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12-1-1995 SFRA ewN sletter 220 Science Fiction Research Association

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.11;'4 Review== Issue #220, November/December1995

IN THIS ISSUE: SFRA INTERNAL AFFAIRS: President's Message (Sanders) ...... 5 Works in Progress ...... 6 SFRA Members & Friends ...... 6 Membership Directory Updates ...... 6

NEWS AND INFORMATION ...... 9 FEATURES Special Feature: A Certain Inherent Kindness: An Interview with Lois McMaster Bujold (Levy) ...... 15

REVIEWS: Nonfiction: Ashley, Mike and William G. Contento. The Super­ natural Index: A Listing of Fantasy, Supernatural, Occult, Weird, and Horror Anthologies. (Morrison) ... 33 Bloom, Harold (Ed). Classic Fantasy Writers. (Bogstad) ... 35 Bloom, Harold (Ed). Classic Science Fiction Writers. (Stoskopf) ...... 36 Bloom, Harold (Ed). Modern Fantasy Writers. (Gordon) .. 37 Conger, Syndy McMillen. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Language of Sensibility. (Kaveny) ...... 38 Harbottle, Phillip & Stephen Holland. British Science Fiction and Magazines, 1949-1956: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide. (Hall) ...... 40 Jacob, Merle 1. and Hope Apple. To Be Continued: An Annotated Guide to . (Blackwood) ...... 41 Larson, Randall D. Films Into Books: An Analytical Bibliography of Film Novelizations, Movie, and TV Tie-Ins. (Barron) ...... 43 MacNee, Marie J. (Ed). Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Writers. (Barron) ...... 44 Pastourmatzi, Damna. Bibliography of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror: 1960-1993. (Hall) ...... 46 Rothschild, D. Aviva. Graphic Novels: A Bibliographic Guide to Book-length Comics. (Williams) ...... 47

SFRA Review #220, page 1 Treglown, Jeremy. : A Biography. (Kelleghan) ...... 48 Zipes, Jack. as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale. (Lindow) ...... 50

Fiction and Poetry: Bear, Greg. . (Davis) ...... 55 Blake, Sterling (). Chiller. (Hellekson) .... 58 Brin, David. Brightness Reef. (Kelley) ...... 60 De Lint, Charles. The Ivory and the Horn: A Newford Collection. (Lindow) ...... 61 Loudon, Jane (Webb) (Ed. by Alan Rauch). The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century. (Bleiler) ...... 62 Lunde, David. Blues for Port City. (Lindow) ...... 64 Mohan, Kim (Ed). : The Anthology. (Lewis) ...... 66 Schlobin, Roger. Fire and Fur: The Last Sorcerer Dragon. (Bartter) ...... 67 Smith, Clark Ashton (Ed. by Will Murray with Steve Behrends). Tales of Zothique. (Sanders) ...... 68

Publishers' Addresses ...... 70

SFRA Membership Information & Application ... 71

SFRA Review #220, page 2 .11;'4 Review=== Editor - Amy Sisson Assistant Editor - Paul Abell Assistant Nonfiction Editor - B. Diane Miller

SFRA Review (ISSN 1068-395X) is published 6 times per year by the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) and dis­ tributed to SFRA members. Individual issues are not for sale. For information on the SFRA, see the description and applica­ tion at the back of this issue.

Please submit reviews, news items, letters, etc. to Amy Sisson, Editor, SFRA Review, 3845 Harrison St. #103, Oakland CA 94611; telephone (510) 655-3711; e-mail "[email protected]". Submissions are acceptable in any for­ mat: hardcopy, e-mail, Macintosh disk, or IBM disk (saved as text-only or ASCII). Please note the SFRA Review has an agree­ ment with the Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Review Annual (Robert Collins & Michael M. Levy, Eds.) under which reviews are exchanged between publications. If you do not wish your review to be submitted to the Annual, please indicate the same.

Typeset by Amy Sisson on a Macintosh SE/30. Printed by Sir Speedy, Oakland, California.

SFRA Executive Committee

PRESIDENT VICE PRESIDENT Joe Sanders Milton Wolf 6354 Brooks Blvd. University Library/322 Mentor OH 44060 Univ. of Nevada - Reno Reno NV 89557-0044 SECRETARY TREASURER Joan Gordon Robert J. Ewald 1 Tulip Lane 552 W. Lincoln St. Commack NY 11725 Findlay OH 45840

IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT David G. Mead 6021 Grassmere5 Corpus Christi TX 78415

SFRA Review #220, page 3 The Proceedings of the 1993 Science Fiction Research Association Conference is now available from Borgo Press. Learn why the Sci­ Fi Channel, as well as NBC and CBS affiliates, covered part or all of the SFRA conference held in Reno, Nevada. Featuring some of science fiction's well-known authors: 1) 's "The Imaginative Future" 2) 's "Science Fiction as Fantasy" 3) joan Slonczewski's "Bells and Time" 4) 's "Epistle to SFRAans" 5) Lisa Goldstein's "The Imaginative Future" 6) james Gunn's "Imagining the Future" And some of science fiction's established scholars: 1) Gary Westfahl's "In Research of Wonder: The Future of SCience Fiction Criticism" 2) Susan Stone-Blackburn's "Feminist Nurturers and Healers" 3) Rob Latham's "Youth Culture and Cybernetic Technologies" 4) Bud Foote's "Kim Stanley Robinson: Premodernist" 5) Anne Balsamo's "Signal to Noise: On the Meaning of Subculture" 6) Mark Waldo's "Mary Shelley's Machines in the Garden" 7) Donald M. Hassler's "Machen, Williams and Autobiography: Fantasy and Decadence" If you like HUMOR and want some good SF laughs: 1) 's "Humor in SCience Fiction" is not only excellent scholarship, but a HOWL! 2) Paul joseph's and Sharon Carton's "Perry Mason in Space: A Call For More Inventive Lawyers in Television Science Fiction" is a provocative and highly entertaining examination by two lawyers. 3) Dr. JoAnne Pransky's "Social Adjustments to a Robotic Future" is a tongue-in-cheek tour de force by this self-styled ROBOTIC PSYCHIATRIST, ala Susan Calvin. And if you like ART: The text is enhanced by the works of RODNEY MARCHETTI, and a fine piece of original research by Dr. jane P. DaVidson on "A Golem of Her Own: The Fantastic Art and Literature of Leilah Wendell" - a denizen of 's New Orleans.

ORDER FROM: Borgo Press, Box 2845, San Bernardino CA 92406. Price: hardcover $41, soft cover $31. Special price for SFRA members: hardcover $21, softcover $11.

SFRA Review #220, page 4 '11;'1 Internal Affairs =

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Once upon a time, though within the lives of many of us, SF was a tiny, segregated area of popular fiction. Its readers were a minority interested in imagining how things could change and willing to stretch their imaginations to encom­ pass unusual stories. Nowadays, SF imagery has so thoroughly permeated our culture that sci-fi fans can follow endless se­ ries of books that offer comfortable familiarity. But "real" SF, the fiction that has been developed by writers and editors inside our little area of the publishing industry, remains a minority taste.

Editorials in F&SF and Asimov's have been grappling with this issue lately, encouraged by surveys that suggest the maga­ zines' readership is aging and thinning. , in a recent Asimov's, suggests that we need "an entry-level SF magazine, heavily but not totally media-oriented" to entice Trek people, etc., into approaching more sophisticated fic­ tion. My first reaction was that we already had such a maga­ zine - SF Age - but perhaps that's not entry-level enough to lure new readers.

To some extent, as a category of popular fiction, SF has been controlled by market pressures. That's why Don Wollheim published John Norman novels: so he also could publish Michael G. Coney novels. However, the apparent lev­ eling off of the market for more challenging SF is troubling. I'm not naive enough to imagine that the more complex, so­ phisticated SF that many of us enjoy will disappear. Still, I worry about the prospect of magazines adopting a Stealth-SF policy, editors like Dozois hiding their preferred stories un­ der a layer of sci-fi. When students in the courses I teach are asked during the first class what they've been reading lately, they used to mention Trek novels. This year, they have be­ gun to mention R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike. It's enough to make me nostalgic for the good old days when Piers An­ thony was their favorite ...

So I think we should be concerned about this possible trend. As teachers, we want to help students move along as far as they can. As scholars, we need other people to talk with. If

SFRA Review #220, page 5 the taming and dumbing-down of SF continues, our activities are going to be severely limited.

This has been a public service message. Volunteer to help David Mead and Muriel Becker prepare SFRA's junior high SF anthology. The genre you save may be our own.

If you're one of the few, the proud, the brave people who bought a copy of my Greenwood Press book, , please let me know so that I can send you corrected copies of the pages with missing lines. - joe Sanders

WORKS IN PROGRESS

I'm writing my dissertation on the alternate history and would love any news, help, updates, or whatever on this project. My focus is on notions of history and time and how the alternate history works with these. E-mail me at "[email protected]" or snailmail me at 446 Arkansas St., Lawrence, KS 66044. - Karen Hellekson

SFRA MEMBERS & FRIENDS

Sandra Lindow was named book review editor L)l , ,1.­ tional magazine named Kaleidoscope, a Magazine of Di~;i,)j!­ ity and the Arts.

Elizabeth Ann Hull and janice Bogstad recently at­ tended the Women's Conference in Beijing. jan is spending several months in China as part of an exchange program.

MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORY UPDATES

David Mead writes that he is no longer a GEnie subscriber; therefore, please use "[email protected]" or "[email protected]" when e-mailing Dave.

The following addresses have changed since the publica­ tion of the 1995 membership directory, or are for new mem­ bers who joined after the cutoff date for the 1995 directory.

SFRA Review #220, page 6 Changed Addresses:

Jesus de Paula Assis Darren Harris-Fain Alameda Barros, 522, ap.82 Dept of Arts & Humanities Sao Paolo SP 01232-000 Shawnee State University Brazil Portsmouth OH 45662 H: 55 11669042 B: (614) 355-2329 Fax: 55 11 862 2098 E-mail: [email protected] Paul R. Joseph Shepard Broad Law Ctr. Greg Beatty SE Univ. 806 E. College Apt. 11 3305 College Ave. Iowa Czity IA 52240-5134 Ft. Lauderdale FL 33314 H: (319) 341-5862 H: (305) 474-2046 B: (319) 335-0454 B: (305) 452-6171 Fax: (319) 335-2535 Fax: (305) 452-6227 E-mail: [email protected].­ E-mail: [email protected].­ uiowa.edu nova.edu The structure and ethics of Law, legal issues, politics, and the adventure story; Utopias; social issues in SF television, and the social function of the film, and print. fantastic. Timothy C. Miller Tim Blackmore Department of English 902-1025 Gilford Street Millersville University Vancouver BC Canada Millersville PA 17551 V6G 2P2 H: (717) 872-5667 H: (604) 602-0103 B: (717) 872-3069 E-mail: TIM_BLACKMORE­ The history and characteris­ @MINDLINK.BC.CA tics of hard SF.

Central Michigan Todd H, Sammons University Library 5342 Fallwood Drive #110 Serials and Microfilms Dept. Indianapolis IN 46220 Mt. Pleasant MI 48859 NEW ADDRESS Bernard J. Farber 1126 W. Wolfram, Rear Richard M. Collier Chicago, IL 60657-4330 English Dept., Mount Royal H: (312) 883-1344 College Fax: same as phone 4825 Richard Rd. SW E-mail: [email protected] Calgary AB (E-mail unchanged) T3E 6K6 Canada

SFRA Review #220, page 7 GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX

UNITED STATES FLORIDA PENNSYLVANIA Joseph, Paul R. Miller, Timothy C.

IOWA BRAZIL Beatty, Greg Assis, Jesus de Paula

MICHIGAN Central Mich. Univ. Library

1996 SFRA Annual Conference Eau Claire, Wisconsin - June 20-23, 1996 Janice Bogstad, Phil Kaveny, Michael Levy The 1996 meeting of the Science Fiction Research Association will be hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire at the Holiday Inn-Campus Areas at 2703 Craig Road, Eau Claire, WI on june 20-23, 1996. Our guests of honor are , au­ thor of Shore of Women and Venus of Dreams and editor of the Women of Wonder anthology series, and George Zebrowski, au­ thor of Macrolife and Stranger Sun and co-author of The Killing Star. Other attending guests include novelists joan Slonczewski and Eleanor Arnason, as well as noted futurist Earl joseph. Fur­ ther guests will be announced as their attendance is confirmed. Our conference theme is SF and the Writer-Editor-Critic. Pamela Sargent and George Zebrowski have both had consider­ able success in all three of these areas. We're thus interested in receiving papers not only on our GOHs' fiction, but also on their work as anthologists and critics, as well as on the ways in which the fiction, criticism, and editing activities of other writers have interacted. Other topics we're particularly interested in seeing papers on include the fiction of our other guests, children's and young-adult science fiction, alternative history, gender and sci­ ence fiction, and alternative futures, both positive and negative. The deadline for submitting abstracts on papers is March 1, 1996. Please send all submissions to Michael M. Levy, Chair of Programming, 1996 SFRA Annual Meeting, Department of English, University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie, WI 54751; home phone 715-834-6533; fax 715-232-1346; e-mail "[email protected]". For registration materials and other information write to: SFRA Annual Meeting, College of Arts and Sciences Outreach, Univer­ sity of Wisconsin- Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI 54702-4004; phone 715-836-2031, fax 715-836-2380, e-mail "[email protected]".

SFRA Review #220, page 8 I~M1'tiand Information

CALL FOR PILGRIM, PIONEER, AND CLARESON AWARD NOMINEES The Pilgrim Award was created in 1970 by the SFRA to honor lifetime contributions to SF and fantasy scholarship. The award was named for ],0. Bailey's pioneering book, Pil­ grims Through Space and Time. The 1996 Pilgrim Award committee has recently been selected, and consists of Susan Stone-Blackburn (Chair), Steve Lehman, and Lynn Williams. The committee is beginning the process of reviewing award nominees and requests that suggestions/nominations be sent to Susan Stone-Blackburn, 3323 Constable Pl. NW, Calgary AB, Canada T2L OK9; e-mail: .. [email protected] ...

Similarly, the Pioneer Award committee has been formed, consisting of joe Sanders (Chair), Diana Pharoah Francis, and Diane Parkin. The Pioneer Award is given to the writer or writers of the best critical essay-length work of the year. Please send nomination suggestions to: joe Sanders, 6354 Brooks Blvd., Mentor OH 44060; e-mail: "[email protected]".

Finally, committee members for the newly-created Clareson Award have been named: Alice Clareson (Chair), Art Lewis, and james Gunn. This award will recognize lifetime service in science fiction and fantasy. Please send suggestions to: Alice Clareson, 2223 Friar Tuck Circle, Wooster OH 44691.

All three awards will be presented in june at the SFRA An­ nual Conference in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

TENTATIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR SFRA ANTHOLOGY Here is the tentative Table of Contents for the University / College SFRA Anthology that David Hartwell and I are work­ ing on:

Brian W. Aldiss "A Tupelov Too Far" Piers Anthony "Getting Through University" "" Gregory Benford "Doing Lennon" ""

SFRA Review #220, page 9 (essay from Tail That Wags) John W. Campbell (editorial) "Ender's War" Suzy Mckee Charnas (title to come) "Science Fiction And The Spherical Cow" Samuel R. Delany (title to come) Philip Jose Farmer "One Down, One To Go" "Burning Chrome" Lisa Goldstein "Alfred: The Shining Path" Ursula K. Le Guin "Sur" David Hartwell "The Golden Age of SF is 12" Dean Ing "The Devil You don't Know" Frederic jameson "World Reduction In The Novels of Ursula K. Le Guin" (title to come) Robert jorday (excerpt) "Eye of the World" james Tiptree, jr. "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" james Patrick "Mr Boy" (essay - statement of purpose) Nancy Kress "The Mountain To Mohammed" "Paperjack" Anne McCaffrey "The Ship Who Sang" judith Merril (intro to England Swings SF) Andre North (excerpt) "Star Man's Son" Frederick Po hI (title to come) "The Criticism of SF" Fred Saberhagen (a story) Susan Schwartz "Temporary People" Charles Sheffield "A Braver Thing" "The Sun Spider" Brian Stableford "To Bring in Fine Things: SF Plots" judith Tarr (title to come) "Overdrawn At The Bank" "True Names" (title to come) Walter jon Williams "Wall, Stone, Craft" "jamboree" Gary Wolfe (bibliography of non-fiction) "The Death of Doctor Island" (title to come) - Milt Wolf

GREENWOOD "CRITICAL COMPANIONS" SERIES Greenwood Press has launched a "Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Writers" series, beginning with vol-

SFRA Review #220, page 10 urnes on Mary Higgins Clark and Michael Crichton. 'Writers of interest to the SF&F community who will be featured in future volumes include Arthur C. Clarke, , , Anne McCaffrey, and Anne Rice.

