Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 1)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 1 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Table of Contents:

Part 1
Editor's Notebook [part 1 of 5]
Chuq Von Rospach

Part 2
Editor's Notebook [part 2 of 5]
Chuq Von Rospach

Part 3
Editor's Notebook [part 3 of 5]
Chuq Von Rospach

Part 4
Editor's Notebook [part 4 of 5]
Chuq Von Rospach

Part 5
Editor's Notebook [part 5 of 5]
Chuq Von Rospach

Part 6
I'm not a nice girl
Laurie Sefton

Part 7
Romancing the Turquoise [Part 1 of 4]
Susan Shwartz

Part 8
Romancing the Turquoise [Part 2 of 4]
Susan Shwartz

Part 9
Romancing the Turquoise [Part 3 of 4]
Susan Shwartz

Part 10
Romancing the Turquoise [Part 4 of 4]
Susan Shwartz

Part 11
Scattered Gold
Charles de Lint

Part 12
Much Rejoicing
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

Past Imaginging -- Two Fandoms
Lawrence Watt-Evans

Part 13
        From Beyond the Edge    [Part 1 of 2]
                Reviews by our Readers

Part 14
        From Beyond the Edge    [Part 2 of 2]
                Reviews by our Readers

Part 15
Flights of Fantasy
Reviews by Laurie Sefton

Part 16
        Words of Wizdom         [Part 1 of 2]
                Reviews by Chuq Von Rospach

Part 17
        Words of Wizdom         [Part 2 of 2]
                Reviews by Chuq Von Rospach

Part 18
Your Turn -- Letters to OtherRealms

Masthead -- subscription, submission and other information

Editor's Notebook Comments and Ramblings from Chuq Von Rospach

Advance warning: price increase

It's fairly obvious that I'm never going to get down to my proposed 32 pages, even with the changes I've made. There's just too much to do and too few pages to do it in. Also, postage is going to increase again next year, which will add to the mailing costs. Because of these two factors, the cover price of OtherRealms is going to increase, probably with issue #30. How much and what it will do to subscription rates I don't know yet for sure, but it will likely be either $3.50 or $3.95. I've been at the current rate since the beginning of 1988 and at $2.50 since 1986 despite major increases in the size and cost of producing this thing and so it's time to put things a little more in line with the costs. My policy of free copies to contributors, fanzine trades and the other usual stuff won't change, so people who want to write or draw instead of write checks still have that option. I will, after issue 30, trim the mailing list of freebies who seem to have gone dormant on me, so if you like OtherRealms and aren't paying for it in some way, get active or at least write me a letter telling me so.

Notes on this issue

This issue is huge -- likely the biggest issue of OtherRealms yet. So much for restraint in page count. Aw, well -- I'll publish as much as I can before the electronic edition goes away.

One noteworthy accomplishment from last issue -- not one name was typoed. I got them all right. This is noteworthy only because this is the first time in ten or so issues I've pulled that trick off. Going for two....

There are a number of new graphics this issue -- I was sick and tired of the graphic for Words of Wizdom, and when Laurie told me I was going to change her No Prisoners column (she never did like the dripping blood. That was my idea. I thought it was cute, but I didn't have to live with it, either...) I decided it was time to fix some of the others as well. Hope the new ones (which aren't done as I write this) are better. Since the schedule is more flexible and I wasn't quite as pressed for time (as I write this, I'm looking at an electronic release around mid-September, with mailing of printed copies somewhere near there -- the normal deadline would have been September 1) I've been trying to clean up a few of the things about the look that I didn't like but didn't want to try to fix while under the crunch. Hope the look is better (I think so).

In Times to Come

At that, a bunch of things didn't fit in this issue including a piece on Olaf Stapledon, an interview of Lew Shiner (Sorry, Alan!) and a look at reference books about the Science Fiction field. Also scheduled is a trip report from Judith (Alamut) Tarr on her visit to Egypt, an article from Katherine (Bristling Wood) Kerr and all the usual stuff. Issue 30, to be published in April (and the last issue on the network) is shaping up very well. It's an anniversary issue and is something a little different. I think you'll like it.

One thing that I experimented with and tossed back on the drawing board was an index of reviews using PageMaker 4.0's new indexing and table of contents features. It didn't work out but it did give me a few ideas on how to restructure things that might make it usable down the road. I wish I had an index, and I'm sorry it's not here this issue, but I expect I'll have one starting in the next couple (even if I decide to do it the old-fashioned way). I've also been playing with a Hypercard stack that contains all of the text of all of the issues I've published -- I need something on my disk where I can easily look up what's gone on in previous issues -- grep just doesn't cut it. The work I've done is promising, but I doubt it'll be done before the end of the year (even assuming it works at all), and I won't be able to release it generally because, as far as I can tell, it'd constitute a republication (it's the same general idea as a "Best of OtherRealms" anthology) and my copyright agreement with authors precludes that. What I'm trying to do is design it so I can strip out the text and publish it as an on-line, Hypercard based index to OtherRealms so that people can use it to look things up, but not simply be able to click a couple of buttons and read it. That'd require having a copy of the original publication.

More than you ever wanted to hear
on the end of electronic OtherRealms

When I decided to announce the termination of Electronic OtherRealms last issue, I knew it was going to generate a lot of mail. I also knew that I was going to get yelled at by at least one twit on the network. Unfortunately, I wasn't disappointed. Within a couple of days of the posting of issue 27, the following showed up in rec.arts.sf-lovers under the title "OtherRealms abandons loyal readers". It was posted by account ALC somewhere at Penn State University by someone who didn't bother to sign a name:

Just got the latest OtherRealms and I was shocked to read that Chuq is no longer going to product the electronic version for USENET. He will, starting next issue, only product a paper version.

Well, I guess Chuq has been working at Apple too long. The "magazine for the rest of us" is now "the magazine for those that will pay" (been taking too many lessons from Apple, I guess).

I, for one, find his arguments, completely lacking is
validity. I hope that the readers here will mount some
pressure to change his mind.

I did find it amusing that the poster was able to not only complain about my decision but to be able to make obnoxious remarks about my employer at the same time. He gets two points for ingenuity there, but otherwise, it boils down to "I want it. He has to give it to me." He went and got the date of the last issue wrong on top of that, much to my amusement (issue 30, due in April, is the last issue, not this one).

I had told a few people of my plan to kill OtherRealms, and I'd told them that I could guarantee that I'd be flamed for deciding to kill the fanzine. ALC gave me a rare opportunity to say "I told you so" -- and also to show a classic example of why I've decided to stop producing Eeyore (Electronic OtherRealms, aka EOR). There are a lot of great people on the net. A lot of great people who read Eeyore. And enough idiots out there that all the greatness doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how good the hot fudge is if the whipped cream is spoiled, and for me, the cream of the net has long since gone sour. It's people like ALC, and Omega, and Tim Maroney and Tom Maddox and the nameless dozens who pop in and scream and whine and rant and moan and never make enough of a presence for me to bother remembering their names.

USENET's not fun any more. For me, serious not fun. Why? Read on. This is something that I posted as a tangential followup to the continuing saga of Robert Abernathy of the Houston Chronicle and his series of stories about USENET/Internet (terms he incorrectly uses as equivalent) being a haven for government funded pornography (great headlines, horrible research, factually questionable). This was titled "What's wrong with USENET" and is my final comment on why I'm leaving USENET and taking Eeyore with me. A couple of people mentioned on the net that my comments here were at odds to my comments in the editorial last issue announcing the termination. Very true: I thought I'd be polite (although why USENET deserves politeness I'll never know). So much for polite, here's what I really think:

Since announcing the upcoming demise of my group rec.mag.otherrealms, a number of things have happened. First, I got flamed by someone who was pissed that I'd decided to stop volunteering my time for his benefit. But first, he got all the facts wrong and then flamed me based on his version of the facts. A number of folks wrote and asked me what it would take to give r.m.o a reprieve. A bunch of folks wrote me and told me not to let the turkeys get me down (a LOT of folks: thanks, each and every one of you). ONE person wrote to ask advice on how to do a replacement group like rec.arts.sf-lovers.reviews.

I bring this up for a few reasons. One is to point out that of ALL the mail I got on r.m.o, one person took initiative to look into building a replacement. Some folks offered to help out, but only one person was willing to take over and to the whole thing -- and THAT was the reason I gave a year's notice on the termination. So that by the time OR was gone, there would be something to take its place.

I suggest that if and when he goes public with rec.arts.sf-lovers.reviews, you treat him well. Initiative and a willingness to give of oneself are rare and needed attributes on USENET -- and the general attitude on USENET towards people who do give their time to the net is not pleasant -- as the one idiot who flamed me showed quite clearly. I not only expected that an article of that type was going to appear, I guaranteed it to a few friends. Nice to know I wasn't disappointed.

So what's wrong with USENET? And what does that to do with r.m.o dying? What's wrong with USENET is that I'm tired of being threatened with bodily harm with a baseball bat (Hi, Omega). I'm tired of being accused of all sorts of nasty stuff. I'm tired of abusive e-mail, uuencoded unix kernels in my mailbox, nasty notes sent to my postmaster, profane phone messages in my voicemail. An incident occurred at Baycon this year that really freaked me. A reader of the net came up and introduced himself. Something, for some reason, clicked and suddenly there was a third person between us. I later apologized to him (and he apologized to me, needlessly) -- but it's very scary to me that enough shit has happened to me on this network that my defense mechanisms kick in like that -- that I'm now paranoid enough from a pretty constant stream of threats and abuse that when someone comes up and introduces themselves, my first reaction is to see whether he's carrying a stick. So far, I've been lucky. So far.

Many folks have told me to turn the other cheek. I've been turning the other cheek for ten years now. I'm outta cheeks. I'm outta tolerance. I'm outta here.

That's why r.m.o is dying. Yes, it's the few and the noisy. Yes, the vast majority of my readers are being penalized for the actions of a very few twits. I don't care. All I want now is out -- where I can get away from the noise and the abuse and the twits. I don't care who gets hurt -- as long as I stop hurting.

Which is why I disagree strongly with Kenn when he says we need to protect things for the noisy as well as for the rest -- because while you're protecting the noisy, the noisy are forcing out the rest. Think about how many people who were high-profile on the net two years ago are gone. Or five years ago. And think about why.

You folks are welcome to do whatever you want with USENET. It's not my battle any more -- I fought the idiots and the turkeys for ten years trying to make a better, humane network. I hereby declare unconditional, complete defeat -- the best I can say is that maybe I slowed them down a bit. Maybe.

So when you talk about protecting the net "for all users", think about how you are really defining "all", and what the cost of that really is.

If I sound tired and bitter and angry, it's because I'm tired and bitter and angry. I'm looking forward to discharging the rest of my responsibilities to the net and getting the hell off -- my only hope being that I get off before my sense of humor goes away permanently.

One final note before I shut up: a reading exercise for people who want to make USENET better. In the august Asimov's is an essay called Xenogenesis by Harlan Ellison. Read it. Then ask yourself at what price is total freedom too expensive.

I might point out, just for the heck of it, that there was an entire meta-discussion about the Ellison article on the various nets. As far as I can tell, if you've been there you understand and sympathize with Harlan. If you haven't, he's overreacting and posturing. I haven't hit nearly the shit he has in his life, and I'm glad. I don't know how I could have coped with it. Nobody's thrown eggs (they've limited themselves to obscene phone calls and 'cute' anonymous letters to my post office box). But I find all these 'little, trivial' things add up after a while, and they're additive -- the set of all the trivial, little stupidities and obnoxiousness over the years has added up to a layer of nastiness I no longer want to wade through. The result: lots of the good, worthy readers are getting cut off so I can get away from the few, the noisy, the nasty. You can argue if you want that it's my fault for quitting. I'll argue in return it's none of your business and suggest you go spend a few years in the trenches holding back the filth on the net and try to both stay clean and keep a sense of humor. I can't any more -- you want the job? You got it.

In discussion with a net friend, the following popped up:

Thanks... It's funny. I've been thinking about this for a few days, and I realize that I sit in restaurants with my back against a wall, facing the front door. I'm slowly realizing there are all sorts of behaviors I'm doing because I'm mildly paranoid -- which scares the hell out of me. I've never been physically assaulted in person (just yelling, which I can deal with. Mostly, from USENET folks, it turns out to be churlish whimpering in the guise of high wit -- and almost always, when confronted with a real person, they turn into real cowards...). I knew USENET was causing problems in my life. I'm just starting to realize how many...

Scary to realize exactly how far my unhappiness on the net had pushed me. How many people have 'hobbies' that make them keep their backs to the wall because they're afraid something is going to pop up behind them? (I'll note, by the way, that since these revelations have bubbled up from the subconscious they've been dealt with pretty well -- I'm not nearly as freaked or hyper. But I am still rather pissed at finding myself ending up in the situation in the first place. I'm taking things a lot less seriously and trying to avoid internalizing issues or getting involved in the emotionally charged ones. That makes things more tolerable, but I'm definitely not at the point where I could claim I'm enjoying myself on the net. Not by a long shot. Just not miserable).

A number of people talked to me about possible ways to keep Eeyore alive. Some even were silly enough to volunteer their time to help out (silly folks. Down that road lies net.god status and then you are truly lost). That isn't an option in this circumstance. Even if I was able to find someone who was willing to commit to a long-term shot as editor of Eeyore (and long term means a couple of years or more -- an issue here and there, or even a year doesn't really do anything -- I'd either be spending all the time I'm supposedly saving training new editors (or looking for them) or doing it myself because the editor bugged off on me. It wouldn't keep Eeyore from dying, either -- at some point, sooner or later (and probably sooner) the situation would fall apart and then Eeyore would die again, but this time without notice. The sad reality of USENET is that it runs on volunteers, and volunteers only work as long as they're motivated -- and the motivation has to come from within. I simply can't see someone remaining motivated towards doing mechanistic grunt work on someone else's stuff instead of doing their thing for any length of time. It's just unrealistic based on what I've seen happen around the net. What would end up happening was that hopes would be raised and things would seem to get back to normal and then either come crashing to an unfortunate end or be dumped back in my lap. What it doesn't do is solve any real problems like saving me time, energy or hassle. It just shifts things around and delays the inevitable.

It also begs the major question, which is why I should want to continue doing something for an organization (i.e. USENET) that has made me feel so distinctly unwelcome that I feel I have to get out? Even if I'm not around, I"m still supporting a network that has made me unhappy and allowed users to abuse me. I've used the analogy of a lecture to explain this to people: if I'm giving a lecture in front of a group of people, I don't care how many folks are sitting and listening intently, if two or three idiots are throwing tomatoes, after a while you get tired of ducking -- especially if the rest of the audience isn't trying to make them stop.

And that's the bottom line on this. There are lots of neat people being hurt by this decision and I recognize that. I don't feel guilty about that, though, because USENET, as an organization, not only tolerates the kind of abusive behavior I'm no longer willing to ignore, but actually encourages it by refusing to admit it has to deal with the problem. The attitude of "turn the other cheek and ignore the idiots" only works so long, and now USENET is going to have to deal with the reality that by choosing to accept the idiots, they have chosen noise and chaos and hurt over information and people and caring. I'm not (by far) the first person that's been kicked off the net by the hooligans. I'm just the first unwilling to go quietly.

USENET has to realize that their policy of 'benign' tolerance isn't benign and isn't free of cost. One cost of tolerating the idiots is that USENET is losing OtherRealms. No big loss to many, I'm sure -- but take a roll call of all the names that you don't see on the net any more and ask yourself what the hidden cost of this 'benign tolerance' really is.

When USENET decides that it's time to get serious and start dealing with the aberrant, anti-social and abusive behavior that is common on the network, then maybe I'll reconsider. Until then, I'm treating USENET the way the world treats British soccer fans -- there are lots of nice soccer fans in Britain, but when the hooligans start rioting, it's hard to remember anything else.

When USENET becomes a place where we can sit down and have a good time without someone practicing primal scream therapy in your face, then it'll be time for Eeyore to return. I'm not holding my breath.

Mike White and Ambar, Bob Halloran, borneo @ UC Santa Cruz, Betsy Perry, der Mouse (long time no see, man!), Henry Cate, Bryan @ University of Kansas, Chris Holt, Brad Templeton (well, sort of. Then again, from brad, 'dweeb' is a compliment...), Gordon Banks, Ken Meltsner, Allen Wessels, Joanne Brooks, Dave Cline, Dana Goldblatt, Ken Josenhans, Kenn Barry, William Davidsen, Jr., Peter Scott, Paul @ hcr.com, Rolfe Bozier, Mike Shappe, Robert Frey, Scott Merrilees, Maurice Schekkerman, Paul Zimmerman, Stephen Spencer, Mark Hill, Dennis Cottel, Kevin Rushforth, Alex Heatley, Tippy (somewhere inside AT&Tland), Stephen Duncan, Steven Glover, Ken Crouch, Marc Ringuette, Larry Reeves, Andrew Dwelly and the dozens of other people who wrote in on the situation, thank you very much -- for your comments, your support, and even your criticism. The good people out there make this decision that much harder to carry out. But it came down to me and the idiots. The idiots won. We all lose because of that, me more than most.

[continued]

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 2)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 2 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Editor's Notebook [Part 2 of 5]

What I did on my summer vacation

Unlike the last few years, Laurie and I decided to skip Worldcon in the Hague and do something mundane for vacation. I'm somewhat burned out on conventions in general, and neither Holland nor the Nasfic in San Diego interested me very much (everything I've heard about Nasfic scares me -- the reports, even from folks working on parts of it, seem to be ranging from either "total disaster" to "no worse than Nolacon" -- not that I consider that a great recommendation) and we both have been hoping to get back up to God's Country, also known as Washington state. My parents own a cabin up in the Port Ludlow area on the Olympic Peninsula, which is very green, quiet and about as far away from computers as you can get.

Fifteen days and 2700 miles later, we're back, rested, recharged and back in the grind. Also, I think, even more convinced that we want out of the Bay Area in a few years before things go too crazy. We'd leave now, but our jobs at Apple are wonderful (and for all the negatives Apple has, it's still a paradise compared to almost every other company I see) and it's hard to uproot two careers, especially high-tech ones, and move them to a more rural locale. if the right offer came along, I think we'd be convinced to leave Apple, but it's hard to see that happening out of the blue, and we're not ready to look, not for a few years at least. Apple's a real kick.

Our first stop was Portland and the home of Westercon 43. This was the first Westercon we'd been to since the infamous Westercon XXXX in Oakland (also known as The Con That Would Not Die).

The trip to Portland took two days and a thousand miles -- we obviously took the scenic route. Starting very early, we cruised up 101 through the redwoods to Eureka and then cut inland to highway 5 (also known as "straight, wide and fast"), then up to Yreka. Travelling past Shasta Lake underscores the severity of our current water shortage -- the lake's surface is at least 100 feet below where it should be, a shrunken blue dot in a bright red wasteland of shoreline. It's scary to think of just how much water we need to get back to normal after four years of dry. Driving through lots and lots of wooded hills was awe inspiring -- hard to describe (trees look like trees, big trees are wonderful, but still trees). We neglected to stop at any of the 900 redwood burl souvenir shops we saw, so I didn't get a redwood burl coffee mug for work. I'm so disappointed. But it's really pretty and well worth just tottering along the side roads for a while -- perhaps the subtitle of this vacation should be "The Journey is the Reward", because getting there was at least as much fun as the destination. That's one reason I love driving vacations where you don't hurry to Be There -- because there's a lot to see in places if you just get off the major interstates and open your eyes.

Yreka's pretty typical of a Highway 5 town -- a collection of gas stations, restaurants catering to people in cars heading from down there to up there without really caring about where here is and a few motels for the tired or patient. We stayed at the Motel 6, our normal wayside stomping ground -- you can make fun of them but as Tom Bodet says, when your eyes are closed, all hotels look the same, and Motel 6 is clean, quiet and cheap consistently. The McDonalds of motels, perhaps -- nothing fancy, but you know what you're going to get before you arrive. Day 1 was the longest drive of the trip, about 550 miles, and next time I think I'd either stay on 101 to Medford or cut inland and call it at Redding (about 100 miles shorter).

On the other hand, if I'd stopped at Redding, I might not have taken the side trip to Crater Lake. Day 2 was about 400 miles with a nice jaunt up to Crater Lake. Formed by the collapse of a volcano in Mount Mazama, it's the second deepest freshwater lake in the world at 1400+ feet. It's an interesting body, since there is neither an inlet nor an outlet -- the water in the lake is formed by runoff from the snow, and the only losses are evaporation. Recent explorations have found hydrothermal activity on the lake floor, which is what's left of the caldera of the volcano -- a nice reminder that the term 'extinct volcano' is a misnomer. Sleeping, perhaps, but definitely not extinct. They thought Mt. St. Helens was asleep for a while, too.

After Crater Lake, we toodled on up to Portland for Westercon. I refer to Oregon and Washington as God's Country only slightly in jest. It's absolutely gorgeous. I find, trying to describe the trees and the blue sky and the mountains and the rivers and the entire environment is beyond proper descriptions -- all I can think of are words like "awesome" or "gorgeous" or other essentially content-free superlatives. You'll have to trust me when I say that places like Crater Lake are national treasures and have to be visited to be appreciated.

You can't visit Oregon or Washington without getting involved in the Northern Spotted Owl meets the Logging Monster controversy. Earth First!'s Redwood Summer of discontent and protest seems to have fizzled, with hundreds instead of thousands on the lines and not a lot of either press time or effect.

You drive down roads next to cars with signs in their windows that read "this family supported by timber dollars" -- there are entire towns that will simply cease to exist if the timber dollars go away. A very large chunk of Oregon's economy is tied up in lumber, and if that goes away, the state itself is going to be hurting. The economic costs are potentially huge.

On the other hand, it's far to simplistic to simply write it off as an owl vs. jobs scenario. The reason the Northern Spotted Owl is important, beyond the belief that ALL life is important, is that the owl is what is known as an indicator species. The overall well-being of an indicator species tells you what's happening to the ecosystem and all the other animals in it as well. As the owl goes, so goes a number of other animals and the health of the entire area.

The owl is important in a number of ways -- I think it's the first time when people are having to sit down and make some tough choices. Until now, most endangered species situations either had no real impact (California condor) or impacted humanity in ways most people could ignore (pupfish holding up a dam here, red squirrels holding up a telescope over there). It's like the rain forest -- it's a damn shame, but since it's happening away from the nightly news, we can all feel sorry, but not really worry about it. Shortsighted, but very human.

That's not possible with the owl. Saving the owl -- or even the act of trying to save the owl -- is going to affect lots of people where they can't ignore it. In the pocketbook. So the owl is going to be, I think, the situation where we decide what "save the environment" really means. The old attitude of "at whatever cost" won't last (it never, frankly, has -- instead of fighting over the level of support for an endangered species, all the fighting went into whether or not to save it). Instead, some kind of compromise is necessary -- and it might be we won't succeed at that.

Which isn't to say there aren't people to blame. Many years of stupid land management by the federal government, with a policy of consumption instead of conservation, lumber companies that argue that clear-cutting old-growth forest is efficient and therefore necessary are the major villains here.

The lumber companies like to tell the public things like "we plant many more trees than we cut" -- which is true, but begs a number of facts. One fact is that many of the trees die, of course. More important is that they're taking established, multi-species forests and complex ecosystems and razing them -- clearcutting them, destroying all vegetations and driving off all the animals. Then they replace this by planting fast-growing, single-species forests with no ecological complexity or diversity.

We are, in the name of economics, replacing ancient redwood forests with pine and fir stands that are about as much a real forest as a Christmas tree farm. And the forestry firms pat themselves on the back for their ecological awareness. National Forests are part of the Department of Agriculture, not Interior (a fact brought to light by the many signs we passed while driving all over the state). We're not here to protect our environment, but to maximize the profitability and replacing all those trees with even more trees -- ones that'll grow faster, straighter and be able to be harvested even sooner. Good ecology, that.

The reality is that timber is harvested and managed in a very unsound way, ecologically. Timber is a renewable resource (unlike many of the resources we're wasting, like petroleum) but the ecosystem that houses that timber isn't an unquestionably renewable system. What's going to have to happen is that the timber industry is going to have to come to grips with the reality that uncontrolled clearcutting is not going to be acceptable, especially in old-growth forests. Locking them away forever isn't the answer, either. Somewhere in the middle is a managed forest, where the larger, older trees are harvested and the younger trees allowed to mature in their stead, where complexity is kept and the ecosystem protected. We just can't keep chopping down all the trees, ripping out the stumps and planting Christmas trees in their place.

There's going to be pain. Perhaps a lot of pain. I believe the lumber firms will be forced into the new reality kicking and screaming, and both the forests and the people dependent on the forests will suffer. If everyone worked together, the suffering could be minimized, but that's not how things happen these days. Better to toss a few pet lawyers at the problem until it's too late to do anything.

Sigh.

Anyway, enough on owls. On to better, more positive things, like Portland and Westercon. We arrived on the fourth of July and checked into the Delta Inn (we normally stay at an outlying hotel at conventions. They tend to be cheaper and quieter than the major hotels -- even the non-party hotel that Westercon had. Since Laurie and I both believe in trying to get a good night's sleep instead of partying for days on end, being able to get away from the convention is a good trade-off to being five minutes away). Since the traffic around Fort Vancouver and the Red Lion hotels was supposed to be a zoo because of the festival and fireworks, we (after getting major lost on the way to the hotel -- the 'map' supplied by Westercon was seriously misleading) checked in, unpacked and settled in for the evening. Having driven about 900 miles in 48 hours made a hot bath and an evening of nothing sound quite attractive, so we grabbed some quick food at a nearby generic, mediocre Chinese restaurant and watched everyone set off their fireworks in Delta Park before crashing.

[continued]

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 3)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 3 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Editor's Notebook [Part 3 of 5]

Westercon

I've gotten somewhat bored with conventions recently -- I only go to three or four a year, but they tend to be either mediocre (Nolacon, Conspiracy, Baycon in 1989) or simply bland and familiar (Baycon 1990, Silicon -- not because they were bad, but because I've been to enough Baycons that I could do the entire convention in my sleep, and Silicon is basically a smaller Baycon). Because of this, I've started cutting back on my convention-going -- I'm not going to do Silicon this fall, instead going down to LA for turkey with my parents (and perhaps pop by nearby Loscon for a while; perhaps not) and I hope Laurie and I can visit Yellowstone next year instead of vacationing at Baycon -- I'd stopped going to conventions that didn't invite me as a guest, and now I'm pretty much only going to conventions that are in places that I want to visit anyway, the convention being the excuse, not the reason, to go.

That, in fact, is really my only complaint about Westercon. There is enough good, neat stuff in Portland that the convention kept getting in the way and I didn't see nearly as much as I wanted to.

The unofficial slogan for WC43 was "It's in the other hotel" and the reason for that is simple: Westercon used two hotels. The Red Lion Janzen Beach housed the parties, registration, the huckster room, gaming, masquerade and con suite. The Red Lion Columbia river (about a three minute walk through the parking lot and under Interstate 5) housed the non-party rooms, the quiet con suite (called the Club House), the fanzine room, programming, the Green Room and the art show. Both hotels showed the video program. The Westercon folks, actually, did a very good job of clumping stuff together -- I remember running from hotel to hotel at Nolacon to get from the Green Room (way up there, over there) to my panel (way up there, over there -- WATCH OUT FOR THAT CAB!), or the hikes from the programming rooms in the hotel to the programming rooms in the centre in Brighton. While some folks may have disliked the split of the convention, I think most folks took to the slogan in a friendly, humorous way. It wasn't really a problem.

Overall, I rate Westercon a B+. I ran into no problems personally, heard very few gripes of any significance in the halls and parties, and the concom members I knew were still smiling by the end of the show. The quality of programming was pretty good, the art show was okay (some areas were a bit dark, there weren't as many artists showing as there should have been, some having dropped out because of the con's unwillingness to accept any liability for the artwork (according to reports I've seen in the ASFA newsletter). I ended up buying two pieces, one for myself, one as a present for my mother (a print of a puppy and a dragon playing -- my mother asked me what that other animal was. I'll turn her into a fan yet).

The Huckster room was small but well stocked, with Laurie finding an issue of a Stinz comic she needed and I nabbing a book of criticism and Dave Langford's book of parodies from the folks at Serconia Press. I didn't get to either the masquerade, the video/film, filk or con suite (as usual) so I can't talk about them.

The fanzine room had a lot of pretty interesting stuff. I was able to grab myself copies of two things I had been trying to find: a copy of the long-awaited, unfortunately posthumous Innuendo 12, by Terry Carr with help from Robert Lichtman and The Incompleat Terry Carr, put out for Corflu by Jerry Kaufman. As pieces of fan-history they're irreplaceable. As reminders of a neat person I met but once and never "got around" to finding again until it was too late, they're very special to me. It's both fascinating and depressing to go back and read fan-writing from the Good Old Days of fanzine fandom and compare current fanzine fandom to it. I'm definitely no Terry Carr, and I doubt I'll ever come close to the quality of his work -- and while I'm know I'm reading the cream of the crop here, it almost seems to me that there's something in that writing that's missing in most fanzine writing these days. I can only think of a couple of isolated pieces -- one by Skel in YHOS within the last year, for instance -- that can stand up to this work. There's a soul to the writing of Terry that's missing from todays fan-writing. Terry Carr's writing goes over with my classic SF Review (the Dick Geis version, not the new, improved Elton Elliot version) on the shelf where I can't hide from the standards they set for me. Not that I'll attain them, but it's something to shoot for.

The first day of the con, the Fifth, was a short, quiet day, with the convention opening at 11AM. There was no problem with registration or with getting my stuff at the Green Room, both minor surprises considering my track record of missing or botched material. My first of three panels for the convention was at three, "Responsible Partying and Convention Etiquette", where we both trotted out the old con-cliches of "three meals and five hours sleep, not the other way around", "think shower -- your friends will thank you" and "it's considered impolite to throw up on your host's shoes" and got into some of the important issues that surround conventions.

The problem, of course, is that the people who most need those panels don't go -- they start to resemble revival meetings where the converted get together, swap horror stories and then go out into the world feeling better for it (worse for this are the panels like "Desktop Publishing is Your Friend" or "Computers Networks: the next stage in evolution or a tool of Satan?" where 95% of the audience is already involved and is just there to hear people say how neat DTP and GEnie are). There are, however, a lot of issues that conventions are grappling with (or better be grappling with if they want to survive) that involve hotel relations, legal situations and the safety and happiness of the convention goers.

