• Graham Joyce Interview • Poetry at Conventions • Henry Treece £2.25 ugust/September 1994 • Reviews & Letters The Critical Journal of the BSFA 2 Vector Contents Nuts & Bolts Okay, I promise. I will never set 3 Front Line Oispalches Readers' Letters first lines in bold text again. I'm sorry it 5 A Conversation wilh Graham Jcryce caused confusion for some of you. Ca11eCary Hopefully th ose of you who wrote and 12 Hea,ing from the Ion Engineers Steve Sneyd those of you who suffered in silence 14 "We, O ld as Histo, y Now ... " will prefer the new layout. I've put a lot KV Bailey 17 First Impressions of work into it, and this has caused a Reviews edited by Catie Cary delay in sending out the mailing. I 27 Two Russian SF Novels hope you will think it was worth it. Geoff Cowie 28 Ba1bed Wi,e Kisses Now that I have completed the design, Magazine Reviews edited 1)/ I will hopefully be able to recover lost Mau1een Kincaid Spelle1 32 Paperback G1affili time next issue and get back on RevtelNS edited 1)/ Stephen Payne schedule ... 40 Index to Books Reviewed I'm still working away from home Subscription Info (Hemel Hempstead), and this contin Cover Art 1)/ Andrew Cary ues to impact on my time. I have be
Editor & Hardback Reviews come resigned to continuing to pro Calte Ca1y duce the magazine myself, as no-one 224 Soulhway, Park Barn, Guildfo,d, has offered to take this over - but I'd Surrey, GU2 6DN PhOne: 0483 502349 appreciate help from proficient typists.with access to PCs with 3.5" Paperback Reviews Edilor Stephen Payne drives. Any volunteers? 24 Malvern Ad, Stoneygate, Leiceste1, LE2 28H I hope you enjoy this issue, I look
Magazine Reviews Editor forward to yo~nts! Maureen Kincaid SpeUer 60 Bournernouth Rd, Fo!kestone. Kent. CTt9 5AZ
Edilonal ASSlstanls Alan Johnson, Camilla Fbmeroy Cont,ibutions Good articles are always wanted. All MSS shouk:I be Printed by POC Copyp11nt typed double spaced on one Side of the page. 11 Jeff11es Passage, Guildford. Surrey. GU1 4AP SubmissK>ns may also be accepted as ASCII text files on IBM, Atan ST or Mac 3.5~ discs. Vector IS published b1mon1hly bf the BSFA @1994 Maximum preferred length is 6CX)() words; exceptions All opimons are !hose of the individual contnbuto, and can and will be made. A p,eliminary le t1 e1 is advisable should not be taken necessa,ily to be those of the bu! nol essential. Unsohc11ed MSS cannot be returned edtlor or the BSFA. without an S.O.E. Please note that there Is no payment fo, publication. Members who wish to review books should first write Remember lo the appropriate editor. Check the address label Af!iSIS Gove, Art, lllustra11ons and Fillers are always welcome on your mailing to see if The British Science Ficll()n Association Ud - Com you need to renew your pany L1m1ted by guarantee - Company No 921500 - Registered Address - 60 Bournemouth Rd, Folke- subscription stone, Kent, CT19 5AZ Front Line Dispatches 3
that book. Sta, Maker contains, In hnea, or circular chart form, three ·Time Scales', which between them engull both the action of Nebula Maker and that of the semmal first book l.Bst and First Men ( 1930) - a narrative which recounts the human Slory th1ough to its termInat10n on Neptune two bilhon years hence. Then following Lasl and Arst Men, and set m its historical frame, came Last Men in London ( 1932), in which a 'Last Man· on Neptune time-travels telepathically 10 experience twentieth century London. Thus, looking at this entire section of S!apledon's work, we find a kind of 'Chinese bol
books. This in no way affected the result. Oops ! prOOucers (only the names have been changed to Catie) protect the guilty) and have the same attitude ta.vards But you spotted why some of us tend lo come SF, while most SF writers hold TV in such contempt to some books later than first publication: we prefer they can't be bothered to learn the vocabulary of TV. the paperback format. Not only is it usually cheaper, Then there is the budgetary consideration. which means we can buy more with our money: it is Anything not in contemporary dress and setting easier to handle, slip in a pocket. read on a bus or automatically adds 30% to the budget, more if you hold curled up in bed. Ha rdback books are, to my have to make your own sets and costume rather than great alarm, growing bulkier by the month; I find that hi1ing them {even more if you 're doing it on lilm which, p1etentious, wasteful, burdensome and uninviting - until recently and the invention of those lovely video and not just for SF titles either. Do other readers image manipulation t0ys, was de 1igeur). Now, most agree? TV SF is poorly received and has poor audiences Allow a croak voiced Dalek in an Armani suit to feed all these factors into his spreadsheet and his answer will be the go ahead for two more series of real life TM>M, 1\1,Cl.,l,-i..
raham Joyce gained a reputation as
~;:;~~;~a~:~:e'.~h~~-~!.P:i::,i:~ ~:: enhanced by the publication of Dark Sister in 1992 and House of Lost Dreams In 1993. Dark Sister won theG British Fantasy Society award for best novel in 1992, and Graham has sold the option to film it lo Metrodome {the company responsible for Leon the Pig Farmer'). Oreamside has been bought by a French publisher, and a French edition will be published; ii is out of print in !his country. Dark Sister and House of Lost Dreams are both being translated into German. His short stories which have been published in In Dreams, lnlerzone, New Worlds and Dark/ands 2 amongst others, have been well received. His next novel will be published early next year under the ne.v horror and dark fantasy imprint Creed from Penguin, and he will be the Guest of Honour at Novacon this year. Things would appear to be on the up for Graham Joyce. It was shortly after the publica tion of House of Lost Dreams, last summer, that I went to visit him at his home in Leiceste1 Graham, who was born in 1954, comes from a local mining family with whom he maintains a close relationship; as I arrive his energetic parents are just leaving. They have spent the afternoon working in the garden. He introduces me to his wife Sue; she is a charming and lively solicitor and we get on well. When Graham goes down to the end of the garden to dig vegetables for our meal, he complains that the level of our laughter means that we have been talking about him behind his back. He's right of course, Sue has been telling me how much she dislikes the flattering with an excellent bottle of wine. But earlier. when Sue photograph which is printed on the jacket of his went to have a bath before dinner, we retired to books, which she refers to as the Tom Selleck pose, Graham's quiet study, to talk. and she describes with relish the occasion on which she heard two ladies at a signing complain that he is When did you start writing? not as goodlooking in real life During the evening there is a lot of laughter; the I started writing when I was about sixteen, I Joyces are excellent hosts, Graham is an excellent started writing a fantasy novel, and it was a way of mimic and Sue has a lively wit, and after our meal we trying to work out what was happening to me with all sit late in the kitchen talking over a candle lit table 6 Vector these drugs I was takmg. I 1eckon 11 was drugs that changes I've gone th1ough - I mean I can't take motivated me.•. Heinlein se11ously - htS attitude !awards women makes me laugh•.. You reckon it was drugs? Baby-chewed nipples ... Probably 1I was drugs. l stopped taking d1ugs after a while but somehow the w11 11ng carried on. Exactly.
Did you ,ead lantasy at that lime? Somebody o nce lo ld m e that I was a typical Heinlein woman - and meant ii as a compliment. I read Tolkien, I read Mervyn Peake, I gobbled II he hadn't been so huge l"d have decked him ... all these up and I found that once you'd d1SCOVered Tolkien 11 triggered off assoc1at1ons w11h loads of other Yeah. It's preposterous to think that a w111er has people. I read Mervyn Peake, I read ER Edts0n, got such a lack of sens1trv1ly and 1nS19hl that he can e,.,eryth1ng I could get my hands on of E R EdLSOn t wnte in that way. Yet, and }et. when I was seventeen I read ... and I thoughI 11 was wonde1 ful I lhought it was ,ust thought - 1h15 IS great stuff. Now I've changed the height of lilerature Catie. honestly And I've read 11 obvlOUsly but the book hasn't changed and I canl go since I read 1I a yea, 0 1 two back and I thought ti was back. tripe. Over-wntten drivel, and yet when I was seven teen and reading thal, I thought Klh1s is the way to I think his juvenitia slill bears re-reading - write~. And the only thing I've concluded from that IS though t haven't lfied recently - when he keeps that there are books that are nght for you at certain away from sex and women and ... times of your life. And Edison's Memnison trilogy (do you know those?) I loved all those and now it just Yeah, like you say," shut your gob up about makes me laugh when I read iL 11 is so over-written1 women, Robert, and you're alright", but as soon as he starts to talk about real life and real relationships ... The way the c haracters speak is inc redible this IS where a Joi of scl8nce fiction loses me because - I was aboul the same age when I read ii and I it's so bad on human relat10nsh1ps. It may be great on haven't gone back since - bul I can still remem making imaginary worlds but what the luck has 11 gal ber the very elaborate and ornate language. to do with the way we hve our lives? and our relalM)fl stups with each oth8f? And whelher 11"s science I thought 1t was great lileralure. It JUSt shows that lk:t10n 01 whatever 11 is, that's what any kmd of lite1a- I hadn't developed a critical faculty actually, and I 1ure IS really about... at bottom. The geme forms ;us1 didn't know when somebody was being merely happen to be the me,dia thal you're working in. 11"s the pollentous, 01 merely lyricaL I m istook that for profun colour of the paper. .. realty what it's about is how we dity at the time! think. Now I think it's silty. But I read hve our lives, and if literature isn't touching that, then 1t at that time and ! thought it was great at that lime - to me, it's not doing its job. And that's why !'m not I thought it was marvellous. Bui it's unspeakably silty. interested in a lot or science lichon.
What are lhe books that you re-read lhal you So who do you admire? strn love? 'rou mean contemporary, or? I can sllll re-read anything by Ph1llp K Dick, because he's on a different wavelength, he's making Well. what you read nOW', read for pu,e moral sense alt the time. It's the besl kind of science pleasure... or read because it gives you some hclion because he ,s always trying to gel lo the moral thing. crux of the issue; he"s not mteresled 1n world-butlchng, he's not mterested in hard science - he's interested I always find !his a realty dilflcull question 1n how we live our lives. That's why you can go back because every time I want to mention somebody, I lune and lime again to Philip K Dick. For me he's the want to qualify what I'm about to say, but I guess, 11 most salutary science f1ct1on writer. really is difficult with science r1ction .. ..
Anyone else? II doesn't have to be science fic tion, d on't limit yourself lo that. 11"s very diflrcutt with &ience FICIIOO I've got lhe same expenence with a lot of people that I had Right, I'm a great Ian of Mike Hamson, with Ed1SOn. I mean Heinlein. I was reading about that llme - A Stranger ir1 a Strange Land and stuff like Course of the Heart was amazing ... that which at the time blew me head off. But now 1I JUSI seems so silly, you know? And the1e are all these Graham Joyce 7
Wonderful book ... excellent, because Mike than the angels, that was the presiding belief at the Harrison is writing about how we live our lives, you time, and he was trying to say "No, No'", he was a very know? Okay he's using particular genre tropes and religious man, "No we were raised from the muck, the things that signal genre in writing ... !'m neve1 actually". And he did this big satire of a lot of rather happy w ith a!I these labels about mainstream and romantic poems that were around, and (I can't remem• genre anyway ... all the best stuff is on the edge. but I ber the last line. but) it goes something like· do like Mike Harrison, I do like lain Banks, but ( prefer . .something something her befits his non•science fiction, I can't be bothered with the Celia Celia Celia shits science fiction novels he writes but the other stuff is He's got this woman and it's all about idealising wonderful. So of contemporaries, I like what they·re her, like from the neck up, but this guy is obsessed doing with what's happening with the I01Ner parts ... but this But for pleasure I can still pick up Dickens and is Swift. And all that science fiction and fantasy stuff that kind of stuff you see. I've got really eclectic he was doing with Gulliver was so insightful about the reading habits ... I keep re-reading Jonathan Swill, I'm human condition, about how we live our lives. A lways a great fan of his. ( love the Gulliver cycle, it's brii.. the best stuff. liant... prototype science fiction, I reckon. You know God knCM's how we got onto thaL. Brian Aldiss did this thing about Mary Shelley being the first science fiction writer. I don·t really agree with That's alrig ht, Does anybody consciously that because I think that Jonathan Swift got there influence yo ur wo rk, stylewise o r othe rwise? first... you only have to look at it... you've got flying islands and au the elements of science fiction and No, not consciously. I'm su re there's a lot of fantasy in that cycle, and there's a line that I've often people that I've read over the years, that it's coming adopted. that Homer's Odyssey is about being out, but you spend a (at of lime trying lo get your own washed on Islands, and this motif is in Shakespeare voice and style, and in the early days of writing you and Jonathan Swift and all over the place, and the spend a lot of time imitating I think, eventually you do technological equivalent of ii is a rocket landing on a feel your CM'n voice coming through and I couldn't planet, and it's the same motif, actually, which signa!s point my finger now at anybody who's particularly to the reader - right, let's Just change the rules here, influenced me. There'd be a lot of voices in there. something magic has taken place and all the ru!es are You've got to remember I've done an MA in English suspended - and this is the proposition, what does Literature. I studied English for a degree, and then I this tell us about how we live our lives? did an MA. I'm pretty well read in the classics, the So, w l1at I was going to say about Swift was that mainstream greats. And I've admired these and he does that, he uses that motif and he offers us appreciated those and at some point all that stuff is prototype science fiction, there a,e these islands that dissolved in what you're trying to say. I'm not trying to defy gravity and they've got all these scientists say that I'm in that mainstream, bu t I'm trying to say working on them and they're involved in an kinds of that they're down there, they ... explorations. Do you know the flying island? Form a mulch as it were? Laputa? Yes, I've read it, but not recently ... Yes, it's all mulch They're trying lo make sunbeams out of cucum• bers, they're trying to restore the nutritional value to When did you start trying to write for human shit, it's hilarious! !l's brilliant satire, but it's publicatio n? prototype science fiction I guess I made a serious stab at it when I was in And great run to read . my mid twenties, I used to send stories off, and they were always being rejected, but I guess I always sent Oh yeah, though it's quite dry masculine stuff, them to the wrong places... I'd always start with but... Granta or something like that...(wild laughter) and wait for them to discover this manuscript but it never I used to like his poetry ... quite happened like that. Also I was a poet in those days and I won a couple of poetry awards and I got Do you remember 'Celia Shits'? my poems published in various places, but I could never get my fiction published. Nobody was ever I don't think I came across that one! (gig interested in what I was doing ... I used to gel letters g les) back saying "'Yes, this is very we!I written, but your subject mattef's too weird". I was always told I was too It's a great one, I mean this is what he was at weird, and this was before, remember, I was trying to because he lived in the Augustan age, where every. write either science fiction, fantasy or horror. I didn't body was trying to say that man is just a litt!e lower ~ ii fjuitf:! that wP,y 81 the timP.. in f;u:t I h.:v! ~rnP.- 8 Vector
sold, I was thinking, well why has this one worked where others haven't? And I guess it just came before an edito1 who saw it as a genre novel. And I'd never been thinking about genre, not because I didn"I want to, but that just wasn·t where my thinking was. Perhaps it was to do with this background of studying literature, I'd never really pert1aps taken genre seriously enough. But an edilrn picked it up and said we want to publish this - is ii science fiction, fantasy or horror? And I said, what? What do you mean? And she said, weU we think it might be maybe science fiction or possibly fantasy. And I said, well I don't 1eally care to be honest, like the idea that you're going to publish 1t - it's great, you know - do 11. You decide what it ,s
That's just the label on the back ..
