Steam Engine T ime

Gregory Benford Paul Brazier Andrew M. Butler Darrell Schweitzer and many others

Issue 4 January 2005 Steam Engine T ime 4

STEAM ENGINE TIME No. 4, January 2005 is edited and published by Bruce Gillespie, 5 Howard Street, Greensborough VIC 3088, Australia ([email protected]) and Janine Stinson, PO Box 248, Eastlake, MI 49626-0248, USA ([email protected]). First edition is in .PDF file format from eFanzines.com or from either of our email addresses. Print edition available for The Usual (letters or substantial emails of comment, artistic contributions, articles, reviews, traded publications or review copies) or subscriptions (Australia: $40 for 5, cheques to ‘Gillespie & Cochrane Pty Ltd’; Overseas: $US30 or 12 pounds for 5, or equivalent, airmail; please send folding money, not cheques). Printed by Copy Place, 415 Bourke Street, Melbourne VIC 3000. The print edition is made possible by a generous financial donation from Our American Friend.

Graphics Ditmar (Dick Jenssen) (front and back covers).

Photographs Covers of various books and magazines discussed in this issue; plus photos of (p. 7) Darrell Schweitzer (unknown) and John Baxter (Dick Jenssen); (p. 8) Lee Harding, John Baxter and Mervyn Binns (Helena Binns); (p. 15) Andrew M. Butler (Paul Billinger).

3 Editorial 1: Unlikely resurrections 30 Letters of comment Bruce Gillespie and Janine Stinson E. D. Webber David J. Lake 3 Editorial 2: The journeys they took Sean McMullen Bruce Gillespie Tom Coverdale Rick Kennett Eric Lindsay 7 Tales of members of the Book Tribe Janine Stinson Darrell Schweitzer Joseph Nicholas Rob Gerrand 9 Epilogue: If the house caught fire . . . Arthur D. Hlavaty Darrell Schweitzer Terry Jeeves Matthew Davis 9 Funeral games Steve Sneyd Darrell Schweitzer Bob Smith Martin Morse Wooster 11 Leaping the abyss Lloyd and Yvonne Penney Gregory Benford Ulrich Spiegel Franz Rottensteiner 15 The British Boom: What boom? Whose boom? Andrew Weiner Kim Huett 15 Thirteen ways of looking at the British Boom Cy Chauvin Andrew M. Butler Mats Linder Erika Maria Lacey Barrantes 27 Pioneer Award Acceptance Speech Claire Brialey Andrew M. Butler and others

28 Dissenting opinion: If this goes on: Butler, Science Fiction Studies, Interzone and the ‘British Boom’ Paul Brazier

Welcome to our new co-editor: Janine Stinson. See her self-introduction on page 3.

2 Editorial 1:

Unlikely resurrections

I (Bruce Gillespie) thought Steam Engine of Science Fiction, the Internet Review of subscribed through me, and will do my Time had died when British co-editors Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons. I best to honour those subscriptions. I have Maureen Kincaid Speller and Paul Kin- approached Bruce Gillespie with the idea no idea what to do about the subscribers caid lost interest a year or so ago. Paul, as of reviving Steam Engine Time because, whose names I don’t have. All I can do is production editor, was a hard act to fol- very simply, I missed getting and read- appeal through the email lists for them to low, and I was too busy with my other ing it and felt there weren’t enough get in touch. Otherwise, I will have to projects to try emulating his meticulous avenues available for the sercon variety guess (from the SET correspondence publishing style. of material I prefer to read.’ lists) the people who took most interest This new incarnation of Steam Engine in the first three issues of SET. Apologies Early in 2004, Janine Stinson sent me an Time doesn’t look the same as the three in advance to interested readers who email offering to help revive Steam issues assembled by Paul and Maureen. miss out. Engine Time. I knew little about her ex- Paul gained some wonderful layout cept that she was the affable editor of the effects in Microsoft Publisher; so far I Reprints: Jan asked me to comment small, regular fanzine Peregrine Nations. I haven’t worked how to emulate them in about the number of reprint articles wasn’t even sure I was cut out to be a Ventura. Jan and I will find our own we’ve used in this issue of Steam Engine co-editor. Let Janine tell the story: style. Time. When I accepted Greg Benford’s ‘I’ve been reading SF since seventh article, he didn’t tell me that it was also grade, when I found André Norton’s Subscribers and others who receive the scheduled to appear in Guy Lillian’s Moon of Three Rings in my school library. print edition: I had a financial crisis at the Challenger (No. 16) as well as in Reason. That was back in the Jurassic, mind. I beginning of 2004. I announced my fan- Darrell Schweitzer’s article was offered graduated from Western Michigan Uni- zines would go ‘all-electronic’: that is, be first to SET, then appeared first in New versity in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts published in .PDF format on Bill Burns’ York Review of SF only because of SET’s degree in English. I’ve been a newspaper wonderful efanzines.com website. seeming disappearance. Andy’s article reporter and editor (arts and copy), a Readers objected. They wanted the appeared first in an academic journal soldier (signals intelligence analyst), a print versions of SF Commentary and my (Science Fiction Studies) and Paul’s in a thrift-shop item cleaner, a moving and other fanzines. They sent money. That semiprofessional magazine (Interzone), storage company clerk, and a Baskin & also led to our commitment to publishing so you may not have read them before. Robbins ice-cream shop server. a print edition of Steam Engine Time. The Jan also wondered why I was using a ‘I’ve lived in a variety of places, most very first edition, however, will appear long review as my editorial. Read it and recently in the Florida Keys for over a on efanzines.com as a .PDF. see; I think it’s as much about me as about decade, and had to leave the hard way — I’ve asked Paul Kincaid five times if the book under discussion. I was widowed in January 2003. My son he has any list of Americans, Britons or and I now live in my heart’s country in Europeans who subscribed to Steam En- — Bruce Gillespie (on behalf of Janine northern Michigan, where I write for gine Time, and haven’t received an Stinson), December 2004 publications such as the New York Review answer. I have a list of the people who

Editorial 2:

The journeys they took

The Best Australian Science Fiction time ends one moment from now. I look science fiction books in Australia was so Writing: A Fifty Year Collection, backwards down the inside slope of the difficult a task that it seemed almost un- edited by Rob Gerrand bowl — at History, a vast, colourful ter- imaginable that any of those books ritory filled with everything that has hap- should be written by Australians. Only a (Black Inc ISBN 1- 86395-301-9; pened. I cannot jump from where I am few of them were written by Britons; the 2004; 615 pp.; and land in any spot in the bowl, but from rest, it seemed, by Americans. $A39.95/$US32.00) the edge I can see clearly sections of it, Yet in 1959, when I was twelve and especially that small section through discovered the British magazines New Time is like an ever-expanding bowl. I which I lived. Worlds, Science Fiction Adventures and Sci- stand forever at one edge of the bowl — Rob Gerrand’s vantage point on the ence Fantasy, I was amazed to find that the Present. Over the outside edge is The bowl of time is very close to my own. No Australian authors were published regu- Dark. Perhaps it is the Future, and the doubt he also remembers vividly a time larly there. The editor of the three maga- bowl expands forever, or perhaps all in the 1950s when obtaining enjoyable zines, E. J. (Ted) Carnell, had a feature

3 page in each New Worlds showing a pic- stories by Australian writers only in Much sharper, and with a memorable ture of one of his regular authors, plus a overseas magazines. He chooses to begin twist ending, is A. Bertram Chandler’s short biography. Two I remember were his own journey through Australian SF in ‘The Cage’ (1957), which had sold to one those for Wynne N. Whiteford and David 1955 (with Frank Bryning’s ‘Infant Prod- of the top markets, America’s Fantasy & Rome (David Boutland), although I sus- igy’), but, as his advisers Graham Stone, Science Fiction. Chandler, a British sea pect he also did features on Lee Harding, Sean McMullen and Van Ikin would captain, had chosen to make his home in John Baxter and Frank Bryning. have reminded him, he might have be- Australia after already scoring some Frank Bryning and Wynne Whiteford gun much earlier. The long reach back major successes in the American maga- had each begun a writing career in the into the late nineteenth and early twenti- zines. Until 1982, when he died, he was American magazines before World War eth centuries was one of the strengths of regarded here as Australia’s senior SF II. After the war, these and the other Aus- Van Ikin’s 1981 anthology Portable Aus- writer, but the SF world in general saw tralian authors usually sold their stories tralian Science Fiction, which should be him as one of the major writers of Amer- in Britain, although each no doubt revised and reissued. ica’s ‘Golden Age’ of SF magazine pub- hoped he might score a spot in one of the The lack of local markets had an in- lishing. better-paying American magazines. hibiting effect on the range and quality of Chandler, as ‘George Whitley’, also David Rome (TV writer David Boutland) local writing of SF, as can be seen from contributes the much-anthologised ‘All was unusual, in that his short story the first few stories in Rob Gerrand’s new Laced Up’ (1961, from New Worlds). ‘Parky’ was picked up from Science Fan- collection. Frank Bryning’s ‘Infant Prod- Today’s reader might find the theme of tasy and included by Judith Merril in one igy’, Norma Hemming’s ‘Debt of Lassor’ alien visitation all too familiar, but it is of her Year’s Best anthologies. There it (1958) and Wynne N. Whiteford’s ‘The difficult to emphasise how daring Chan- was read by Frederik Pohl, who some Doorway’ (1960) are stories that now dler was to set his story in the Sydney he years later remembered the quality of the seem a little creaky and outdated, al- knew so well — the inner suburbs with story, and asked David for more stories though quite readable. They fitted well their lace ironwork decorations, which for Galaxy and If. among stories by people such as Donald were just becoming fashionable — and to No doubt, Rob Gerrand also remem- Malcolm, John Rackham, E. C. Tubb and have his main characters resemble bers this long period when we could find Francis G. Rayer. closely himself and his wife. Until then, most Australian short stories had to be set in a never-never land, or somewhere in Britain or America. As I’ve mentioned already, David Rome’s ‘Parky’ had an international suc- cess. Years later, David was still debating with himself whether he should give up TV writing for what he regarded as more ambitious work in science fiction. Fortu- nately for him, he stayed with TV, be- coming one of Australia’s most successful script writers. ‘Parky’ has that extra spark in its dramatic style that is missing in most of the early stories in this collection; perhaps David did have in him a major SF novel that never was published.

