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SFSF CommentaryCommentary 80A80A August 2010 SSCCAANNNNEERRSS 11999900––22000022 Doug Barbour Ditmar (Dick Jenssen) Bruce Gillespie Paul Ewins Alan Stewart SF Commentary 80A August 2010 118 pages Scanners 1990–2002 Edited and published by Bruce Gillespie, 5 Howard Street, Greensborough VIC 3088, Australia as a supplement to SF Commentary 80, The 40th Anniversary Edition, Part 1, also published in August 2010. Email: [email protected] Available only as a PDF from Bill Burns’s site eFanzines.com. Download from http://efanzines.com/SFC/SFC80A.pdf This is an orphan issue, comprising the four ‘Scanners’ columns that were not included in SF Commentary 77, then had to be deleted at the last moment from each of SFCs 78 and 79. Interested readers can find the fifth ‘Scanners’ column, by Colin Steele, in SF Commentary 77 (also downloadable from eFanzines.com). Colin Steele’s column returns in SF Commentary 81. This is the only issue of SF Commentary that will not also be published in a print edition. Those who want print copies of SF Commentary Nos 80, 81 and 82 (the combined 40th Anniversary Edition), should send money ($50, by cheque from Australia or by folding money from overseas), traded fanzines, letters of comment or written or artistic contributions. Thanks to Ditmar (Dick Jenssen) for providing the cover at short notice, as well as his explanatory notes. 2 CONTENTS 5 Ditmar: Dick Jenssen: ‘Alien’: the cover graphic Scanners Books written or edited by the following authors are reviewed by: 7 Bruce Gillespie David Lake :: Macdonald Daly :: Stephen Baxter :: Ian McDonald :: A. Susan Williams and Richard Glyn Jones Ursula K. Le Guin :: Samuel R. Delany :: Lou Aronica, Graham Joyce :: Paul Kincaid :: Jack Finney :: Shawna McCarthy, Amy Stout, Patrick LoBrutto and Michael Conner :: Margaret Weis :: Poppy Z. Brite :: Betsy Mitchell :: Robert R. McCammon :: Ellen Datlow :: Nancy A. Collins, Edward E. Kramer and Martin H. Greenberg Neal Barrett Jr :: Robert Bloch :: Sean McMullen :: Oliver Sacks :: Leanne Frahm :: Terence M. Green :: Paul Voermans :: Greg Egan :: Bill Congreve :: Diana Wynne Jones :: George Saunders :: Dave Wolverton Geoff Ryman :: A. S. Byatt :: Peter Crowther :: Mary Doria Russell :: Chuck Palahnuik :: Lisa Goldstein :: Ian Hamilton :: Robert Charles Wilson :: Connie Willis :: Steven Millhauser :: Jonathan Strahan and Jeremy G. Byrne John Kessel :: Hannes Bok :: Stephen D. Korshak :: Richard Harland :: Gillian Rubinstein :: Rory Barnes :: Virgil Finlay :: Jack Cady :: Jonathan Carroll :: Chris Gregory :: Stephen Dedman :: Yvonne Rousseau :: R. A. Lafferty :: Peter Hoeg :: George Turner :: Alan Garner :: Peter Delacorte :: Janeen Webb :: Terry Dowling and Van Ikin :: Rosaleen Love :: Catherine Jinks :: Sean Williams :: Kerry Greenwood :: Leigh Blackmore :: Paul Collins :: D. G. Compton :: Alison Goodman :: John Marsden :: Brian W. Aldiss :: Christopher Evans :: Alan Lightman :: Frank Weissenborn and Guy Browning :: Tony Daniel :: Robert Holdstock :: Cordwainer Smith :: Melissa Luchashenko :: Sophie Masson :: Dave Luckett :: Lord Dunsany :: Gore Vidal :: Christine Harris :: Andrew Weiner :: David G. Hartwell :: Peter MacNamara and Margaret Winch :: Lucy Sussex :: Andrew Whitmore :: Iain Banks :: Michael Marshall Smith Douglas Adams :: David Garnett :: Jane Gardam :: Brian Greene :: M. John Harrison :: Andrew M. Butler :: Neil Gaiman :: Dave McKean :: Mark Buckingham :: Philip K. Dick :: Henry Kuttner :: Cameron Rogers :: Dean Koontz :: Anthony Bilau :: Edward Gorman :: Anne Halam :: Gwyneth Jones :: John Sladek :: Anne McCaffrey :: Lela Dowling :: Cynthia Martin :: Michael Chabon :: Maxine McArthur :: Michelle Marquardt Fred Von Tobel :: Brynne Stephens :: Christopher Priest :: A. F. Kidd and Rick Kennett :: Patrick O’Leary :: Karen L. Judith Raphael Buckrich :: Jack Dann :: Gary Crew :: Hellekson :: Stuart Coupe, Julie Ogden and Robert Hood :: Ali Kayn :: Judith Merril and Emily Pohl-Weary Damien Broderick :: Cherry Wilder :: H. G. Wells :: 3 90 Doug Barbour Guy Gavriel Kay :: Poppy Z. Brite :: Michael Barley :: Spider and Jeanne Robinson :: Eileen Kernaghan :: Linda Smith :: Terence M. Green :: Dave Duncan :: Robert J. Sawyer :: Melanie Rawn :: Ursula K. Le Guin :: Paul DiFilippo :: Barbara Hambly :: C. J. Cherryh :: Jack Dann :: Dan Simmons :: Jeff Noon Jack Finney :: Frank Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson 109 Alan Stewart Stephen Baxter :: Vernor Vinge :: Philip Jose Farmer Gene Wolfe :: Piers Anthony :: Charles Sheffield :: Allen Steele :: Harry Turtledove :: Richard Paul Russo :: Spider and Jeanne Robinson :: Kathe Koja 113 Paul Ewins S. N. Lewitt :: Bill Ransom :: Amy Thomson :: Katharine Kerr :: Don Callander :: Kristine Kathryn Rusch W. R. Thompson 4 ‘The Alien’: the cover graphic DITMAR (DICK JENSSEN) Almost every Friday evening a small group of SF fans, friends placed either