Weapon policies are a nice, controversial subject, to name one. I'm all for them -- it's my belief that weapons have no place in a public forum like a convention. Why? In the years I've been con-going, I've almost been skewered once, had a knee bruised by an errant broadsword (in a scabbard. If you're going to wear one, be aware of how far out the stupid thing hangs, okay?) and almost had a laser-based phaser pointed in my eye (not by the owner, but by someone who picked it up while he'd set it down "just for a minute" -- a classic case of "it's not dangerous, I know how to handle it" while forgetting that others may not be quite so capable). And I don't go to many conventions, nor do I go to many with lots of weapons. Horror stories are legion about these things, and besides, I think that SF, and SF fandom, should be looking towards the kind of society we think ought to exist, and armed camps isn't my idea of a fun future.

Then there's the legal liabilities of having weapons hanging out. And the problems of frightened mundanes. And unhappy hotels. And SWAT teams (an unfortunately NOT apocryphal story -- they have been called out). All so Conan can look macho in his loincloth and pigsticker, or so Han Solo can beam his pretty red light into the chandelier prisms. We need this?

Another aspect that really scares me about most conventions today is alcohol. I am definitely not anti-alcohol (he says, taking a dainty sip of Graham's Port -- the ultimate tonic for occasional stress and writer's block) but alcohol is very poorly controlled in a convention setting. When a convention was 200 people a bathtub of beer could be ignored. Now, with 2,000 and more people going to conventions and party hotels (as opposed to party floors) more the norm, there are certain realities that we can't afford to ignore any more. Underage drinking and party crashing to name just a couple. If you're running an open party at a convention, do you check for badges? Do you check that the people hopping into the bathroom are of legal drinking age? Do you actually allow or encourage underage folks to drink at your party?

Think of some of the implications for a second. A couple of local teenagers know about the convention and drop by on Saturday night. They crash the party floor, grab a couple of beers in each of two or three parties and then head home -- full of free booze and happy with themselves.

They never get there. Guess what? You're liable for their deaths as the server, even if you never saw them walk in the door. Legally as well as morally. The convention is liable. The hotel is likely liable. At best there will be a lot of unhappy questions to be answered. It's very likely the con will shut down. It's possible you'll get to go downtown and have your picture taken. You may well find yourself up on manslaughter charges. Or murder.

How about something less drastic? That teenager you gave that beer to at 10PM (remember him? without the badge? the one with the long, stringy hair?) was a member of the Excise Board. You just gave alcohol to an underage, undercover cop. You're busted, and the hotel wakes up to find out it doesn't have a liquor license for the next 30 days (and the convention has a hefty fine, to boot). Guess what, lots of folks are unhappy at you right now. Even assuming the convention opens for the day (which is questionable) you probably won't be enjoying it.

Have these things happened? Not that I know of, but I DO know of cases where underage kids have been found passed out (and in one case, dead, a complication of alcohol and prescription drugs he should have known better than to drink with). The Excise Tax board or the police haven't walked in and checked alcohol enforcement that I know of -- but it is only a matter of time. It'll happen, sooner or later -- as conventions get bigger and bigger, and as more and more conventions are invaded by the outsiders who are after an evening of free booze and vandalism (this being a continuing hassle at Baycon, since the local rowdies have figured out that the Baycon party floor is a great place to pop in and be obnoxious) we're more and more likely to get the notice of the authorities. We aren't 200 folks and a bathtub. We're 2,000 folks and 100 bathtubs -- no longer too small to bother with.

What to do? First, stop pretending we're above the law. It's easy to think that since fandom is "all one big family" we can get away with stuff that's illegal. We have certain societal restrictions that don't go away simply because we've set up shop in a hotel for the weekend. Party hosts have a responsibility to the hotel, the convention, their party guests and themselves to be responsible for what goes on. With a few simple rules, you can have a good, enjoyable party and not have to worry about knocks on the door at 3AM:

o An important rule for party hosts: nobody joins your party without a
badge. "I left it in the room" doesn't cut it. Don't allow gate
crashers. Discourage the crashers and the rowdies. A secondary
reason for this is financial: a party crasher hasn't bought a
membership and hasn't contributed to the finances of the
convention. They haven't paid a penny for the hospitality you're
giving them, directly or indirectly. Don't let them freeload --
too many freeloaders and the convention won't bother coming back,
and everyone who DID pay loses. The crashers don't care whether
you lose or not. If you have friends coming over for the evening,
either close the party or buy them one-day passes.

o I suggest that if you're going to serve alcohol, close your
party. Share the beer with your friends, not with random
strangers. It's cheaper to serve soda, anyway, and frankly, 95% of
the people who pop in to visit won't notice -- and the 5% who do
you don't want in your room anyway.

o If you can't live with that and feel that you have to have your
alcohol, stick to beer and wine. It's hard to get barfing drunk on
beer and wine, and you have to work at it to get to the "I'm in
deep trouble and behind the wheel" stage. Make sure that everyone who
drinks is of legal age. Ask for ID -- those that are of legal age
shouldn't mind, and you don't care what the idiots think. If they
cause problems, let them drink someone else's beer.

Convention committees need to get into the act:

o Set an official "no alcohol at open parties" policy. Enforce it.
Have security walk the halls and check. Any party that has alcohol
closes their door and takes down the signs.

o Set an official "no gate crashers" policy. Anyone hosting a party
with people without badges gets shut down. Anyone without a badge
is escorted out of the party area. Period. Make sure the crashers
are unwelcome.

o Short of banning alcohol at open parties, the concom can do the age
screening -- if you want to drink, you get carded at Registration and
get your badge marked. No mark on the badge, no drinking. That helps
the host keep his side clean.

When you think about it, this isn't a lot of hassle, and it saves everyone a lot of potential hassle -- the only folks that 'lose' are the folks we don't want around in the first place. Being a responsible host means only that you aren't putting yourself in a situation where you can get in trouble for the acts of someone else -- don't you deserve to give yourself that?

Remember the prime credo for safe convention partying: never serve a drink to an underage fan without a condom.

Thursday night was our one big party, the @! party put on for the people involved with either the Internet or USENET. Thirty or so folks wandered through while we were there, and a good time was had by all, especially myself and Laurie. I'm not usually a big party fan, primarily because I get claustrophobic in crowds and most parties have far too many bodies per square foot of room for my tastes. Since I don't like crawling over people and screaming as I head casually for the door, I tend to keep my partying somewhat limited. The hotel had nice, large rooms, however, and the company was wonderful. I finally met Kathy Li, a very famous net.person, and Jon Singer, a very famous person in general popped in for a while. Lots of others popped in and chatted, and if I don't mention your name, it's because (1) I didn't write them down and I'm terrible with names, and (2) I don't want to insult anyone by leaving them out, so I won't mention anyone. Thanks to everyone who put the thing together, kept it from falling apart and made it enjoyable and pleasant.

Friday at Westercon included watching Clifton Amesbury, Ginjer Buchanan, Fran Skene and Art Widner talk about the Graying of the SF audience. With the inclusion of first fandom members, the discussion occasionally strayed into random threads (Spain in World War I was one of them) that had nothing to do with the topic, but the bottom line is that the SF audience is getting older and new readers (and fans) aren't coming in to take their place. According to Ginjer (editor at Ace) this is NOT true of the fantasy area, which surprised me (but probably shouldn't have). This is something that fandom needs to worry about -- where IS the next generation? (watching TV, right?)

My second panel was "What is/Why is a fanzine", one of those wonderfully vague topics that lets folks talk about just about anything. Bruce Pelz, Fred Patten, Lit Smith-Gharet and I all sort of nattered for an hour and I frankly don't remember on exactly what -- I've been on enough versions of that panel that they all meld together, and I neglected to pack my tape recorder for note taking (I ALSO neglected to pack a single copy of OtherRealms, much to my continuing embarrassment, so I had nothing to wave, pass out or push on people. Sigh). I do remember that the panel went off quite well overall, with lots of good feedback from the audience. One name I finally got to put a face to was Bruce Pelz, and another was FAPAn Don Fitch.

Saturday morning was the infamous SFWA business meeting, of which the less said the better, I think. A large chunk of members, headed by Kit Kerr and Judy Tarr, decided the intelligent thing to do was Brunch and went off in one direction. I, with my misplaced sense of duty and responsibilities as Nebula Reports Editor, went to the meeting. We all exchanged secret SFWA-type handshakes and got down to whatever business it was we were getting down to. I thought a lot about brunch.

Following that was my third of three panels, "Semi-prozines and their effects on the field". Flanked on one side by Elton Elliot and Norman Hartman (both of the new and improved Science Fiction Review), flanked on the other side by Gordon Van Gelder (New York Review of Science Fiction) and Jerry Kaufman (Serconia Press), we all got together in front of a small but interested crowd and made complete fools of ourselves. Every so often you get a panel that bombs, and this was it. I'm not a semi-prozine, although I play one on TV. Elton took every opportunity (at least 18 by the scratch marks on my pad of paper) to huckster SFR. Gordon, who is an exceptionally nice, intelligent person who just doesn't deal with public speaking well at all, came across somewhere between tranquilized and hung over (he was neither -- he's just uncomfortable in crowds). Jerry at least admitted that it was his idea and he thought it was a good idea at the time. The less said about this panel, the better -- we talked for the full hour ("Is Locus a semi-prozine?" "If a tree fell in a forest and nobody was there to hear it, would it affect the Hugo balloting?") but I don't think we really said much of anything worth saying. Oh, yeah: please subscribe to Science Fiction Review or Elton will come to your house and hurt your dog. Just kidding, Elton. Ha, ha.

Saturday afternoon, the Delta Inn went to the dogs. Literally. Turns out that Sunday was a major dog show down the road, and everyone stays at the Delta Inn. Dogs outnumbered fans by Saturday night, and except for arguing for elevator space with a bull mastiff, it was a lot quieter there than it was in the party hotel -- nice people, dog breeders. Nice animals, too. Any any time people make fun of your going to SF conventions, suggest they spend two weeks on the dog show circuit. They say WE'RE crazy.

Sunday was getaway day. We got up, checked out of the Delta Inn (stepping over a shih tzu, two poodles and a cocker) and headed back to the convention for a final morning of panels and picking up our artwork (which was in theory to be released at 1PM, and which was in actuality released about 1.20. Everything at Westercon pretty much ran on time, much to many people's surprise). We stopped in and watched "What does an editor look for", starring Barb Young (Dragon Magazine, and on her way to the airport), Ashley Grayson (agent), Kathleen Woodbury (SF and Fantasy Workshop) and the Pulphouse crew, Dean Wesley Smith and Kris Rusch. The normal litanies and horror stories were brought up -- don't insult your editor, don't threaten your publisher, there's a reason for double spaced type on white paper in black ink. Editing OtherRealms, I've picked up a strange fascination for the kind of horror stories most editors can trot out on request -- most of which I seem to be avoiding. Part of that, I think, is that I don't advertise OtherRealms in the market magazines like Scavengers much -- I prefer to work with people who read OR and choose to write for it rather than folks who see a market report and decide to restructure my fanzine to fit their preconceptions. Since I generally have more material than I can easily use, it's a strategy that I can use that others can't get away with, fortunately. Barb Young, who I'd only met a couple of times on GEnie before, was quite informative and helpful -- in fact, everyone on the panel, even for someone who's heard most of the stories before, found ways to be informative and original. Good panel.

Kris gave me a copy of the sample issue of their new project: Pulphouse short story paperbacks. For $1.95 you get a little (Beatrice Potter kiddie book sized) paperback book with a story in it. They're doing five titles a month starting in October, with people like Poul Anderson, Kate Wilhelm, John Brunner, Ed Bryant, Robert Sheckly and Esther Friesner signed up to contribute. Limited collector hardbacks are also going to be available. This looks like another potential winner for them -- you can buy them individually (either direct at Pulphouse, Box 1227, Eugene, OR 97440 or through specialty stores) or by subscription at $55.00 for half a year (30 stories) or $100 for 60 stories (a full year). Definitely something I want to look into, and if it piques your interest, write and get more details. The Pulphouse folks are turning out lots of really neat fiction and if you like short fiction, you should be checking them out.

And that's Westercon. Good convention, well run, well organized, well programmed and, well, lots of fun. Once we picked up the art I bought, we headed back to the van and headed out.

Before we head into the Great North, though, a little backtracking. If it sounds like there's a lot of convention missing in this report, you're right -- my only real complaint about Westercon was that it kept intruding and made me miss spending time hacking around Portland. If the Con report is a little skimpy, it's only because there's a lot more to Portland than Westercon.

[continued]

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 4)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 4 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Editor's Notebook [Part 4 of 5]

Portland

Once you figure out the realities of a city that's built on the banks of a number of rivers, with the associated roads that end abruptly and the bridges that span the waters, it's pretty easy to get around Portland. It's a nice, logically laid out city. That first trip off the main drag can be a bear.

But Portland, the city, is wonderful. Green and very clean (the same can be said for most of Oregon. Where roadside little was collected, the piles of trashbags was significantly smaller than the same style road in California. What really brought this home, though, was the morning of the 5th. Outside the Delta Inn was a park that was used by a few hundred people to shoot off fireworks. The next morning, there was very little trash left behind. Even though many people were there until 10 or later in the evening, they picked up their stuff and took it home. Unlike Californians, Oregon's people seem to believe that they shouldn't expect someone else to clean up after them. I'm impressed).

What do you do in Portland? What else? First you go to Powell's Books. For those that have never been there, let me explain that you don't 'go' there as much as you make a pilgrimage. Powell's is an entire building in the downtown area, and you wend your way through various rooms filled with large numbers of massive bookshelves. They hand out maps so you don't get lost (and you need them). It's the kind of place most book people dream of. I was nice (to my budget) and didn't spend a lot of money, limiting myself to a rare copy of Mike Resnick's "Redbeard" and a couple of books on Roman Britain. Laurie picked up more English history, and we browsed a few other things. We could have easily spent both hours and hundreds of dollars there. Next trip, we just might. (Right down the street from Powell's is Henry Weinhardt brewery. We considered the tour, but that's something that's on the list for the next visit as well).

One thing Laurie and I try to do when we visit a city is go to the zoos or aquariums they have. It's nice to spend a day walking around and watching the animals and looking at how different cities deal with animal habitats and presentation. We're members of the San Francisco Zoological society and the SF Zoo is a nice place, but aging and with some serious facility and organizational problems. We have a new person in charge, brought in from the New Orleans Audobon Zoo (one of the best small zoos in the country -- their swamp exhibit showing off local animals is awesome) that hopes to turn it around, but much of the zoo is Depression area WPA building, so there's a lot of turning around to do.

Portland's Washington Park Zoo has some exhibits that show where our zoo can go. One of the trends in Zoos today is clumping animals by region instead of species, so that instead of putting all Bears together, Asian Bears would go with Asian animals, North American Bears in with other North American animals and so on. When this works (The Audobon Zoo Swamp exhibit, for instance) it really gives you a feel for what it's like out in the animal's true environment. When it doesn't work (San Diego Zoo's River Walk, which just didn't impress me) it's blah.

Portland has two regional environments, the Cascade Stream and the Alaska Tundra. The Tundra was okay (but nothing really special) but the Cascade exhibit was almost as good as the Audobon Swamp (this might have something to do with taking special pride in showing off the local environment, plus the expertise to do so. The same can be said for the Monterey, CA aquarium, which specializes in the aquatic environment of Monterey Bay and nearby oceans). The Stream is a half to three-quarter of a mile path through heavily forested woods with a selection of animals and birds (including eagles and owls). There are beavers and otters, a waterfowl pond and various other exhibits. One thing the zoo very consciously was showing off, though, was the green that defines Oregon. An upcoming area they're working on is the ubiquitous African Rain Forest. Looks interesting, but so are a number of other zoos. The Stream exhibit is special and very nicely shows off why Oregon is special as well.

Other exhibits didn't fare as well -- I was very unimpressed with the Polar Bears, which seemed dark, cramped and dirty. Overall, though, the zoo is a success. Clean, seemingly well-run with the animals and facilities in good shape. An honorable mention should be made of the small-gauge railroad, done in a nifty art-deco style, that took people from the zoo to the Rose Garden and back.

Speaking of the Rose Garden, Portland is called the city of the Roses, and for good reason. The climate is perfect for roses, and that area is one of the placed used to test new varieties. The rose garden on Mount Washington is huge, with a wide variety of roses including patches of all of the national winners from over the years. Since I'm a rose freak (I plant them wherever I live) I spent a few hours wondering and planning the garden here at home. Folks I talked to said the Rhododendron garden they have is even better, although it was too late in the season to see it at its peak. Another thing to do some other time (Rhodies peak in May from what I've been told).

That took care of the two free afternoons. Other than that, we did a fair amount of driving in random directions. Everything we saw was pretty. There are a number of things that look interesting that we want to check out next time, like the Portland Saturday Market, the Rhodie garden, Fort Vancouver and generally wandering around the downtown area. There's a lot of fun in Portland that we simply couldn't get to. Conventions can be very inconvenient, especially when all your panels are early afternoon (convention committee members please note: this is NOT a complaint. Please do NOT put all my panels on at 10AM. Please. I was joking. Honest.)

Another, highly recommended place that we didn't get was Paisley's, a dessert house by Reed College. I was told Portland had two main cuisines: seafood (not surprising) and sugar. We really didn't sample the latter, but we were impressed with the overall quality of the food. Thanks to David Levine, local fan and restaurant critic, we got steered to a couple of really nice places for dinner: Jarra's, a family-run Ethiopian restaurant and Alexis, reported to be the third-best Greek restaurant in Portland (the first two were closed for vacation).

For those that have never eaten it, Ethiopian food uses chicken, beef, or lamb and lots and lots of veggies. Most of the sauces are pretty spicy using chilis and pepper. Think Szechuan Mexican and you get the idea. Food is eaten with injira and the fingers. Injira is a flat, soured bread that is used as fork, napkin and plate. you just grab pieces of whatever looks good with the bread and pop it in the mouth (and then grab for the beer. As I said, Szechuan Mexican). We eat Ethiopian about once a month here in the Bay Area, and always look forward to trying a new place. Jarra's is quite good. It turns out they saute most stuff in clarified butter. The beef in my dish was tender enough it was literally flaking apart. Yum. Highly recommended.

One thing that is missing for some reason in the Bay Area is Greek food, although I've heard rumors of one restaurant opening recently and another on the way. For a while, there was some food downtown and lots and lots of really bad gyros. Because of this, we try to make a habit of eating Greek whenever we're in another city. Alexis was quite good. They evidently bake their own bread, which was delicious. My sauteed Tiger Shrimp were wonderful -- very rich and plump. So rich I was almost unable to finish them (but I forced myself). I also tried the Retsina wine, much to the waiter's amusement ("have you ever had Retsina before? Do you know what you're asking for? Are you sure you want Retsina? Are you REALLY sure? How about some ouzo and we'll just let you sleep it off instead?"). Some folks might be more affected by that wine -- I just thought it was okay. Nothing to go out of the way for.

There are literally dozens of good restaurants in Portland we didn't get a chance to try. Damn, I think this means we'll just have to go back.

If it's not obvious, I like Portland. Portland is a city I would seriously consider living in if I left the Bay Area, which puts it on a pretty short list (other cities I've spent time in over the last few years include Boston, which is great but only in the summer, New Orleans, which has great food and a great zoo but which just drove me crazy (nothing personal, New Orleans folks -- chalk it up to personality conflicts or something. I just do NOT like New Orleans) and Orlando, which would be a great place to live if I never had to leave the grounds of Walt Disney World (good luck). To put it on the list of places to live is a high honor, well-deserved.

Washington and places north

Back on the road to the real purpose of this trip: vacation. My parents own a cabin near Port Ludlow, Washington (it's on the Olympic Peninsula near the National Park). Nice, secluded (although growing less so daily -- growth is a major problem for the Seattle area, with 40% and more appreciation in real estate per year right now. Traffic can be a bear. Seattle has tried to limit growth and keep the quality of life good. It also appears, in many ways, to be losing. All the no-growth proposals in the world won't help if people come anyway) with no computers, no telephone and no cable TV. In other words, heaven for a hard-core techno-nerd like myself who spends double-digit hours a day with computers.

On the way up from Portland, however, we took one more little side trip -- a couple of hundred miles through Mount St. Helens. Even after ten years, the damage is devastating. Sitting up on hurricane ridge looking over to what's left of the mountain (the volcano took the top 1500 feet and either sent it up into the air or down into the valley in a massive avalanche) and Spirit Lake is really a strong reminder that when Mother gets mad, humanity loses. Period. The ranger was telling people what the eruptions did to the area -- for instance, to find the original surface of Spirit Lake (now a shrunken, ugly pool full of ten year old rotting timbers) you go you to the current surface and then go straight down 400 feet.

There are areas that have started rebuilding themselves. There are many other areas that are still completely barren and dead -- and will be for an unknown amount of time. One of the drives took us through an ash 'desert' -- a patch of nothing but dirt where nothing would grow, surrounded by recovering forest. The drive back out was via a side road that was one and a half lanes wide -- one lane plus turnouts. Not exactly the interstate, but absolutely gorgeous country.

It'd been two years since we'd made it to the cabin -- my parents rent it all but about six weeks a year to a man who spends two months a year in Alaska with commercial fishermen and then the rest of the year out in the middle of nowhere relaxing and doing odd jobs. Primarily, the time in Washington was for relaxing, kicking back and exploring and helping out with the occasional odd chore (my parents were up there doing the same, but also taking care of various things that rental houses always seem to need taking care of -- father is actively turning the lot into a real yard, although upstream logging has again clogged the stream with mud and made it useless. With any luck, that'll pass).

Last time we were up in that area we never made it into Seattle, so that was our first stop. We spent one day by taking the ferry into downtown and walking through the waterfront and Pike Place Market. On the water is both the Seattle Aquarium and the adjoining Omnimax theater. The Aquarium is decent -- not as good as Monterey but a lot better than many I've seen, with an emphasis on the local ecology and a strong message of protection and ecology. Good for them.

The Omnimax was showing a film on Mount St. Helens, a nice coincidence since it gave us a chance to watch the eruptions and the ten-year old footage and compare it to what we were seeing a few days earlier. Unfortunately, the lamp was quite dim and viewing was difficult (this is a not-uncommon happening these days, caused by not swapping bulbs at the recommended number of hours -- save a little money on projector maintenance; who cares if it screws things for the customer? Another reason I rarely seem to go to the movies any longer).

The highlight, however, was clearly Pike Place. It's a modern throwback to an earlier area -- the market street that predated supermarkets. Combination farmers and flea markets, there are both temporary vendor booths and permanent storefronts. Laurie found a really sharp sweater in one mall and we grabbed cherries (Ranier, also known as Queen Anne) and Walla Walla onions (a relatively short-season onion that is very sweet and not sharp at all) and berries. Washington State is the number one producer of berries in the country, but only the number two shipper. Why? Because they keep all the good ones to themselves. Blackberries, Marian Berries, Raspberries (including a yellow variety that I'd never seen before that was very sweet and exotic), Blueberries and even Strawberries (although I think California does better strawberries. either that or the season wasn't quite right for them). For a few short weeks each year, Washington residents sit down and eat massive amounts of berries, savoring the tart-sweet morsels that remind them exactly why it was they moved up there in the first place. I happily joined in -- eating berries on cereal in the morning, berries with lunch, berries on ice cream (actually, the way I did it, ice cream on berries). It's possible to get good berries here in the Bay Area (we found some last weekend at the Palo Alto Farmer's Market) but they're twice as expensive and not as good. Better than nothing (better than a LOT of things, actually) but not as good as the real thing. We also picked up some nice bread, some really nice English cheeses -- there's lots of good food at Pike Street.

And fish. It was salmon season in Seattle, and there was Salmon everywhere. My guess is that it's the salmon that keeps Washington from being known as the berry capital of the world. The fish shops (plural) were loaded with salmon to the gills (ugh, sorry). We didn't take any back only because it was already there waiting for us. The fish up there is wonderful -- probably as good as the berries in its own way (but I can eat berries forever; I run out of appetite for fish after the second or third salmon).

[continued]

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 5)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 5 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Editor's Notebook [Part 5 of 5]

We didn't see all of Pike Street -- not even close. It's a continuing, long-term adventure that changes before your eyes. But a number of shops -- the crumpet shop, the Philadelphia deli, the cheese shops -- will get closer examination next time. I promise.

One thing that demands special notice at Pike Street is (surprise) a bookstore. I fully expected when I walked into Collector's Bookstore (1501 Pike Place Market, 432 Lower Level, Seattle, 98101 206-622-5182) to see the same kind of bookstore you see in most touristy areas: overpriced books on local flora and fauna, out of date tour books and racks of Stephen King and Sidney Sheldon. I walked into this one and ran straight into an entire collection of Arkham House editions. Even more surprising, the rest of the store was full of lots of books that showed there was a lot of love and care going into the inventory. I had a chance to sit and talk to the people running the store a bit, and they had a intelligent knowledge of both publishing in general and the SF field. One of those unexpected little jewels of a store that sticks in your mind -- and go back and spend even more money. If you're in the area, this is a place to put on your list. It's not Powell's -- but it carries stock that is in many ways complementary to Powell's, the smaller, more obscure and interesting things that only a fellow collector would know to have.

A quick note on the ferry. I found it somewhat disturbing to realize that I could live in Winslow (where the ferry docks) or Poulsbo (an enclave of Nordic people that have built a very charming city with nice shopping that somehow has avoided the patina of tourism that tarnishes Solvang down south) and use the ferry to commute to Seattle. The time for this trip is about the same is the time to take BART (the San Francisco commute subway) from Fremont. Fremont housing is middle-class and not on the water, is still a LOT more expensive and built up at that. The real pity, however, is that a round trip on BART is about twice the cost of a round trip on the ferry.

On the other hand BART won't get you seriously seasick during winter storms. It's also a lot cheaper to build a pair of docks and a couple of ferry boats than it is to lay track for a light rail railroad, and there is no way the ferry system can handle the kind of volume BART does -- but it does make you wonder about the economics of rapid transit and whether there are options that just aren't being examined. On a personal level, I ask the question "all other factors being the same, would I rather live in Poulsbo or Fremont?"

Actually, that's a silly question. Given the chance, I'd be out of the Bay Area in a shot.

Daytrip #2 was Victoria, British Columbia, billed as the closest thing you'll come to England on the continent. They're right. It is, and it somehow is both a major tourist attraction and avoids being blatantly touristy at the same time. Unlike some places, like Las Vegas and Catalina Island, Victoria has combined both a real city and the kind of things that short-time visitors can enjoy without losing any attractiveness for either. The ferry Coho makes four trips a day (summer schedule) between Port Angeles and Victoria, with travel time being about one and a half hours. I can see why Jack Chalker is such a ferry fan -- they're almost an addicting form of transportation. The large ferries in the Seattle/Vancouver/Victoria area hold about 200 cars and up to 2000 passengers, include a snack bar, inside and outside seating and wonderful views.

Customs was interesting. Washington state currently has a problem with apple maggots, and Canada is very interested in keeping it Washington's problem and not theirs, so most fruits and veggies were on the "don't be silly" list. Americans don't need passports to visit (although it doesn't hurt), only legal ID like a driver's license. Customs looked at us (Laurie with purse, I with ubiquitous backpack for goodies), decided there was no room for massive smuggling and asked us whether we were carrying fruits, vegetables or weapons. (no, no and no). Then they asked us whether we were carrying mace. (also no).

That stopped me a bit. I always figured that mace was a weapon, just like a handgun is. Legally, you need permits for either, at least in California and they're both no-no's under many circumstances (flying, for instance). Evidently, however, some Americans will pack their mace for a day trip to Canada and then not realize that when Canada says "no, you can't carry personal weapons into this country" that their mace applies.

I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I want THOSE folks carrying mace. They might mace their foot or something.

Victoria is a place that you can spend a number of days at. We picked up a flyer that listed 40 separate used or antiquarian bookstores alone (if that isn't enough to get people up there, I don't know what is). We checked out a couple and carried back a few more finds (this was a good vacation for filling out our collection of stuff -- between Westercon, Powell's, Victoria and a wonderful little bookstore in Poulsbo, we picked up a lot of treasure, including a long-sought copy of Damon Knight's Turning Points (a book of essays on SF from the 70s), a 1923 edition of Dumas' Three Musketeers and a Penguin Classic edition of The Song of Roland).

Lunch was at a nice little restaurant/pub called Elephant and castle, which featured British food and good Canadian beers and ale. I had the shepherds pie and Laurie had a wonderful pork curry that we smelled from the street and followed in the door. We also had some nice Canadian beers (proof positive that Canada keeps its best brews at home and sends us the rest -- this stuff puts Molson or Moosehead to shame).

The center piece of the harbor area are two buildings: the Parliament house, which is the seat of Government, and the Empress Hotel. Both were built in the late 1800's with the same overall style -- lots of copper domes and windows. The inside of the Empress is impressive, and they serve formal tea (which we didn't take this time around) and have what looks like a wonderful restaurant (lots of nice curries and things). It is very British and really helps set the feeling of Victoria.

We visited a number of things in Victoria. Since we're big bird and animal types, we had to visit the Crystal Garden, which wants to be a high-class greenhouse/aviary/zoo. What it really is is a pretty small building with a couple of dozen cages, a few exotics and some macaws and other birds. It was nice to see the birds (we left ours at "summer camp" with the people we bought Morgan from, and when we aren't around her we miss having her around) but it's definitely not worth either the price or the hype. On the other hand, the Royal British Columbia Museum, a combination Natural and Cultural history museum, was worth the couple of hours we put into it. Lots of displays of both the geology and ecology of the British Columbia area and the people, places and history that surrounds the area. Recreations of a typical city over various periods of time, a look at farming, mining, seafaring and fishing through the years, and, most importantly, a LOT of fascinating data on the native Indian cultures including an authentic Big House and Pit House (the Big House having actually been given to the museum by a chieftain when he stopped using it). A great place for authorial-type research and poking.

I was impressed with how the Canadians handled their Indian history. Upfront about the abuses and realistic about the outcome. Much of America really wants to believe that we didn't do things to the Indians (or, at least, that they didn't believe). America, as a country, has trouble accepting that it's not perfect -- just ask the WW II Japanese or Amerinds (or read Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" for the American invasion from the Indian viewpoint. There's a book in there somewhere....). Overall, the museum is a fine example of how to display a culture to outsiders in an accessible, interesting way.