At the launch for this book, Rob Gerrand said that he read several thousand stories before choosing its contents; and that he could have produced several more 600- page volumes while still telling the same story about the progress of Australian SF. One result of this selection dilemma is that the book itself has some odd gaps in chronology. Were there really no notable stories between 1961 and 1967? None leaps to my mind, I must admit. In February 1967, Jack Wodhams pub- lished ‘There Was a Crooked Man’, the first of a number of stories he sold to John Campbell at Analog, then the top US SF magazine, a status it retained until Campbell’s death in 1971. Campbell had never published anything like this story before, and I can’t think of any later author whose works resemble those of Wodhams. On the page, ‘Crooked Man’ looked like the dreaded stories emerging from the new New Worlds in Britain (Michael Moorcock had taken over in the mid 1960s). It had no plot; it was told in

4 snappy little vignettes of dialogue; and the problems faced by every Australian (1969), which I don’t like much. To pub- its feeling was impressionistic rather and British magazine since then. lish a ‘Best’ collection without reprinting than preachy. The manic world depicted Although Vision looked glossy and sub- one of Broderick’s best stories (especially by Wodhams had some resemblance to stantial, the cover art on its first issues ‘The Magi’) does a disservice to the most those shown by, say, Eric Frank Russell was just a bit oldfashioned. It became consistent and productive author and an- in the early 1950s, but that’s the only clear that Graham had chosen Harbottle thologist of the whole fifty-year period. influence I could ever detect. Wodhams as editor because of their mutual interest appeared to be saying that any ‘progress’ in a now almost forgotten British pulp A most important date in Australian SF in technology will have results that are so era writer named John Russell Fearn. was 1969, when John Baxter edited for disastrous and unexpected that they will One of the ambitions of the editors was Angus & Robertson The Pacific Book of make the idea of ‘progress’ unthinkable. to publish a magazine that restored the Australian Science Fiction. The Second I would have thought this is not a mes- style of the pulps. Meanwhile, the Aus- Pacific Book appeared soon after. Until sage much liked by Campbell. But tralian writers who were trying to sell to those collections appeared, nobody had Campbell did like writers who poked fun Vision of Tomorrow were influenced most realised that Australia had a heritage of at what he regarded as conventional wis- by Mike Moorcock’s New Worlds, and SF story-telling. Once we realised it, our dom; he was the only editor apart from wanted to leave the pulp style way be- authors, who had seen themselves as iso- Paul Collins (in the 1970s) to publish hind them. Vision attracted mainly scorn lated lighthouse keepers sending out Wodhams regularly. in Britain, and was dropped by its dis- occasional flares to the rest of the world, ‘The Case of the Perjured Planet’, by tributor there. It was never distributed began to think in terms of local stories to ‘Martin Loran’ (John Baxter and Ron properly in Australia. But it did have its be told to local audiences. Damien Smith) (Analog, December 1967), is more triumphs, including Lee Harding’s Broderick edited two more collections of conventional in structure than Wod- ‘Dancing Gerontius’ (much antholo- Australian short SF, each as interesting as hams’ story, but its oddly jagged imagery gised, and now republished by Rob Ger- Baxter’s collections. Yet Gerrand skips of a planet that seems insane to terrestrial rand) and ‘The Custodian’, which Lee eight years between 1970 and 1978, eight observers also owes much to the British illustrated with photos. years in which everything, in a sense, had New Wave. If Campbell had lived, per- ‘Dancing Gerontius’ is a one-idea already happened! haps Australian writers might have un- story that is saved from predictability by As Rob Gerrand was a partner in Nor- dermined Campbell’s many prejudices Harding’s ambition and a genuine lyri- strilia Press, which began in 1975, it is not and led Analog into a 1970s renaissance. cism in its last pages. What shall we do clear why he ignores several of ‘Perjured Planet’ leaves out almost all the with the old in society? Most SF writers Norstrilia’s collections, especially The comforting paraphernalia of the detec- have plumped for life extension, but Altered I, when compiling The Best Aus- tive story, yet it does retain a feeling of Harding is hardly the first or last writer tralian Science Fiction Writing. In 1976, mystery. It also has a manic sense of fun to suggest that we will all be killed off at Paul Collins and Rowena Cory began that reminds me of the work of Eric Frank a certain age. To judge from statements Void magazine, which became Void Pub- Russell, one of the few British authors from Australian government sources lications, and later Cory & Collins. Both who is still counted a part of the Ameri- during the last year or so, this idea has Norstrilia Press and Cory & Collins were can Golden Age of the late 1940s and achieved renewed popularity in Can- small presses that had little chance of early 1950s. berra. Their idea is to work us to death by making a profit, but both kept going for denying us retirement; Harding’s ‘solu- ten years, and laid the foundation for The assumption during the fifties and tion’ is rather different, and quite mov- everything that has happened since in sixties was that Australian writers still ing. Harding has done better work since, local small press publishing. Enterpris- needed to kowtow to overseas editors especially in his novels, but ‘Dancing ing independent publishers, such as from either side of the Atlantic. Sydney Gerontius’ stays in the memory as a Hyland House/Quartet Australia and publisher Horwitz Books, guided by genre breakthrough story. Wren, were publishing occasional Aus- American expatriate Ron Smith, pub- Rather more original, however, is the tralian SF novels and anthologies during lished a couple of SF novels in the late next story in the collection, Michael the same period. Even Penguin Australia sixties, but nobody could see that as the Wilding’s ‘The Man of Slow Feeling’ offered a short-lived SF line. beginnings of a local industry. (1970). Wilding is one of two non-genre Gerrand takes as his starting point for Ron Graham, also from Sydney, writers in this collection. (The other is the 1970s renaissance Rooms of Paradise, caused great excitement when in 1968 he Peter Carey.) Literary writers in Austra- edited by Lee Harding (Quartet Austra- announced the forthcoming publication lia have tended to stay far away from SF lia, 1978) and Transmutations (1979), the of a magazine, Vision of Tomorrow, that and fantasy, but Wilding (who became anthology Gerrand edited for Morry would feature half British stories and half one half of Wild & Woolley, the pioneer- Schwartz (now the publisher at Black Australian stories. It would be edited in ing small press from Sydney that offered Inc), when Schwartz was publisher at Britain by Phil Harbottle (unknown to much help to Norstrilia Press) shows a Outback Press. Each of these landmark most SF people in Australia and Britain), poised awareness of the balance between anthologies took advantage of the enor- but it would have an Australian advisory the exposition of the SF idea and explo- mous boost to the quality and quantity of editor, John Bangsund. Stories were ration of the interpersonal implications Australian SF writing that resulted from bought, and Lee Harding even went so of the idea. The idea of a person who is the visit of Ursula Le Guin to Australia in far as to quit his job as a photographer to slightly out of time with the rest of the 1975 (the Writers’ Workshop associated become a full-time author on the strength world is not entirely new, but only Brian with Australia’s first world SF conven- of all the positive feedback he was getting Aldiss’s ‘Man in His Time’ can match this tion, Aussiecon I), and Christopher Priest from Graham and Harbottle. story for subtle horror. The fine quality of and Vonda McIntyre in 1977 (the second Vision of Tomorrow was published for Wilding’s story-telling proved not to be major SF workshop). David Lake’s ‘Re- one year. During the early seventies there unique: he pointed the way forward to deem the Time’, George Turner’s ‘In a were many harsh words said about its the Australian SF of the seventies and Petri Dish Upstairs’, Randal Flynn’s ‘The demise, but today we can see that the beyond. Paradigm’ and Philippa Maddern’s problems posed by its combination of I don’t know what to say about ‘Inhabiting the Interspaces’ have a swag- ambition and poor distribution reflect Damien Broderick’s ‘The Final Weapon’ ger of approach and command of the

5 English language that one finds rarely in fact/science fiction magazine, began the thology, Sybylla Press, 1995). Smith was Australian SF stories before the mid careers of many of the best writers of the a graduate of the first major Writers’ 1970s. 1990s. Perhaps it’s hard to find archival Workshop (the Le Guin Workshop of David Lake’s ‘Re-deem the Time’ is files of Omega. 1975); she has published little since; and conventional in structure, with an H. G. Where is any recognition of the vital she works very slowly. The fine writing Wellsian time traveller finding much importance of Peter McNamara’s Aphe- and sharp dialogue of this quiet story of more than he could have expected as he lion (magazine and publishing company) exploitation and the horrors of true belief travels into the future. Its theme, our re- during the 1980s? McNamara’s work is makes it one of Australia’s best short sto- sponsibility for a livable future, has be- the link between the books by Norstrilia ries of any kind during the last fifty years. come more rather than less pertinent and Cory & Collins (both having dis- Oddities remain in Gerrand’s book. I during the last 25 years. banded by the mid eighties) and that of can’t pretend to like Terry Dowling’s George Turner’s ‘In a Petri Dish Up- Eidolon and Aurealis magazines in the Tom Rynosseros stories, but how could stairs’ is rather conventional, too, and nineties. one represent Dowling’s strange career even a bit creaky. Turner made no secret The coverage of the 1980s is the weak- (adulation from Australian readers; very of his dislike of the short story/novella est aspect of this book. I cannot believe little success overseas) without featuring form, and wrote short works only on that Gerrand did not have available for a Rynosseros story? ‘He Tried to Catch commission. He collapses the skeleton of reference a copy of David King’s Dream- the Light’ represents some of Dowling’s an entire novel into the 38 pages of ‘Petri works (Norstrilia Press), which he helped strengths, but it’s hardly his best. Dish’. Turner did write better short to publish, or King and Blackford’s Urban Neither ‘Niagara Falling’ nor ‘The pieces than this, but it has its memorable Fantasies (Ebony Books), which included Diamond Pit’ seem to represent Jack moments. David Grigg’s best story. However, Ger- Dann’s work at its best (and Janeen Webb Randal Flynn’s ‘The Paradigm’ is a rand does include Paul Collins’ ‘The has published stories that are much bet- story by a young writer about young Government in Exile’, a dark, amusing ter than ‘Niagara Falling’), but again, re- writers in a future that has little time for fable about future social breakdown, and cognition must be paid to the role played creativity of any kind. It’s a faithful por- Rosaleen Love’s ‘The Total Devotion by Dann and Webb in promoting Austra- trait of the despair that many Australians Machine’, hardly her best story, but an lian SF during the nineties, and these felt as Fraserism took over from Whit- effective demonstration of her insouciant stories did win awards and impress lamism in Australia during the late sev- verbal facility and fine wit. people other than me. enties. It still has some fine sentences and The nineties was a good period in accurate portraits, but perhaps has not Rob Gerrand does his best to cover ade- which to be an SF reader in Australia. It aged as well as some of the other stories. quately the ‘boom period’ of Australian was satisfying to rediscover the subtlety Philippa Maddern’s first published SF publishing (1990 onward). With the and power of Lucy Sussex’s ‘Red Ochre’ story, ‘The Ins and Outs of the Hadhya sudden development of writers such as (it is fourteen years since I had read it). City-State’ (1976, in The Altered I), was Greg Egan, Sean Williams, Terry Re-reading Sussex’s story and Margo listed as Best Australian SF Short Story in Dowling, Lucy Sussex, Simon Brown and Lanagan’s ‘The Boy Who Didn’t Yearn’ a poll conducted by Science Fiction maga- many others, Australia entered the world made me feel all gooey and patriotic and zine fifteen years later. Maddern should stage. Australian stories began to be proud that the current best stylists in have become the anointed monarch of picked up for international ‘Best Of’ col- Australian fiction are part of the SF/fan- Australian SF from the seventies onward, lections and feature on the annual Locus tasy genre. The division between literary but she abdicated. ‘Inhabiting the Inter- Awards lists. The major Australian pub- fiction and science fiction disappears, spaces’, which reads as grippingly as it lishers began to take an interest in their much as it did in stories by Michael Wild- did in 1979, shows her great gifts. The own writers. In the end, this led to the ing and Peter Carey all those years ago. main character, unemployed in a society proliferation of endless fantasy block- The last section of Gerrand’s anthol- that does not forgive the unemployed, buster trilogies, but it also generated in- ogy includes plenty of my other favour- can survive only by inhabiting the nooks come for writers such as Sean Williams, ites, some of which I’ve reviewed at and crannies of a large office building at who otherwise could never have quit his length elsewhere: Greg Egan’s ‘The night when its workers depart. This be- day job. The great Australian small press Caress’ I’ve just re-read for the fifth time, comes a perilous enterprise. I had always tradition continued in the form of Eidolon with as much pleasure as ever; Russell remembered this story is a long, epic tale, and Aurealis magazines, and publishers Blackford’s ‘The Sword of God’ seems but it proves to be only 14 pages. such as Ticonderonga and MirrorDanse. retains its freshness every time I return to Maddern published few stories after Recently, Agog! Press, the Vision Writ- it; and I enjoyed the only story new to me, this, and in the last decade has been ers’ Group, the Canberra Writers’ Group, Sean McMullen’s ‘Tower of Wings’. Associate Professor of History at the Uni- Mitch, and several other small presses versity of Western Australia. If only writ- have published a large number of origi- My fifty-year journey through Austra- ing SF could have offered her a real career nal fiction anthologies. lian SF is slightly different from Rob Ger- path. I won’t look at the later stories in de- rand’s, but I’m satisfied that we have tail, mainly because they are known sign- been looking back at the same timescape. By 1979 the maturation of Australian SF posts in the current landscape. I think For some of these writers, I would have had already taken place. Again, Gerrand that Gerrand could have chosen a better chosen other stories. I might have chosen has an odd elision in his narrative, offer- story of Sean Williams’ than ‘The Soap stories from the time gaps I’ve men- ing only two more stories before 1989. Bubble’ and a better Stephen Dedman tioned. But whatever its limitations, this Where is a story by our most success- story than ‘A Walk-on Part in the War’, fifty-year collection is an essential record ful writer of the period, Leanne Frahm, but at least the roles of these authors is of the long, rocky journey of Australian who sold stories to several American recognised. SF writing. Better, for me, it’s the record anthologies? Where, indeed, is the best As Race Mathews pointed out when of some achievements by people I grew Australian SF story ever, Frahm’s ‘On the launching the book, Gerrand really up knowing and admiring. Turn’? scored the jackpot with his reprint of Where is any recognition for Omega Petrina Smith’s ‘Angel Thing’ (from Sus- — Bruce Gillespie, 28 November 2004 magazine? Omega, an Omni-style science sex and Buckrich’s She’s Fantastical! an-