Yeah, I don't care, just publish it. I don't care ii you call it Mills & Boon if you want - publish ii And after a lot of dithering, it came out as a fantasy novel. Although it seemed to be really well accepted by the science fiction community, as a science fiction noveL l!'s certainly doesn't conform to my idea of fantasy. Maybe it's around the area body around at that time who'd pointed me in that of dark fantasy, but it misses a long way from my ditect1on, saying "look, you've got a constituency for definitions of fantasy. And yet it doesn't quite seem this kind of stuff, you're going to have to look at like science fiction, and it's certainly not a horror science fiction, horror, fantasy readers, because the novel. I do have this problem with classification, it literary mainstream, they thought it was all too wild"' I always seems to be on the edge. At least. rm not sure was constantly up against that problem if it's a pioblem. I wrote a novel in my mid twenties, it's still in the bottom drawer (best place for it, hope it stays there). I admit I've always read your books as But it had the same reaction any lime that I sent it mainstream, or at least mainstream with touches anywhere. You know, this well-written but... of the weird ... Anyway what does it matter?
So what was the nature of the weirdness? Oh I don't know, a lot of people do say that it's mainstream. Colin Greenland said I think your stuff is I was always interested in exploring different mainstream, various people have come up to me and levels of consciousness, whether 1! was dreams, drug- said I think your stuff is mainstream, but it's got the induced states, hypnotic states, shamanistic states; I weird. you know. it's got that factor X. was always interested in the idea of other realities and that people could be going through this world but So is it Slipstieam? having completely different realities to each other. I remember from college days getting hooked on this I don't know what that is Catie, it's a catchall social construction of reality idea - that you inhabit the same world but don't inhabit the same reality - so (laughs) ...the sort of stuff that SF fans I was trying to write stories about different realities would like only it isn't SF. and the way that people had access to different realities was either through sleep, drugs, magic, belief Yes, I guess so, if that's what slipstream means systems, religion then maybe ii is
So when you came to w rit~ Dreamside, It puts you in there with John Fowles and .. that's really following on down the same path ... 1 think that there's a huge pmblem with this It was actually. It was very much. This was discussion and that's that people have endless something I'd been writing about for several years. So discussions defining science fiction, and what is when Oreamside came along and I did that thing of published now under the title science fiction, it's crazy going off to Greece and writing that novel, when it to try and stling those things togethe1 and yet people Graham Joyce 9 want to. Clearly he,e's a community who enJOY the same kind of hlerature, so we feel the need for some (; t: \ \I kind of dehrnhons. yet 11's an insane task because the 11 \ .I O ) (' F whole range or those things JUSl deftes conceptualtsal.JOn. HcufeOf · - What there IS 1n 1t, IS factor X. Factor X, it's either a lazy way of saying that weirdness or {temble cliche) sense of wonder thing Iha\ science ficllon fans hke, fantasy tans hke, horror fans like, appreciators ol jJJf/)rta/115 sl1pslream en,o,- very much 11's the element that says the rules are slightly suspended nON let's see whal happens when we change the rules. This lust !or a def1rnhon just drrves me up the wall. Why bother? Librarians can do that, because they're paid to do 1t. That's their lucking Job. They get enough money to do that. let them do that. They like doing 1!. Good. I'm glad. I'm very happy we've got librarians. They're good people. They do that for us. II saves me tram having to do 11. I don't want to have to worry about that. But I do want to gel factor X into my novels because it's what I enm when I'm reachng and I rind 1t 1n science fichon I find ti 1n some fantasy, and I find 11 m some horror. a.it facto, X goes out of each of those genies when radical marketmg takes over Facto, X disappears. When a horrOJ novel becomes very vlSC8fal factor XIS gone. When science flct10n nean hohday, but I'd held out for Cornwall, because I becomes \'ery rationa! :md schematic on the baSls of was a bit SICk ol the Mediterranean. I'd gol tired of 11, Physics Chemistry or you know Hard Science, factor X so l'd held out for a ·discover Cornwau· sort of rs gone from Iha!. Fantasy ... loses factor X when you holiday. And 1t pissed dov,m with rain. fNery bloocly start having ta!king animals. I can1 stand talking night And so Sue was giving me hell, because l'd animals. The thmg about talking animals 1s that they chosen this, and I was lying in the tent while she was lose their animalness when they start talking. the giving me hell, and lh1s idea came ove1 me, and I said beautiful thmg aboul animals is that they don't talk. shut up and listen to this, and she said, "oh that is a They behave and relate 1n this universe 1n a way which good idea", so it started with that idea of somebody doesn't involve language and people keep wanting lo waking up again and again. write novels about talking animals. Factor X is gone. You know what l'm talking about with factor X be Which is really powerful. Rig ht at the begin cause you know the son of things that give you lhal ning of the book that sequence where Lee is feeling, when you get there. happed in his dreams.
Yes. Thal attered state, the opening of the See this rs my theme agam, reahty, of nol eyes to new ideas - it's all of that knowing what realtty is. You couldn't distinguish dream horn waking ,eality, because of the fact that It's the altered state thing agam, which I was the dream was banal and almost Identical to waking saying earher I was lry1ng to get mto my novels. thal IS reality. Your dream and my dream, we m19ht always dehmlely factor X. That t thmk IS the thing that strings recognise instantly thal we're dreaming because of these three genres together. B..Jt I realty don't give a change and the suspenSIOn of logic. 8..Jt what 1f you monkey's which genre 11 falls rnto as long as rt's got have a d1eam where logic- IS not suspended. When factor X. everything appears lo be as 11 is when you're 81N8ke. And that seemed to me a terrifying idea - dream and Good. waking reality might be indrstinguishable. It's like that Where does the germ of your books come Idea from Jung. I was always Impressed by that ,dea rrom. How do they start? Is ii an idea? C harac of Jung's w hich said that when you wake up your ter? dream world continues but giant shutters have blocked off what's happening in your dream. You're Jt's nearly always an Idea. Dreamside came with still dreaming fM/ay but yow consciousness is only lhe idea of somebody having a repeated awakening. vaguely aware of noises from behind this great barrier Where that idea came from ... I'd gone camping with ti seemed wonderful that there was this reality going Sue to Cornwall. She'd wanted to go on a Medilerra• on. still, while you we,e awake, and thal each could 10 Vector
It seems to me to have come out differently. GRAHAM JOYCE But that's alright. In some ways that makes me feel a bit better. But Dark Sister, what I wanted to do there was take another idea of altered states, in this case witchcraft, but couch ii all in the reality of DREAMSIDE~ .. - --- - ___ - - ,, ~ -rilmnar111j.1ndl~.-irful ... brflhan1, relationships between people and show that the wnsuous•nd\r.irln~• altered state affects the ordinary state, and then the •ANWArSON ordinary state begins to play on the altered state and things are cyclical and they're related to each other. That the altered states that we have are not hermetically sealed, bu1 affects what we call reality See how we have problems with these wo1ds because it's very difficult to talk about the alterna j,, ' ) tive realities and use !anguage which gives them the same kind of credibility and bottom line as what we ca!I the waking reality . but I wanted to shO'N that - once you start getting your head into an alternate reality, it affects your life and your life affects it and so on. And also to show that things like witchcraft don't grow out of a vacuum; they grow out of people's desires and frustrations.and they have a very real emotional basis for people and also there is a very interesting subject matter to explore the question of women's relationships and what men do to them in the way that men can oppress them. have equal weight. Your dreaming reality could have And I wasn't writing ii as a politically correct novel or more weight than your waking reality. A fascinating anything like that, I was writing it as a novel to explore idea and !he idea of people developing pcme1s to these different reality states. Because I wanted to become kind of amphibious creatures so they could show that in Dark Sister Maggie does all this witch live equally in both these environments. So that's what craft thing, but the most dangerous thing that hap. hatched out Oreamside. It was that idea. pens to her is when her husband punches her She does all this exploration, but the real danger Okay, but then Dark Sister, where did that is from her life. So I was relating wife battering to !he start? psychological dangers, but the real physical danger was not from demons or witches or spooks or any Dark Sister. My novels have come out differ thing like that it was from having her husband smack ently, they all seem to have come out dilterent. And I her in the gob. hope they continue to-do that. ! don't think that's a problem. I worry about it sometimes, because I look Ok then what was the germ from which the at other people's novels and they seem to me as if House of Lost Dreams sprang? they've got a clear thing that they're trying to do, whereas mine are always hatching out different. There are certain experiences that everybody has which are dismissed as coincidences. We've all Isn't that because they have their own done ii, and we've an had the one where you think person~lity? about somebody and the phone rings, and there they are, and it's banal, it's cliched, everyone has this kind Yes, there is that too, but with a lot of people's of experience, so we have this dustbin word and it's novels you know where they're at and you know what called coincidence, and I wanted to explore that they're doing and you know what they're exploring and I suppose I sometimes wonder if I don't know what I'm doing because I'm interested in the way you address feminism in Dark Sister and also to an extent I I though! House of Lost Dreams was c loser think in I-louse of Lost Dreams. 'It's a sort of to Dark Sister than Dark Sister was to psychological interpretation and not political at Oreamside ... all. ..
OK. That's fair enough. It seems to me .. Righi. I think I'm partly working out my own ideas about feminism in that because I've spent quite But I'm just a reader. .. a lot of years thinking about the subject and the issues, and I've met all kinds of feminists; I've met Graham Joyce 11 inspiring feminists who've really turned me around, mean that I haven't been listening hard to what's been and I've met lunatics that called themselves femi said over the last twenty years, although some writers nists, who should be quietly put down. I think men seem no1 to have heard any thing, and that seems to have got to think about feminism nCN/, and they me appalling. And I here's some people who claim to shouldn't moan about it, they shouldn't whine about be writers who don't even reflect any of the talk Of 11, but they should be doing what needs to be done thinking that's been offered over the last twenty or nCN/. Feminists have said what they"ve got 10 say lh1rty years. they behave as rf nothing's happened, you over the last twenty years, and there's some brilliant know, whe1e aIe they? stuff there for men to think about. If men go around So a lot of what's in the books is exploration, behaving li ke they haven'1 heard it, then they've because my books, you knO'N, they may be science rn1ssed an opportunity somewhere. I tt1ink the issue is f1ct1on . they may be fantasy, or wha1ever they are, far more complex, however, than a lot of feminists lhey"re actually much more concerned with human real ise. As far as I'm concerned, feminism has been relationships than anything e!se, and it"s about men informed too much bf the separatis1 feminist move• and women and how they actually live together, and ment that's been in the van of feminism. I'd like to how they deaf with each other. and that involves hear a lot more from the hcte1osexual vanguard of questions of sexuality, so it's an endless and fascinat~ feminists, we've heard a lot from the separatists and ing subject for me it's a lot more complicated than that
People have to live their lives...
People have 10 live their lives, and I remember reading magazines where men were agonismg about this. you know, and what should they do ... and there were these feminists arguing that the best thing they could do is not live w ith women. Gibberish 1
What a way to live your lifet What have you won if you do that?