SOL: SPECULATION ON-LINE SOL is a peer-reviewed electronic journal which focuses on the critical analysis and theory of speculative cultural pro­ ductions ranging from narrative fiction and other forms of textuality to film, television, performance art, and any other cultural form exploring diverse ways of being in the world.

In addition to occasional reprints of paper-based essays and reviews of contemporary history, theory, criticism, and commentary about speculative productions, SOL will publish essays, as well as more radical expressions, concerned with "the fantastic" and with "science fiction," ranging from an­ cient to contemporary examples, as well as with the most immediate of such cultural productions, often tagged with terms like "cyborg," "cyberculture," "cyberspace," "futurist experimentation," "slipstream technology," "postmodern," "virtual reality," and the like.

We are looking for essays, articles, interviews, reviews, and notes on (in any form), relevant contem­ porary theory, and the experiences of contemporary techno­ culture. All submissions will be peer-reviewed.

Deadline for submissions for the first issue of SOL (to be disseminated electronically via e-mail and the WorldWideWeb) is January 1, 1996. Send all inquiries and submissions to "[email protected]." SOL will begin dissemination on March 15, 1996. - Veronica Hollinger & Len Hatfield

LITERARY SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY DISCUSSION FORUM SF-LIT is a moderated computer forum, operated by the with UNIX-listserv software, which is open to anyone interested in discussing issues related to the liter­ ary side of Science Fiction and Fantasy in all its various me­ dia forms. SF-LIT provides an opportunity for members of the international community to participate in discussions

SFRA Review #220, page 11 related to reference, research, analysis, and other library and information center activities in the field of SF&F.

How to subscribe to SF-LIT: Send the following message to [email protected]: SUBSCRIBE SF-LIT [full name]

You will receive a welcome message that we urge you to keep a copy of as it will explain how to set various options and how to unsubscribe. [email protected] is the Internet address of the discussion list. Mail sent to that address is distributed by the UNIX-listserv to everyone who is subscribed to the list. - Colleen Stumbaugh and Eric A. Johnson

CARVER WEB SITE

Jeffrey Carver, author guest at the 1995 SFRA Conference in Grand Forks, has a new web site: ''http://www.oneworld.­ net/SF / authors/ carver.htm".

MYTHCON REPORT The 26th annual Mythopoeic Society conference was held at UC-Berkeley, August 4-7, 1995, with the theme of "Fairies in the Garden, Monsters at the Mall". Over the last quarter of a century the Mythopoeic Society has concentrated its atten­ tions on the works of J.R.R Tolkien, the Inklings, and a num­ ber of other high fantasy authors, among them Le Guin, Beagle, Kay and many others.

The 1995 conference was graced by having as guests: Tim , fantasy writer and author of , The Stress of Her Regard, On Stranger Tides, Dinner at Deviant's Palace, and several other fine novels; Michael Collings, whose many scholarly works on such writers as Stephen King and Orson Scott Card, as well as books of poetry, have won the respect of his peers; and Patrick Ball, the musician-guest whose lyri­ cal harp playing and evocative storytelling fit seamlessly into the events of the weekend.

It was impossible to attend all the sessions, but here is a sampling:

Panel: "Fantasy in the Historical World" - Mike Glyer (moderator), , Lisa Goldstein, Phil Kaveny, Diana

SFRA Review #220, page 12 Paxson. A tour across the wide ranges of the use of history in fantasy literature. We all agreed there is really no such thing as the historical record; what we get instead is rationalized cheers for the winner. It is safe to say that most authors draw from history - and successful authors draw a lot from history. (PK)

Guest of Honor Speech: "C.S. Lewis and Orson Scott Card: Two Models for Mythopoeic Fiction" - Michael Collings. This paper focused on the works of Card, especially the Alvin Maker series, the last book of which is just out. Collings's knowl­ edge of and respect for Card's work and ideas was obvious. (JB)

Paper: "Fairies, Spirits and UFOs: Shamanic Initiation in the Western World" - Eileen Roy. Reviewing decades of lit­ erature on and about supernatural encounters and abduc­ tions, Eileen Roy suggested in this paper that what might have been interpreted as an encounter with the land of Faery in 19th-century Europe may have become the Shamanistic ex­ perience among Native American and African cultures, then UFO abductions in late 20th-century America. The parallels in descriptions of these encounters, all of which are narra­ tives that have been developed as part of group-consensus, are astounding, and this insight into the human need for some "otherness" is both valuable and worth further study. The paper was entertaining and welcome, for it stretches the en­ velope of what we consider to be Fantasy. It made us wonder if we had an Alien in Our Cupboard. (JB)

Panel: "The Anthropology and Sociology of l'-'1iddle-earth" - Sarah Goodman (moderator), Arden Smith, Janet Lafler, Janice Bogstad, William A.S. Sarjeant. Each panelist was as­ signed a duty on an imaginary anthropological expedition to Middle Earth. Sarjeant reported on plate tectonics, with elabo­ rate notes and charts. Smith analyzed several Elvish dialects using established phonetic categories and speculating on the relationship between Elvish and other languages of Middle Earth. Lafler, an anthropologist, reported on social customs of the various races of Middle Earth, and Jan Bogstad, in the persona of a 12th-century Chinese woman, analyzed histori­ cal periods of Middle Earth's races in relation to Chinese his­ tory. The expedition members, while agreeing there was too little information gathered about Man as a race, agreed to make their field notes available in an upcoming edition of Mythlore. This panel was one of the high points of the (on-

SFRA Review #220, page 13 vention simply because the panelists played their roles so well. (JB)

The Mythopoeic Award winners were: Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature: Patricia A. McKillip's Something Rich and Strange Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children: Patrice Kindl's Owl in Love Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies: Doris T. Myers's C.S. Lewis in Context Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies: James Roy King's Old Tales and New Truths: Charting the Bright-Shadow World - Janice Bogstad and Phil Kaveny

SFRA Review #220, page 14 I§rt4Qm. Feature - A Certain Inherent Kindness: An Interview with Lois McMaster Bujold by Michael M. Levy Hindsight is always perfect, of course, but in retrospect it doesn't seem surprising that Lois McMaster Bujold should have become a science fiction writer. Her father, a professor of welding engineering at , was an avid science fiction reader who gave his daughter a gift subscrip­ tion to Analog when she was just thirteen. Like many future authors, Bujold told herself stories from an early age; she began to write them down in junior high school. "Somewhere in my attic," she says, "still lurk 20 or so pages of an aborted epic in Spenserian verse, the result of having read both The Faerie Queen and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings twice in the s

After attending Ohio State from 1969 to 1972, Bujold worked as a pharmacy technician at the University Hospital, but quit her job in 1979 to marry and raise a family. The Bujolds settled in Marion, Ohio, an aging rust-belt industrial town, where her husband, a chef, found only intermittent employment. Bujold had two children and did very little writing until the early 1980s, though she does remember 60 pages of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche (with a major female character named Cordelia Naismith). Times were hard for the Bujolds, and the author's memories of those years seem tinged with sadness and some bitterness.

Then Bujold's old friend, Lillian Stewart, now , began writing again and eventually sold several novels and short stories. With this example before her, Bujold de­ cided to try her hand at science fiction. Her early efforts received encouragement from both Carl and fantasy writer Patricia C. Wrede. As Bujold recounts, "I quickly discovered that writing was far too demanding and draining to justify as a hobby, and that only serious professional recognition would satisfy me. Whatever had to be done, in terms of writing, rewriting, cutting, editorial analysis, and trying again, I was savagely determined to learn to do."

SFRA Review #220, page 15 Bujold finished the manuscript of her first novel, Shards of Honor, in 1983 and immediately began work on a second book, The Warrior's Apprentice, which she completed in 1984. Although submitted to the New York publishers, neither manu­ script sold immediately, but Bujold, showing great faith in herself, devoted her time to a third novel, Ethan of Athos. Her first professional sale, of a titled "Barter", occurred in late 1984 and was published by Twilight Zone Magazine in March 1985. Then, in October 1985, lightning struck. bought all three completed novels, and scheduled all of them for 1986 publication. Shards of Honor gave us the basics of Bujold's universe and introduced two fine characters, Aral Vorkosigan, warrior and statesman, and Cordelia Naismith, Aral's enemy and even­ tually his wife. The Warrior's Apprentice introduced their son, Miles, the brilliant but disabled diplomat, soldier, and secret agent, who has become one of the most beloved char­ acters in recent science fiction. Ethan of Athos, although set in the same universe as the other two novels, centered on a non-series character, Doctor Ethan Urquhart, a pediatrician on a planet without women. Although Bujold's early novels received positive reviews and were finalists for several minor awards, her fourth book, , was her first major success. Serialized in Analog beginning in late 1987 and published in by BaeD in 1988, it won the prestigious , given by the Science Fiction Writers of America, outdistancing novels by such better-known authors as William Gibson and Orson Scott Card. Other honors quickly followed, including both the Nebula and the Hugo Awards for her "The Mountains of Mourning" in 1989, and Hugos for and in 1990 and 1991 respectively. In less than ten years, Lois McMaster Bujold has moved to the front rank of science-fiction writers, and the reasons for her success are not hard to understand. Bujold combines colorful, action-adventure plots and strong prose with solid hard-science content. More important, however, are her char­ acters. Miles, Aral, Cordelia, Ethan, and Leo Graf of Falling Free all differ in an important way from the nearly flawless heroes of Robert Heinlein and the mainstream tradition of science fiction characterization. Although highly competent, they also have flaws and weaknesses; although imperfect, they are capable of growth. Each makes mistakes, but learns from

SFRA Review #220, page 16 those mistakes. Finally, and perhaps most endearingly, Bujold's heroes are kind; they have within them a basic hu­ manity, and they care about others. For these reasons, we care about them.

(Note: this interview was originally conducted in 1993 for publication in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review Annual. Since then Bujold has won another Hugo, for , and has moved to , Minnesota. Her first anthology, Women at War, co-edited with Roland Green, is due out from Tor in December 1995. Her new novel, Cetaganda, is due out from Baen in January 1996.)

Levy: You've referred to yourself in print as "an overnight success after a mere thirty or so years of build-up," but the fact is that your rise to prominence within the science fiction genre has been extraordinary. Few writers in the field with less than ten years of pro­ fessional experience can boast your record of publi­ cation and awards. It had to be a bit of a shock when Shards of Honor did so well in 1986 (finishing second in the Locus poll for best first novel), and, even more so, when Falling Free won the Nebula two years later. Aside from the fact that it's good, why do you think that your work has been so successful?

Bujold: A quick success? Well, I guess it's all in your point of view. To me, it seemed excruciatingly slow, but I was writing to escape some fairly dreadful personal and financial circumstances. I have ten years writ­ ing experience - eleven, now - but the first three years were invisible, before I got published. Three years without a paycheck, which is what the start­ up of my career cost, were grueling. My children were one and four when I started the book which eventually became Shards of Honor, I lived on my husband's sometimes-pay, sometimes-unemploy­ ment, sometimes-nothing, and the charity of my parents, in order to stay home with my pre-school kids and start my writing career. If I could have found a real job in rustbelt-depressed Marion, Ohio that would have paid a babysitter, I'd have taken it. The price in pride was very great. I was one step away from being a welfare mother through that pe­ riod. But I bet on myself, and won.

SFRA Review #220, page 17 Shards and the other books (The Warrior's Appren­ tice and Ethan of Athos) did okay in 1986 - they did okay to be published at all! - but sales weren't, at first, nor for some time, all that extraordinary. The Warrior's Apprentice did have a good sell­ through, at 70%, which inclined my publisher, Baen Books, to look favorably upon me, but the other two volumes were just average in sales at that time. But they were good enough for the publisher to buy my next book, which is, after all, the first requirement of a writing career - to continue itself. My initial goal or definition of success was to make enough money writing that nothing could force me to give it up. My income the first few years after I started getting any income at all was very erratic and not very high, but I did escape minimum wage work. So no, it wasn't a shock when Shards and its compan­ ion volumes did reasonably well; that was the way it was supposed to be, the first steps of a long slog upward. It was my observation that people who suc­ ceeded in publishing seemed to do so quickly (Wil­ liam Gibson, for example, not to mention Jean Auel and Tom Clancy); it was my terror that I wouldn't be able to succeed fast enough, and I'd get dumped back out on the street. Remember, success is not measured by the quality of one's readership (though I think my fans are extraordinary folks), but by the quantity, the dread "numbers." I've always had great readers but only slowly have acquired enough of them.

I thought Falling Free had a good shot at the Nebula, frankly. I don't believe in Nebula or Hugo politicS - that would be like herding cats - but there is such a thing as award demographics. A book, in addition to being good, has to be seen by enough of the pool of voters in time to be voted upon. Every award nomination I've ever received has resulted from the demographic advantage of having the work appear in Analog and be mailed right to the door of 80,000 or so SF readers and writers. This is not, by the way, an unfair advantage; every other writer has the right to submit their work to the magazines too, in the same blind hope that I did. I do note that nothing I've ever done that did not have an Analog SFRA Review #220, page 18 appearance has ever been nominated for anything. (Nothing I've ever written has ever been nominated for a juried award, either, a fact that I'm not sure how to interpret.)

The Nebula, in addition, has an earlier "time win­ dow" than the Hugo. It favors writers in the "hot new" period of their careers, when they're doing work of a quality and quantity to be noticed, but have not yet started making significant amounts of money. I hit that time window spot-on with Falling Free. There's also the luck of the year, whether one is up against a killer book by some writer with a lot of momentum that's been building to a peak, or whether it's a relatively weak year in the competi­ tion. I thought Warrior's Apprentice should have gotten more notice in its year of publication, but hey - 1986 was Orson Scott Card's year, toward which he had been working for a decade. One must wait one's turn in the queue sometimes.

So, why has my work been successful over the long haul? (And it has - Shards sold more on its second printing than it did on its first, and Warrior's sales never go down, year after year). Partly it's because my work was permitted to have a long haul. , my publisher, has kept them in print. Very few writers in any area can make the statement that every book they ever wrote is still in print - I can. This happy event did not occur by accident. I engi­ neered it as well as I could.

Levy: Many of your best and best-known stories - "The Mountains of Mourning", "Labyrinth", "Weather­ man", Falling Free, Barrayar - have appeared in Analog. That magazine, of course, is generally seen as the most conservative in the field in literary, so­ cial and political terms. Its stories also tend to have the most hard science in them. Your own fiction, although traditional in form, is not necessarily tra­ ditional in social and political content. Further, with the exception of Falling Free, little of it is really hard nuts-and-bolts SF. To what extent do you see your­ self as an Analog writer? Are we likely to see a Lois McMaster Bujold story in Asimov's or F&SF or Omni at any time in the future?