6 Tales of members of the Book Tribe

Darrell Schweitzer

Darrell Schweitzer has been writing A Pound of Paper out science fiction magazines. Thus I gained access to the Galaxys and F&SFs for fanzines since about 1970. He by John Baxter has been selling stories since (de- of the 1950s. Baxter’s first SF magazine seems to have been the February 1940 pending on how you want to count) Super Science Stories, which he borrowed 1971 or 1973, and has sold about Bantam Books (UK), 2004; and read sometime in the late ‘50s. I read 275 stories to SF/fantasy publica- trade paperback; 336 pp.; £7.95. that issue about ten years later, but by tions in the US, UK, Australia and then I was in fandom and bought that elsewhere. His books include three JOHN BAXTER IS A MEMBER OF MY issue from a mail-order dealer. novels, The White Isle, The Shattered tribe. That’s what I conclude from read- I am sure that if John Baxter and I ever Goddess and The Mask of the Sor- ing this delightful memoir. Superficially, got together, we could have a long and pleasant conversation that wouldn’t cerer. His numerous collections the book is the autobiography of a man I don’t know, whose works I have more mention science fiction all that much. If I include Transients, Refugees from heard of than read, and whose interests visited him, he could show me his an Imaginary Country, Nightscapes, do not necessarily coincide with my own. rarities. If he visited me, I could show Tom O’Bedlam’s Night Out. His verse It’s not really a fan memoir either, though him mine. What we truly have in com- ranges from serious poetry (Groping the narrative weaves in and out of science mon is that we are both members of the toward the Light) to a limerick rhym- fiction and fandom at times. Certainly a Tribe of Book People. H. P. Lovecraft, ing ‘Cthulhu’ (in Non Compost fan will recognise the Moment of Con- who was not, complained to one of his younger correspondents (I think it was Mentis). He has also published tact, when the proto-fan first meets another science-fictionist or attends a fan Donald Wandrei), ‘I love literature. You essays, interviews, and nonfiction meeting for the first time. (How appro- love books.’ books (on H. P. Lovecraft and Lord priate that the first SF story Baxter read There is something to be said for the Dunsany). He has worked editorially was Murray Leinster’s ‘First Contact’.) book as object. Hopefully the collector on Isaac Asimov’s SF Magazine and Mine happened a little earlier than does not lose touch with an appreciation Amazing. He has been co-editor of Baxter’s. I attended a Philadelphia for the contents, but the book is consider- Weird Tales since 1988. A three-time Science Fiction Society meeting for the ably more. Non-collectors, with whom Baxter has had many colorful encoun- nominee for World Fantasy Award, first time when I was fifteen. The PSFS is a most venerable organisation, founded ters, will never grasp this. Baxter tells one he has won it once (with George in 1936, one of the two surviving chapters ghastly incident in which someone casu- Scithers, for Weird Tales.) Most of Hugo Gernsback’s Science Fiction ally ripped the flyleaf out of a Nigel recently, he has edited a ‘facsimile’ League, still engaged in a genial dispute Kneale book to make a note on it, and of the April 1933 Weird Trails: The with the Los Angeles chapter over which couldn’t understand why he and the Magazine of SF Supernatural Cow- is the oldest continuous fan group in the bookseller were virtually in a state of boy Stories. country or even the world, the question shock. being whether PSFS can genuinely claim That brought to my mind a scene from continuity through World War II. I Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which a high wasn’t sure, before I went to that first school bimbo is very obviously chewing meeting, whether I was going to a con- vention such as I had read about in Lin Carter’s ‘Our Man in Fandom’ columns in Worlds of If magazine, or something smaller. (‘Don’t buy the place out,’ my father said to me.) The first fan I ever met, in the stairway on the way to the meeting room, was the PSFS president, J. B. Post, later famous for The Atlas of Fantasy and still a good friend after 37 years. Baxter was seventeen at this point, considerably more mature (out of school and living on his own), but I could readily relate to his description of his first fan meeting in Sydney. There’s another early moment that’s happened to all of us, described in chapter 4. Somewhere in the early teens, the proto-fan has a friend whose father reads science fiction and who will lend John Baxter (Melbourne, July 2003) (Photo: Darrell Schweitzer Dick Jenssen.)

7 of books bound in human skin. What bookman would not be at least curious to see such a thing? Yes, the book world has a dark side. Morbid as it may have sounded at the time, the story of the Poppy Z. Brite books that smelled like burnt human flesh makes more sense in this context. (Not a story that Baxter tells, but I am sure he could appreciate it: A suicide or would-be vandal incinerated himself in a postal lobby. The smoke penetrated the post boxes, leaving four copies of a signed-limited Brite book smelling of charred human flesh. Rather than discard them as damaged books, bookseller Barry Levin wrapped them in plastic and listed them as unique collec- tor’s items for about four thousand dol- lars each — and got it. Ms Brite expressed regret that she could not afford one.) gum. ‘Get rid of the gum,’ says Giles the Away stories. The ‘I bought one’ story, Books, for members of the Book Tribe, librarian. The bimbo tears the flyleaf out with the subtext of, ‘If I’d bought the are a way of life. Baxter describes what of one of those Necronomicon-like tomes whole stack I’d be a rich man today.’ The we all do. Whenever he settles in a new with which Sunnydale High’s library is dustjacket stories. Baxter tells of a find of place, he immediately checks out the so mysteriously well equipped. Giles ex-library Graham Greene books, not local book scene. His cast of characters looks like he’s been slugged in the gut. worth much for themselves, but a fabu- includes authors, eccentrics, and gro- ‘But . . . that’s a six-hundred-year-old lous hoard of dustjackets, which could be tesques. His scenes are great bookshops book!’ he manages to gasp. ‘Well at least put on better copies. I once bought a and obscure ones, sales in alleys, and it wasn’t a new one!’ the bimbo says jacketless first edition of Stephen King’s what the English or Australians call ‘boot cheerfully. Giles is appalled. Carrie for two dollars back in the late ‘70s. sales’ — which were once called ‘tailgate Even TV fantasy sometimes touches I got King to sign it at a convention when sales’ in America when cars had tailgates. on real life. that was still possible. I found a very ratty It is precisely the universality of what he Books are part of real life. An obses- ex-library copy of The Shining for 25 describes that makes A Pound of Paper so sion with them is not mere escapism. To cents, swapped that for an equally ratty appealing. Even when the details are dif- quote the late L. Sprague de Camp, a ex-library Carrie, then extracted the wrin- ferent, when the scene is in Sydney, Lon- book is as real as a board or a baby. kled but intact jacket from the pasted- don, or Paris, we’ve all been there. It is All through various mundane jobs down mylar protector . . . We’ve all done almost as if Baxter is bringing shared and career moves, Baxter has been a de- that. In American bookseller idiom, this memories alive on the page. voted bookman. Of course he reacted like process is called, suggestively, ‘mating.’ that to the desecration of a book. Any Baxter has some great bits here, won- — Darrell Schweitzer, October 2004 member of the tribe would. In fact, he has derful digressions, one about the various quite a bit to say about flyleafs and end- intrigues regarding the authorship of The papers. Inscriptions by authors are one Story of O, another about verified copies thing, but Baxter resents the sort of nobody who inscribes to another nobody messages of no significance even to the recipient. He tries to avoid having end- papers stamped by the bookseller, even when that allegedly makes the book more collectible. Endpapers, he remarks, are like the silences in a Pinter play, a pause between the cover and the text (p. 79). They are not to be marked on lightly. Condition matters. It is a major concern for book people. The book is more than just the words inside it. It is a whole object, a thing in itself. Any one of us knows what it means to get up in the dimmest hours of the break- ing dawn and travel to some remote, dingy district where other members of the book-tribe drift out of the gloom in search of bibliographic treasures. Most of them are shabbily dressed — there are few dapper book people, particularly when on the hunt — and all of them have soon-to-be-filled bags in hand. We all have book-stalking stories. Great Buy stories. The One that Got Lee Harding, John Baxter and Mervyn Binns (Melbourne, July 2003). (Photo: Helena Binns.)