A place we didn't get was Butchart Gardens, since we weren't staying over and didn't feel like taking a tour and returning on a late ferry. Our next trip up will definitely be an overnight stay in Victoria, though, and this is the top of my list. Butchart is about 50 acres of displays of various flowers and plantings and is considered one of the top formal gardens in the world and well worth a full afternoon to itself. In retrospect, I wish we had taken a half-day tour up there, but it's something to look forward to. Other places we missed (with varying degree of unhappiness) included the Royal London Wax Museum, featuring Queen Victoria herself, Sealand (aka Sea World in San Diego, Marine World in Vallejo and dozens of other, similar places), Miniature World (dozens of displays of miniature cities, towns and etc, housed inside the Empress Hotel) and Undersea Gardens, an aquarium. Two days seems to be a minimum to really see decent amounts of Victoria, and I think I'd prefer three.

The third of three day trips might seem a little unusual to many. We popped down to Tacoma (about an hour's drive) to spend the evening watching the Phoenix Firebirds (AAA team of the San Francisco Giants) beat the Tacoma Tigers (AAA team of the Oakland Athletics) 3-2. Laurie and I have been going to minor league games in the Bay Area for a couple of years (San Jose is home of the A level San Jose Giants, which is, obviously, associated with the San Francisco team). Minor league ball is a lot of fun and a lot less serious than the majors -- A league is the lowest form of professional ball these days, and so the kids here are making the adjustment from being the top kid in their high school or college to being one of the junior players again. Many of them, obviously, never make the transition or get good enough to get to the majors at all (the reality is that at any level, only three or four on the team will likely be promoted to the next level up -- the rest are being paid to play catch with the prospects). An average San Jose game can attract anywhere from 300-400 unless there's a strong draw (San Jose is one place where S.F. players rehabilitate. Kelly Downs pitched there last week (as I write) and it was essentially a sell-out in a stadium that'll hold 2,500 or so. AAA is a lot more professional, with crowds of 6,000 more typical, so a good part of the intimacy of A ball is lost, but it's still a lot better than the 30,000 at San Francisco. It also gives you a chance to see the stars of tomorrow -- Mark Leonard hit a home run against Tampa (and later was promoted for a short time to San Francisco, where he went about 1 for 11 before going back to Phoenix. Good player, not quite ready). At the A level, there's a lot of raw talent and enthusiasm but not a lot of skill. Baseball and Hockey are my two special sports, but I've always had a soft spot for college and amateur games over professional because the top-level athletes (especially in the NBA) tend to make it so smooth and machine-like that it becomes boring. The lower echelons are where you'll see people still playing it as a game instead of a profession, and where the stakes aren't so high that mistakes are unthinkable. Fun stuff.

The rest of the time we spent in Washington was spent either sitting, walking or puttering in places like Poulsbo. Laurie and I both caught up on a lot of reading, although I swear my to-be-read stack gave birth to some books while I was on vacation because it doesn't seem any smaller. We also spent a fair amount of time with the shortwave (A Sony 2010, another hobby of ours -- in fact this morning I went and bought a Radio Shack Pro-34 scanner to upgrade my Pro-33. Next toy will be a Kenwood R5000 desktop shortwave, maybe around the first of the year). The Pacific Northwest is one of the best places to listen to Radio Moscow, for instance, as well as being a good place for the Far East and Australia.

Radio Moscow is as clear an indication of the fundamental changes going on in the Soviet Union as you can get. What used to be an unending stream of rhetoric, political posturing and field trips to fork manufacturers in Kiev has shifted to a fascinating mix of politics, relatively unbiased news (Boris Yeltsin was busily taking the Russian Republic independent and sticking his tongue out at Gorbachev, and while RM was critical of that situation, it wasn't ignoring it like previous regimes did -- and it's being very open and frank about many of the other problems the USSR is having, from miner strikes to toxic waste. An amazing change of face for what was a political toy) and even, believe it or not, Top 40 Rock and Roll (Saturday afternoons here on the west coast, hosted by Gary Gears, a well-known Chicago DJ. They seem to be taking a satellite feed from him and rebroadcasting it on their world service. The first time I heard it I couldn't believe my ears -- I thought a domestic station like WRNO was taking over a Russian Frequency).

We'd planned on doing a lot more in Washington, but vacation-ennui set in. The thought of sitting and relaxing and sitting some more was so attractive that we gave up playing tourist and recharged our batteries. We thought about going and seeing the Everett Giants (Rookie league A ball), and we thought about Vancouver (vetoed because of Westercon next year) and tracking down a number of our friends in the area.

We'll do it next time. It's hard to beat sitting out on the deck and watching the bald eagles fishing out in the sound. Vacations shouldn't be so busy you go back to work to recuperate.

I can hardly wait for next summer.

[not continued]

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 6)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 6 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

I'm Not a Nice Girl Commentary by Laurie Sefton

Let's start out with what not being a nice girl means....

There's probably a lot of not nice girls out there reading this editorial, because they've bypassed one of the "societal norms" -- they're either (or both!) reading science fiction or using computers. If you remember to those long ago days when you first heard that only boys read science fiction. And certainly only boys did computers; I still surprise people who have been asked to contact me for advice on their computer systems -- you can almost hear the "but, girls don't do computers" at the other end of the phone. A lot of you were probably in "non-traditional" (i.e. traditional being teaching, nursing or home economics) majors in college.

But you keep hearing the people over the years telling you to not be so aggressive -- it's not feminine, the ones who intone that "boys don't date girls who are smarter than they are" -- so don't let on that you have any brains, the ones who proclaim that you must be interested in marrying an engineer, since you've chosen (or been chosen by) to go to the state engineering university, who say you shouldn't make more money or hold a higher position than your husband/boyfriend, because it might hurt his ego (and somehow that counts for more than how you feel).

In essence you're told that being a nice girl is being quiet, smiling a lot, being subordinate to all the men in your life, submerging all your feelings, because, as a woman your life just isn't worth as much as a man's.

Bullshit.

This is the only me I've got, and I'm certainly not going to waste it worrying about whether I should be nice, because there's some nebulous someone in society who expects that of me. I've heard all the insults (or what the people who were hurling them at me thought were insults) -- "you're too damn aggressive for a woman", "why aren't you a team player" -- team player meaning that I do the work, and hand it over to the men for credit, and the infamous:

"If I didn't see you with your boyfriend, I'd say you were a lesbian."

Like there's something wrong with being a lesbian?

Feh.

You bet I'm going to compete as hard and fast as I can, and not defer, and express my opinion, and I really don't care what those stupid rulemakers say.

I'm not a nice girl.

First topic: getting a "life." I was recently accused by one of the local USENET jackals of not "having a life". Now, said jackal spent the first month of his latest employment hitting his management up for a USENET feed. I wonder what sort of life he must have if he can't live without his daily BBS fix, and if the only goal he has is seeing how many sniveling sycophants he can have licking the soles of his boots and how many people he can piss off along the way (with, of course, the belief that if you get upset at what he says, you obviously Have A Problem, not him). I can also say he is so full of shit that not only is it running out of his ears, but that he can probably single-handedly cure the lack of nitrogenous nutrients in California's central valley.

What sort of not-boring life am I leading? Well, for one thing, I work for Apple, and in the current economic situation, working anywhere in the valley provides a lot of stimulus. I've not only convinced Stanford and San Jose State to let me into their respective grad schools, but I have Apple paying for it. I've been used as a resource by various governmental agencies to tell people whose computer sites have been broken into how to 1.) clean up their security and 2.) deal with the other governmental agencies.

I can say "hello", "goodbye", "how are you", "I'm fine", "you're an asshole" and "your mother fucks camels" in Farsi -- very useful stuff.

I have a slightly larger vocabulary in Gaelic. I like bagpipe music and am fairly awful to almost mediocre on the chanter.

I've read Dumas and Zola in French, Cervantes and Valle-Inclan in Spanish, and can grind my way through chemical texts written in German. I first learned spoken french by listening to hockey broadcasts for the Montreal Canadiens. I then went to Morocco. My accent is interesting.

I had my first concussion from a hockey puck at age 7. Many more followed. I've fallen off of various horses, motorcycles, and sleds.

I've had licenses to run both a water treatment plant in a town of less than 10,000 people, and a license to operate a radio station that broadcasts with less than 10Kw of power.

I've taken prizes for art, debate, and swimming.

I have a large collection of biographies of Queen Victoria, and even larger collection of wine, and I can tell you all sorts of interesting ways to poison people.

This is "having a life" -- whining and bitching electronically as your main pastime is not.

Speaking of education....

I'm going back to grad school. One of the quasi-requirements for the one of the grad schools was taking the GMAT -- the Graduate Management Admission Test, and while the nice folks representing the grad school didn't say you had to take the refresher course for the exam, it was "highly recommended" -- and we all know what that means. So, for three weeks in May and June I spent my Saturdays in a prep course. I thought at the time that I might need some refreshing -- after all, it had been eight years since I previously took grad examinations.

Oh, my.

The first week was six hours of math refresher. I found that while I hadn't factored a polynomial, or approximated a square root by hand in quite a few years, that I still knew how. However, the fresh young faces straight out of college were at a total loss. They had no concept of basic algebra, no ideas of how to figure out a simple geometric problem, and had apparently never been taught anything about square roots, except for where to find the button on the calculator. These were future MBA students, though. The first question they asked was "can we form study groups?".

The English refresher the next week was even worse. Most had not heard of a lot of parts of speech -- oh, they had noun and verb down, but adverbs, conjunctions and participles, much less gerunds, were totally beyond their ken. Their vocabularies were rather sad -- they couldn't answer what the idea behind a paragraph was because they couldn't understand the words. Exactly what passes for an English requirement at the universities these days?

As it turns out, on the morning of June 16th, 1990, I drove up to Lincoln High School in San Francisco, took the exam, and am now getting lots of mail from lovely places where it snows in the winter which want me to spend large chunks of money to go to their graduate school.

As for those in the prep class who were possibly learning the tested subjects for the first time in their lives, I don't know which would be worse; that they didn't score high enough on the test, and didn't get into MBA school, or that they did.

People can tell me to get a life. I just smile and point out that if I get any more, I'll go crazy. My calendar's full, thank you. What "get a life" really means is "I don't like what you do, so it's meaningless". Which is crap. Nothing more than a weak attempt at someone far lower on the ladder of life trying to even things up by bringing you down.

Remember, it only works if you let them.

Me? I'm not going to let them any more, which is why I've finally started writing this long-threatened column. It's time for people to realize that "nice girl" is no different than "nice nigger" -- I live my life to please me, not to please some male misconception of what I ought to be.

Nice girls smile on the outside and say nothing. I'm not going to do that any more. When I smile, you better make sure it's because I'm happy. I smile when the claws are out, too -- from the joy of the hunt....

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 7)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 7 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Romancing the Turquoise [Part 1 of 4]
Susan Shwartz
Copyright 1990 by Susan Shwartz

Breaking Away

Don't call me Ishmael. Ismail was my driver in Cappadocia, and I don't think he'd approve.

For how I spent my vacation in Turkey, I might, however, decide to answer to the name "Joan Wilder." As in Romancing the Stone Joan Wilder, author of some rather purple prose and heroine of some very unlikely adventures. Unlike many people I met in my recent trip -- or unlike Mike Resnick (now planning his latest safari) -- the writers I know tend to travel mostly in our imaginations.

Mostly, I write about Byzantium and China from half a world or so away. But in May 1990 (May 9-May 27), I spent almost three weeks in Turkey, playing tourist in Istanbul and Anatolia, researching Byzantine and Seljuk sites, and acting out...I should know about lives like that: the lucky protagonists of my books usually get to live them.

This time, I did.

Three years after my last vacation (a Pan Books-subsidized trip to the Brighton Worldcon), I sat over lunch with Sargent Cheever. Sarge is in the Foreign Service and, as I knew, has been stationed most recently in Ankara.

He tells me now he has a new, temporary posting to Istanbul. That stops me cold. After writing four novels set in a Byzantium of my own imagination, I'd kill to see Istanbul. Accordingly, I turn the green of my computer CRT.

"Well, why don't you stop talking about the place and come on out and see it?"

"This is crazy," I tell him. After ten years of thrashing about in New York City, I have a book contract, more writing commitments than I can handle, volunteer editing, the Nebula Jury, ballet and opera subscriptions, not to mention my Wall Street job, which was eating up my entire life at that point.

No answer. I think of my other Commitments. Never let Commitments get in the way of living. I'd be lying if I told you that's what I always say; but it's what I should have been saying for a long time.

"Do you mean it?" I ask. Wouldn't you know it, my voice squeaks? I promptly put both elbows on the table, narrowly missing the rice, the soup, and the chicken curry.

"Sure. Why not?"

And "do you mean that?" I ask in a letter; after all, Turkey -- you can't just arrive and expect crash space.

A letter confirms the original invitation. Sarge has once again been posted back to Ankara and would gladly show me around Anatolia on weekends before I took off on my own for Istanbul. I call a travel agent.

"You're going WHERE?" Startled people invoke Midnight Express, hijackers, and every other spectre overactive imaginations can conjure. When I don't blanch, they grin. Istanbul. Byzantium. I have waited an entire life of getting drunk on maps to see Hagia Sophia.

Now that the trip has become more than a dream, it shocks my coworkers, to whom "vacation" means Club Med if it doesn't mean a careful progression from one nice hotel to another or (if they are very senior) a painstakingly orchestrated triumph of luxury hotel after luxury hotel.

"You know," they tell me seriously, just as they told Joan Wilder in Romancing the Stone, "you're not equipped to handle this."

According to them, I'm in no shape for a trip that would involve heavy walking and some climbing because I don't do aerobics at a healthclub. And, while they are on the subject, have I forgotten that Turkey is a Muslim country, that it probably gives people dysentery, and that I don't speak the language? All of a sudden, the Ideal Traveler (hereafter IT) reared its smug head, weighed me in the balance, and found me even more inadequate than usual.

You do know the Ideal Traveler, don't you? The IT is the equivalent of that terrible woman in TV commercials who finds ring around the collar, dust on the floor, or water spots on glasses not washed with Calgon. The IT never goes on tours, always is perfectly groomed, yet carries no more luggage than a clever little backpack. The IT always knows the language, is never sick, and will tell you -- without being asked -- about all the fascinating people who invited IT into their homes and told IT how unlike other American tourists IT was. The IT always finds bargains and out-of-the-way places and even makes time to go jogging.

People who listen to the IT go crazy.

Letters and phone calls planning my trip start to happen. Sarge returns from a visit to the American consulate at Adona to tell me that one of the consuls there read SF and had my books. Not only that, he had Harry Turtledove's Agent of Byzantium. I laugh. Harry, when I call him at about 2:00 a.m., howls. At 6' 8", he makes a really incongruous Joan Wilder.

The people at work immediately conjure six different ways of letting me know that taking that much vacation time was probably going to crash Wall Street about my head and theirs. It's funny how you're not valuable at raise time, but if you want some time off... Several asked me if I couldn't put off the trip for a few weeks. Having not had a long vacation since I started there and for more than a year before, I put down my foot instead.

"I don't believe this," my colleagues at work begin to say and tease me for the way I was grinning.

Instead, I make it through a last dutiful half day and a ritual lunch, flee home, and head for the airport.

Unreality really hits me on the jet. Maybe the IT sleeps on jets: I don't. Like other writers who make deals with hyperspace, I'm a nervous passenger; but I am inexpressibly reassured after the pilot comes on and introduces himself. In three languages (none of them the Appalachian that Tom Wolfe says is de rigeur for pilots), he introduces himself as Captain Jaeger. That Anglicizes as Yeager -- in my opinion, the very best possible surname for a pilot.

Comfortable as Swissair is, the trip from New York to Ankara is long. When I arrived at Esenboga Airport, jetlagged as I've seldom been, practically the first thing I saw was Turkish security. Their uniforms are unfortunate, rather like Peter Cushing's in Star Wars; and they carry automatics.

The cab ride to the American Embassy gives me an inkling of what I've let myself in for. While Turkish driving isn't as nutty as Egyptian driving, the Turks have one of the highest crash rates in Europe. That goes double for the small, marauding taksis, which are enough to daunt even a New Yorker who thinks she's heard everything in taxi-stories. Most cabs and trucks have a blue evil-eye charm somewhere about them; inscriptions of MASHALLAH or "In the name of Allah, the Merciful and Loving Kind" are more common than plastic Jesuses in a country-western song, considerably more sincere -- and necessary.

Somehow the taksi gets me to the Embassy and my host without fatalities. No rest for the wicked: I unpack and find myself at a dinner party full of Foreign Service officers celebrating the return of a colleague from Italy with wonderful food and wine. Assiduous tourists, all of them -- and full of information on what I should see.

The next day, I take it (relatively) easy. I go to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations at Ankara, which is housed in a fifteenth-century bedestan or covered market. It is an extraordinary collection in which Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman exhibits can be lumped together under the heading "modern." An important part of its collection consists of artifacts from Catal Hoyuk, the oldest town yet discovered: stag's heads, beads, a diorama of the site, and a very early mirror made from obsidian. In the main hall of the bedestan, the chief attraction is Hittite lions, labeled arslan.

Since it is about noon, I wait to hear the muezzin chant the call to prayer for the first time. Technology has helped the Faithful; sound systems now carry the chant all over Turkey. Only once -- in Amasya -- did I see an actual man emerge from the minaret to sing.

After the Museum, I walk up the hisar, or Citadel. It is still inhabited by families, who live in houses off the narrow, twisted streets: a market sells macadamia nuts, brasswork (for the tourists), dried fruits, and other food that the local cat population hangs about, preparing to steal; old men lounge about the streets (no Turk will consent to use a sidewalk if there's a more comfortable street to walk in the middle of); women in headveils come to the fountains to draw water and carry it away in huge sunflower oil tins; and the children in their black school tunics swarm up to you demanding you take their photo.

The hisar is the site of the original hill fort. Most of its fortifications are now from Roman and Byzantine Ankyra.

After the hisar, I head for Anit kabir, located on a couple of acres of parkland in the center of the City. Why, in a crowded city whose population has exploded from less than 100,000 in the 1920s when it became the capital, to more than 2,000,000 today, would there be acres of parkland? Because Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, is buried there.

Before I go on, let me make a few comments about Ataturk. He was the only Turkish general in World War I to win -- and he won at Gallipoli. After the War, when Turkey received much harsher treatment than its ally, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire was known as the "Sick Man of Europe," Ataturk led an uprising that replaced the decaying sultanate with a Republic. Like Peter the Great, he determined to bring his country into the West and into the current century. In six months, he had substituted the Roman alphabet for the Arabic. He proclaimed Turkey a secular state, established a parliament, and ordered women to adopt European dress and no veils because he was concerned how they suffered from them during the summer. He required all Turks to adopt surnames: his own -- Ataturk -- means "father of the Turks."

More than fifty years after his death in 1938, he still is. Think of a combination of George Washington, Mao Tse-Tung, and Martin Luther King; you'll have some idea of the veneration in which Ataturk is still held.

Anit kabir looks very much like a Hittite Lincoln Memorial. Set on a hill, it's reached by taksi, which can take you to the first guard post outside the chapels with their huge mourning statuary groupings of Anatolian men and women. The soldiers are young, heavily armed, and solemn. Past the chapels is the Lion's Way, stone avenue through park marked by paired arslans that watch tourists unblinkingly: respect; remember; behave yourselves. The Lion's Way opens into a cloistered square. Side buildings contain memorials of Ataturk's life: memorabilia, clothing (including the white tie in which he is most often depicted), his car, his cigarette cases and coffee services, photos and portraits of Ataturk with kings and generals so Turks can see that he was honored as an equal -- and so were they.

The hero cult reaches its apex in the Memorial itself. It is utterly stark: a severe, long-windowed building marked inside by mosaics in Turkish folk motifs and huge torch holders wrought of black iron. The ceiling is very high: your footsteps echo, and you whisper as you walk toward the enormous sarcophagus. It is bigger than Napoleon's and, to my mind, more impressive than Place des Invalides. Though Anit kabir received Ataturk's body in 1953, you get the sense from it that you do throughout much of Turkey: of incredible age, of an overlay of cultures.

I walk from Anit kabir, get thoroughly lost, and when I grow tired of it, found a taksi driver who could understand my city map and get me back to where I was staying, high in the newest part of the city where officials, Embassy personnel, and the most Westernized Ankarans live. This section of town is full of cats. As I discover, Turkey itself is full of cats -- there's a whole feline ecosystem that goes its way with no help from humans except their food scraps. These are not pampered pets, but wild hunters.

I did coax a fluffy red cat to come and be fussed over -- much to the amusement of two old men playing chess, who applauded and said "Very good" to the crazy foreigner (Turks don't notice the cats). All bets were off, however, when the red cat wanted to introduce me to its friends. They ran. This incredible cat population, a guide told me, may come from the legends that Mohammed was very fond of cats: custom disapproves of hurting cats.

Custom disapproves even more, thank God, of hurting kids. In the short time I was in Turkey, I never saw a child, even in the poorest villages, who wasn't well-fed, cheerful, and courageous, with the spirit of someone who knows that all adults will love and protect him or her. Compared with the wariness American children have to learn to protect themselves from adults, the Turks are doing something very right.

Weekend One -- Back To The Past

On Saturday (May 12), we planned to head into the Anatolian countryside. (Geographical rule of thumb: Western Turkey is not landlocked; think Black Sea; think of the "garland of waters" that travelers have described as adorning Istanbul. Eastern Turkey is mountainous...like Mount Ararat. Central Anatolia is a huge plateau.)

Early, as in about 7:00 a.m. Jet lag, or no (and helped by ten years of blitzkrieg packing for science fiction conventions), I make the deadline and we get into the rented Murat, a Turkish-made car that could be sturdier than it is: the door handle breaks in my hand. "You tell the rental people that if a small woman can break this door you shouldn't have to pay for it!" I gripe to cover major embarrassment.

We start for Bogaskoy. (The name actually contains some umlauts and a diacritical mark over the g which means it's not pronounced: the town sounds like "Bo-AS-koy" and is better known as Hattusas, the ancient Hittite capital.) On the way, a sign at a crossroads is hand-marked in white paint: Iran. That's the way the international truck routes head. The horizon expands: all Asia seems to be scrolling out in front of me.

Bogaskoy, Yazilkale, and Alaca Hoyuk ("huyuk" means "mound") are fairly thoroughly excavated. Bogaskoy consists of temples and living quarters and a number of mysteries, as well as some ritual gates in its huge walls. In addition, heaped over by earth about four thousand years ago, is a tunnel about 70 meters long, leading through the wall. The stones form a natural arch from which moisture drips; the hillside slopes down; and it is very dark. After the obligatory wisecrack from Indiana Jones ("Are there snakes in this tunnel?") I find myself racing through it, not frightened, particularly, but with my breath coming faster. I put my hand up to touch the ancient stones. Entering the sunlight feels like a rebirth, and may have been: archeologists like Dr. Peter Neve, who has worked at Bogaskoy for the past 30 years, now think that these sites have a ritual purpose: the metamorphosis of a dead king into a god.

Yazilkale is, essentially, a temple complex containing too-much-worn freizes of gods and godkings. Alaca Hoyuk is an excavated barrow, essentially. I was intrigued to see a double-headed eagle, symbol of the Byzantine Paleologus dynasty that didn't happen for much more than a thousand years later.

The fields are very green now, thanks to a wetter-than-usual spring. In another month or so, they'll be dried to golden stubble. But right now, women and girls, many wearing the headveils and trousers that Ataturk tried to forbid (but that countryfolk never abandoned) kneel or squat in the fields picking herbs. Young men sit in groups, learning to carve "arslans" out of local stone -- scuola di Bogaskoy -- for sale to tourists. Around the excavations, numerous children come up, clamoring for "bonbons" and baksheesh.

Having always relied on my ability to use words to get by, I'm having trouble with the idea that in Turkey, I'm as mute as I am illiterate. If I want to communicate with Turks who don't speak English, French, or German, I must do it with tone of voice, body language, and goodwill.

We have lunch in the farming town of Corum. Even in this town, the food is excellent: wonderful bread, savory lamb, the "white cheese" that I'd call Feta if we were in Greece, and tomatoes and cucumbers that make even the most expensive products from Manhattan Korean vegetable stands look and taste like styrofoam.

"Did your doctor tell you to avoid fresh fruits and vegetables all trip?" Sarge asks, reaching hopefully for my salad. I decide to give him a run for it.

Curiously, Corum reminds me of a Midwestern farm town, with people driving into town in wagons and minarets on every corner, rather than steeples. Corum, like most other towns, has a very pretty small museum with some good antiquities: the fine system of local museums is due to Ataturk, who not only turned the Sultan's palaces into people's museums, but mandated local ones nationwide.

After Corum, we get off the roads into back-country, unpaved roads, frequently crossed by flocks of sheep. Guarding the sheep are the kangal, huge white dogs about the size of mastiffs, who herd cars when they get bored with sheep. They are all sinew and muscle and jaws; they wear spiked collars; and having six kangal come after you across the fields because they think you're trying to steal their sheep is a very daunting experience, even for animal lovers.

Eluding this pack of kangal, we come to Surusulay, a town scheduled for evacuation because it is build on top of Roman Sebastopolis. Right now, though, the ruins of the city (probably first century A.D.) are scattered throughout the town. Sarge pulls to a stop and plunges into rapid negotiations with the local elders and teenage boys. Three of them crowd into the Murat and take charge of the tour: columns in a dungheap; first-century Roman columns forming a bridge; fragments of pediments in a field.

They beckon us into a shed. Sarge slides through the lathes and down onto what looks like an earth floor. I decide to pass until "Byzance," explains one of the boys, making a gesture as if crossing himself. He holds up what I think is gravel until I see the sun glinting off it.

That's not gravel. That's tesserae from a mosaic. I nearly pass out. It's strictly forbidden to remove antiquities from Turkey; but what about destroying them?

I call plaintively to Sarge: "I don't think we ought to be here." Visions of jandarma and their automatics march through my head. But the boys have probably been playing on this site since they were children and see no problem.

"They're clearing the dirt off the mosaics with a board," he replies from the depths of the shed. The boys pry another board away from the shed, making my descent easy. To stop the unauthorized excavation -- or get in on it (I can't tell which) -- I slide down into the shed and photograph some highly satisfied amateur readers of the last ark and their pink-and-green mosaic finds; shortly afterward, we all go happily off for tea at a hot springs where there is a cafe.

The owner of the cafe has a mixed breed dog: part kangal, part something else. Smaller than the real herd dogs, it is embarrassingly friendly.

Leaving the people of Surusulay with enough dinner conversation for a couple of days, we arrive at Amasya, a very pretty town in which layers of history rest lightly upon each other. At some points, it has been used as a center of government and a training ground for princes, such as the grandson of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, conqueror of Constantinople. At others, it has been an exile for insurgent artists.

Its site is lovely. A swollen river runs through the center of town. Near the river, an octagonal fifteenth-century medresseh (Koran school) is still in use; when we enter it, we see a volleyball net in the courtyard. Across the river are some lovely mosques of various ages and a thirteenth-century Seljuk insane asylum (consisting of an impressive gateway and a sort of cloister), now undergoing restoration.

I pause on the bridge to listen to the call to prayers and watch the muezzin emerge onto the balcony of his minaret: this won't be the first time I regret not taking a picture in deference to the Islamic prohibition on representing the human form.

We visit a restored Ottoman house that once belonged to a wealthy merchant and now serves as a museum. I wander from the men's quarters into the women's, wondering what such women talked about in the interminable hours during which they produced delicate, intricate embroidery. Somehow, I am lulled into conventionality; I smile, look down, and do not shake hands like a proper American with the guards. Sarge teases me for acting like a docile Turkish lady and laughs when I glare.

Five minutes later, I've shed that wholly aberrant docility. Above a railway tunnel we can see Phrygian cave tombs. We climb onto the railway embankment; Sarge takes my camera to climb further -- fine for someone who climbed Mount Ararat, but beyond the reach of someone my height. Turkish ladies peer from their window at the crazy Americans. I'd be embarrassed, but I'm too busy keeping a lookout for trains.

An evening ride brings us to the hisar at Zile, which is where Julius Caesar said "veni, vidi, vici." Architecture in the town is simple and beautiful -- half-timbered, plaster construction, with gables projecting over narrow streets. Except for the bright colors, it almost resembles Tudor houses.

We stop for the night at a new hotel in Tokat. The manager insists on guiding Sarge on a tour. It's an impressive place, well-run and maintained, and it boasts a series of pictures derived from Tokat's history through the ages.

The next day (May 13), at a local museum, I try to buy a book containing photos of the pictures. It's not on the list of publications offered for sale. No price is given. The rules don't say anything about it. Regardless of what the hotel charged for the book, the museum guard has no instructions; and he's not selling. Grrrr.

We visit a local dye works in which men in hipboots flush long cotton cloths stamped with colorful folk motifs with cold water, then hang them from ancient rafters like so many banners.

[continued]

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 8)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 8 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Romancing the Turquoise [Part 2 of 4]

Another drive over mud roads. Sarge has found evidence of a Seljuk Turk han, or caravanserey, on some back road or other and wants to find it. As long as the Murat doesn't break an axle and leave us facing kangal, I'm all for taking the back roads on which only electrical wires remind me that this country is occupied. After numerous backtrackings and map consultations (during which I take the wheel), we find the site of the han -- down a very steep, rocky slope and across a swollen stream bridged only by a few railway ties and boards.

I topple and slide down the rocks to the stream. Once there, I hate to be a party-pooper, but I'm only three days away from a plane trip from New York and my balance is a little shaky: no way I'm taking that bridge. Sarge negotiates it valiantly and sets off in search of Seljuk ruins.

The presence of strangers, and Westerners at that, draws the women of the village out of doors. Holding their headscarves politely over their mouths, they stare at the apparition in a Banana Republic jumpsuit who sits on the rocks on the opposite side of their stream, fiddling with her camera and trying to convey that I'm going to be courteous and not stare and not take pictures. I definitely get the impression that they'd like to chat.

A truck roars up, and two men leap down the rock slope that it took me so much time to negotiate. It's the bread delivery. It's also a problem for me. There are a number of village women and they know the newcomers. I don't; there's only one of me; and what they would consider my natural protector, the only other Westerner for miles, is off questing for ruins. Clearly, a tactful display of good manners is in order. So I look around, concerned, then sit back down on my rock, hand politely over my mouth as a sort of veil in the presence of strangers. I think I notice some of the women nod approvingly: poor thing's scared; let's move in to reassure her.