SFRA Review #220, page 19 Bujold: The reason you don't see me in the magazines very much is because I do very little short work. (Actu­ ally I haven't written a short story since 1985.) Two of my five Analog appearances were serialized nov­ els, and the other three were , one of which was an out-take from a novel-in-progress ("Weath­ erman" from The Vor Game). Hardly anybody but Analog serializes novels, so you won't see any of those in places like Omni due to sheer length con­ siderations. I am a character-centered rather than an idea-centered writer, and that means novels, for the most part. I need the length to do a character right. My latest, titled Mirror Dance, is a 672-page character study of Miles Vorkosigan's clone-brother Mark, thinly disguised as an action-adventure tale. It's too long even for Analog- Barrayarpushed their length limit at 400 or so pages. If I do write some­ thing short, it'll go to Stan Schmidt of Analog first, if it's not outright fantasy or something, for loyalty's sake. I don't necessarily see myself as exclusively an Analog writer, though I do consider Analog as near the defining core of the genre - it was the magazine I subscribed to back in my teens. The per­ tinent question is who Stan sees as an Analog writer, though. I know from personal conversations with him that he is very frustrated by writers who try to second-guess him, and don't send him stuff on the pre-assumption that it doesn't fit what they imag­ ine to be his editorial parameters. He wants to do his own rejecting, please. Levy: Writers get into doing long-running series for a va­ riety of reasons. Some don't want to waste all the time spent on developing the series background. Others fall in love with a particular character or with the universe they've created and simply have a lot to say about them. A few writers have even admit­ ted that they do series novels because they can make more money writing within the series than they can on stand-alone books. What do you see as the ad­ vantages of writing within the confines of a series generally, and within your series specifically? Do you see any disadvantages? Bujold: Series books cross-sell each other. Lots of things can make a set of books a series besides ongoing

SFRA Review #220, page 20 characters or story-lines, and in science fiction par­ ticularly one of these is setting. Everything set in the same is by definition a sort of series. (I've referred to mainstream literature as "the world's largest shared-universe series.") So every­ thing I could make series, by this broadest possible definition, I did. Falling Free and Ethan of Athos both were centered on ideas that could have been developed in different universes than Miles's equally well- it wasn't just laziness that made me set them as series -offs. (If either book could not have been done as well in-universe, I'd have made up another setting without hesitation, however.) Among the several reasons I wrote Barrayarwas that Shards's sales were sinking to the point that it was in danger of being let go out of print, and I thought a would throw it a safety line and rescue it for an­ other round of sales. Which is exactly what hap­ pened. Chance favors the prepared mind, you betcha!

All of the above, however, has to do with what I call the monopoly game of being a writer - what hap­ pens after you drop the finished book in the pub­ lishing hopper and the machinery starts to grind. But ultimately, success is manufactured by neither the writer nor the publisher. Success flows from the readers, the book-buyers. My work is successful because people like to read it. To find out why a book works, you must ask them. Inside a reader's head is the only place a book ultimately succeeds, or fails. Why I think it works is a secondary matter compared to why they think it works.

Other series advantages and disadvantages? Hm. Well, it isn't for the money. Over and over I've got­ ten the signal that no publisher will bid much for another publisher's series, and without the compe­ tition, the first publisher is under no pressure to pay more either. I take a financial cut to write the series stuff I love. For me the advantage of a series, besides limiting the amount of work I have to do on the part I regard as least interesting, namely setting (the fifteenth­ century Italy of The Spirit Ring heing one excep-

-=-:-~----:.---- SFRA Review #220, page 21 tion), is in the scope it gives for character develop­ ment. You can really do a character's life right in ten books, with all the complexity and change of a real life. The Hornblower books are a structural model for my series - each book standing alone within an over-arching biography. I didn't devour C.S. Forrester's books back in my teens because of an overwhelming interest in the military history of the Napoleonic Wars, I can tell you. I wanted the character.

Levy: Do you ever get tired of Miles (a la Conan Doyle and Holmes)? You nearly killed him off in Barrayar, of course, not to mention in The Vor Game and else­ where. Have you ever felt the desire to get rid of him for good?

Bujold: I am certainly in love with Miles (and now with Mark as well). Between them they are almost everything I can imagine wanting from heroes; they cover a good bit of the human condition, from top to bottom (though not the female side). I have no current de­ sire to get ride of Miles for good a la Sherlock Holmes; he's much too much fun to torment. Certain char­ acters are meant to live forever. Still... it's very tempting to give a great character a great death. I probably will do in Aral one of these days - he nearly bought it in Mirror Dance, but was saved by divine fannish intervention. It's a trick you can only pull once, though. Not till my kids are through col­ lege, for sure.

Levy: Could you elaborate on what you mean by "divine fannish intervention" saving Aral's life?

Bujold: Basically a couple of my test readers objected to Aral's imminent demise in the manuscript - "Do you HAVE to? It's so soon!" and similar complaints - plus my own conclusion that I didn't want to blow away so important an event in Miles's life as a mere subplot when it could be much better done as a main plot later. It's Major Theme stuff, and Mirror Dance had enough other major theme stuff for two books already.

Levy: In his most recent book, Steel Beach, John Varley admits in a preface that, although the novel is tech-

SFRA Review #220, page 22 nically set within his Seven Worlds future 'history, there are inconsistencies between it and earlier works in the series, but he says that he doesn't care; it's too much work to fix them. Have you found this to be a problem? How do you keep the facts of your own future history straight?

Bujold: I've had no trouble keeping the facts of my universe straight so far; anything that's in print, I can look up, and anything that isn't in print I'm free to change. But it's only nine books. By the time I get to book twenty, the problems of keeping things con­ sistent may get more severe.

Levy: In a previous interview you listed Poul Anderson, James H. Schmitz, Cordwainer Smith, Anne McCaffrey, , Robert Sheckley, De Camp and Pratt, Dorothy Sayers, Conan Doyle, and as favorite authors. What do you think of the more recent writers who have met with major success in science fiction? ? Greg Bear? Pat Cadigan? William Gibson and the generally?

Bujold: I find it terribly hard to read other genre work while I'm writing, a not-uncommon syndrome among writ­ ers I know in both SF and myslery, and I suspect other genres as well. And since I'm writing most of the time, my fiction reading has gone sadly downhill in quantity these last few years. I mostly read non-fic­ tion for pleasure and research, and friends' manu­ scripts, and a very few books I blurb, and I choose the non-fiction by subject rather than author. One writer who is an exception for me is - I love his world-view. I sort of save his books, read them at long intervals when I really need a Pratchett. I can read him even when I'm very tired, as on an airplane. I don't think his work is much like mine, though. Some writers, or at least books, I've read to blurb and liked include R.M. Meluch's The Queen's Squadron and Steven Gould's Jumper. I really like 's stuff, wonderful style, though her understructure sometimes needs stiffer connection.

A horror writer friend of mine, Richard Lee Byers, put it very well in a letter to me in which we were SFRA Review #220, page 23 discussing this phenomenon, when he said that af­ ter a day of writing he experienced nausea at the thought of even looking at more prose. When I'm really exhausting myself, I can't muster the emo­ tional energy to watch a movie. It takes me weeks to recover from the last push of turning in a manu­ script. Re: your list of writers, the ones I've met seem like very nice people. I've read only a little of any of their stuff. I don't read cyberpunk; I'm somewhat allergic to near-future dystopias. I sometimes won­ der if what I write is SF at all, or just fantasy wearing SF clothing. Any sufficiently advanced magic is in­ distinguishable from technology, after all. What I write is psychological allegory, the story of some person changing through time and experience; I aim for the universal in the story's bones, in its theme, and all the techie bits are arranged to support the pattern as needed. Levy: A number of science fiction reference books include at the end of each author or book entry, the phrase "if you liked ... , you'll like ... " How would you fill in the blank in the phrase "if you liked Lois McMaster Bujold, you'll like ... "? To put it another way, are there any other current authors with whose work you feel a particular affinity? Why?

Bujold: There may be other writers out there who are dOing something in common with what I do, but I haven't been keeping up with them. I don't want to write "like" anybody else anyway. I want to write like myself. Let them chase me. And I suspect every other successful writer you asked would say exactly the same thing, or they wouldn't be successful. Asimov and McCaffrey are the two authors most of­ ten mentioned by fans in the same breath with my stuff, however. Make of that what you will. Not bad company, from my point of view. Both have a hu­ mane, un-cynical world-view, and a certain inher­ ent kindness.

Levy: One thing that sets your work apart, for me at least, is your use of non-traditional protagonists. The tra­ ditional SF tends to be a straight white male

SFRA Review #220, page 24 with technical or military training - i.e. Leo Graff or Aral Vorkosigan, yet your heroes are often dis­ abled (Miles Vorkosigan), perceived as disabled (the quaddies), gay (Ethan Urquhart), or female (Cordelia Naismith). Why the interest in disabled or disad­ vantaged characters? Bujold: I don't think the traditional SF protagonist is neces­ sarily the straight, white techie male you assert. Lots of my favorite heroes from SF past, the stuff I was reading when I grew up, don't fit that mold. Telzy from James H. Schmidt's novels. Gerald Howeson from 's The Whole Man. Cordwainer Smith's characters, or 's. Asimov's robots, or Dr. Susan Calvin. All those quite wonder­ ful aliens - that bug of 's, Barlennan, the ship captain who lived on the heavy-world in Mission ofGravity. There's enormous variety. Miles is disabled, yes, and since he ended up being the main man of my series, that issue comes up when he does, which is rather a lot. My principal interest when writing Ethan of Athas, however, was to do a main character who was a doctor. J never thought of the quaddies as handicapped - I thought they were super-adapted - and I was quite surprised by the response on them I got from handicapped read­ ers. It was a matter of environment, after all. In the dark everybody's blind. I am interested in female characters 'cause I am one, I guess, though I don't like drippy females. It's becoming quite fashion­ able, though, you know - some male writers are doing female action-adventure heroes now, David Weber's Honor Harrington, for instance. Fine by me. Levy: A disabled student of mine recently explained to me the difference between a disability and a handi­ cap: a disability, she said, is what you have; a handi­ cap is what society imposes upon you. How do you react to this, particularly in terms of your own char­ acters?

Bujold: Your disabled student has it quite right. A blind fan of mine in Kentucky, to whom lowe much, describes the rest of us as "the temporarily able··bodied.'· We are all one automobile accident away from being

SFRA Review #220, page 25 worse off than we like to think about. Old age will take us down if nothing else does. Anyway, we're all handicapped here. There is scarcely a more universal appeal to the reader. Con­ sider the plaint of the good-looking woman who re­ fuses to go out in public until she's slathered her­ self with make-up: "I have to put my face on!" Here's someone that you'd think qualified as hyper­ adapted, who feels she doesn't even have her own face, or not an acceptable one. Sad, and scary. Ev­ erybody harbors some cripplement, emotional if not physical. You can't judge anybody - you never know what back-breaking secret burdens they may be carrying.

Levy: You were recently guest of honor at the 1993 Wis­ consin SF Convention, a con with a strong feminist bent. It seems to me that there's little that's explic­ itly feminist about your fiction. Some in Free Fall perhaps and some in Barrayar. Maybe in Ethan. Do you see your fiction as feminist?

Bujold: I see my own fiction or views as feminist, but not radically feminist in the sense of giving up and con­ cluding that all men are hopelessly evil - I've de­ scribed myself as a human beingist, to distinguish it from the term humanist, which has at least three other meanings already. I have a son and a daugh­ ter; I'd like to see each get the best chances in life they can. Levy: How would you describe your own politics?

Bujold: My description of Cordelia at one point in one of my books could be a description of me: "She's about as apolitical as you can get and still be conscious and walking around." Psychology, not politics, in­ terests me.

Levy: What themes do you see as important in your work?

Bujold: Themes in my work, hm. Theme is very important to me. I may repeat a setting or a character, but I try never to repeat a theme. What my themes are has gradually become clearer to me as my work has

SFRA Review #220, page 26 progressed; I can state the themes of my later books more readily than those of my earlier ones. Barrayar was about the price of becoming a mother. By the book's end, Cordelia had to sacrifice everything, including cherished ideals and illusions about her own identity, to bring Miles to life. (Something in common with the price I paid for becoming a mother.) Falling Free was about being a father, and became a tribute to my own father, and his obitu­ ary. The Warrior's Apprentice was of course a com­ ing-of-age story, and in addition the account of how Miles overcame three besetting deadly sins: pride, despair, and imprudence. The latest book, Mirror Dance, was what Brother in Arms was meant to be before it was hijacked by the supporting cast, and was much benefitted by my increasing skill and cour­ age as a writer; it's probably the deepest explora­ tion of what it means to be human that I've done yet, and I've had four test readers independently tell me it's a better book than Barrayar, which is a little unnerving. I'm much too close to it now to be objective, having just finished it twenty days ago. I adore it, I'm sick to death of it, and I only know what I meant to write, not what I actually did write. That must wait on its being read, and I can hardly wait to find out. Levy: At the Minnesota SF Convention in 1992 you ap­ peared on a panel on gay characters in SF, a panel that, rumor has it, almost didn't occur because of the hostility of some members of the Minicon pro­ graming committee to gay programing. Have you received any hostile comments about using a sym­ pathetic gay protagonist?

Bujold: I didn't have any problems doing Ethan Urquhart (of Ethan of Athas) - I was more concerned with making him a convincing doctor than a convincing gay - but I was most pleased to get some very nice letters from gay men thanking me for doing him well. I have not received hostile comments, but my feedback tends to be selective - only people who really like stuff are excited enough to write a letter to the author. Or who really hate stuff, I suppose, but I haven't got any of that yeL Ethan of Athos was more about role reversal than homosexuality any-

SFRA Review #220, page 27 way; the question it asked, and answered, was, How would men do taking over women's central roles? I figured they'd do just fine if they had to, but would be more hierarchical about it all, with lots of one­ upsmanship and maneuvering for position. The book was also a send-up or reply to all those really awful Amazon Planet stories written by men back in the fifties.

Levy: I have to admit that I consider Barrayar to be your best book. How do you rate it in comparison to Fall­ ing Free or The Vor Game?

Bujold: Barrayar pleased me as having a more coherent understructure than some of my books. The Vor Game still bothers me because of its structural flaws. It really should have been two other books. When that damned body turned up in the drain in Chap­ ter Three, the story was trying to turn into a mili­ tary murder mystery, and I didn't let it, because I'd contracted for a "Miles returns to the Dendarii Mer­ cenaries" book. It should have had a very compli­ cated mystery plot, all on Kyrll Island, which Miles would solve, and should have climaxed with the naked-guys-in-the-blizzard standoff, after which Miles would have been promoted into ImpSec for his exceptional competence as an investigator. The "Gregor runs away" story could have been a quite nice second book. Both halves would have benefitted from the additional length and development. Ah, well. FaWng Free was special to me because it was my tribute to my father. I originally made my hero, Leo Graf, a welding and non-destructive testing en­ gineer for convenience because my father was one of the world's foremost authorities in the area, which handled my expert research and review problems quite nicely. But my father died when I was only part way through the book, and it thus became much more - I think I talk about this in my essay in the Nebula volume, if you want an expansion. Leo's class lecture in Chapter Two was my attempt to summa­ rize my father's exceptional engineering integrity. One of the several reasons there has not yet been a Falling Free sequel is because it means, for me, going back into the emotions surrounding my father's death. Someday I may be ready for that, but not yet.

SFRA Review #220, page 28 Levy: You've used the term "understructure" twice in this interview. Could you define it?

Bujold: I define "understructure" as the choice of events, their ordering, and their pacing, which combine to create a particular pattern of emotional response, tension and release, in the reader. A good understructure creates a satisfying pattern; a flawed understructure creates a vague unhappiness, a sense of something missing or amiss, and complaints along the lines of, "it fell down at the end."

Levy: After a string of successful SF stories, your ninth novel, The Spirit Ring, was a fantasy. Why the change? Did you find it more or less difficult to write fantasy? Was there more research involved?

Bujold: The author's note in the back of The Spirit Ring tells something about the book's origins. This was a book I waited to write for a long time, partly because other projects took precedence, partly because it struck me as smart to establish my reputation in hard SF first, as there was at least a period where female fantasy authors tended to be diminutized and dis­ missed. Because I chose to make it quasi-historical. The Spirit Ring took more research than anything I'd ever written, including Falling Free. I was in ef­ fect writing my first historical novel as well as my first fantasy, a nice change of pace. I won't really know how well the book is going to do until it comes out in paperback in October 1993, by which time it will be too late - I've just about committed myself to doing its sequel next.

Levy: Can you tell us some of what will happen in the se­ quel?