8 Epilogue: reach for my Mervyn Wall collection, The (because stories derivative of Dunsany Unfortunate Fursey etc., which is a small were the first I was able to sell). If the house caught group of hardcovers and magazines Ironically, I don’t even have my first fire . . . (copies of The Irish Review with the texts copy, but have replaced it with a copy of corrected in his hand, including a serial- the gift edition, which is bound in vellum ised novel thus) but I would also go for and has gilt edges. It still has the same the signed/limiteds of Lord Dunsany’s wonderful Sidney Sime illustrations. The King Of Elfland’s Daughter and Don One thing I would definitely take BRG: At the end of A Pound of Paper, Rodriguez. There’s also a signed/limited from the row of the books on the bed- John Baxter printed the answers that of Talbot Mundy’s Queen Cleopatra right room dresser, along with the Walls and various friends (including several next to those two, and an Arkham House the signed/limited Dunsanys, is a copy famous Australian SF fans) gave to the The House on the Borderland next to those of The Martian Chronicles, the large illus- query: nominate the one book you two. trated Heritage Press edition (a reprint of would snatch from your shelves if your Depending on my prospects for es- the Limited Editions Club edition) house was burning down. I asked cape at this point, I might well tie the signed to me by Bradbury. I doubt I will Darrell for his nomination: pillowcase shut with a belt and hurl it out ever meet him again, so that is irreplace- the window to (hopefully) a better fate able. The book itself is rare enough, one DS: To answer your question about what than the books left behind, the way a of the handful of Heritage Press books to book I would grab if the house were on desperate mother might hurl a child. be worth anything. fire and I could save no other, I suppose But I suppose if I were somehow lim- I would also try to get my copy of the the realistic answer is that in such a situ- ited to one book, I might well go for A surrealist Codex Seraphinianus into the ation I would doubtless snatch a pillow- Dreamer’s Tales by Lord Dunsany (Luce, swag-bag, but of course if I had to heave case off the bed and try to fill it with swag no date, circa 1917), which is a book that that out the widow, there would be con- the way a burglar would, assuming I was I first bought for 10 cents when I was a cern that I’d bend a corner . . . in the upstairs bedroom where many of teenager and which opened many hori- the best books are. I would doubtless zons for me, including my writing career

Funeral games

by Darrell Schweitzer

[First published in The New York ers, and a few familiar faces, waiting for the send-off that mattered in the book- Review of Science Fiction, July 2003.] a book sale to start. selling world. A bookseller’s funeral. This was the house of the late Ms I take my title from a book, of course. I REMEMBER IT AS A SUNNY, LATE _____, a lady whose name was appar- Funeral Games is a novel by Mary Renault winter morning, about two years ago ently well known in the mail-order and in which she extends the metaphor of now, as time and chance and the press of internet business. She also sold books by ‘funeral games’ — the various athletic other things prevented me from writing appointment. She had a large invitational contests and such that the ancient Greeks this essay when the impressions were clientele. I never knew her, and had in held in honour of a dead king — to de- immediate. But they are still vivid fact had passed by this house many times scribe the scramble for power as Alexan- enough: late winter, when the snows without ever knowing what wonders der the Great’s generals carved up his have melted and car tires leave great, were hoarded within. After her (recent) empire among themselves after his muddy gouges in unpaved driveways. death, her family held a series of sales, death. The Greek version was much I was standing with about twenty first for her invitational clientele, at more polite than the Etruscan and (later) other people on the porch of a sprawling which everything was offered for 50 per Roman versions, where the ‘games’ Victorian house, one of those hodge- cent off. But today was different. It was turned bloody — one flattered the dead podges of stone and wood with peaked the everything-for-a-dollar blow-out, not by adding to their number, and the un- gables, a turret or two, an enormous advertised, but more or less open to any- dertakers invented gladiatorialism. porch, and a ‘barn’ in the back yard one. I had been tipped off by a bookseller Bookseller funerals are always polite. (actually a large garage-and-shed) friend. I simply showed up, acted like I Now the doors were opened. We filed which, I deduce from their proximity to belonged there, and I more or less did. inside, ever so politely, nobody pushing, one another (that is, with less-than-an- But as I listened to the conversation no elbows making contact (despite all the acre yards), must have passed for around me, as people reminisced about jokes you hear at more ordinary book middle-class development houses circa what a great bookseller the dead woman sales, where the ‘usual suspects’ make 1890. was, what excellent things they had comments like, ’We’re all here! That’s the Wayne, Pennsylvania, where I grew bought from her, what a shame it was to end of this sale!’ and ’I think I’ll get a pair up, has sections of such housing. I may see her magnificent collection picked of spikes for my elbows next time!’). well have stood on this porch as a kid, over like this (even as the speakers, like a Some people said a few words to the trick-or-treating, but now I was there for school of piranhas, were prepared to family members and helpers who admit- something all book-people have experi- wipe it out completely), I realised that I ted us. enced. I was in line, early in the morning, was intruding on a funeral. All the sad- Then the race was on. Even here there in the company of strangers, near-strang- and-weepy personal stuff aside, this was was a unspoken code, an etiquette. You

9 may not shove. The younger and more wealthy neighborhood where I grew up, Relics of famous Ferengi become expen- agile persons may twist and weave a lit- I once discovered an entire such can full sive collector’s items. tle, and slip by. But you never grab some- of hardcover books. I pawed through Quark makes a ‘killing’, if you will thing out of someone’s hand, or even them while a passerby saw me, and pardon the expression, a bigger profit right under their nose (in the latter case, didn’t pause. Nothing special, but the than all his lifetime of sales put together. unless you say ‘Excuse me’ first). books didn’t belong there. I later resold Later when he discovers that, as part of a I was at a disadvantage at this point, the first edition of Lizzie Borden, the Un- complicated conspiracy, his medical re- because most of these people (who were told Story I rescued.) cords have been switched, he is not dying of the invitational clientele) had been to I am instead referring to high-class after all, and an enemy has maliciously the earlier half-price sales, not so much to scavengers like the ones you meet at run the bidding up to incredible levels, buy (since Ms ____’s prices, even reduced major outdoor computer fairs. Toward Quark is terribly torn. He would almost by 50 per cent, tended to be quite high) as the end of the day, the large companies rather die than give up that profit. to case the joint. They knew exactly represented in the ‘flea market’ section So here we were scrambling for the where everything was. All I could do was start disposing of their unsold inventory. bits and pieces of the late Ms ___’s life follow the crowd, while a little alarm was So you climb into these huge dumpsters and career, thus increasing her profit and going off in my head: Emergency! Emer- the size of railroad cars, often deep her honor, since bookseller-Ferengi are gency! Where is the science fiction section? enough (if the accumulation is insuffi- ultimately remembered for the greatness Where are her Arkham House books? ciently high) that nobody’s head sticks of their hoard and the quality of their Sometimes, half a second before I up over the edge. Safety necessitates final, going-out-of-business sale. She was reached a given shelf, someone swept the speaking loudly and maybe even station- doing well, it seemed, from the praise I entire contents into a box with their arm. ing someone on guard at the dumpster’s was overhearing from all around me. (I think they’d done more than case the edge, to make sure that incoming projec- What great stuff she always had. What a joint. They’d very likely sneakily ar- tiles don’t come crashing down on some- shame to see her place taken apart like ranged the desired books just so during a body’s head. Everybody helps every- this — even as it was being taken apart. previous visit, ready for the quick grab body else find whatever they’re looking on the dollar-day.) for: free televisions, spare parts, sacks of But what about the loot? You want to hear This was a piranha-frenzy, but, yes, a diskettes, or whatever. They lend screw- about the loot? A tale of acquisition must very, very genteel one, with voices in low drivers and wrenches back and forth. include descriptions of the haul. I under- tones, everyone making quick, purpose- Trash-picking, I like to explain, is a stand, having, as Quark would say, ‘the ful motions. Before long piles of books gentlemanly occupation, closely related lobes’ for these things. began to assemble themselves, in the to archaeology. Complete strangers co- The Rare First Editions shelf (in what middle of the floor, under coats and operate with one another, following an must have been the dining room) was dropcloths. Another part of the booksale unspoken code. (‘You, Sir, are a gentle- almost bare by the time I got to it, 2.3 code — you never, never take a book man and a scholar’, a techno-scavenger seconds into the sale. One of the few someone else has selected. That is tanta- said to me once, ‘but don’t worry. Your volumes left was a book called The Cor- mount to stealing (and in a place like this secret is safe with me.’) rector of Destinies by Melville Davidson would get you kicked out). If there is any There was no danger of incoming Post from 1908 (‘being the tales of Ran- doubt, you hold up the book and ask books landing on someone’s head at Ms dolph Mason, as related by his private aloud, ‘Does this belong to anybody?’ ____’s place, but it felt very much like secretary, Courtlandt Parks’), a beautiful, and if it does, you can be certain the owner truly elegant dumpster-driving. It was almost new copy with a Mylar protector will be upon you in an instant, even if part of the same cultural experience. over the boards. What is this? I’ve vaguely he’s on the other end of a long gallery. I realised, ultimately, that this wasn’t heard of Melville Post. Some kind of Sher- Book people have special senses. They an ancient Greek funeral (with foot-races lockian mystery? I drop it in my totebag can feel someone else’s fingers on their and discus-hurling) that I’d barged in on (which grew to a box, which grew to a books from great distances. Then you here. It was a Ferengi funeral. Watchers of pile on the floor under my coat) to buy politely give it back, and everyone goes Star Trek: Deep Space 9 will remember and sort out later. about their polite ravening. those comic, rascally, cheapskate inter- If there was an Arkham House shelf What you do is bring a cloth or use stellar traders with the big ears who live or a pile of Weird Tales, I did not find your coat to drape over your goodies by a sacred scripture called The Rules of them. One of the things I always do (and once they have become too heavy to Acquisition. There was a wonderful epi- I am sure most of you do, too) when carry. In the summer, bring a light jacket, sode in which Quark the Ferengi has visiting an unfamiliar house is to glance not so much to wear as to mark territory been tricked into thinking he was dying. at the books on the shelves. They tell so with. Another technique, which doesn’t Therefore he does what any sensible much about the person who lives there. work so well in a crowded room, is to member of his species would do under Ms ____ was a conventional literary acquire the nearest cardboard box, fill it such circumstances. He endeavours to person, although one of considerable re- with your stuff, and push this along the make a profit, so that he will be honorably finement. She sold what she knew and floor with your foot. remembered, which is all-important to a liked, which was very sensible of her. The purposeful crowd spread Ferengi. (Indeed, a dream-sequence You will never succeed in bookselling throughout the house. I felt the inevitable affords us a glimpse of Ferengi Heaven, unless you can think like your customer, anxiety: The Heinlein first editions and the a gaudy, gold-plated shopping mall, and appreciate what they appreciate. Her run of Weird Tales are in the other room where you present your account books to stock included a lot of poetry and art which I haven’t discovered yet. the equivalent of St Peter, to show you books, and a lot of odd little items from All this overwhelming courtesy made a profit in life, before they let you the nineteenth century with interesting reminded me of the etiquette of trash- in.) bindings. There was no science-fiction pickers. No, I don’t mean bums going So Quark offers pieces of his own section, though I found a couple of late through trashcans — although if some- body for sale on interstellar eBay. It Heinlein first editions (To Sail Beyond the one drops books into a trashcan he is by seems that Ferengi corpses are freeze- Sunset, and The Cat Who Walked Through definition a barbarian, whose opinion dried, chopped up into little bits, encased Walls) along with a British first of Arthur and contempt do not matter. (In the in plastic disks, and sold as coasters. C. Clarke’s The Ghost from the Grand Banks