So what I'm quite mteresled in is seeing men trying to work it out, in the Interests of being a better person. ! don't think, on the subject of feminism. there's a lot left to be said. I realty think men have got to do the work nO'N for themselves. And I certainly don't think it's about lelling women have their O'Nn way ... I mean they can just fuck off if they think that's the answer. .. I don't trust women any more than I trust men
Yeah, I think you'd be extremely unwise
Yeah. Whal kind of 1dio1 would? But that doesn't 12 Vector
concemed wllh -inner· space, the m1nd-bb.-J1ng 1nwa1d voyages of the late '60s, and the ·soft sci ences· that tracked then pas51ng, as with the outer Hearing space ,aurneys then busily rno.iIng ham the realm al hct10n lo fact w11h the Moon Race between the USA and USSR. from the Such a polled summary IS necessary to explain what happened next - the pre·begmmng of the Ion Engineers beg1nmng, as 11 v,,oere, m terms of the Iheme of th,:s a,1,de John Brunner lold the story tn some detail m hlS ---- + ---- 'Noise Level' column m Dick Geis' Sc,ence Fict,on A Quarter Century of SF Poetry Rev1BW(No 5 of that column, sub11tled 'Rhyme and, II You're Very Lucky, Reason', appearmg m the March by Steve Sneyd '71 issue, No 43). 8 rie1Iy, within the Bnghton Aris Festival of 1968, a weekend conference on scIonce ftct1on was organ f "the making of annive,sar1es there is no ised, J01n tty chaired by lhe h1stor1an Asa Briggs and end·. to misquole a chch8 - a process lhe poet and critic Edward Lucie-Sm,th ever accrellng as lhe "Heritage lndus1,y· As the closing item of !he conference, Edward begrns lo seem lhlS country's only real Lucl&-Sm1th organised a science IICIK>n JX)elry 0 . reading, with a 'cast ltSI' from mSlde and outside what future source of occupauon 111, Why shouldn't SF J()ln m? 1995's 100th was generally seen as the SF world Brunner notes annrversa,y of lhe pubbcalion of HG Wells' The Time that lhese 1nck.Jded Adrian Henn and lhe LNerpool Machine. deserves the celebrallon II WIii doubtless Scene, George MacBeth, D M Harl, D M Thomas ,ecerve, rf any genre classtc does (then connected with New '1\,bflds, later a Booke, In. naturally much less lavish style, SF poetry pnze.wmmng aulhof), and Brunner htmself. also has an anniversary WOf rhy ol some sort of To quote Brunner directly · rickets were ho,ntxy recognition looming o.,erpnced, so the auchence was small, but ,t was a Easter 1994, rs lhe 25th annrversary of the first very sllmulating and enJQYable occaS10n". (He also poetry readmg at a convention m this country (or at no1es !hat "Not all the ma1e,1al read was stnclly SF - 11 leas! the memory of fan speaketh nol to the contrary, Shaded c,,.,e, mlo fantasy and sunoahsm - but a as far as I've been able w11h due d1hgence 10 drs surprising amount of it was the pyre metal·. pa1licu cover.) larly praIs1ng MacBeth's • Bedtime Story' with its During the quarter century since, appearances poetic account of the death of the last man.) of poelry at cons have been , 10 put 11 mildly, spo The success of this event encouraged Brunner roctic: indeed, in England, !hey include a gap of some lo o rganise a reading at lhe 1969 Eastorcon at fourteen years, or I\NO thirds as long as the interval Oxford, its theme being the recently publrshed belween the firsl and second world wars. anthology, Holding 'rour R,ght Hands, In hmdS1ghl !he Neverlheless, since for 1he last few years there mosl influential SF poetry yel pubhshed The antholo has been some son of poetry event at at leas! one gy's ed1t01. the same Lucie-Smith who had b,ought English convention e,,ery year. and smce that English about the Boghton reading, look part 1n th,:s reading, gap had no parallel breach-Of-con11nu1tywise m almos1 certainly the first eve, 10 lo,m pa,t ol lhe Scotland, here ,:s a tradI1100 al SOI I to celebrate m programme at a British SF convention. ( In the Sc1- whet8\1Cr festuon proves appropriate ence hct,on Rev,ew article, Brunner speaks of In the meantime, a brief account of what hap ·,nv111ng Ted to come along"; elsewhere he has said pened when m th,:s patt1CUlar specialised sphere of "he was kind enough 10 drop m - unpaid as I recall, human aclMty, begmnmg al the beg1nnmg, Of even and p18Slde al a reading lo wh.ch I and olhe,s conlub shghlly before, IS possibly worth putting on the record uled. wI1h what accuracy rnf0tmat10n ava,la~ permits. Lucie-Smith read exe,pts horn the anthology Arthur C Clarke called for a poetry of science and gave tndlCBIIOflS al the th1nk1ng behind hlS hct10n as long ago as 1938, and poetry indeed chOtCeS Brunner and othe1s also read. Brunner, 1n the appeared 1n1erm,t1ently m fanzines and pulps down No,se Level account. says -eonSK:1e11ng he (Lucie the years Sm,th) had outright refused lo rehearse our duet But any kind or real visib1hty had to wait till beforehand, it went off rather wen and provoked a Michael Moorcock took over the editorship of New good reaction from the audience." (adding to this Worlds and alongside his many oth er Innovations, accounl, in the 1989 \el !er ahoady quoted, "I can'1 Int1oduced poetry to its pages - albeit a poet1 y fa1 remember all the people who 1ead on that occasion, horn lhe conventions of genre verso, freer in form, but I do recall that afterwards Ken Bulmer told me surreahst1catly expe11mental m many ways, and as Iha! he had been doublful about the appeal of such an event bul 11 had gone off unexpeciedly we11.· Poetry 13
Thls encouraging ,esponse led Brunner to from further at1empts. No one else look up the Idea, Ofgamse another for nexl year's Scicon In London. and poetry at English Convenl10ns began a long Thts reading featured Jen1 Couzyn, a South pe11cx:I ol being consp1CUOUS Dy' its absence. certamly Af11can poet then ln,mg m London, who used SF as an 01garnsed item lhemes lo, poems med1tat1ng on AldtSS stones, and There were occaSK>nally SF poel1y reachngs, who 1ead he1 recent black comedy "extract from an lhOUgh not In a convent10n enV11onment - lor example Ahen cookery book", called Human Pie', WhlCh at the Sunderland 2CXXl fest1val In 1973, where the appa,ently had the audience In lits of laughte, "Beyond This Ho11zon" SF even! included a geme HONeYet, anothe1 aspect ol the reading, a poetry reading o,ganlsed by Ch11s Ca,eell, with "slorm 111 a glass". 01 rat he, caused Dy' a glass. wh1eh accompanying mm...anthology from Ceolfnlh Press. IS best remembered Dy' those who were there. (Other with an Edward Lucl&Smtth 1ntroduct10n updatmg his reade,s included Brunne1 himself. Brian Ald1ss. and HYBH Inlroducto1y text Edward Lucie Smith, M1ehael Moorcock was present ln 1979, as part of the "High Frontier" space and George MacBeth may also have reacL ) A mem~ exploration exh1b1tion at Gtasgo,,,'s Third Eye Centie, ber of the audience. "incensed al the quality of !he orgamsed by Duncan Lunan. the same Chris Caroell, verse, or drunk"~ 811an Aldiss) th1ew a glass at by nO'-N Third Eye's directo1, invited Edwin Morgan to Brunner, Couzyn and Luc1e-Sm1!h, which hI1 the firs! read his SFnal poetry, and Ttmd Eye produced the named on the leg. work read as the outstanding "slim volume• Stargate. In reaction to "the SOB responsible, now dead", 1n 1985, Lunan himself organised a reading at Brunner 1ead for the f11st time In public his poem the Scoll1sh Albacon, at which John Brunner read, as Flyt1ng Against Mi X' ( a "lly11ng" bemg a Scots term did Alasdai, Gray, who also presented work Dy' Edwin fo, a 1a1hng or scokhng poem) and "with a ,eal targel Morgan. In 1986, agam wtlh Lunan presK:lmg. another m view". In his ONn words convention readmg featu1ed Edwin Morgan himself Afle1 that 1970 even!, nothing seems to have and Diane Duane. happened till 19~. when Lrsa Conesa, a poet herself Subsequently, Lunan was to arrange a reading and ed1lo1 of the well knONn fanzine Zunn. wh1eh gave Dy' MOfgan and Brunner at lhe Edinburgh Science conSlderable space to poetry, organised a poetry leslrval In 1989, and has Since g1Y0n readings of SF ,eadmg (she called ,ta Poel!y Sonee) lo, the 1971 poetry to non-gen,e groups hke the monthly Ay,estme Tynecon "Poems and Pints" events As a souvenir of this, she published an antho~ In the meantime hov-lever. he played a maior role og,J, The Purple Hours, which contained a selection ol In the poetry reading on lhe f1rs1 night o f the 1988 poetry Dy' well known SF w1Iters and fanzine and little Lucan. As convention Guest of Honour. he took par I magazme poets, though m the event only a few ol ma discussion about lhe value of SF poetry, chaired those mcluded In the anthology aclually took part In by myselr, during which he 1Uustra!ed the gen,e's the Soiree. value In focusing understanding of sc1ent1hc develop, However, those who did read Included a notable ment. and 1Uum1nating and Inspmng discovery, with 1110, Brian Ald1ss, Couzyn again, and Robert ex trac ts from his own book Man and the Stars. "Hawklord" Calvert, poe! and lyricist with the SF~rock Confusion over event locations meant occasional bond Howkwmd. irruptions of costumed Vikings and Spacemen, but a This is probably the only occasion that Calvert. 1easonable audience then heard a reading by who died m 1988, read his poell y m a context othe, Darhngton, ext,acts from a tape of Dave Calder than a Hawkw1nd conce1tor on record. reading from his remarkable collect10n Spaced, and Andrew Darlington says "the reading seems to Pete Presford reading his ONn work, examples of SF have been a mmor dtst1act10n [w1th1n the ConvenhonJ poetry pubhshed in his zme Barddon,, and an unusual wtlh confused and dtsappom11ng ,eachons. but the ·unconsclOUs SF" poem wntten by a resKtent al a pa1!1C1pants were well-pleased wI1h then perfOfmance hostel lor the homeless. and a little setr-congratulatOfy at leavenmg some Lunan·s comment on conventoo audiences !Of culture on the event • poetry seems relevant he1e ·not . la1ge, but they've Duncan Lunan recalls John Brunner reading the been m1e1ested.- (Of hts ·Poems and Pints" experi 'Muslapha Shenr poems which appear as chapter ence he added "Some of them tok::l me they weie epigraphs m has novel Web of Everywhete and notes Vv'Omed aboul what I was gomg to reacl. but to their
"We got mto a d1SCUSS1on at the interval and became rebel I hey were able lo understand 1t a11 1• • so absorbed that we forgot to go back mto the hall M 1989 saw an unp galhe11ng and transmuhng almosl on lhe spo1 expen ences of the day (a remote pub, an encountered //a.Je/ eccenlrlC) Inlo his store of ,mages for lho past. For example, he gave us a first copy ot War Dog with an Insc11bed ded1cat1on to ou, old bearded collie whose ways and cha1acte, he had come to know almost as well aswe did I le was p1e-em1nenlly a histo11cal novebsl, olnas w1111ng lo, ch1ld1en and fo, adults, but he was also a poet and possessed the kind of 1ns.ghts which Rosemary Sutchff drscerned when She wrote in he, introduction to The Golden Strangers: Ml-le unde1- sl00d belier than any othe, write, l have eve1 read bfst:OR&' R. lhe appalltng mt11cacy ol hfo 1n a p1Im1trve society 11 was this undors1and1ng which enabled h,m to po, tray so con'lmcmgty how the hfe and manne,s of one race. lnbe Of community m19ht appea, to be unbndgeabty DOUJ ...... // alien to another He shOINOd through the acl10ns and mteract10ns of his characters how this strangeness seems lo haw made inevr lable the \JIOlent hostihtl0S and c ruelties of history, yel paradoxically could b1eed mulual tolerance and eventual peaceful luSIOns. In I1s Henry Treece Simplest form this IS seen m the early JUY8nile, The Eagles Have Flown m the transformation of A1tos, the Cel!IC Bear of 8r11am, mlo A1lu11us "who rode 1n the by KV Bailey service and not lhe destruct10n ol the old Roman mannors and government" II IS also evidenced there (and personalised) in episodes of savagery and of healing between native Cwm, y and Saxon sea-folk atie Cary cont11bu1ed 10 lhe Compass As Ma1gery Fisher wrote (w1lh reference to The fbmts featu,e of ~°' 170 a rccommcnda Bronze SWon1) ,n a Bodley Head Monograph ( l969) hon of Treece·s novel The Golden Stran ·n,ough Treece had been hea1d to say that he haled ge,s Not all readers. 11 appeared, consKt lhe Romans', he oouk:I enter 1010 thet, desire for law C and o,der as 1ntuItr,,ety as he could understand the ered hrs 'NOfk to have e11he1 fantasy or SFnal rel evance In cor,espondenco wtlh Catie I mentioned doomed courage of the Celts R The oppos1tIon ol the that I had known Henry rreece wet!, and agreed with bailey-growers and the InvasIve cattle-men of The 1k• what she had written al his talent to immerse his Golden Strangers is echoed In hrs last w ork, a rema 1eaders In bolh the reality and lhe strangeness of the able novella (strikingly illusr,aled by Cha,les Keeping) pas! (My title IS laken from a poem tn his collect100 The Dream-Time (Brockhampton Press, t967) The Haunted Garden.) She encouraged me 10 enlarge Here, however, T,eece mo,,os mto Whal sometimes ,n on this !or i.ector and in domg so 10 otler some seems a t1meN3SS pre-history. 01 a1 any rale a scene personal recollect100 wh1eh the practices of com grow,ng, or herding and Henry, hrs wife Ma,y. and several lordly cats hunhng, of cave ar I and metal smelting all coexist a hvod in a rambling mansion adjacent lo lhe Saxon scene populated by proto humans w ithout language chu1ch of Barton on Humber, a village et 1he SOU!hern and by !rue humans w1 lh davming languages. the approach of lhal big bndge crossing ova, to Hull We constant themes of c1uelty, courage and compassion, had common Inle1esls ,n lho w,I11ng ol books fo, or agg1eSS1on and reconc1hat10n are rehearsed children and m his plays for racho. My work m the '50s th1ough the mult1-landscapes of an u, wo11d New olten took me from our then home near Nottingham concepts and physical potentialities are seen shapmg mlo Lrncolnsh1re, he was a ftequent visitor to Nolllng w11h1n the human mind Thcs was the direchon m ham, and so 1t came aboul that we \-\'010 lrom lime to wh1Ch Treece·s 1magrnat10n was moving a d1rect10n 1Ime each others house guest. On one such occasron I p,esaged by 1he opening Imes of a i:x,em he had 1ecaU lhat my wife baked a huge medieval pie lo, a w111ton some twenty years f'81l,e1 "The10 rs an ocean pa,ty to round off lhe 111st night of his [dward II play, m my head thal nighlly srngs. / Swings, sways and globe. " CamNBI Kmg, produced at the Nottingham playhouse crawls alx>ut the mental (as was hts late, Viking play Foo/steps III the Sea). Our Without extenSNe quotat10n 11 is d1lhcult to lnendsh,p lasted lhrough to hrs too early death 1n convey lhe 'planetary' sense wh1eh suffuses T1eece's 1966. He was a good raconleur. a bom telle1 of tales, w1111ngs - both 1n his chddren's stories and cspecialty ceaselessty 1,ymg out new plols and thomos m in tho mature adult novels such as Red Oueen, Wf11te conversat10n, avid !or and met1eulous as 10 detail, Oueen, Jason and Oedipus. II may be channelled mto 16 Vector physical desc1iption oi a clarity as sharp as Le Guin's, Hoidstockian version. ·vet the seif-reveiatory sentences as here in War Dog:" .. . against contrary w inds, three just quoted suqqest the extent to whic h his lrnaq1na dark long.