Bujold: I want to send Thur and Fiametta off to Venice circa 1480, a place that fascinates me. It even has a work­ ing title - The Death Mask - but I'm not sure that will survive, as I don't know the plot yet. ]\[uch of the plot detailing will arise from the research read­ ing I plan to do this summer. Thematically, it seems to be tending toward some sort of exploration of Fiametta's relationship with her gender, mother­ hood, and talent, as it will pick up Thur and Fiamctta

SFRA Review #220, page 29 some years after the close of The Spirit Ring when they have a couple of young kids, and the death mask is Fiametta's lost mother's death mask. Any­ thing about Fiametta's mother will also entail Fiametta's relationship with her race, as well, since her mother was black. Race relations in 15th-Cen­ tury Italy were quite different from those of post- 19th-Century America, and I'd like to pick up a little more actual background on them as a jumping-off point, if I can find the historical material. Not that, as alternate history, I'm necessarily tied to the facts.

Levy: Mirror Dance, your tenth novel, may well be out before this interview sees print, but could you tell us something more about it? Bujold: That's a working title. Baen's a little worried that some uninitiated reader might mistake it for some kind of romance, which it isn't. If they put enough combat drop shuttles on the cover I ought to be able to get away with it. It's the sequel to Brother in Arms where Miles and his clone-twin Mark meet again, to their mutual dismay. There was an awful lot of unfinished business left at the end of Brother, like Barrayarand Shards. I'm actually glad so much time passed between the book and its sequel, as I was able to do a much better job with the ideas than on the first pass. The book opens with Mark show­ ing up at the Dendarii fleet in Escobar orbit, passing himself off as Miles, and hijacking the Ariel for a raid on the clone-creches of Jackson's Whole. For Mark, this is like trying to storm heaven, to prove himself as good and acceptable a hero as his big brother Miles. Mark engineers a major disaster; the rest of the book covers his struggles for redemption and identity. How huge and complex a task this turns out to be is indicated by the fact that Mirror Dance came out to twice the length of most of my other books. (It's also related to my rise in income; I could afford to take the extra months to write this one.) If you liked Barrayar, I think you'll like this one a lot, though I warn you, it takes time for Mark to grow on you, as he starts off as a very unhappy camper indeed. This book creates Mark the way The Warrior's Apprentice created Miles.

SFRA Review #220, page 30 · Levy: So, after Mirror Dance comes the sequel to The Spirit Ring. What's next?

Bujold: I don't know what's next after The Death Mask; hope­ fully by then I will have recovered enough to tackle another Miles or Mark book. But I always reserve the right to have a better idea - which is also why I don't work to outline, a lack of procedure that cre­ ates many terrifying pauses for me in the middle of writing my books. But it makes the book exciting and rewarding for me; I have to write it to find out what it is.

Levy: As a parent who has been the primary caretaker of a small child, I know how tough it can be to take care of kids and write. Do you have any suggestions on how to do it for aspiring writers?

Bujold: Learn to write in tiny doses, one paragraph at a time. Not writing at a word processor actually helped me - I could carry around my 3-ring notebook and jot in pencil anytime, anywhere, instantly. Sitting down at a word processor is a major project that requires clearing a room of other people. I had and have no office; my computer is in my dining room. I've writ­ ten over nine novels in pencil in longhand because of those habits picked up by necessity in my early days. I didn't have a computer for the first book­ and-a-half either, just myoId college report type­ writer, which I used to set up on my kitchen table. Toward the end of Mirror Dance I tried to work di­ rectly on the computer. This was only physically possible, I've realized, because now that I am di­ vorced I have the house to myself when the kids are in school.

It's a tough trade-off and the kids pay in lost atten­ tion. My own mother was a full-time homemaker and had a cleaning lady once a week. There was no way I could duplicate that. My daughter had al­ most four years of full-time, if low-income, mommy attention before I started trying to write. My son had only one year, under worsening economic con­ ditions at that, and I'll always be asking myself, if he lags behind her in any way, if it's my fault. I would have to ask the kids if it's tougher to have a

SFRA Review #220, page 31 mom who goes out to work - out of sight and out of mind - or one who's there but not paying atten­ tion.

Levy; One last question on kids and motherhood. Could you elaborate on how being a mother has affected your writing, particularly in Barrayar?

Bujold: What my kids took away from my writing in time and interruption they returned ten-fold in content, in my own growth of understanding of just what people are and how they get that way, not to men­ tion being a laboratory on the internal effects of stress. Falling Free was thematically about being a father and was dedicated to my father, but Barrayar, which was about being a mother, was dedicated to my children, because they taught me most of what I know about that part of being human.

SFRA Review #220, page 32 1~[.]hi$H.]" Reviews-

Ashley, Mike and William G. Contento. The Super­ natural Index: A Listing of Fantasy, Supernatural, Occult, Weird, and Horror Anthologies. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, May 1995, 952 pages, hardcover, $195.00, ISBN 0-313-24030-2.

The literary mode we call supernatural fiction began in the massive novels of the late 18th Century British Gothic. But its evolution during the decades that followed into the literature we know today took place largely in shorter forms: the short stories, novellas, and novelettes of the Victorian era and the first 70 years or so of the 20th century. Indeed, during the 1920s and '30s, as the literature of supernatural horror coalesced into an identifiable genre, anthologies of ghost stories and proliferated like weeds - an efflorescence unmatched until the horror boom of the 1960s and '70s, which spawned a bounty of original and reprint paperback anthologies. For all the attention paid to by readers, bibliophiles, and librarians since the pub­ lication in 1813 of the first supernatural anthology - the anonymously edited Tales of the Dead, which notoriously inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein (1818) - the contributions of such major anthologists as Hugh Lamb, Rob­ ert Aickman, Cynthia Asquith, August Derleth, and more re­ cently E.F. Bleiler (in a series of books for Dover) and Richard Dalby have gone largely unsung. Until now. For master bib­ liographers Mike Ashley and William Contento have brought the horror anthology into its rightful prominence with The Supernatural Index, one of the most useful and obsessively fascinating bibliographies I've ever encountered.

Ashley and Contento are names that will be familiar to students and scholars of SF and horror fiction. Many know Ashley's exhaustive 1987 bibliography of the works of , his 1985 index (with Frank H. Parnell) to English-language magazines of weird fantasy, his defini­ tive 1985 volume (with Marshall B. Tymn) on SF, fantasy, and magazines, or his early collection of author profiles, Who's Who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction (Elm Tree Press, 1977) - the project he credits as the genesis of the present book. And nearly all of us have used William Contento's Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collec-

SFRA Review #220, page 33 tions (1978 and supplement 1984) and its continuations in the late, lamented Brown and Contento Locus bibliographies.

In scope and accomplishment, The Supernatural Index is unique in its field. Ashley and Contento's heroic - if at first glance quixotic - goal is "to list all antholo­ gies of supernatural and fantastic stories." True to their word, they offer lists encompassing 2,100 volumes containing 21,300 stories by 7,700 writers. Even this vast corpus ex­ cludes several categories: Single-author collections, anony­ mously edited anthologies of anonymously written stories (especially from the early 19th century), Ace and other Doubles, bound volumes of magazines, books less than half of whose contents are supernatural or fantastic, anthologies of science fiction stories or of "mystery stories dressed in shrouds of the supernatural," and books designed for pre­ teens. (Happily, the compilers' tendencies are inclusive, and they include several problematic volumes in an Appendix of "Associational Books.") All anthologies not thus excluded are covered in a multiformity of lists - an organizational decision that markedly enhances this book's practical value. Indeed, lists abound: alphabetically by editor, by book title, by story author, by story title.

But this book offers more than mere lists. In the nearly 1,000 closely printed pages of The Supernatural Index, one can ferret out a wealth of facts, including original source data and variant titles for each story; details of editorship, col­ laboration, reprints, and physical production of each volume; and pseudonyms and dates of birth and death for each au­ thor and editor. Best of all, the final massive compilation contains the table of contents of every volume, complete with pagination, classification (short story, novella, etc.), thorough publication data (including ISBN number, reprint informa­ tion, and price), and brief descriptive annotations about the volume as a whole. The value of all this information, of course, hinges in large part on its accuracy. While I'm unable to address this issue comprehensively, a highly selective but vigorous test on several dozen books in my own collection turned up zero errors.

Do you need this book? Librarians whose patrons need to trace an elusive story or locate original venues should imme­ diately order a copy for their reference collection and put it on the shelf with other classic bibliographic resources on the fantastic by Contento, E.F. Bleiler, Neil Barron, and Donald H. SFRA Review #220, page 34 Tuck. Individual collectors and scholars face a more difficult purchase decision because of Greenwood's appallingly high price. If your interests and/or research gravitate towards su­ pernatural fiction, I think you will find this book worth every penny. The care Ashley and Contento have lavished on it to­ gether with its comprehensive coverage make The Supernatu­ ral Index an invaluable resource and a bibliophile's delight. - Michael A. Morrison

Bloom, Harold (Ed). Classic Fantasy Writers. New York: Chelsea House, 1994, 187 pages, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 0-7910-2204-8.

With a two-page introduction by Harold Bloom, who pre­ sumably made this selection of classic authors, we are re­ minded of the need to identify great authors as a yardstick against which to measure others. The authors chosen for this volume are certainly well known, including L. Frank Baum, William Beckford, James Branch Cabell, Lewis Carroll, , Kenneth Grahame, H. Rider Haggard, Lafcadio Hearn, Rudyard Kipling, Andrew Lang, George MacDonald, , Beatrix Potter (the only female), and Oscar Wilde.

In many ways, this is a book of snippets. For example, Bloom's introduction consists of two-thirds of a page of his own comments and another half-page quoted from Borges. Overall, the volume incorporates pieces from such works as Contemporary Literary Criticism and Contemporary Authors, as well as short quotations from a variety of commentators. ConSidering the shortage of original material, what is the ra­ tionale for this book?

This is not an ideal reference book for libraries -- the en­ tries do not provide full information, but are more like Cliff's Notes on the works of the authors, with no full analysis of anyone work and little substantiation of the claims made by the various commentators. One must presume, then, that a potential user of this book wishes to have the benefit of Harold Bloom's opinion as to which writers should be called classic fantasy writers, and a chance to browse the opinions of many other critics, some of whose names are familiar to a reader of Book Review, for example. In form, ~hen, this is a "book of advice," which helps the reader unfamiliar with the genre to decide what to read or not read next. Let it SFRA Review #220, page 35 not be mistaken for a reference or critical work, for it pos­ sesses none of the characterizing marks of scholarship: criti­ cal distance, substantiation of claims, completeness, unique­ ness as a source. This is a coffee-table book for the dilettante of fantasy; it is attractive, light, and useful for a few intriguing facts about a handful of a larger number of fascinating au­ thors in the as we now know it in the twenti­ eth century. In other words, this is a place to start but hope­ fully not the place one would go to understand the field itself. - Janice M. Bogstad

Bloom, Harold, (Ed). Classic Science Fiction Writers. New York: Chelsea House, 1995, 186 pages, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 0-7910-2211-0.

In his four-page introductory "Life of the Author", Harold Bloom says, "We read in hope, because we lack companion­ ship, and the author can become the object of the most ideal­ istic elements in our search for the wit and inventiveness we so desperately require. We read biography, not as supplement to reading the author, but as a second, fresh attempt to under­ stand what always seems to evade us in the work, our drive towards a kind of identity with the author." This appears to offer a promise of meaningful biographical analysis of the au­ thors included. Indeed, there is a biography of each of the authors (Edward Bellamy, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Aldous Huxley, C.S. Lewis, Jack London, H.P. Lovecraft, George Orwell, , Mary Shelley, Olaf Stapledon, and H.G. Wells), and some do offer an explanation of why that author's works, or at least some of them, should be considered science fiction. However, the biographies range from only one to two pages and offer minimal insight.

The volume's "User's Guide" promises not only biography, but also critical and bibliographical information. Of the three elements, the critical is perhaps the most valuable. There are excerpts from various critical analyses of major works by each author. These critical comments include one by each author himself, with the exception of Edward Bellamy, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Edgar Allan Poe. The excerpts are arranged chronologically and do provide some useful insights and comments about these authors' writing.

Like the biography, the bibliography is overly brief, offer­ ing only the titles and publication dates of the various works. SFRA Review #220, page 36 · The "User's Guide" clearly indicates that material written under a pseudonym or works that have been translated by anyone other than the original author are not listed. The materials about each author are discrete, totally separate entries arranged in alphabetical order, which is not particu­ larly helpful. The choice of these authors as the classic or formative writers for the genre is open to debate due to the lack of further explanation or connections. This book may be of some use to a neophyte, but is limited in its usefulness to any other fans. As such, it may be helpful in a general library, but is probably not useful enough to justify its purchase. - Sherry Stoskopf

Bloom, Harold (Ed). Modern Fantasy Writers. New York: Chelsea House, 1995, 194 pages, hardcover, ISBN 0-7910- 2223-4.

Modern Fantasy Writers, part of an ongoing series titled Writers of English: Lives and Works, is a curious volume in several ways because it raises so many questions. Here is what we do know: Harold Bloom's name appears as editor, and he has written both a general introduction to the series and another specifically for this volume. The body of the work comprises biographies of fifteen fantasy authors, each from one to two pages in length, followed by critical extracts and bibliographies. The fifteen authors are: , John Collier, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt (one unit), E.R. Eddison, Robert E. Howard, , C.S. Lewis, David Lindsay, A. Merritt, , M.P. Shiel, Clark Ashton Smith, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams.

My questions begin with the title: what is meant by "mod­ ern" and what is meant by "fantasy"? I might assume a chro­ nological definition of "modern," and this seems closest to the truth since the authors seem bracketed by the Edwardian at one end (no E. Nesbit) and the postmodern at the other end (no Angela Carter). Even so, the selection of authors remains curious. I found myself wondering why some of these authors were included rather than, for instance, Lord Dunsany, T.H. White, George MacDonald, Sylvia Townsend Warner, or Muriel Spark. "Fantasy" is by no means a static term, so it would be useful to know its parameters for this volume. Bloom's introductory material does not help us c.:1- derstand the scope of either the title or the content.

SFRA Review #220, page 37 The introductions are gracefully written; one would expect no less. The four-page general introduction, "The Life of the Author", is a highly conservative rejection of the postmodernist death of the author, dismissed as "no more than a Parisian trope," a plea to "return to a study of the life of the author" (p. vii). His argument, both compelling and nostalgic, is that "we read biography ... as a second, fresh attempt to understand what always seems to evade us in the work, our drive towards a kind of identity with the author" (p. ix). The one-and-a-half­ page introduction to this volume, which might have answered those questions of scope, instead consists entirely of a paean to David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus. As such, it seems irrelevant and useless. The introductions, and possibly the selection of authors to be included, seem Harold Bloom's only evident contributions to the book.

I say this because the body of the work does not support the argument of the general introduction. The biographies themselves, quite brief, include little which will lead us to "a kind of identity with the author," but emphasize literary ac­ complishments rather than personal revelation. Though they provide useful summaries of literary careers, they offer no more than do other, more extensive reference works. The critical excerpts also suggest a tenuous editorial connection. Though generally perceptive and intelligent, they seem ran­ domly arranged. The questions raised by the body of the volume include one of authorship - who wrote the brief bi­ ographies? - and, second, why did they not stress the thesis of the general introduction?

As handsome in appearance as this volume from Chelsea House Publishers is, it fails as a reference work because it raises more questions than it answers. The fault appears to lie in the tenuous relationship between the editor and the finished work. - Joan Gordon

Conger, Syndy McMillen. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Language of Sensibility. Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994, 214 pages, hardcover, $39.50, ISBN 0-8386-3553-9.

I chose to review this book in the manner I did in the hope of expanding the edge of the envelope of fantasy and science fiction criticism. In doing so, r find myself borrowing some SFRA Review #220, page 38 of Syndy Conger's language as she describes "the Language of Sensibility".

Syndy Conger addresses a number of fascinating theoreti­ cal concerns relating to the power and limitations of the lan­ guage that Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), daughter of the enlightenment and mother of Frankenstein author Mary Shelly, confronted and grappled with in her short lifetime. To her, the biggest of these concerns was whether or not the Language of Sensibility functions as a language which includes and communicates, creating a dialogic public space, or as an anti-language, a kind of secret code which is only apprehended by the initiate who shares the language and experience of the speaker's narrative voice.

This issue is raised repeatedly within the field of science fiction, and has been with us since the early days of aca­ demic science fiction criticism in the 1950s. Its most com­ mon form is the cry, "Let's get science fiction out of the class­ room and back into the gutter where it belongs!" Here I con­ fess my own value-laden standpoint: I feel that criticism must be more than an inaccessible language (like Topology filled with it's own conventions), understandable only to those who practice its secret and arcane ritual.