10 in the mainstream literature/modern ton: Small, Maynard and Company, (some of whom were elderly) had braved first editions section. (Not that they’re 1912), a volume of verse, with nicely gilt- the ankle-deep mud in the unpaved particularly worth anything. Not that I decorated boards. Immaculate condition. driveway and the puddles in the back have since been able to resell them, but The title item seems to be a play of sorts yard to go out to the barn. It was almost when something like that is a buck, you (‘A Lyrical Eclogue’). Is this worth read- untouched. That was where I found the take it now and ask questions later.) The ing/owning/selling? Buy now, research early William Morris book, the Dunsany one old science fiction book was Ralph later. first edition, the Rider Haggards, the his- Milne Farley’s The Radio Man in hard- Two hours into the sale, as I had as- tory, photography, and old periodicals cover, published by FPCI, 1948. I suspect sembled my first couple of crates of section. I was the only person there who knew books, and was milling around the It went on and on. Most of this mate- what that was. It had been left behind on check-out table, I noticed Peter Ruber’s rial was tangential to my own interests, that nearly swept-clean Rare First Edi- The Last Bookman (a coffee-table-sized but stuff I could easily resell. I made, of tions shelf. volume of tributes to Vincent Starrett, a course, a huge profit that day. My car was It was interesting to note that no one great member of our tribe, Candlelight full when I left. I resold much of the loot showed much interest in the main- Press, 1968) among the cookbooks by the to my friend the bookseller who had stream/modern first editions area. Those kitchen. After the feeding frenzy, you tipped me off about this sale in the first shelves were packed solid, hours into the have to look for odd mis-shelvings like place. We both understood exactly what sale. I could go through them at leisure, that. was going on. She had been unable to get after the initial frenzy had long abated, I’d gone through everything, in every away from her shop to attend. The pick out the above-mentioned Heinleins room of the house that was open to the service I had performed for her, for and the Clarke, and also find a Salman public. How did I feel picking through which I was rewarded by mark-ups on Rushdie book I didn’t have, The Jaguar the books in the shelf over Ms ____’s bed, the books I resold to her, is called, in the Smile, A Nicaraguan Journey. the ones which were her obvious favour- trade, ‘scouting’. If you buy for a dealer, Upstairs, in a little side room which ites, which she read through before she you are a book-scout. had gotten messy — debris on the floor, went to sleep each night? Did I feel like a Some of the remainder I resold else- papers, envelopes, even a few boards ghoul, a scavenger, a tomb-raider? . . . where. Some went into my own collec- from a few crumbling leatherbound Hell no. She was one of us. She would tion. It was not the very best book sale I volumes on a nearby shelf — I found a have understood. We were helping her had ever been to, but it was a very good first edition of Kipling’s With the Night orphaned books find good homes. Even one. A year or so later I got myself onto Mail in the midst of that same pile of though I had never known her, I hon- eBay, thus greatly expanding my capac- debris. A nice copy, with one plate loose. oured her, by making her last booksale ity to resell things that I might not, my- I shall have to carefully examine another all the more memorable (at least to me). self, particularly want to keep. So of copy to see precisely where that plate While I can remember what books I course I think back and wonder: what goes before I glue it back in. Then the bought from her stock, she lives on should I have taken, that I left behind? At the book will be worth about $100.00. through them. It’s all part of the Code. end of such a day, as your car fills up, you In that same room was an entire shelf Quark the Ferengi would understand begin to feel a sense of ‘restraint’. Maybe of Christopher Morley first editions that too, and salute her. I have enough. Maybe I should leave a had apparently interested no one. Poor So there I was at checkout, maybe two little for somebody else. What am I going Christopher Morley. His star has fallen. and a half hours after this all started. I to do with all this stuff? In retrospect you After a while, as the crowd thinned had just scarfed the copy of The Last Book- always come to appreciate a further Law out a bit (politely, politely . . .) it was time man (which ultimately turns out to be of Acquisition that Quark the Ferengi has to really pick over the remains. Now (as only worth about $50, according to ABE- not yet explicitly revealed to humans: long-time customers, my fellow Ferengi Books.com listings, but was still a pleas- restraint is for losers. who had actually known Ms ____ ant find) when I learned, again from Hail and farewell to the valiant Ms lamented) the house was beginning to overheard conversation that the ‘barn’ ____, whom I never knew. Thus do I look a bit shabby, many of the shelves out back was also full of books! praise and remember her. Thus did we all (save for mainstream modern first edi- Oh my God . . . praise and remember her. By the time the tions) almost bare, books fallen onto the The sellers had made a major strategic sale was over, I was no longer an inter- floor. It was time to grab the expensive error, which worked to my advantage. I loper, but one more of her ‘mourners’. I literary reference books in what must deserved some advantage after every- could have addressed anybody there by have once been an office — books that body else got the jump on me in the first their first name, if I knew their first name. had not been for sale when Ms ____ was minutes of the sale. They should have put This kind of ‘funeral’ sure beats hav- alive. Wow. The Penguin Companion to up a huge sign saying, MORE BOOKS IN ing yourself chopped up into little bits World Literature, a boxed, four-volume BARN, but possibly, since even this sale and sold as coasters. set, in immaculate condition. It counted was not, theoretically, open to the public, And a profit, of course, is not without as one item. I got it for a buck. I found an perhaps they didn’t want to get mobbed. honour. odd little book called The Poet, the Fool, Or else they just didn’t think of it. In any and the Fairies by Madison Cawein (Bos- case, few of my fellow book-vultures — Darrell Schweitzer, February 2003

11 Gregory Benford

Leaping the abyss

[First published in Reason, April 2002.] tion has been such a success that the Sili- equations, a kind of tunnelling occurs, in con Valley folk now supplied units to which the universe, before the Big Bang, Stephen Hawking seemed slightly similarly afflicted people worldwide. has many different ways to pass through worse, as always. ‘Please excuse my American accent,’ the singularity. With imaginary time, one It is a miracle that he has clung to life the speaker mounted behind the wheel- can calculate the chances for a given tun- for over twenty years with Lou Gehrig’s chair said with a California inflection. He nelling path into our early universe, after disease. Each time I see him I feel that this coded this entire remark with two key- the beginning of time as we know it. will be the last, that he cannot hold on to strokes. ‘Sure, the equations can be inter- such a thin thread for much longer. Though I had been here before, again preted that way,’ I argued, ‘but it’s really The enormous success of his A Brief I was struck that this man who had suf- a trick, isn’t it?’ History of Time has made Stephen a curi- fered such an agonising physical decline Stephen said, ‘Yes, but perhaps an ous kind of cultural icon. Its huge success had on his walls several large posters of insightful trick.’ has made him a curious kind of world- a person very nearly his opposite: ‘We don’t have a truly deep under- scale metaphor. He wonders himself Marilyn Monroe. I mentioned her and he standing of time, so replacing real time how many of the starlets and rock stars responded instantly, tapping one- with imaginary time doesn’t mean much who mentioned the book on talk shows handed on his keyboard, so that soon his to us.’ actually read it. transduced voice replied, ‘Yes, she’s ‘Imaginary time is a new dimension, With his latest book, The Universe in a wonderful. Cosmological. I wanted to at right angles to ordinary, real time. Nutshell, he aims to remedy the situation, put a picture of her in my latest book, as Along this axis, if the universe satisfies with a plethora of friendly illustrations to a celestial object.’ I remarked that to me the “no boundary” condition, we can do help readers along. In it, Hawking offers the book was like a French impressionist our calculations. This condition says that imagistic explanations for such com- painting of a cow, meant to give a glanc- the universe has no singularities or plexities as superstring theory and the ing essence, not the real, smelly animal. boundaries, in the imaginary direction of nature of time. The trick, of course, is Few would care to savour the details. time. With the “no boundary” condition, translating equations to sentences, two Stephen took off from this to discuss there will be no beginning or end, to very different languages. Pictures help some ideas currently booting around the imaginary time, just as there is no begin- enormously, though purists deplore physics community about the origin of ning or end to a path on the surface of the them as oversimplified. I feel that any the universe, the moment just after the Earth.’ device is justified to span such an abyss Big Bang. ‘If the path goes all the way around of incomprehension. Hawking’s great politeness paradoxi- the Earth,’ I said. ‘But of course, we don’t As I entered, his office staff was wary cally put me ill at ease; I was acutely know that in imaginary time, there won’t of visitors, plainly suspecting I was a aware of the many demands on his time, be a boundary.’ ‘civilian’ harbouring a crank theory of the and after all, I had just stopped by to talk ‘My intuition says there will be no universe. But I’d called beforehand, and shop. I am an astrophysicist and have blocking in that special coordinate, so our then his secretary recognised me from known Stephen since the 1970s. calculations make sense.’ years past. When I entered the familiar ‘For years my early work with Roger ‘Sense is just the problem, isn’t it? office his shrunken form lolled in his Penrose seemed to be a disaster for Imaginary time is just a mathematical motorised chair, staring out, rendered science,’ Stephen said. ‘It showed that the convenience.’ I shrugged in exasperation goggle-eyed by his thick glasses — but a universe must have begun with a singu- at the span between cool mathematical strong spirit animated all he said. You larity, if Einstein’s general theory of rela- spaces and the immediacy of the raw could sense the inner fire. tivity is correct. That appeared to indicate world; this is a common tension in doing He had lost his vocal cords years ago that science could not predict how the physics. ‘It’s unrelated to how we feel to an emergency tracheotomy. His universe would begin. The laws would time. The seconds sliding by. Birth and gnarled, feeble hands could not hold a break down at the point of singularity, of death.’ pen. For a while after the operation he infinite density.’ ‘True. Our minds work in real time, was completely cut off from the world — I recalled that I had spoken to him which begins at the Big Bang, and will an unsettling analogy with the fate of about mathematical methods of getting end, if there is a Big Crunch — which mathematical observers who plunge into around this, one evening at a party in seems unlikely, now, from the latest data black holes, their signals to the outside King’s College. There were analogies to showing accelerating expansion. Con- red-shifted and slowed, by gravity’s grip, methods in elementary quantum sciousness would come to an end at a to dim, whispering oblivion. mechanics, methods he was trying to singularity.’ A Silicon Valley firm had come to the carry over into this surrealistic terrain. ‘Not a great consolation,’ I said. rescue. Engineers devised tailored, user- ‘It now appears that the way the uni- He grins. ‘No, but I like the “no friendly software and a special keyboard verse began can indeed be determined, boundary” condition. It seems to imply for him. His frail hand now moved across using imaginary time.’ We discussed this that the universe will be in a state of high it with crablike intent. The software is a bit. Stephen had been using a mathe- order at one end of real time, but will be deft, and he could build sentences matical device in which time is replaced disordered at the other end of time, so quickly. I watched him rapidly flit by imaginary time, as a notational con- that disorder increases in one direction of through the menu of often-used words venience. This changes the nature of the time. We define this to be the direction of on his liquid crystal display, which hung equations, so he could use some ideas increasing time. When we record some- before him in his wheelchair. The inven- from the tiny quantum world. In the new thing in our memory, the disorder of the