Sarge emerges and announces that the han has crumbled to rock piles. He starts across the bridge, but the bridge is swaying; prudently he drops to all fours. The village women go into such giggles that their veils fall off. I'd like to laugh too, but the stream looks treacherous; I can't drive stick shift; and it occurs to me that if I laugh or get out my camera, I'll make Sarge lose face.

After he crosses and gets to his feet, the village women decide that they will show us how such bridges should be crossed. Heads up, not looking at their slippered toes, they sweep across the rickety, swaying thing -- all except for one woman, who fords the stream with supreme disdain. Sarge shouts something in Turkish that gets a laugh; I smile and wave; and we get out of there.

After another long drive, we return to Ankara.

Cappadocia and Beyond

On Monday, I go to the Aslanhane Cami, or Lion Mosque, in Ankara. The mosque is thirteenth-century. Outside it is a turbe or tomb and the arslans that give it its name. Inside it are much later chandeliers, prayer rugs, and a sound system. I am particularly struck by its many columns, which are highly polished tree trunks. I'd have stayed in the back because I feel it's improper just to march up before the place where the imam would stand, but the sexton insists on leading me before the mihrab, the niche that marks the direction of Mecca, and the mimber, a stair of age-blackened wood leading to a pulpit from which the imam can preach.

I visit the Ankara Hilton, where I find a copy of The Fleet, volume II (Ace, edited by David Drake and Bill Fawcett), and Lisa Cantrell's The Ridge (Tor). Talk about great distribution.

That night, Sarge throws a dinner party, announced as "The stock market is up 50 points, six people are coming to dinner in one hour, and you're going to Cappodocia for three days starting tomorrow. Early."

Sounds like fun to me.

An hour later, we're mostly done cooking, I'm packed for Cappadocia, dressed for dinner, and talking about stock options with people who'd play them if they were back in the States. I suggest a computer modem hookup, but the costs in money and time are prohibitive. I'm introduced to Dr. Toni Cross, a classical archeologist who came over on a dig, married Ihsan, an economist, and has made Turkey her home. She's interested in my reactions to the Hittite sites and invites me to hear Dr. Peter Neve lecture on them on Thursday, if I get back from Cappadocia in time, and then join them in the Old City for dinner.

The tour bus arrives early the next day. It's dolmus-sized, which means about the size of the vans used as group taxis in Ankara, and the driver is equipped with cigarettes, blue- and yellow-beaded "Mashallah" charm, blue glass evil eye, and invocations to God for protection. He's so skilled he doesn't even need them. Our guide's name is Ali Mert, but he says to call him Matt. The tour group is blessedly small: two other Americans (from the Hilton), an Italian couple, and a French couple, traveling together. The French man gets up and delivers an enthusiastic and semi-accurate lecture on Western Culture. I strike up a conversation with the American couple, a musicologist turned travel agent and a research cardiologist from Philadelphia. The bus roars toward Cappadocia, past a huge salt lake.

Some words about Cappadocia. It sounds like a Roman province or something out of the Bible: as with a lot in Turkey, it's both. The reason, though, that it is such a tourist haven is that it's largely volcanic. In addition to Hasan Dag and its companion peak, which are snow-capped even in May, Cappadocia is noted for its "fairy chimneys," mounds and strange conical shapes puffed up out of volcanic tufa, a very soft rock that cuts easily but hardens on exposure to the air. The properties of tufa also made it attractive to monastics and villagers, who used it to build church communities in caves and to construct underground cities that were originally used as refuges against invasion by Seljuk Turks (or anyone else).

The churches are carved out of the rock in the shape of basilicas and elaborately frescoed, though the paintings have suffered from Byzantine iconoclasts, Muslims intent on eradicating forbidden representations of human faces, and the barbarism of tourists whose desire to leave their names on a thousand-year-old painting turns out to be international. Though the landscape looks somewhat like the limestone karst in China, I'm more reminded of Dunhuang in Central Asia, where Buddhist travelers grateful to survive the terrible crossing of the Takla Makan commissioned chapels cut out of the rock. Definitely, I think (hardly for the last time), I've wandered into my own Silk Roads and Shadows.

As we head south, the green of Anatolia is replaced by the whites and tans of a bleaker, more volcanic landscape. Up ahead, I can see Hasan Dag. The sky is turning black in patches at the horizon: we're heading into a major thunderstorm.

Hmmm, Storm Over Cappadocia... can I do anything with that title? No...it's too much like Storm Over Warlock.

In any case, it's time to look, not think. I get out the opera glasses that I've decided are easier to cart around than binoculars. A veritable lunar landscape rises about me.

Our first stop in Cappadocia is Goreme, where fairy chimneys, gargantuan tour buses, and roadside stands suddenly appear on the road. The cave churches are jammed with tourists eager to escape the torrents of rain that turn the smallest wadi into a river; I think of how Alexander the Great's army was almost wiped out one night when it camped on just such a river bed.

Dark, lit by windows carved in the tufa or by flashlights or matches, the churches have smoke-stained walls from which the frescoes flicker out like ghosts from a violent past. The artwork is crude, but powerful, and I find myself straining to read the Greek inscriptions and the iconographic patterns.

Leaving the first cave church, we wander further into the valley as some spectacular lightning strikes outside. Sand-colored cliffs tower above us, honeycombed with living caves, chapels, and pigeon houses. Ladders and rickety metal stairs lead to some of the larger chapels. Cracks in the rock remind us that this area, though geologically old, is still a risen seabed and not as tectonically steady as it might be. The outer cliffwall of the Dark Chapel has fallen away, exposing the frescoes and the pattern of its carven clerestory.

The rain stops. On a rise above the Buckle Church, I see a toothless old man holding what has got to be the oldest camel in creation. A rickety ladder leads to its shabby saddle because you can tell that if that that animal ever sinks to its knees, it won't be able to get back up again. What a mangy beast. But abruptly my vision shifts, and the wretched thing somehow becomes Lawrence of Arabia (yes, I know: we don't talk about Lawrence in Turkey), my own books, or every fantasy I've ever had about this part of the world.

"That's so fake!" warns one of the other Americans as I strip out of raincoat, shoulderbag, postcards, and camera and toss them apologetically into her arms.

"That's a tourist trap," I'm told. Would the Ideal Traveler get her picture snapped perched atop it? It's not even one of the big, two-humped Bactrians. Do I care? Happily, I race toward the camel and wonder when was the last time I ran toward anything except a taxi.

The cardiologist snaps my photo. I recall that in Lawrence of Arabia, Omar Khayyam tells Peter O'Toole that saying "hut, hut, hut!" will get a camel moving. Frankly, I doubt it; and I'm not minded to try and probably fall through the ground into the apse of the Buckle Church, which is right under the camel's feet. The next stop is the actual town of Goreme. Cappadocia is the center of the carpet trade and the manufacture of onyx ornaments: stalls offering carpets, trinkets, postcards, fake Izod sweaters, and enough material for a whole city of garage sales spring up under the shadow of fairy chimneys all over Cappadocia, each entrapping its share of tourists.

Actually, this is a symbiotic relationship. Most people come to Turkey wanting to buy carpets or other gifts. Why not make it easy for them? Naturally, the Ideal Traveler (remember IT) avoids these stalls as ripoffs and rake-offs, preferring to buy rugs at auctions, bargaining fiercely, and driving down the price to a level that even Turks admire. Right. All I want is good value...maybe not in comparison to what an expert could get, but in comparison to what there is no way I could spend at Bloomingdale's.

The carpet gallery to which we are taken is a little piece of the Arabian Nights. We are led into a room festooned with carpets of all shapes, colors, sizes, materials, and ages -- from faded, woven kilims, to the aristocratic and wickedly expensive hand-knotted silk reproductions of ancient Persian paradise and prayer-rug designs, to the geometric patterns of the heavy wool nomad rugs. Seated on divans cushioned and tapestried with old rugs, we sip tea and coffee while men bring out a model loom and explain the knotting of rugs simultaneously in English, French, and Turkish.

How do you buy a rug? First, you get a lecture on the basics.

Rugs are either woven, like kilims, which are flat, or knotted like the classic Turkish carpets (double knots) or Persian rugs (single knot and less durable). They are made of silk, wool, wool and cotton, or all cotton. Warning: some rug dealers will try to pass off all cotton as cotton and silk. This is a sign of fraud. Because of silk's great strength, the silk thread would cut through the cotton fibers. Dyes are either chemical or vegetable; some are secrets of individual households, passed down from woman to woman within a family.

There are Persian patterns and individualized patterns from every region of Turkey. You can identify Persian patterns from their flowery designs or from their representation of the mihrab or prayer niche. You can identify tribal patterns from their vivid colors and geometrical designs. You can even identify regions and tribes by the colors they select.

You can make carpets the study of a lifetime. Or you can simply fall in love with one as the gallery's employees, like capitalistic genies, unfurl them on the floor in front of you. You sip tea and gasp as rug follows rug. The supple, wickedly expensive silk rugs shimmer in the light and literally fly across the room.

I keep looking at the tribal rugs, which have a most satisfying depth and wildness.

"That one," I say, pointing. It is jerked from its place on the wall and hurled at my feet like a captive tribesman: a nomad rug from Kars, about four feet square, in saffron, rust, and crimson. It folds into a remarkably small compass and fits into a Converse bag, I discover, as I sign travelers cheques.

The French and Italian tourists laugh and point fingers as I emerge. Matt shakes his head: and another tourist bites the dust! The Americans warn me that it was no bargain. First rug, though, like first love, is oblivious.

We stay that night in Urgup at the Turban Motel. My English guidebook observes snidely that it is a favorite of huge tour buses. With its bars, restaurants, shops, and numerous rooms, it is indeed a magnet for group tours, but, as my guide agrees, it's also the modern equivalent of the ancient caravanserays established by the sultans. With one difference. In the Seljuk caravanserays, however, food and shelter were free.

We turn down the offer of a floor show of ethnic dances, including a belly dancer. The dining room is crowded -- and cloudy with cigarette smoke. Though Turks are legally able to buy and sell spirits or beer, custom seems to have been that tea (or coffee) and cigarettes replace the U.S. cocktail hour. The Turks I spooke to regard American queasiness about cigarette smoke -- including passive smoke inhalation -- as a foreign weirdness. While, in general, they like Americans, they tend to regard them as fragile creatures as susceptible to lung cancer as Scandinavian tourists are to sun poisoning.

Unfortunately, the smoke-filled dining room and lounge are the only warm rooms in the place. It's May, after all: no reason to turn on the furnaces in the sleeping quarters. My room is about the size, color, and temperature of a large hailstone. Fortunately, it comes equipped with twin beds, and they come equipped with thick plaid blankets -- Turkish weaving to the rescue. I burrow into every blanket I can steal. For additional warmth, I seriously consider kidnapping one of the Turban Motel's cats, sleek, long-haired creatures who greet the tour buses and -- uncharacteristically -- crave affection.

Random observation: I have seen fowl along the roadside that I would call turkeys. In Turkey, however, people call them "hinds" (or Indian) because they were first imported from the West Indies.

The next morning after a breakfast of bread, honey, tomatoes, olives, white cheese, and coffee, we pick up two more Americans (both retirees and a little peevish after almost getting drowned in the crossing from Greece), and we drive toward Zilve to see more cave churches and a cave mosque.

Tentatively, I offer my 39 sunscreen to the Frenchwoman who explains that she's from Marseille and doesn't need it. By this time, we're speaking a weird mixture of French, English, Italian, and German -- plus a few words of Turkish -- at once another and tossing cameras back and forth. We exchange cards and offers of hospitality in our own countries. "Elle est gentille," I hear in whispered French. After many years of flagellating myself because Americans Don't Speak Other Languages and, in any case, my French accent is lousy, it's nice to be the one trying to help bridge the gap.

Carved into the rock face at Zilve is a basin. Legend has it that if you throw a rock into the basin and it doesn't skip out again, you will have good luck. On my third try, a lucky underhand throw brings me a chance to make a wish.

The French and Italian men are having an urgent discussion with Matt. He returns to the front of the bus and announces: we are detouring to the underground town at Kizilcukur. Like the kilises (derived from ecclesia), or cave churches, the underground cities have been carved from the tufa; the big problem isn't cutting the stuff, but hauling it out of the excavation, which they probably did via the airshafts which I'm told are the first things sunk into the rock.

Down, out of the sunlight, we go, three floors, four... bending over in the long, twisted passageways with their rudimentary steps. The taller men are having trouble negotiating. I have to stoop in the corridors, but I do have headroom. Though I have expected to be claustrophobic, I'm fascinated as I gaze at where they prayed, where they made wine, the sites of long-cooled communal cookfires, grain storage in the walls, pits that could be used to hold bedding. Deep down, I'm told, they still store oranges: natural refrigeration.

I gather that these towns were cut out as a refuge against Seljuk Turks (about the time period of the Byzantine massacre at Manzikert -- 1071). You could instruct your spies, get your shepherds to hide your flocks (I think that would be a suicide mission), flee underground, roll the two-ton millstones over the entrance, and wait out a siege of a couple of months. Granted, this would only work against a fast-striking nomad strike force that lacks the resources to starve out a town. An Old Roman legion would just tunnel in after you -- look at the ramp they built at Masada over more than a year of siege. A Byzantine army could do the same, or just drop Greek fire down the airshafts.

I mention this to the guide and start scouting around to see how the town could be defended. I am amiably imagining deadfalls in the storage pits and arrows in the airshafts when I realize he's looking at me as if I'm one sick puppy. But that gives me some ideas, and I start frantic picture taking. Tomorrow, there will be Kaymakli, an even bigger underground town, joined to a network of other such towns by nine kilometers of tunnels. Legend has it, Matt says, dropping his voice impressively, that there is one such hidden city that goes deeper than any others and contains treasure.

His shadow looms up in the electric lights they've tacked up. I shiver and try to imagine this place lit only by torches or lamps.

We emerge and realize we've been clambering around beneath the bus. Getting back into it, we drive to Avanos for a pottery demonstration. The Italian man disappears and reemerges from a store wearing a vest made of old kilims. The effect, with his tapestried sweater and print purple pants, is indescribable.

Lunch is planned for a cave restaurant. I'm enjoying myself tremendously, drinking Turkish coffee and chatting ineptly in a couple of languages until the realization sinks in: the others in the tour put in for a day and a half. I signed up for three days. After lunch, the bus will be returning to Ankara. I, however, won't.

They're gonna abandon me in this awful cave! My lips start to tremble, but I get out my luggage and wave my friends good-bye, then resign myself to a troglodyte afternoon in the restaurant. Although the saner part of me knows something's going to be arranged -- at the very worst, a Mayday call to the Embassy -- I'm jittery. But I'm learning.

I manage, calmly, to ask Matt what gives. The car hasn't arrived, he says, all concern that I won't want to go on with the tour. Meanwhile, he introduces me to Ismail, who offers to show me around.

I am consoled by the sight of a small, plump black-and-white cat. Ismail explains that this cat, born by Caesarean section, is famous in the region. He offers to show me a puppy. I look in, don't see its mother, and decide that, while the puppy is very cute, its mother may be a kangal. If she is, I don't want to be there when she gets back.

No chance. The car, a sturdy little Fiat, has arrived. There, in front of the biggest tour bus I've seen all day, I learn that I am continuing the tour in style -- with my own car, guide, and driver. Ceremoniously, my baggage and I are escorted to the car and helped into the back seat. Matt the guide and Ismail the driver get into the front seat. Is there anything I want?

Nothing I can legitimately ask for. Elephants and pith helmets wouldn't be bad, though. Matt and I spend the afternoon exploring more cave churches in deserted valleys that he doesn't take the usual middle-aged tourist to because the tourist won't walk that far. We go to Sari Han, a Seljuk caravansary that has been totally renovated. What looks like a Romanesque church in the back is actually camel quarters, the high vaulting serving to ventilate the place in the winter. Matt explains that by order of the sultans, food, shelter, and fodder for animals was free in the network of caravanserays running the length of the Empire. Guards to the next han were also available, but at a small fee. Every night, the gates were closed, not to be opened till dawn, even for the Sultan himself. The yellow and brown stonework of Sari Han makes a pretty imposing fortress.

We return that evening to the Turban Motel and my hailstone of a room. Matt points out the various tour groups. Ismail speaks to the other drivers. Every five minutes, someone rushes up to him, kisses him Turkish-fashion on both cheeks, and involves him in a serious discussion of what car to buy...including the waiter. Ismail is a sort of local legend; he knows the roads and the landmarks better than any other driver, and he truly loves his work.

The room is turning blue with smoke from Marlboroughs, Dunhills, Sobranies, and other things that my eyes and lungs are beginning to protest. Besides, Matt and Ismail have friends to talk to, and Ismail badly needs to unwind by talking driver-talk. God knows what sort of stories he's telling about me. Decorously, I retire. Outside, I find an Austrian tourist talking to the Turban cats, who may not understand German but do understand handouts. We exchange places of origin, comments on the day's travel, and complaints that our rooms are freezing.

[continued]

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 9)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 9 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Romancing the Turquoise [Part 3 of 4]

The next morning brings warm sun and a trip to Kaymakli, a large underground city. By this time, Matt is used to me, has the idea that I've got a book idea, and helps me plan ways of defending it against invaders. We drive over deserted roads -- and beneath two snow-capped volcanoes, to the Ilhara Valley. It is a true canyon, bisected by the fast Melendiz river, now in flood after some energetic rain. If you go to the lip of the canyon and lie flat (safest way to take pictures), you can see green poplars rising from the valley floor. The canyon walls are honeycombed with hermitages and churches. Above the Valley is a beautiful lodge and a series of staircases. I try not to think of how much fun I'm going to have crawling back up those stairs. Compared to this, high-impact aerobics is for sissies.

A guard at the valley floor warns us: the Melendiz has washed out all approaches to the caves. If we want to see the Serpent Church, we'll have to climb. There are already Germans on the rocks. We help them with their cameras, are thanked in Oxford-accented English, and we start clambering too. I have time to thank God that I'm wearing sturdy clothes (unlike some of the women tourists who are wearing skirts and high heels) and that I've done enough reading about rock climbing to know that you always keep three points anchored. I am keeping up.

"Hey, Matt," I gasp between handholds. "You ever see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?"

"I hate snakes!" he shouts. We scramble over the rocks to what looks like a two-story church, carved in the rocks. It looks like the place in Indy where they kept the Grail. I take a few pictures to show people back home what a couch potato is capable of...

...which reminds me of the way time is passing. I'm hungry, and I have to get back to Ankara in time to change for that lecture and dinner party. I explain this to Matt and receive an object lesson in the way a culture that doesn't value hustle-and-hassle for their own sakes reacts to a need to hurry up.

Given an American-style adrenaline hassle, we'd skip or skimp lunch, the driver would have a fit, and we'd start back, me worrying and whimpering all the way. Turkish-style travel consists of a leisurely and delicious lunch while looking out over the spectacular drop into the valley, followed by a drive with stops for pictures, tea, rest, and chats with the other drivers. A German bus roars into the rest stop. Its undercarriage holds a refrigerated compartment for beer and soda. A Turkish tour bus pulls up. Its undercarriage holds pillows and quilts so the driver can rest while his charges buy postcards. I sip tea out of a tiny, tulip-shaped glass and wait for everyone to finish. Much to my astonishment, I'm not even fidgety.

American-style traveling, and I'd probably be late. Traveling Turkish style, I get back in plenty of time to say elaborate thanks and farewells, wash every stitch I packed, and get changed for the lecture on Hattusas. I even have time to walk down there and introduce myself to Toni Cross and Peter Neve, the guest speaker. He's conspicuous not only for having spent his entire professional life shuttling between Hittite Turkey and Berlin, but for recovering from a broken back, helped by his faithful kangal (yes, he's domesticated one of the creatures), who refused to let people move him and lay by his side in the snow until medical help came.

Toni introduces me to her friend Joy, who is hoping to write a children's book set in Sardis. It sounds interesting, so I outline How Books Are Published, give her my card, and suggest that we keep in touch.

Not everyone at the dinner has an interest in archeology. These meetings are a good way for the English-speaking community or Turkish exchange students to meet each other. I speak to a woman working on a dissertation on theatre and a British civil engineer.

After the lecture comes a dinner at the Kara Deniz, or Black Sea, in one of the oldest parts of Ankara. For part of it, the entertainment seems to be "let's watch the newcomer try to drink raki." Turkish raki, like Greek ouzo, turns white on exposure to water and tastes like a collison between grain alcohol and liquorice. The Turks call it "lion's milk." Instead, I take my first cautious sip to laughter and applause when I manage not to cough.

"You don't have to drink it," Sarge tells me. But Peter Neve contradicts him. You will drink your raki...it occurs to me that if I don't, he could sic that kangal of his -- elderly now, but with all his teeth -- on me.

I drink the raki. Toni's husband Ihsan mercifully shows me how to dilute it with ice water. I find myself getting used to it, or maybe it's simply burned out my taste buds. When Ihsan hears my story of the drive from Cappadocia, he agrees: "There is balance to all things," he intones. "There are two groups of people -- people who like to work and people who enjoy life...like the Turks. I think things should stay this way."

Is it too late, I ask, to change sides?

The second part of the evening is enlivened by the arrival of a very heavy hitter from New York who is reporting on human rights. She's classing Turkey with North Korea, El Salvador, and several other countries known for human rights abuses. She is hard-hitting to the point of being abrasive. I make myself scarce and silent. Sarge goes even more silent, then zings her with one well-chosen question. She is reasonably pleasant thereafter. When she finds out I'm a novelist, doing research in Turkey, she offers to nominate me for PEN.

Wait till she finds out what I write.

Friday (May 18) is my last day in Ankara. I revisit the Museum of Anatolian civilizations, join Sarge, Toni, and Joy for lunch, then find myself back at ARIT (American Research In Turkey) which Toni manages in Ankara, happily sitting at a long table and researching what could be the start of a historical novel set in Cappadocia.

I end my stay in Ankara at a party for a South American diplomat who is being transferred to Iran and is candidly happy at the idea of seeing Isfahan and Persepolis. No accounting for tastes. The party, about equally divided between foreigners and Turks, is a notable one; the hostess, an American musician and artist married to a lawyer, has brought in a Turkish musician who sings and plays the flute and what looks like an autoharp but is called a kanun. At one point, several of the Turkish women and some of the teenaged girls get up and dance. Exaggerated and with beads added, this is the belly dance of nightclubs. In a private home and in the presence of friends, it is decorous and charming.

To my horror, I find myself in a discussion of the American and Turkish stock markets with an American lawyer, who visited Turkey for three weeks and promptly left a job in one of the most prestigious Wall Street firms so he could join a firm that would station him in Ankara, and a Turkish banker, engaged to another American. To the lawyer's shock, I not only read Harry Harrison, I know him and his wife. His girlfriend, a British engineer, is delighted.

A music tape interrupts; it's Ladino chants -- and Sephardic music (Spanish, Hebrew, with a lot of Arabic influence) always makes me cry. It occurs to me that I am going to miss Ankara and the friends I've made here.

Kutahya and Culture Shock

Success this weekend! Even though Sarge's car is still in the shop, awaiting parts from Germany, he has rented the Mercedes Jeep from the Embassy motor pool. No fears that I'll break a door handle or that an axle will snap on a back road with this thing, which could moonlight as a tank.

We take off for Gordion, where Alexander cut the knot. It wasn't a new place then; one of the largest hoyuks in Anatolia marks the tomb of a king popularly supposed to be King Midas. There are some fine pebble mosaics and a good local museum; once again, we can thank Ataturk for the wise policy of allowing regions to keep some of their antiquities rather than shipping them all off to Ankara.

"Midas's Tomb" is a huge barrow, as barrows go; and it is centered in an area full of such mounds, tombs of lesser nobles. The archeologists got lucky on this one. They entered the tomb from above, and almost the first thing they heard was the sound of wood decomposing as air touched it for the first time in 2,000 years. Fortunately, they had chemical preservatives on-site; the tomb -- which you reach via a long, cold underground passage, is in a fine state of preservation.

We climb to the top of the hoyuk, and I pick up some pyrite. Fool's gold from Midas's Tomb -- an object lesson for a person whose day job is on Wall Street. We climb another hoyuk from which the antiquities were scooped. Two barrows in an hour, and the blood-caffeine level is down. By the time I get over the ensuing nap attack, it's time for lunch.

Unfortunately, it's also May 19, Youth and Sports Day (mandated by Ataturk), and what seems like half the Turkish Army and Air Force is out on the road in buses on the way to three-day furloughs. The roadside place where we stop is crowded with armed people, all of whom are considerably less rowdy than American soldiers might be and who politely ignore me. Unfortunately, we miss the restaurant that sells live trout in a pool outside the eating area. At least, Sarge thinks it's unfortunate; the last one of those I saw in Cappadocia had a kangal sleeping outside it. No doubt, he was guarding the fish.

Given the capabilities of Mercedes Jeep, why stick to the highway? (Why stick to the highway in any case?) The mud road we find climbs rapidly into an area of ground scrub, stunted pine, and pure chalk; though it's easily 80 degrees out, it looks as if we're driving through snow, broken occasionally by the rush of swollen streams. The road specializes in hairpin turns and switchbacks; frequent checks of a German survey map mean that I lean over and take the wheel, except when I see trucks, farm equipment, or kangal.

But the view on the occasional straightaways is breathtaking. Less mountainous and dramatic than Switzerland, less raw than the American West, but far tougher, in a way, than either. This whole area is seabed, raised millions of years ago. It is rounded off, ancient; and I definitely do have the sense that all Asia lies before me. No wonder Alexander wanted to journey to World's End.

Just at the point I decide for the thousandth time that Alexander had a good idea and I'm already considerably older than he at the time of his death so I'd better get a move on it, Sarge resumes control of the steering wheel. Damn!

I will never know the name of the village at which we arrived in mid-afternoon. One moment, we are dodging the usual children, roosters, sheep, and cats. The next moment, "Look at that inscription on that stone!" he exclaims and we stop right after a bridge. Sure enough, just as in Surusulay, the stone has been cannibalized from an earlier building, Roman at a guess.

The men leave off lounging in the middle of the road to talk to Sarge. To their surprise, he is not German, but American: they get few tourists and fewer Americans there. I get out my camera, a procedure that draws the village's children. To my surprise, many of them are girls. Living as far from a major town as they do, they are shy, but fearless. The women leave off doing laundry in the clean, fast river and approach speculatively. We stare, then look down quickly and decorously. A young girl runs up to me. I'd have thought her a child, but she apparently feels very mature; she is in charge of the other children and wears a headscarf like a grown lady. What's more, she has painted her palms, as grown women do (Benazir Bhutto did so before her wedding) with henna, which is used in the Middle East as a cosmetic as well as hair coloring. Proudly she shows them to me. After all, doesn't every adult woman understand about these things?

"Henna!" I say, so she'll know she's gotten her message across. "What a pretty girl you are. You're all grown up!"

She understands my voice, if nothing else. As if some signal is given, the children swarm after me.

Shortly afterward, Sarge introduces me to a village elder, who will be our guide for some Byzantine ruins and Pontic hill tombs. We start to climb into the Jeep; but not yet. The eldest girl runs forward with a loaf of bread, hot from the oven.

"You have to break bread first and offer it about," Sarge warns me. "Use your right hand." The elder shakes his head yok (no) proudly: this is a gift and there's far more at home.

Turkish bread is great, and this is the best I've had. We much on it all day and share it with unwary tourists we meet.

The plan is to reach Kutahya, where potters and artists have revived the art of making fine pottery from both Turkish and Persian designs, by nightfall. Traveling Turkish-style, with pauses for pictures, scenery, and some monumental rock carvings of arslans and serpents, we go slowly.

Near sundown we pass through a town with the wonderful name of Cavdarhisar. I don't see the hill-fort, but ..."My God, there's a temple on the roadside!" We've reached Aizanos, where the Temple of Jupiter forms part of one of the largest and best-preserved Roman complexes in Anatolia. Some boys are playing soccer nearby. We prowl the ruins of temple, bath, and amphitheatre till the sun dies and the cats come out.

Then, on to Kutahya. The manager clearly decides that we are people of the highest possible respectability...for Americans. I am escorted to a room on an aile (aile means suitable for women and families) floor where there isn't just an outer locked door but an inner one.

From my honorable and ladylike seclusion, I lean out the window to watch the Youth and Sports Day parade, an affair of drums, guns, and torches with decidedly Hittite overtones.

The manager is appalled at Sarge's choice of restaurant and runs out into the street to warn him: it's been turned into a beer garden. The restaurant he considers suitable is charming. All I can say is that the honor of his hotel is safe with him.

I find some wonderful pottery in Kutahya, including a plate designed by one artist who shows me an English-language clipping of him receiving an award in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a site of pottery-making that the Kutahya masters greatly respect.

We visit a mosque that looks more like an eighteenth-century building than the medieval one it actually is and the house of a Hungarian freedom fighter, whose revolutions failed and who took refuge in Anatolia. It's a fine house, but seeing it makes me melancholy. No doubt he was contented, with his European-style study, his money chest, his letters, his books, his plans, and visitors from, no doubt, every activist in Europe. But what of his wife, son, and daughter? Stubbornly French-style clothes and a little inlaid spinet remind me of them. Though the gardens here are beautiful, I wonder what that family found when it ventured outside them.

Sailing to Byzantium

And, then, suddenly it is time to get me to Eskesehir to catch the train to Istanbul! No one's going to believe that I've got dust in my contact lenses, are they? Didn't think so.

Part of my shakiness is pure fear. For the first time, I'll be facing Turkey without benefit of friends, guides, or tour bus. And the Mavi Tren, the deluxe Blue Train I'd hoped to take to the City, is sold out.

"I've got half a mind to drive you back to Ankara and put you on a plane tomorrow," Sarge mutters. I promise him I've got more guts than I'm now displaying. I've also got his phone number, the Embassy's phone number, and the names and phone numbers of three people in Istanbul who have said it's okay for me to get in touch.

Hell, teenagers have backpacked all over the world with less concern; what's the problem? Analyzing the problem from the standpoint of a science fiction writer produces the answer: like Magdalen Lorne in the Darkover stories, I have adopted enough local customs to have assimilated some of them. The conservative, properly-brought-up woman I've been "playing" would feel some distress at traveling to Istanbul alone. Accordingly, I'm nervous. Get out of character, I order myself.

I am put into the charge of an official who makes sure that the mad American doesn't stand on the platform for everyone to stare at, but sits inside like a proper lady (he motions two other tourists to move down and leave me room) and that I get into the right car and seat.