<;hip<; row":ld only by c1 dozen oars encl so low tion and his imaginative work may be compared with i,, the ·,-.,ate; ttoat every ·.vave seemed to smothe; them, those of many ;,vriters ·.vith1n ou; genre. Catie Cary came out of the swiriing mists, ihe greedy gulls wro!e accura1ety of his "unique vision; bieakly poe!ic, squawking and wheeling above them"; or it may be violent and scary, qrittily realistic"' Such words miqht mythopoetic as in the irn;:iging of a time "long before also be said of the vision of Ian McDonald 1n Hearts, Crete came up like a great fish from under the green I lands and \rbices; of that informing the Times World sea and reared her golden palaces for the god's chapters of Vernor V1nge's A Fire Upon 1he Deep: and approvar· (Oedipus). He himself, in notes (appended perhaps also that of Suzy McKee Charnas in Walk to to the Margery Fisher monograph mentioned above) the End of //1e World No direct comparisons, but, for a lecture given at the Hull College of Ari shortly with all the;r d1 ffe1ings.a certain common grounding m before his death, wrote of a creative writer's vision such a vision. Reading the opening chapter of f-learrs, being directed to "the seasons in their progression Hands and Vorces. I was particularly remmded of .. this rituc1I dance of the months". So sensitised, he some of Treece's adult fiction continues, "he will know, without doubt that all years He wrote only one critical work, though a are one year, all pleasures one pleasure, all disasters memorable one - Dylan Thomas: dog among /he trivial. and all heroes expendable" The percep!ions fairies. They were friends and, though unlike in poetic wl1ich feed this vision, he says rnc1y then be ordered technique, not so far apc1fl 1n poetic sens1b1llty. They by a writer "into a cosmology, or imaginative system, bo1h had affinity with what was known as the 'Apoca so as to form an entire and sell-suft1cient environment lyptic' movement. In one of Dylan Thornas's poems for his writing"' there is a line which I think might well be applied to Henry Treece was never a writer of science Treece's understanding of humankmd's planetary fiction nor strictly of fantasy, though in a man-into-tree status and destiny. It is: "A process in the weather of apparent metamorphosis in his Beowulf novel, The the world"' - provided always that this is comple Green Man (his only mention, I think. in the Clute mented by another line, one which is also the title o f Nicholls encyclopedia), he comes near to the that poem:" A process is the wea1her of the he;ut .. Aire Y<0>rn g<0>ii1rng? \\Ve1llll lbie 1rnunurnilrng <0>1tu §Uoce§§Jfull JB§JFA T<0>1mlbi<0>lla ,ag,arnL ][Jf y<0>rn cairn hellp ,at the wedkerndl <0>1r w<0>ulld Hlke t Stephen Baxter ~Ing Harper Col/Ins 1994, 443pp, £15.99pp Alan Johnson , ~~~a::t~~-~~~t~ the future history so elegantly plugged in Vecto, 179. The scale of this work is ,mmense. takrngusfromtheheartofthe Sun !o the end of our Universe iniustOYer400pages,and providesthecapstone ofthe Xeelee eye~. but how does it stand up as a story? The year is 3953AD and the quasi-religious cult. Superet haslor,gtermplanstopreserve the human race. and to these ends sponsors projects which it feels will promote this aim. This story is about two diverse projecis,aprojecttoplacea humaninteUigenceinsidethe Sun. and a second to send a multi.generation ship on a relativistictriplivemillionsyears into the fu ture. although it w,11 only be one thousand years subjective time, with the intention of creating a worm hole back in time to their point of origin. The reason for this massive undertaking is that Superet has gleaned informa- R tion!romthisperiod thatno EVIEWS OF HARDBACKS & ~t~sof~~~i~~-r=~~;:s thepro1ectaswl'f-Jtopreserve PAPERBACK ORIGINALS ~":.::,~.:>::~::;:;:•=•interior of the Sun. and a force E grcwnchild, L,esed.isbrought DJTED BY CATIE CARY :re1f~Ei;':"e~~ti~~i~e~;;a ,------'---=-,,-.,,.-,.;;.,,,..;~:,:::.,.,..:=..:..;;;_::..:,_ ____~ days before dying and her ..._ North Pole. The warming of the autoriomous artl'"fl of sell· essence ,s incorporated ,nto the ...... oceans provides a fert;le replicating Al machines on a probe to give a human Mott..r- Ten-y BIMon unobtrusive. understated and rooted in fact - although the,e"s a.. ... ot-...- Flre careful. a tendency to be either Tor, $19.95, 254pp The least of these pedantically p reci se or Kev Mc Vcigh stories is the alien~iew of Earth m,,st,callyvague. Foreicampfe. "They"re made out of Meal' althoughnodateisg1venfor T~;r:~~~t~~!~~ ~~~;~~ which1samildlyfunrljsqu1b the events of the novel, it's until an ironic last line upsets it relatively easy-given the most welcome volumes in all. The best? The riches here references to people and eve nts recent SF, and one to be are mani-, bu!thet,tlestory, outs1dethescopeof the treasured in the future. Not only "The TwoJanets·, 'Two Guys narrative - to place it around does the ,ePfinling of these from the Fu tu re'. "Press ANN'. 80ADAsahistoncalnovel, s\or,es 1noneplacesave all the "The To.xic Donut' and 'England hoY,,ever. The Forest House 1s difficulty of trawling through Underway' are all worth the not wholly successful. Perhaps magazines as divers as entrance money on their own this is because it is not entirely Asimov's, lnterzone, F&SF, And then there is "Ove r Flat focussed within the Romano- 0mm, Science Fict,on Age and Mountain" about a truck driver 8ritish world which 1s its even Playbo;(though for andahitchhikerdn\llfigc,,,era setting.Therearema'lf stories as good as these it huge mountain raised up atx:M! informative asides - two girls would ce rt a,n!y be worth the the atmosphere in Kentucky. walking through "the thick. ettort). but ,tallows a closer ('lbu get to know Kentucky uncleared forest that still look. at some of the things pretty well. reading Btsson) coveredmuchofthesouthof Bisson does which are so Here Bisson wins me over with Britain". And Bradley"s special t:,, the magnifying effect suchtrueobse,val1ons as the • charncters occasionally appear of then close compa~ young hitchhiker slyly checking to be no more than mouth Tak,ng all of these theten--dollarbill ,nhis pocket pieces for authorial comments stones together reveals that "to make sure that 1t hadn't oncurrent concerns outwit ani- compute, system. there isn't one particular aspect turned into alive" delorestat,on.ethnic cleansing. steals one of the cop'es of !he o!Bisson·swnt,r,gwhichg1ves Teuy Bisson has female priests-which seem genome. You may well suspect this collection a degree of emerged from nowhere as one not only anachronistic but •thattheco,poration'splansare cohesrYeness uncommon 1n of the best sho, t story writers largelyirrelevantto theeventsof all go,ng horribly wrong and such volumes: ,n pure dialogue currentlyactive.upthere w ith !he novel you would be nght stonessuchas 'Nru ...... __ 0 golhtCSMS1bihty whochforall trt.en,ertK>OS lrom a fl\'Sleuous. a,e drsllnc:t and ,rwolving but CaleffluN lkna.vmayberruesofar.) stranger wt-o knows more Wlthoul lecf!OUS Wllrospecilon Head/lfl(I, 1994, 340pp, In the pmcess she was about them tfl3n they do (oldsoltiethatlam.lgotqu,te f:16.99 learl'W'lglhemorep,0Sa!C lhemsel\les.. The oonduslo'1 IS auac:hed 10 Leeth deso,te her Notman Beswick elemenlsothertrade,hplol gua,anteedloattract unorom,s,ngs1ar1)Charac:teost,. tidinessandpace.a,,y,ng the P0$1m0demistcnticsbulisalso cally,thereareoc::cas,onal The amval o( her nooth book Shadow was certari/ weQ. P8ffec;Uysa1tsfy!ngtoordinary_,_ 1euc:hes of ser;ual diwrseness, I fnoctomer(!OnUfT1'{een made;rtre--exarrriedandQalo-'I! and)'IIS.sewralcharactilfSare s1ones "1 "-erzor>eand anewslanltolhevamp,re f,ne, you say, so 1hafs on personal quests but they're etsewnere)p,oelalmsStorm image,showedtonslderabla !he [orm: what aboul the allddferentand ncidenlal, Constanrine an established SF/ research Wllo angels and m.,cn corwenr?Surely.101" ,nstance. uritramme!led by poooe,ous Fwnter else, and go1 a,,,a,w,tt1 y,e've heard ot traYellino cities wiiards and teriTW\al cosrnc Rigtt from the slar t, she quolatJOnSfTOmP.iradiseLost belore; Ctwi$topher Priesrs battles agan.t the forces of rnana;edl0.wot(iOlhitr at the head ot -v c;hapl:er lnwtted ~ Of the flying n1ua.llS8d evil. people's/OffllOlas.Forbe!leror (not man,SF nwels haWI cillesUlJamesBltSh'sCitieslfl In olher woros, ano!her lor worse, her st0f1t!S haw prompted me lo reread Mlftonl) A,ghf? &ii they were eJ1amples Constantine goodie and wen always beenreoogrvsablyher She was beg1nnng to rel&ll. and of hard SF; Constartrne has no worth reading. As an atremv& own F,rst (beg,nnmg ,n 1987) Sign lo, rhe Sacred was a ,omp, 1ntetestwha!IM.!f1nhowher fan I'm dehQhled to see her came the three Wraeththu Comtant,ne at play, with a Clllti mo\18, !hey iUSt do, and unravel a technical tangle ,ntoa books,w1ththeirelegar1ty hQhtlycontrolleclstructure,a she concentrates on the fan!asy that almost (but happify m,-stenous lilies, sJow1)8Ced hrnt of SelCual amblgu,ty. and a slrangely dlllenng people, nof ent,1efy)'rnakes sense'. It and sp,aw~ng plOls, enigmatic central character or (to borrow customa and social structures has to be said, of course, that and androgynousct'laracters: an appropr1a1e term from chaos in each, we know, in a way, why nothlngshehaswrilten sil'ICe cultbooi<.s to ,mmerseyourself ma!hs) ·strange attractor' they move. but the answe1 only tha WraethlhY books has qu1ta in, ,mag,natr.ely teasing out and whos& presance and random makes sense ,n that WOflcl, not gill&l'l the f11sson, the httle shlv&I distu1btng our concepis of behavlol.Jrdisonentatesothers. In ours. How they get food ,s of the uncor,scious, that those gencler. For a new wntm Now we hiM! Ca/Bnture, hinteclat,butnotina way that strange, mutated humans (despitethetrurtldysejl and although the tone is mont encourages further que5hons. 1111hallyoc:caSIOOed.Shewas indulgerce and a d1sl'l'"JSSIW sobe,-tnanll"ISignthere'san And lhe story ,s comple1e wosetotumtootherarBa!I, ,n Foundation) !hey elemenlofplayhefetOO.QIYlng enough without them belore they got stale and the r-rep,asentedaooos.derable hill a par !lculaf tectncal And ttris is charactenstic sallflSISturned on her, and if problemtoer-.o, Thelltle ofhefworkingeneral.Her rumours of anolher Wraelhlhu thBMonslrousR~ means ·t-. burnng pass,on, WOl'ldbuildlng IS conce,1/ed 10 book berng on the stoc:ks id and1!SS1Ste<\IOlume,AJeph.set glow" and IS 111,st,ated by a allow the story to happen. no1 t,ue 111110 be hoped she has --on a p1aoe1 where ll!f'T'llnlSt rule QUOle from Jom Dome, fOCOf'f.rolJl."Thoughbyno turnedthemageanothetw;l-f has gone disastrously wrong, rffdefs wll makl! up ttie. own means saertifically iliterate, to come at ll with fresh had good ttwlgs bul were rnn:ts how far. and where the sheisnohatdSFwritei-, avtho11aleyes. pemai:&lesssuocessful,rroor. term~ in !his labulaflon tuld,ng up a story on a th.wetocorYe5$rm ot:Mously 'thougtf up' {she bul a book has to be called SCl8f'tlhc:ort~what· waitingfortheblggle:lhenc,.,el hefsetf was dissatisfied with something. Casmeer, last d his ~;no,esheasociologest thal'1nolonlytechnlc:ally Rsg,menlandonell:'>lllslhal lond, wes in the deserted ciy ot saywig "By God, if tt>is goes Cnlianlbutc:utsdeep.thal she lS haOp,ef with lhemes that Thef~amongthe on_ l"Shei$ aspwr,erof lakes emocional nslr.s, Iha!. says IIIIOod e,lher/Of). &.it Hermetech mourtains of 0,,emang. slories.ll'ldulgen:abootloose somettw,g ~ and slartbng wilh It$ wandenng hippie Compulsr,,eiy he has Wflllen the th"eads and ,ncomplete wholes. somethlng that hurts to wnle. tr8'.'ellers,st111lhnganatomw;:al h1Sloryofhisnowcry.1talline The~arerieely lt'saloctoaskota1hrrly-egt1 rearrangemerts and ciimaJI ot peocle, and iust as~ 'lllflOI.IS, the wnt,ngca,ries us year old writer who after an has erot,c magic showed her back s,vety, he begins ,rwentmg, and happilyalongwithplentyof lo keep the titles piling up and on conceptual course: cfl!teal w riting down. stOfies of hrs own lelicrtiesenroute(hefprose the ,ewaros comtng in. and reception was understandably eboutthewlderworldof which was already intmesung m maybe I'm rreslaken and she'll sorre.Yhat rro:ed, but tr3118Hingc1t1es. Terranauts,p,lot its rhythms ,n the ~eththu ne110rachie.'8lt.Ei.rtl'dlow,her Constantine was at least usu'lg stones and strange creatures books, has Ool better and to!ry whenshefeetsreadyor is her imag1Nt1 on uncluttered tr; beyond. We enter those stones, be!ter sinceMonstmus forced to it by her talent. other people's argument. ( The f0Uc,,y1ng the characters, their Regiment) and the characters Encyclopedia of SF refers to her J,ws il'ICreaslngly shadowed b',' The Hidden Ctt,, Dmdl!ddl beyond doubt !Of followers of trolls, usually the bad guys, The plot IS simple A1. the HarperCol/1ns, 487pp. £15.99 !he story so far. it's the way that on Sparhawk's Side. was a sec:ret thaumaturgical !abora Vikki Lee he does 11 that enlertains. masterstroke. The book ,s lOfy ot Losa Llamas (ho. ho). a Although the OU!corne worth read,ng for the troll mad 1haumaturgical poyslClst ofthrs9p,1c:story,sneveftn scenes alone. has created the eponpnous T ~:!8of1~~~~enes. c,outit, Edd1r99' lflUfllefable Eddings'~IIC Rana Militaria. Twercy fr.e )'ears andpossiblylhelaslacM!nl.Uf8 p1ot.11nesc:oruiuetowanoet" style cl wnUng and 'ralJblt out late!', 5n)'oew1ndef {he&, he&) lor 5oamawk., t'IS Wlfe Ooeen and wiggle llft>IJrld lille the hat' use ol magic is olten UncoveB ths secret and heads Etunaandthellcountless Medusa's hairclo altef a C1"1t!CIS8das1ep1eseotat1118ot for the alorementtonecl lrogs in Gods and lnends. Aftei- Sill partlCIJlarlybadperm.His all Iha\ IS wroog ,n modern order to effect hois planned books. for Spa,hawll. fITT.t mac:hinat,onsinno1only farw:asy. But ask an,, Eddings dastardty deeds.. Meanwhile. appeared al lhe beg,mng ol keepng !lack ol aD these tan. nobody does It lwl twn Firton (ha. ha). Hogshead (slop theprtMOVSsenes. The plo(ttnes. but In bmgu-og them oraswellastwn.and The rt,)00'1ekil,ngme).Dawnfasin 8en,r,,m. ,rs t,me he hung up altogether for the predictable Hidden Citywdl keep · Dawn rose sloN!y" - p20) and hlS advenl:unng spll'lt and dlfl'lacllC ending, olten borders Eddingsatthetopwilhlhe luendsareloolungforKiog seltled doMl to produce an heor onfaracal_'Ntw,Zalasta verybesl. Klayth'a lather. Fllkin et al lo takeuplhe mantle oflhe appea,s inSephrenla's r'IIX!Slllbooks.. bedroom and stabs he, through ~ewindef's plol and. weQ, loll Thestoryp,cks up the heart because he loves her The Fn,pof..,. --n whale the last book left off. and can't stand another man Legend--·, 1994, 295pp, £3.99 Along the way, we have Ehlana has been taken hostaga being the lighl of her kfe, she IS Ian Sales lolsofdreadlulpuns.s,llyi<)kes, by the mad Lord Scarpa and 'magicked' back to lull health and a style ol wnt,ng !hat ins,sts the Styric magician, Zalasla, 1n a beeause she rs still needed to on bu11d1ng up to &Y8< more bid to get Sparhawk. to helppullthe w holeplot A=~~k~:=. pred,calble and mannered surrender the all-pc,,yerful togethef. A!thoughlhis is the with this one you could make a pul'IChl E.Ll>ooto,ow reports seeing a carnage lrkePratchett.Gardner,or him leave town alive. The TheW.Wrwort;• carrying his father through the indeed PiersAnlhoflil,l'msure lecturer has a radio rxmered In Macmillan, 1994, 246pp, streets of the city. But his father )'UU' II !ind this.. . entertaining" anewway,bul 1nh1senviron £1 4.99 a dealer in shoddy and in slaves What1stheellipsiscoveringtor? ment ii will never be known Paul Kincaid is dead. Though he doesn't "Marginally"" "Notinthe The sheriff shoots both and the quite believe in the ghost. sl19 htestb Oddly enough, although NellQaknan/.,.,ious 1HustratJng a Simple mo1al man where a d1Herent reality can be everyone knows how dreadful • rtist.; ilrtrodwotion~ il'V'IC:N8!Mt and sometimes g!1mpsed. Nevertheless, he tS Vargo Slatten and Volstead ,... ..,_ unsetthr,g way. There's a lot of retumed to his OoY11 place, Gudban were (don'l 1hef?), of Death: The High Coat of wisdom to be gained llorn rewarded for an act. the all the hacks who wrole this Livi.. dream11, and from 0.