12 Up close, though, it’s waves and bubbles. these ideas became current. I had arrived At extremely fine scales, pockets and at them in part from some wide-ranging bubbles of spacetime can form at ran- talks I had enjoyed with Stephen — all dom, sputtering into being, then dissolv- suitably disguised, of course. Such ing. Arcane details of particle physics enclosed space-times I had termed ‘onion suggest that sometimes — rarely, but universes’, since in principle they could inevitably — these bubbles could grow. have further locked-away space-times This might have happened a lot at the inside them, too, and so on. It is an odd instant just immediately after the Big sensation when a guess turns out to have Bang. Indeed, some properties of our some substance — as much as anything universe may have been created by the as gossamer as these ideas can be said to space-time foam that roiled through be substantial. Again, the image of those infinitesimally split seconds. mathematical physics as French impres- Studying this possibility uses the ‘worm- sionism. hole calculus’, which samples the myriad ‘So they form and go,’ I mused. possible frothing bubbles (and their con- ‘Vanish. Between us and these other uni- nections, called wormholes). verses lies absolute nothingness, in the Averaging over this foam in a mathe- exact sense — no space or time, no mat- Greg Benford. matical sense, Stephen and others have ter, no energy.’ universe will increase. This explains why tried to find out whether a final, rather ‘There can be no way to reach them,’ we remember events only in what we call benign universe like ours was an inevita- his flat voice said. ‘The gulf between us the past, and not in the future.’ ble outcome of that early turbulence. The and them is unbridgeable. It is beyond ‘Remember what you predicted in jury isn’t in on this point, and may be out physics because it is truly nothing, not 1980 about final theories, like this?’ I forever — the calculations are tough, physical at all.’ chided him. guided by intuition rather than facts. The mechanical laugh resounded. ‘I suggested we might find a complete Deciding whether they really meaning- Stephen likes the tug of the philosophi- unified theory, by the end of the century.’ fully predict anything is a matter of taste. cal, and seemed amused by the notion Stephen made the transponder laugh This recalls Oscar Wilde’s aphorism, that that universes are simply one of those dryly. ‘Okay, I was wrong. At that time, in matters of great import, style is always things that happen from time to time. the best candidate seemed to be N=8 more important than substance. His nurse appeared for a bit of physi- supergravity. Now it appears that this If this picture of the first split second cal cleanup, and I left him. Inert confine- theory may be an approximation to a is remotely right, much depends on the ment to a wheelchair exacts a demeaning more fundamental theory, of super- energy content of the foam. The energy toll on dignity, but he showed no reaction strings. I was a bit optimistic, to hope that to blow up these bubbles would be com- to the daily round of being cared for by we would have solved the problem by pensated by an opposite, negative another in the most intimate way. the end of the century. But I still think energy, which comes from the gravita- Perhaps for him, it even helps the mind there’s a fifty-fifty chance that we will tional attraction of all the matter in the to slip free of the world’s rub. find a complete unified theory in the next bubble. If the outward pressure just I sat in the common room outside his twenty years.’ balances the inward attraction (a pres- office, having tea and talking to some of ‘I’ve always suspected that the struc- sure, really) of the mass, then you could his postdoctoral students. They were ture never ends, as we look to smaller and get a universe much like ours — rather working on similarly wild ideas and smaller scales — and neither will the mild, with space-time flat on such rela- were quick, witty, keenly observant as theories.’ tively tiny scales as our solar system, and they sipped their strong, dark Ceylonese ‘It is possible that there is no ultimate even flat on the size range of our galaxy. tea. A sharp crew, perhaps a bit jealous theory of physics at all. Instead, we will It turns out that such bubbles could of Stephen’s time. They were no doubt keep on discovering new layers of struc- even form right now. An entirely sepa- wondering who this guy was, nobody ture. But it seems that physics gets sim- rate space-time could pop into existence they had ever heard of, a Californian pler, and more unified, the smaller the in your living room, say. It would start with an accent tainted by southern scale on which we look. There is an ulti- unimaginably small, then balloon to the nuances, somebody who worked in as- mate length scale, the Planck length, size of a cantaloupe — but not before trophysics and plasma physics — which below which spacetime may just not be your very eyes, because for quite funda- was, in our age of remorseless specialisa- defined. So I think there will be a limit to mental reasons, you can’t see it. tion, quite a remote province from theirs. the number of layers of structure, and ‘They don’t form in space, of course,’ I didn’t explain; after all, I really had no there will be some ultimate theory, which Stephen said. ‘It doesn’t mean anything formal reason to be here, except that we we will discover if we are smart enough.’ to ask where in space these things occur.’ were friends. ‘Does it seem likely we are smart ‘They’re cut off from us, after we Stephen’s secretary quietly came out enough?’ made them,’ I said. ‘No relics, no fossil?’ and asked if I would join Stephen for Another grin. ‘You will have to get ‘I do not think there could be.’ dinner at Caius College. I had intended your faith elsewhere.’ ‘Like an ungrateful child who doesn’t to eat in my favourite Indian restaurant, ‘I can’t keep up with the torrent of write home.’ When talking about where the chicken vindaloo is a purging work on superstrings.’ immensities, I sometimes grasp for some- experience, and then simply rove the Mathematical physics is like music, thing human. walks of Cambridge alone, for I love the which a young and zesty spirit can best ‘It would not form in our space, but atmosphere — but I instantly assented. seize and use, as did Mozart. rather as another space-time.’ Dinner at college high table was one of ‘I try,’ he said modestly. We discussed for a while some specu- the legendary experiences of England. I We began discussing recent work on lations about this I had put into two could remember keenly each one I had ‘baby universes’ — bubbles in space novels, Cosm and Timescape. I had used attended; the repartee is sharper than the time. To us, space-time is like the sea seen Cambridge and the British scientific style cutlery. from an ocean liner, smooth and serene. in Timescape, published in 1980, before We made our way through through

13 the cool, atmospheric turns of the col- can be given to the question, why does scrape of heels. There is even a booklet leges, the worn wood and grey stones the universe exist. But it is a question that about roof-climbing describing the reflecting the piping of voices and one can’t help asking.’ triumphs and centuries-long history. squeaks of rusty bicycles. In misty twi- As usual, the ability to pose a question Stephen took me to a passageway I light, student shouts echoing, his wheel- simply and clearly in no way implied a had been through many times, a short cut chair jouncing over cobbled streets. He similar answer — or than an answer even toward the Cam river between high, insisted on steering it himself, though his existed. peaked buildings of undergraduate nurse hovered rather nervously. It had After the dining hall, high table rooms. He said that it was one of the never occurred to me just how much of a moved to the senior common room tough events, jumping across that, and strain on everyone there can be in round- upstairs. We relaxed among long, then scaling a steep, often slick roof the-clock care. A few people drifted polished table, comfortable padded beyond. along behind us, just watching him. chairs, the traditional crisp walnuts and The passage looked to be about three ‘Take no notice,’ his mechanical voice ancient aromatic port, Cuban cigars. And metres across. I couldn’t imagine leaping said flatly, ‘many of them come here just somewhat arch conversation, occasion- that abyss from the slate-dark roofs. And to stare at me.’ ally skewered by a witty interjection in the dark, too. ‘All that distance?’ I We wound among the ancient stone from Stephen. asked. and manicured gardens, into Caius Someone mentioned Stephen Wein- ‘Yes,’ he said. College. Students entering the dining berg’s statement, in The First Three ‘Anybody ever miss?’ hall made an eager rumpus. Stephen took Minutes, that the more we comprehend ‘Yes.’ the elevator and I ascended the creaking the universe, the more meaningless it ‘Injured?’ stairs. The faculty entered after the stu- seems. Stephen doesn’t agree, and ‘Yes.’ dents, me following with the nurse. neither do I, but he has a better reason. ‘I ‘Killed?’ The high table is literally so. They think it is not meaningful in the first place His eyes twinkled and he gave us a carefully placed Stephen with his back to to say that the universe is pointless, or broad smile. ‘Yes.’ These Cambridge the long, broad tables of undergraduates. that it is designed for some purpose.’ sorts had the real stuff, all right. I soon realised that this is because watch- I asked, ‘No meaning, then, to the In the cool night he recalled some of ing him eat, with virtually no lip control, pursuit of meaning?’ his favourite science fiction stories. How is not appetising. He follows a set diet ‘To do that would require one to stand much stranger the universe was turning that requires no chewing. His nurse must outside the universe, which is not pos- out than even those writers had imag- chop up his food and spoonfeed him. sible.’ ined. Even when they discussed the next The dinner was noisy, with the year’s Again the image of the separation be- billion years, they could not guess the new undergraduates staring at the tween the observer and the object of odd theories that would spring up within famous Hawking’s back. Stephen carried study. The gulf. ‘Still,’ I persisted, ‘there the next generation of physicists. on a matter-of-fact, steady flow of con- amazing structure we can see from A week after this evening, I got from versation through his keyboard. inside.’ Stephen’s secretary a transcript of all his He had concerns about physicists’ ‘The overwhelming impression is of remarks. I have used it here to reproduce Holy Grail, a unified theory of every- order. The more we discover about the his style of conversation. Printed out on thing. Even if we could thrash our way universe, the more we find that it is gov- his wheelchair–computer, his sole link through a thicket of mathematics to erned by rational laws. If one liked, one with us, the lines seem to come from a glimpse its outlines, it might not be spe- could say that this order was the work of great distance. Across an abyss. cific enough — that is, we would still God. Einstein thought so.’ Portraying the flinty faces of science have a range of choices. Physics could One of the college fellows asked, — daunting complexity twinned with end up dithering over arcane points, un- ‘Rational faith?’ numbing wonder — demands both craft decided, perhaps far from our particular Stephen tapped quickly. ‘We and art. Some of us paint with fiction. primate experience. Here is where aes- shouldn’t be surprised that conditions in Stephen paints with his impressionistic thetics might enter. the universe are suitable for life, but this views of vast, cool mathematical land- ‘If such a theory is not unique, one is not evidence that the universe was de- scapes. To knit together our fraying would have to appeal to some outside signed to allow for life. We could call times, to span the cultural abyss, de- principle, which one might call God.’ order by the name of God, but it would mands all these approaches — and more, I frowned. ‘Not as the Creator, but as be an impersonal God. There’s not much if we can but invent them. a referee?’ personal about the laws of physics.’ Stephen had faced daunting physical ‘He would decide which theory was Walnuts eaten, port drunk, cigars constrictions with a renewed attack on more than just a set of equations, but smoked, it was time to go. When we left the large issues, on great sweeps of space described a universe that actually exists.’ Stephen guided his wheelchair through and time. Daily he struggled without ‘This one.’ the shadowy reaches of the college, in- much fuss against the narrowing that is ‘Or maybe all possible theories de- dulging my curiosity about a time- perhaps the worst element of infirmity. I scribe universes that exist!’ he said with honoured undergraduate sport: climb- recalled him rapt with Marilyn, still glee. ‘It is unclear what it means to say ing Cambridge. deeply engaged with life, holding firmly that something exists — in questions like, At night young men sometimes against tides of entropy. does there exist a man with two left feet scrambled among the upper reaches of I had learned a good deal from these in Cambridge. One can answer this by the steeply steepled old buildings, scal- few days, I realised, and most of it not at examining every man in Cambridge. But ing the most difficult points. They risked all about cosmology. there is no way that one can decide if a their necks, for the glory of it. Quite out universe exists, if one is not inside it.’ of bounds, of course. Part of the thrill is — Copyright 2001 by Abbenford ‘The space-time Catch-22.’ eluding the proctors who scan the Associates ‘So it is not easy to see what meaning rooftops late at night, listening for the