The seat is occupied. I present my ticket to a middle-aged man and his head-shawled wife, and look very embarrassed. Half the Third World seems to be staring at me. The other half is holding veils over its mouth. No harm, of course; just curiosity. This has ceased being Romancing the Stone and become Kim. The literary reference consoles me. I sink into the seat and try not to disgrace myself further. Some helpful men show me by gestures how to take care of my ticket. Ignoring my efforts, they lift my suitcase into the luggage rack.

If this is an Express Train, I'm Rudyard Kipling. It occurs to me that, for the time being, I am.

A line from Left Hand of Darkness also occurs to me: "When action grows unprofitable, gather information. When gathering information becomes unprofitable, sleep." I sleep. By the time I wake, we are passing through mountains -- sometimes with only about three feet separating the train from the rock face.

By midnight, we have reached Haydarpasa Station, outside Istanbul. From here, I must catch the ferry. Not to Kadikoy, but to Karakoy; and God help me if I screw up. Fortunately, I fall in with a Turkish lady from Adona. Waving aside my baby-talk Turkish, she guides me in English; and I wonder if she doesn't work at the Joint Forces base (NATO) in the south.

The ferry begins its chug across the Bosphorus.

For a moment, things seem familiar. There's a train station, a ferry, and a city ahead: how's this any different from Staten Island, with the Statue of Liberty coming up?

Then I glance across the black water. Spotlighted on the far bank are clusters of minarets and the great sullen bulks of domes. A middle-aged Turkish lady is watching me, and I appeal to her. "Is that Ayasofya?" (Hagia Sophia) I ask in my few words of Turkish.

When she smiles, nods, and says "Evet" (yes), I lose it. Completely. I have dreamt of this moment all my life. I've written four books set here. What I've come halfway round the world to see is shining out there in front of me.

"It's so beautiful," I whisper, wiping my face. "It's just so beautiful. I've wanted to be here all my life."

[continued]

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 10)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 10 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Romancing the Turquoise [Part 4 of 4]

Whereupon one Swiss tourist offers me help in German and three Turks wave him away; I am obviously an American, if a rather tear-stained one; and the best thing to do is to get me off the ferry and safely to my hotel so the rascally taksi drivers of Istanbul won't rip me off.

This plan is promptly put into effect. Istanbul streets are even more convoluted than those of the cities I know best, New York and Boston, in which the oldest parts of the city make no sense at all: we get promptly lost near the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia. I almost don't care; I'm seeing what I came to see.

Finally, directed by the cats and the local jandarma, I get to the Otel Sumengen, a very pretty restored Ottoman house with a fountain, a white facade, welcoming lights, and a teen-aged girl who insists on carrying my suitcase. And the familiarity with every other major city promptly increases exponentially; there is a hotel screwup. The woman who took my reservation has quit her job, and left no trace of it.

This is scary, but ten years of traveling to conventions leave me with a lot of experience. I know just the thing to say.

"If someone came in off the street and needed a room, would you have one for him?"

(Fortunately, I can argue in English, not French or German.)

"Yes."

"Fine. Forget the reservation and give me that room."

Miraculously, that works. I am settled -- for the night at least -- in a very pretty room with nice rugs, velvet upholstery, and stained glass. Tomorrow, I will have to speak with Mr. Murat, the manager.

The next morning brings breakfast in a pretty salon overlooking the Sea of Marmara. It is actually two colors of blue, dark in by the shore, pale out where the shipping rides at anchor. The girl who took my suitcase stops by. She is pale and unhappy; she's got a cold; and she's still young enough to turn automatically to the nearest female adult for comfort. Reaching into my handbag, I pull out aspirin, pour her some coffee, and insist she have orange juice (portykal suyu) before I realize that this is not an Elizabeth Peters novel and I am not Amelia Peabody.

Mr. Murat is expected in at nine, then "in a few minutes," then, by noon. And all Istanbul lies outside. No way I'm waiting around. I make a few phone calls. My first, to the American Consulate, produces an invitation to meet for lunch at the Pera Palas, where people used to stay when they got off the Orient Express. Hotel screwup? No problem: Consul Nancy Cope will introduce me to the travel officer.

Leaving my baggage in the room, taking my key, and reclaiming my passport, I head up the street. The map tells me that the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia are ten minutes walk away. There's another reason that Istanbul resembles New York: militant, enthusiastic, and incessant capitalism. Everyone's got an angle; everyone's got something he wants to sell you over a glass of tea or a cup of coffee -- no obligation, no problem, we're all friends. And so we are...but this isn't getting me to the Blue Mosque.

"Lady, where are you from?"

"New York."

"Ah! America. Long Island. Go see Neva Shalom Synagogue too. But I have fine rugs, coffee, tea...no obligation..."

You have to learn to say no in Istanbul or you'll never see anything but rugs. (Except maybe pottery, leather goods, brass, and jewelry.) I start saying "yok" (no) in earnest as I reach the Mosque (Hagia Sophia, directly across from it is shut on Mondays) and am besieged by men, boys, and toddlers, each with guidebooks, postcards, stuffed camels, film, headscarves, evil-eye charms, and anything else that a peddlar's fevered mercantile imagination can delude itself into thinking that all tourists can't live without.

More subtle -- and useful -- are the grown men who cut individual tourists out from the herd, offer urbanely to guide them about, and actually do a fine job of it. The payoff comes later, when they take you to their cousin's rug store. But, hey, "no obligation" works two ways.

Mete (two syllables) singles me out, offers to show me the Blue Mosque, and waves off the flock of eager hucksters. A moment later, I have my shoes off and my shawl over my head, and I'm gaping at what has to be one of the most beautiful spaces I've ever seen.

Look: this isn't a guidebook. Strolling Through Istanbul or the Blue Guide will tell you more than anyone needs to know about the manufacture of the magnificent blue tiles that give the mosque its name, the influence of the domed basilica Hagia Sophia on Ottoman architecture, and the architectonics of a domed space as huge as this one. The effect is stunning. Tourists, fenced away from the area reserved for prayers, mill about open-mouthed. A few black-swatched Saudi tourists crouch in the spaces reserved for women, praying without self-consciousness.

The Sultan who ordered the mosque built was so eager to have it completed that he himself worked on it. He died at age 27 before getting to enjoy it long; his turbe, or tomb, is outside, somewhere among the welter of ablutions fountains (Islam requires the Faithful to wash before prayers), medressehs, hospitals, and hucksters.

Getting out of the mosque is difficult. Too many French tourists have poured in, and they're pushing... If I push back, I'll be an ugly American. Mete doesn't quite know what to do, either. Then inspiration strikes.

Pretending it's the E-train at rush hour, I hunch up one shoulder and plunge forward. "Verzeihung, entshuldigen Sie, meine Damen und Herren," I mutter over and over again. The French grumble, but German tourists are renowned for pushing worse than French ones; and my accent -- if not my grammar -- is good enough to get me through the crowd. Triumphantly, I reclaim my shoes.

A cry of "polis!" goes up. Immediately, a tsunami of illegal hucksters pours down the steps of the Blue Mosque and out of its courtyards. All the tourists -- French, German, American, English, Japanese, and Turkish -- stand and laugh.

Mete and I cross the Hippodrome, site of the Nike revolts in which Belisarius killed about 30,000 people and saved Justinian's throne. Nothing of the original stonework remains, except for some obelisks and triumphal columns. Istanbul University is nearby, and a large Ottoman building stands on the site of the Imperial box, or kathisma, I've had so much fun sticking characters into. We take off for the Sulimaniye Mosque, cutting through a corner of the Grand Bazaar, with its vaulted arcades, its thousands of shops, its dizzying array of stores with gold chains hung like sausages with bright lights catching molten gleams...

... and here we have a very nice rug shop! I should have guessed. In fact, I did. But Mete is doing a fine job of guiding me, however, and I don't want him to lose face. Fortunately, I can plead a previous appointment. I must see the Sulimaniye, and then I am due at the American Consulate for lunch, a duty I cannot escape; I'm sure they understand official business; I'll be back; thank you so much.

The Sulimaniye is more somber than the Blue Mosque, and very beautiful. The guidebooks will tell you that it was built by Sinan, the great Islamic architect, who built about 500 buildings, lived to be almost 100, and shouldn't be as little known in the Western World as he is.

In the Sulimaniye, I am approached by two nice tourists from Wayland, Massachusetts. They have seen my guidebook (Sarge's guidebook) and want to know where I got it. The woman blanches; her head is uncovered, and she insists on stopping right then and there to get out a scarf. She thinks I look Turkish, she tells me.

Leaving the Sulimaniye, Mete and I head for the cabs. He hails one, instructs "Pera Palas, lutfen," invites me to a son et lumiere, then disappears into the crowd in search of better rug-shop fodder.

The taksi crosses Galata, a pontoon bridge, into the newer part of the city. Galata Tower, a medieval Genoese structure, looms up; it's now a nightclub. Beyond it are the great international hotels of chic Tacsim -- and the Pera Palas, built in the nineteenth century to house passengers of the Orient Express. Soft greens and whites in the Ottoman style on the outside, inside it's very much a period piece out of nineteenth-century Europe, all wood and brown velvet furnishings, high walls, stone floors, clouded mirrors. Just to a point: hanging on the old, wrought-iron elevator is the biggest blue evil-eye talisman I've ever seen. Old menus and exhibits, and tributes to Agatha Christie attest the grand old place's position in the mythology of travel and its legendary status as a refuge for royalty, expatriates, artists, and spies.

I buy postcards and sit down at an escritoire to write them. The concierge looms over me. "I'm meeting someone at 12:30 for lunch, and I prefer not to sit in the bar alone," I explain.

The bar too is all dark wood and dark velvet. An evil eye hangs above the gun collection. Nancy Cope hurries in. In overstuffed chairs by a bay window, we order wine and sandwiches. I tell her what I can of what I've seen and whom I've met. She tells me of her upcoming posting to Yemen.

I promise to send her a copy of Silk Roads.

"Is there a good romance in it?" she asks.

Not even the Ideal Traveler gets handed lines like that.

We return to the consulate, a huge Genoese palace converted to official use. It had -- and should have -- ceiling frescoes in the tradition of Tintoretto in it, but the wife of a long-gone Consul General decreed that they were indecent, and it would cost too much to restore them. The travel office lives in a quonset hut. Mehmet Ozen, its manager, is a cheerful, elegant man. Am I sure I want to stay in the Sumengen? He's never heard of it. Is it nice? New? Clean?

Fine. He's on the phone. What sounds like a war in Turkish follows. My reservation is reinstated: no problem, but here's his card, just in case. There's a hidden agenda here -- every hotel in Istanbul wants to get on the list that the Consulates use to recommend to visitors. The Sumengen isn't on it yet, and Mehmet has now promised to inspect it.

I arrange a one-day tour of Istanbul for Wednesday, shake hands, catch him up on news of Sarge, whom he admires for his travel experience, and go back to the hotel. I am greeted like a returning princess and thanked for looking after the eighteen-year-old. I unpack, then go to the salon for tea, taking opera glasses with me so I can look at the ships.

Ordinarily, when I travel alone, I pretend I'm someone else -- a spy, a ship captain (usually a starship captain, but let's get real), a Byzantine princess. Here in Istanbul, I can't think of anything I'd rather be for the moment but myself.

I begin the next day with a futile trip to see the mosaics at Keriye; it's closed on Tuesdays. I take counsel of one of the street cats and catch a taksi to the Mosque of Eyup, outside the Byzantine walls. Eyup Ensari was Mohammed's friend and standard bearer. Killed outside the walls of Byzantium in the siege of 674-678, he was buried where he fell. The truth is that his grave has always been a pilgrimage site and its safe-keeping has been a matter of treaties with the Byzantines. The legend is that it was lost until after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Fatih (the Conqueror) Sultan Mehmet; whereupon the Sultan built a shrine on the site. Whatever: after the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and Mecca itself, Eyup Cami is the third-holiest site in the Islamic world.

It is heavily overgrown, an island of sanctity in the middle of a rather rundown neighborhood. It is not crowded, except for individual pilgrims who come and quietly pray while their wives look on, or phalanxes of head-shawled schoolgirls. The actual shrine of Eyup is covered by a green and gold silk cloth and illuminated by green light from the stained-glass windows above it: Eyup is bathed forever in the color of the Faithful. I shove my camera in my bag and stand quietly. The sexton gives me a lump of sugar to make certain the memory of my visit is sweet just the way the old rabbis who taught Hebrew school would smear the boys' slates with honey.

From Eyup to Hagia Sophia is a quick taksi ride into the heart of the old city. With a heroic effort, I manage not to start crying again. Hagia Sophia has the noblest proportions I have ever seen in a building; even the sheer breadth of its galleries awes me.

It was here that the last emperor made peace with God before going out to die in 1453. It was here that the Christians of Constantinople huddled, praying for a miracle. And it was here that Fatih Sultan Mehmet entered, spared the lives of those who made no resistance, and ordered that the great church be converted into a mosque. It opened for prayers a day later.

I find the runic graffiti that some bored Viking -- I like to think it was a Varangian, but I suppose that's too much to be hoped for -- etched into one of the marble railings in the galleries and take photos of the surviving mosaics.

After so many years of war and change, Hagia Sophia is quiet now, except for the tourists. Outside it are more gardens and roses. I remember writing roses into my novels and making them lavish; but these roses exceed my wildest expectations.

I visit the Mosaic Museum, which is all that remains of the imperial Blachernae Palace, and chat with some Germans who come upon me reading the German labels and draw the obvious and inaccurate conclusion. Lunch is at the Yesil Ev, or Green House, prettiest of the Ottoman houses converted to hotels largely because of its garden, with its view of the Blue Mosque, its enormous rose trees twining about lampposts and the ornate marble fountain. It is a mistake to order fish: cats mob me with more determination than the rug sellers.

I spend the afternoon at the Museum of the Ancient Orient, marveling at the glazed bricks from the Ishtar Gate in Babylon. The Metropolitan Museum in New York counts itself lucky to have two panels: here, panel after panel shines on the walls. From there, I head over to the Archeological Institute to see the monumental Alexander Sarcophagus, carved not for Alexander the Great (who was finally buried in Alexandria), but for a petty king, perhaps the one chosen to rule by Hephaistion.

Sitting down to rest a bad case of museum feet beside a group of sturdy middle-aged ladies with covered heads, I note an interesting by-play. A flock of Saudi ladies passes, black draperies sweeping by in a way I haven't seen since before Vatican II. I don't think I'm imagining that the ladies "tsk" and square their shoulders: imagine what they do in that country; I'd like to see someone make me wear that; aren't we fortunate that Ataturk outlawed such customs here?

They turn from the Saudi ladies to study me. Though I'm conservatively dressed, I'm obviously European or not-Turkish: my head is uncovered except for a pair of red sunglasses worn as a headband. I can feel their regard: what kind of foreigner is that? I smile and look at my catalogue. Ah! English? the one closest to me asks.

American. New York, I tell them. One woman points toward the sarcophagus at the tiny, exquisite high relief of Alexander, then toward my catalogue. They match.

"Iskendar," she says, and I agree. "Iskendar."

We smile and nod, communication having been established.

That evening, I meet two other ladies, both Americans and both writers, for drinks at an apartment with the most breathtaking view of Istanbul you can imagine: you look down on the minarets and out to sea. We grab a taksi and drive out along the Bosphorus, winding up at a gazino for seafood.

The Grand Tour

Wednesday is the day of my tour of the City. Mehmet Ozen turns up to make certain I get on the right bus. Much of the morning's trip covers sites I've already seen, but we do go to the underground cistern, a silent, eerie place built by Constantine and renovated by Justinian. Colored lights and Beethoven make it even more impressive; the occasional plunk of condensation falling into the water cause the whole complex to appear to shiver as the reflection breaks and the shadows reflect up the columns into the shadows of the vaults. There are Gorgon heads at the bases of several columns. It is hard to believe that overhead, modern Istanbul is vigorously alive.

Around noon, we wind up in Bazaar 54, a licensed and legitimate rug, jewelry, and leather store. Once again, we are seated on tapestried cushions and offered our choice: coffee, soda, tea, raki; kilims, silk rugs, wool carpets, or cotton. Once again, I am cut out from the herd.

I confess it: I succumbed again. The new acquisition is a very beautiful nomad design from Bergama in shades of blues and true Turkey red. It's astonishingly light, as I should know: I carted it home from Turkey myself.

At lunch, I sit with a number of women: two ancient English ladies who have earnestly quizzed our poor guide about prayers and who insist that, though Hagia Sophia is now a museum and was a mosque for a good four centuries, it has never been deconsecrated; a German woman brought to England as a bride after World War II; a lady from Cairo who works for the United Nations and who tells us that if we look bored enough, the hucksters will go away; and me. We can all manage in English, French, and German, and our similarities seem to outweigh our differences. The Cairene lady is embarrassed that she has no head covering, but that I do. She is upset, she says, about the trend toward conservativism among the educated professional women of her acquaintance even in more secular Sunni Egypt.

We visit the Topkapi Palace. Our guide, a Turkish woman educated in France, announces to the appallingly forthright Californian who quizzes her about prayers that, thank God and Ataturk, Turkey is a secular state and she can choose whether to observe the times of prayer and whether she wants to cover her head or not. She also informs us that we will not be going into the Harem; harems are more powerful in the imagination -- especially, she adds with a sly smile that is pure Paris, in the imaginations of the gentlemen -- than in the actuality, she states, first in English, then in French.

Topkapi is mobbed, especially around the emeralds (where Americans have set up camera tripods) and the holy relics, including a door from Mecca, which is filled with Saudis and carefully raised schoolchildren. This is no place for cameras and none appear. Labels are in Turkish and Arabic, as well as English and German.

On my way back to the Sumengen, I meet the eighteen-year-old clerk who had gotten sick with her friend, Gulcan. They are both coming back from English class. I recognize the friend's name: Gulcan used to be receptionist at the Sumengen. Here I have the culprit who lost my reservation! Aha! It's very hard, though, to be angry at a young girl with long, dark hair and troubled eyes: she is planning to be an au pair in London; her family doesn't understand; but she has to do this for herself. "You understand," she insists to me. After all, aren't I traveling by myself?

I suggest she tell them that she'll be carefully supervised; I can imagine that they will miss her. She finds out I used to teach English and shakes hands enthusiastically.

There is no way I can be angry with a girl like that.

Thursday (May 24) is my last full day in Istanbul. I visit Keriye in the morning; the mosaics are incredible. So are the frescoes, including one monumental painting in the right apse of Christ raising Adam and Eve from hell during the Harrowing. If this were anyplace but in Turkey, artists from all over the world would come to admire it; though I've studied ecclesiastical art, I've never seen a picture of it before.

After changing hotels to the Hotel Avicenna (owned by the proprietors of the Sumengen and opened just that day), I reserve my final afternoon in Turkey for a brief tour of the Grand Bazaar. I bargain for amber; I buy evil-eye charms, including a gold-and-enamel one. I even visit Mete's rug shop.

I even get into trouble with a gypsy who is leading a dancing bear and wants to charge me 50,000 Turkish lira ($25.00) for two shapshots. "You're nuts," I tell him in English. Three chivalrous Turks agree. A thousand lira is more like it. The gypsy shrugs: can't blame him for trying.

Journey to the West

Friday morning is the last I'll spend in Turkey. I visit the Dolmabahce Palace, the residence of the last three sultans. Set in gardens full of rose trees, it is a splendid place, rather like a Turkish Versailles. But of all that splendor, the rooms that the guide considers most important are the study and the small bedroom in an obscure corner of the (vacant at the time) Harem where Ataturk died in 1938. The clock is stopped at the moment of his death, and the bed is covered by the Turkish flag. A cab ride returns me to the Avicenna. Another cab takes me to Ataturk International Airport, where I am frisked (by a lady guard), talk to a Dutch businessman who invites me to visit him and his wife if I'm in The Hague for the World Science Fiction Convention, and passed through to Swissair. Hours later, I am in Zurich.

A clean Mercedes taxi whirs me to the nineteenth-century Hotel Tiefenau. My German is easily understood and cheerfully answered. My room is ready, including an endless list of services, a minibar, and a courtesy plate of cheese and fruit.

Zurich would have made a great destination in and of itself, but now I see the pretty, scrubbed Swiss city in the valley as my reentry point into the West. The next day I take it easy: a simple tour of the city, a visit to the Landesmuseum, a walk 'cross town to the Grossmunster, and then back to the hotel. And on Sunday, May 27, I land at Kennedy Airport.

"Have a good trip?" asks the customs officer, noting the stamps on my passport. "Anything to declare?"

I point to my carpet, traveling in state in its own bag with the wheels and the Benetton logo, and to the evil-eye sign I'm wearing. "Plus some amber and some gifts I bought in Turkey."

"Turkey?" His attention is piqued, and I resign myself to a luggage search. "What did you do in Turkey?"

"I had the best vacation I've ever had, visited friends, and researched a historical novel."

"You're a writer?" Standard New York question. "Ever been published?"

I nod.

"So your trip was like Romancing the Stone?"

I nod again and grin.

"Well, let's see what we can do to get those duty charges down. Glad you had such a good trip, and welcome back." He waves me through with a bill for $14. A half hour later, I am swearing at the locks in my apartment building.

The first thing I unpack is ten rolls of film. The second is my carpet. I wish it could fly me back. Well, there's always next year. And the stone I threw for luck in Zilve did land in the basin and stay there.

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 11)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 11 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Scattered Gold
Charles de Lint
Copyright 1990 by Charles de Lint

Installment 12

Lens of the World
R.A. MacAvoy
Morrow, June 1990; 288pp; $17.95; 0-688-09484-8

Simply put, I feel that Roberta MacAvoy is one of the best and most innovative writers to come out of the 80's. I don't say "of the 80's" because, as wonderful as her work has been to date, I believe that she is still growing as a writer and that we've yet to see the highlight of her career. And by speaking of her continuing growth as a writer, I don't mean to imply that there's anything lacking in the novels she's completed to date. It's rather that her work is consistently improving; she's always seems willing to take chances, rather than resting on her previously well-earned laurels.

Stylistically, there's really no argument to the above. MacAvoy has the ability to write a clean, lyrical prose that never gets too muddied with overuse. Some people might quibble at considering her an innovative writer, but if they do, then they're forgetting that she's usually on the cutting edge of the field, whether it be with contemporary fantasies (Tea with the Black Dragon), historical fantasies (the Damiano series), Celtic fantasies (The Grey Horse) or even her recent excursion into science fiction (The Third Eagle).

What's particularly refreshing about her work is that she's not afraid to tackle the "small story". Rather than feeling a need to have her characters save the universe in every book -- or even a country, city or the like -- she can be brave enough to concentrate on the needs and lives of just one or two characters, making her something of a rarity in the sf/fantasy field where the former is usually the case.

Her latest novel, Lens of the World, is a perfect example. Though billed as the first of a series, this book stands easily on its own. It concentrates its action on the coming of age of Nazhuret, a young man apprenticed to an astrologer whose ideas of a well-rounded education include everything from martial skills and optics to the learning of obscure languages. Needless to say, this mishmash of studies causes Nazhuret some confusion as to exactly what career he's being prepped to assume -- a confusion which is only compounded when his mentor sends him off into the world on his own long before Nazhuret believes he's ready.

The pacing is slow, relaxed really, but the reader remains engrossed from the first few pages. The story is small in terms of worldly concerns, but takes on vast proportions of spirit and heart the more time we spend in Nazhuret's company. There is indeed action, but it isn't necessary for the novel to maintain its tension; the tension comes from MacAvoy's ability to convey a sense of importance to even the smallest scene.

Generally speaking, I'm not very enthusiastic about trilogies and the like, but this is one series that I'll be following with great interest.

Walker of Worlds Tom De Haven Foundation, July 1990; 341pp; $19.95; 0-385-26039-3

I hate cover copy comparisons. De Haven's latest novel is blurbed as comparable to Mark Helprin's A Winter's Tale and John Crowley's Little, Big, which is redundant to begin with, Helprin's novel being merely an echo of Crowley's innovative work. De Haven's novel doesn't compare to either favorably, because it's not at all that kind of a book. If a comparison is necessary, one would be better off looking to Roger Zelazny since Walker of Worlds has more than a little of the Zelazny touch with its headlong action, pared-down prose and inventive characters and plots.

Inventive and headlong are really the key words here. De Haven postulates that there are three universes -- or "Moments", as he refers to them in the book -- each with a world habitable by human beings. Ours is called Kemolo, while the otherworldly characters in this first volume of "Chronicles of the King's Tramp" come from Feerce. The possibility of a fourth world's existence, one whose inhabitants wish only destruction for the other three, and one evil wizard's attempts to open a door from it into Feerce, form the basic thrust of this volume's plot as it rambles back and forth between our world and Feerce.

There's lots more of course -- strange beings and customs; entertaining ideas and explanations for magic and the like; an interesting cast of characters which is unfortunately only sketched in; and of course the locomotive plot. It's with the latter two points that De Haven again reminds me of Zelazny -- the Zelazny who writes the Amber books, rather than novels like Eye of Cat or Lord of Light -- for De Haven doesn't give much depth to either. There's a large cast of characters, and a great deal going on, but Walker of Worlds often reads more like an outline or a script treatment, rather than a fully-fleshed novel.

Still, it's quite entertaining -- a cut above and something different from the current rash of contemporary fantasies that seem to be everywhere these days. And hopefully subsequent novels will flesh out the characters into more fully-rounded individuals. In the meantime, Walker of Worlds will certainly whet your appetite for more.

Two Queens of Lochrin
Lee Creighton
Ace, April 1990; 181pp; $4.50; 0-441-83459-0

East meets West in this new contemporary fantasy, but not at all as they did in the above mentioned Tea With the Black Dragon by MacAvoy. Lee Creighton's novel is both darker and more intense, a kind of Gothic novel, except that the haunting doesn't take place in a mansion, but in a mind.

The action travels back and forth between contemporary New York City, where the protagonist Rian is busy maintaining her relationship with her lover Kieran and trying to deal with the Eastern martial arts disciplines of her mysterious mentor Huashan, to an ancient Celtic past where she inhabits the body of a warrior queen named Vennelandua. The world shifts are handled as dream segments initially, but elements of the past begin to bleed into the present as the novel progresses.

What the book is really about is choice -- the choices we make for ourselves and those that others make for us, but that we must ultimately accept or reject for ourselves -- and so the important action is internalized. Creighton does an admirable job of holding it all together and maintaining her readers' interest, all except for Huashan's endless philosophizing which, while it would have been very effective in smaller doses, becomes increasing irritating as the story progresses.

Queen of the Summer Stars
Persia Woolley
Poseidon Press, 1990; 415pp; $19.9; 0-671-62201-3

Every time I get thoroughly sick of seeing yet one more tired retread of the Arthurian Matter appear on the book shelves in the local bookshops, an Arthurian novel comes along that is so good, and seems so fresh despite its hoary subject material, that I'm enamoured with the whole cycle of legends all over again. Parke Godwin did it with Firelord and the subsequent two books that made up his Roman Britain trilogy. A couple of years ago, Persia Woolley did it as well with Child of the Northern Spring.

And now she's done it again.

Queen of the Summer Stars is told from Guinevere's point of view and deals with that period of time when Arthur was struggling to unite the various warring factions of Britain. The romance of Tristan and Isolde figures prominently in it; as does that of Merlin and Nimue; Arthur's incestuous affair with Morgause and the son that came of that union, Mordred; and of course, that most famous romance of all, between of Lancelot and Guinevere.

It's to Woolley's credit that these well known plotlines are both familiar and oddly -- but pleasantly, I should add -- askew, all at once. Her handling of the Lancelot/Guinevere and Merlin/Nimue relationships are particularly refreshing. But most importantly of all, she has given full life to her characters; they are never parts of a distant, legendary story, but as immediate as our own family and friends.

Her prose is a delight to read, warm and lyrical, yet never overwritten and never cloying, and while there is no magic -- and no magical courts in the sense of Mallory, but rather a rough and tumble kind of post-Roman existence where the high courts of folklore are still being built -- Queen of the Summer Stars should appeal to fantasy lovers equally as much as it will to those who love a good historical.

Woolley's first novel could have been a fluke, but the quality of this second one proves, at least insofar as this reader is concerned, that before too long her work will be spoken of in the same breath as are those classics by Stewart, White, Bradley and Godwin.

Yes, it's that good.

In Between Dragons
Michael Kandel
Spectra, August 1990; 192pp; $3.95; 0-553-28814-8

Michael Kandel's first novel, Strange Invasion, was an enjoyable romp, but it didn't really cover anything that Frederick Brown hadn't already done some thirty years earlier in Martians, Go Home. For his second outing, however, Kandel is mining much more satisfying territory.

Sherman is a teenager just starting to hit puberty. He's got a bad stutter, acne and all he wants to do is have a girlfriend, not take care of his snotty little sister. As an escape from all of this, he's found a way into a world presided over by a mysterious Mr. McGulvey. He can come and go at will between McGulvey's library and his own world, and spends more time in various "books" having adventures, than he does in the real world.

This isn't a YA novel, for all the above thumbnail outline. Sherman's various adventures as psychic detective, dragon slaying knight and intrepid commander are fun in their own right, showing that Kandel has nurtured his deft humourous touch to good effect. The author also has a good sense of the troubles of adolescence and is able to convey it in an engaging manner.

Unfortunately, Kandel has also opted to drive home a rather surprising message in the context of a fantasy novel, to wit: fantasy is an escape and it isn't good for you. I suppose this is the only way he felt he could his message across to the people he wanted to reach, but I can't help but feel that the readers attracted to this book by its overt fantasy trappings will only be left with a sense of disappointment when they get to the end.

The Abraxas Marvel Circus
Stephen Leigh
Roc, May 1990; 255pp; $3.95; 0-451-45009-4

And speaking of humourous fantasy, have you noticed how much fantasy that takes place in a contemporary setting takes a humourous approach to the material? I wonder why that is sometimes. It seems to me that rather than using the fantasy as a metaphor -- which is often what resonates between the lines in the best of this kind of fiction -- the authors are shying away. Of course they could just be having a good time -- and there's room for that on the bookshelves, as well as for more serious works like those put forward by, say, John Crowley and his ilk.

Anyway, the latest contender to the humourous contemporary fantasy sweepstakes that I've read is this new novel from Stephen Leigh. The Abraxas Marvel Circus has its ups and downs. Its downs, to get them out of the way quickly, start with how it takes forever to find a plot. We're still a hundred pages or so in and lots is going on, but nothing connects. Its other down is that none of the characters rise much above caricature which makes it hard to care about what happens to them.