-eam. Some s~canc:e of which he wiM trash. 0fV'1 the SF Is remern, Titan Books, f l.99, ot the tales a,e stronger than ne,,er understand. bered, and some ot 1he authors 104pp, pb Olhers. but each displays a 'Orpheus' IS the tale of Ilka l\enMtti Bulmer ar.:l EC Neilo.n.n/w.-lous qual1tyofstorytelhng. the wedding of Dl-eam's son to Tubb wert on to ,ecognot,on, ..-tiata; introduotion ~ mfthmaktng and symbolism Eurydice, and the true tale ol while any othef SF author ot 1he (bothgraphicandverbal)Whlch what happened afterwards. The torne(even Arth!.11 C Clarl a mouthful ... usuallyabbrev, Shet,lflHWbofl When Kelly. Ryan's track down some hijacked ated" - who is found mending daughter(who!iveswithh1seK) arms. the machine that is the Warner, 1994, £4.99 pb IS kidnapped and held to Since bullet holes. no Universe ransom because Finlay has got matter how graphically The deus ex machina is Whtt.- Ghoat on the wrong side of the Mob. described, soon pall. Hutson an in•ioke SF !ans should Little, Brown, 1994, Ryan has to do the Pf bit and brings the Triads into the stOfy certainly appreciate. Although £15.99 hb saveher. After all. they have nice big there are several more to be nm Barton Naturally,itallc!imaxes knives don't they? There really found ,n this book, and I am in one big and very gory shoot· is little other reason to sure that I missed a ffNV out. Everyone bar Kelly is blown introduce the Chinese element. a!lusjons, I stillf1nd ITTJSelfonly S:S7/::~5;;)~h':,8of many to hell. Ryan·s death is not the beyond the fact that their half in agreement with David V K>Jumes of horror fiction. shock It could be, as he is community seems to have Barrett who described Holt's enthuses theblurb-wri!er. shown thl-oughout to be a bit of marginally more honour than work(in Vector 177)as !ndeed. the back-<:Cl'V'er of his ananti-hero,andtohavea the ref)(Jblican community as it "h,tariousnonsense". Atastel latest paperback. Deadhead, cancer-induced deatl""r.Nish to is presented t:,,, Hutson. an1 sure that man,, o thers will eiipjicitly categorises the book 0001. In the context of the finale, After the ritual continue to acquire, I found as·Horror'". Kieman·s death does mt bloodbath. this book ends with HoWs wnt,ng l o be "clever" ~I. neither of these surprise either. though he has the central character actually rathe, than outstandingly titles are horro1. to ITT/ n,ijnd, mt found his siste,, leaving an alive. so I guess Hutson must amusing lnfact.theyareboth unresolved element - the like him. Doyle is, though. thrillers with horrid bits. closest to interesting Hutson ar,;thing but likeable. His City of th Thefeasenoprv:es, The Fiss,on of the !Ille IS Ca,ton.fromthef~mofA Tale lhen.fo,guessingthatthlsisa an abusnie young woman from ...... of Two CirrllS. There are Olhei comedy of er?OrS.1/efQ&ng the future, whose flM)Unte Gollancz. 1994, 281pp, cultural references all though between sallfEI and broad farce words are "fonk" and "fonlung" ttS.99 the book.. including quotat,OnS Jn Jacobs' snn,'. sooally ttvs dist,nou,shes her from the -PatJ IGncaid from ISOUrces as~ as managed neo-Owelllan fulum other )'0Ung woman, Glona, Magna Carta and Boney M's INefyone's status and Al:ne.-e wt-o spec;iafises 1r1 VetY slow Rasput1r1', wt.ie in one scene mer« F'otenllial IS stamped on though! processes. There IS an o::.,~==: inawlualC8SIDOf~ l.hetrfC>n!haads as a~. andrOod. a dragon (guarding the named. a town in l"hailand. but appear from Egyptian m,1h and James'Nandel's.naturally,IS Golden Fleas). the Cretin ElJII. the scene actually lakes place Tht!ISl01yatO.) happy in t-.s A• status He has t~ee-neaded Cerberus and at Mycenae in Greece. Tt.s the II is a world where who a beautJul Wife and children. a SNke-haired Medusa. among readef works out some pages people are and whaf their good iob and a rlSlnQ career Olhef marvels. IUflhefonll isasmallbut allegiancesa.-eremamfort'M!f He can afford to be beoevolenC Phil Janes' Sfyle IS telling example of both the way unsettled. Meariwh,le. ltke a and gen&fOUS lo those With heav!lyloadedwithsetl Gwyneth Jones works, and the ttvanodyl0f8'lleftnlhe lower Codings. ref8fentlalgagsthata1 first are Iheme she pursues. background, is !he inability of A freak acodeN: at a moderately lunry. lncreas,ngly, ForthlSisabool!.about men to corrp-ehend women supe,masket checkout robs him they slow do.Yn the ac!IOl'l and noo,comp1ehension. Two and of women to comprehend of his presc,ge,stalusandeven clog up the text, plot and languages feature in the~. men. and of the reincarnat,ng t,,s humanity. and recodes him characters benig lhmsy, the l"IOl'mal spoken language and aliens to comprehend the as a can ol V,gor sodium-free auttior lrant1cal/'y poles on the the "common tongue·. a peunanenl death ot humanity. pea SOI.JP. verbal humour to make up f01ma!1sed mixture of facial lncomp,ehension rises !ike a Al llrsl everyone around rm tryrng to bela1r. Only exp,essIon and body language wall between eNery cha1acter h,m ,s supporlfV8 and sympa R8\11ewer's Duty got me through which is supposed to be more and every group of charact8f5 lhet,c. Bu t as he takes his case lo the end Bu t I'm afraid that rGYealing and more honest. But in the book. While. every so ttvough the courts. he learns some people may hke 11. throughout the boo!<. both ollen, the plot 1s punctuated b>,' tnat the social stabil1tyol the languages are used, con, l'l'IOffl8f'lls of VMd dramatic Hotfenste has been sacrificed to Okuda's) Ill COflUOdlOO With a lir.sl time researcher a.ms to The Black Q)Phon IS a prondethedefinlt1veSOtXce book w hK:tl will appeal to guldetothe&ar Trekuriver'$e ~whoer1(¥JAme up to and including Sat TflJk -McCaffrey's later Draoon lx>ok3. The Next Geoerat,on (senes 6) Thatis.rfsgoocl,pos,tn,e, and Deel) s,»c;e Nine (senes1). happy fanlasy, whefe the lt1$alwaysdifhcultloreviewa images and Ideas are drurrvned rete1ence text like this, but as a home In case you missed them habitual v,ewer of the C011t1nual the first t,me round. The style rs reruns on Sky One, I have occas,onally marred b'J' clumsy trawled thrOIJQh the text, and pl'lfasing{"lh,splandidn'tha...e find ii to be as accurate as the chances of a snowflake in a would be expected The formal trying pan of workirog "), but ,rs Is the COf1V8flt1onal alphabetic readable enough and w,11 no cross-felerence. but it is also cloubl please Lacke{s existing ijberallyspnnkledw,lh r,m , ~luslratlOf"IS and ,mages __ grabbed from Iha Video lootage. These sc,een grabs arn of ...... vanable qua~ty and lel doNn Go/lane~,~~· 3t7pp. the ~aa 1oo1,, ol the w:>lume wt,,ch,solaNghquafity. The Andrew Seaman textli$l$alcharactl!fS!oappear n lhe 263 houn plus ol Star Trek footage, along with l:s~~=~!~ med,cal cood1hons. loods.wfls. DI his use of up-to-the minute equ,pment - the list of sc19f'll:Jfre speculation culled categories, IS comprehens!Yll. In rrom the pages of popular addition spec,al table entnas science press mamed to a irx:lude e'Yefy spacec1aft ever headystewofrn,'th, l1terary seen on the screen, and some allusiol'1 and a seemingly only lnle1red by conversation, l,m,tles.sfascinat,onw,th every planet and star base, popular cun:ure m all ,is ma"f everytile!o,rnencountered. lorms. It's a rT1lll that, when cross.reterenced by episode m successful. combines to which 1hey were encouOlered. Pfoduce distinctr-.oe and The most in.erest1ng spec,al powerful prose but has the piece Is the IP.trapolated tendency to degenerate lfllo llmelioe '°' the urwverse, and lffilllllngself-fflfenniahty. grves approximate dates tor all undermlrwigtheefled1IIS the ma,or dramas ., the Sta.. oesigrled to achtwe One of Trek rrythoa to dale. Howewf, McDonald's most le, tile rhe main use ol .such a volume must teach the INlr1g the value sou«:es d lflSPll'alJOo has, of olfrM30dshlptolhe~· surefyl'SasasourceoftrMS. thetr Ir.es aod how 10 INe c:oune, been the SF gen-e tan decadence ol the Saint ol and t would like 10 gn.e as an them. of Itself, leading at least this reader John l'leCIOVllle oo the Mexicao funed in lhe world lhe example a short qua based on IMr,g tt-e 93tes ot the of hiS work to pose the Day ol the Dead. Sant,ago bt¥>nd matfff1al gleaned from 1hls necro,nlle the five unc:tecvo, question: clever post-modern Columbar a world-weary volume. during the feshval of the dead, a pastiche or redundanl dabbler1nC1esigner-drugs, 1) What IS Geo,di symbolic resurrectK>n In !he city ,~tation?lfssurelyno haunted b')' the death of a lowr. LaForge's favourite food? ot the dead. McDonald's powe, co,nc!dence that McDonald's Yo·Yo Mok: an ambitious and 2)WhatislOIC? socond published collection of successful lawyer whose career as a writer has rlEM!r been In 3)Whatanc1ent Earth doubt, but in the past the shoftstoriesis. rather cheekily. is improbably ruined by the anijact was deslrO'/ed by the layenr,g ot almost too much called Speaking In Tongues, cybernetic ghost o f a Carmen Khr,gons In Siar Trek V: The deta,I and that $Ol'Tl@tlmetl but readers who in the past Miranda Impersonator: Tnnidad Fina/Frontier? wea,y,ng se!f-1efe1ent1al,ty has rnghl h- found themselves Mafcopvelo. a nch dilettante, 4)What do Or. M iranda !ended to obscu1e his crying ln desparr: W,U the real searching for romathlng In the ~.DrAm Mulholllood Dr. Slfeogths. Necn:,,.,illehas Ian McDonald please stand up? wake o( a laJled IOt"9 affair. Kathenne Putaski have tn WIii be rette,,,ed to (itS00l,l8f lhal TOUSS3ff11 Tesler: the estranged mometts ol real power and baauly McDonald's forte may MlatestnavelNecn:Niftl, rebel SOil ol lhe Tesler-Thanos ='S)What was StJ!u's firsl 5t'IOWS the authof making big stdllargefylie111hlshandlingof - .,.., Camgu,y indMdual soaoes and set ~, at1llanCes 11'1 the quest to f•nd a 0umt.aoa manoe boologisl, AR1t1all. The&BtTrelc YOiceolhsown..Ce,ta,n tumed nanolech arllst. cloomed pieces. b,JI Iha lcNngiy ba,oque Enqdopedi.a comes across as touch he lends to the descnp sedoons of the newel aren't to die bv his betrayal of the exactly what ,t da11T1S to be, but toons of the al.en, but st• immune to the Pefl"IICIOUS womanheloved Each.nthetf is probably lot dedicated recognsabl,e, transformed glossolalia w~ has Rected LA Tmkkllfs only, (a guaranteed ownWW'f,hasnolhlnQ leflto ol the quick and the dead ltngef tvs earltef work, but what IS lose and In the course of that bestsel!el). good about 1he r,oyel more en the rnnd long after an, one rvght !hey all become accusalions of slavish lmitahon than compensates lrnolved, d11eetly or indirectly, ,n have faded. In $OfTl@ respects The scientific advance the momentous events of a his struggle to find a true (rather that powers the plot of complex plot to liberate the than d1s11nct1ve) YOrce lnthe Necrovilfe Is nano1echnology enslaved dead and kick-start /.11uno:)fXlJ81\0::is1puna1.u clamour of late twentieth which,early1nthenextcencu1y. the emergence of a transhuman :111'18!1,e15'mfEWH(Cj century mayst1II not be CM!f, has enabled the dead to be Sf (IJOJ/ll'l9118!:) luture but Necrovi/Je shouts power• ,e,surrected. tn a Los Angeles of No-one could accuse JJt Lan-Gt.en Denn• O'Neil Robert Sitwerbe"9 Pa-..a.Volaky Tongulna the z.ttgeist Bat,._n: Kntgartt.U ~ of the H-.indr-ed T he Wotf of Winter Permeable Press, 1994, Ban/am Press, 25'&94, Bantam, 1994, 439pp, £4.99 192pp, $11 .95 349pp, f:9.99 Harper Collins, 1994, £14.99 Martin Brice Paul Kincaid Andy Mills hb, £3.99pb Kev- McVeigh 1 V !~~1~;!