Avenue, Faulconbridge, NSW 2776, Australia.
Holier Than Thou #27, Marty Cantor, ed. The final issue for a while
from 11825 Gilmore #105, North Hollywood, CA. 91606.
The Insider, St. Louis SF Society. Monthly clubzine from P.O. Box
1058, St. Louis, MO 63188.
Lan's Lantern #26&#27, Lan Laskowski, ed. Irregular from 55 Valley Way,
Bloomfield Hills, MI 48013. A Hugo Finalist for best fanzine,
probably the best first fanzine for fans interested in what
fanzines are about.
Locus, Charles Brown, ed. $28/yr (12 issues) from Box 13305, Oakland,
CA, 94661. Multiple Hugo winning news magazine for the Science
Fiction field. Recommended for anyone serious about SF or Fantasy.
Mad 3 Party #27&28, Leslie Turek, Ed. $1/issue (to $10) from Box 46,
MIT Branch PO, Cambridge, MA. 02139. 1988 Hugo finalist for
Best Fanzine. Leslie is a finalist for Best Fan Writer. The
fanzine of Noreascon 3. Fascinating to anyone interested in
what happens while people put together a major convention.
Nebulousfan, David Thayer, ed. from 7209 DeVille Dr. North Richland,
TX 76180. Thayer's (aka artist Teddy Harvia) perzine.
The New York Review of Science Fiction, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, ed.
$24/year from Dragon Press, Box 78, Pleasantville, NY 10570.
New monthly semi-prozine of criticism on the field. Has many
interesting contributors, including Samuel R. Delany, David
Hartwell, the Neilsen Haydens, Debbie Notkin and Tom Weber.
Pirate Jenny #1&#2, Pat Mueller, ed. Available from 618 Westridge,
Duncanville, TX 75116. Mueller is the ex-editor of the Texas SF
Enquirer, now with her own publication. As good as TSFE was,
this is much better (without the limitations forced on her by
F.A.C.T. In issue 1: the coup at F.A.C.T. and why Pat's no
longer with TSFE. Fascinating. Pat won the Best Fanzine Hugo
for her tenure at Texas SF Enquirer, and is well on her way to
winning it for Pirate Jenny.
Renaissance Fan #3, Rosalind Malin and Dick Pilz, Jr. from 2214 SE
53rd, Portland, OR 97215. A hard to classify fanzine, each
issue is themed, and each copy hand finished with custom
coloring. Gorgeous covers, and a real joy.
Riverside Quarterly, Vol 8. #4, Leland Sapiro, ed. $6/4 from Box 464,
Waco, TX 76703.
Rune 78, Jeanne Mealy & David Romm, ed. From Minnesota SFS, Box
8297 Lake Street Station, Minneapolis, MN 55408.
Secant #4, Greg Hills, ed. GPO 972G, Melbourne, Australia, 3001.
Scavengers Newsletter, Janet Fox, ed. $8/yr (12 issues) from 519
Ellinwood, Osage City, KS 66523-1329. Small Press marketzine.
Science Fiction Chronicle, Andy Porter, ed. $2.25, $27/yr (12 issues)
from Box 2730, Brooklyn, NY 11202-0056. The other major news
magazine for the Science Fiction field.
Thrust #30, Donald Fratz, ed. $2.50, $8.00/yr (4 issues) from 8217
Langport Terrace, Gaithersburg, MD 20877. Very disappointing
issue; small, boring, after skipping the Spring issue
completely, erratic typography and very poor proofreading made
this issue a chore. Generally better than this issue.
Weberwoman's Revenge #30 & #31, Jean Weber, ed. Irregular from 6
Hillcrest Avenue, Faulconbridge, NSW 2776, Australia. Discusses
the Australian "Door for DUFF" campaign.
YHOS 44, Art Widner, Ed. 231 Courtney Lane, Orinda, CA 94563. Art's
personal/apazine.

Publishing Notes

Hill House Publishers has announced a 500 copy, limited edition of Ray Feist's Fairie Tale, with a cover by Don Maitz and interior illustrations by Lela Dowling. The price is $75.00. For more details, contact Hill House Press, Box 1783 Grand Central Stations, New York, NY 10163.

Avon October books include: Blood of the Colyn Muir by Paul Edwin Zimmer & Jon de Cles (first novel for Zimmer, second for de Cles); Piers Anthony's Heaven Cent, a Xanth novel; The Last Defender of Camelot by Roger Zelazny, a reprint collection; Vale of the Vole by Piers Anthony, a Xanth reprint. November books include Chess With a Dragon by David Gerrold (recommended), Striped Holes by Damien Broderick; Arienne Matrine-Barnes' The Fire Sword and Roger Zelazny's Visual Guide to Castle Amber with art by Neil Randall.

Avon's November list includes Tropical Chills, an anthology of tropical horror edited by Tim Sullivan; Chess With A Dragon by David Gerrold (recommended by OtherRealms); Striped Holes by Damien Broderick; The Visual Guide to Castle Amber by Roger Zelazny and Neil Randall; and The Fire Sword by Adrienne Martine-Barnes. In December, they will publish Crystal Warriors by William Fortschen & Greg Morrison, Taflak Lysandra by L. Neil Smith (sequel to Brightsuit MacBear) and Still Forms on Foxfield by Joan Slonczewski. Avon's December releases are: Crystal Warriors by Wiliam R. Fortschen and Greg Morrison, Taflak Lysandra by L. Neil Smith, and Still Forms on Foxfield by Joan Slonczewski.

Avon January releases include Free Zone by Charles Platt and Cluster, a reprint from Piers Anthony.

Coming in October from Baen: Deadman Switch by Timothy Zahn; The Fall of Atlantis by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Divided Allegiance by Elizabeth Moon (The Deed of Paksenarrion, Book 2); The Armor of Light by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett and Unknown, edited by Stanley Schmidt.

Pocket book October releases: Weaveworld by Clive Barker in paperback; The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley in paperback; The Final Nexus by Gene Deweese (Star Trek #42); The Star Trek that never was compiled by Allan Asherman

A new review-oriented magazine is starting up. Called The New York Review of Science Fiction, it is be a monthly review of the field. The folks involved include Kathryn Cramer, David G. Hartwell, Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Susan Palwick & Tom Weber. A one year, 12 issue subscription is $24 from P.O. Box 78, Pleasantville, NY, 10570. ---- End of Part 8

↑ Top

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 9)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 9

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

Dreams of Flesh and Sand

W.T. Quick

Signet 0-451-15298-0, April 1988, 301 pp., $3.50

Johnny Zed

John G. Betancourt

Popular Library/Questar 0-445-20559-8,
July 1988, 213 pp., $3.50

Reviewed by Michael C. Berch
Copyright 1988 by Michael C. Berch

Ingredients:

% A dreary near-future setting % Extrapolation of computer technology and human interfaces % Obsessive fascination with weapons and drugs, the nastier the better % A disaffected anti-hero(ine) protagonist % Greedy oligarchies and corporate conglomerates

Mix generous quantities of the above and beat to a pulp-like consistency. Add appropriate buzzwords (the matrix, ice, the Sprawl, technical boy). Add corrupt hedonists to taste. Season with colorful character names (Japanese, if possible) and garnish with assorted references to computer security techniques. Serves 100,000.

Dreams of Flesh and Sand

A strong case can be made that recent literary movements in speculative fiction have developed in four distinct phases: first come the short stories, knocking on the door and demanding critical attention, followed by a solid core of novels by the movement's "leaders" (which they were writing while the seminal stories attracted attention), then a spate of (often commercially successful) formula imitators, and finally a collapse into self-parody and cannibalism. By this time, the original leaders are usually well on their way to something else.

William T. Quick's first novel, Dreams of Flesh and Sand, leads me to believe that the cyberpunk movement is well into its third phase. Dreams may well become a commercial success, but its close adherence to the well-traveled paths of cyberpunk make it difficult if not impossible to enjoy Quick's crisp, witty, fast-paced prose style.

From the beginning, Dreams disturbing resemblance to the works of William Gibson hinder the reader's attempts to discover the author's thematic and dramatic intentions. By page 23, when one of the main characters (after a discussion of wetware and information matrixes) inserts a jack under her right ear and, a few pages later, she and an associate take off on a visual tour of cyberspace -- excuse me, the "metamatrix" -- I put the book down and looked at the cover to make sure that I hadn't accidentally purchased a copy of Cyberpunk Combat Command in the World of Burning Chrome..

Dreams of Flesh and Sand concerns a large, oligarchic corporation -- Double En -- run by a Mr. Nakamura and a Mr. Norton. Nakamura and Norton are having some sort of feud, and our two main characters, Jack "Iceberg" Berg, and his ex-wife, "Icebreaker" Calley, are either hired or not hired by one or both or neither of the principals, ostensibly to find out what the other is up to and take countermeasures. The scene weaves in and out of the metamatrix (involving various representations of Berg, Calley, Nakamura, Norton, and a number of lesser characters), interrupted by a generous helping of chases, shootouts, raids, and interrogations. Unfortunately, neither Icebreaker nor Iceberg (who were, in theory, named on account of their respective intrusion and intrusion-countermeasures abilities) seem to demonstrate any technical knowledge of these areas beyond what one might read in a PC magazine. This strains the reader's identification with these otherwise sympathetic characters.

I kept waiting for Dreams to break out of its cocoon and head for some uncharted territory; towards the end it showed a few signs of doing so -- as the true nature of the metamatrix and the Nakamura-Norton dealings are revealed -- but never quite got there. Since Quick has promised more novels in this genre, we can hope that the next and its successors will make strong moves away from formula and toward the author's own innovations and futures.

Johnny Zed

Many of the same elements are present in Johnny Zed, John Betancourt's second novel. But instead of letting them form the stuff and substance of the book, the author has relegated them to the background and allowed the story to predominate instead. Johnny Zed is a political novel, about revolution, terrorism and corruption. On a more personal level, it is about trust and betrayal and a revolutionary trying to figure out her political and personal identity.

In Johnny Zed the U.S. Congress has gone off its rails, suspending elections and ruling by decree. Congressmen and Senators openly buy and sell favors, become wealthy off the proceeds of foreign colonization, and pass their seats on via inheritance. As the government and ruling class have grown completely corrupt, the American people -- those with jobs, anyway -- have withdrawn into fantasies of consumerist mall culture or drugs or street technology.

This society could not be complete without a revolutionary movement. Our focus is Shelley Tracer, urban terrorist -- or freedom fighter -- and member of a Disruptionist cell. The Disruptionists seem to lack neither money nor technology, and Tracer and her cell leader, one Johnny Zed, rush from one attack to the next, pausing only to replace blown-off fingers with fancy imported prostheses.

If this sounds a bit comic-bookish, it should; Johnny Zed is a novel painted in bright primary colors; its characters are almost constantly in action. Contemplation, if any, seems to be restricted to the (intentionally) platitudinous "quotations" that introduce each chapter. But mere fast-pacedness does not render a novel a mere adventure or romance; Johnny Zed manages to delve into some interesting questions of power and how it corrupts. Shelly Tracer learns that where power is involved, loyalties become fluid; things are quite often not nearly what they seem.

This is a book of disguises, assumed identities, secret police, double agents and double crosses, overlaid on a background of cyberpunkisms like underground medics, drug and weapons merchants, people with modified bodies (the catmen and the reptilian Esteban Grammatica are particularly effective), and, of course, the mandatory treatment of computer and communications security hacking.

Johnny Zed is plausible in a larger-than-life sense. This is more a dark satire than a comic novel, but the author shows that he does not take himself too seriously, and his tongue is occasionally found planted firmly in his cheek. While Johnny Zed may not break new literary ground, I found it an enjoyable, well-paced novel.

Brightsuit Macbear

L. Neil Smith

Avon paperback, 1988, 212pp., $2.95, 0-380-75324-3.