I suggested another form of criticism in an introduction to a cosmically black paper I gave on Kurt Vonnegut's intertextual use of science fiction at the SFRA Conference in Grand Forks at the end of June. My suggestion is a form of criticism with which we are all familiar. Sometimes I think it is the best form, really the only valid form. It gets passed around by word of mouth. Someone just has to tell you about a book they have read. They make it sound so interesting that you read it, and pass on the word, as I am doing with this book.

Conger presents intrinsically interesting historical and bio­ graphical aspects of the life of the major English Enlighten­ ment Feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and suggests that Wollstonecraft's work predated contemporary feminist con­ cerns by 175 years. Conger shows that Wollstonecraft ar­ ticulates major issues concerning the limits and potential of the Language of Sensibility and is acutely aware through her career of its problems and potential.

What does Conger mean by this phrase,"Language of Sen­ Sibility"? In a general sense she uses it as a phrase meant

SFRA Review #220, page 39 both to counterpoint and complement the major themes of the century-long period dating from the Glorious Revolution in England in the 1690's and ending at the gate of the Bastille in 1789, which we have come to call the Enlightenment.

It is safe to say that the "Language of Sensibility" adds an enhanced dimension to the machine-like rationality of the Enlightenment. Conger suggests an approach to language that engages sentiment in other than the alleged cold deduc­ tive progression of pure reason of the Enlightenment. Will­ iam Blake was fully aware of these issues as he raised the question: can we privilege one sense above all others, with­ out dulling them to the point where we face the prospect of imprisonment in one's own language, or worse yet the cre­ ation of anti-language like some forms of criticism I deplore which seek to exclude and isolate rather than enhance language's dialogic potential?

I think this book will be of interest to the critic, fan, and general reader alike, particularly in light of its manner of presentation, which allows Mary Wollstonecraft to speak through Conger's selections of her work. The book belongs in any research collection, and is at the same time of general interest to any who share concerns, dealing with the evolu­ tion of the human condition and the limits and potential of language, which are at least as compelling in the late 20th as they were in the late 18th century.

Reminding ourselves that we are in fact in the late 20th century, I would like to point out that a number of free, full electronic text versions of Mary Wollstonecraft's works are available on the Internet. I have found them to be fantastic scholarly resources, and I hope that Michael Hart and others performing this important service can find the necessary sup­ port to continue. - Philip Kaveny

Harbottle, Philip and Stephen Holland. British Sci­ ence Fiction Paperbacks and Magazines, 1949-1956: An An­ notated Bibliography and Guide. San Bernardino, Califor­ nia: Borgo Press, 1994,231 pages, hardcover, $30.00, ISBN 0-89370-821-6; softcover, $20.00, ISBN 0-89370-921-2.

Harbottle and Holland, in this book and the related Vul­ tures of the Void, present a segment of SF history which is

SFRA Review #220, page 40 otherwise not well covered in the literature on the genre. Their history is important in understanding the history of SF in Great Britain, and the sociology of the genre in this time period in Great Britain.

The book is presented in four major sections. "Original Science Fiction Paperbacks, 1946-1956" lists the books al­ phabetically by author or published pseudonym. A brief bio­ graphical note is given for many authors, and may be the only such biography for some of the writers. Books are de­ scribed bibliographically by title, place, publisher, pagina­ tion and cover artist, followed by a short annotation.

"Paperback Books from Established Houses, 1949-1956" records the publications of mainstream publishers, which were mostly re-publications of previously published hardcover novels and collections.

"A Checklist of British Science Fiction Magazines, 1949- 1956" is a useful historical checklist of magazine publishing in Great Britain for the period. More important is the "Com­ plete Author Index to the Stories in the British Science Fic­ tion Magazines, 1949-1956", which provides a concise win­ dow into the British editorial taste for short SF in the period, something not easily derived from more comprehensive bib­ liographic tools.

The volume concludes with title indexes for both the books and the magazine stories. Overall, it is a nicely-crafted en­ tree to post-war British publishing, editorial taste, and sci­ ence fiction literary history. - Hal Hall

Jacob, Merle L. and Hope Apple. To Be Continued: An Annotated Guide to Sequels. Phoenix, Arizona: Oryx Press, 1995,364 pages, hardcover, $45.50, ISBN 0-89774-842-5.

Jacob and Apple's guide to sequels is just that, a guide. It is not comprehensive, as I shall demonstrate, but it does do some good reference work for people interested in sequels dealing with science fiction, fantasy and horror. This guide defines sequels "as novels that tell a continuing story or are united by a regional, social, or philosophical theme." It is concentrated on novels in English for an adult audience which are available in American libraries, and excludes sequels that

SFRA Review #220, page 41 are the product of more than one author, such as or Dr. Who books.

Some of the prominent sequels missing include John Norman's Gar series, Robert Adams's Horseclans series, Terry Pratchett's popular Discworld series (which originated in Great Britain), and Glen Cook's The Black Company series. Appar­ ently these series just slipped between the cracks.

Phyllis Eisenstein's The Crystal Palace (1988), a sequel published about seven years after Sorcerer's Son, as well as her In the Red Lord's Reach (1989), also published seven years after its source, Born to Exile, were not mentioned. This omis­ sion may have occurred due to the longer-than-usual gaps in publication between original and sequel.

On the other hand, some good basic reference work was done on the 110 fantasy authors, 11 horror authors, and 136 science fiction authors who were included. First, each entry contained a one-paragraph summary outlining the plot of the sequel. The outlines are somewhat cursory due to the approximate ISO-word limit for each, but bibliographies must often compromise in this manner. Secondly, the indexes were super. The reader can look up the name of a series or an individual novel in the title index, or check the genre index, which was quite accurate.

The Subjects and Literary Forms Index was my favorite. Under "Advertising", it listed Fred Pohl and CM. Kornbluth's . Under "Arthur, King", Mary Stewart and T.H. White as well as six other authors appeared. Under "Gods and Goddesses", E.R. Eddison (Eric Rucker), Philip Jose Farmer, Fred Saberhagen, Brian Stableford, Sheri Tepper and Gene Wolfe appeared . Over 50 authors were listed under "Imaginary Kingdoms", while "Imaginary wars and battles" laid claim to 45 writers. Other subject headings included extraterrestrial beings, interplanetary voyages, in­ terplanetary wars, interstellar communication, and . There was also a Time and Place Index with such de­ tails as "Arctic regions 19th century," "Arctic regions 1900- 1945", and "Arctic regions 1945-1980" plus six different time categories on California alone and nine on the .

The author's name, series title, title of novels, publisher, publication date, annotation, genre, and subjects were very accurate for the most part. The book also contains a small SFRA Review #220, page 42 bibliography of other useful sources for the sequel reader or researcher. This guide, though not exhaustive, is a good start in charting the many sequels in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror. - Bob Blackwood

Larson, Randall D. Films Into Books: An Analytical Bibli­ ography of Film Novelizations, Movie, and TV Tie-Ins. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, April 1995, 608 pages, hardcover, $69.50, ISBN 0-8108-2928-2.

In this guide, Larson limits his discussion to novelizations of film and TV scripts, or original novels based on a film or TV show or series. He isn't concerned with books adapted to the film or TV medium, the subject of a handful of reference books. Even with that restriction, he lists hundreds of novel­ izations, from the 1920s, when they began to appear occa­ sionally, to today. King Kong in 1932 is one of the better known from the early period. When mass market paperbacks mushroomed in the 1960s, novelizations became common, with SF and fantasy the most commercially successful, both then and now.

The first fifty pages discuss the mechanics of film and TV novelizations, which occasionally may be created in close cooperation with the studio (c.g. 2001, by Clarke and Kubrick), but far more commonly are based on an early film or TV script that often differs markedly from the final product, though rarely as widely as films based on books diverge from their print originals. Far more TV than film novelizations are published today. Deadlines are typically tight - a few weeks rather than a few months. If it turns out to have some literary merit, so much the better. Few novelizations have such merit, which doesn't mean they won't sometimes sell millions of copies (the Star Trek spinoffs are prime examples of such commercial success). Larson thinks more highly of novelizations than most of their creators do. He cites as "clas­ sics" the novelizations of Forbidden Planet, the Quatermass books, Serling's Twilight Zone series, E. T., and Fantastic Voy­ age.

Part Two, 184 pages devoted to 52 authors of noveliza­ tions, relies primarily on personal interviews and corre~t-',ll1- dence, from which quotations are interwoven with descrip­ tive material. While some of the names are well-known -

SFRA Review #220, page 43 Piers Anthony, Asimov, Bloch, Orson Scott Card, de Camp, etc. - most aren't. Few authors can overcome the constraints imposed by novelizations, although some try, but they rec­ ognize that it's quick and fairly easy money (flat fees, not royalties) and can generate additional sales of their other books. Part Three provides bibliographies by title and au­ thor, followed by an author/title index to Part Two.

Scarecrow, recently sold to University Press of America, markets mostly to libraries. Most novelizations are paper­ backs, which libraries acquire but infrequently catalog, so readers generally find novelizations more by chance. Since they aren't cataloged, they can't be used for inter-branch or interlibrary lending, and although selection criteria for popu­ lar fiction are often rather relaxed, little money is likely to be spent on novelizations, although many are acquired as gifts. How many libraries will therefore buy a relatively pricey book that lists books that most of them don't acquire in significant numbers and don't catalog anyway? Relatively few, I'd guess, outside of a handful of large university and public library systems.

If you are still interested in novelizations, consider instead 's (modestly) titled The Ultimate Guide to Sci­ ence Fiction, 2nd Edition (Ashgate/Scholar, 1994, 481 pages, $59.50). Unlike the 1990 first edition, the second includes annotations for many dozens of novelizations, on the grounds that younger readers will ask about them (as they probably will). They aren't rated very highly, but they're here. I didn't have to tell contributors to Anatomy of Wonder to exclude novelizations. 2010 made it, as did Metropolis (1927), writ­ ten by Fritz Lang's wife, Thea von Harbou, but I don't think there were any more - for obvious reasons. - Neil Barron

MacNee, Marie J. (Ed). Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Hor­ ror Writers (two volumes). : U.X.L.lGale Research, 1995,439 pages, $38.00 (set), 0-8103-9865-6.

Gale's U.T.X. imprint began in 1994 and is used for books and electronic products aimed at grades five through nine, a bit younger than the young adult market, and with relatively affordable prices. This set contains profiles of eighty authors selected by MacNee and an advisory board of librarians and children's literature specialists (and including Thomas Ligotti, SFRA Review #220, page 44 the horror writer, who's a Gale editor). The selection' criteria are rather general: "the best-known, highest-praised, scari­ est, funniest, and most promising authors." The range is from Mary Shelley to R.L. Stine, with a strong emphasis on writers who specialize in YA fiction (about half the writers), such as Joan Aiken, Natalie Babbit, John Bellairs, Roald Dahl, Madeleine L'Engle, Daniel Pinkwater, and Jane Yolen. Men outnumber women by 52 to 28. Verne is the only non-En­ glish language author. Although comprehensive works like the Clute/Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction profile YA writers, they're conspicuously absent or scarce in many of the standard reference works devoted to fantastic literature.

Each profile provides basic biographical information, an author photo, a reproduction of a book jacket or a still from a film based on the author's work, a "best bets" list of one to five recommended books, and sometimes a list of film adap­ tations. The sources list books, magazine articles, and re­ views. The narrative text ranges from about 900 to 1500 words and often quotes from the cited sources, the author, and/or other critics. I found the profiles generally balanced, allowing for the intended audience of the set. How would you summarize, say, Silverberg's career in that few words? With great difficulty. Dying Inside is mentioned in passing but isn't included in the best bets list, probably because it wouldn't appeal much to a younger audience. Both volumes include a list of Hugo and Nebula winners and a complete author/title index - a waste of sixteen pages, since I cannot imagine any library buying only one volume of the set. Read­ ers would be better served with a single awards listing, add­ ing at least the World Fantasy and Stoker awards, and possi­ bly some of the lesser-known children's book awards (a few are mentioned in the entries themselves), and a single index.

I didn't spot many errors. Tolkien is misspelled in the contents, and Gernsback is cited as the founder of Astound­ ing. The selection of writers is balanced and suitable for its audience. Whether these are the optimum eighty authors is anybody's guess. I would have liked to see profiles of Robert C. O'Brien and the Australian author Gillian Rubinstein, even if at the expense of some lesser authors, like Caroline Cooney, who were included. The list of sources relies too much on reviews and not enough on more substantive work, but this may not be very important for fifth to ninth graders. The paper is acid-free, and the colorful glossy cover (over boards; no jacket) by Philip Tan will appeal to fantasy readers. A

SFRA Review #220, page 45 good value for middle and high schools and for public librar- ies. - Neil Barron

Pastaurmatzi, Damna. Bibliography of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror: 1960-1993. Athens, Greece: Alien, 1995, 245 pages, $30.00 (plus $5 shipping & handling).

The bibliography of science fiction, fantasy and horror lit­ erature in Greece has been essentially nonexistent to now. Damna Pastourmatzi has set as her goal the identification and recording of works in these genres, both in translation and in original Greek fiction. This volume is the first of three books she proposes, and it is a pioneering work of biblio­ graphic scholarship.

To clearly comprehend the pathfinding nature of the book, consider that there is no systematic bibliographic control of publishing in Greece prior to the early nineties. Couple that with an elitist and antagonistic literary establishment, spo­ radic publishing of the genres, and scattered, mostly unorga­ nized fans and collectors, and the Significance of this unique work is highlighted.

This volume covers SF, fantasy and horror translated into the Greek from 1960-1993. Pastourmatzi estimates she has identified at least 95% of the published material for the pe­ riod. Methodologically, she systematically searched book­ stores, libraries, and private collections, especially the exten­ sive collection of Christos Lazos. In her quest, she discovered service policies in libraries I would describe as archaic, and a curious lack of cooperativeness on the part of publishers, both of which slowed her work.

Pastourmatzi offers twenty-five pages of introductory ma­ terial in Greek (which I wish I could read!). She follows with an introduction and an article, "Science Fiction in Greece: A First Encounter", (both in English) plus a set of tables detail­ ing the publishing of translated material, for a total of fifty­ one pages of commentary on SF in Greece. The insights pro­ vided into Greek literary bibliographic and genre culture are interesting and valuable.

The body of the book, 155 pages, is arranged by author, and lists book translations and short story translations for

SFRA Review #220, page 46 each author. The data includes: author; nationality, date of birth and date of death; pseUdonym data; title in Greek; origi­ nal title; translator's name; place of publication; publisher; and date of publication. For short fiction, pagination is given for many works.

The volume concludes with sections listing anthologies; articles, essays and criticism; interviews; and a science fic­ tion magazine checklist. The critical materials were essen­ tially unknown prior to Pastourmatzi's efforts, and the maga­ zine checklist informs international readers of a little-known arena of magazine activity.

Pastourmatzi is to be complimented on an outstanding ini­ tial bibliography of Greek SF activity, and on an ambitious continuing effort - she proposes to continue her work on translated SF, fantasy and horror with a volume covering 1994-2000, and a volume covering original science fiction by Greek writers.

Science fiction research collections should acquire all three books as they become available, as the best resource on sci­ ence fiction, fantasy, and horror in Greece. - Hal Hall

Rothschild, D. Aviva. GraphiC Novels: A Bibliographic Guide to Book-Length Comics. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, March 1995,245 pages, $30.00, hardcover, ISBN 1-56308-086-9.

Since many graphic novels contain fantasy or science fic­ tion, this new bibliography will be of interest and use to many SFRA members. It is, as far as I know, the first reference guide to this ambiguous art/literary form, which is only now beginning to be taken seriously. It begins with a preface by artist Donna Barr (in graphic form, naturally), and an intro­ duction in which the editor attempts to explain what a graphic novel is and what it is not (e.g. a comic book, a children's picture book, or a collection of newspaper comics or cartoons). She describes herself as "a graphic novel evangelist, eager to spread the good news about comics and encourage readers to explore this genre, which contains some first-class litera­ ture that has received little exposure." Her book is alsv in­ tended as a useful guide to librarians building collections and as a record of ephemera that have been poorly docu-

SFRA Review #220, page 47 men ted and are in danger of disappearing entirely.