~s~ss~~~;~;~F,! o ~sc~~~~t!acs~;~oo° My picture of 8<1tman Robert Silve,be,g's to the throne of Rhazaulle, flct1on set ,n a gnttily described has been moulded no! from the novella of Ancient Egypt bears murders most of those who and usually dCJNn,at •heel near comics but from the screen: re acertainsimilaritytoConnie stand in his way. Only Cerro, luturewh,chtouchesona runs of the 1940'sserials,the Willis' acclaimed Doomsday and Shalindra (brother and human•informat1on interface spool TV series, the recent Book In its depiction of a fone sis ter) escape, their very flight but which deals more directly blockbuster movies. There's a travelle(s experiences in the implying involvement ,n the with all aspects of popular bit of each of these trad1t1ons In past. As with Willis' novel the assassinations. When these two culture. from rock music to th1sbook,whichfranKlyis best moments of Thebes of the returnwithanarm,'.they have bfand names. That Is a something of a mess. Hundred Gates are the been gone and lorgotten so description of lance Olsen's ln largepar! th1s Is descripllons of the physical long, that they can be branded neoN novel, Alter the sensIt,ve because O'Neil, a comics editor setting. Unlike Willis, Silverberg usurping impostors, manipu• romantic idy1I of his first novel. al DC, has tned to cobble fails to truly bring Thebes to hie latedt:,,aforeignaggressor Live From Eatlh, this book IS a together a va riety of narratives !or the reader though he does If reminiscent of the shock. a rfJN, rough,edged and produced by other people occasionally manage to distract story of Macbeth, that Is not relentlessattackthattakesfame "The original story, " he attention from the inadequacies surprising, as the author is a as ,ts subtect and its metaphor. acknowledges. "was a complex of the plotting. Shakespearean scholar. Further Andy Warhol's fifteen collaboration of editors. artists. Edward Davies Is the pleasurable,nterestmaybe minutes of fame now looks like and writers who often drew on t1metravelle1sentbackin obtai ned I})' looking for other an extra~agarice, here the work done t:,, other editors, search of two lost Time service parallels and influences within whole world goes through artists and writers who agents whose mIssmn to Rome lhe novel massive,rock,star• nst1gated themselves borrowed elements went astray. What Davies finds Forexample,,nthe s~e.fet,shes three or four 1Imes from work by still other editors, shock him, though not the nor them kingdom (or Ulorate) a year. Some people get nch art1stsandwnters.·· Theresult reade1 of Rhazaulle, a picture of Tsarist investing In the stockmarket of ,s a mish-mash of sub-plots. a ln1t,allythereisgreat Russia, icebound in winter, rock star fame, but even the story•linewhichlurches promise here. Despite the odd mud-engulfed In spring and biggest names are gone In an throughasuccess1ono! lapse into clumsy phrasing. autumn, and always beset I})' ,nstant. trailing behind them an unsatisfactory climaxes, and Silverberg vividly describes the sinisterenemieswith1n,bethey efftu111aoftiiHns,t•sh1rts. poor handhng of both pacing mass!Ye physical and psycho anarchists or apparitions. Could merchancl T-, w.th !he WOfO •GOfvle• lenered ~ Al Arms has an Susansaysofthegu,itar. "It's _.,...,_ on,t. Mear,,rmle,Captain underiylng theme ol tolerance no1 supposed to be "' our Goltancz, 1993, f14.99, Vimes IS preparing fO hang up and aooeptance, 'Nhethel' it'S hlsto,y- 0.Jt the rn.lSIC doesn'1 t-.s sword and badge and rettre belween !roll and dwarf, dead rnnd Ifs the hear! beat. Iha ....."":!... 1O111bleof~blisswirh Otundead ll'1 r-morelhar'I back beal.. Ifs awe aga,n. Gollancz. 1994, fl•.99, Lady~ RarTV!.in, dragon. 8 lhlma, fhoug,h; 11 l"lfNl!II gall breeder. SOC1Bhte and · a on 1heww, ofthaan1ert8ll"lmenl Meanwhile. Buddy Ta~rown woman out for all she can gMt" Supercooled lrolla and (fo,merly iuv:-n as Imp} ha$ ute rs seldom that easy, tandacape gerdenng ·~ all become a sl-to the rhyttYn, howt!w!I'. and ttw,gs will gel _,, -it, but whet happens a chennel fo, somethng tnat's s ~::t:X~~~asy·s worse before they get better. when an anthropomofphc been around fo, a Vf!fY long •~ 10 OouglasA.dam5, he's Angua IS ll"troduced 10 per1onihcatlOl'I II smiltenwrlh tune (What was the sound camed oo ptoducir·,g l"IO'.-el$ at the Dog Guild, in charge of IIXIS!anllilll &ng51? Soul Music bef01ethebirtholthe a stuperdous r111 e ("mote tnan SC8\lef1glrtgligi"ts.surbathog seesOeathWlthlhebiues. Urwerse? ·0oe. two, ttnte, two•~·.1oquote • 1ec«11 spots and r.gl"t-time barking U0?1"1Q off to get _.,,,from ,t IOtM" ·1 Nothing in Susan·s letiture) One ooulcl, howi;Jl,,er, duty, WI Gaspode, 8 dog who aa. Death·• g,anddaughlel' sensible, prachcal upbrrog1ng ocx:asionaly beforglY8nfor has uept ~ up near the Susan II endunng her has prepared her fo, this. At thnung lhal haw1g tound a walls ot Lins-, Lh-we ending. Wilson·s characters are ~N SF NOVELS - During their detention. The~ starts in his own. however: rou!"lded. real Gusev talks of plunder and of Petrograd and the scene shifts and - w ith one except;on - annexing Mars to the Russian to Paris, Germa1'1)1, a yacht at sympathetically drawn. The A ~~g~:=k~~:~~c~n I Federati'-":I Republic, while Los sea, the Soviet Far East and except1onisn'tsoldier8illy.as stall manned by Russian fans talks of gathering wisdom other locations. The story is much a victim as the people he These books, published ,n the Soon !hey are introduced to a accompanied i:,,. technical kills, 1t"s Tom·s pushy, matenal1s USSR (sic) bt Raduga graceful young Martian female. details and sketches which t,c brother. In one way or Publishers. Mooca.v, and Ae\ita. With some Martian even today seem quite another the remaining printed in English, looked like technology resembling v,deo plausible Oi popular SF characters are lonely. vvlner• interesting mementoes of the she starts teaching them Iha standards and must haw able ,ndiVlduals, all of whom Convention. language. and 1s subsequently seemed more so In 1925 when have lost something and are Both are t,,, Alexei able to narrate them some our kllCY,/ledge of phys,cs and look,ng for something. though Tolstot/1883-1945). a distant Martianhislory;ahistoryol theearth'scrustwasless they"1enotoftensureofwhat.lt relativeoltheauthoro/War conflict,ofinvasionfromEarth advanced. Tolsto{s education infuses the novel with a hrnt ot and Peace. Alexei Tolstoy is t:,,.Atlanteans. was engineering-based. melancholy, as when Tom one ol the most widely read A love ana;r between The hardbacked realiseslhathecannottreat authors in Auss,a, highly Los and Ae!ita develops. They ed1t1on of GARIN which I living In the 1960s as though ,t regarded there both for his learn that a faction of the High obtained has unusual lull.page were a rehearsed drama, and science fiction and for his epic Council. led bt Aeli1a·s father, colour 1llustrat1ons, most of that whenever one lived people historical works means them no good. A which are rather good, being savoured the possibilities which AELITA {1923). though revolution starts in the city. and painted in a vigorous modem m isted: not well known in the West. is a Gus011, the man of action, and in one case decidedly art "Everywhere the same. famous book in Russia and one escapes and joins in. Aelila's deco style. (Artist unknown). Tom thought. 1962 or 1862 or oltheRussianSFclubsis father, Tuscoob, escapes into In contrast to 2062. Every acre of the world named after it. A movie version an underground lal:1y'finth and Zam,'atin's WE (1920). which httered w ith bones and hope • (scheduled for the Fifth Festival launches a destructive counter most SF fans these days would It's perhaps not ofFantasticFilms(Manchester attack. Los and Gusev escape. find rather tough going, both surpr,sing. then. that whilst the 9- 11 Sept)) was made in 1924 In the final scene. Los is back Tolstoy's n()\lffls, despite th9ir story is a round and complete At the opening of the on Earth. listening to Aelita's age.arehightyreadable,fullof one, the end of the~ brings llO'llel, ,n Petrog1ad c. 1920, YOice calling to him ~ radio. tension and spectacle. with no endings for its playe,s but Archibald Skites sees an ENGINEER GARIN largerthanlifecharactersand nl!ffl beginnings. and a unM!rse acNel'tisment posted ~ the AND HIS DEATH RAY (1925), the kind of technical details that ofposs,bilities. Evenforthe engineer M.S.Los. asking for has a number of larger-than-life these days would be labelled as unhappy Billy. \IOIUriteef'Sloflywithhimto characlers: glamorous femme cyberpunk. Ignore the cover. This ,s Mars.Skilesinterviewslos,and fatala Zaya Montrose, Rolling. a Though written in the agood"un. sees the experimental space rapacious American capitalist, 1920's, GARIN accurately craft, a complicated and hi.tech andGarin,aITT(Sterious foretold the nse ol the likes of device~ 1920's standards. engineer who soon displays Hiller and Mussolini and the 0-WWl"ftl'Off ruthless tendencies. Following Japanese warlords. Reading Ben-NthTheT.-..of While Skiles is at the workshop, a volunteer, Red Arrnt soldier an unexplained murder of a this novel, one is reminded man who turns out to be more than a little of Michael NEL, 1993, 409pp, £16.99 Gusev, introduces himself. Garin"s double. Gann is Mooroock"s 'Byzantium' noYels K. V. Bailey Guseo.o, unlike the other two, is ·- no intellectual, but a restless. pursued to Paris ~ Shelga. a in which the characters and the practicalsort, whoisquite Petrograd detective. and the ambience are not too dissimil&. p ~~~~t1~t an ready natureolGarin'sactivitiesand AsbefitsSovietno,,-els ~:::i~~ his deal with Rolling and his of the 1920's they are written 'Mars book'. In The Stone todeserthiswifefora nl!ffladventure.los.awidc,,,,,er, ultimate aim is gradually from a perspectM! which Within we left Jelka Tolornm just is equally ready to go and face rwealed. Garin. in fact. has embraces socialism with er.ding her sequestration on invented a heat ray pcmered ~ enthusiasm and attacks T,tan. Now on Mars, in transit p:issibledeath. Los's experiments are chemicals which burn to capitahsm and fascism. The eartt-Mrards. she is kidnapped. funded t,,, the &Met State, so produce intense heat. The rays socialistperspectiveisanovelty later to be released bt a are focussed bt a 'hyperboloid' these days; but one should reformed Hans Ebert. She the launch is attended bt a group of officials and newspa todestructiveeffect. (A~ afterallref!ectthatwhile completes her Journey, but physicists among you may socialism eventually failed in the Ebert's continued soiourn on per reporters. The ship makes a ot.Jiect that it should have been East, capitalism has yet to show Mars looks like being of future swift passage to Mars and a paraboloid; according to the 3f'¥ success in improying the lot sign,ficance. Parts2and3are lands safely. Their speed has foreword Tolstoy was well aware of ordinary Russians. located ,n Cities North America. been such that their watches oflhis andusedlhe Unfortunatelyneithef Europe and Africa. They arc 1ecord a passage of 19 hours, hypemoloid as a symbol of of these no,els is currently in concerned with the future though 24 days have passed on artistic exaggeration.) print in the UK. I have not been decimation of the Earth-ruling Earth Garin uses the ray abletoasce-rtainifRadugaare Tang Seven and with the fall of Los and Gusev find ruthlesslylirst lo aid Aolling's still operating in Russia. cities. thatMarshasbreathableaif. capitalist schemes and then to Apparently GARIN was There is 1nthis, as and !he immediate surround• further his own fascistic plan for published in the USA as TH E throughout Chung Kuo, a micro ings are a desert with cacti world domination. Once he DEATH BOX and an out-of and a macro scenario. The They find signs of cultivation, gains control of Aolling's wealth print UK edition of AEUTA micro-scenario lsthatolendless and realise that they are walking he uses it 10 occupy a small exists. af'l'J()r)e wanting to plottings and manoeuvdngs in the bottom of a dry canal But Pacific island and drill down to swap books with Eastern among hierarchies, bureaucra• They soon make contact with the magma belt in search ct European fans might well cies and revolutionaries. the inhabitants, who have flying gold. When the gold, in huge enquire there. Characlers · such multitudes • machines, and are captured and brought to first a city. then quantities. Is rooo...ered to the AELITA, Raduga lend to be two-dimensional. Of surface.Garinuses,ttodestro,, Publishers. 17 ZuboVsky cardinal figures, Knut and Jelka an isolated house. During the the econom,, of the Uruted Boulevard. Moscow. CIS. .1991, Tolonen and leading protago,. night they see mostly ruins and States IS8N5-05-003454·X nist Major Kau Choo are wel~ desolation. rounded. Others are spreading of the plague from transference of Chung Kuo seems to be Ind,cat1ng that they personifications of malice (De Africa into Europe, chaos in ethos and technology. has representtheYinelernenl,a Vore), vice (the monstrous Alexandria, closure of ports and been blasted open in the dark tide rising to coonter / T'ang of Africa). perennial curfews in City Europe course of mternecinestrife complement Chung Kuo's Yang wisdom (Master Tuan Ti Fo). Elsewhere, City North America At the same t,me a nl!ffl dominance The macro-scenario has been destrC¥80 t;,; an element is active on Mars. The While'operatlc' w 1th1n such a profusion of e-rrant orbiting asterok:I and the blackrnan,theOsu,early confrontationale,, editors includ e an illustration which gave away the endrng two pages before the story actuallyfm,shed?Th,s 1s not Ius! annoy,ng for the reader, It Is not simple caielessness on the part of theed1tors. it ,sactually 1nsuttmg to the author Thisdeg,eeof stupid,1y is unusual.But 1t 1ssympto mat,c ol the way too marry magazines ,gnore the way the stories are piesented. Too often, lnterzone looks as if it doesn't care about the stones Which makes it very hard for the reader !o care about them. The look does not \'ary (which may be the biggest sin of all). The same typeface (readable but a little hea,,y). the same colu mn w idth and leading (the space between the hnes. ,n this case rather too close). al ways Just1hed; the result 1s that the pages alw ays look cramped, unappealing. hard to get into. It Magazine doesn't help that the artwork (when there Is any only two of thesix storieso,1/n/erzone f'87 Reviews ha..