The front cover blurb says "To save the Confederacy, a young man embarks on a wild journey across galaxies...and enters exotic new worlds." But the blurb writer screwed it up, because the teenage hero doesn't save the Confederacy, there is no wild trip across galaxies, and only one semi-exotic world gets entered. What happens is that young Berdan Geanar follows his villainous grandfather down to the surface of the not-so-exotic planet Majesty and eventually recovers the brightsuit of the title, along with a new name: MacDougall Bear.

The back cover blurb tells us that this is "the first adventure in an exciting new series set in the Tom Paine Maru universe," but that's not quite right either. Brightsuit Macbear ends with the evil Hooded Seven (who never appear on stage) still at large, so presumably Mac Bear will run into them again in as many volumes as the market will bear (pun gratuitous). But the truth is that this "new" series is the same as the old one -- what's changed is the publisher, since the earlier volumes were brought out by Ballantine/Del Rey.

For those not familiar with the series, the Confederacy is a sort of loose anarcho-libertarian civilization which developed in an alternate universe in Smith's first novel, The Probability Broach (1980). Broach was a pretty good novel and it justly won the Prometheus Award given by the Libertarian Futurist Society, but except for it and the third volume, Their Majesties' Bucketeers (1981), the series has been a big disappointment, with the same old "Hamiltonian" villains and the same old Confederacy good guys duking it out in volumes such as The Venus Belt, The Nagasaki Vector and The Gallatin Divergence, as the improbable Confederacy science and society spreads from Earth to space to the whole damn galaxy. Brightsuit is the, um, seventh in the series, and little that is new or interesting happens, just more of the same.

The brightsuit, by the way, is a refinement of the smartsuit which made its first appearance in Tom Paine Maru, and while the smartsuit would only keep you warm and healthy and safe, the brightsuit will give you superpowers such as flying through the air and space, blasting your enemies with thunderbolts and saving the Confederacy in a single bound. Smith does include one of his more interesting aliens, the Sodde Lydfan scholar Pemot, in this story, and the fauna and flora of Majesty are mildly interesting, but these crumbs do little to make up for the lackluster story and style. If you're following the whole series as I've been, you'll want to read this one too, I suppose -- otherwise, don't bother.

At Winter's End

Robert Silverberg

Warner Books, 1988, 0-446-51384-9, 404pp, $17.95

Silverberg, who seems to have passed through more artistic periods than Picasso, has moved into megacorporate publishing heaven -- the fat book series. If ever a novel cried out "there's more coming," this is it. Sadly, like Clarke's 2061, this tour de force is all tour.

Following the 26 million year cycle of the Nemesis hypothesis, this tale of Earth's reawakening after a 700,000 year stint on the meteor hit parade ought to have ample sense of wonder. As they emerge from their underground cocoon into the New Springtime, chieftain Koshmar and her twining partner, offering woman Torlyri, lead the small band of People west from the ancient Mississippi River to the fabled Great World city of Vengiboneeza. During the dangerous trek, the old chronicler of the tribal records and myths dies, and all precedent is broken when Koshmar appoints a very young, impulsive Hresh to take his place. Hresh, with more psychic power than most of his People, represents both scientific inquiry and adolescent insecurity.

Once Vengiboneeza, parts of which are still in good repair, is finally reached and the tribe settles in, Hresh slowly unearths functioning machines from the past glories of the Six Peoples. Gradually, too, he comes to realize what the reader knew all along, that Koshmar's small tribe is not human, and was in fact, given human help to evolve from New World monkeys during the Long Winter.

For all the wonderful background that surrounds Hresh and his friends, for all the finely detailed works of the long- collapsed Great World and its races, for all the implied threat of the similar Beings and the very different, insectoidal Hjjks, the plight of these People barely kept me awake. As with his Majipoor stories, Silverberg has exposed a vast and glorious panorama to watery emulsions. Wait for the paperback.

Antibodies

David J. Skal

Congdon & Weed, 1988, 0-86553-199-4, 169 pp., $15.95.

In a chilling update of Bruno Bettelheim's case study of "Joey, the Mechanical Boy," and Bernard Wolfe's classic Limbo, Skal give us a near-future sociopathic horror.

In San Francisco, Diandra marks time as an avant garde department store window dresser, while she awaits full conversion to the Cybernetic Temple. Under the influence of cult leader Venus Tramhell, an armless sculptress whose robot arms promise so much, Diandra starves herself ever closer to her dream of machine conversion, of escape from her hated meat existence. When Diandra falls into a catatonic trance at work, however, she becomes the unwilling patient victim of Dr. Julian Nagy, whose Resurrection House uses questionable methods to deprogram such "antibodies." Nagy's frustrated wife, Gillian, on the other hand, has secretly penned the underground science fiction novel that inspires the antibody cult, while her paraplegic lover urges her to write an expose of her disgusting husband and gain her freedom. In the ensuing struggle over the eternal mind/body problem, more than mere flesh is lost.

With just the right level of SoCal behavior-mod glitz over pseudo- Freudian psychobabble, Skal flays much of contemporary American fads and fancies -- with not a few swipes at SF fandom. This is not a pleasant story, but short as it is, you're going to finish it in one fascinated sitting.

The Big Lifters

Dean Ing

Tor Books, 1988, 0-312-93067-4, 243 pp., $16.95.

Before American powers-that-be were jerked around by Shiite terrorists, Ing told them how to respond in Soft Targets. There is little evidence that they listened. Let us hope, as Ing again tosses out more clever ideas, that somebody with Ing's can-do attitude about Man's future in space is paying attention.

Wes Peel, founder and CEO of Peel Transit, has a dream. Due to a strict Christian upbringing and a tragic loss of close family in trucking accidents, Peel wants to replace trucks with more efficient, safer ways of moving freight. He is on his way, thanks to his brain trust of Tom Schulteis and Dave Kaplan, who have designed Delta One, a massive, state of the art, cargo dirigible. In addition, Peel Transit is testing a maglev track maintenance train contracted by railroad interests, which has a few tricks designed by Schulteis and Kaplan that even Wes Peel doesn't know about. When hot pilot Glenn Rogan is hired to test both airship and train, the secret agenda of Peel's scientists is underway.

Unfortunately, other interests have secret agendas as well. Joey Weatherby, head of the largest truckers' union, feels the threat of Peel's future shock to transportation. And an obscure Iran-born college professor, along with a band of Shiite Kamikazis, has targeted those Americans who bring hope to the Great Satan, like John Wesley Peel.

This is an idea book, a set of gedanken experiments in fiction form, but the characterization and action plotting offer plenty of excitement. As you cheer on the good guys, you'll hope that all these workable ideas are already off the drawing board. ---- End of Part 9

↑ Top

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 10)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 10

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

Words of Wizdom

Ivory: A Legend of Past and Future
Mike Resnick
Tor, 374pp, September, 1988, $17.95, 0-312-93093-3
[*****]

Full Spectrum
Edited by Lou Aronica
Shawna McCarthy
Bantam, 483pp, September, 1988, $4.95, 0-553-27482-1
[****]

Anti-Grav Unlimited
Duncan Long
Avon Books, 170pp, $2.95, August, 1988
[***-]

The Blind Knight Gail Van Asten Ace Fantasy Special, 218pp, July, 1988, $3.50, 0-441-06727-1 [****]

Arabesques: More Tales of the Arabian Nights Edited by Susan Shwartz Avon Fantasy, 275pp, August, 1988, $3.50, 0-380-75319-7 [****]

Dance Band on the Titanic
Jack L. Chalker
Del Rey, 339pp, July, 1988, $3.95, 0-345-34858-3
[***+]

Tropical Chills
Edited by Tim Sullivan
Avon, 258pp, November, 1988, $3.95, 0-380-75500-9
[****]

Sword-Singer Jennifer Roberson DAW books, 382pp, September, 1988, $3.95, 0-88677-295-8 [*-]

Cradle
Arthur C. Clarke & Gentry Lee
Warner Books, 304pp, $18.95
August, 1988, 0-446-5 1379-2
[**-]

The Troupe
Gordon Linzner
Pocket Books, July, 1988, $3.50, 0-671-66354-2
[***+]

The Forever City
Dick Lupoff
Walker & Company, 1987, $15.95, 0-8027-6742-7.
[***]

Mirror Matter: Pioneering Antimatter Physics
Joel Davis&Robert Forward
Wiley&Sons, 256pp, 1988, $18.95, 0-471-62812-3.
[****+]

Roger Zelazny's Visual Guide to Castle Amber
Roger Zelazny
Neil Randall
Avon, 222pp, November, 1988, $8.95, 0-380-75566
[**]

Shaggy B.E.M. Stories
Edited by Mike Resnick
Nolacon Press, $14.95, 262pp, no ISBN
[****]

The Palace
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Tor, 471pp, August, 1988, $3.95, 0-812-52802-6.
[****]

A Trio for Lute
Damiano
[****]

Damiano's Lute
[***]

Raphael
[***-]

Bantam, 680pp, July, 1988, $4.95, 0-553-27480-5

Ripper!
Edited by Gardner Dozois and Susan Casper
Tor, 427pp, September, 1988, $3.95, 0-812-51700-8
[***]

Retread Shop
T. Jackson King
Questar, 276pp, August, 1988, $3.50, 0-445-20674-8.
[***]

Welcome to Moonbase
Ben Bova
Ballantine, 253pp, November, 1987, 0-345-32859-0
[***+]

Once on a Time
A.A. Milne
Signet, $3.50, 0-451-15558-0
[*]

Surfing Samurai Robots
Mel Gilden
Lynx/Omega, $3.95, 1-55802-001-2
[]

Ivory, by Mike Resnick, is a tough book to review. It's a Science Fiction novel written about a pair of elephant tusks that first showed up in 1898. Elephant tusks. If that sounds boring to you, it's simply because I can't successfully explain what this book really is.

What Resnick has done is span 4000 years, numerous planets and civilizations, telling many stories that together tell the story of the tusks of the Kilimanjaro Elephant, the largest tusks ever to be documented. What he is doing is telling myth, in the classic sense, set in a science fiction format. A white man, creating a classic Maasai myth that a Maasai storyteller would be proud of. In Ivory, Resnick shows a greater sensitivity for a culture that is inherently foreign to him than many authors do to their own. He cares about this, and it shows.

The late Robert Heinlein was generally considered to be the great storyteller of Science Fiction. Since his death, people have wondered who would don the very large shoes left behind. Many have championed David Brin, but with Ivory, Resnick shows himself to be the heir apparent. Brin tells a very good story, but Resnick is the storyteller, and is finally taking his place at the front ranks of the Science Fiction field. Ivory should be a contender for the major awards this year, and is one of those books that may well redefine what we think of as Science Fiction in the years to come. Resnick has taken some very unusual concepts and ideas and melded them into a classic framework, and has come up with something that is pure SF, but also something much, much more.

Original fiction anthologies have a long, honored track record in the SF world. Orbit and Universe being the premier examples. Now comes Full Spectrum, a labor of love from Bantam editors Lou Aronica and Shawna McCarthy, with 25 stories that they feel define the leading edge of Science Fiction.

If that's true, then Science Fiction is going to be in good shape in the coming years. From Gregory Benford's vignette "Proselytes" to Norman Spinrad's "Journals of the Plague Years," there is not a clinker in the bunch. Even the weaker stories, such as Kevin Anderson's and Doug Beason's interesting, but seemingly unfinished "Reflections in a Magnetic Mirror," are merely good. And the best?

Some of the stories will make you put the book down and just think for a while. There's "Dead Men on TV" by Pat Murphy and "My Year with the Aliens" by Lisa Goldstein. My favorite fantasy work, by far, as Fred Bals' "Once in a Lullaby" [duty forces me to warn people that Fred writes for OtherRealms, and I saw "Once" in a very early draft. It made my cry then, and after a number of rereadings I still find myself reacting that way. Friend or not, it's one hell of a story].

And then there is "Journals of the Plague Years" by Norman Spinrad. Spinrad is not my favorite author. Something about his writing just doesn't click with me. Some of his stuff I actively dislike. And having said that, I think that "Plague Years" may be the most important piece of less-than-book-length fiction published in the last few years.