On the plus side is that Leigh has a nice light prose style that ably moves things along -- even while we're waiting for the plot to kick in. He has a great sense of the absurd and there are some wonderful scenes in here as well as some truly odd characters such as Joan the Flower Man, a hermaphrodite homeless person, and Ecclesiastes Mitsumishi, a Japanese undertaker with a penchant for naming his various businesses things like "Remains to Be Seen".

The plot when it does kick in is a fairly standard bunch-of-mismatched-folks-saving-the-world kind of storyline, and it's not exactly a deep think novel, but it is entertaining and will give you far more payback than an evening with your gaze glued to the television screen.

The Sandman: The Doll's House
Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg & Malcolm Jones III
DC Comics, 1990; 256pp; $12.95; 0-930289-59-5

Oddly, enough, the best, and most mature, fantasy I've read in some time, is this trade paperback comic book that collects issues eight to sixteen of The Sandman.

A friend of mine is illustrating an upcoming issue and sent me xeroxes of his pencils. I was so taken with the storyline -- I think it'll be issue nineteen and it deals with Shakespeare, faerie and dreams in a wonderfully moving and complex fashion -- that I went out and got this trade paperback to see what I'd been missing from previous issues of the comic.

I'd been missing a lot.

It's pointless to get into the plot to any great deal because its multi-layered and textured and you really should appreciate it on its own, without little guideposts stuck in your mind to tell you what's coming next. What I will tell you is that it's got nothing to do with superheroes running around in tights, but everything to do with some of the most fascinating personifications of Dream, Death, Desire and their like that I've run across in fiction. Although all the material originates with the creators, it has the verisimilitude of old myths. It resonates with a feeling of rightness.

It also reads like a novel with subplots, rather than an episodic monthly comic. Those subplots include everything from African myths, retold, to child abuse, a convention of mass murderers and far more than I could ever hope to encapsulate in the space I have.

The art is gorgeous, but also effective. And -- but I'll stop raving, except to repeat that if you're at all interested in contemporary fantasy done seriously, than I can't recommend this too highly.

And that also goes for issue seventeen of the monthly comic by Gaiman, Kelly Jones and Malcolm Jones which deals with Calliope, the youngest of the muses, locked away in the attic of a bitter old man. Brilliant, evocative, moving material, indeed.

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 12)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 12 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Much Rejoicing
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Copyright 1990 by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

Truth and goodness are the same for all men,
but pleasure differs for different men.

-- Democritus, frag. 69

There's a whole lot of skiffy goin' on.

More books are published in a typical month these days than we used to get in a typical year, and there are uncountable hordes of Big Name Writers wandering around loose. Somehow, the overall quality of the stuff doesn't seem to have improved in proportion; perhaps this unchecked growth is not an altogether good thing.

With all these established authors, it's as hard as ever for a new writer to sell his or her first book- and even harder to get it reviewed. The review space available that might seriously help a new writer gets taken up by the flashy new books by the flashy old writers, and the new writer is condemned to the darkness.

OtherRealms has always tried to light a path out of the darkness for the new writer, and beginning with this column, so shall I. The established pros will have to just sit on the sidelines and hope I have some space left over to fit them in after introducing you to some neat new people.

Let's go.

Kent Smith's Future X [Holloway House 1990, $3.95, 0-87067-549-4] gave me some deep trepidations. It appears, from its packaging, to be what might charitably be termed "Black Exploitation SF." The cover depicts a bespectacled and conservatively-dressed young black man, clearly in trouble; the blurb matter (except for the inside cover, which is a sex-sell and quite misleading) explains that this is the story of how said bespectacled and conservatively-dressed young black man, Ashford Henderson by name, travels from a distant planet in the far future, to twentieth-century Earth to save the life of Malcolm X.

Well, not quite.

He comes from Earth in the twenty-first century, but they got his purpose right. You see, he's Malcolm's several-greats grandson, and in his future America, the ruling White Supremacy Party has cordoned off blacks in ghettoes, made eighth- or ninth-class citizens of them (while claiming they've been granted political independence and are just under US "protection"), made said enclaves the dumping ground for unwanted drugs, etc., and generally made life in the US really bad, especially for blacks.

This is actually perfectly sound extrapolation. Smith takes as his basis for extrapolation the current "war on drugs" (which concentrates almost solely on minorities in the ghettoes, despite the fact that cocaine use, for example, is fairly evenly spread across the social strata) and the rising skinhead and White Aryan Nation movements in this country.

Ashford, in a desperate raid on the RAND corporation (!), which costs the lives of all his companions, comes back in time to warn Malcolm of his assassination- figuring that if he can be kept alive a bit longer, he can overthrow the relationships between the races in America by the end of the 60s.

Unfortunately, Malcolm dies early, murdered by secret police from the future, bent on keeping him dead.

Fortunately, our hero, an actor by profession, has with him a copy of the Autobiography of Malcolm X (which he'd brought to convince Malcolm that this business about being his great grandson was true) and, amazingly, he even resembles Malcolm. So he takes over Malcolm's life, with only minor changes, and prepares to survive and change history.

SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW, SKIP TO THE NEXT REVIEW

Naturally, it isn't that simple.

From here on, the experienced SF reader realizes that Future X, basically, does for Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man what The Wiz did for the Emerald City. It proceeds with the same sense of inevitability to the end we all expect.

There's an important difference, however. Moorcock's surrogate Jesus chooses to die so that his world comes to pass. Smith's surrogate Malcolm dies and fails to change his world. The inevitability is mingled with a sense of futility that reflects backward through the whole book (for example, shortly after arriving in the twentieth century, Ashford actually sets in motion events that will lead to the hegemony of the White Supremacy Party in) and makes Future X a distressing book to read. All the pain and effort we have followed is for nothing.

The distress is not alleviated by the apparent failure of the publisher to hire a competent typesetter. And I don't know what the copy-editor in charge of Future X got, but I hope it was twenty-to-life. Page after page is marred by typos and astonishing grammatical horrors that leap off the page and jar the reader out of the fictional dream.

Additionally, there are some large-scale writing problems. The first third to half of Future X is told from a shifting point of view; then, in the raid on RAND, all the viewpoint characters except Ashford are killed, and the remainder of the book, the part set in the twentieth century, is told solely from Ashford's point of view. The result is that Future X feels like the mismatched halves of two different books, glued poorly together.

All of which is a pity, because Kent Smith proves, despite all this, to be a competent storyteller. His characters engage the reader; his research and his extrapolate convince; the flow of his language- excepting those grammatical howlers- pleases; his plot carries you along.

I can't, in good conscience, recommend Future X, but I can't honestly suggest you stay away from it either; I'd like to see it sell well enough that the publishers give Smith another chance. The problems with his first novel are partly their own fault, after all.

END OF SPOILER

I don't read as much fantasy as science fiction, because I like science fiction, but love fantasy. It has always seemed to me that science fiction was a self- limiting as the historical novel, though in a different way. The finest SF novels- Dune, Stranger In A Strange Land, Childhood's End, The Stars My Destination, The Book Of The New Sun- generally drop pretenses of scientific realism and partake unblushingly of the mysticism of fantasy.

But because I do love fantasy, I can't stand to see it done less than right. I want, from a fantasy, a new world, which differs from our own in some significant way, and which in so doing comments on ours, or on worlds generally (this latter would be the case of The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, which have very little to say about Earth specifically, but have metaphysical and moral implications relevant to Earth or any world you might visit or invent).

So you have to keep this in mind as I talk about Kathleen Blake's first novel, The Interior Life [Baen Books, 1990, $3.95, 0-671-72010-4]. It's a prejudice on my part, and one I won't easily divorce myself from.

Blake tells the story of Sue, a bored and frustrated housewife of the late twentieth century, who "escapes" into her fantasies of a world where she is Marianella, lady-in-waiting to the Lady Amalia. Amalia, gifted with the Sight, has come to a remote village in search of her missing brother; meanwhile, the whole land is threatened by a Darkness. And, of course, Sue keeps finding things in her fantasy world that she's sure she didn't put there. . .

At this point, I drop plot summary, less than ten percent of the way through the book. Everything you need to know is there.

The fantasy world already sounds extremely generic. It is. This is a conscious choice of Ms. Blake, and it is somewhat- though not entirely- balanced by her unusually detailed knowledge of the quotidian life of a medieval household. This is, in fact, her strongest suit; reading Sue's fantasies, one gets an amazingly solid sense of what it's like to live that way.

Nor need the generic nature of the fantasy world be a disadvantage, if Blake chose to play it up. (She didn't.) What I mean is, that The Interior Life could have been a fantasy version of Evan S. Connell's Mrs. Bridge, and used the fantasy world both as contrast to Sue's drab real world, and as a comment on how it has dulled her imagination. Of course, this would have destroyed any chance of the fantasy world turning out to be (surprise!) real!

This is not, by the way, a simple case of my trying to rewrite Blake's book; I'm following up what's in there but unused. The comment on one world by the other is there. In particular, Marianella and Amalia peek into what Sue is doing on occasion, and make suggestions. The reactions of Sue's family and acquaintances when she follows these suggestions are very nicely handled, and on at least one occasion, uproariously funny.

If you're the sort of individual who happily reads large quantities of generic fantasy, you'll probably enjoy The Interior Life. I enjoyed it far more than I expected to.

I hope you're all familiar with the Ace Specials line of novels. Pioneered by Terry Carr, they've been through three incarnations; in the last, over the past half-dozen years, they've specialized in bringing to light the first novels of major writers like Lucius Shepard, Howard Waldrop, and Kim Stanley Robinson. The dozenth and, I fear, last of this worthy series is out now and merits some attention.

The Moon has been terraformed. Though it's not a totally novel conception, it's bold enough that I'm surprised I've never seen it handled in detail.

Galvanix is a citizen of the Lunar Republic, which controls- more or less- the territory on the Nearside of the Moon. The Moon has been suffering from a complete embargo for several years, now, while a war, or negotiation, or something concerning their fate, goes on without their consent or knowledge.

As the novel opens, Galvanix is preparing to leave the Moon to plant a small fusion bomb on an asteroid which threatens to smash into the moon causing Untold Devastation (ooooohhhhh!). He is joined by a friend, and then by Taggart, an agent who won't tell who she works for or what her mission actually is.

The bomb goes off; Galvanix and Taggart (whose name, mysteriously, changes to Beryl) find themselves on the Lunar surface- Farside. Farside is an unpleasant military bureaucratic-totalitarianism, preparing for a war with Nearside. The lunar climate starts changing rapidly; the war begins; Beryl and Galvanix get it on; things get rapidly worse.

Actually, this is unfair. The Oxygen Barons is one of those novels that doesn't summarize well because too damn much is happening. It's incredibly dense in plot, background, and invention. Almost all the technology is plausible now; Feeley's characters don't pull any "McGinkey-Therieu" principle or somesuch out of their hats to justify their gizmos.

The writing is clean and competent, though a bit cold. One never really gets into Galvanix's head, despite his being the point-of-view for most of the novel. (There are two interruptions, one from the point-of-view of the Shogun of Farside, the other from Galvanix's point-of-view, sorta.) The politics are sufficiently complex that I frankly don't follow them, and am not convinced that they're followable- which may be the point.

Recommended highly.

Closet Anti-classic

The spirit of the Closet Classics is, and has been, to look at books that deserve to be brought back into print. The spirit of this column has been to look at new writers.

Let's look at Gene Wolfe when he was a new writer.

His first novel has been out of print for some time now. This is, according to reasonably reliable reports, by Wolfe's request- understandably so; Operation Ares is not in the class of Peace, The book of the New Sun, or even The Devil in a Forest. Yet it is not a bad book.

Operation Ares, like Future X, is set in a repressive future America, one ruled not by racists but by an anti-intellectual military.

A colony was planted on Mars before the forces of know-nothingism took over, and they want to help us (or so they say). They broadcast technical information to us, and ask us only to communicate with them. Any attempt to do so is severely punished; even to be caught watching their broadcasts is a crime.

Wolfe's protagonist is a believable but fairly generic schoolteacher, whose attempts to bring technical competence to his students without being executed for disloyalty create the initial conflict of the book. This leads logically enough into the book's main plotline- but I don't want to tell too much. Wolfe's ability to make a story inevitable yet surprising was present even in this early work.

I can't say why Wolfe doesn't want this book reprinted. To speak for Wolfe would be arrogant at best. But I can conjecture that he might not want it reprinted because it simply isn't up to his standards.

To which I reply, Even Homer nods, Mr. Wolfe. Your work has won such a reputation that people will seek it out. To keep it out of print is to force those who are the greatest supporters of your work to pay inflated collectors'- market costs, at no possible benefit to yourself- for they will find it, and any damage you feel it may do to your reputation will be done, regardless.

Further, it is vain, Mr. Wolfe. Your work shows a profound religious sensibility; I suggest that allowing the reprinting of Operation Ares- which is not your best work but would be quite respectable from a lesser craftsman- would be an excellent exercise in humility.

Returning to you readers: I recommend you your eyes open for copies of Operation Ares at reasonable prices. It's not high art, but it's a good read, and that's more than many first novelists accomplish.

Past Imagining Lawrence Watt-Evans

Two Fandoms

I write science fiction and fantasy as a living, and I collect comics as a hobby; this means I have some contact with both SF fandom and comics fandom, and attend conventions devoted to one, the other, or both. In doing so, I've noticed that there are some definite differences between the two.

For one thing, all comics fans -- or so close to all that the others don't matter -- are collectors, at least on a small scale. They read their comics and save them. SF fans are not all collectors; some do all their reading courtesy of their local library, and even those who do buy their own books are likely to sell, trade away, or even throw out old books when they run short of space or need cash. (Yes, I know some comics collectors will sell off surplus when necessary, but it's far more common among SF fans, and "when necessary" is far less extreme.)

Some SF fans don't read at all; they just watch movies and TV. They can do that, since SF is a genre, where comics are a medium.

Of course, a good many SF fans are collectors of one sort or another, but collecting is generally much less important in SF fandom than in comics fandom.

I suspect that that's related somehow to the next big difference I'm going to mention. At a comics convention, everybody talks about comics. Obvious, right? They discuss new titles, bemoan the cancellation of old favorites, brag about great finds they've made, wonder what's going to develop in a particular character's life, and so forth.

At SF conventions, though, most of the conversation is not about SF. At least, not directly. This may come as a surprise to a lot of you, but it's true. People at SF conventions talk about anything and everything -- politics, religion, philosophy, new technology, music, books, movies, TV, cars, costumes, old friends, and just about any other subject you can think of. Oh, there are probably more conversations about science fiction than if you were to snatch up a random sample of the population equal in number and listen to their conversations, but not by all that terribly much.

Why is this so?

Well, probably because SF is more varied and spread out than comics. Anyone who collects comics knows who Spider-Man is, probably keeps up with the character, and at the very least can follow a discussion about him. In SF, though, you won't find any character everyone knows except maybe James T. Kirk or Luke Skywalker, and there are plenty of genuine SF fans who really aren't interested in Star Trek or Star Wars at all. At an SF convention you'll find people for whom the sun rises and sets on Anne McCaffrey, while others dismiss her as a fuzzy-minded fantasist and adore the likes of James Hogan. This occurs to some extent in comics fandom, as well -- there are people who don't care about superheroes, but only collect horror, or war, or funny animal, or romance, or whatever. However, the vast majority of comics fans are superhero fans. You won't find anyone who collects comics of any sort who isn't aware of Superman or Spider-Man or Batman. There's a central core that any comics fan can discuss. Even if superheroes fail, there are common topics for discussion -- prices rising and falling, how to store the little nuisances, incredible finds people have made, and so forth. In SF fandom, none of this can be taken for granted. Most people will know who Robert Heinlein is; most will have read some of his work; but you probably couldn't find a single book that had been read by a true majority of the people at any major SF convention. Book prices aren't much of a topic, since there's nothing like Overstreet's Guide nor is there the network of dealers in new and used books -- you buy new SF at Waldenbooks or B. Dalton's or even Woolworth's, you buy old SF at any second-hand bookstore for half of cover price, or you check it out of the library for free. Storage isn't much of a topic, since bookcases are pretty standard and bags aren't considered necessary. Incredible finds are of interest only to hard-core collector types; most fans wouldn't know what to do with a mint first edition of Bradbury's Dark Carnival. The result? SF fans don't talk about SF all that much, because their own reading and experience haven't got the universality that one finds among comic collectors.

Then why do they bother to get together in big conventions at all? Why not just little specialized conventions, dedicated to Darkover or Dr. Who, Heinlein or hobbits?

Well, some such small, specialized conventions and clubs do exist, but the numbers of people in such areas are not always enough to put on a decent convention. And SF as a whole does have a certain unity, and therefore attracts a certain sector of the population, so that even though con-goers don't actually talk about what they've read at cons, they know that they're likely to meet people there with whom they can find something to discuss.

What is this that unites the fan of H.P. Lovecraft with the devotee of Doc Savage, the dragonrider with the high frontiersman? It's simply that SF, fantasy, and horror are all devoted to alternate realities, worlds other than our own. They all require the imagination to appreciate places that have never existed.

That appreciation is enough to hold SF fandom together -- at least so far.

Reprinted from "Rayguns, Elves, and Skin-Tight Suits, Comics Buyer's Guide" Copyright 1985 by Krause Publications and Lawrence Watt-Evans. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Lawrence Watt-Evans says, when asked what he does for a living, that he's a science fiction writer, despite the fact that he's produced more fantasy than science fiction. This is apparently due to some desperate striving toward greater literary respectability, which his collection of 12,000 comics doesn't help at all.

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 13)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 13 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

From Beyond the Edge    [Part 1 of 2]
Reviews by our Readers

Agviq Michael Armstrong Popular Library, 1990, 0-445-20848-1, 275 pp., $4.50

Not since Ruesch's classic Top of the World have I had such an interesting nose-nuzzle with the Real People. Armstrong's version of isolated survivors of World War Last strands a blonde anthropologist among North Slope Eskimos when the bombs fall. He paints an authentic, legitimately chilling panorama of Inupiaq life, both before and after "civilization."

Claudia Kendall is digging at the abandoned village of Pingasagruk, in search of artifacts and her doctorate, when her undergraduate assistant, Rob, hears the first radio confirmation of nuclear Armageddon. Fortunately, Rob has read Dean Ing, and turns their excavation of an old Inupiaq house into a fallout shelter for the next three weeks. The two emerge, somehow still chaste, and begin to walk to Wainwright. They are turned back to Barrow, however, by three men who have retaken their tribal lands from the taniks and no longer welcome Whites. On their way to Barrow, Rob falls through the ice and drowns. Claudia continues on alone, only to meet new horror outside Barrow where a ravine contains the bodies of hundreds of dead taniks.

As she cautiously enters the ravaged town, Claudia is met by armed men who recognize her, Inupiaq cousins who have returned to Real People ways and names. Tuttu takes her before the village elders, now led by his grandfather, Malgi, who decrees that they have use for this tanik woman -- if she shows proper respect -- for the Real People need instruction on their ancient ways. Before she can become a proper wise woman and hunter in the tribe, however, she must fight for her life with her new extended family. The ensuing battle destroys most modern supplies and food, and survival of all Barrow depends on a successful return to hunting agviq, the bowhead whale -- if Claudia and Malgi can remember how!

As one of the few whose "after things fell apart" novel does not depend on nuclear war, I sympathize with Armstrong. The rapid rust-through of the Iron Curtain flenses the blubber from his whale tale. Despite excellent feel for the territory, a few plot elements gnaw at suspension of disbelief. Laptop PCs and snow mobiles turn up at too convenient moments, and most lesser characters are sticks to be blown away. And while much is made of the Inupiaq lesbian character, Tammy, the lack of any credible sexuality in this Eskimo story is a real snow job.

-- Dean R. Lambe

Arachne Lisa Mason William Morrow, 1990, 0-688-09245-4, 263 pp., $19.95

You've got to admire the spunk of a novice novelist who writes her own puff sheet for her first novel, especially when that book finds the rail right from the starting gate and gallops almost all the way to the finish line. But then unusual things might be expected of a woman who escapes the Byzantine world of corporate law with her soul intact -- which is pretty much what the novel is about.

After the second Big Quake, in a San Francisco almost a century hence, young Carly Nolan straps into a telelink chair for her first case. As her brain fuses with the worldwide Telespace network, something terrible goes wrong and she encounters images of spiders and mayflies instead of the cutthroat legal interchange that will strip a widow of her just due. Suddenly the perfect world of this genetically-engineered superYuppie, on the fast tract of megacorporate Ava & Rice, crashes to the mean, gridlocked streets, where neoAztec gangs cut the hearts from those who offend the corn goddess, dropouts carry Aboriginal spears, pirates sail the Bay, and robots conspire to collect human "electro-neural energy." As her mentor's brain crashes to mush, and the Telespace judge threatens disbarment, Nolan tries loveless sex and illicit drugs as her condition worsens. Finally, intertwined human and AI forces push her into the claws of Prober Spinner, a robot shrink with its own secret meta-program, who may have to destroy her mind in order to save it.

Mason knows just enough about computers to get details wrong, and nothing about neurophysiology, yet this dead-on tour of the real "paper chase" glows with energy and creativity. The combination of now-standard cyberpunk metaphors with Jungian archetypes, Greek mythology, and New Age metaphysics works surprisingly well, so long as the reader doesn't inquire too closely about the Freudian images at the back of the neck. At the end, well, we're not . . . at the end, but such sequelitis may be blamed on the geeks of modern publishing, and we do want to read more by this talented writer.

-- Dean R. Lambe

Circumsolar!
Richard A. Lupoff
Ace, August 1989, 262pp, $3.95, 0-441-11791-0

The novel is set in a universe which may be familiar to readers of Lupoff's Circumpolar! To readers who did not read that novel the setting remains a bit of mystery. Forget all laws of physics, probability, and do not count on logic when reading this book. "Suspension of disbelief" is strained beyond the breaking point, and in general the book reads like a modern version of the kind of movie that gave SF a bad name in the 50's.

In this novel the Earth, which is doughnut shaped, like all other planets, finds out in 1927 that it has a second hemisphere which is reached by traveling through the central hole. First contact is made with the people living on the "far side" and out of this new technology, such as "magnetic ray propulsion" comes. Then (in 1942), it turns out that there is a second Earth, in the same orbit but exactly opposite the first Earth, and it is calling for help. Two unlikely groups of characters respond by setting out to reach the alter-ego of earth. The good guys are Einstein, Northrop, and two baseball players, while the bad guys are Peron and Evita, a renegade German aircraft designer and an English noble.

They all set out in two airplanes that can move in space by Magnetic propulsion and a nuclear engine (also originating from the far side of the Earth. Not to spoil it for those of you who will want to read this book, let me just say that from this point on the characters undergo a series of unlikely events, and most of these events serve only to add dramatic, action filled moments to the novel, while having no apparent connection to the plot. They can also ignore all physics and logic at will (e.g. they make several landings but still have to de-accelerate to shed the speed given by passing through the center hole of the moon when they left the Earth.) In addition they have some unexplained and seemingly purposeless mystic experiences, and can, sometimes, survive in space with no spacesuits at all. When they finally get to their destination a pale excuse is given as to who summoned them and why. Then all is made well suddenly and without any basis, in a classic Deus Ex Machina conclusion, which left me convinced that Lupoff, like me, got tired of his characters and flimsy plot, and took the easy way out.

The only saving grace is lots of action. If you want to read a classic 40's or 50's "B" movie - this may be the book for you. Otherwise, this is a waste of time and money. [*]

-- Michael Orr

Contrarywise
Zohra Greenhalgh
1989; Ace Fantasy Special; 290 pp; $3.95

Below the Presence (God), there are the twenty-seven Greatkin (lesser deities). Among these is the whimsical and perverse Rimble, called "Trickster". While the other Greatkin are patrons of Love or Imagination or Mathematics, Rimble is the force of chaos, wandering the world in many guises, upsetting apple carts and sowing confusion. He plans to keep on doing so, even if it causes the end of the world.

I found much to admire in this book, and also much which seriously
bothered me.  The author seemed to toss in every idea she could think
of, as if she couldn't bear to waste one, even if it didn't advance the
plot.  Among these is the offensive notion that different racial groups
have inherently different personality traits.  Periodically the book
breaks out, like a rash, in attacks of terminal contrariness.  I could
have done without the low dialect, or the frequent dependent clauses
left standing waveringly on their own.  However, the level of
inventiveness is high throughout; and the good writing (when the author
controls her bad habits) is quite good indeed.  Given more practice and
more restraint, Ms Greenhalgh shows the makings of a promising
fantasist.  Those who admired such earlier Ace Fantasy Specials as Emma
Bull's War For The Oaks might want to check out Contrarywise.   [***]

-- David M. Shea

Dreams Of An Unseen Planet
Teresa Plowright
1986; Arbor House; $16.95; 273 pp; 0-87795-863-7

Optimistic young intellectuals brought the Ventura habitat to orbit rugged Gaea, but as the years pass, agronomist Miera Tull is depressed: contact with Earth has been lost, the birth rate is dropping, and her own biological clock is ticking.... Actually, that's about it. If the name of the planet is not sufficient hint, we find such lines as, "...to suckle a moment of peace...", "...a pregnant pause...", "...new life burst forth..." And that's all in the first three chapters. That last one is about plants, by the way, but you get the picture. In short, it's an I Want To Be A Mommy book, thinly disguised as sci-fi. Will Michael be faithful to Daphne? Will Miera get knocked up and/or validate her womanhood? Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

-- David M. Shea

Fire
Alan Rodgers
Bantam; 0-553-28777-X; Sept. 1990; 525 pages

The Fire in this excellent second novel by Alan Rogers concerns the Battle of Armageddon as foretold in the Bible when fire will consume the world. However it is not God but one man, Herman Bonner, a man held in high esteem by the government who wants to 'sterilize the planet and get rid of Sodom and Gomorrah'.

The President's wife has accidently died while on a trip to Russia and in retaliation he declares war against them. A recently discovered microbe is accidently released during these nuclear explosions. This microbe, trilobite, can reconstruct a fossil from bits and pieces of its DNA. The horror of this is that it resurrects all the people and creatures that have died. In effect you die, then are resurrected, then die again and the pattern repeats itself, ad infinitum. Nothing can stop it! Can you imagine being electrocuted, dying and then coming back to life only to repeat the same death over and over? The thought of that continuing agony makes me shudder. Also released in the blast is a creature whose appearance resembles the Beast of Revelation -- a physical abomination with several heads growing from its neck. This creature apparently can communicate telepathically and it convinces Ron Hawkins to travel with it on a cross-country journey to try and stop this Apocalypse. The ending was superb. Rogers ties everything together in a most fitting and satisfying conclusion. Fire has enough action, violence and suspense to fill a couple of books. The ending was a minor letdown for me only because I wanted this fine epic to continue. I feel it cries out for a sequel.

This marvelously crafted novel challenges the reader's imagination by theorizing on many of man's religious dilemmas regarding death and the end of the world, while leaving the answers to one's own beliefs. It does make one think.

The characters are superb and more than believable, but the one I most enjoyed was old Tom the dog. Tom seemed to have the best role and at times had more personality and insight than the others. Rogers even managed to sneak in a couple of Bantam Books executives as characters, namely his wife Amy Stout as a store manager and Lou Aronica as a sheriff.

Alan Rogers is a rising star in the horror field and Fire will only enhance his future position. Don't miss this novel.

-- Richard Weilgosh

The Founder
Christopher Rowley
1989 Del Rey 251 pp; $3.95

Set in the Fenrille universe, this novel is a prequel to the author's award-winning The War For Eternity (1983) and The Black Ship (1985). Like most prequels it has the built-in disadvantage that one knows, to some extent, how it comes out. However, this book contains enough action for any two ordinary novels: Clan Fundan's escape from the Sol system; civil war aboard the starship; and humanity's first contact with the fein, the chitin, and the woodwose. Rowley has a knack for portraying the human race's darker side, without losing touch entirely with our meager virtues. Those who know the Fenrille universe will find new insights; those who don't, might start here and then catch up with the other books. Recommended. [****]

-- David M. Shea

Heritage Of Flight
Susan Shwartz
New York: TOR, 1989, $3.95, 338 pp

This is a difficult novel to categorize and perhaps is best described as ecological science fiction. Not that there aren't other elements present, there are: Galactic war, discrimination within and between races, colonization of new worlds, the struggle for survival and the struggle for growth of self all dart in and out from chapter to chapter. But these serve more as sheep dogs, herding the plot along to its somewhat predictable, if only in a general sense, end.

In fact, this is ecological SF from a science perspective. Sort of like a treatise on the impact of oil spills as written by Exxon. The points are all there and well made, but the final conclusions and the actions taken are somewhat contradictory and driven by expediency. For example, one of the major themes in the novel has to do with the fledgling colony's contact with a race of moth-like beings who turn out to possess intelligence. Unfortunately, much like their Earthly counterparts, these moths -- or Cynthians as they are called -- pass through a larval stage to reach adulthood. And the larvae are ravenous, directly threatening the area staked out by the colony. And so, the settlers are forced to make a choice -- albeit a somewhat loosely explained one -- in which they decide to eradicate all traces of the Cynthians -- larvae and adults. This produces a great deal of cultural angst which is present throughout the book. Not that the decision is lightly made, it isn't, only following much discussion and soul searching. The driving voice of reason, in the person of one Beneatha, the group's Xenobiologist, is unfortunately muted due to Shwartz's decision to make the character a whiner and a nag. While Benethea says all the right things about protection of the environment and its native species, the message is warped by the medium. And the message is important, if not crucial, to the theme and plot.

This message, embodied by the act of genocide, returns in discussions concerning what sort of cultural heritage the colony is leaving for its children. Parents and the colony's leaders fear that their actions will leave the children mentally scarred beyond healing.

The emotional impact of making major decisions rings true and Shwartz has done an excellent job of capturing the mental anguish of leadership in no-win situations. Characters thoughts, words and deeds ring true to life. This is both a very good thing and a very bad thing. While I found myself nodding in agreement with the internal dilemmas I was also somewhat annoyed with the amount of time spent on them. True to life, yes, but, I think, too true for fiction to be comfortable.

Shwartz's ability to show the dilemmas faced by this tiny colony whose only mission consisted of the order "to live and be human," is quite detailed. Too much so, perhaps, in that a great deal of time is spent with these characters guilt, anger and depression and too little with their search for possible solutions. A number of times I found myself wanting to reach into the pages and slap some sense into these people. If they were truly worried about their children they should have been more concerned with the effect their constant moaning and groaning was having.