-earry illustration)alw-iys !its e,,:actly the same pattern. one full column w hen it Is w 1t h1 n a story. the top half of a two-page Edited by sp,ead w hen it h.!ads a story There ,s no\'ariat,on ,nth1s regime. T here ,s a tendency also to use a rather coarse Barbed Wire Kisses Maureen 1ll ustra1Jvesty!e, hea,,y hnes. !lat and lackmg subtlety of shade or makes a welcome shape. It gf\les the pages an Kincaid urwarying. arnateunsh look; as ,f ar1g1dforrnat has been return to Vector devised so that no-one ,nvolved ,n the maga.:Ine actually has to after a gap of two Speller think about how it looks I am being a little harsh on /n/erzone, it is by no means issues. the worstof thebunch. That Compcuisons honour belongs to Tomo,row. In the following wh,ch is printed on poor quality nre ocfious. paper w,th a reproduct,'18 technique thatmakesln/erzone pages, Mark look slick. Tomorrow • 7. actually kay, let's be odious d ated February 1994. looks like Plummer examines Let's see how it belongs to !he pulp era even magazines treat t~n down to the arch headings !or contributors. (As to 0 each pulp-era story. I was going the newly risen how the contributors treat us to point to the exception of I' ll be gelllr,g round to the Keith Brooke"s 'Jurass,c and shade of Galaxy fiction later. ) the Great Tree', u nt,II ro3hsed ,I These thoughts were was repnnted from !ntc1zone, prompted bf Lawrence Dyer's e--,,en down to the accompar'li 'Slugs and Snails and Magazine, and Pupp; Ing illustrations. Dogs· Tails' 1n lnrerzone 1' 86 (or Pu!phouse f' 16 looks Maureen Speller "Slugs and Snails ... ·. as the l,ke a stable-mate for /nre,:zolle. contents l,stwould have it It isn"t p,1nted on slick paper, don'tyou1ust hate thathabltin but it has the same, uniform explores the ln!erzone?). Nc,,,, th1s1sa two-column g11d. a s1m1lar {but reasonablestorywh,ch would not ident,ca/}lypeface, the choices available have been a lot better at about same paucity of 1ntemal half the length. When you have 1llustrat1on (other than the sto,y only one isolated character and headings). Bu t 1I the feel ,s the in the small and onepremise(inth1scase,an same. lnterzone comes out the oldlagd,scoverstheabl!ityto winner In terms of the stones alternative presses. regenerate parts of his body} it None of the stories 1n thls isn't easy to keep the end,nga Pu/phouse stand out. Mike surprise. It would have been Res nock's'The Mumm)'(one of But first, Paul bener if Dyer had gone al the his on-going Lucifer Jones thinglullliltmamucht1ghter, adventures)wasan amusingly Kincaid weighs up tauter story, rather than taking I,ghtwe1ghl Indiana Jones rrp longer and longer over things ofl: Lawrence Watt·Evans's the closer he gets to the end 'Monstm Kidnaps Girl at Mad the glossy A4 Once I had worked ou t the Sc,ent1st's Command' was as ending (not eicactly the most silly 3nd inconsequential as the magazines - and m1ncH1ogglmg!y difl1cu ~ of ti!le;CarneR,cherson's 'Phases· tasks) I 901 more and more was a neat but unexceptional 1mtated at the way Dyer delayed play on ~ampmsm, menstrua he's determined to gel!Ing there. But al least he tion and lesbranism. The rest was trying to sustam a measure wouldn"\ even wa,rant that be unfair... of suspense. So why djd the muchattent1or1.except fo1two Barbed Wire Kisses 29 things worth not1c1ng. Two of everythmgelse ,nthemaga 1ntelhgences spawned by our the stories. 'N0Rest,ict1ons'by :zine, clearly shows the work of own imaginations, but fails In QAIAxies Billie Sue Mosiman and 'Close someone who has thought the wnting. Like too many to the Bone' by Lucy Taylor are sympatheticallyat:outwhatthe /nterzonewriters, Flood will gntty,unpleasantstoriesof author had set out to do. It 1s a produce OYl!f-f1pe, purple, ..£ike QrAins violencew1thabsolutelyno good but not great story, but mood•sett1ngp,ose.then sciencefict1onalor!antast1c theformatreal!ymak.esitwork abruptly stop the flow to content whatsoever. And. If we are making advance the ptotone more of ~And w1thout making ant song and comparisons (and we are, we notchwit h averypla1n, dariceat:outit, Pu/phouse are)thegeneralrunofstorym unadorned sentence. The he Legend Returns: we contains four stories outol BBR ,s better than the average d,ssonancebetwccnthetwo •. re reminded of this fact seven w11tten by women. and lnter:zonestory(/nlerzone,of tears the whole story apart throughout the first four thestoriesdealseriouslyw1th course, has to fill more pages The best writers don't issues of the newly havetoshiftgea,betweenplot T subjectshkemenst,uat1on, rno,eoften), butthebeststor1es relaunched Galaxy magazine. motherhood and lesbianism. In ,n /n/erzonetendto topthe best anddescr1ption,eachis In ,ts heyday, Ga/axywas one of comparison, lnterzone only has ,n BBR. It is just that BBR looks smoothly a part of the other. As, the three most important SF two stones by women among somuchbetter,1spresented1n for instance. ThomasD,sch magazrnes, theothersbe,ng the 16,nthe last three issues. amuchmoreattractiveand with 'The Man Who Read a Astounding and F&SF Under andonlyMa1yGentle'snasty readable styie, and appears to Book.',n lnlorzonef87.a the eo;torship of Horace L. and ,nconsequenlial 'Human takethe,eaderandthewriter beautifully 1udged story of a Gold, the early issues published Waste· eventouchesonan,, morese1iouslythan lnterzone world 1n which read,ng ;s so classicstor1esbythehkesof subject which doesn't conform d~s endangered it is supported by Shackley and Knight alongside to lnrerzone's usual "toyslorthe Aslorthestones(yes,I g011ernmcnt subsidy. The hero, ser1 alised novels from Bester boys" scenar,o did say I would get round to a no-hoper dr,!ting from one ( The Demal,shed Man, The Sc,ence Fict,on Age th1s)let'sstart w1th88R failed attempt to make a hv,ng Stars my Destination) and Pohl looks tobetheeio.cep!ion.ltis Among the ten fictions included to another, suddenly finds there and Kornbluth (Gladiator-at printed on glossy paper w,th ful l ,n1h;sissue('BodyofL1fe'by ,s a career beckornng as a Law, 1-'\t>lfbane). Pohl himself colour 1llustrat,ons(rnostof David Kerek.esand 'Marstall'by reader of took.s, Paul di took Oller as editor in 1961, and them very good). and though 11 Oa11ckChamberl1n,while Filippo's 'The Double Feh.>r.', also underh1sregimew1iterssuch keepstothesmnetwo1ustil 1ed structurally interesting, ha,dly in lnlerzonet87, is another as Cordwainer Sm,th became columns,thetypesizeis count as stories) there are two story that works lik.e a well-Oiled regular contributors. By the '70s actualtysl,ghtly smallerthan good tales from rel ia ble sources machine.every part fitting the maga:z,ne was generally lnterzone·s.whichconversely andtwoe,cceilent p,ecest,,,,less smoothly into 011Bry other. It ,s less mlluential. quality and g,vesthe1mpress,onthatthere well known writers. The good another tale exploiting frequency of publication ,smorespacesomak,ng1t are Don Webb w,th 'The Way Sheldrake's rno,ph,c f,elds. but became vanable, the last issue eas,er to read. Odd lines r:,.cked Out',aventllre,nto the here done ,n the form of one of appearing 1n 1980. out in larget:olditalic which geography of dream which is Thome Smith's comedies. D1 Now it's back, fourteen breakacrosstheco!umnshelp, eventuallydisappo,nt, ng only Filippo cannot match Smith's years after its last issue and because the pages no longer because of the routine revenge madconversations,but hehas !orty-lourafter1tsfirst.So. look as if they are unrelieved plot entwined within it, and Paul caught the headlong. lunatic what's changed between blocksottextUnfort unately, d, Filippo w ith 'Mud Puppy plot perfectly, and this story of ,,.,1ume 1 number 1{0ctober apart from a good story by Goes Uptown'. Di Filippo has a mad scientist who has let 1950) and volume 1 number 1 Barry Malzberg ('Underatand clea, ly become enraptu1ed w ith himselfbemurderedt,,,,hisw,fe (January/February 1994)? The ,ng Entropy', pty about the pat Rupert Sheldrake's "morphic sohe can test his theories by magazine has got brgger, using ending)and a reasonable JOke fields" and here presents a rev1v1ng himself in the body of the nr:J,N conventional A4 format by Geoffrey A Landis ('What We world where movement up a hrll his dog, makes far better use of (01rather,that American Really Do at NASA'). the fiction takesonethroughamorpho Sheldrak.e's rdeasthan hos equr\lalent that's slightly smaller) doesn·t begin to stand upto logical evolution, contribution to BBR. ratherthanthetraditionald19est what's going on around 11 The excellent are T hebest sto1yfroman,, and it's n<:Nf E J rather than H L Then there 1s Back Tooley's Root' by T im N;ck.els, ofthiscropof recentmaga• Gold at the helm. And. Brain Recluse t 22. which pays another In that odd SF sub :z1nes, however. has to be Stuart unsurprisingly, the cove1-price ,tswriters the respect ol genre whrch attempts to Falconer's 'Fugue and has increased tenfold. Other thinking about each story and e:itpressthe1ncomprnhens1bility Vana\1ons' m/nlerzone t 85,a than that, the intervening forty present1ngthemmanirx:h11idual of thevery !ar fu ture.Here finely1udged e;,;arnination of ptusyears might not have and attract,ve way. The typeface strange creatures scuttle about how Mozan, as an old man, happened. That red logo is still issmallerthanthatusedt:,,, acurious,subterraneanworld influenct:edWagner1nthe there. Man,, of the contributors fnterzone and the leading ,s un1 il the appearance of wri ting of his opera to the new Ga/axyw1II be greater.sothereisrnorewhite something human (and hence Frankenstein. The modern-day famil;artoreade1softheold: ~ce on the page which totallyahentothem)d,sruptsall librananheroresearch1ngthis there's former editors Gold and makesthetext lookattractive their understanding of s!ofy among his grandfather's Pohl, plus Shackley and The layaut doesn't follow the ex1stence. lt1sahardmood to papers, also foods that the path Silverberg and thafsiust the same format for ant two stories capture,andNicilels'sslightly wtiict,leadshimtothe fi rslissut! (forming one. two or three closer and maybe even some o! from the editorial ;mdsc,ence w,ththeArthurianrTI)'lhs.That's cer ta,nlynothere.Goldis thestoneslookfam;1,a,: the article, the contents page lists aOOut,t really.As with near~ pubhsh1ng much new work i:,,, Pohl ,s a reprint from 1955 and 14 items 1n the magazine f!-le1y story published here, 1t re lativeunknc,y,,ns, andonone the Sihlerberg comes from includ1ngseveralwritersfrom ent,relylackssubstance if!-le l this is commendable, but F&SF circa 1963. Sheckley thefostissue:ChuckRothman. Apparent~ the vo lume tranklythematerial,sn'tthat cont,,butes a senal1sed nov':!I JeanManeStine(who1s listed ofsubmissions forthis.thenew great. It may seem unfair to The Ciry of rhe Dead, ,ts pages as a contnOOt1ng editor) and G.:ila.>Cy.hasbeensogreat, 'OYer dwell on the length of man,- al m no way enhanced by some Lawrence Sch,mel, The athousandmanusc1rptsinover lhe stor,es - there's nothing rather basic "Photolllustrat,ons tendency rema,ns towards the last two weeks·. that Gold 1ntr1 ns1cal~ wrong with the of a model town provided by E short.1nconsequen!talpieces has had to em~oy twenty short-short story. after all. Yet It J Gold . The seroal was a staple Ro!hman's contnOOtrons in this readers. ·fnends".tohelph1m 1s!hesest0<1esthatseemto ol!heoriginal Galaxy,and andthe!iist 1ssuearnountto process them. One wonders typdy the whole attotude of the indeed of other magazines ol less than one page of text ,n whetherthestandardhasreal~ magazine - m,nor, ins1gn1!icant the era. because !or many lo1al BjoTrrmbletellsusfar been so lowthathehashadto 1nconsequent1al wr1ters ,twastheonlywayto rnorethanallbutthemost rehash so many "class1c· works. get nc,,.,el length work ,nto pm1t. ardentlar.at1ccouldeverwanl bu\onthebas1sofwhathas T housands o! fans Ma(¥ d ass,cnovelss.rNthe1r to know about the plot episode been published so ta, one must wan1ed Ga/8xy back. E.J.Gold first publ1cat,on 111 its pages, but of SM, T,e/,; regrettably conclu de that ,thas assuresus1nh,s fi,s\ed,to11 al the need has now passed- We even get Harry been. Muchofthe1nter1m Those fans have probably got 1ndeed. serials have been all bu1 Nilsson- yes, it is that Harry artwork for this issue has been whattheydeserveandare abandoned by the other maJor Nilsson - who always wanted provided t,,,V,rg1IF1nlay.a probably happy. Ho,,ever, 1f magazines - and their to write for Oafaxyas a kid and .,::,ung man (tx,rn 1914. d,ed a.-.,.bodyelsereets temptedto continued use here aga,n has now been able to achieve 1971) who shows much buy a copy of this unnecessary ,llustratesthe nos!alg1caspect thatarnb.t,on. Presumablytl)1S and rather sad relaunch. resist ofthere!aunch. There are ,s because he happened to the temptat,on. get down to stonesbynewwnters,at least knowGold:1tcerla1nly1sn'ton Number four does no! .,::,u, local second·hand store new,nthesensethattheyare thestrengtholthew r1 l1ng It's haveaFreascover. No, th1st,me and p,ck up some cop+es o! the not listed ,n the Encyclopedia. debatable which 1s worse - we are treated to a senes of onginal. the real Galaxy look butallthcsl onesinth1s ftrst wr1t,ngal1nelrke "Hewould photographs of the "Ahen for those from the "SOs or issueareumemarKablewhlch always1nva11ablysay'no·o,.as Allstars·. a bunch of baseball perhaps the "60s: to, the cost may be ,n part because they aneditor. lett1ng1t stand ~ayers ins,llymasks. These are conscious, look. for the much are so short - several come ,n Strangely enough. lurking part of a series of trading cards cheaper and more generally allessthantwopages amongst a•lthisverym1nor and represent the kind of image ava:1lableBritishr~pr1nts.ltwrll So tt,eprem,er1ssue stufl,there'sastoryby Don wesc1-fifansiustlove. St1II. be better value and probably fa,lsto,mp,ess Pe ,hapsth1ngs Webb. bl.it perhaps this was a 1ns1de we're nc,,,, down TO the rno,e relevant to SF 1n rhe ·90s w,lllmp eyes and letting the Force guide his btacle, or when Solo and fnends escape 1n a stolen ship stra,oN: into lhe ciutCMS ot lhe lmpenlll fleet (and escape hom !here with the Son Crusher ~ knockng out lheu' guards and disgu,sng lhemseNes ,n Stormtrooper unforms), the sense of dilia vu ard quiet de spa,r really come home to roost Everytlwlg you either loYed a hated about the origmal Sia, ~ IS here. but at the same tune ell those nagging doubts and problems that were cheer fully glossed OYef by the specta cleondspeciaLelfectsofthe big screen stand out far too boldty,r,pm,t. No SUfpl'tses. but no pl'IZeS e1lhe1 , George Beahm The Stephen King Story Warner Books. 714/94, 422pp, £'5.99 Alan Fraser 'm not really a Kmg fan, and INNe only read his nitk Tower bool m the final chapter. and the and nc,.v she', homesick. lrus thing was 901ng to end happily book p,o,,des a useful bibbog· 11a1et1 and pregnanl. Barrayar's $plelbefg doesn't off cute kids, raphy of all King and Ktng-re society 1s pnmtrve, alrno!.t feu so why should James ai~ton" laled worli.s, marred bJ the rad dal. ~ to Be1aColonf; Eveiythlng was too neat. tJdy that the original US 1992 edition meet.cal science has a lot ol andpredlciable!f1tt.svery has not been updated On the catchng UP to do. and the moial. black lillfY story 11'1 which pl1n Side lhere are some excef. ,"'he TangleBairb)'leny weather isn't too g1eat either everyone gets their 1ust des lenf •1os1rat101'15 from King artist / Stooks IS an easy way 10 Ye1there1Splertytodrs ,u. Kenn/ Ray Linkous The spend a surrmer afternoon. tracther Altsno!wellw,ththe BUT.. there were a !ew pas Stephen King $10,y IS M'1 '"I' Thecharactersareuncompit House of Vorslogan. LIElUtenant sages here wt.ch made mr opnonacurate's egg. nol the catad and single-dimensional; Koudelka, a nerve--mangled vet guts heave, descnpllOl"IS I lin ldealbooklopickuptoleam theyareeitherallgoodorall eran, is lind,ng 1t d,lficull to lshed out of duty rather than about KlllQ, although 1t c1oes bad. and the book ends with a cope With the attraction be deslre This man can lorn a reter ~ 10 those !hat mighl be. pred,cUbly Marwchean chmax. iween himself and Droo, ghastly phrase with the very Howewr, there are human 1111er Cordelia's oodyguard. Aral's best Strange ts by re means a Ben Bova with Bill Pogue est themes 1n the book that father Piotr makes no seGret of g1eat book. but I fancy there is The Trikon Deception ma.IQ& 11 a cut above pulp fiction. hrs conlempt for his daughler- more and better to come trom NEL, 717/94, 470pp, CS.99 The Tangle Bwc ts preoccupied 1r.law"s newfangled galactic Jame, Bw.ton. Wa1chout IOf Steve Palmer W1 !h k:lw between humans and nol10n5. And Bothar1 IS having him, e11pecially in a dark street. non-humans; the resporlS!blh bad dreams. a result of the ties of k1ngst11p in a kingdom of hea11y.handed therap,, typical of Joe Dever T:: :~: ~;~~u!