You're not going to like this story. It's written to upset you, to make you angry. To sit you down and force you to think about things you would much rather avoid. It's about AIDS, and a future in which AIDS forces changes in society that many people (myself included) will find repulsive. But changes that are all too possible, and Spinrad is the first author to sit down and deal with what AIDS really means, in a story that demands that you read it, even as it hurts. "Plague Years" should be another award contender, and you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Anti-Grav Unlimited, Duncan Long's first novel, takes a new look at some well-worn territory. The plot is familiar: Good Scientist Discovers Something That Will Change Society, And Fights Nasty World Corporation For His Life. While the plot sounds somewhat moldy, Long's interpretation of it is fresh and interesting, familiar without being derivative. Phil is a scientist for a Major Corporation who has just discovered a metal that acts like a gravitational magnet; when one pole is facing mass it is attracted, the other pole repels. Anti-Gravity. Free Power for everyone.

The Major Corporation chooses this moment to sack him and his staff. Phil grabs the material, the files and the machinery needed to build it and decides to bring the power, literally, to the masses. He outfits his van with an anti-gravity motor (unlimited energy, and it flies), and starts planning large scale manufacturing.

About now, of course, someone tries to kill him. They blow up his house. They remove him from the databases, making him dead. And the chase begins.

To his credit, Long doesn't let the chase get out of hand. Phil runs off to his friend, Nikki, who happens to be a recently unemployed rocket pilot. This is rather handy, as they decide the only safe place to get away from the Nasty World Corporation is to go to the moon. In the van, of course.

The first two thirds of the book are quite good. The science behind the anti-gravity material is well presented and easy to accept. The setup of the van, the trip to the moon, and the entire time spent on the moon hiding and setting up manufacturing in an abandoned lunar mine are well thought out and enjoyable. The only flaw with this part of the book is the relationship between Nikki and Phil, which consists of Nikki saying "I'm not ready yet" and Phil acting like a seventh grader suffering from Puppy Love. The relationship got a little saccharine for me after a while, and kept getting in the way of the narrative.

The final third of the book unfortunately unravels a lot of the good work. They return from the moon to give their discovery to the people of Earth. This quickly degenerates into a non-stop chase scene, as Phil and Nikki try to find out who's trying to kill them and track them back to their boss (who else would be the logical person to give the discovery to?).

They finally meet the head of World Power, the force behind the assassins. He's an obese, decadent Nero type whose primary interests seem to be eating and little boys. He already has the formula for the anti-gravity material, of course, and is actively suppressing it because it would be bad for profits.

Nikki and Phil kill him, destroy World Power, leak the secret, and the riots begin.

The ending is left muddled, nothing really solved, and a last minute plot device tossed in in what seems to be a made-for-sequel setup. The first part of the book is really good, the final part is disappointing; in all, I can give Anti-Grav Unlimited a qualified recommendation, but what I'm really interested in seeing is his next book. This one isn't bad for a first novel, but it isn't especially good for a first novel, either.

Gail Van Asten's The Blind Knight is the third of the Ace Fantasy Specials and her first published novel. Set in the time after the death of King Arthur, it is the story of a boy coming into his inheritance, a woman thwarted of hers, and of the life they build together. The book is set in an Arthurian mythos, but Van Asten uses and builds on the Arthurian legend rather than simply copying or rehashing it. It's a well written, pleasant first novel that you'll find enjoyable and interesting.

Arabesques is an original anthology of stories set in the time of the Arabian Nights, an area that fantasy writers haven't heavily explored to date.

This book is chock full of good stories. My favorite, by far, is Larry Niven's "The Tale of the Djinni and the Sisters." Another good story is Gene Wolfe's "The Tale of the Rose and the Nightingale (and What Came of It)" but really, there aren't any bad stories at all. Other authors represented include Tanith Lee, Jane Yolen, Esther Friesner, Andre Norton, Melissa Scott, Harry Turtledove and M.J. Engh. A strong cast of writers, a strong anthology, this is a book Fantasy readers don't want to miss.

Jack Chalker doesn't write many short stories. The tapestry he prefers is large and complex, and he builds stories in terms of books, not chapters. Occasionally, however, a shorter work comes to life, and Chalker has now collected them together in a collection, Dance Band on the Titanic. This collection is full of interesting stories (the title piece will, frankly, stay with me for many years -- a very un- Chalker-like and haunting piece set on a very different coastal ferry) and autobiographical pieces and story prefaces.

It's a good, solid collection with a couple of true gems. Even if you don't normally read Chalker, you should try it out for Dance Band. It's well worth it, just on its own.

Tired of cold, drafty cellars and graveyards at midnight? For a different look at horror, let's go to the tropics. That's what Tim Sullivan does with Tropical Chills, a new anthology of horror stories with a single theme: that the heat can be as horrible as the cold.

About half the anthology is original fiction, including works by Dean Koontz, Gene Wolfe, Steve Rasnic Tem, Edward Bryant, Charles Sheffield, Pat Cadigan and George Alec Effinger. The front cover pushes Koontz's story "Graveyard Highway," and Sullivan himself pushes "Houston, 1943" by Gene Wolfe as a potential award winner. While I won't disagree with either, "Dead Meat" by Sheffield and "Talking Heads" by Effinger were the two stories that did the most for me. There really isn't a bad story in the entire anthology, and you can't go wrong by picking this one up.

I was really looking forward to Sword-Singer, the sequel to Jennifer Roberson's wonderful Sword-Dancer. While a bad book is disappointing, a bad sequel to a very good book is worse. Expectations are set, and when they aren't met, the disappointment is greater.

In Sword-Singer, Sandtiger and Del head north to meet her fate and (hopefully) clear her name of the death of her advisor. On the way up, they run into many dangers and fight many foes, including one set of persistent magical beasts that she never does begin to explain, seemingly leaving them to the next book (the only thing worse than throwing in a mystical magical foe is throwing in a mystical magical foe and leaving it mystical through the entire book).

The best description of the book is tired. Roberson, the writer, seems to be going through the paces, and the book plods along without any real motivation or interest. Roberson doesn't seem to care -- and telegraphs that into the story and then into the reader.

Sandtiger is a cardboard cutout who not only can't understand what's going on in Del's mind, he doesn't even try. Many of the things he seemed to learn about her in the first book have flitted from his mind. Del, on the other hand, is an automaton, running around stone- faced. Roberson tries to build in some personal conflict by having Del try to decide whether to track down the leaders of the group that killed her family or clearing her name. What really happens is that Del seems to twitch around at the whim of the author. The relationship between the two is cold, forced, and entirely artificial.

The only decent character in the book is Sandtiger's horse, the stud. He's lively, obnoxious, and upstages everyone else in the story whenever he's around. In a novel full of cardboard stereotypes, he's the only breathing thing there. He's wonderful, which only adds contrast to how drab and lifeless the rest of the book is.

And then there is the ending. People who dislike spoilers should skip along, since there's no way to talk about this without giving some nasty ones away. At the end, Del and Sandtiger are manipulated into fighting each other in the circle. Sandtiger has his new, unbloodied sword screaming for a soul. Sandtiger moves in for the kill, and....

Cut to the final chapter as Sandtiger, his blooded sword and his stud, go riding off into the sunset to find out who set those mystical beasts after them. Is Del dead, soul powering the Sandtiger's sword? Roberson never says, although she implies it. If Del is dead, why doesn't she say so? If Del is dead, why is Sandtiger leaving on a quest without any feeling of remorse or pain? One would think that if you killed your mate, you'd at least feel something. Sandtiger showed more emotion when he lost the stud.

And if Del isn't dead, the author's played some unfair mind-games on her readers. The ending really bothered me. The book was ended in a way that left the reader hung out to dry, and I resented it. You have to play fair with your readers. I don't like "who shot J.R." type endings -- the author isn't trying to convince you to read the sequel, they're trying to force you to. A good series doesn't require coercion. Sword-Singer left a bad taste in my mouth, and I expected better from Roberson.

There are whales beaching themselves in unreasonable numbers off the Florida coast. At the same time, the Navy is searching for something out there, and isn't talking about what it is. Carol Dawson, a journalist, thinks the two may be related and decides to find out for herself.

This is the beginning of Cradle, the first collaboration between Grandmaster Arthur Clarke and Gentry Lee. The Navy is searching for a lost missile, Carol Dawson is searching for a Pulitzer, and the whales....

The whales sort of get forgotten along the way. Clarke and Lee use them as a hook to get Dawson out onto the ocean, looking for what she thinks is a lost missile, hoping to find it before the Navy does, but once the search is started, the whales more or less disappear, being explained away quickly, towards the end. In their place comes the Colony, an Alien civilization Out There somewhere, which, along with the folks from the Navy and Carol and her compatriots, are the three point-of-views used in the book.

Unfortunately, by bringing in the aliens, the authors defuse what could have been a good action-adventure-suspense story. Instead of hanging the reader on "What's Happening?" we know -- the aliens are causing the problems with the whales, and all that's left for the reader is following along and seeing how the authors pull it together.

A major subplot -- the search for the missing missile, doesn't really do anything to help. Carol's looking for the missile, thinking it's the problem with the whales. So is the Navy, with the added problem are some people who are convinced that the missile was stolen by the Russians, and that Carol is working with the Communists to recover it.

A confrontation is looming, but it's one you don't care about because you know it's a red herring. The aliens are really the cause of everything, and the rest is filler; marking time for the final climax where all three groups come together and everything resolves out.

The resolution comes, but it's more an anti-climax than anything else.

Cradle has potential, but potential unrealized. It sputters along, never quite taking off, but never crashing in on itself in total collapse, either. Overall it's a disappointing book from Clarke.

In a fascinating updating of the vampire legend into a modern urban setting, Gordon Linzner makes the move from short fiction and small press books into the mass market with The Troupe.

In it, a group of urban vampires hit New York City. They are the classic vampire archetype, with two variations: sunlight doesn't disturb them, and they eat the soul of their victims rather than their blood, leaving corpses without a mark. Linzner implies, but never explains their existence as a mutation of some sort. But this is a story of their existence, not their creation, so the lack of an origin isn't a problem.

Against this group of ruthless nasties are two people. Benny is a drop out, a drug addict; the kind of hopeless slime New York is famous for, looking only for enough cash for the next fix. And Nan, a former member of the troupe who has realized that killing the cattle, so to speak, isn't right -- a crisis of faith that puts her at odds with the rest of the troupe and has forced her to either convert her fellows, or destroy them.

Against a modern urban setting, we have the classic evil force, which kills silently and at will, and seems unstoppable. At the same time, though, Linzner has given them their own life and dimension. You can sympathize and understand the vampires, even if you can't agree with their principles. Their actions are not those of the mindless Evil Nemesis, but of a group of people in a life or death struggle of their own.

The book has a complex plot and a lot of deep, complex characters going for it. The pacing sets up a sense of crisis for the reader, carrying them along for the ride to the final climax, which is ultimately very satisfying.

The only criticism I have is the opening. Linzner spends about the first quarter of the book introducing the characters. One by one you meet the Troupe, and the Troupe kills and feeds. For me, this ran overly long -- I found myself waiting for something to really happen. It could have been cut somewhat without losing anything and evening out the pace, since the start of the book is significantly more sluggish than the rest.

All in all, though, this is a minor criticism, and the book as a whole is a nice read. If you don't read horror, this would make a good introduction, and for horror fans you will have, I feel, a real feast with this one.

The Millennium series, a Young Adult oriented series of novels created by Byron Preiss and written by well-known Science Fiction authors, continues with The Forever City by Richard Lupoff. Each book in the series takes a new look at a standard theme in Science Fiction, and this time it's Cities in Space. The orbital city Yukawa sends a research ship out to the Oort Cloud in search of knowledge and (not so coincidentally) the fate of another research ship lost in the area. What they find is a substance that redefines their perception of the Universe, and gives them what seems to be an insurmountable problem.