The primary groaner is Pauli Yeager, former deep space fighter pilot and now colony commander, mother, wife, chief decision maker and conscience for the people. Pauli mumbles and stumbles her way through the book, wracked by indecision concerning the future and regrets about the past. When the opportunity presents itself, in the form of a contact from a now unified galaxy, Pauli freely gives herself up to authority, in fact, demanding court martial and the subsequent penalty for genocide -- death.

It should be noted that this book is composed of three short stories, two which previously appeared in Analog in 1983 and 1986. While this in no way affects the plot, it does make the flow somewhat choppy. The breaks, where one story ends and another begins are fairly obvious, but this proves far less distracting than Shwartz's adherence to "real life" in her characterization.

-- Stephen Sawicki

Heritage Of Flight
Susan Shwartz
Tor; 1989; $3.95

Pauli Yeager was trained as a combat pilot. But when her ship fled an unsuccessful battle, she and a handful of other officers were assigned a thankless task. Dumped on a virtually unexplored planet with a shipload of refugee children, Yeager and her companions are instructed simply to "survive, and stay human". With limited supplies and virtually no briefing, a handful of soldiers and a troop of half-feral children are left to make it on their own. Survive they will; but at what appalling cost?

Like Yossarian's fish, I have ambivalent feelings about this book.  The
author, best known for historical fantasies, proves she can spin a
credible space opera.  The book is well-written, the pace is crisp, and
the characters are believable.  Still, Heritage Of Flight is an
uncomfortable companion.  It's about things I'd rather not think about:
things like atrocity, guilt, atonement.  (It's a very Jewish sort of
book ...) And that, presumably, is the point.  That this book insists
you think about the unthinkable is at once its best recommendation and
its chief drawback.     [****-]

-- David M. Shea

[continued]

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 14)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 14 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

From Beyond the Edge    [Part 2 of 2]

In the Country of the Blind
Michael Flynn
Baen $3.95 527 pg.

H.G. Wells wrote a short story that was based on the saying "In the country of the blind, the one eye man would be king." The story debunked the saying by showing that a community of the blind would have developed ways of surmounting their handicap so an one eye man would not have any real advantage when pitted against the entire community. This novel is an attempt to portray realistically what would happen if a secret society really did try to influence human events. The story starts with the premise that while Charles Babbage failed in his attempt to build an analytical machine, others succeeded and used the machine to develop mathematical models of human behavior that allowed them to predict future trends and manipulate them to their own ends.

By our time, this secret Babbage Society has grown rich and powerful. However it has also become divided and corrupt which limits their ability to control and influence. Sarah Beaumont is secretly buying up houses in an old section of Denver, planning to gentrify it. Unknown to her, one of the previous owners, Brady Quinn, of one the houses she tries to buy was a dissident member of the Babbage Society. In her attempt to research the history of the building and Quinn she inadvertently alerts the society of her research. Thinking she has discovered their existence, they try to kill her. Sarah survives, learns of the society and vows to destroy it.

A tremendous amount of historical research went into this book as well as a large amount of thought into the implications of a secret society that was able to predict the future through mathematical models. The result is quite realistic and very believable. Basically such a society would have tremendous influence on our society but would not be all powerful. Our society is too large and unity is very hard to maintain in a large group over a long period of time for such a society to achieve total dominance. The result is an engrossing mystery that always has the ring of authenticity. Anyone who has ever had to deal with large group politics would immediately understand why such a society could not truly rule the world from behind the throne.

Despite large amounts of philosophizing, the book is mainly an action
story as Sarah first tries to escape the society's assassins and then
tries to strike back at them.  Sarah's ability to survive is well
established by her background.  However, she is not superwoman.  Her
success is due in large part to the assistance of a breakaway faction of
the society.  The characterization is well done.  Too many of the
Babbage society leaders are too psychotic but is within acceptable
limits given the premise that power corrupts.  In all, this is a highly
recommended book.       [****]

-- Danny Low

A Matter of Taste Fred Saberhagen TOR Horror; 0-312-85046-8: 284 pages; July 1990; $16.95

It has been several years since I last read a Saberhagen novel and I guess I've got some catching up to do. A Matter of Taste is a vampire novel with a little twist as it's told from the vampire's perspective.

Angie Hoban's fiancee just happens to be the nephew (of sorts) of a vampire, Matthew Maule. She and her fiancee visit 'Uncle Matt' to ask him to attend their wedding, but shortly after arriving Maule is suddenly taken quite ill. Angie discovers that Maule is a writer and presently working on a new novel. Maule asks her to listen to some tapes that might help explain what's happening. We learn how Matthew Maule became a vampire and how intent he was on revenge against the men who betrayed him. We follow his trek across Europe to Italy, where he eventually settles and becomes the right hand of Cesare Borgia. Saberhagen gives us a fine history lesson of Italy and what transpired between the aristocracy and the papacy in the late 15th century. We cross paths with such illuminaries as the Borgias, Leonardo da Vinci and Copernicus.

A Matter of Taste is standard Saberhagen fare- fast paced, well written, good plot-line with dialogue not as stilted as his previous works. The characters are quite exciting, very believable and realistic. In fact Saberhagen does such a good job with Matthew Maule that we empathize with his plight and the fact that someone wants to murder him. We feel sorry for him and what he's gone through since becoming a vampire, much the same way we felt after reading 'The Godfather' by Mario Puzo. We genuinely like character Maule, and we are upset by the way he's been constantly harassed. We come to appreciate why Maule does what he does and we're pleasantly surprised at the feelings he has for those he cares about.

A Matter of Taste has enough to capture and hold the readers attention resulting in a solid, entertaining story.

-- Richard Weilgosh

Nightside City
Lawrence Watt-Evans
1989; Del Rey; $3.95; 227 pp; 0-345-35944-5

Dawn is coming to the gambling spa of Nightside City; and dawn means the end of the world. Despite this, someone is buying up real estate in the doomed resort. A client wants cyberdetective Carlisle Hsing to find out why. Unfortunately, some heavy hitters are willing to resort to drastic measures to keep their plans from becoming public.

This book has no great ambitions, it's just a good crisp
adventure/mystery with lots of computer jargon tossed in.  The setting
has a suitably gritty future-urban ambience; the plot is logically
constructed around an interesting problem in planetology; the writing is
consistent and well-paced, each chapter ending with a neat narrative
hook.  A very solid, professional piece of work.        [***+]

-- David M. Shea

Nightwatch
Robin Wayne Bailey
TSR $3.95 311 pg.

This is a police procedural story set in the AD&D Greyhawk universe. Garett Starlen is the commander of the nightwatch for the Greyhawk police department. One night all the seers of Greyhawk are murdered. Then all the mages disappear. Garett is the one assigned to solve the mystery.

As a police procedural, this novel follows the format well but the
mystery is very badly done.  It is very obvious who is the villain.  The
motivation is obvious as well.  The reader can guess the motivation well
before any of the characters.  The action is fast paced.  However in
all, this book is of interest only to Greyhawk fans.    [*]

-- Danny Low

N-Space Larry Niven TOR Books; 0-312-85089-3; 509pp; Sept. 1990; $18.95

Reading science fiction is always a pleasure especially when written by a master such as Larry Niven. His latest book. N-Space is a collection of his finest short stories complete with essays by Niven himself on the how's and why's of each story. Most of these stories have appeared in previous collections, but several including 'Brenda' and 'The Kiteman' are collected here for the first time.

This retrospective contains several of my personal Niven favorites, including 'Inconstant Moon'; 'Flare Time'; 'Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex' and 'Passerby'. I guess the main reason I enjoy Niven's writing is that the worlds and characters he creates appear so realistic, so believable and most enjoyable to read.

Niven goes into considerable detail explaining his collaboration with Jerry Pournelle in the writing of The Mote in God's Eye. Larry Niven is perhaps most famous for the Ringworld & The Ringworld Engineers novels and also for the marvellous collection of KNOWN SPACE stories.

N-Space begins with kind words from David Brin, Fred Pohl, Greg Benford and several others who comment on how they first met Niven and the appreciation they have for this immense talent. Niven also comments on the people who influenced his career. A complete bibliography, at least I presume it is, brings to an end this superb collection. I urge you not to miss N-Space; highly recommended.

-- Richard Weilgosh

Out of Sync
Isidore Haiblum
Del Rey, $3.95, 184 pg.

Basically this is a hardboiled detective story with enough pertinent SF
elements that it is not just a detective story with a SF coating.  James
Morgan is one of those people who make their money on the fringes of
society. He is not quite a criminal but also not a honest citizen.  He
has finally amassed enough wealth that he has invested in several
casinos.  The problem is someone is robbing them.  While other casinos
are being robbed as well, the robbers seem to have a special grudge
against Morgan.  The story, which is rather short, is about Morgan's
attempts to find the robbers while evading their attempts to stop him.
As in any good mystery and especially one with an SF twist, the plot is
very twisted and requires a fairly long explanation at the end for those
who did not figure it out.  The mystery seems to hang together well.
The story is not prolonged due to the characters acting like idiots.
Someone knowledgeable about mysteries and science fiction can probably
figure out what is happening from the events in the book.  This is a
minor work but is enjoyable.    [***]

-- Danny Low

Petrogypsies Rory Harper Baen, 0-671-69840-0, 275 pp., September 1989, $3.50

Imagine an alternate Earth where all petroleum products are recovered through the use of huge "critters", crewed by Gypsies and you've got a head start on this book.

Petrogypsies follows one Henry Lee McFarland from the time he leaves his daddy's farm to join a gypsy drilling crew. We join Henry Lee in learning his new trade and in seeing the wonders inherent in being a gypsy on one of the gargantuan living machines which travel the country searching for petrochemicals.

The book is really three novelets strung together. Still, this does nothing to deter from Harper's fast and loose style of writing. To Harper's credit he does not go into too much detail on exactly how these "critters" came to exist, but instead delves into the human side of the equation, rounding out a cast of interesting characters that are enjoyable to spend time with.

Petrogypsies reminds me of the stories one would find in Analog somewhere in the sixties -- character driven from a point of pure speculation. This is a fun book, at times touching and at time humorous. Tom Kidd's cover captures the essence of the novel in a few brush strokes. This is Harper's first novel and based on its content, the future looks bright for this Texas native.

-- Steven Sawicki

The Renegades Of Pern Anne McCaffrey Del Rey, 0-345-34096-5, 384 pages, $19.95, November 1989

While this is a continuation of McCaffrey's Pern series, the reader should be warned not to expect that this novel deals, once again, with dragons. While the telepathic, thread fighting, flying behemoths are certainly present, they play but a minor role.

The renegades of the title are essentially the homeless (or perhaps holdless would be a better word) of Pern. There's Thella, who leaves the security of her family's hold to establish a hold of her own (something that would never happen if she'd stayed.) There's Jayge, whose family plies the overland routes between holds, trading and delivering goods. And there's Aramina, whose family has been rendered holdless through the machinations of a conqueror.

The interweaving of these three lives and how each complicates the others makes up the body of the plot. It should also be noted that the Southern Continent plays a large role. In fact, parts of this book seem to replay previous explorations as detailed in The White Dragon, although told from a different point of view.

While I admit to being initially disappointed as I kept wondering when the dragons would show up, McCaffrey's deft storytelling more than made up for their absence. With Renegades, McCaffrey seems intent on opening up new chapters in Pern's history, something every fan of the series should be more than happy about.

-- Steven Sawicki

Sparrowhawk
Thomas A. Easton
Ace Books, 1990

Traditionally, physicists are given credit for the thought experiment, the what-if scenario at the cutting edge of scientific endeavor. And some of the best science fiction tales have followed from such what-ifs. With the biological revolution, however, life scientists have taken to whacking and hacking with mathematical purity, and thought experiments find a place among creatures great and small. In his first novel, biologist Easton has run his what-if a few score years into an American future where genetic engineering has replaced conventional industry and technology to a large degree.

Easton's designer genes world of 2044 opens with the fall of a sparrow, a Palestine Airways Sparrow the size of a 747, that is. The big bird, it's biochip controller sabotaged, misses the airport with it's load of passengers, and lands on a freeway where it begins to gobble Roachsters and other Buggies, and the people who drive them. Nick and Emily Gilman and their son Andy escape the gruesome gizzard because they drive a safe Tortoise.

When gengineer Emily is interviewed about the rogue Sparrow at her office at Neoform Labs, however, she feels an immediate attraction for the hawker, the cop Bernie Fischer, who patrols aboard a giant kestrel. Soon the reader learns that all is not well with Emily's marriage to her poetic househusband, nor does harmony rein at Neoform, where bigoted Ralph Chowdhury tries to design cars based on armadillos in competition with Emily for Sean Galarean's research funding.

Back home, Andy Gilman enjoys an errant Chickadee in his yard, an escapee from the local commercial airport, where drug smugglers let the private birdplane roam. Then a Bittern with poisoned beak tries to kill Emily, Chowdhury's underworld Cocaine Nettles and Heroin Jellyfish operations expand, and the sexual fire between the gengineer and the cop reaches flashpoint.

Despite first-novel foibles -- point of view shifts and inconsistencies in futuristic projection -- Sparrowhawk moves right along as a twisty police-procedural mystery. Characters have breadth and depth; you care about them. Oddly, only the technology doesn't seem to work. While Easton makes appropriate nods to the square-cube law and the problem of elephant dung rung large, the society seems at a net loss in terms of greenhouse gases. Just how much methane and cee-oh-two does an airline fleet of sparrows and eagles emit? And where are the small appliances that ought to have come first -- before bulldogs replaced Mack trucks -- the oh, so needed garbage gut and plastic diaper eater? Perhaps the story is best enjoyed, tongue in cheek as Easton intended, without dissection of the creature features.

-- Dean R. Lambe

Surrender None
Elizabeth Moon
Baen $4.50 530 pg.

In the Paksenarrion trilogy, the legacy of Gird had a major influence in Pak's growth from a sheepherder's daughter to a Paladin. This book tells the story of Gird. The first half of the book tells of Gird's life before his rebellion and is detailed and well done. Unfortunately the story goes downhill once Gird rebels.

One problem is the story gets more and more compressed as the rebellion proceeds until by the end, the story is more of a synopsis than a true story. Another more critical problem is the nature of Gird's deeds. What he did certainly qualifies him as a major cultural hero but there is very little that qualifies him for godhood. Someone who is not aware of Gird's divine stature in the Paksenarrion books would be left confused at what happens to Gird in the end. The divine element is too minimal in this story whereas it was rather prominent in the Paksenarrion stories. Yet this story requires more divine elements. Paksenarrion only became a Paladin. Gird became a god.

Considering the length of the book, one gets the impression that Moon wanted to avoid writing a multiple volume story even though the story is big enough for two volumes. The very down to earth style of Moon's fantasy works against her in this story. Gird's ascension into godhood is too unexpected and unexplained. Those who are interested in military SF will find the second half of the book quite fascinating. Here Moon's military background is put to good use.

This is not a bad book but considering what Moon did with the Paksenarrion novels, itis a disappointment. [**]

-- Danny Low

The Varayan Memoir 1: Son of the Hero
Rick Shelley
ROC, $3.95, 256 pg.

This novel is an interesting variation of the hero in a strange land. Typically these stories involve someone from our world who is transported to another world where he becomes the Hero that saves the world. This novel is about the son of the Hero.

Gil Tyner always knew his parents were a little strange but just before his 21st birthday he discovers why. He returns from college to find his parents gone. He finds a message that says that if he is reading the message, his parents are in deep trouble. He should go to their rescue through the magic door in the basement. Magic door? Well there is one and it leads to a land between Mundania (us) and Fairie. He discovers his father is the official Hero of Varay. Varay is a land where magic works and science too, sometimes.

Gil goes to rescue his father and partially discovers why his parents have been living in Mundania and keeping Gil's heritage a secret from him. Eventually Gil becomes the new Hero and completes the mission to save Varay that his father died trying to complete.

While there will clearly be a sequel, the story in this book is
completed in this book.  The writing is mixture of humor and seriousness
that blend together well.  Shelley knows his horses.  Instead of being a
convenient method of traveling from place to place, the horses in this
book get tired and have to be fed and care for.  The characterization is
sparse but adequately done.  Most characters can be readily
differentiated from each other. The story is logical.  There are some
unexplained events but hopefully the explanation are forthcoming.  This
is a fun book and is a cut above the average.   [****]

-- Danny Low

Vettius And His Friends
David Drake
Baen, 0-671-69802, 304 pp., $3.95

A dozen stories and a short introduction make up this collection. All were written in the late seventies and I think reflect Drake at his beginnings. It's not that the individual stories lack a professional polish or that they're not entertaining. They do and are. Yet one comes away from each piece with the feeling that one is dealing with fragments. And indeed two of the stories -- Killer and Ranks of Bronze were expanded into novels -- successful ones.

Each story falls within the sub-genre of heroic fantasy, with the major background being fourth century Rome. Seven of the stories focus on Vettius, a roman soldier and his merchant friend Dama -- forming a loose history of their relationship. Two additional stories, The Barrow Troll and King Crocodile, encompass Norse and Egyptian settings respectively.

Only the first story, The False Prophet, was written for this book, the remainder having been collected from various magazines and anthologies. As a study of a writer at his beginnings, this anthology is well worth the purchase. For the avid Drake fan this is probably a necessity. But unless you're interested in either of the above, you'll find more satisfaction elsewhere.

-- Steven Sawicki

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 15)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 15 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Flights of Fantasy Reviews by Laurie Sefton

It's summer, and time for lots of books to show up. Good thing, too, since I've just about burnt out on the case studies d'jour from classes. Summer is the time when you ought to be able to kick back and read something because you want to read it, not because you have to have it read, noted, and ready for discussion in Thursday's lecture. Kindly enough, the publishers let loose with a torrent of summer reading, and herein lies the kernel of this quarter's lecture:

If it's the nth book in a series, please provide the reviewer with a recap of the previous n-1 books so the reviewer at least has some sense of what's going on [editorial note: my policy on series is that if I haven't read book 1, I don't start in the middle, and series books aren't generally assigned for review unless I know the reviewer has been reading the series. Reviewing the middle book of a series out of context is fraught with possible problems, and there are too many good independent good books to spend a lot of time 'catching up' to read something in the middle. If a series doesn't catch us with book one, it's unlikely to ever do so-chuq].

A corollary to this: if you are releasing a set of books, release them in an order that makes sense to the readers, and not what appears to be the order in which they were submitted.

The Death of Sleep
Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye
Baen Books, 1990, 380pp., 0-671-69884-2

A case in point is The Death of Sleep. If you've read Sassinak, by McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon, a lot more of the history will make sense, as will the title. When I first read Sassinak I wondered why the lead character had a name that sounded a lot like the anglicized version of a pretty nasty insult in Gaelic. Several hundred years into the future apparently the meaning has moderated a bit.

Beyond the information gleaned from Sassinak (and if you haven't read it yet, go out and buy the book -- it's a nice blend of Moon's ability to write about the military, and McCaffrey's social-science fiction), those who have read the Dinosaur Planet diptych will get a lot of questions answered about the universe in which variants of humanity and their allies explore.

The underlying theme is how Lunzie Mespil, the main character, reacts and adjusts to having her life strung out across generations, due to her being in "coldsleep" (suspended animation) for decades. Anyone who has spent any time outside of their normal venue will empathize with Lunzie's plight. Your re-entrance into society has the added burden of trying to figure out what has gone on during your absence, as well as acclimating to the new surroundings. Lunzie copes with her family having added new generations, new societal changes -- as well as dietary habits, and the feeling of being an extra player in the game.

My biggest complaint with The Death of Sleep is the necessary tie-in with both Sassinak and The Dinosaur Planet. You can see when the plot suddenly makes a turn down the road to the old familiar places -- which is why it would have been much better to have The Death Of Sleep released before Sassinak. It's just one too many times to read the same plot, albeit from a different viewpoint. [***+]

Silent Dances
A.C. Crispin and Kathleen O'Malley
Ace Books, 1990, 275pp., 0-441-78330-9

Silent Dances shows what good teamwork can do for a book -- it's
seamless as far as anyone being able to guess who did what.  The story
itself is also different from the run of the mill "xenotech goes and
takes care of nasty situation on far away planet" that you tend to see
off and on.  The book takes Tesa, an Amerind who is profoundly deaf, and
shows that what might be considered multiple disadvantages by some are
actually advantages in a different venue.  Her culture allows her to
better understand the alien culture she investigates, and her deafness
gives her a door to the entirely visual language of the alien Grus, the
species which may or may not be sentient, based on observations by the
hearing investigators.  Silent Dances shows the growth of a woman who
finds her place in the future worlds.   [****]

Surrender None
Elizabeth Moon
Baen, 1990, 530pp., 0-671-69878-8

Those who read the Deed of Paksennarion by Elizabeth Moon are already familiar with Gird, the peasant who showed his own people who to fight for themselves against their overlords. In Surrender None, Moon looks at the man behind the legend.

Once again, I'm struck at how Moon is able to present the banalities of life to her readers; the everyday drudgery of the peasants, the mean existence of the first troop of rebels that Gird finds, and not only make it very interesting, but an integral part of the story. Too often, fantasy writers tend to forget that their characters have the full set of bodily functions, and not only have to eat, but have to deal with all the steps that lead to eating and afterwards. Contrary to what was said in "The Big Chill", the outdoors is not one big toilet, and if you treat it as such, you'll probably give yourself a good case of dysentery (if you're lucky -- more likely, you'll end up with hepatitis). Gird has to deal with the mundanities of life as he attempts to overthrow the nobles who have ravaged his people's land.

Along the way, we find the roots of what becomes the legend of Gird. Characters are placed with the names of Gird's apostles, and we find that even a saint can be very human after all. [****]

The Rowan
Anne McCaffrey,
Ace/Putnam, 1990, 335pp,0-399-13570-7

Anne McCaffrey also shows what happens when we take a human and attempt to make a legend out of her. The Rowan is a novel adaptation of a novelette that appeared in Get off the Unicorn. I haven't read the novelette, and I'm glad I haven't since I would have spent much more time comparing the two than enjoying the novel.

The Rowan is the name of a "prime talent", in this case telepathy and telekinesis, who is found when she is the only survivor of a mud slide in a mining community called Rowan. As with many of McCaffrey's novels, the story follows the physical and mental growth of the girl and woman. As in most of McCaffrey's characters, The Rowan faces a tough test -- in her case, a telepathically induced agraphobia which keeps all the primes prisoners of their planets. The usual McCaffrey story telling style is evident here; you get a full story and then something that can only be described as an addendum -- a short story at the end of the book after the main characters have resolved the major portion of their problems. It's odd, but it works. [***+]

Magic's Price
Mercedes Lackey
DAW, 1990, 351pp ISBN 0-88677-426-8

Magic's Price is the third book of the Last Herald Mage trilogy by Mercedes Lackey. Vanyel, the aforementioned Last Herald Mage has started to come to grips with both his role in the kingdom of Valdemaar's future, as well as his own personal future. He sees his own future, and possibly his own death, but doesn't know the events that will lead him to that fate. The king of Valdemar is dying, and there are attacks of magic from outside the kingdom. Vanyel must also deal with the attentions of a young bard, who freshens the painful memories of Vanyel's lover, Tylendel. Vanyel breaks through his pain from Tylendel's death as he breaks through his own fear of death, to save the kingdom of Valdemar. The on fault with the book is Lackey's consistent use of rape (in most cases, gang rape) as a final test of the protagonist's mental and physical constitution. Certainly there ought to be other ways of testing character. [***+]

Knight of Ghosts and Shadows
Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon
Baen Books, 1990, ISBN 0-671-69885-0

Mercedes Lackey, with Ellen Guon have combined talents to produce Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, the story of elves in Los Angeles. Sounds a bit strange, but as someone who visited Los Angeles from the Midwest for the first time about 15 years ago, it certainly gives some plausible answers to some odd questions. The elves have been in Los Angeles (as well as the San Francisco bay area) since they were driven out of Europe, nearly 500 years ago. They've made their home, and tied their magic to the area, to see that magic ripped to shreds by man's encroachment of steel and glass.

Enter Eric Banyon, a busker, or street musician, who makes a good chunk of his living by playing the Renaissance Faire circuit. Eric doesn't know it, but he's the last chance for the Angelino elves to survive.

An interesting sidelight in the book is the reaction of some members of a rock band when they are confronted by real magic. Like some of the members of neo-pagan and like movements (note that I said some, not all, not most) they thought that what they were doing was a game, and suddenly decided that dabbling in magic wasn't fun anymore when the magic stopped being a game, and started being for real -- and for real stakes. It's a nice refection on real life. [***+]

Charlemagne's Champion
Gail Van Austen
Ace, 1990, ISBN 0-441-10287-5

I was busily complaining that it seemed that everyone was doing Arthurian romance these days, and ignoring all the other great stories, when Charlemagne's Champion appeared in my reading list. Charlemagne's Champion is taken from The Song of Roland. Roland is one of the great heroes of French history, who , according to the legends, nearly single-handedly defeated the Moors in the north of Spain, as they were attempting to march through Catalonia, and on to the new created Holy Roman Empire. One of the points in European history that no one in the world or medieval history classes you took in high school and college seems to want to talk about is how far the Moors (and other Islamic groups) managed to get into Europe before they were beaten back to the Ottoman empire and the south of Spain.

The Song Of Roland is fleshed out, with Roland's questions of his father, and his pain at his allegedly paternity -- born of a witch by a demon. Much of Charlemagne's Champion is taken up with Roland's need to prove that he is a moral human being, while those around him who are accepted as fine upstanding nobles are dealing death to their compatriots. Charlemagne's Champion is an engrossing read, and I'm glad that Gale Van Asten has continued the story of Roland and Charlemagne's time in future books. [****+]

Gossamer Axe
Gael Baudino
ROC, 1990, ISBN 0-451-45025-6

I'm going to try and explain Gossamer Axe, by Gael Baudino, with the hope that more than the women understand. It's an odd book in that when I explain the story and characters to women, I get nods of understanding. When I explain it to men, I get looks of puzzlement. There are two plots in Gossamer Axe: the first of Christa attempting to rescue her lover, Siudb (read Judith) from the entrapment of the Sidhe. Christa has spent the last 200 years attempting a rescue after she escaped, only to find her way blocked. She then discovers heavy metal rock.

The second plot, which is tied in with the heavy metal, is the story of the women who Christa finds and forms into a band. All the women had been suffering at the hands of a male-dominated culture; from the singer whose jealous ex-lover first refuses to allow her to sing, and then tracks her down like a wandering piece of property, to the bassist, whose entire self-esteem is tied up with whomever she is having sex with than night, to the woman who was sexually abused by her father, to the woman whose day-to-day life is attacked by men who feel that a mere woman couldn't understand the power of their music. The growth in the power and self-assurance of the women parallel's Christa's increases in magical power, and while there are casualties along the way, you can really say that all are happy by the end of the tale.

Women -- read this book.  You may take a long hard look at the world
around you.  Men -- read this book with an open mind and heart, and you
may find yourself with an entirely new viewpoint on life.       [****]

Out of the House of Life
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Tor, 1990, 0-312-93126-3, 480 pp

Out of the House of Life is the latest in the Saint-Germain series, and provides a double chronicle -- the life of Saint-Germain, first as a slave then as a servant and finally as the high priest of the temple of Imhotep in ancient Egypt, and Madelaine de Montalia's adventures in the area of Egypt, this time in the early 19th century.

True to form of the previous Saint-Germain novels, Madelaine, the major character in this story, finds herself mixed up in the intrigue of a French archaeological dig. Besides the unwanted attentions of a deceitful french professor, Madelaine is in constant danger of being denounced and killed by the natives, who feel that an unmarried woman on her own is evil. What really makes this book special are the letters from Saint-Germain, giving his accounts of his life in the temple. Saint-Germain peels off layers of mystery of his past life as Madelaine digs and sifts through the sand to bring to light the ancient mysteries of Egypt. While Madelaine must leave Egypt at the end, we learn much more about both Madelaine and Saint-Germain than ever before. [****]

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 16)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 16 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Words of Wizdom Reviews by Chuq Von Rospach

But what is the literary merit of Science Fiction?
By what standards should it be judged?

By precisely the same standards of other fields of fiction. I myself prefer fiction which is entertaining, although some critics do not seem to care about this point. -- Robert Heinlein

Summer. Vacation time. A time to relax. A time to unwind. A time to read like crazy and try to catch up on all those great books that have been gathering dust through the deadlines. I'll spare you the commentary this time -- but if this column seems long, you should see how many books didn't make the cut.

The Quiet Pools
Michael P. Kube-McDowell
Ace, $17.95, May, 1990, 371pp, 0-441-69911-1

In the movie When Worlds Collide, one of the most powerful moments of the movie is when the general populace realizes that the people in the spaceship are going to leave them behind to die. It doesn't really matter that the ships can't carry everyone -- the riots begin as those who don't have seats decide to go and create an place -- or make sure that nobody goes.

It's easy to talk about sending people out to space. The people that are going, obviously are going to be motivated to make sure the project succeeds. But what about the people being left behind? What is in it for them? How do we keep the people staying home behind a multi-year, very expensive project designed to benefit only a small percentage of people?

This is what Michael Kube-McDowell has chosen to explore in his latest book, The Quiet Pools. Allied Transcon is funding a project to send five ships -- a few tens of thousands of people -- out into the Void. The first ship is on its way and the second ship is close to completion, and reality is setting in on Earth. Homeworld, a radical organization attempting to stop the migrations, is stepping up their activities and the people of the Earth are wondering why they're spending all this money. The "What's in it for me?" attitude that has plagued the American space program for so long is rearing its ugly head again.

This is the story of those who are left behind, and it's the story of those keeping the dream alive in the face of increasing odds. It is, even more importantly, a careful look at why some people drive themselves out into the unknown while others hunker down in their caves, afraid to stare at the stars. It is both very similar to and quite different from Dan Simmons' wonderful Phases of Gravity, and those that liked that work will definitely want to track this one down. It's not an easy read, it isn't supposed to be either escapist or particularly enjoyable and some folks are guaranteed to come out of this work feeling rather depressed. There's a lot to be depressed over here. On the other hand, this book says a number of very important things that fluffy mind-candy could never even hint at.