~:~,~~111:~ drverse races and subjects; and Barrayan military medicine. The Skull ol Agarash sentlally. the novel relates therr¥5t1cal relat1onsh1pbe Meanwhile, Aral has become Red Fox. 1994. £4.99 events during 1998 on an orbit tween woman, nature and Regent and i, acqu1r1ng per Steve Palmer 1ng sc,ent,f,c station; a station magic. The no,,,el IS 100 slight sonal and political enemies on \hat 1s 11upposed to be research to explore these themes albeit eve,yside.lt'sonlyamatterof his ls the first graphic treat ing a means ol using microbes superl1C!ally Instead, what ttme before thtS begins to Tment of the Lone Wolf saga to eat pollut+en. but ,s adually Ter1y8roo!tsoehie,,eswnha char199 COfdel1a's life. and, although it's standard the locus IOf 1nterNitK>Oal sh& high degme of certainty and 0..1,old's cornpetert. chatty hack-and-slaylare,1t'snotawlul =...,,.. de! tness is a well paced plot, style is not altogether su11ed to - if you can cope with ths sort Wnnen w,th lhe orbtal ex eff0fllesslyt1al'\Sp()fhngthe aplotasacttOn-paci LorestoneofVarettaastold in which imposes stock SF trap bot Gerald (Night and The Cityj Parke Godwin theblurbonthebackc()l{E!r), por'lQS Of'l a feudal societal H. Kersh: "Much of London s!rll Firelord The town of Herdos ,s ,n framework straight out of genre bears the stamp ol a vanished Avonova. 5194, 400pp, $5.50 the MagiocracyofDessi.thus fantasyfict,on, Elliot's intent empre: its grandeur, its obdu· Vikki lee supply,ng plenty of scope for becomes e.x.phc 1t as Tess flees racy- and, sometimes, its vio the sorcery side oftheequa earthfortheplanelRhui, part ler.ce" (p. 22). c::J,eiordisyetanotherretell t,on. lone Wolf and h,s female ofher~1ledbrothershefdom, London should be listed in ,----- Ing of the legend of K,ng companion Petra !urn,sh the dominatedt,y theJaran.Stavrc the Dramatis Personae - but Arthur. I approached thrs with swordplay. There is not much style horse nomads. As a there 1sn 'tone. Fowlere.x.pects t,ep;dationafterread,ng theau• characterisation provided.for stranger in a strange land she his readership to ha\le longer thor's acknowledgements. At e,ther of these lead players, or must =me to terms with be,ng attention spans than their Niven the end of these he states " That of the many subsid iary charac• part of Jaran society,wh1les1- / Pournelle counterparts. Idle theydidn'talll,veatthesame lers who wander into the plot multaneously becoming in. thought: I wonder ~ he's related lime is beside the point. Very Not as sale and predictable creas,ngly embroiled In the to Harry Fowler, the actor who lik.elysome of them did". It is assomeofitskind,1f1tprov1des comp!~ rnach,nations of the played Sam Weller ,n the 1954 truethatcharacterssuch as abridge for young readers to aliens, het brother and the riva l fi lm version of Pickwick Pa Vortigem. Ambrosius and the1rfostfantasyno-.-els,thenl factions o t her adopted people peef/ Arthur couldn't have all lived to suppose it hasause. The plot and hteraryscen.. meet each other, but having ery may not be terribly original. Maggie Furey read the book, !hrs actually ,s Philip I< . Dick but the f10llel rs well•written and Aurian bes,dethe point. The World Jones Made E!liot'sde!a1 leddescriptionof Legend. 2615194, 611pp, Set presumably some HarperCo//ins, 27,5-94, Jar an society telling. Through f4.99 where around 500 • 600AD, thrs 192pp, f4.99 the adventures of its resourceful Benedici S. Cullum is the story of Artorious Uther Reviewed by Andy Mills and likeable heroine Jaran Pendragon, a young Centurion presents a compl~ and belie,,• 1 who works h,s way up through able portrait of societies, both P :~d~e'.~~~sF~~:t;i/ ;:;1 the ran ks and becomes the war A:!~~~~~~::~e human and ahen, ,n the throes ' Book One of... " invariably an. rior·king who trred to unite Bnl• Earth ,s recove11 ng from a war of !ar- neither cops nor robbefs will jCI)' this book. Although the What They Seem~ as they also For anyone still pualing su1viveunless theycanf1rst storyof adesperatesearch,it is say wh1chifthewo1dsinthetitle identify and defeat the monster lack.ing in e~citement and there "Writing short stories is ,nspiredfl't,'opernngtwore which is awakening beneath is little doubt that the heroine good training for the novelist marKs, theyare "final"and "in• thefo,l'sfoundatlOrlS will triumph in the end Among other things, it teaches coherent". You can p,obably Here'sara1ity:aswordand econorrrt of language. Every work out the order for you1- l!Orcery ~; written in grown Harry Harrison word must count in the short selves. up language. Instead of the Stainless Steel Visions story, must be ,mportan! and usual If!'/, adjOCtive.laden pas Legend, 2114194. 254 pp, essential. Or ,t must be thrown Tom Holt sages of whimsy, Green's writ• f:4.99 out. Writers who practice this Grailblazers ing is sharp, almost plain. the Graham Andrews dictumareBrianAld1ss, Orbit, 21&'94, 357pp. f:4.99 plot carried bot dialogue more Thomas M. Disch, and Rober t Mar1in H. Blice thandescnption 10 ShecKley" (Introduction, p. 11) Indeed, the dialogue 1s of s i:~:e;::~: ~r in Harrison should have 1 ten closer to an Amencan ac 1993) is one of those retrospec thrown gentlemanly forbear H: ~~ ~,u~~:=::~l~cu~s I lionfilmthanatraditional tive collections that help Big ance to the winds and put him Know, but true lantasystory- "Goahead Name Authors - hereinafter selfon !hatselectlist. His own All the Arthurian ingredi· GiYe it a try. Who kncms: you relerredtoasBNAs - eke out stories · .. move and sing and ents are here: thunderstorms mightge1 lucky" -andthere,s their reclining years. Random captivate" (ibld.) on rnountaIn peaks: sleep,ng anairofeverydayrealityabout examples: Dinosaur Tales Stainless Steel Visions is princesses; Knights m shining thesmall.well-definedl1stof (Bradbury): More Than One almost, but not quite. The Best armour: c,afty dwarves: time characters. wh;ch se ts off the Umvwrse (Clar~); Robot of Harr y Harrison (the sadly out• lessmag1cians:damselsmdis supernatural elements ol the Dreams / Visions (AsiITlOII); of-print 1976 Pocket Boal( justi tress: talKing unicorns; • book very well. The Grand Adventure (Farmer) fied its title). l'dliKetosee Excalibur and the Quest for the Alltheactiontakesplace1n Old-tuners tend to dep,e 'Captain Honario Harppla,.er' Ho!yGra,I and around the fort, and there's cate such jacKdaw volumes, (F&SF. March 1963) in some But the way these ingredi plenty of 1t: although the end· even if they do conta1norig1nal/ fu ture Hamson retrotome N.B ents are stirred together makes less gushing of spooky blood uncollected stories as a sweet Galactic Orsamswas published not an epic, but a pizza .. p,e· does gel a bit repetilNe But it's ener. Afterall.whycan'tpeople by Toi in April 1994. pared by the Knights of the readable: a superior blend of read/ reread Machineries of Round Table, w ho are now do fantasy and horror Jov / Reach For Tomo,ruw / Harry Harrison & Davk:I ing a motor-cycle dehveryserv Earth ,s Room Enough/ Down Harris ,~. Barbara Hambly In The Black Gang? Bill, The Galactic Hero: The Reconvened ,n the 1990s Sorcerer's Ward OtN,ous answer: mart/' Final lnc:oherent Adventure by the reawal iant: but that's rn; problem, not Gwyneth Jones the time he spends in this other hideously scarred brothers, yours. lagreewithWilson Flowerdust place does not cost him even Samael and Terran. debating apart from the stupid 'mind-al Headline, 1417194, 3 12pp. more t,me in his home reality: whether to ignore or talk to their tering' bit. £4.99 quite thecontiary, he can re father J"role (who scarred them Dafydd Ab ('son of') Hugh Sue Thomason tumalmosttothever yinstant as children). Samael decides to has done his Arthurian home he left.sohecanhavealifet1me search !or h,m and when he work well. YOU ARE THERE. of adventure and yet return, as a finds J'role, discovers that J'role w ith mind / t1me-traveller Peter P ~:~1a~~~i~~e!~~:h bo,. back to his home and live hasastorytotell Sm,,the, 1n the·- three--story eas1AsianfutureasJones'ear h1slifeo;eraga1n J'role'sadventuretakesh1m (sic) palace of Artus Dux lier novel Oivme Endurance Around this premise. onto a bleak island in the mid Bellmum, Pan-Dracon,s, Gen (Although I don't feel an ac Kearney has WOYen a strong die of Death's Sea, into death eralofthelegionsandarchi quaintance with Divine Endw tale, full of 00th wonders and itself. and bacl<.. Along the way tectofthePaJlBnttanicus" ance 1s necessary !o enJc:,,, ho,ror, with two excellent cen he discOYers that he 1s not the (p.9). Bu t th,ngs don't go ac Flowerdust). The eport;meus tral characters in Michael and monster thathehadalways cording to Malory; "Wrong. flc,,yerdust1sadrugw1th his love. Cat, a changehng in thought he was, and he makes wrong. wrong, not the cruise I strange and powerful effects. that other world. A Differenr !he lirst t11ntat1ve steps tc,,yards signed up for! Romans, Ma• andtheo;ertplotmolivatorfor Kingdom is a good, exciting. reconcil1at1on with his family sons.OueenOu1nevereadrug most of the book's action (rebel cunningly told tale Kubas1k's style ,s met,cu addict? - Arthur, a Roman le leader Oerveet learns that lous. the things which happen g1onnai1e? Campaigns in the someone is d,stri but,ng 1t. and Katherine Kerr to J"role and the peope that he Holy land? - What mad rabbi setsoff todestrc:>flhedrug A Time of War meets are carefully docu hole have I fallen down?" (p.55) cache she Knows must exist). HarpcrCoffins, 2 716194, mented. perhaps to the point of Maio, Peter Smy-the 1s a Derveet is a "failed woman". a 485pp, £4.99 dwelling on them a b!t too serving SO.S officer who has childless (therefore p soaally, politically and techno- Mool'cock SI.ales that lhe Albanek dedares thal t~ wtll perfect because al a mllloo dol log,cally lhan - o, rhe Rorrrans n0Yel • based on papers left to take and hold the land for their lars WOllh cl SUl"get"y and mind· had thouglt. l ~ the him bJ PyeL There IS an elabo- o,vn. MostoltheAbanlsup changing chemlcals to book to Veao, readers. and am 1ate lltfoduct100!elwlg how POI I twn, but !hey are 8CCIJ!k transform her from alieo to tu- eager to get rn, hands on Vol Moorcock became acquarted tomed to obemeooe aro have ume 2, Stand~ Sl'WI (the withPyat,aF\J$Slanemtgri ~Ille choice ooce Albanek """Paul ParksshoNsusa r0rTie ci both a star-dang stone doNnonhisluckandlMnQ., bums the fleet. Among the planetwhetethelocal~ and of a town ot dissert•s to London. He impresses on the Albans IS Bayrd ar'Tatvtyn fan has been boo;ed up bJ external which our heroes a,e headed). reader the d,fflCUfl,es he has cestor ol lhe Hotse L First Impressions George Beahm The Stephen Kng Story 32 &!fl Bova with Bill Pogue The Tnkon Oecepuon 33 Terry Brooks The Tafl111e Bo,,. 33 Lois Mc Master Bujold Barrayar 33 Joh-I Barnes Mother of Srorms17 James Bui.ton St1ange 33 Stephen Ba,..ter A1ng17 Joe Dever The Skull of Agarash 33 Terry B,sson Bears Discover Fire 18 Joe Dever & John Grant The Secret of Kaian-oud 33 Maroon Zimmer Bradley The Forest House 18 Philip K. Dick The World Jones Made 34 John Brosnan The Opopona1t Invasion 18 Kate Elliot Jaran 34 Storm Constart11ne C alentura 9 Chri stopher Fowler Da rkest Day 34 E.L. Doctorow The Waterworks 20 Maggie Fu1ey Aurian 34 D3vid Eddings The Hidden City 19 Pa rke Godwin Firelord 34 Andrew Harman The Frogs of War 19 Simon R. Green Down Among The Deadmen 34 Harry Hamson Galactic D1eams20 Barbara Hambly Sorcerer's We1d 35 Sl- Holland The Mushroom Jungle: A Hislory of Post-War Harry Harrison Stainless Steel V1SIOl"IS 35 Paperback Publishing 20 Harry Hairison & David Harris Bill. The Galactic Hero: The F,na1 Tom Holt Faus! Among Equals 21 lncohelertAcM!fture 35 Nd Gaiman Death: The High Cost ol LMng 21 Tom Holl Gulilblazers 35 Neil Gall'J\ar'l Sandman: Fables and RellectJOns 21 Oalydd Ab Hugh Arthul Wa, lord 35 5nat,t HutSQl'I Deadhead 22 Gwyneth Jones Rowerdust 36 Shaun Hutson White Ghost 22 Paul Kearney A Oilrerert Kngdom 36 Simon lrigs City of the Iron Fish 22 Kathel'11'1e Ken A Twne cl Wai 36 Harwy Jacobs Beautiful Soup 22 Ctv1Stophef Kubasik Eatlhdawrl Fusoned Mernones 36 Phil Janes flSSIOl1 Impossible 23 F'tl!Jhp Marw, A Land Fit for Hefoes VOiume I Escape To The Gwyneth Jones North Wind 23 WildWood 36 Mercecies lackey & Larry Ooton The Black; Gryphon 23 Stephen M arley Shadow &ste11, 37 Ian McOooald Necroville 24 Michael Moorcock Byzar,,um Endures 37 Midl&el Okuda. Dense Okuda and Debbe Muak The Star Trek Peter Morwood Greylady 37 Encyclopedia: A Refmence Guide To The Future 24 Peter Morwood Wldowmaker 37 la.-.::e Olsen Tonguing the Zertgetsl 25 Paul Paik Coelest1s 37 De!1nm O'Ne~ Batman: Knight1all 25 Steve Perry Stellar Ranger 37 Robert Silverberg Thebes of the Hundred Gates 25 Michael Scott Rohan The Gates of Noon 38 Paula Volsky The Wolf of W inter 25 Nyx Smith Shadow,un· Fade 10 Black 38 Terry Pratchett Men at Arms 26 Rogor Storn The Death and Life of Superman 38 Terr y Pratchett Soul Music 26 Whitley Streiber The Forbidden Zone 38 Robert Charles Wilson A Bridge of Years 26 Margaret Weis & Tr acy Hickman Into The laby!'inlh (The Death David WingrOYe Beneath The Troe of Heaven 27 Gare Cycle Book 6) 38 Philip G. Williamson Moooblood 39 Philip G. Williamson Heart of Shadows 39 Dave Wolveflon Star Wais The Courtshp of Pnncess Leia 39 Roger Zelazny A Nigh. in The Lonesome October 39 David Zindell The Broken God 39 \.actor is a bl-monthly pub{ication of the BSFA, which also brings you the news magazine Matnx. and the writers' magazme Focus for onty C 18 per yea, (UK & EC). Concessionary rates are available. For further dela1ls contact the appropriate address: New Members: Alison Cook. 27 Albemarle Drive, Grove, Wantage, Oxon OX 12 ONB Renewals· Keith Freeman, 269 Wykeham Roacl. Reading, RG6 1PL USA: Cy Chauvin, 14248 Wilfred Street. Detroit, Ml 48213, US/\