This is a good book, but while the other books in the series were accessible to adult readers as well, The Forever City is a simpler book and definitely aimed at a younger market. While Lupoff is dealing with the orbital city (unfortunately all too peripheral to the story for my tastes) the book moves wonderfully, but once out in space and dealing with The Problem, it bogs down and seems to get off track. The characterization and interpersonal relationships are also simplified and of the kind you're likely to see in Young Adult fiction.

It's still a good book, and the entire Millennium series would be a fine introduction to Science Fiction for the younger readers, as well as good entertainment for older readers.

It looks like popular science is back in vogue. Last issue I looked at Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time. As I write this, it is still on the best-seller lists, and there's another, even better, book now out. Mirror Matter! Pioneering Antimatter Physics by Joel Davis and Robert Forward is a very well researched and written book on an exceptionally esoteric subject. Unlike History of Time, which was primary an autobiography of Stephen Hawking's life in physics, Mirror Matter puts the people in the background and talks turkey about the physics behind the universe. A must for anyone with an interest in science, while this won't have the best seller draw of the Hawking book, it's a much better science book and well worth tracking down for your library.

How can you tell your series is a success? They start publishing books about your books. One current example is Roger Zelazny's Visual Guide to Castle Amber, in which Neil Randall, with input from Roger Zelazny, takes you through Castle Amber and talks about what goes on within.

This is, from the start, of interest only to Amber fans. It's a tribute to Zelazny that Amber is popular enough that a publisher thinks a book about Amber would be profitable.

If you're an Amber fan, is this book worth your time? I'd call it a qualified maybe. There are two sections to the book. The first is a tour of the Castle and the area around it, given by Flora, a Princess by Amber. The second section is an encyclopedia of Amber that includes biographies of the royal families, articles on the history of Amber and other items of interest from the series. Each biography is illustrated with the family member's trump.

Unfortunately, the writing is uneven, ranging from the terminally cute to the truly inspired (the description of Flora's apartments, by Flora herself, is hilarious). The illustrations tend to be rather pedestrian and uninspiring, looking more like a drafting assignment than a set of illustrations in a book.

Until you get to the trump cards. I'm working from a galley, with the horrible art reproduction a copy machine implies, and the trumps are still gorgeous. It's obvious that a lot of time and detail has gone into drawing the royal trumps. The biographies that go with them are generally well done, and I found them useful in trying to keep track of the rather complex relationships that Zelazny builds into the story.

If this was a mass market paperback, I'd give it my recommendation just for the biographical material. At the more expensive trade paperback size, it is harder to justify. For serious Amber fans, yes. For the rest, take a look and see for yourself. It's uneven, but it is also full of interesting information and a handy reference if, like me, you can never keep the various characters separate in your mind.

Shaggy B.E.M. Stories is a limited distribution (1000 copies) anthology of parodies of famous Science Fiction authors and themes. It was initially published for Nolacon, the 1988 Worldcon, and about 800 copies were sold at the convention -- so if this book hasn't sold out by now, it will soon. It includes pieces by many famous writers, including Clarke, John Sladek, Randall Garrett, Dick Lupoff, Isaac Asimov and Poul Anderson. Some of the pieces are rather famous, including Asimov's classic Thiotimoline piece or George Alec Effinger's Muffy Birnbaum stories. Others, like Cathy Ball's "Love's Prurient Interest," (a classic romance set at a SF convention, as Our Heroine looks for True Love, or at least A Good Time) are getting their first wide distribution. There is even the first pure Cyberpunk parody, "Nutrimancer," by Marc Laidlaw.

It's a hoot. If you like parodies, you'll want this book. The ordering information is in the Stuff Received section. But you had better hurry.

Short Takes: Back in print after too long is Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's The Palace, a historical horror/romance set in Renaissance Florence. It's a well written vampire tale with a twist: the vampire is the hero. The Palace, like the entire St. Germain series, is highly recommended.

Another series brought back to print, this time in a single volume omnibus, is R.A. MacAvoy's A Trio for Lute, containing the books Damiano, Damiano's Lute and Raphael. About a witch and the Angel Raphael, it's a fascinating series of fantasies.

Similar in feel to Roger Zelazny's Alien Speedway series is Retread Shop by T. Jackson King. It's an orphan-human-in-alien-society- makes-good story. Well written and entertaining, it could be read either as a Young Adult or as straight SF with equal enjoyment.

Gardner Dozois and Susan Casper have collaborated on a new theme anthology about the most famous mass-murderer in history, Jack the Ripper. Ripper! includes a few reprint stories, but is mostly new fiction about a time in English history that has grabbed a piece of the cultural mind and never let go. It's full of good stories and is well worth it for Horror readers or anyone with an interest in Jack.

Many stories have been written about bases on the moon, but how about a User's Manual? That's what Ben Bova has done in Welcome to Moonbase, a fictional (for now) book that describes everything you need to know to get around and enjoy the permanent space enclave that the United States in 2001. This is both a highly entertaining work and chock full of facts about the moon and how a permanent moonbase could be built and survive with current technologies. It's also a convincing work on why this should be done.

Long out of print, Once on a Time is a Fairy Tale for Adults by A.A. Milne, author of the classic Winnie the Pooh. I'm a hardcore fan of Winnie, but I had real problems with this book. It's old, tired, not terribly amusing and much too self-indulgent for my tastes. It's obvious to me why this has been out of print so long, and I can recommend it only to Milne completists and masochists. Unlike many, I feel that an author's lesser works should be allowed to rest in peace, and this is a good example of why.

From the disappointing to the horrid. Mel Gilden's Surfing Samurai Robots is the first category book I've seen from Lynx/Omega, and as soon as I saw the cover, I had this feeling I wasn't going to like it -- it was going to either be unreadable or high camp. While Lynx/Omega was the publisher, it was packaged by Byron Preiss, so I had some hope there might be something interesting behind that cover.

Wrong. If this is the kind of book Lynx/Omega is going to put out, anyone willing to admit to reading SF in public can write off the entire line. I have to admit it -- this is one of the few books I review that I didn't finish. I tried, but it wouldn't let me.

It's that bad.
----
End or Part 10

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Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 11)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 11

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

Interview
Joel Davis

This interview was held on the Delphi Timesharing service by Sysop Mike Banks and other Delphi members. It was held on July 16, 1988.

For information on joining the Science Fiction group on Delph, get your local access number from 800-544-4005. Log onto Delphi with account JOINFICTION and password URANUS. This will qualify you for a special discount.