Readers should be aware that there is some sexually explicit material. Easily offended sensibilities need not apply -- but this is by far the best piece Kube-McDowell has written to date and one of the best books I've read in what's is turning out to be a fairly average year for books. Highly recommended. [****+]

Castleview
Gene Wolfe
Tor, 278pp, $18.95

If I was kidnapped by a Whitley Streiber Bug-Eyed Monster and told I could only take the books of one author with me to the dissecting table, I'd want to read Gene Wolfe in the waiting room. Wolfe is a writer that epitomizes not only what is good about the Science Fiction field, but an indication of what Science Fiction can be. His series about Urth, which starts with Shadow of the Torturer, is a classic of the field. His other works, from Free, Live Free to Soldier of the Mists, all go and redefine the pieces of the field that he chooses to touch. Some of his work is highly experimental -- Free, Live Free is a character study done in an SF setting, for instance and a highly complicated look at a number of different people. His works are noted for the precise language and exacting use of English, their complex tapestries of words and ideas and things. Wolfe is also a rare beast in that he's equally adept at Science Fiction as he is Fantasy. His lesser works (There are Doors and Soldier of Arete, for instance) are still the kind of book many writers wouldkill to be able to produce. He's the kind of writer that other writers look up to technically, and that readers have grown to expect a thought-provoking journey from.

One thing to be aware of: Wolfe requires the reader to be an active participant in the journey. He does not feed you pablum. His books are not one-evening entertainments to be read and discarded. They have texture and taste and at times they fight back -- Wolfe is the kind of writer that collaborates with a reader in a trip to the end of the book. There are nights when I don't have the energy to keep up with him and I turn to lighter fare -- but long after the mind candy is forgotten, a part of Wolfe sticks with me and whispers in my ear. There aren't many authors that can do that. Unfortunately.

Wolfe's latest is Castleview, a fantasy with Arthurian overtones. Castleview is a town in Illinois named because at various times you can see a castle in the distance. Into this come Will Shields, new owner of the car dealership, and his family. Then lots of weird things start happening.

Part of me is convinced that Wolfe specifically set out to write a book designed to drive book reviewers crazy. There's no way I can coherently explain the plot. Suffice it to say that whatever Arthurian stuff there is in Castleview is very subtle and usually hidden beneath the other layers -- there are vampires (maybe) and there are nasty people and a werewolf (maybe) and Fairie hanging off on the side and a cult religion that might be killing people and revenge and....

It could just be that someone's spiking the water in Castleview, too. What really got to me in the book was that, over a period of a number of hours, Wolfe throws in half a dozen fantasy genres, mixes thoroughly with a few contemporary sub-plots, throws a little Fairie dust on it and then puts it in front of a fun-house mirror just to watch everything bend and twist -- and at the same time makes it look as though, ho-hum, it's just an average night in Castleview, Illinois. There's a strong surreal sense to the book, as though Wolfe is seeing exactly how far he can push you before you throw the book down in disgust and say "I refuse to believe this!" -- if you accept flying castles, how about vampires? and werewolves? And King Arthur? and Fairies?

All at once? Somehow he pulls it off. Thinking back, I'm not sure how, but he had me pushing to the end, mentally thinking "what next? what's he going to do to me next?"

This is the kind of book that drives reviewers crazy -- it's good, but impossible to describe. You'll just have to read it for yourself to find out. And if you can explain it coherently, please tell me what it's about. [***+]

Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion Dan Simmons Foundation, $8.95 ea., 482+517pp, 0-385-26348-1, 0-385-26747-9

I'm reviewing this set together because this is really a two book novel. Are you ready for a 1,000 page novel (in actuality, between 1,100 and 1,200, because Doubleday went to a denser layout in Fall; if published in one volume, it would have rivalled some of Stephen King's hernia-makers). More importantly, can Dan Simmons write a successful 1,000 page novel?

In a word, yes. Hyperion has just won the Hugo award at the 1990 Worldcon, a fact that bothers me only because I felt the ending of the first volume was very abrupt, inconclusive and arbitrary (it is not an ending, merely a stopping point until you start up the second volume). I also think that of the two volumes, Hyperion is the weaker one.

On Hyperion, the time vaults are showing signs of preparing to open. The vaults, which are (as far as anyone can tell) travelling backward from the end of time for reasons that are unknown. A religion, the cult of the Shrike, has sprung up around the tombs, and it is said that parties of pilgrims that travel to the Shrike will have the wish of one of the pilgrims. Lest that sound like a good deal, the other pilgrims are all killed. The cult believes that when the vaults open the Shrike will be released on the world and that Armageddon will result.

Add to this the fact that Hyperion is a primary point of conflict between the Hegemony and the Ousters (if you think of Niven's Earth and Belters, but on a massive scale, you get the general drift), a quiet conflict that looks like it will finally erupt into full-scale interstellar war. Then there is the Core, the collection of Artificial Intelligence entities that deal with keeping the Web (a FTL point-to-point transfer system and massive data transfer network, among other things -- think instantaneous intergalactic subway system -- the kind of system that takes you close, but not to, most destinations) and the administrative aspects of the Hegemony alive.

Simmons has built an immense, complex tapestry to weave his tale. There are about a dozen sub-plots winding around here and there, popping in and heading back out for a while, each ultimately helping to carry the main storyline forward to the end.

Hyperion, better titled Prelude to Hyperion, I think, is the tale of the pilgrimage and mimics Chaucer's Canterbury Tales fairly closely. As such, there's not a lot of action in the book -- the Pilgrims are chosen, they travel to Hyperion and begin the pilgrimage to the time vaults. Along the way each pilgrim tells their story of why the roads of fate have carried them on this journey. This is told in a classic style that readers used to a faster-paced, action-based story might find a little tedious. Not a lot, relatively speaking, really happens -- Hyperion is an exercise in emulating Chaucer and getting everyone in the proper positions to start the real story.

Fall of Hyperion is where it all hits the fan. The Pilgrims arrive at the vaults and meet the Shrike, the Hegemony and the Ousters go at it, the time vaults open and the Shrike appears. To say much more would require heading off into plot spoilers, and to say it intelligently without making a hash of it would require pages -- Simmons is juggling many subplots around, and none of them turn out to be incidental to the story. This is one of those books where you really can't hint at the action without saying too much, and it's a story I don't want to take a chance of ruining for someone. It's too good.

If you tried to read Hyperion and found it slow for your tastes, I recommend pushing your way through -- if it doesn't completely grab you along the way, you'll find the second book (which has an entirely different pace and tone, much more modern in style) will more than make up for it. I think Fall of Hyperion stands alone, but this is a set that really should be read together. Together, they set a new standard for high-quality Science Fiction that authors are going to find themselves hard-pressed to meet. This book (it may be in two volumes, but it definitely one book) is one of the few books I've read in the last few years that I think has a chance of becoming a long-term classic of the field. It is definitely a must-read. [*****]

The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant
at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two
David Langford
Drunken Dragon Press (UK)

Good luck finding this book. I got mine from the Serconia Press people in the huckster room at Westercon, and I got lucky finding it. Tracking down your own copy in the United States will be a chore, but well worth it.

If it isn't obvious from the title, Langford has sharpened his legendary pencil and poked some fun at many of the big names of the field. Included in his list of victims are Harlan Ellison, Piers Anthony, Asimov, Lewis Carroll, Frank Herbert, Michael Moorcock (in a hilarious story called "The Mad Gods' Omelette"), Doc Smith and James White (with a parody of his Sector General stuff that will change how I view that series forever -- no higher praise can be made of a parody).

This is good stuff. Classic, top-level Langford. It not only kept me up far into the night, it kept up Laurie, because, try as I might, I couldn't stop giggling. Maybe we'll get lucky and someone here in the states will issue an edition. [****]

Polar City Blues
Katharine Kerr
Bantam, August, 1990, 288pp, $4.50, 0-553-28504-1

Katherine Kerr takes a break from her Deverry series and tries her hand at Science Fiction in Polar City Blues, a low-brow, down and dirty murder mystery/intrigue story set on the planet Hagar, a dry planet that's in the middle of competing factions just waiting for an excuse to come in and take over. A member of the Confederation Embassy is found dead -- murdered -- and with hints that he was under suspicions of working with Alliance (the other faction) we're suddenly in the middle of an interstellar Situation. Then people start dying, and there's a nasty new (and unknown) virus that's eating people and if things don't get fixed quickly, one or the other of the factions are going to come down and 'stabilize' Polar City and then all Hell will really break loose.

Oh, and did I mention the previously unknown aliens?

Polar City Blues is a fun romp. It's not deep or complex but it's a well-written combination of the SF field with the Mystery/Suspense field (similar, in many ways, to the works of John Stith, who with works like Redshift Redevous is showing you can cross these genre-lines without screwing one or the other side up) that will give you an enjoyable evening's read. Recommended. [***]

The Dragon Revenant
Katherine Kerr
Foundation, 403pp, $8.95, 0-385-41098-0

The Deverry series continues with book four, The Dragon Revenant. This review has spoilers, for which I apologize. If you wish to avoid them, skip past, but there's no way to discuss the heart of the book without giving stuff away.

You've been warned. In this book Kerr resolves much of the crisis that's been hanging through the story. In it, the thread that has tied the books together -- the vow of immortality by Nevyn until he can resolve the wryd of his love (currently reincarnated into the character of Jill) -- is resolved. So is the long-standing rivalry between Nevyn and the Old One, as they finally meet in a climactic battle and the Old One is permanently destroyed, not just in this world but beyond existence within the afterworld as well.

Dragon is, from accounts, the end of the first cycle of Deverry. Nevyn, the focus of the first three books, is moving offstage and finally seems to be in reach of his final rest. Not without cost: Jill, Rhodry's lover and chosen wife, is forced to make the choice between the man she loves and the wyrd she desires.

Kerr does some gutsy things in this book. First, she decides to retire the focus of her story and move on to a new storyline, probably focussing on Jill and Rhodry. The tone of the series seems to be in transition, and I think the future books will be very different from what we've seen so far. Another thing she did that both surprised and intrigued me -- she made a point of reminding both Nevyn and the readers that Nevyn, immortality and power or no, was not the demi-god-like figure he'd come to believe he was. He was a tool of the gods, true, but no more than that, and lest the readers forget like Nevyn had, the gods came down to make sure everyone understood where he stands in the scheme of things.

So Kerr moves on to deal with other things in Deverry, taking us along joyously to see where we end up. This is clearly the best book of the series to date. Kerr's skill as a writer has matured and she avoids some of the awkwardness that popped into the first book, and with all the stuff going on and the plotlines being resolved, the sense of marking time that sometimes pervaded the middle books is long gone ("We CAN'T solve the puzzle now! There's three more books to write!")

The entire Deverry series has been a fascinating, well-written work to date, but The Dragon Revenant is the book that makes it all shine like polished silver. If you're one of those people who waits for the series to be published before starting, now is the time to pick it up and jump in. Deverry is the story that shows how to move beyond the three-book-novel type of series into the kind of complex tapestry that makes all those pages worthwhile.

If I have a gripe, it's the book design. The book was typeset in Cochin, which, while a really pretty baroque face that goes well with the material in the book, is also a real pain in the eyes after a few hours of reading. This book kept me awake four straight nights past midnight while trying to finish it, and this typeface is not pleasant reading when you're tired. They would have been better off sticking with something a little more traditional and easier to deal with, frankly. [*****]

[continued]

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 17)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 17 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Words of Wizdom [Part 2 of 2]

Phoenix
Steven Brust
Ace, 256pp, $3.95, 0-441-66225-0

The Vlad Taltos series continues, and as usual Steven Brust writes a fine, enjoyable novel. It opens with Vlad being hired by a God to kill a King, and it ends with Vlad's entire life in tatters -- and Vlad happy for the first time in a long time.

Along the way, Vlad kills the King, he and Cawti finally call it quits (a long time coming and an appropriate action in the circumstances, but it still bothers me no end to have watched that relationship grow, stagnate and die over the length of the series), the Easterners revolt, all Hell breaks loose (fortunately not literally -- although Brust is certainly capable of throwing it in if he needs to).

In other words, the typical well-done Steven Brust book, a combination of emotionally powerful happenings, complex plot-twinings and a wry sense of humor (the humor in the book reminds me very much of Tom Baker as Dr. Who, who always had time for a sly comment as the world was about to explode around him -- a character balanced by equal parts of raw ego, terror and fear of failure). Most people have either discovered Brust by now and are overjoyed at the thought of a new book or are long disgusted and already reading the next review. If you're new to his books, don't start here -- go pick up Jhereg and start at the beginning. This is not a series where you can pop into the middle without getting hopelessly lost. [****]

Sparrowhawk
Thomas A. Easton
Ace, 240pp, $3.95, 0-441-77778-3

Thomas Easton's first novel is an interesting mix of hard science and wild speculation. Easton is the long-time reviewer for Analog (which serialized this work in 1989) and a trained biologist, and what he's done is try to write what is, for lack of a cleaner term, biological space opera.

Let me try to explain. In Easton's future world, biological breakthroughs have led to using genetically modified animals for vehicles: giant, Greyhound bus-sized pigeons for ambulances, sparrows for commercial jets, giant roaches, turtles and other beasties for automobiles. Anything you want, they can build through gene splicing and experimentation.

About ten pages into the book, I shook my head in disbelief. While the science is a pretty clear extrapolation of current trends, the logic of the situation is rather hard to swallow. But as I thought about it, I realized that Easton was only doing with biology the kind of semi-fictional handwaving we take for granted in the 'real' hard science fiction stories. We can accept faster than light space travel, teleportation, hand-held laser guns and the other trinkets and toys of the hard SF world, all of which are arguably closer to fantasy than reality, but when someone does the same in biology, we have trouble believing it, even though the science of Easton's police-cruiser Sparrowhawks are closer to reality than many of the concepts commonly used by other authors.

What I did was stop worrying about it. Pretty soon it really didn't matter -- Easton's written a good story here, and you can see the Roachsters and Turtles heading down the freeway, the Hawks and the 747-sized Sparrows flying the skies like planes. Around this he builds a fascinating action-adventure/mystery that's a lot of fun, even if it's not terribly hard to unravel.

All in all, a good, successful first outing that is a good read while rather quietly setting some of our preconceptions about what's Science and what's Fiction in this field on its ear. Definitely worth an evening of your time. [****]

N-Space
Larry Niven
Tor, September, 1990, 0-312-85089-3, 512pp, $19.95

Larry Niven has been writing SF for 25 years. For someone who pretty much cut his teeth on Niven's work, that scares me a bit. It's hard to realize I've been reading him that long. He's simply always been there.

To honor this anniversary, Tor books has put together a collection of Niven material. Some of it is reprint: excepts from his books, some of his more famous stories. Some of it is new, like the cult classic "Down In Flames" -- long distributed through gray-market channels but never before published. "Down In Flames" is the outline of the story that proves that all of Known Space is a shuck, a hoax. You have to read it to believe it.

Each work has either a forward or an afterward, and there's a lot of good material both by and about Niven. This book is a good overview of his career -- the only thing I found missing is a story from his Warlock series. I wish it had "What Good is a Glass Dagger". Also missing is a Hanville Svetz story, and a Draco's Tavern story, and...

Which is probably why these things are missing -- Niven's done so much that's notable that you have to draw the line somewhere. I do wish it'd been drawn on the other side of Warlock, though.

For Niven fans, a gottahave. It also makes a really good introduction to the writer for people that are just starting out. It was for me a nice way to spend some time with an old friend. [****]

The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventh Annual Collection Gardner Dozois St. Martin's, 598pp, $24.95, 0-312-04451-8

There's not a lot I can say about this collection that I haven't said about previous collections. Suffice it to say that this is the book I keep around so I don't need to store the entire year's supply of magazines. Dozois doesn't publish every worthy story, but he comes close. He has twenty-five of the top works of 1989, including Mike Resnick's "For I have Touched the Sky", Connie Willis' "At the Rialto", Michael Swanwick's "The Edge of the World", Alan Brennert's "The Third Sex" and more. This, of all of the "Best of" collections in the field, is the one that really gives you a feel for what happened in the short fiction world that year. [****+]

Universe 1
Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber
Foundation, 449pp, $8.95, 0-385-26771-1

When I was growing up, there was an anthology called Orbit, edited by a person named Damon Knight. Little did I know when I was grabbing these off the library shelves that I was not just getting a book of stories, but I was getting a book of some of the best of the field. Later on, Terry Carr started Universe, another anthology of original fiction. Between these two editors, a foundation for a lot what makes modern SF successful was laid (and, coincidentally, I was made a fan of the genre). Damon isn't editing Orbit any more, and Terry Carr has left us long before we were ready to say goodbye, but in the hands of Karen Haber and her husband, Robert Silverberg, Universe lives on. This, the 18th volume of the series (why is Universe 18 inexplicably named Universe 1? Don't ask me. Only the publisher knows) is the first since Carr's death, and shows that the series has been placed in very good hands. There is a wide range of styles and ideas here, from Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Translator" (my personal favorite) to Barry Malzberg's "Playback" to M.J. Engh's "Moon Blood". The only thing these stories have in common is a commitment to strong, quality writing. I'm very glad to see Universe alive and kicking, and thrilled that it's in the hands it's in. Highly recommended. [****+]

Blood is not Enough
Ellen Datlow
Berkley, 308pp, $3.95, 0-425-12178-X

One more anthology, this a mix of new and original material. Ellen Datlow is Fiction Editor for Omni, and has started editing a series of theme anthologies with a twist (the other one that's been published is Alien Sex, which I haven't gotten my hands on yet). Blood is not Enough is a vampire anthology. Actually, it's more an anthology on vampirism in its many forms -- these are not the bite them in the neck type ghoulies.

These are the suck them until they're dry vampires of Harlan Ellison's "Try a Dull Knife" (always a story that gives me nightmares after re-reading it), and the vampires of fear and death of Dan Simmons' "Carrion Comfort" (by far the most powerful story in the bunch -- can Simmons write anything that is merely good? He's likely to give a lot of authors inferiority complexes by the time he's done). There's Ed Bryant's "Good Kids", which shows that real vampires might be the least of your worries.

Basically, there's a lot of really good stuff in here. A fine theme anthology -- Datlow is a very good editor who seems to be able to coax the best out of her writer's. If this is an indication of what her books are going to publish, I'll be sucking each one dry as it comes out. [****]

Golden Fleece
Robert J Sawyer
Questar, December, 1990, 250pp, $4.95, 0-445-21078

I really wanted to like Golden Fleece. It is a tale of an insane intelligent computer on an interstellar ship named JASON that Has A Secret and is willing to go to any length, including murder, to protect that secret. The book, in fact, opens as we watch Jason (the AI persona and point of view character) not only commit a murder, but do so both gleefully and with the nastiness of a cat playing with a mouse. It's clear, from the beginning, that the character that is speaking to us is not the hero of the story. The similarities between this book and Christie's Murder of Roger Ackroyd are clear, although Sawyer definitely heads off in his own directions.

And thus lies the problem with the book. This is a telling of the story of 2001: A Space Odyssey from the point of view of HAL. But being locked into HAL creates some serious limitations to what Sawyer can do to tell the story and make it interesting to the reader. Structurally, he can't switch from first person to an omniscient viewpoint without screwing up the story, but he can't successfully tell the story purely from a first person POV -- especially one locked into an immobile computer.

So from the very start Sawyer has done the writerly equivalent of painting himself into a corner and then depending on his skills to paint a door into the wall to make his exit. JASON has microphones and cameras everywhere -- hallways, bedrooms, bathrooms, in the closets, under the bed -- he does a better job of surveillance than Colossus did in The Forbin Project (one must wonder how the citizens of this ship had to feel about all this 'benign' oversight by the computer, yet not once did we see any indication of anyone worrying about not having any privacy at all about anything). That's a very expensive proposition and I wondered what justification the builders of the ship could have to convince everyone, especially the Governments that funded the ship, that it was necessary to watch people that closely (an authorial necessity, yes. But would a ship really be built with this level of watchfulness? I can't buy it, except perhaps under a very tight autocratic dictatorship -- but would they send people to the stars where they couldn't be completely controlled?)

The authorial manipulations get worse, though. At some point, Sawyer decided that he really had to get inside the head of Aaron, the computer's main antagonist. To do this without breaking point of view, he had JASON take a brain dump of Aaron and sticks it into a few spare gigabytes of RAM and simply simulates the persona of Aaron, neuron by neuron -- in real time. Just an off-the-cuff weekend project for a self-actualized AI like JASON, you understand.

Now, if you can stretch your disbelief across all of the technical and structural problems, you've got a pretty good story here. JASON is a murderer and is definitely Up To Something. What it is, he's not saying. Aaron, on the other hand, has to solve the murder and figure out the mystery before he finds himself breathing vacuum himself. It's a pretty good mystery with pretty good writing -- I simply found myself constantly distracted by the man behind the curtain waving his hands and blowing lots of smoke.

If Golden Fleece is a failure, it's because Sawyer set his sights very high and found that his writing skills weren't quite up to the task. How well you like this book will depend on how forgiving you are of watching the author manipulate the story to make what needs to happen happen. For me, I could never forget that Sawyer was there, directing traffic and could never suspend disbelief long enough to let the story work. A good, but unsuccessful first novel from someone that I think is going to continue setting unreasonable goals for himself -- and start reaching them. [**]

The Zork Chronicles
George Alec Effinger
Avon, 290pp, $4.50, 0-380-75388-X

I'm a long-time fan of Zork, having played it on the original MIT machines back when personal computers were still too weak to support it. I'm also a big fan of Effinger, whose When Gravity Fails and The Fire in the Sun are wonderful works. So when I found out that he was writing the novelization of the computer game, I had to see what came out.

I wish I could say I liked it. Part of the problem is inherent in the idea: how do you write a narrative of a computer game? Effinger solved the problem by writing it from the point of view of the character you control while playing the game. That's okay as far as it goes, but it wears thin after a while. The other inherent problem is that this kind of book ends up turning into a travelogue. First you visit the unicorn, then you visit the volcano, then you do this, then you do that. Zork fans can follow along and enjoy the references and watch the progress, but everyone else is likely to either be very confused or bored.

Effinger tries to rise above this by using the Zork story as a baseline while tossing in lots of other stuff. There's a lot of interesting (and sometimes wickedly funny) comments, in jokes, commentary on people in the field, awards and organizations. When this stuff works, it's hilarious. When it sputters, everything comes to a crashing halt. Unfortunately, it sputters far too often to support the tale, which ultimately becomes boring and sketchy.

All this book really needs is a good rewrite to tighten up the weak spots, clear out the deadwood and the gags that didn't work and to fix up some of the errors in consistency. Unfortunately, in a knock-off product like this, it didn't get that kind of care and what we get is a prototype of what could have been as good a book as McCrumb's Bimbo's of the Death Sun, but what is, when we're done, merely is an inadequate work for any but the most hard core of Zork fans. [*]

------ End ------

Issue 28, Fall 1990 (part 18)

Electronic OtherRealms #28
Fall, 1990
Part 18 of 18

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

Your turn Letters from our readers

[[Most of the mail OtherRealms got over last issue was, of course, about the termination of the Electronic OtherRealms. Since I cover that in my editorial, I'm not repeating a lot of that mail in the lettercol unless there's something notable in the letter. My thanks to everyone who wrote on the subject, supportive or not- chuq]]

Wayne G. Morrison

I want to thank you for mentioning Westlin' Wind in the Fall '89 issue. I don't know if I'd ever heard of Axolotl Press prior to that, but if so it hadn't made much of an impression on my memory. Ever since fortuitously stumbling upon Moonheart one winter five years ago, I have been an avid de Lint fan. I have snapped up anything by him I could find, searched diligently for his "out of stock indefinitely" book I have only heard the title of, and recommend him to anyone who will talk books with me. (This has caused some amount of frustration for my wife, herself an unpublished author and de Lint fan, in that she doesn't think I'll ever feel the same about her work.) Now that I have been given a reason to acknowledge Axolotl's existence, I have given them a nice amount of business- three books and one magazine in the space of two or three months. Anyway, I wanted to thank you for putting me on to them and so further enabling me to fulfill my de Lint addiction.

[[Then you'll be thrilled to know that de Lint's latest in the Moonheart cycle, Ghostwind is now available from Axolotl/Pulphouse Press.- chuq]]

Wayne Throop

Sorry to hear that electronic OtherRealms is soon to be no more, but I certainly sympathize with your reasons. It might be realistic to boost the reviews-to-noise ratio of available USENET by creating rec.arts.sf-reviews a-la rec.arts.movies.reviews. While it is a far cry from "filling" the void left by OtherRealms, it would at least provide a service to the uunet without the noise that makes sf-lovers such a time-sink.

Has anybody else proposed members of such a class of things? Do you have any thoughts on the pros and cons, or of how to set such a thing up? Should I contact the RAMR moderator for advice, do you suppose? If a chicken and a half lays an egg and a half... uh, sorry... I get carried away with long lists of questions.

[[As I told Wayne in mail, one of the reasons I gave as much notice as I did about the termination of Eeyore was because I hoped someone would take the hint and volunteer to either start their own on-line fanzine or some kind of moderated group. With a year's notice, the hooks could be in place and the network could move on without missing a beat.

It didn't happen- frankly, I didn't expect it to. Wayne was the only person who suggested the idea, and is still trying to figure out if he has the time to do it. So here's a public call to the people on the net: quit complaining about Eeyore going away and do something to replace it. Complaining is easy. Try contributing. rec.arts.sf-lovers.reviews is a great idea. I'd hate to see absolutely nothing come out of the years of publishing on the net except some fond memories -- if you really want, you can keep what I started alive. -- chuq]]

Cathy Howard

My city launched a recycling campaign on Earth Day which is still going strong. I will admit my comments were (1) about time, and (2) they need to recycle more types of things.

What's being recycled is aluminum cans, clear glass, newspapers, plastic milk jugs and soft drink containers. It's made a real difference in the amount of trash outside this house. I hope they expand the program in the future.

I'm sorry you are having to cut back on OtherRealms' publication, but agree heartily that you can't let it take over your and Laurie's life.

"Behind the Scenes" by Michael Kube-McDowell was a fascinating account of how he wrote The Quiet Pools. I hung on every word.

You'd mentioned you're working on a book. How is it going?

And, of course, thanks for the reviews. Your zine has pointed me in the direction of more than one book whose charms I'd overlooked.

[[I'm happy to say that, to some degree, my pessimistic view on Earth Day wasn't warranted. People do seem to be taking things more seriously. I'm encouraged, but we have a long way to go (on the other hand, I recently read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, a classic work in environmentalism. How far we've come is amazing, especially when you realize how far we have left to travel). We're now recycling cans and bottles (we've always recycled newspaper) and I've started mulching the cut grass back into the lawn to reduce garden wastes. By spring I hope to have a full compost pile running, in fact, and I'm starting to take white paper to work, where Apple has a full-scale waste-paper recycling plan going. Earth Day was the last straw in getting me motivated on a lot of this- and it seems to have had that effect elsewhere, too. Maybe there is hope for humanity.

The status of my novel is that it's moving forward very slowly. Before I retired from working the Writer's Workshop on CompuServe, I ran the first few chapters through, and it was pretty heavily (and correctly) savaged. I've been slowly rebuilding the story to remove the more obvious stupidities, but between OtherRealms, the Nebula Awards stuff I do for SFWA and work I haven't had a lot of free time. When I thought I was going to have a few weeks of evenings free, Marion Zimmer Bradley got ill and I found myself helping out with the layout of the Summer issue of her magazine.As soon as I finish this issue I should have six or seven weeks without ANY deadlines (other than work), and I plan on taking the phone off the hook so nobody can borrow it. With any luck, I can be halfway through the fixed-up first draft before the end of October. We'll see. I'd hoped to finish Marowan by year-end, but right now that doesn't look likely. But it's happening. Slowly, but it's happening.- chuq]]

Arthur Hlavaty

I've been telling fanzine fans for years that apas, and now nets, don't just suck talent out of the zines but open up two-way traffic. I'm glad to see you of an example of this, and I look forward to the new print-only version of OtherRealms.

I'm a bit bemused to see people burning out on the nets when I haven't even started on them. It reminds me of the way I felt in my 30s, when many of my contemporaries were on their second marriage and I hadn't had one yet.

[[I agree with you about APAs- I think they're a place where you can stay involved when the time it takes to do an independent zine just doesn't exist. For newer people, building mailing lists and learning the ropes can be a major problem, and APAs definitely help that. For some folks, it's a choice between an APAzine and gafiating and I'm glad they have the choice.

I'm not so sure about networks. They seem to be sucking potential talent out of both. There are not many people who are making the transition from network fandom to traditional fanzines- network fandom encourages shallow work with immediate feedback and it's easy to do (although it isn't easy to do well). Fanzine publishing takes a lot of time and energy, and so it's easier just to stay on the nets. Some people make the transition, but they're likely folks who would have found fanzines anyway.- chuq]]

We Also Heard From: Mark Hill, Sheryl Birkhead, R. Allen Jervis, Larry Estep, Mike Gunderloy, Evelyn C. Leeper, Richard Wexelblat, Alex Heatley, joan hanke-woods, Teddy Harvid and David Shea. Thanks to everyone for writing.

Masthead

OtherRealms Science Fiction and Fantasy in Review

Issue 28, Fall, 1990

Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach All Rights Reserved

OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.

OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.

No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other publication without permission of the author.

All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.

OtherRealms is published three or four times a year. Next deadling: December 1, 1990.

Editors
Chuq Von Rospach
Laurie Sefton

Contributing Editors
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Charles de Lint
Dean R. Lambe
Lawrence Watt-Evans

Contacting us

Chuq Von Rospach
chuq@apple.com
GEnie: CHUQ

Laurie Sefton
lsefton@apple.com
CompuServe: 74010,3542
Delphi: LSEFTON

U.S. Mail
35111-F Newark Blvd. Suite 255
Newark, CA 94560

Subscriptions

OtherRealms is available free fro arranged trades, your published letters, articles, reviews, or artwork, or at the whim of the Editors. If you prefer spending money, send $2.85 for one issue or $11 for four. Checks should be made out to "Chuq Von Rospach". Canadian and overseas people, please write about rates. Because my bank things foreign currency is the spawn of Satan, all monies must be in U.S. Dollars.

Submissions

OtherRealms publishes reviews of Science Fiction, Fantasy and related books. Authors are soliciety to discuss their work in the Behind the Scenes section. This series allows you to describe the background and history of your works in the kind of detail that helps make a book successful but isn't obvious from the writing. Let us know why the book is special to you.

Please query everything except reviews, and please include a SASE if you want a response.

Artwork

Submissions are welcome, but be aware that we only use one or two pieces per artist each issue. We need work of all sizes and types, from good full page or cover works to clipart. If possible, send a good reproduction. If you wish the art returned after use, please let us know.

Letters

We solicit your feedback and comments, since they help us make a better fanzine. All letters will be considered for publication unless otherwise requested.

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