14 The British Boom: What boom? Whose boom?

Thirteen ways of looking at the British Boom

Andrew M. Butler

Andrew Butler, ‘the greatest SF critic [First published in Science Fiction what, with the clarity of hindsight and the galaxy has ever known’ (Cheryl Studies, No 91, November 2003. the demand for narrative convenience, Morgan, Emerald City) is ‘a pipe- Reprinted by permission of the author we do with Romanticism and Modern- and Dr Arthur Evans, editor of SFS. ism. What this article sets out to do is to smoking, vaguely sarcastic Andrew and the SET editors have survey the terrain from a variety of per- academic’ who has a PhD in the attempted to preserve the style of the spectives, in the hope that this will help works of Philip K. Dick, and has pub- original as far as possible, including the to give some indication of the phenome- lished books on Philip K. Dick, use of American spelling.] non’s scope and characteristics. The Cyberpunk, Terry Pratchett, Film Boom contains cyberpunk, post- Studies, and Postmodernism, co- 1. ‘There certainly seems to be something cyberpunk, cyberpunk-flavored fiction, edited books on Terry Pratchett and of a boom. To a certain extent these things steampunk, splatterpunk, space opera, hard sf, soft sf, feminist sf, utopias, Ken MacLeod, and has been fea- are always artefacts — there’s no objec- dystopias, anti-utopias, apocalypses, tures editor on Vector since 1995. tive criteria by which one can judge “boom-ness” (boomitude? Boomosity?) cosy catastrophes, uncomfortable catas- The following article on the British — so the fact that everyone’s talking trophes, Bildungsromans, New Wave- Boom, described by the leading Brit- about it is to a certain extent definitional style writing, planetary romances, ish SF magazine Interzone as ‘a of the fact that something’s going on’ alternate histories, big dumb objects, farrago’, won the 2004 Pioneer (China Miéville in Butler, ‘Beyond’ 7). comedies, tragedies, slipstream, horror, Award (the Science Fiction Research fantasy and any combination of generic hybrids and cross-breeds. Hopefully a Association Award for Excellence in 2. Mapping the Terrain It is asserted that there is currently a series of micronarratives about Boom Scholarship). In his spare time writing and writers will avoid the dan- Andrew teaches Media Studies, Cul- boom within British science fiction — by editors, by critics, by authors, by readers, gers of prescription in an era when the tural Studies and Digital Culture at in the pages of Science Fiction Studies and macronarrative or metanarrative is no Canterbury Christ Church University in the publicity for some events at the longer achievable or desirable. College. I (BRG) ‘met’ Andrew first Institute for Contemporary Arts in Lon- It is worth first comparing the Boom through Acnestis, the prestigious don in May 2003. Let us assume that this with two other movements within science fiction. The British New Wave in British amateur publishing associa- is not a mass delusion, and there is in- deed a boom. The Boom is thought of science fiction is primarily associated tion. He has visited Melbourne twice with the Michael Moorcock era of New in recent years, and is welcome back mostly as a British Science Fiction Boom, and to limit it to this genre is clearly Worlds magazine from 1964 onwards, any time. within the parameters of a journal named dissipating at some point in the 1970s — Science Fiction Studies. But there is also a the experimental writings of J. G. Ballard, parallel boom within fantasy and horror, Moorcock, Barrington Bayley, Brian as well as within children’s fiction — Aldiss, John Brunner, and visiting dominated by the hype surrounding the Americans Thomas M. Disch, John publication of the fourth and fifth Harry Sladek, Pamela Zoline, and Norman Potter novels by J. K. Rowling and the Spinrad. If Moorcock can be said to be its fact that the third volume of Philip Pull- polemicist, its Ezra Pound figure, then man’s His Dark Materials trilogy, The Ballard was its resident T. S. Eliot — Amber Spyglass (2000), won the overall although arguably the New Wave had Whitbread Prize, the first children’s book found its creed in Ballard’s 1962 guest to do so.1 We could no doubt make a case editorial where he argued that ‘science for other, less cognate, genres. What we fiction must jettison its present narrative also need to remember is the generic slip- forms and plots [. . . I]t is inner space not page and interchange that goes on within outer, that needs to be explored. The only adult and children’s science fiction, fan- truly alien planet is Earth’ (117). Langdon tasy and horror. Jones’s The New SF: An Original Anthology It is impossible to draw a clear, stable of Modern Speculative Fiction (1969) an- boundary around these distinct and thology can stand as its archetypal collec- Andrew M. Butler, speaking at Aussiecon tion. New Worlds did continue to publish Three, 1999. (Photo: Paul Billinger.) overlapping booms, to subsume them within a single movement, but that is non-New Wave material, but writers

15 (1986) as its tombstone. Indeed, many of Chaz Brenchley, Keith Brooke/Nick The Boom is thought of the stories within the collection hardly Gifford, Christopher Brookmyre, Eric conform to the concept of cyberpunk as Brown, Molly Brown, Eugene Byrne, Pat mostly as a British it is now understood. In the years since, Cadigan, Richard Calder, Mark Chad- Science Fiction many other writers have been labeled as bourn, Simon Clark, Susanna Clarke, Boom . . . but there is cyberpunk, post-cyberpunk or cyber- John Clute, Michael Cobley, Steve punk-flavored, irrespective of their con- Cockayne, Storm Constantine, Louise also a parallel boom nection to the original impulse. Here we Cooper, Paul Cornell, Gillian Cross, within fantasy and have a model of how a movement can Peter Crowther, Russell T. Davies, Jack horror, as well as begin almost as a hobbyhorse, grow Deighton, Peter Dickinson, Eric Evans, through association with a number of Jasper Fforde, Christopher Fowler, within children’s fiction. writers, and then explode beyond the Maggie Furey, Neil Gaiman, Stephen control of its originators — and be in- Gallagher, David S. Garnett/David Fer- creasingly difficult to define as cyber- ring, Mary Gentle, Debi Gliori, Muriel punk. Gray, Colin Greenland, Nicola Griffith, such as Robert Presslie, Don Malcolm The Boom has no resident polemicist Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Peter F. Ham- and John Phillifent were more or less (although M. John Harrison, China ilton, M. John Harrison, Robert Hold- silenced. A movement can exclude as Miéville and others have found spaces to stock, Tom Holland, Tom Holt, Lesley well as include; indeed different hailers talk about it3), no key writer (although Howarth, Eva Ibbotson, Simon Ings, of the Boom have their own list of exclu- some would suggest Miéville), and no Brian Jacques, Robin Jarvis, Ben Jeapes, sions. defining anthology or magazine Diana Wynne Jones, Gwyneth In the previous paragraph I specified (although Interzone could take some of Jones/Ann Halam, Graham Joyce, Peter British New Wave, because the applica- the credit). Even such a thing as a starting Kalu, Garry Kilworth, William King, tion of the term to American writing has point has yet to be agreed. Mark Bould David Langford, Tanith Lee, Roger Levy, led to some confusion. Certainly Judith has outlined a number of starting points James Lovegrove/J. M. S. Lovegrove, Merril, in her Best of SF anthologies, was between 1982 and 1995 (Bould, ‘Boom’ Brian Lumley, Ian R. MacLeod, Ken looking to Britain for material, exposure 308–9) and each of these starting points MacLeod, Jan Mark, Graham Masterton, to which may have led to a greater would lead to a different conceptualiza- Paul McAuley, Geraldine McCaughrean, experimentation in form in US science tion of the boom. A writer like Mary Ian McDonald, Juliet E. McKenna, Robin fiction. There was a growing permissive- Gentle found success with Ash: A Secret McKinley, John Meaney, China Miéville, ness that led to a greater willingness to History (1999), winning among others the Martin Millar/Martin Scott, David explore sexual themes within sf. One British Science Fiction Association Mitchell, Michael Moorcock, Alan product of this was Harlan Ellison’s Award, which ought to put her smack Moore, Simon Morden, Richard Morgan, groundbreaking anthology Dangerous into the British Boom — although she’s Grant Morrison, Kim Newman/Jack Visions (1967), in which taboos (for the been a highly regarded writer since the Yeovil, William Nicholson, Jenny science fiction market) were broken. 1980s and was first published in 1977. Nimmo, Jeff Noon, Daniel O’Mahoney, This, along with a growing divide be- Perhaps we should borrow Borges’s ter- Darren O’Shaughnessy/Darren Shan, tween hard and soft science fiction, has minology and speak of precursors to the Stephen Palmer, K. J. Parker, Terry led to a retrospective acknowledgment of Boom, even of work precursive to the Pratchett, Christopher Priest, Philip Pull- an American New Wave, which could Boom. There are a number of writers — man, Robert Rankin, Philip Reeve, Alas- include ‘Aldiss, Ballard, Disch, Delany, Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, M. John Har- tair Reynolds, Chris Riddell, Philip Heinlein [sic] and on’ (Brooke-Rose 99) or rison and Christopher Priest, among Ridley, Adam Roberts/A. R. R. Roberts, Joanna Russ, Ursula Le Guin, Philip K. others — who have been successful in the Katherine Roberts, Justina Robson, J. K. Dick, Thomas M. Disch and Samuel past and are now enjoying a renewed Rowling, Nicholas Royle, Geoff Ryman, 2 Delany (Pfeil). Broadly speaking the period of success or republication. There Jan Siegel, Alison Sinclair, Gus Smith, American New Wave seems to be a new is also the problem as to whether the Michael Marshall Smith, Brian Stable- kind of content, a paradigmatic New British Boom should only include ford/Brian Craig/Francis Amery, Paul Wave, and the British one a new kind of British-born writers, or be expanded to Stewart, Charles Stross, Tricia Sulli- structure, a syntagmatic New Wave. In include writers from the United States van/Valery Leith, Brian Talbot, Sue turn it should be noted that British and (Pat Cadigan, Tricia Sullivan, Molly Thomas, Karen Traviss, Lisa Tuttle, Jo American perceptions of the Boom are Brown) or Canada (John Clute, Geoff Walton, Ian Watson, John Whitbourn, different. Ryman) who have become long-time Liz Williams, John Wilson, David Win- The second movement is cyberpunk. resident in the UK. Whilst many of the grove, Chris Wooding. It might be true that Bruce Bethke was the writers within the Boom know each first to use the word cyberpunk — the other, there are varying degrees of influ- title of a manuscript circulating in the ence and social connection. Some of them 4. The Long Wave early 1980s — and that it was Gardner do have lunch together on a weekly basis, The history of science fiction in Britain Dozois who was the first to use the term but that is as much the bonds of friend- has been traced back to Frankenstein to refer to a group of writers, but for the ship as the secret powerhouse of a move- (Aldiss 1973), to Paradise Lost (Roberts, larger critical community it began with ment. Science Fiction) and even to Utopia (Kin- William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). caid, ‘More’; although Malory’s Le Mort Meanwhile Bruce Sterling circulated a d’Arthur [1485] is the root fantastical text fanzine, Cheap Truth (1983–86), edited as 3. A (Partial) Census in Kincaid, British 7). None of these ur- by Vincent Omniaveritas, which cri- Joan Aiken, Brian Aldiss, David Almond, texts was consciously written as science tiqued much existing sf and set out the Joe Ahearne, Chris Amies, Tom Arden, fiction. The various scientific romances of grounds for cyberpunk — although it Neal Asher, Steve Aylett, Wilhelmina the last thirty years or so of the nineteenth was not until issue 12 that cyberpunk was Baird, Cherith Baldry, J. G. Ballard, Iain century were often prompted by im- mentioned. In the final issue Omniaveri- M. Banks, James Barclay, Clive Barker, pulses which we would now recognize as tas declared cyberpunk to be dead, with Paul Barnett/John Grant, Stephen Bax- science fictional; H. G. Wells’s writings Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology ter, Malorie Blackman, Stephen Bowkett, could stand as a definitive starting point