Mike> We are pleased to welcome Joel Davis, co-author (with Dr. Robert
L. Forward) of Mirror Matter! Pioneering Antimatter Physics.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Mirror Matter! is a pop-science
book on the development of a future antimatter technology that
will lead to cheap solar system travel within 25-50 years. For
a first question, I'd like to ask you to synopsize for us just
what antimatter is. (Or is not)
Joel> Antimatter is not "dark matter" or "shadow matter." Antimatter
is, in a sense, matter which is the "mirror image" of ordinary
matter. Mass is the same, but other properties such as
electrical charge and direction of spin are opposite. For
example: the electron has a negative electric charge but the
positron (antielectron) has a positive electric charge. Same
for the antiproton -- the charge is negative instead of
positive, but other properties are the same, such as mass.
Mike> In normal matter, then, electron (-) , proton (+), but antimatter
reverses? Does the direction of electrons in their orbits
reverse?
Joel> Yes on the first, not necessarily to the second. The idea of
"orbits" around nucleus is really just a fiction of the Bohr
imagination. It isn't really like that in there at all. What it
IS like, is mysterious. We are talking about the properties of
the subatomic particles themselves, not the direction of their
orbits in an atom, or a nucleus.
Ralph> The thing Mike said about solar system travel in 25-50 years
intrigues me. How can this be when we can't even keep a shuttle
on the launch pad? Who's developing it?
Joel> Good question. First, more background. When matter and antimatter
meet you have total annihilation of matter into energy.
Everything basically cancels out and you get pure E=Mc2.
Theoretically, anyway, this could be a superb source of
propulsive energy. As to who is working on it: (1)Not NASA.
It's too "far out" for our space agency. (2) The Air Force is
very interested in it. Bob Forward's been working with them for
about 5 years now on a consultant basis. USAF sees antimatter
as a definite possibility for earth to orbit propulsion and for
in orbit propulsion, at least to start with.
Mike> What kinds of energy can be expected? Hard radiation?
Joel> To start with, a first-generation antimatter space propulsion
engine would use a very small amount of antiprotons (nanograms
to micrograms) to heat a large amount of "working fluid" like
liquid hydrogen. You get several thousand seconds of specific
impulse, which is a hell of a lot more than the shuttle. Hard
radiation. This kind of reaction with antiprotons produces as a
byproduct about 1/3 gamma rays. Hard ones. But 2/3 of the
byproduct of the annihilation event is pions, which are
subatomic particles with mass. Some are charged. So magnetic
fields can direct them for more thrust.... You do have to
shield for the gammas, but the thrust and specific impulse is
so huge that the weight penalty is not that serious.
Mike> You seemed to imply by "working fluid" in alluding to liquid
hydrogen that the liquid hydrogen would be used for boost mass?
Or am I wrong in my inference?
Joel> No you are correct. The working fluid is heated up to a plasma
(you can use liquid methane, or water, or whatever) and that is
your boost mass. You have a ratio of a few micrograms of
antimatter to a few metric tonnes of working fluid.
Mike> Great. I love it. Heinlein's torch ships.
Joel> Exactly.
Warren> How can the conversion be controlled , i.e., rate?
Joel> This is, as we say, "just an engineering problem...." Actually,
it is a big engineering problem. However, antimatter has been
made and controlled for decades now in particle accelerators by
physicists. The trick is to construct small and compact magnetic
bottles which can hold micrograms to milligrams of antihydrogen
ice flakes. Also, the flakes are kept slightly charged with an
electron gun (simple stuff) and levitated in the bottle. Such
bottles exist now, called Penning traps, but they are the size
of a refrigerator. But the engineering is not impossible.
Mike> Then the real engineering problem is how to release the flakes
selectively?
Joel> Right. The flakes must be sent down a tube to the thrusters where
they mix with the large amounts of normal matter.
Mike> The tube must somehow be isolated...magnetically?
Joel> Yes. Magnetic fields, for sure. Also cooled to a fraction of a
degree above absolute zero to keep the antihydrogen flakes as flakes.
Damon> Really more of a matter of metering out the stuff atom by atom,
or nearly so. I think it would be similar to existing particle
accelerator guideways, but more compact.
Joel> Much more compact. And different design, too. Not circles but
straight. This is one place where the warm temperature
superconductor technology will make a big difference..
Mike> Has anyone written to say they're using Mirror Matter! as source
info for a novel, yet?
Joel> Yes, Greg Bear has told me he is already stealing ideas from the
book. I should also note that Jack Williamson wrote a nice
blurb for the book, and he's the inventor of antimatter SF.
Mike> Can you briefly highlight applications involving antimatter other
than spacecraft/aerospacecraft propulsion?
Joel> Sure. Antimatter, especially antiprotons, can be used for imaging
the interior of a human body in much more detail than current
PET scans and CAT scans by building up pictures pixel by pixel,
like Voyager 2. Also, antiproton beams can be used to cauterize
tumors that are otherwise inoperable. Some people at the University
of Syracuse in NY are working on this. The same technology can
be used to image/anneal the interior of solid objects.
Mike> What about weapons?
Joel> Weapons? Well, not bombs. Too expensive, and antimatter/matter
annihilation tends to be fizzle and not boom. Antiproton beam
was considered by SDI people, but shelved as "too expensive."
Actually it was too far down the road, after Reagan
administration so they were not interested.
Damon> I've seen a proposal for room temperature storage of mirror
matter in ring molecules. Any thoughts on that?
Joel> That sounds interesting. The problem with room temperature
storage, as I see it is the presence of air molecules. Now, if
this is room temperature storage in a very hard vacuum, then
you got something interesting.
Damon> The idea is to capture positrons in a ring of molecules so it'd
be relatively isolated from outside influences, such as stray
molecules. I point out that this is still theoretical as far as
I know.
Joel> Ah. The problem there is (1) won't the positrons annihilate on
contact with the ring molecules, and (2) positrons are not as
good for antimatter propulsion as antiprotons. Hey, ALL of this
is theoretical, right now..
Damon> It's not a great answer for all applications, but provides a possible
means of storage somewhat like a small battery, as an analogy.
Joel> That might be very good for some nonpropulsion applications, such
as medical uses or metallurgical uses. Do you know who is doing
that research?
Damon> This was from a letter in Aviation Week and Space Technology.
And the author was proposing tank-killing rifle bullets, for
example, more as hypervelocity rounds than semi-nuclear
explosives, I think.
Joel> Forget that. Very expensive antitank weapon. Antimatter costs
hundreds of millions to billions of dollars per milligram. But
that would be a good storage method for other uses. Such as in
a high school or college physics lab.. Think of the experiments
you could do.
Mike> Do you see any "spinoff"-type applications or discoveries
associated with near -- future antimatter research?
Joel> The first spinoffs, I think will be in the area of physics
research, since storage of large (nanogram) amounts of matter
will make possible some very interesting new experiments. Like,
does antimatter have the same gravitational force as matter?
Other spinoffs may show up 10-15 years down the road, in those
medical applications.
Mike> What's your opinion on that?
Joel> On the gravity thing? I think it's the same for antimatter as
matter. At this point there is no reason to think otherwise.
Though I wonder about the 5th and 6th force experimental
results.... Interesting. Perhaps an antimatter component there?
Mike> Antimatter could, among other things, promote "hands-on" research
into some currently-neglected areas.
Joel> Yes. Bob Forward calls it "low velocity nuclear physics" since
all the current antimatter physics experiments are done with
high velocity antimatter beams.
Clay> I read in Scientific American, that antimatter is "heaver" than
matter - because of gravitons & antigravitons and all that stuff.
Joel> We assume gravitons exist (and therefore antigravitons) but no
one's ever detected them. A physicist at Harvard is currently
doing experiments at CERN to determine exactly that, Clay.
Dropping antiprotons down a tube to see if they fall at the
normal rate in a 1g field.
Joel> Right, He's first using protons, then antiprotons. The first step
was last year, when he captured individual antiprotons in a
penning trap and played with them.
Mike> You mentioned/described briefly the penning trap earlier. This is
a true magnetic bottle? (Or electron-beam "levitation?")
Joel> Yes. It uses magnetic fields to capture and then trap a subatomic
particle in a container, and keep it there.
Mike> What is the "incidence" of antimatter particles, antiprotons,
say, when compared with normal matter? i.e., how many ppm (or
billion, trillion?)
Joel> Theoretically there should be equal amounts of matter and
antimatter in the universe, since this is a symmetrical
production thing. For every matter particle produced there
would be an antimatter particle.... However, there is almost no
antimatter naturally found in the universe...
Mike> Indeed, Joel. Any theories on that?
Joel> The theories are pretty complex, and currently are tied up in the
Alan Guth idea of the inflationary scenario of the universe's
creation. Some very tiny imbalances at that point lead to a
slight preponderance of matter over antimatter and the stuff
all annihilates except for the left over matter. And that IS
US. And the galaxies, etc.....
Damon> Either production wasn't symmetrical after all, or we just
haven't seen it yet.
Joel> Damon, we have been looking for a long time and there are
characteristic radiation signatures to antimatter/matter
annihilation, which are not seen in the universe.
Damon> Does our current understanding of nuclear physics (such as it
is) suggest that interactions of matter and antimatter might be
significantly different between different elements and antielements?
I.E., would the generated subatomic particles and various radiation
be different, as in fission and fusion reactions?
Joel> No. The proton is a proton is a proton (apologies to Gertrude
Stein) no matter what atom it's in, and the same is true of
antiprotons, etc. The by-products of antimatter-matter
annihilation is pretty well known for antiprotons and
positrons. It might get more complex for large clusters of
them. But not really different.
Joel> Yeah, everything eventually cancels out. Even the pions
eventually decay to gamma rays and positrons and electrons,
which annihilate to gammas.
Brandon> You mentioned experiments concerning 5th and 6th forces. Like
most other people, I've only heard of the "Four Forces". What
are these experiments?
Joel> Recently some physicists have found tentative evidence for the
existence of variations of gravity on a short range. Gravity is
infinite in its expanse. But the fifth and sixth forces would
act at short distances a few hundred meters to a kilometer or
so. One is attractive, one repulsive, and no one is sure that
they are real at this point. But some of the evidence is intriguing.
Mike> Are these analogous to gravity, strictly speaking?
Joel> I believe so yes.... The main thing about them is that they would
explain some discrepancies in the measurements of gravity
forces that have been found over the years, and also win
someone a Nobel Prize.
Warren> What about inverse process - energy to matter and antimatter?
Joel> Oh yes. That is VERY true. E=Mc2 again. That is how the first
antiparticle was discovered. By Carl Anderson of Cal Tech.
Found electrons and positrons appearing in a cloud chamber when
a cosmic ray hit a particle of some atom in the chamber and it
was photographed.
Warren> Then antimatter can be manufactured?
Joel> YES. Interesting consequences. That is what physicists do today
in particle accelerators. Make antimatter, namely antiprotons,
and keep them in a beam, then slam the antiprotons into a
target and get a spray of quarks. So the key to antimatter
technology is to make A LOT of antimatter and learn how to
store it. Making it is not hard. Just energy consuming.
Susan> Joel, how do they contain it?
Joel> They keep it in a vacuum tube bent into a circle about 10-15 km.
in diameter, which runs under Switzerland and France. Magnets
keep it circling around in the tube.
Susan> So if they make a mistake, there goes Europe?
Joel> No. The stuff is so minuscule in amount (femtograms or less) that
all that happens if the magnets cut out is that there is a blip
on some radiation counter.
Damon> Has antihydrogen actually been manufactured, even in single-atom
quantities?
Joel> Yes it has, at least in nuclear form -- since that is just
antiprotons. But also antideuterons, antitritons, and some
isotopes of antihelium. But antihydrogen with an antiproton
circled by a positron: not yet. But not difficult to do,
either.
Damon> Why not? Just no need for it yet?
Joel> Well, the reason why not is that most physicists consider making
real antihydrogen just "a trivial chemistry experiment." And
they are not interested. Just another "engineering problem."
----
End of Part 11

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Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 12)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 12

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

No Prisoners!

Divided Allegiance
Elizabeth Moon
Baen Fantasy, 522pp, October 1988, 0-671-69786-2
[*****]

The Oathbound
Mercedes Lackey
DAW Fantasy, 302pp, July 1988, 0-88677-285-0
[****]

Snow-Eyes
Stephanie A. Smith
DAW Fantasy, 222pp, July 1988, 0-88677-286-9
[***]

The Final Planet
Andrew M. Greeley
TOR, 398pp, May 1988, 0-812-58338-8
[****]

The Irish Americans
Andrew M. Greeley
Warner Books, 256pp, August 1988, 0-446-38558-1
[****]

The Chernobyl Syndrome
Dean Ing
Baen Books, 330pp, 1988, 0-671-65345-8
[**+]

In my last column, I discussed what makes a story appealing to me, and what I considered to be the "rules" for a good story. As with any other good rule, corollaries start popping up. Therefore, I present Sefton's First Corollary to these rules:

Stupid people get killed.

Why is this important? Because I've read one too many story that hinged on the lead characters constantly keeping important information from each other. Now, how did these people get to their position, usually quite lofty, by either: 1) Listening and believing every fool who comes down the road, or 2) Believing something incredibly stupid about their leader, true love, or whatnot, and not bothering to check with the person in question.

Of course, the fool, or the rumor are sent by the Truly Evil Person. The misinformation will keep our heroes running in tight little circles until the last chapter, at which point they will realize what has been done to them.

Happily, this style appears to be on the wane. Authors are beginning to turn out books that have fantastic elements, while not throwing out psychological and physiological reality.

Elizabeth Moon's Divided Allegiance, the second book in The Deed of Paksenarrion, is such a book. In the first book, Sheepfarmer's Daughter, the physical aspects of battle are brought to bear. This is continued in Divided Allegiance. Again, people get hurt in battle; they don't either die gloriously or come out without a scratch. The aftermath of war is also explored, another area usually ignored by fantasy writers. Battlefields and conquered people just don't disappear after the battle, and there is much not normally covered.

The aftermath of the final battle in Sheepfarmer's Daughter is what propels Paksenarrion into her current adventure. The Girdsmen, introduced in Sheepfarmer's Daughter, play a much larger role in Divided Allegiance. A good part of the book examines the lifestyle and philosophy of the Girdsmen, who transcend the usual warrior sect that is presented as the Paladins or Rangers of many world.

Moon also breaks another fantasy cliche; she introduces the stock snotty elf, who is usually the secondary lead, and then gets rid of him. Very refreshing.

The use of horses is another area in which Moon breaks with the fantasy mold. Horses are some of the most beautiful, intelligent, obstinate, and obnoxious beasts known. However, you wouldn't know this by quite a few fantasies. The horse is always perfectly groomed, its tack in splendid order, and of course the horse never throws, kicks or bites the rider. There is also a squire handy to take the horse off-scene for a fill-up, and presumably, a tire rotation. The horses in Monn's books are real horses; they need to be curried, their hooves get stones and mud, and they kick and throw their riders.

Divided Allegiance is an excellent partner to Sheepfarmer's Daughter. I'm looking forward to the third book, Oath Of Gold. The story just keeps getting better.

The Oathbound is the first in a trilogy by Mercedes Lackey. The story and characters are from the same world that the lackey's previous series, The Heralds of Valdemar. However, the Heralds don't enter into this book except as a reference. The two main characters, Tarma, and elite swordswoman, and Kethry, a sorceress will be familiar to those who keep up With Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress series. In fact, one of the chapters in this book is also a chapter in this year's anthology, which was published one month later. It was mildly unnerving to read The Oathbound, and then come across the same material in the next book I read. The Oathbound is a much better work.

While the book is episodic in format, Lackey fleshes out the characters beyond their primary motives. One of the aspects I've always enjoyed about characters is Lackey's stories is that not only are they talented, they're intelligent. They have the abilities, and they also have the resourcefulness to use them. Once again, Lackey has come through with another winner.

Snow-Eyes, by Stephanie Smith, is a bit of a puzzle. There isn't a lot of action going on here; in fact, most of it takes place in one house. The drama and conflict is almost entirely psychological. The mother/daughter conflict in this story makes Mommy Dearest look like a walk in the park. On top of a neurotic need to not be usurped, and an almost crazed jealousy of her daughter, this mother has the magic abilities to make her daughter suffer. The mother is torn between having to complete her duty of serving the local deity, and wanting to be the alpha female in the pack. So, she uses one of the classic neurotic passive/aggressive tactics: she "forgets" to tell her daughter information she needs to understand what is happening to her. An example: The daughter is "blinded" to be taught how to use all her senses in the service of the Lake Mother. But does the mother tell her daughter exactly why this is being done? And that the daughter has a choice whether to accept this? Nope.

In Snow-Eyes, Smith takes the perennial mother/daughter conflict, the transformation of child to adult, and child-like to adult, and transforms it into a horror tinged fantasy.

Anyone who grew up in Chicago in the 60's and early 70's, and isn't familiar with Andrew Greeley wasn't paying attention. Besides appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times as a columnist, Greeley also appeared as the voice of reality in Chicago politics, both regular and secular. Greeley has also written across the spectrum of subjects, from sociology texts to detective novels. His latest foray into the Science Fiction field is The Final Planet, a story of the Holy Order of St. Brigid and St. Brendan, interstellar pilgrims who must be asked by the inhabitants to be able to land on a planet. The colony ship is wearing out, and in reference to the title, this is the Final Planet; the ship won't make it to the next port of call.