The novels are listed alphabetically by title within the fol­ lowing categories: Action/Adventure, Fantasy, General Fic­ tion, Funny Animals, Science Fiction, Westerns, Superheroes, and, most interestingly, Non-Fiction, which includes Biogra­ phy and Autobiography, Politics, and Science. A complete bibliographic listing, including ISBN, is followed by a sum­ mary and review of each work's writing and art. The reviews, which are personal, opinionated, and sometimes sharply criti­ cal, demonstrate the editor's wide knowledge of and enthusi­ asm for the genre. There is an index to assist readers looking for a particular writer or artist.

As the first work in a new field, Graphic Novels is far from complete, but at least it is a start, and anyone interested in popular culture will wish to own it. Readers are urged to send new titles and comments to the editor, care the pub­ lisher, for a hoped-for second edition. - Lynn F. Williams

Treglown, Jeremy. Roald Dahl: A Biography. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994,322 pages, hardcover, $25.00, ISBN 0-374-25130-4.

Roald Dahl was remarkable for having received critical acclaim in two distinct genres: macabre tales for adults, and c.hildren's stories. His collections Someone Like You (1953) and Kiss Kiss (1960) have sold millions of copies worldwide and preserved such often-reprinted Twilight-Zone-esque tales as "Lamb to Slaughter", "Poison", "Man from the South", and "The Landlady". His surprise-twist stories convey a misan­ thropic view of apparently genteel characters who can reveal ruthlessness and cruelty to others, particularly spouses, who fall under their power. Dahl's best-selling children's books include James and the Giant Peach (1961), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), The Enormous Crocodile (1978), and Matilda (1988).

Jeremy Treglown's biography of Roald Dahl reveals the charismatic, domineering personality behind these stories. Treglown has relied on correspondence and interviews with many of Dahl's relatives and acquaintances to build a pic­ ture of the man since early childhood. His portrait of Dahl is sensitive to the many factors that shaped the writer into the SFRA Review #220, page 48 difficult man he would become, such as his father's early death, his unhappiness at various English public schools, and the physical pain he lived in for much of his life. However, unlike all other biographers of Dahl, Treglown does not glo­ rify the man. Dahl became a less than satisfactory husband to American actress Patricia Neal and could be a demon to his editors, and the later chapters portray him with brutal candor.

The book is extremely readable, indulging itself with com­ ments about various scandals, such as Dahl's marital infideli­ ties, gift for self-aggrandizement, and love of making scenes in public, yet without stooping to sensationalism. Where Treglown reveals his subject's failings, he does so without apology and with every appearance of objectivity.

Treglown describes Dahl's stint in the Royal Air Force, which provided him lifelong injuries, a reputation as a war hero, and the material for several stories, and sets straight various details which Dahl would later exaggerate or whitewash. Treglown brings to life the social atmosphere surrounding Dahl's succeeding position at the British Embassy in Wash­ ington, where Dahl was to meet a variety of celebrities and politicians - particularly his lifelong friend, the newspaper tycoon Charles Marsh - even while spying upon them for the British government. For Dahl's marriage, Treglown avails himself of Neal's autobiography and the accounts of their children and friends. He describes a volatile relationship filled with drinking parties and fights; during the early years, Neal was often the breadwinner, which Dahl envied and resented.

The story of Neal's stroke and Dahl's nursing her back to health has often been romanticized, since Dahl himself in­ structed interviewers on its details. Treglown finds that those close to the Dahls found the truth less than charming, and murmurs that a streak of sadism may have underlain Dahl's regimen of rehabilitation. He also suggests that, with Neal unable to work for some years, Dahl's turn to writing screen­ plays (such as Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and You Only Live Twice) and his later prolificity in children's books was motivated by the need to earn money for his growing family.

Treglown ties the events of Dahl's life closely to his writ­ ings. After the early success of his adult fiction, Dahl found himself increasingly stymied by writer's block, and often SFRA Review #220, page 49 turned the bedtime stories he made up for his children into a source of income. Treglown provides a fascinating look at Dahl's relationship with his editors and publishers, which grew thornier as Dahl's self-importance swelled with success. His editors extensively revised his stories, which Dahl always ac­ cepted with bad grace, finding other ways to take revenge upon them. An editor at Knopf, after being instructed by Dahl to supply the writer with pencils, finally wrote to Dahl that their business relationship was over, and Dahl was free to publish elsewhere. At this news, Treglown reports, every­ one at Knopf "stood on their desks and cheered." By the end of the book, we feel that Treglown is perfectly justified in titling the last chapter with a remark Dahl once made to an interviewer: "You're absolutely wrong and I am right."

Treglown's strengths include his talent for making his read­ ers feel they are peering through the keyhole of the Dahls' residence, or even sitting at the table sharing a glass of claret with them, a sensation aided by the several leaves of black and white illustrations of the Dahls. The book's unfortunate weaknesses are the inexplicable lack of a bibliography and a reluctance to place the reader chronologically. For example, when trying to determine in which year Patricia Neal had her stroke, I had to skim back and forth through a few chapters. I also found myself wishing that Treglown would discuss the stories more, and in a more critical vein. However, overall I found the book fascinating and impossible to put down. - Fiona Kelleghan

Zipes, Jack. Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale. Lex­ ington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1994, 192 pages, hardcover, $33.00, ISBN 0-8131-1890-5.

Jack Zipes is possibly the most interesting and accessible fairy tale scholar writing today. Previous works like his bril­ liant critical anthology, Don't Bet on the Prince: Contempo­ rary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England, have changed not only how we look at and understand fairy tales but also how we look at and understand contemporary gen­ der relationships. In Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale, Zipes continues his excellent scholarship. He tells us that a myth is "a sacred history," a "fabled time" of "beginnings," how "a reality came into existence." Fairy tales are folk tales with a magical focus, a "telescoping" of life within a culture so that the story seems both aged and timeless. Because of

SFRA Review #220, page 50 fairy tales' origins in the oral tradition, manifold retellings tend to strip the tales of all but an archetypical essence, not how we began, perhaps, but how we are.

Of course, there is an overlap of information between the "sacred" myth and the "profane" fairy tale. Zipes tells us, "Myths and fairy tales seem to know something that we do not know. They also appear to hold our attention, to keep us in their sway, to enchant our lives. We keep returning to them for answers. We use them in diverse ways as private sacred myths or as public commercial advertisements to sell something. We refer to myths and fairy tales as lies by say­ ing, 'oh, that's just a fairy tale,' or 'that's just a myth.' But these lies are often the lies that govern our lives."

Thus, understanding the way stories change from culture to culture and age to age through retelling is an important clue in understanding ourselves. In this volume, Zipes com­ piles six lively and important essays. The first, "The Origins of the Fairy Tale", traces fairy tales from the earliest versions told by aristocratic French women to entertain each other at salon parties through their expropriation by men when pub­ lishing and printing became almost exclusively a male activ­ ity. Zipes remarks that "one way in which paternal rule has been reinforced is through fairy tales." In most traditional fairy tales the primary duty of a heroine (Cinderella, Beauty, Snow White, e[ al) is to be dominated and tu serve graciously. Zipes suggests that "Fairy tales do not become mythic unless they are in almost perfect accord with the underlying prin­ ciples of how the male members of society seek to arrange object relations to satisfy their wants and needs. The fairy tales must seem natural and celebrate submission by the op­ posite sex or the dominated so that the dominated can feel the beauty of their actions." Thus, the tales (even in many of their modernized versions) function subtly to subdue, tame and domesticate women. Zipes concludes, "we must become even more aware of those scripts that tame us and prescribe our desires, for they can only become our tales if we review and rewrite them with a strong sense of our own creative powers of transformation."

In "Rumpelstiltskin and the Decline of Female Productiv­ ity", Zipes explains how changes in versions of this story re­ flect how women's work is valued. Just as the invent:... 1 of the printing press took the dynamic oral tradition of folk tales away from women, the invention of mechanized weav-

SFRA Review #220, page 51 ing took away women's means to financial independence by taking the production of cloth away from independent spin­ sters. (Even the name "spinster" itself came to be devalued.) "Rumpelstiltskin" changes from an early version of a young woman who asks for help because she could only spin instead of the more valued cloth, to one where the young woman can spin flax into thread easily, but is imprisoned and risks death because her parent said she was so skillful that she could magically spin straw into gold. In this version her "reward" for being able to do the impossible is to be forced to marry the king whose stupidity and inordinate greed caused him to imprison and coerce her in the first place, a no-win situation. She is totally at the mercy of men. The spindle, though phallic in its shape, has long been a mythical symbol of female productivity. To study the evolving versions of "Rumpelstiltskin" is to see our changing attitudes toward women's independence and interdependence as well as the value of women's work.

Just as printing took folk tales away from women's experi­ ences, so did cartooning. In "Breaking the Disney Spell", Zipes explains how Walt Disney was able to gain a cultural strangle­ hold on the fairy tale through technological Wizardry, so that his vision has transformed and homogenized fairy tales for over 60 years. Early cartoonists like Disney tended to be men, and Zipes suggests that the drive to create life through cartooning is, on a Freudian level, an attempt to take repro­ duction away from women. The pen is a phallic object that can create life in a micro-world controlled entirely by the "demi-god" cartoonist. Although cartooning might well func­ tion to subvert and radicalize, Disney's vision of America was conservative. Old-fashioned family values were the focus of his fairy tale revisionings. Sexuality was the realm of evil stepmothers, while his heroines tended to be passive, chaste, and domestic. Virtue's reward was a traditional love match and marriage to the Prince (on a psychological level, Disney, himself). This is a very powerful image. My seven-year-old daughter, who has grown up on the romance of Disney movie videos, for a long time believed that all brides and grooms were princesses and princes as well. Zipes concludes that Disney's technological genius has petrified the fairy tale into mere entertainment rather than a dynamic vehicle for exam­ ining relationships within our culture.

Chapter Four, "Spreading Myths about Iron John", critiques Robert Bly's use of the "Iron Hans" folk tale. Through the

SFRA Review #220, page 52 poet's misunderstanding, the tale becomes "nightmare and hyperbole." Zipes points out that "Ely's rambling interpreta­ tion of what he has designated as a primeval initiatory narra­ tive" has very little to do with the meaning of the original tale. Ely revisions the tale in an attempt to create a primitive male mythology that will work archetypically to cure the unacceptably "soft" modern man of whatever ails him. Zipes suggests that "Ely's notions about men are a clear reaction to the women's movement and part of a backlash against Ameri­ can women." By retreating into his primitive, ideological for­ est of hairy men howling at the , Ely only works to un­ dermine those who are seriously attempting to study the prob­ lems in gender relationships.

Chapter Five, "Oz as American Myth", is a study of utopian fiction and how it functions to critique and revision a cul­ ture. The authors of such fiction "paradoxically... remove us from our present situation to engage us with it." L. Frank Baum was initially an optimist and a dreamer, but his search for economic success in America was an increasing disap­ pointment for him. Oz came out ofthis disappointment. Zipes writes, "Oz is everything America did not become, and it is why we keep trying to return to Oz." Oz embodies everything contained in the American myth about spacious skies, fruited plains, equal opportunity, and the eventual triumph of good­ ness. Thus, Zipes shows how modern writers Philip jose Farmer (A Barnstormer in Oz, 1982) and Geoff Ryman (Was, 1992) continue to return us to Oz in order to revision alter­ nate realities for America. It is a mark of Baum's genius that Oz, after nearly a hundred years, continues to be a dynamic vehicle for engaging us in "a critical review of our present world order."

Finally, in "The Contemporary American Fairy Tale", Zipes reviews the re-emergence of fairy tale popularity in America both through beautifully illustrated picture books and through young adult and adult retellings. Zipes suggests that the goal of modern writers like Angela Carter, Wendy Walker, jane Yolen, and Robert Coover, as well as editors such as , is to re-energize the fairy tale and restore its dy­ namic "problem without a solution" characteristic. just as in today's world, there is no guarantee of happy endings. Zipes suggests, "The end goal of the postmodernist fairy tale is not closure but openness, not recuperation but differentiation, not the establishment of a new norm but the questioning of all norms." It is clear that Zipes approves of further fairy tale

SFRA Review #220, page 53 experimentation through utopias, parodies, revisions, and feminist fairy tales that subvert the male discourse and pa­ triarchal ideology.

Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale is a joy to read. In a field that has historically tended to be rather patriarchal, Zipes's feminism is both on track and refreshing. My only criticism is that Zipes, in a volume otherwise completely ac­ cessible to the lay reader, occasionally forgets that his audi­ ence may not be entirely fluent in French and German and does not always include translations of phrases and titles. This book is a must for anyone interested in how fairy tales and myths continue to shape and be shaped by culture. -Sandra Lindow

51-lM Review #220, page 54 'iSH.'" & Poetry Reviews-

Bear, Greg. Legacy. New York: Tor, 1995,349 pages, hard­ cover, $22.95, ISBN 0-312-85516-8.

In a 1990 Extrapolation interview, Greg Bear comments some­ what wearily that a fellow writer found Eon "too metaphysical and too undisciplined." Putting worries about plot aside for the scope of this review (surely the least interesting element of SF), I think this observation points out an essential tension within Bear's work, a tension foregrounded in Eon and Eter­ nity, and equally prominent in their new , Legacy. In­ deed, it is the tension between diSCipline and metaphysics that constitutes the most effective element of much of Bear's work. So, while undeniably a noteworthy piece of Hard SF proper with some tip-top scientific speculation (and thus hardly "un­ disciplined" in a scientific sense), I think it is important to re­ view the other side of Greg Bear's Legacy, the operating condi­ tions of its Hard Science, that is, its metaphysics.

Both Eon and Eternity collapse science into metaphysics in the final instance, the former featuring a mathematician on a collision course with the geometrical sublime, a sublime that becomes a kind of existential anguish before the latter's inhu­ man cosmology. On the face of it, though, we've got some­ thing different with Legacy, something that looks like a return to Hard SF proper. For unlike most sequels/, Legacy presents us with something truly new (and in the process de­ livers a sound slap in the face to the overcapitalized, under­ conceptualized serials presently spewing across the genre), an ingenious "What if...?" What if we have a world in which evo­ lution is not driven by the inheritance of genetic traits, but by acquired traits? Turning molecular biology on its head, Bear builds a planet where the evolutionary theory developed by the early 19th century biologist Jean Baptiste de Lamarck does, in fact, hold. Bear then delivers a clever planetary for his Lamarckia, an ecology of "ecoi," continent-spanning, quasi­ intelligent single genetic organisms that design the course of their own evolution. The narrative itself is likewise distant from Eon and Eternity, in brief, the story is a prequel, detailing a formative event for a character common to the "previous" works, the now-young Olmy Ap Sennon. Olmy is sent on his first mission through The Way, the behemoth spacetime fractal attached to the asteroid starship Thistledown, to report on a SFRA Review #220, page 55 group of low-tech rebels who, in defiance of their high-tech spaceborn society, opened a prohibited in The Way to found a colony on Lamarckia. So with Legacy we're not only presented with a different physical environment from that of Eon and Eternity, and with a plot centered around concerns that are somewhat "incidental" to those two works, but early in the novel we realize, this here's a sea tale.

Legacy can certainly be read as a travelogue in which Olmy voyages around Lamarckia, visiting its many natural won­ ders, seeking to understand the impact that humans are hav­ ing on the planet's unique environment. This Lamarckian odyssey provides Bear with ample opportunity to develop in some depth the planet's complex ecology. Read thus, Bear's narrative pieces itself together like a complex biological puzzle, a puzzle that will serve up challenges for all but the most stodgy Hard SF devotees.