at the centre of a wall, or at a wall join — and it used and family meet for dinner at Ciao Restaurant in downtown a very wide angle lens: 12 mm. The resulting image was surprisingly Melbourne. Elaine Cochrane joins the group whenever possi- pleasing, and I sent Bill Wright a copy. He asked for it to be the next ble, and a few months ago sent me the following email: Interstellar Ramjet Scoop cover (his fanzine), and you can find this at: http://efanzines.com/IRS/index.htm: it’s the June 2010 issue. At Ciao last night, Vida (Yvonne Rousseau’s mathematician daughter) said she’d been trying to puzzle out a reflection problem. I emailed the triagonal image to Vida, together with an alternate version in which I replaced the human with an alien spacefarer. Vida If you stood at the centre of a (regular) pentagonal room with responded with two wonderful comments. She felt that the geometry, mirrored walls, how would your reflection(s) appear? the architecture of the chamber would be greatly enhanced if the She says she’s been in a equilateral triangle room and the effect joins of the walls could be delineated. She also — bless her — is of being in a kaleidoscope. preferred the alien to the human. Is this the sort of thing that Vue’s ray-tracing ability could model? I say ‘bless her’ because the alien was an idiosyncratic tribute on my The ‘Vue’ to which Elaine refers is a world-3D-modelling software part to Murray Leinster, who wrote one of my favorite SF stories — package from E-on Software (http://www.e-onsoftware.com/), and and one which I consider to be canonical — ‘First Contact’. As David which is available in a multiplicity of forms, ranging from free to Drake, Eric Flint and Jim Baen point out in their anthology The World US$2290. The version which I have is way down the ladder at Turned Upside Down, Leinster wrote other stories on the ‘first contact’ US$600, and since it was an upgrade, cost a mere US$200. It does theme, and they printed his ‘The Aliens’. The aliens were called more than I really need, and produces images which I am more than plumies due a feathery-appendaged head, and lived on a methane- happy with. From my experience with the software, it seemed quite hydrogen planet circling a star of vastly different temperature, and certain that my Vue 8 Complete would do the job, and likely would knew only of bronze or light metals, not iron or steel. An unfortunate not force me to exercise my wits too greatly — as I have said before, accident brings humans and plumies in contact with each other — I enjoy a challenge and tend to respond (provided, of course, that I literally when their two spaceships touch and fuse together. How the think the task will be successfully completed — easily, if possible). ships are separated, and how a mutual acceptance of each other is effected, is the thrust of the story. If you look carefully at the cover The first graphic was a simple triagonal vertical tube of three mirrors, graphic you might be able to see the feathered helmet of the alien. with mirrors for the base and top. For a focal point of interest, I situated a spaceman in this chamber. A point light (essentially a The Vue working window is effectively divided into four sub-windows naked bulb) was placed just below the ceiling; a spotlight played on (there are menu rows above, and a ‘catalog list’ on the right), but the human; there was a light mist in the tube; and the camera was these windows are the main work areas. There is a view from above 5 the ‘world’, one from the side, and one from the front. The fourth dimensional object, into Vue’s world. (It also saved some time ...) area gives a very-low-resolution image of what the camera ‘sees’. A The octahedron was then given a mirror surface. Fortunately the click of the mouse, however, gives a much higher resolution image Mathematica model is not solid, so the camera and the alien could — still small — in a minute or so inside this fourth window. be placed inside it. As an example, the view from the top of the world setup for the cover Because I have a warped outlook on the world, I had the alien doing graphic is given below. The alien is inside an octahedral chamber — a hand-stand. A point light was placed at the apex of the octahedron, although it is relatively easy to construct such an enclosure in Vue, and three spotlights were aimed at the alien to bathe him in as I made sure that the angles of the walls would be exact by importing uniform a light as possible. the Platonic Octahedral Solid from Mathematica 7, as a three- Some mist was added. The main work involved was in making the wall joins obvious. For this, twelve, long cylinders were placed at every join. Not a difficult task inasmuch as Vue makes exact place- ment and exact slopes a relatively easy task. The diagram should make things a bit clearer — the camera is not easily seen because it’s partly hidden by one of the horizontal wall join cylinders.