Now, given that Greeley is an Irish Catholic, and a Jesuit to boot, one would probably expect a bit of propaganda for the Catholic Church to slip into the plot. However, this Catholic Church bears very little resemblance to the Roman Catholic Church. It's a lot closer to what an extrapolation of the Celtic Catholic Church would look like if it had been allowed to go its merry way. The Captain Abbess is a highly trained psychic; one of the best parts of the story is where she lets loose some psychic lightning bolts. This group is also missing the refined hypocrisy that marks many alleged christians today. I'm also happy to learn that they will still haven't untangled St. Brigid's and the Virgin Mary's functionality hundreds of years from now.

The good brothers and sisters need to determine whether the planet they have come to is ready for them. So, Seamus O'Neill, soldier, bard, and natural politician extraordinaire is sent down to the planet Zylong to spy for the Captain Abbess. As a spy, Seamus is a total loss; his inherent ability to lead shines through,and he finds himself allied with the planet's rebels. Seamus finds a planet, which started out as an experiment in an anarchic society, to have swung in the opposite direction. Procreation is strictly controlled, as well as an sexual expression. Sex has become totally divorced from love, as the society practices either abstinence or total orgiastic abandon. This dichotomy typifies this society; very tight control with planned lapses is the method under which the dictators keep control. Add to this a Homo Erectus type race being kept as a slave class, and you have a fertile ground for not only a little sociological lecturing, but a fine story.

I mentioned above that Andrew Greeley is a man of many talents; besides being a novelist and columnist, he is a professor of Sociology. The Irish Americans is an excellent introduction to the Irish and Irish-American cultures. With the deluge of Celtic and pseudo-Celtic novels, there's a lot that may be Irish, and may be the product of a fertile imagination. The Irish Americans gives an excellent background in Celtic legend and Celtic psyche.

It's the end of the decade, so it's time for the gloom and doom books. I've survived this spate once before; I don't know if I can say the same for the "grab your junk silver and gold, your dehydrated foods, and head for the hills" crowd. Dean Ing's book, The Chernobyl Syndrome, avoids most of the complete mania of the 70's books, but fails to address some fairly important topics.

For example, I don't see a discussion of shelf life or storage of contraceptives. I don't know about you, but the last thing I would want a year after the bomb falls is a spate of births. Without contraception, you can expect 80% of the woman who have sex regularly to be pregnant by the end of the year. Personally, I'd rather not have the local gene pool expanded at my expense.

Another point is what do you do the next spring? The survival tactics hit a brick wall after six months. Given there are survivors after a biological, chemical, or atomic war, there probably isn't going to be enough protein on the hoof to go around. That means that the survivors are going to have to learn farming, and on a very low level of sophistication. I see no discussion on what to plant, when to plant it, and how to keep it from getting eaten by various pests. The best shelter in the world isn't going to help you if you all starve to death the next year.

My biggest problem with this book, however, is the amoral tone. Ing suggests cozying up to your "out of town" neighbors for the express purpose of making sure that you're taken in when the big nasty happens. I find that idea disgusting. I suppose, however, that due to my tight little sets of morals, that I'll be reduced to a shadow on the wall. However, if all who's going to be saved consider lying and deception in a positive light, I don't hold out much hope for the human race. ---- End of Part 12

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Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 13)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 13

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

Your Turn
Letters to OtherRealms

Thomas Maddox

About the interview with Bruce Sterling conducted by Alan Wexelblat, and I would be most appreciative if you would convey the following, expressing my anger and disgust at being misquoted and misrepresented.

The passages in question (both on page 15):

AW:Reading through the first issue of SF Eye, it's amazing some of the
things people say about you. Maddox just goes on and on during
this interview with Gibson.
BS:I'm a 'treacherous, crazed Rastafarian'? I 'emit ectoplasm?'

AW:Listening to Maddox, the way he says Chairman it's like he means
Chairman Mao. I sort of expect him to get up and start waving
'Bruce's Little Red Book' or something.

Ah, where to start? To begin with, I do not go "on and on" in either of the Gibson interviews, the one I conducted or the one Takayuki Tatsumi conducted in which I participated.

My Sterling contributions to Takayuki's interview are as follows:

In response to an extended Gibson paragraph about Sterling,
that concludes, "It's like watching somebody eat live
chickens," I say, "Bruce is a monster. He is, he's a sport."

In response to Gibson's claiming to have a "hypertrophied plot muscle," I say, "Bruce is the same."

Finally, in response to a claim by Steve Brown that Bruce is whipping up a movement in Austin, I say:

"He's like a mad treacherous Rastafarian down there in Texas. This has nothing to do with science fiction. It has to do with Bruce's charismatic leader qualities. Bruce the messiah." Thus, in an interview that takes up eleven pages and talks about influences on Gibson, I mention Sterling three times, twice in response to others' comments. My final comment, in the ironic/Hunter Thompson mode, reflects the mixed feelings I have about Bruce in his Chairman Bruce mode (very complex issues involved here, that I've discussed with Bruce publicly and privately). Also, please note that the "emit ectoplasm" comment was Gibson's not mine.

In the interview I conducted with Gibson (which, by the way, was done publicly and edited from a tape transcript by Steve Brown), my contributions in re: Sterling are as follows:

On the last of eight pages of interview, in response to a question to Gibson from the audience, "What sort of scientific and technical background do you have?" I said, "I can answer that. He asked Bruce Sterling."

In short, what is Wexelblat going on about? I suspect strongly that he has conflated my responses with the rhetorical excesses indulged in by John Shirley at a SFRA panel, a transcript of which is also in SF Eye. Shirley refers to "Chairman Bruce." I don't. Shirley appears to want to function as ideological front man for cyberpunk. I don't.

In fact, concerning cyberpunk I say (page 15), "There is no there there. The whole thing is a media ghost... There is a movement forming. It's not this, and it has nothing to do with this..."

Thus I conclude that with regard to both letter and spirit, Wexelblat has fucked up -- quoted me wrongly and portrayed me as some sort of CyberAcolyte spouting the Chairman's words when absolutely nothing that I said (or have said, or thought) would lead to that conclusion.

Bad journalism, bad reading, glib bullshit.

[Alan responds: I'm glad to see Mr. Maddox putting forth such a carefully-reasoned position. I'm sorry I said Tom Maddox went "...on and on." I'm also really sorry if, contrary to his desires, I've included Mr. Maddox in anything I consider interesting; I hereby retract my sense of amazed respect. Far be it from me to imply that Tom Maddox is not his own person.]

Dean R. Lambe

On your comments on Forge of God, it's not the "SETI Lament" -- officially, it's the "Fermi Paradox" after physicist Enrico Fermi's question to Norbert Weiner and others, "Well, then, where are they?" And Bear certainly isn't the first to tackle this theme, although he's one of the first to deal with the possibility that one Berserker species in the galaxy could and would wipe out all other competition.

Also, to your comments to the Harvey letter, it's been a misnomer to call much of psychology and most of biology "soft" sciences for some time now. Certainly, where the two fields overlap, the ground is pretty solid, and no one without a firm understanding of hard science can be much of a biologist these days unless they plan to restrict their activities to counting bugs and branches. but then, the American public is biologically ignorant, in no small part due to the legacy of the 1926 Scopes "Monkey Trial," as I've written for a number of years.

Fred Bals

On Graphic Novels and the Hugos:

1) Create a category called "Special." Not "Special <anything>." Just "Special."
2) Put everything which doesn't fit into the other categories into "Special."
3) Define "Special" with a statement such as:

"The Special category is for those works of science fiction which are not appropriate for the other categories, but have been nominated as deserving of recognition by the science fiction community. Entries in the Special category do not compete against each other. Rather, if any entry garners a <pick a percentage> percentage of eligible members' votes, then it will receive a Special Hugo Award. Members can obviously vote for as many entries as they wish and more than one entry can receive a Special award."

I'm still a child of the sixties as much as anything else, and think the idea of "Best" whether it happens to be for Oscars, Hugos, or the Westminster Kennel Club is ridiculous competitiveness. To my mind, awards have one purpose: To bring superior things to general attention. For every argument I've heard for or against Watchmen, I've heard very few people argue that it was not a superior work. It also fits the best definition of science fiction I know: If you eliminate the scientific or fantastic element from it you no longer have a story.

The bottom line is that it deserves to be given a fair chance to be recognized by the science fiction community, as much -- if not more -- for our "community's" credibility as for the work's sake itself (one finds it difficult to believe that Alan Moore is sitting somewhere in nail-biting nervousness about all this). But it doesn't deserve to be squeezed into the "Novel" category where it would obviously lose whatever its competition because of Talmudic arguments about whether it was kosher or not. It also doesn't deserve weird catch-all categories such as "Other Forms." Neither, for that matter, do the other unfortunate entries in that category.

Laurie brought up the point that after Watchmen, there are presently few -- if any -- other graphic novels which can seriously be promoted to the science fiction community (I would have made an argument for Elektra:Assassin, but I'm weird). There probably won't be until V for Vendetta completes its run next year and is collected. That, in my opinion, is another argument for "Special." You award works as they come along without levering them into unsuitable, existing categories or creating a slew of new categories at every turn. You don't compare apples against oranges. And you get out of this competitive nonsense.

Unlike you, I'm a two- rather than three-column fan. I like the two- column look much better. Boring or not, it's easier to read, plus it leaves nice wide white space gutters. But together with the other reasons you cited, I imagine three-column also makes better economic sense. And yes, I think the less typefaces and styles the better, too.

The offset and layout make the issue look real good, but what makes the issue from a design standpoint are the Brad Foster pieces. You're right that offset reproduces b&w so much better. Foster's pieces are alternately beautiful and funny (and sometimes beautifully funny). I realize that every issue can't be a Brad Foster issue, as much as I might want it to be, but I hope to see a lot more of his stuff in OtherRealms -- as well as other art equally as good.

I was going to say I'm no horror fan, but that's untrue. I like good horror, as I like all good writing, genres notwithstanding. Rick Kleffel looks like an excellent addition to the crew, especially since he also doesn't seem to feel restricted by any genre boundaries. Excellent first column. I now want to read many of the books he reviewed. What more could you ask of any reviewer?

On the down side, I wasn't very impressed with Alan's interview with Sterling. I've no firm feelings why. Interviews are tough to do well. I think Alan realized it too. Good interviews depend on some sort of central focus. Sterling flails around from subject to subject, not staying long enough on any one to provide any insights about it, or any insights about him either.

On the other hand, Sterling might just not be very interesting to me. I think he's a competent enough writer, but he seems more a weird cyberpunk Fan-boy mutation than writer at times, if you know what I mean. He's like what Tom Galloway might evolve into if Galloway went punk. Sterling's main concern seems to be thinking a lot about The State of the Art of Science Fiction rather than writing.

Steve Chapin

I'm glad to see somebody did a review of Barbara Hambly's The Silicon Mage. While I agree wholeheartedly with Charles de Lint's assessment of the plot similarity in Barbara Hambly's The Silicon Mage and The Silent Tower, I feel he misses the mark slightly, and gives Hambly better marks than she deserves. Her presentation of computers is, in a word, insulting. She obviously does not understand the smallest part of computer science, and it shows through in her writing. In the first book, she refers to such inane terms as "CP/M pixels." I really would like to know what a CP/M pixel is...as a friend of mine remarked, it seems that she has discovered a new hobby, and is trying to incorporate it into her latest works without really understanding that about which she writes.

I would subtract at least 1/2 star from the book rating; despite all her technical flaws, she does write well. I'd give the book a **+, with a ***- on the outside.

Tom Galloway

According to Locus, The Falling Woman wasn't eligible for this year's Hugo, although it was eligible for the Nebula. This is because of a new wrinkle in the Nebula rules which allow an author to withdraw one edition of a work in favor of another. In this case, Murphy withdrew the hardcover in favor of the paperback, which came out last year. The hardcover apparently came out in '86, and so TFW would have been eligible for the Hugos awarded at Conspiracy rather than this year.