Of course, there are people on Lamarckia as well. With humans in the puzzle, Olmy's journey into Lamarckia can then be read in more portentous terms as a journey into the very heart of darkness, a protean voyage into the human con­ dition. Such a voyage assumes an interesting cast in the con­ text of Hard SF. As is typical with Hard SF, the physical is theorized with rigorous detail while the social is left largely untheorized, its "behavior" taken for granted. For instance, we are presented with lengthy theoretical treatments of Lamarckia's fantastic biology, but Bear never considers whether the utopian colonists had a social theory (a mean­ ingless concept for most Hard SF) apart from their crude humanism, "uncertain wishes and self-enlarging dreams." It is sadly inevitable, then, that when Olmy arrives on Lamarckia roughly 30 years after its settlement, he enters a state at war. "Away from centuries of culture and political experience, away from all restraints and the enforced patterns of tens of mil­ lions of fellow citizens, the immigrants had reverted. The old human pattern of violent conflict had started again." The social realm, just like Bear's/Olmy's theories of Lamarckian biology, is treated as an element of the natural world - the Inhuman. Given such a formulation of human nature, it seems natural that we encounter starry-eyed scientists, monoma­ niacalleaders, petty ideologies, armed combat - all the com­ mon tropes woven into the genre's concept of human nature. Unless bulwarked by superscience and supertechnology, "the graces of centuries of spaceborn civilization, of the highest of technologies and the closest of aSSOCiations, the most so- SFRA Review #220, page 56 phisticated of cultural educations," the social slides into the only condition left to that which is human: atavism.

Of course, we've got to wonder at the "sophistication" of the determinism at work here. Yet, unlike that found in most Hard SF, I don't find this essentialist formulation of the hu­ man condition merely simpleminded, for Bear has the hon­ esty to follow it to its grim (metaphysical) end. "Life here [on Lamarckia] followed the same round of nature as on any other world," Olmy observes. "Things lived, competed, suc­ ceeded for a time or failed, and died ... What was eerie, even frightening ... was the inevitability of conflict ... " What is forced upon us throughout Legacy is the implication of this naturalist formulation of human action: the futility of coHec·· tive human agency in the face of its own (and the Other's) inhuman determinants, and the eerie alienation of such a real­ ization. Individuals then - and Olmy is an obvious example of this - can only be effective agents within the world (and, as the case may be, survive) so long as they position themselves beyond the bare social realm they find themselves in.

Just as in Eon and Eternity, collective human effort (unless augmented by suprahuman/superindividual artifice) neces­ sarily culminates in war on Lamarckia. Despite their excesses, it must be granted that Bear's battles tug the existential heartstrings. The Inhuman nature of it all feeds the Sartian anguish that Bear's Legacy-Eon-Eternity triplet continually evokes: subject as we are to our own limited conditions of existence, we can never really know ... It is this metaphysical treatment of the Inhuman which makes these books work despite (and because of!) their atavism and unremarkable characterization. Faced with the Inhuman - be it the bio­ logical prowess of the ecoi, or the infinity of The Way, or the determinants of our human nature - we can understand what prompts one of Bear's biologists to state, "soon we realized humans were trivial." Compared to the finite, factious efforts of human society, the Lamarckian ecoi come to signify the tran­ scendence of the Inhuman in their "selfless and eternal curios­ ity, the purest and most biological urge to know." In the final analysis, it is the ecoi that, through their sheer physicality, effect change, and at the colony's collective expense.

Despite its narrative distance from its predecessors, Legacy, too, collapses science into metaphysics. The sea voyage is lit­ erally a quest to understand the Inhuman ecoi scientifically, yet even science is a largely human affair and subject to the SFRA Review #220, page 57 rigid behavioral determinants of Bear's human condition. Those individuals who transcend the constraints of the social realm, namely scientific visionaries and rational observers, are then struck by their own alienation from humanity. Theirs, then, becomes an inhuman condition. They are thus suspended in a bleak existential state, with an awareness more akin to that of the ecoi than humanity, of "no right, no wrong, only forces of nature, like winds blowing us back and forth."

Bear continually confronts the anguish imminent in Hard SF's conception of the human condition, in its penchant for locating agency solely in the Inhuman. This is the heart of darkness Bear's sea tale confronts, the powerlessness at the core of humanity. Legacy is hard, yes, and grim. Its effect­ and all three of these books affected me in a distressing way - hinges on how well you know yourself, that is, how much Inhumanity can you bear? - Richard D. Davis

Blake, Sterling (Gregory Benford). Chiller. New York: Bantam, October 1994, 658 pages, softcover, $5.99, ISBN 0-553-56866-3. Chiller is a suspense novel, pure and simple, and one that works dramatically well as a psychological thriller. It has more in common with John Sandford than Gregory Benford, who writes here under a pseudonym. The SF content is found in the book's subject matter, cryonics, and in the setting: Chiller begins in a near-future California, then skips ahead 38 years. Blake creates a world not too far removed from ours, but the unobtrusive details evoke a different world, as good SF does: medical science is further advanced; the doctor protagonist uses a transcription device that turns her spoken words into writing. The characters ignore these details because they are part of their landscape. But because we have more in common than not with these characters and their world, when the 38- year time shift reveals real scientific wonders and advances, we notice them because the characters do.

What makes this novel science fiction is its handling of cryonics, or freezing recently deceased people for future re­ vival when medical technology can cure them. In an afterword, Blake points out that he depicts cryonics accu­ rately, noting that 50 people are currently suspended. Blake uses this topic as a springboard for musings about the nature

SFRA Review #220, page 58 of life and death, concerns he parallels with the character George, an insane religious fanatic and serial killer who de­ cides that freezing people is against God's plan. George stalks the three protagonists, dedicated employees of a cryonics company called Immortality Incorporated, and kills them one by one. In an interesting twist, the three victims and their antagonist meet again 38 years later when doctors revive them, hoping to solve their murder case, and George tracks them down again. The showdown is wicked fun. Blake delivers lots of suspense and plenty of plot twists, as well as a memorable final scene, but the best part of this novel is the psychopathic George, who has an interesting link with the very science he despises. Unfortunately, a falsely happy ending ruins the novel's complex message regarding death and loss. Blake had hinted that, thanks to cryonics, death can be deferred, but he chooses not to face the ultimate eventuality, instead closing on a message that affirms life and love, not to mention the wisdom of freezing oneself. Blake pairs off all the characters; he even revives the frozen dog.

This character-driven novel delves into the ethics of freez­ ing someone for later revival. Characters' responses range from "heirs should get the money; the frozen person is self­ ish to use it to maintain himself while frozen" to "it's im­ moral" to "do the frozen go to heaven?" Several characters exist only to give one-sided reactions to this science. This works to a point: Blake points out arguments against as well as for cryonics, but he fails to show any of the protagonists really wrestling with the issues. And oddly, Blake chooses to gender cryonics. One character says, "I might reawaken in some strange place, without any of my family, my friends, no job." Dr. Susan Hagerty answers, "Women feel that way, more than men. I call it the neighborhood argument ... [that] you can't live outside your present context." This gendering, as well as the one-sided exploration of the women charac­ ters, strikes a false note. But the primary struggle here is between religion and science, and clearly Blake favors sci­ ence. George, after all, is a misguided religiOUS fanatic whose religion covers up and explains his twisted beliefs. A televangelist uses George to further his campaign against Immortality Incorporated, and we later discover the televangelist is tied to big business and is furthering an agenda that has nothing to do with religion. Though we do get a mainstream minister's positive evaluation of cryonics, reli­ gion is the bad guy here; science will save the day.

SFRA Review #220, page 59 With the focus on George's twisted mind and the rather simplistic good guy-bad guy oppositions, this book reads like a novel of suspense and crime. The crucial difference is that no detective stalks the killer. In fact, the police seem un­ aware of George's actions until distressingly late in the novel. Though Blake plays up cryonics and what cryonics implies in terms of life and death, he understates the other (mostly tech­ nological) science fiction content, using it as backdrop. Chillers spine says "novel"; it is not marketed as science fic­ tion, and readers seeking Benford's brand of hard SF should look elsewhere. On its own terms, I found this novel sus­ penseful and entertaining. I only wish it had dealt more ad­ equately with the thematic topics it wrestled with. - Karen Hellekson

Brin, David. Brightness Reef. New York: , October 1995, 514 pages, hardcover, $22.95, ISBN 0-553- 10034-3. After a hiatus of eight years, returns to his Up­ lift Universe with the publication of Brightness Reef, and once again demonstrates why he is one of the leading writers of the science fiction genre. Intriguing, thought-provoking, and thoroughly captivating, this novel is a fitting continuation of his saga of the Five Galaxies. Set on the fallow world of Jijo, refugees from six races, including Humans, have evaded the patrol ships of the Galactic Migration Institute to hide them­ selves away from the peril of galactic civilization. Here, they have made peace with one another as they purposefully de­ volve back to a non-technical existence with the hopes of puri­ fying their races and giving themselves a second chance. This very act, however, is a great crime - the despoiling of a fallow planet that should be healing itself from it's last settlement.

After almost 2,000 years of criminal seclusion on this world, the skies of Jijo are rocked by the arrival of a starship. As foretold by the Sacred Scrolls, this ship must surely bring judgment upon them all. But instead of judges, the starship bears even greater criminals than the illegal colonists. For the new arrivals have also evaded the blockade of the Great Institutes and have come to steal from the biological diver­ sity of Jijo millions of years before the wounded world should be touched. To compound matters, the ship's crew have an all-too-familiar form. Now the six races are faced with pos­ sible extinction as the new arrivals attempt to cover their

SFRA Review #220, page 60 tracks, and must struggle not only for their own surVival but also to prevent a great crime against the very galactic civili­ zation that they themselves had abandoned.

The first book in a promised trilogy, Brightness Reef deliv­ ers the kind of engrossing tale and rounded characters that Brin's readers have come to expect. Set against one of the most imaginative backdrops in all of science fiction, his Up­ lift novels are surely destined to become classics of the cali­ ber of Asimov's . Following his earlier Up­ lift books, the Hugo and Nebula-winning and the Hugo-winning The War, this new novel takes the reader into a fresh saga filled with adventure, passion, hu­ mor, and intrigue. Lovers of great science fiction should run to their nearest bookstore for a copy of Brightness Reef. They will not be disappointed. - George Kelley

De Lint, Charles. The Ivory and the Horn: A Newford Collection. New York: Tor, 1995, 318 pages, hardcover, $21.95, ISBN 0-312-85573-7. Many male authors have been criticized for creating unre­ alistic female characters. Charles de Lint is not one of them. De Lint consistently creates strong, believable, female view­ point characters. Furthermore, he presents them in commu­ nity with other strong, believable female characters. His sto­ ries evolve naturally out of human and extra-human interac­ tion. Recurring characters like Jilly Coppercorn, the artist; the Grasso Street Angel; Sophie; Wendy; Geordie, the busker; teenaged Maisie and her "adopted" retarded brother Tommy create a web of interaction within the stories. Whether his tales be of artists, street children, angels, dryads, social work­ ers, or ghosts, the message seems to repeatedly concern the importance of human relationships, the dangers of isolation, and the possibility for transcendence through artistic con­ nection and the art of connectedness.

The Ivory and the Horn is perhaps de Lint's most powerful and unified collection to date. Newford, the mythical Cana­ dian city wherein these stories are set, is not a blissful place of happy cavorting elves. Rather it is, like many North Ameri­ can cities, a bleak urban environment where AIDS is real, child abuse is epidemic, crime is rampant, and the "emanci­ pated" mentally ill have been turned out onto the street to

SFRA Review #220, page 61 live in cardboard boxes and abandoned buildings. Life is not easy for the residents of Newford, especially those street people who must struggle each day simply to survive. In the midst of Newford's seediness and grime, the fact that love, altruism, and magic occasionally occur provides de Lint's tales with a gently redemptive quality.

Although de Lint's tone tends to be dark, his sensitivity to human emotion and his compassion for those who suffer is in itself a kind of magic. Of the fifteen stories here, only "Bird Bones and Wood Ash" appears for the first time. In it, jaime, a lesbian grieving the death of her partner, is given the supernatural power to punish and cure child molesters and joins forces with Dennison, a dreadfully overworked so­ cial worker. "Coyote Stories" appeared in the Datlow and Windling Year's Best Fantasy and Horror collection for 1994; here de Lint presents the mythical totem god as a Native American street person always in the midst of a scam, pull­ ing luck out of tragedy at the last possible moment. Although the tales are uniformly excellent, "The Wishing Well" is per­ haps the most important story in this collection because of the sensitive way de Lint describes Brenda, an intelligent woman with a serious eating disorder. Neither wishing nor dieting nor magic can protect Brenda from the destructive­ ness of her negative self image. If not for her friends, Brenda would have died when her latest fad diet of lettuce and pop­ corn finally began to "succeed."

Charles de Lint writes the way it should be written. The horror is the very real horror that lurks at the edge of all our lives. The magic, that transcends the horror and sometimes death itself, is the mystical, unexplainable way people come to love each other. - Sandra]. Lindow

Loudon, Jane (Webb) (Ed. by Alan Rauch). The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century. Ann Ar­ bor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1995, 299 pages, hardcover, $34.00, ISBN 0-472-09574-9; softcover, $14.36, ISBN 0-472-06574-2.

The Mummy! by jane Webb (later Mrs. john Loudon) has a deserved reputation as one of the more entertaining nine­ teenth-century stories of the future. As has been pointed out before, it is basically a historical Gothic novel, much indebted

SFRA Review #220, page 62 to novels of Sir Walter Scott, with a pervasive Biedermeier moral note. Although derivative from Mary Shelley's The Last Man, it is original enough in its occasional technological and strong enough in narrative values to be of interest in itself.

Rauch's introduction, an excellent statement of political and social conditions in Regency England, attempts to tie The Mummy! into the larger cultural issues of the day. It is worth reading for its own sake as a good, insightful historical sum­ mary, but I am inclined to think that Rauch overestimates the background and perceptiveness of a young middle-class woman in a small provincial town when he classifies The Mummy! as "a political allegory ... a broad response to the unstable political climate of England prior to Victoria" (p. xv). I would see Webb's milieu as not so much court scandal, political gossip, and major cultural issues, but as the Napoleonic afterglow, the French discoveries in Egypt, and prototypes in the popular fiction of the day.

It might seem that this edition of The Mummy!, which is a very rare book in the editions of 1827 and 1872, is a god­ send, but actually it is a disaster. The text is abridged, about ten percent being omitted, and the editor has made alter­ ations to the text. This would be bad enough, but worse, no indication is given of what is Webb and what is Rauch or where the cuts have been made.

The reason for this lobotomy, Rauch states, is that "editors and readers alike suggested that the text might benefit from some minor pruning" (p. vi). If this is literally true, it is an astonishing admission. Restated: The house editors didn't like part of a historical classic and decided to omit it. Shades of Bowdler! Who are they to say what a scholarly reader might want?

I wonder, though, whether the publisher was not really concerned about the production cost of a fairly long book with a very limited market. If this is the case, as I am inclined to believe, there were obvious ways to cut costs that Michi­ gan did not use. Repaging with stats or xeroxes (as Dover Publications did with Richmond, Scenes in the Life of a Bow Street Runner and Wilkie Collins's Little Novels) would have been one possibility. Another would have been offsetting the one-volume 1872 edition, which as I remember was a small de my octavo.

SFRA Review #220, page 63 One of the worst things about this deplorable edition is that for the foreseeable future it will preclude any full edi­ tion of The Mummy!, for no publisher in his right mind would print a competitive edition of a book that has very limited potential sales. The result is that an entire generation of scholars and students will never have a chance to see the full text of Webb's novel. - Everett F. Bleiler

Lunde, David. Blues for Port City. Saginaw, Michigan: Mayapple Press, 1995, 17 pages, chapbook, $5.00, ISBN 0- 932412-07-6.

David Lunde, the winner of the 1995 Rhysling long poem award for "Pilot Pilot", gives us a sparkling glimpse into a future world in a first edition (300 copies) chap­ book, Blues for Port City. Ostensibly written by Nulle, a shad­ owy, 22nd-century female poet about whom little is known, it consists of a preface and eleven poems supposedly col­ lected in 2294 by David Lunde, Professor of Poetry and Sci­ ence, Orbital University. In the preface, Professor Lunde writes that it is the "turbulent and transitional period in which human kind reconceived itself and realized at last the dream of stars." It is a difficult time, indeed, where only those ge­ netically and cybernetically enhanced can become the Pilots who "lay claim to the new frontier" and "swim/ naturally as a shark/ in the all-fathering darkness." The rest hold onto their unenhanced humanity with a kind of rueful anger, like the persona of "Pilot Pilot" who assaults and attempts to kill his seemingly invincible Pilot brother on the streets of Port City with the furious scream, "But we made you!"