[Very true. I knew that, but I wasn't thinking about the differences in the rules when I made my comments. There's been a fair amount of controversy about the Nebula hold-back rule, because it can give a book a much longer word-of-mouth time than it would otherwise get. Personally, I think the more complicated you make the qualification procedure, the less realistic the award is. This is true in the Hugos as well as the Nebula. Would Murphy has won for Falling Woman a year ago? Good question. Probably not, frankly. So the change in rules helped her here -- but who did it hurt? -- chuq]

Rick Genter

Since you've recently been talking about fonts and layouts and such, I'll start there. I found the use of fonts quite comfortable with the exception of the font used for the cover (Canaith?). It strikes me as...well...wimpy.

I really empathized with your Editor's Notebook. I also found it interesting, a good explanation of what goes into an issue of OtherRealms. On the other hand, it read a little bit like "oh, I'm so busy, and everything's going wrong, and I'm sacrificing body and soul to get this magazine out, and..." and, to quote Bette Midler, the thought "why bother?" crossed my mind. Mind you, I understand exactly how crazy things get.

Overall, I found the technical quality of the editing uneven. For the most part it was good, but there were spots (Neal Wilgus' review of Adulthood Rites) where there were so many typos that I felt like I was stumbling rather than reading. I'm assuming this is the type of thing you are targeting by shifting your deadlines and making Electronic OtherRealms a second priority.

Then there's the interview. I have mixed reactions to it; I think it's great that OtherRealms was able to print an exclusive interview with a relatively big name like Bruce Sterling. I think it's also great that Alan was able to interview him.

On the other hand, the style of the interview had me pulling (what remains of) my hair out. A lot of it can be blamed on Sterling himself, and the preface to the interview did state that it would jump around, but I found it almost too rambling to remain interested in it. Alan has to take some of the responsibility; part of being a good journalist is being able to manage the interviewee.

Alan's reviews were fine. Also, he seemed to be the only one who actually recommended that people should not buy a book (Starfire). Maybe that is a result of the reviewers choosing not to review books they don't like; I personally think that does a disservice to the reading public.

I liked Brad Foster's artwork. Overall, I give the magazine [****-] :-).

[Getting the typos under control is the primary purpose for changing the deadlines. I hope that this issue shows that it's working. It's funny how all those little glitches show up on the way to the printer....

The other reason for the change in schedule was to try to make sure I don't get myself into a situation where I feel compelled to write whiny editorials about how rotten life is. One fanzine reviewer claimed I was going through Editor Burnout and that OtherRealms was likely to go away soon -- nothing is further from the truth. It was all those other things that kept me away from OtherRealms I was bitching about. With Macintosh Horizons (where I was a contributing editor) folding and the end of a few other commitments ending, there isn't much of a scheduling problem anymore. Unless I get really stupid someday and create one.

The final responsibility for the interview doesn't lay with Alan, but with me. He did the interview, the transcription and the first editing. I did the final edit and most of the major cleanup. Anything that didn't get cleaned up was something I didn't catch, however there's only so much you can do to make an interview readable without taking the words out of the interviewee's mouth or changing his meaning. When it came to a choice between clarity and context, I stuck with context. -- chuq]

Charles de Lint

Thanks for the latest OtherRealms. Looks great! I enjoyed your new columnist, Rick Kleffel. He's done a good job on this first column. Speaking of columns, one thing I'm noticing -- and enjoying a lot -- is that different columnists are reviewing some of the same books. It makes for fascinating reading as to how much a book can affect people in different ways. What a complete bummer (I'm dating myself with that) about both Simak and Heinlein. Unlike most folks, I didn't start off SF with Heinlein -- though I have enjoyed going back and reading his stuff once I got into the field -- but I was weaned on Simak. A great humanitarian writer. It's so depressing how all these fabulous writers are getting to the age now where we're going to be losing more and more of them. There are lots of new writers around, but there was something very special about these trailblazers that many people seem to forget these days. Sigh. ---- End of Part 13

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Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 14)

Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 14

No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author.

Your Turn
Letters to OtherRealms, Part 2

Andrew Porter

I just got the new issue of OtherRealms. I'm flattered that, once again, people are wondering how to get the Hugo award award from rotten old SF Chronicle. Except years ago, it was evil old Algol, the Starship.

Actually, I won a Hugo once, in 1974, when Algol tied with The Alien Critic.

I'm also flattered that you think SFC has a vast circulation, right up there with Locus. And that making an arbitrary break at 7,500 will easily take care of both SFC and Locus in separating the men from the boys (to use an old and sexist expression). The current circulation of SFC is about 4,500. The circulation of Locus is somewhere around 8,000.

Also, I don't make a living from SFC. I have other income from other sources.

I'm not unhappy: I like what I'm doing. But SFC does not pay me a living wage, does not have a vast circulation, and has never won a Hugo. So I don't see why I should "withdraw from the running" as Kevin Anderson suggests. Withdraw from what? Charles N. Brown will probably never withdraw from the running, until he has to buy a bigger house to hold all his Hugos.

[In case it wasn't obvious from my comments last issue, I'm
categorically against withdrawing a publication from
competition because it dominates the category. That cheapens
the category and doesn't solve the problem.

While I'll admit that the 7,500 number was chosen primarily to move Locus to the professional category where I think it properly belongs, I don't feel there was any such intent with SFC. I did, however, overestimate the SFC readership -- based on the 4,500 number it definitely would belong in the proposed small-press category, and I'd have no complaints with that.I do wonder, however, how the number in your letter can be reconciled with the remark in the September Aboriginal SF, in which Charles Ryan states: "Andy edits SF Chronicle, a direct, but smaller, competitor of Locus, though Andy [Porter] says he will soon surpass Locus in circulation." -- it seems to me these statements are mutually exclusive.

Rather than trying to resolve problems caused by arbitrary boundaries with new arbitrary boundaries, perhaps it might be better to take a hint from the costumers, who promote contestants to a higher class after winning major competitions. If a publication wins a category in, say, two out of five years (or some other boundary that people decide is reasonable) they get moved to the next category. Still not a perfect solution, frankly, but I don't believe one exists. -- chuq

Kevin Anderson responds: Andy Porter seems to have misunderstood my intent about the Best Semi-Pro Hugo. What I have objected to is not the idea of "Best Publication Called Locus" Award, but an objection to what a Best Semi-Pro Magazine Award should be.

I have spent many years working with the semiprofessional fiction magazines. I think the small press fiction magazines have brought a resurgence of vitality to the field by providing an open door to new types of fiction, stories that are too graphic, too unusual, too experimental, too hard-to- categorize for the mass-market magazines. I was under the impression that this was what the Award was originally designed for...and if I'm wrong, then it should be that way.

But that will never be the case. Locus and SFC are the newsmagazines of the science fiction field. Everybody interested in SF awards and Hugo voting reads one or the other or both. Everybody. When such publications are on the ballot against other magazines that don't have such broad-based support, the semipro fiction magazines don't have an athiest's chance in Georgia. I don't think that's fair. I think the category is drawn wrong. How can SFC compete against Whispers? It's apples and oranges. The criteria for a good newsmagazine are enormously different from the criteria for a good fiction magazine. What if, for instance, Locus and SFC were competing year after year against Asimov's and F&SF for the "Best Magazine" award? They'd never win...it's not fair -- but that's the same situation as putting semipro fiction magazines up against the newsmagazines.

I'm not at all knocking SFC or Locus. I personally think it's poor form for Locus to keep yawning and accepting Hugos year after year -- Charlie Brown has proved his point and should let some of the other worthy magazines get noticed -- but that's his decision. Nobody else should make it for him. I'm actually rather surprised that the voters don't get tired of voting for Locus year after year. Maybe it's just that Locus is the most accessible of the semipros and nobody bothers to check out the other contenders... I don't think it's an issue of 7,500 vs 4,500 circulations -- I think it's a question of fiction vs non-fiction. The newsmagazines are useful (perhaps even essential) to people working in the SF field; fiction magazines are literature/entertainment. It's like comparing a screwdriver with the Mona Lisa and giving an award for the "Best" one...that depends if you're trying to study art or build a bird house.]

Ben Bova

I read with great interest de Lint's review of Communion, by Whitley Streiber. I know that at least one New York publisher refused to publish the book as non-fiction, and I -- like de Lint -- keep asking myself if Streiber really believes what he's written to be anything other than a neatly crafted piece of malarkey.

I've been reading and listening to UFO stories for more than forty years now, and I have yet to see a single piece of evidence to support any of them. When I was running Omni magazine we actively tracked down a number of stories, and always found that there was no evidence. Faked photos, yes, plenty of those. False interpretations of photos, too -- such as the "UFO lights" seen by Gemini astronauts that turned out to be, on the next frame in the film roll, the lights of an Agena spacecraft.

We also ran into a number of people who honestly believed that they had seen UFOs, but could offer nothing more than their unsubstantiated word.

If we are being visited by aliens, they must be the greatest neatness freaks of the galaxy. For four decades they've been bumping into little old ladies on deserted highways, without leaving so much as a fingernail clipping or a frayed shoelace. Compare this with the littered messes we left on the Moon at our Apollo landing sites!

My personal opinion is that Streiber is writing science fiction here, but he's smart enough to market it as non-fiction and garner a large enough audience that doesn't know enough to ask inconvenient questions such as: "Where's the beef?"

[Personally, I think the greatest indictment of the non-fiction status of Communion is that Streiber has published a sequel....

-- chuq]

Katherine Kerr

Since most authors write reviewers only when they're feeling mad and nasty, I thought I'd try to start a new trend and thank you for sending along the latest OtherRealms with your very kind review of Darkspell. Last year you also sent along an equally kind review of Daggerspell, but at that time my life was too hectic to write to anybody -- so here's retroactive thanks.

I wanted to let you know, too, that I'm in complete agreement about the Generic Celtic Fantasy Trilogies. Unfortunately, they do sell, even the sloppy, lazy ones where the Celtic names are only so much cheap window dressing. Quite recently a small group of fantasy writers (all women only by coincidence) including myself, Judy Tarr, Susan Shwartz and Lillian Stewart Carl, have banded together to try to do something about raising the standards of fantasy writing in general. Our first effort, a reply to Greg Benford's infuriating attack on fantasy, will appear on the stands shortly in Amazing magazine. Our second will appear in the Spring issue -- probably -- and will be an attempt to define what good fantasy is as opposed to the GCFT's and that other drag on the genre, the "S&M Quest."

I'd like to say that I set out consciously and rationally to write a better CFT, but actually the Deverry books are more the result of an unconscious compulsion than anything. You might find the story of how they were written both amusing and instructive: I started to write a novella, a version of the Loddlaen's War incident in Book 1, and the damn thing just kept getting longer and longer. I would wake up in the middle of the night and write 20 pages or so of an entirely new past life section, fall back into bed, and then wake at dawn to spend all day scribbling on the main story. I could hear voices in my head, telling the story just one step ahead of my madly typing fingers -- Nevyn's voice, mostly. Never once did I have any plan, merely a blind faith that all the pieces would add up eventually.

Finally, after two years of writing, they did. At that point, I could revise and fill out the story as rationally as any writer ever can. (Not much.) The story still plays tricks on me, though. What I thought was going to be the third and final volume has just split itself in two. I had 1100 pages, and my editor didn't want me to cut anything, and so there we bloody well were. The first half, The Bristling Wood, will be out in the Spring of 1989. I wince as I confess that Wood will end on something of a cliff-hanger, but I haven't played any games with the reader. Although it ends with a main character in danger, you'll know exactly what his situation is and how he might possibly be rescued.

Perhaps it's this inner drive (from the land of the Jungian Archetypes?) that keeps Deverry from being just another GCFT; I don't know how other writers start their trilogies, so I can't really say. One thing I do know, however, is rather than using a Celtic culture for some extraneous glamour, I've concerned myself with certain problems deeply rooted in the Celtic character itself. For example, why are we all so obsessed with vengeance, why do Celtic men hit first and regret later, why do we all enjoy martyring ourselves, and finally, why do we all drink so damn much when we don't handle it very well??? Said problems have appeared in my very modern family and life from the time I was a kid, so they are very real to me, even if I've set them in my own version of Tolkienland. In a sense, then, this is an intrinsically Celtic book, and the exotic elements are the Eastern philosophy and most of the magic, which is of course based on the Jewish Kabbalah.

Have you heard this joke? What's Celtic Alzheimer's Disease? It's when you forget everything but the people who've wronged you.

So anyway, think of me with pity when you remember that I didn't set out to write a trilogy at all.

Richard Lupoff

Many thanks for sending me the summer issue of OtherRealms. This magazine has been impressive from the start, and since I hadn't seen an issue for a while, this newest is all the more impressive. Somehow it carries me back to my own days in fandom, when it was all the fashion to be "faanish" and silly and fun-loving (which I have no quarrel with, but....)

The "but" is that some of us felt that we'd like to publish a magazine that was actually about something, and that something might even be science fiction! A lot of people thought that was a nice idea. (The magazine we wound up publishing was Xero, the contents of which eventually evolved into at least four books that I know of, and chunks of which still turn up in print now and then, even after 25+ years.)

But, you know, we also took a certain amount of flack. There were people who really resented us actually publishing a magazine that wasn't filled with a lot of chirpy and amusing chit-chat, but that instead contained things like articles and book-reviews. Even more interesting, to me, was that we were even more bitterly attacked by some people who thought we were much too frivolous, publishing stuff about science fiction instead of delivering political diatribes on the issues of the day.

No way you'll ever please everybody. Just set your compass, follow your star, and those who like what you're doing will follow you. Let the rest go their own way.

Anyway, I want to thank you and Dan'l for the nice little piece about Space War Blues. I guess it would be nice to see it back in print...my association with Dell was not a happy one, but Dell has been taken over by Bantam, and I've been very happy, so far, with them. (They just did a science fiction novel of mine, will bring out a mystery early in 1989, and have another of each on contract, which I guess will come out in 1990.) so maybe Bantam would bring it back.

You may wonder why I was so disgusted with Space War Blues and why it is a painful memory for me, to this day. First came my problems with Harlan, the fact that the book was written (for the most part) in 1966 and not published until 1978. One reviewer commented, in '78, that he thought Space War Blues was one of the best SF novels of the 60's, and he wondered why it wasn't published until nearly the end of the 70's.

Hah! Wanna see my scars?

But my grievances against Harlan were long ago, and I have long since declared, not a forgiveness, but a moratorium with regard to those grievances.

But once Harlan was out of the way, Dell proceeded to botch the project. They kept talking about doing a hardcover edition, and procrastinating on it, until it was too late to do it. That's why the book was a paperback original. I don't think it's generally known that there was another subplot in the book -- in the manuscript -- that was dropped at the request of my then-editor at Dell, Jim Frenkel. He felt that it was too cynical and pessimistic.

I recall vividly the phone call from Jim, in which he asked me if he could simply delete the manuscript sections involved (they were not extensive). I told him, Sure, go ahead. He seemed astonished, and implied that he'd expected to have to fight with me over the issue, and might have been willing to give in if I'd insisted.

But I was so disgusted with the whole project by then, that all I wanted to do was get the book published and out of my hair. That is why the book is so cheerful and bright. Dell bought it out with a brilliant George Barr cover (and poster). I learned later than Dell hated the Barr cover and would have scrapped it, but they'd already paid him for it and were too cheap to buy another.

Space War Blues sold out its first 75,000 copies in three weeks. Frenkel told me they were going back to press for another 25,000 copies. I was delighted, and asked him when. He said, as soon as he could get them to.

Well, in typical Dell fashion, it took them four months to get the second printing out. By then all the excitement over Space War Blues had died down. The audience had turned its attention to the next hot item to come along (or the one after that, or the one after that). Consequently, the second Dell printing died the dead. And they never understood why!

Dell also came close to scuttling the Gregg hardcover edition of the book. Gregg was a library-and-university oriented publisher. They did small editions of their books, and they paid a uniform, flat fee for the rights to do so.

When they made their standard offer to Dell for hardcover rights, the Dell subsidiary rights department knew exactly what was going on, but they felt they had to get Gregg to up their offer, even if only by a few dollars, as a matter of principle. They couldn't just take the money they were offered. Gregg was adamant about not increasing the offer, on the grounds that they paid a standard amount for every book in their line, and if they started haggling over this one book, they would be in deep trouble.

Dell and Gregg were only $50 apart on the price, but Gregg refused to come up and Dell refused to come down and there it sat. For weeks. Maybe months. Finally, I told them I would personally come up with the extra $50, out of my pocket, just to make the deal work. Apparently that shamed them into reaching an agreement (I never knew exactly what it was) because the next thing I knew they had signed. And I didn't have to pay the money. Fortunately, because I didn't have $50 at that point, thanks to the grand success my publishers had made of my books.

I do wish to point out that my problem with Dell was not at the editorial level. I had a number of fine editors at Dell, including Frenkel. The problems lay elsewhere in the company. Anyway, if Bantam wanted to bring the book back, that would be okay with me. If the missing sections are still in the files at Dell, I'd like them to be restored in any new editions. If they're not there, maybe I could turn up copies somewhere.

[It's funny how little things change. I've been lambasted by some for being 'too good' or 'not fannish enough' or any of a number of variations of 'I don't like it, so it's bad.' I've been kicked off at least one mailing list for not being politically correct.

But those people exist in the real world, and I don't let it bother me that they exist in fandom as well -- in fact, they're rarer in fandom, from what I can see. I publish OtherRealms because I want to read something like OtherRealms. Tossing out all the good things that are happening because a few don't agree with them is silly. I try to do what I'm good at, and avoid what I'm not good at, and hope the audience appreciates it.

The rest, rather than trying to get me to remake OtherRealms in their image, are welcome to publish their own zine. If the vision is good, they'll attract an audience. -- chuq]

A.C. Clarke

Fernando Gouvea asked why nobody noticed Arslan when it was first published 11 years ago. I did, and I sent it straight to Stanley Kubrick. It would make quite a movie.

David M. Shea

Are the ratings in OtherRealms too generous? OtherRealms #20 contained eighty-five rated reviews of books. Another eleven reviews were not rated; it would be presumptuous to attempt to interpret the reviewers' remarks in rating terms. I'm also ignoring "plus" and "minus" qualifiers.

The ratings, on the whole, were rather generous. Ten books received the highest rating of [*****], and no fewer than twenty-four books received a generous [****]. Exactly forty percent of books reviewed in this issue were rated above average. How this correlated with Sturgeon's Law must be left to the reader's discretion. Another twenty-four books were considered worthy of [***]. Seventeen books were judged as [**]; a mere eight were disregarded with only [*]; and only one received the ultimate ignominy of getting no stars at all.

Closer analysis may reveal some interesting trends. Of the ten books which received [*****], three were reissues of older books with established reputations (MacAvoy's Tea With The Black Dragon, Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon, and Robert Silverberg's Dying Inside). One other received a highly qualified rating: Fred Bals judged Richard Kadrey's Metrophage to be [*****] "for cyberpunk fans" but only [*] "for all others." Not surprisingly, most of the remaining [*****]'s went to established names: LeGuin, Koontz, McCaffrey, Cherryh.

Chuq Von Rospach, contributing editor's Charles de Lint and Alan Wexelblat were responsible for forty-two of the eighty-five rated reviews, nearly half. Less obviously, these three gentlemen among them contributed fifty-nine percent (twenty of thirty-four) of the highly favorable [****] and [*****] reviews. Before you leap to a hasty conclusion, note that other factors should be considered. Twenty-one of the books they reviewed were hardcovers, and if a generalization may be permitted, books published originally in hardcover tend to possess higher quality, or at least marketability. In addition, Wexelblat, de Lint and Von Rospach receive a review copies; and it seems a safe speculation that editors would choose to send books in which they have some confidence. It is also the editor's policy to favor positive reviews. On the other hand, perhaps they just hit a lucky streak.

Books covered in the "Pico Reviews" section fared less well. This portion comprised forty-four reviews by ten persons. Again, most of the material came from a limited number of sources: Von Rospach, Fred Bals, and Danny Low provided sixty-four percent (twenty-eight of forty-four). Ten of the books were other than mass market paperbacks, and that includes several "graphic novels." Only two [*****] ratings were given in this section; one of these was the aforementioned qualified rating given to Metrophage. Seven [****] ratings were awarded here, and one of those was a reprint (Barlow's Guide to Extraterrestrials) and two others were G/N's. Do books published as original mass market paperbacks get less respect, or are they just worse books? Perhaps both suggestions contain an element of truth.

The question arises of how appropriate it may be to attempt to reduce to numerical terms what is inherently a non-numerical experience. The essential subjectivity of ratings can clearly be demonstrated from the evidence. For example, Fred Bals felt "duty bound" to report his inability to finish Glen Cook's Sweet Silver Blues, yet still gave it a [*]. Danny Low belabored Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted for, among other flaws, "philosophizing at the expense of the story," a "cartoonish level of unreality," and "stereotypical characterization"; yet he still gave the book [**]. Conversely, Low found Christopher Rowley's The Vang to be "an excellent action SF story with superb characterization," but rated it no better than [***]. Michael D. Weaver's Mercedes Nights was reviewed three times and was rated [**], [***], and [****] (by Bals, Low, and de Lint respectively).

Is this information meaningful to the reader? It might be argued that any rating, however subjective, is better than no rating at all. It is unlikely that a reader would run out and buy all the [*****] books sight unseen. Reason would suggest the prudent course: spending time with OtherRealms, preferably over two or three issues, analyzing the styles and preferences of individual reviewers and comparing them with one's own taste. Intelligent interaction by the reader is the best means to make OtherRealms a useful resource.

[Dave's final paragraph says it all. There is no objective scale in reviewing. The best you can do (and all I try for) is to set up some basic parameters that people can use. A [***] by me isn't the same thing as a [***] by Fred, and isn't really intended to be. The only thing you can rely on is that a [***] by me is better than a [**]. The ratings exist so that everyone works from in the same basic framework. Without it, one reviewer would rate from 1-5, another 1- 10, another 0-4, and we'd end up with one person reviewing A-F. With a standardized scale, you know that Fred thinks it's an above- average book, even though his interpretation of above-average differs from mine. It's not objective, but it's better than total chaos. As to other things that skew ratings, I don't read books that look like losers, and after doing OtherRealms for almost three years, I'm getting pretty good at guessing. By the time I read the blurbs, the publicity that comes with the review copies, look at the cover and skim the book, I've got a pretty good idea whether the book is worth reading. If I do start a book but don't finish it, I don't (with rare exceptions) review it.

My belief is that no publicity is worse than bad publicity. Since OtherRealms never has enough room for everything that I'd like to publish, choices need to be made. My preference is to point towards something worth noting rather than away from something worth avoiding, all things being equal.

When you have 3,500 or 4,000 words and 45 books on your review list, you have to make cuts. So you talk about the things you think are most deserving. The things that are merely deserving lose out. I wish I could publish 80 or 90 pages an issue. That's what it would take to publish what I'd like to print each issue. That's still not even coming close to covering the entire field, either. I don't think that's even possible these days. -- chuq]

We Also Heard From Gene Wolfe, Gordon Linzner, Susan Shwartz, Mike Resnick, Lois McMaster Bujold, Cathy Howard, Marge Simon, Bill Davis, Betsy Mitchell, Sheryl Birkhead, David Gerrold, Paula Matuszek, Jeff Copeland, Erik Naggum and John Wenn. ---- End of Part 14

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OtherRealms — Issue 22, Fall 1988

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 1)

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 2)

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 3)

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 4)

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 5)

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 6)

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 7)

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 8)

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 9)

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 10)

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 11)

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 12)

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 13)

Issue 22, Fall 1988 (part 14)

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