The poems themselves are interesting balances of science fictional trope and sexual imagery, as well as American liter­ ary and French Symbolist influences. "Aubade for Port City" begins "Unreal city, city of dreams,! your aching white tow­ ers/ barely bronzed by the first/ faint drizzle of photons/ stirring your solar collectors,". Lunde, who also won the 1992 Rhysling for his short poem "Song of the Martian Cricket", and has been nominated for the award five times, has a a firm grasp of the genre. He writes SF poetry the way SFPA founder and past president, Suzette Haden Elgin, intended it to be written when she said that a story must be present for a poem to be labelled science fiction. Although Elgin's defini­ tion might be arguable, Lunde's brilliance is not. He has

SFRA Review #220, page 64 mastered poetic form as well as the natural rhythm·s of hu­ man speech. His images are vivid, his emotions are powerful and the stories revealed by the poems have a satisfying com­ plexity. With rhythms and imagery reminiscent of Edwin Arlington Robinson's "Richard Cory", "Port City Lament" con­ cludes: "We curse the bread, we curse the dough,! We curse the God that made us from such hapless clay.! No man can go where the deepships go:/ We stare at stars we can never know."

As in Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology, Lunde's characters speak out, identifying themselves through the bit­ terness and longing of those who can see what they cannot have. "Star Rigger" begins "Call me star-rigger/as they will, saying it/ don't make it so. Saying it/ just bitters the breath,/ abrades the ear, when I've got! no more to do with stars/ than a starfish on a reef." Lunde's individual voices reveal dark visions beneath the simple words. I only wish that the book were longer and that there were more poems.

My one quibble with these poems is that I don't really be­ lieve that Nulle is female. There is nothing in the voice or imagery that identifies her as female and much that would suggest her to be male. "Nulle's Address to the Pilot" begins "You, who adjust your blood away from anger/ As I might sneeze, does nothing linger/Of love or hate in that quick contraction/ That frees you from the glands' distraction?" The clever male sexual double entendre is continued later with "That calculating mind when neural spike/ Inputs your guidance to the Ship whose drivel Might flutter, fade or flare, and you'd arrive/ Transmogrified, still less human than you were.! Pilot, do you remember being him or her?" At least from this female vantage, there is much in Lunde's poems that is him (Lunde) and little that is her (Nulle). Even the poet's name is only one letter away from being an anagram of the protagonist's name, as if she is meant to be his female alter ego. But Nulle means nothing, and nothing is really what these poems are about; for the characters, unable to take pleasure in the small human things of everyday life - work, child-raising, and human contact - are overwhelmed with longing for a new frontier that they can't have, and they and become psychologically impotent. The penultimate poem, "Anguish", begins "Nature, nothing of you moves me,! not the hypertrophied produce/ of the hydroponic gardens, nor the city park/ that counterfeits Sicilian countrysides, nor the atomic fusion of suns, nor the dark abyss between galaxies."

SFRA Review #220, page 65 Ships become images of intergalactic penises piercing the outer darkness. The residents of Port City, sex-starved young men living in a phony, plastic earth environment, long for space like the body of a beautiful and capricious woman on whom they can perform heroically and slake their desires. It is hard for me to believe that a female poet would be this male-identified. Be that as it may, Lunde's book reads as a cautionary tale of what can happen to a culture so caught up in the space race that all else loses value. -- Sandra]. Lindow

Mohan, Kim (Ed). Amazing Stories: The Anthology. New York: Tor, 1995,320 pages, softcover, $l3.95, ISBN 0-312- 89048-6.

"Amazing Stories. It's a tough name to live up to, but this anthology does the job." So ends the editor's introduction to this collection of thirteen stories and an Afterword. It is a statement that inspires immediate skepticism, even in one who has read very little of the magazine in recent years. Nevertheless, it is not as useful to agree or disagree with the editor's assessment as to examine the merits of the stories included. Eight (those by Paul Di Fillipo, R.A. Lafferty, Will­ iam Barton, Berliner & Guthridge, Mark Rich, Lawrence Watt­ Evans, Kathe Koja, and George Zebrowski) are published here for the first time. The remaining five pieces are reprinted from the magazine, and are by Ursula K. Le Guin, Alan Dean Foster, Thomas M. Disch, Gregory Benford, and in a "classic reprint from the bygone days," , with a story from 1953 and an Afterword from 1983. On the whole the reprints are a notch above those stories not previously pub­ lished.

Reprints and new stories alike break no new ground, fall­ ing into such familiar categories as alternate history or uni­ verse, future society including advanced technology and ex­ ploration of space, and fantasy. We have been reading simi­ lar stories for some years, but we continue to read them when, as in this case, they are competently written, with plots that catch and hold our attention. The best story in the book is Ursula Le Guin's "Dancing to Ganam", which combines Hainish-inspired exploration of another planet and misun­ derstandings arising from contact with its people. Close sec­ onds are Gregory Benford's "A Tapestry of Thought", in which advanced machine intelligences are greatly interested and

SFRA Review #220, page 66 puzzled as they dissect a human being, and Lawrence Watt­ Evans's "Revised Edition", a satiric look at the business op­ portunities (mostly literary and advertising) when a opens between parallel universes.

As Mohan points out, these stories do indeed deserve a shelf life longer than a magazine can give - a good reason for such an anthology. Bloch's Afterword, "Fantastic Stories with Amazing", about his many years of contact with the magazine, is a fitting ending to a good collection. - Arthur O. Lewis

Schlobin, Roger. Fire and Fur: The Last Sorcerer Dragon. Omnimedia, 1994, electronic book.

Reading a book created for the computer is interesting, to say the least, and Schlobin's text is handsomely done, with large, easy-to-read letters and color marking the minimal hypertext notes (mainly used to explain the Chinese names of the various characters). Each of Schlobin's dragons bears a name evocative of Chinese mythology, for these are not essentially Western dragons, guarding hoards of gold and eating the stray human adventurer. Instead they are Eastern dragons, harbingers of fortune and happiness - at least un­ til the race dwindles (apparently from lack of exercise), be­ comes greedy (at the behest of an Evil Dragon or two), and falls for nasty politics (inspired by the Demons of the North).

Schlobin has not used the hypertext capability of the elec­ tronic medium very much, perhaps because the book is dis­ tributed on disk rather than CD-ROM. He has included no graphics, no opportunity for the reader to "create your own text" by jumping from option to option, no benefits from reading onscreen beyond large, colorful text (and the draw­ back of having to unlock the program after Chapter 22), so the applicability of the tale to the medium seems unexplored here. (In contrast, several other electronic books do interact with the reader. A review in the October 1994 Compuserve Magazine discusses various hypertext possibilities: one book reshuffles itself each time it is read, so the story is never the same twice; another has no obvious beginning or end, but actions that occur concurrently, inviting readers to jump between events, picking up and dropping threads as their interest leads them). Fire and Fur simply starts at chapter 1, where the Last Dragon discusses the world situation with his

SFRA Review #220, page 67 Cat, and runs linearly through the end to the same scene - only now the reader knows how they got there.

Schlobin is an experienced writer but not an experienced novelist. I did not find the book compelling, perhaps be­ cause it had to be read onscreen, but more obviously be­ cause I found the plot predictable. The world has ecological problems because an outside Evil overcame the indigenous Dragon Good. (Schlobin neatly explains the move from the Oriental dragon to the Western one, but doesn't seem to no­ tice his accomplishment.) Some scenes come vividly alive; others simply limp offscreen. His rendition of dragon sex is fascinating; the inner motivations of his dragons are not. They do what they do because they are created that way. Charac­ ters appear for no apparent reason, and some who seem to have excellent reasons for staying around disappear.

Fire and Fur makes an interesting first novel, but a less­ than-interesting experiment in hypermedia. If someone re­ ally wants to try reading a book on their computer screen, it works, but it is neither compellingly interesting as a story nor satisfying in its exploration of the possibilities of the elec­ tronic medium. - Martha A. Bartter

Smith, Clark Ashton (Ed. by Will Murray with Steve Behrends). Tales of Zothique. West Warwick, Rhode Is­ land: Necronomicon Press, 1995, 224 pages, softcover, $11.95, ISBN 0-940884-71-2.

Smith was one of the most distinctive Weird Tales writers, along with Lovecraft and Howard. In addition, this is a major sequence of tales, one Smith designed for separate book pub­ lication that eluded him during his lifetime, and the original group of stories has been supplemented with additional sto­ ries, sketches, and a brief play. Moreover, the texts of most stories are corrected from Smith's own manuscripts. In short, here is a good text of important material at an extremely reasonable price. You really should get this book. Whether you'll enjoy it is another question. Of the three writers men­ tioned above, Smith is by far the least popular.

For one thing, Smith's prose style is exceedingly archaic and ornate. Steve Behrends's Clark Ashton Smith (Starmont 1990), the only lengthy study of Smith's life and work, quotes SFRA Review #220, page 68 his response when a requested writers to use their characteristic style to describe someone smoking a cigarette: "Ignited in the rich and multi-Ohued Antarean dusk, the tip of the space pilot's cigarette began to glow and founder like the small scarlet eye of some cavern-dwelling chimera; and an opal-grey vapor fumed in gyrand spirals, like incense from an altar of pagany, across the high auroral flames that soared from the setting of the giant sun." There's some deliberate self parody in this, but it's not greatly exaggerated.

Another limitation is that Smith's fiction tends to be mo­ notonously insistent in its disdain for any prospect of genu­ ine human comprehension. Zothique is the last continent on Earth, sometime in the far future as the sun dims and our present world is forgotten. In that barren, largely desert land, the remnants of humanity do not, as Smith wryly noted, show much evidence of moral advancement over the eons. Instead, they use swords and magic to attempt to gratify our familiar passions. As in most horror fiction, characters who assume too much comprehension or control end very messily. Kings and sorcerers are consistent losers. Smith is a bit kinder to lovers and poets, finding them slightly less absurd and de­ serving a less awful fate.

Smith is not, in short, someone to read very long at a stretch. In shorter doses, however, his highly-wrought style is a pleas­ ant change from the scrupulous meanness of most modern prose. I personally find his later work, the pieces written after the early sequence, the most satisfying, as Smith shows some sympathy for characters ("Morthylla") and some un­ derstated humor ("The Master of the Crabs"). In all, this is a valuable collection of one of the major American fantasy writ­ ers of the early-mid-20th century, a limited but genuine tal­ ent. It is good to have this book available. - Joe Sanders

SFRA Review #220, page 69 PUBLISHERS' ADDRESSES/ ORDERING INFORMATION

Alien, Yiorgos Hatzipanagiotou, Griva 14, Ag. Anargyroi, 13461 Ath­ ens, Greece Borgo Press, PO Box 2845, San Bernardino CA 92406 (fax 909-888- 4942) Chelsea House, 300 Park Ave S, New York NY 10010 Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, c/o Assoc Univ Presses, 440 Forsgate Dr, Cranbury NJ 08512 Greenwood Press, PO Box 5007, Westport CT 06881-5007 (1-800- 225-5800) Mayapple Press, PO Box 5473, Saginaw MI 48603-0473 Necronomicon Press, PO Box 1304, West Warwick RI 02893 Oryx Press, 4041 North Central Ave, Suite 700, Phoenix AZ 85012 Scarecrow Press, 4720 Way, Lanham MD 20706 University Press of Mississippi, phone orders 1-800-737-7788 U.X.L./Gale Research, 7625 Empire Dr., Florence KY 41042

1995 SFRA Conference Videos This is a partial list of the footage available from the 1995 SFRA CONFERENCE; more will be made available as soon as the master tapes are converted to a different format. "The Atomic Bomb & the END of WWII" (AI Berger) Opening Ceremonies (Charles Wood, UND Space Studies; GoH John Brunner; Bruce Farr; Diane Miller; Lisa Mason's "The Elephant and the Netcruiser"; slideshow from Artist GoH Robert Pasternak) "Writing Genre Literature" (Jeffrey Carver, John Brunner, Amy Thomson, Ben Bova) "Are Women Taking Over SF and Why Would They Want To?" (Lisa Mason, John Brunner, Amy Thomson, Lynn Williams, Jeffrey Carver) "What Makes a Classic?" (Neil Barron, Ben Bova, Frederik Pohl, Donna Camoesas, Batya Weinbaum) "The State of International SF" (Larisa Mihaylova, Ariane von Orlow, Janice Bogstad, Andrea Bell) "Sex and SF (Has Moral Decay Hit the Lit?)" (Jeffrey Carver, Eleanor Amason, Sandra Lindow, Amy Thomson, Margaret McBride) "Teaching Literature Through Films - War of the Worlds, , (Robert Blackwood) "The State of the Art in Teaching SF" (James Gunn, Jeffrey Carver, Margaret McBride, Christian Moraru) Tapes are $22 each; please send orders to Shawn Miller c/o Diane Miller (1402 4th Ave. N., Grand Forks ND 58203-3145) specifying which footage you want. There will also be a memorial tape of John Brunner, featuring digitized photos by Robert Blackwood and possibly a photo composition of John's work.

SFRA Review#220, page 70 THE SCIENCE FICTION RESEARCH ASSOCIATION

The SFRA is the oldest professional organization for the study of science fiction, fantasy, and horror/Gothic literature and film, as well as utopian studies. Founded in 1970, the SFRA was organized to improve classroom teaching, encourage and assist scholarship, and evaluate and publicize new books and magazines dealing with fan­ tastic literature and film. Among the membership are people from many countries - authors, editors, publishers, librarians, students, teachers, and other interested readers. Academic affiliation is not a requirement for membership.

SFRA BENEFITS INCLUDE: Extrapolation. Quarterly magazine; the oldest journal in the field, with critical, historical, and bibliographical articles, book reviews, letters, occasional special topic issues, and annual index. Science-Fiction Studies. Trimesterly magazine; includes critical, his­ torical, and bibliographical articles, review articles, reviews, notes, letters, international coverage, and annual index. SFRA Review. Bimonthly magazine; an organ of the SFRA, this maga­ zine includes extensive book reviews of both nonfiction and fiction, review articles, listings of new and forthcoming books, letters, SFRA internal affairs, calls for papers, works in progress, and annual index. SFRA Directory. Annual directory; lists members' names and ad­ dresses, phone numbers, and special interests. Foundation. (For an additional fee - see next page). Trimesterly magazine; discount on subscription price; includes critical, historical, and bibliographical articles, reviews, letters.

AS A MEMBER YOU ARE ALSO INVITED TO: Attend our annual meetings, held in a different location each year. Members and guests - many of them professional writers - present papers, share information, and discuss common interests, all in a relaxed, informal environment. Much of the significant scholarly literature, available at discounted prices, is displayed. The Pilgrim and Pioneer Awards for distinguished contributions to SF or fantasy scholarship are presented at a dinner meeting. Participate in the Association's activities. Vote in elections, serve on committees, and hold office. Join the SFRA section on GEnie, where the SFRT (SF Round Table) has a private category where SFRA members meet in "cyberspace" to conduct business, exchange information, or enjoy real-time discus­ sions. Contribute to the "Support a Scholar" program. SFRA members help needy young scholars here and overseas continue their study of SF/F.

[Annual membership dues cover only the actual costs of providing benefits to members, and reflect a modest savings over subscripLlvns to the publications listed above. Your dues may be tax deductible.l

SFRA Review #220, page 71 SFRA MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION Please mail this completed form with your check for dues, payable to SFRA (U.S. dollars only, please) to: Robert J. Ewald, SFRA Treasurer, 552 W. Lincoln St., Findlay OH 45840. Dues: U.S.A. Canada Overseas Individual 1 $60 $65 $70 Joint2 $70 $75 $80 Student3 $50 $55 $60 Institution4 $80 $80 $80 Emeritus5 $30 $35 $40 If you wish to receive the British journal Foundation (3 issues per year), add $17 ($20 for airmail). 1 all standard listed benefits 2 two members in the same household; two listings in the Directory, but will receive one set of journals 3 category may be used for a maximum of five years 4 all privileges except voting 5 receives SFRA Review and Directory

This membership application is for the calendar year 1 996. This information will appear in the 1996 SFRA Directory. Name: ______. ______

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SFRA Review #220, page 72