16 SET EDITORIAL COMMENT: The British New Wave — did it ever disappear? Compare the cover for New Worlds 178, December 1967/January 1968 (by Charles Platt and Christopher Finch) with the cover for Interzone 188, April 2003 (by Judith Clute). Okay, no nudes on Interzone covers; the cutup effect is achieved digitally rather than with scissors and paste; and the names on the covers have changed. But who could doubt that British SF is still Cool Britannia after 35 short years?

were it not that this would seem a nation- Greenlander (1978), the first of a projected Simon Ounsley, Alan Dorey, and Gra- alistic move. The American domination trilogy, Compton was only occasionally ham James — decided to take the profits of the genre coalesces in Amazing Stories published after 1975 and few now will of the Yorcon II convention to set up a in 1926, but some British writers did con- know the names of Morgan, Dunn and new magazine. Meanwhile in London, tribute to the sf pulp magazines — most Lunan as writers of fiction. The Hold- Malcolm Edwards pitched the idea for a notably John Wyndham, Eric Frank stock and Priest-edited anthology Stars of new magazine to the BSFA (then chaired Russell, and Arthur C. Clarke — and Albion coincided with the World Science by Alan Dorey) and brought John Clute, tried to meet the demands of the US mar- Fiction Convention being held in Colin Greenland, and Roz Kaveney in as ket. Only with the onset of the New Wave Brighton in 1979, but it was the last gasp associate editors. The BSFA plan having in the 1960s did British science fiction of the market. New Worlds was no more come to nothing, the eight banded to- begin to make an impact upon the way — there were four, irregular issues be- gether to set up a quarterly magazine that that generic science fiction perceived it- tween 1978 and 1979 — and since the they eventually called Interzone (see self, in the writings of Moorcock, Aldiss, only other British science fiction maga- Pringle and Terran for more on this). and Ballard. The moment did not last, zine, Science Fiction Monthly, and its re- Inevitably it suffered comparisons to however, and after a brief period of suc- placement, SF Digest, had both closed in New Worlds; in part it was championing cess in the early 1970s, the market for 1976, the only outlets for written British former New Wave writers such as Aldiss, British sf collapsed. Brian Stableford cites science fiction was the book and antho- Ballard, Sladek, and Disch. Many of the the 1978 special All-British issue of The logy markets and overseas sales. stories it published in the early days had Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction In 1981 a group of fans, critics and the downbeat endings typical of much if with its article by Brian Aldiss celebrat- writers based in Leeds — David Pringle, not the bulk of British science fiction ing the wealth of professional British since the Second World War. The Inter- authors: ‘Ian Watson, Andrew Stephen- zone editorial collective dwindled until son, Robert Holdstock, Chris Morgan, Only with the onset of the Pringle became the main editor, but the Mark Adlard, Bob Shaw and Philip Dunn New Wave in the 1960s magazine went from strength to [. . .] Richard Cowper, Edmund Cooper, strength, going bimonthly in 1988 and Christopher Priest, Duncan Lunan, did British science fiction monthly in 1990. Other professional Laurence James, Barrington Bayley, begin to make an impact magazines have emerged: among others Michael Coney, D. G. Compton, Angus upon the way that generic Extro (which published three issues in Wells and M. John Harrison’ (21). But, as Northern Ireland in 1982), Back Brain Re- Stableford notes, most of them had al- science fiction perceived cluse (edited by Chris Reed from 1984 and ready produced their best work or would itself . . . The moment did linked to the small press scene), The Gate disappear until the 1980s or later, having not last, however. (1989–91), SF Nexus (1993–1994, which reinvented themselves as fantasists. Ad- merged with Interzone), Amaranth, Spec- lard has not published a novel since The trum (paid for by editor Paul Fraser), Od-

17 yssey and 3SF (published in 2002–03 by perspective of the New Wave writers in Ben Jeapes’s Big Engine small press). Among the British 1970, looking forward with boundless There is also TTA, also known as The optimism. By 1975 that optimism was Third Alternative, which is more geared to writers who carved out misplaced, and there is no guarantee that dark fantasy and horror. However, Inter- their science fiction the current Boom will continue indefi- zone is the only paper-based science fic- writing careers in nitely. tion magazine to keep a regular schedule over a sustained period of time in Interzone were S. M. — Britain.4 later Stephen — Baxter, 5. British British vs US British Boom Among the British writers who Keith Brooke, Eric One thing that has become clear to me in carved out their science fiction writing discussing the state of British science fic- careers in the magazine were S. M. — Brown, Molly Brown, tion at various locations on both sides of later Stephen — Baxter, Keith Brooke, Eugene Byrne, Richard the Atlantic, is that there are two different Eric Brown, Molly Brown, Eugene Byrne, Calder, Nicola Griffith, perceptions of the Boom in terms of the Richard Calder, Nicola Griffith, Peter F. market place. At a discussion panel at the Hamilton, Simon Ings, Graham Joyce, Peter F. Hamilton, ICFA in 2002 I noted that two writers had Paul McAuley, Ian MacLeod, Ian Simon Ings, Graham blazed a trail for best-selling science fic- McDonald, Kim Newman, Alastair Joyce, Paul McAuley, tion and fantasy prior to the contempo- Reynolds, and Charles Stross, leading to rary boom, Terry Pratchett from The what The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Ian MacLeod, Ian Colour of Magic (1983) and Iain M. Banks. called ‘a second new wave of UK SF’ McDonald, Kim But Pratchett has been through a whole (Clute and Nicholls 622). Their writing Newman, Alastair series of different American publishers, was diverse in scope, yet within an iden- suggesting that he has not sold consis- tifiably British mode: for example Baxter Reynolds, and Charles tently, and Banks seems to be a name that wrote hard sf within his Xeelee sequence Stross, leading to what had not broken as much in the United and has been compared to Clarke, The Encyclopedia of States as it has in the UK. It almost feels McAuley has tried his hand over the that the leg-up apparently given to Ken years at hard sf, steampunk, and tech- Science Fiction called MacLeod by Banks in the UK has been nothrillers, and Newman and Byrne ‘a second new wave of reversed in the United States; MacLeod’s mapped out alternate histories rooted in UK SF’. Fall Revolution Quartet may have been British popular culture. As if giving this published in a different order but it has new generation of writers a regular mar- now all been published, and first US edi- ket was not enough, Pringle branched tions of the Engines of Light trilogy have out into editing role-playing game tie-ins followed swiftly upon the British. In Brit- with the Warhammer series of novels Hugo and Noon winning the John W. ain MacLeod has been perceived as one and anthologies, giving Kim Newman, Campbell Award. Since then Jon Cour- of a number of Marxist or left-wing writ- David Garnett, Brian Stableford, and Ian tenay Grimwood and China Miéville ers that also includes Gwyneth Jones, Watson opportunities to write novels in have both begun having novels pub- Adam Roberts, and Miéville, but in the the late 1980s and early 1990s, and many lished without a visible track record of USA it is his libertarian interests that others of the Interzone generation another short stories. seem to have caught attention. market for short stories (Baxter, ‘Free- From its nadir in 1977 and 1978, Brit- It is likely that a large number of the dom’). ish science fiction has spent two decades names I have listed in section 3 remain After this generation of short story rebuilding itself and finally is being unpublished in the USA, but equally writers began to publish novels, they taken notice of again. It is worth quoting many British writers have been able to were joined by a series of writers who Brian Stableford here: sell in New York what has not sold in had not first appeared in Interzone, London. Ian McDonald, Manchester- though in some cases not for the want of The writers [. . .] felt that science fic- born but based in Northern Ireland and trying. Iain M. Banks had begun as an tion had been labouring too long first published by Extro in 1982, sold his enfant terrible with the publication of his under artificial constraints, held story collection Empire Dreams (1988) and controversial The Wasp Factory (1984), back by the walls of the ‘pulp ghetto’ his first novel Desolation Road (1988) to and followed it up with the sf-tinged and subjected to the unreasonable American publishers, prior to any British Walking on Glass (1985) and The Bridge contempt of literary critics. They publication. Equally Ian R. MacLeod was (1986), before publishing his space opera were longing to break free, to carry able to enter the US book market well Consider Phlebas (1987). Jeff Noon — pre- the cause of science fiction forward before the British one. His story viously known only for winning the Mo- to a position of honour and prestige ‘Through’ was published in the July/ bil Playwriting prize at the Manchester that it had been unjustly denied. August 1989 issue of Interzone, but his Royal Exchange Theatre in 1985 with his They [had . . .] the conviction that first books were the collection Voyages by Falklands play Woundings — wrote a the tide had turned, and that the Starlight (1997), mostly collecting stories novel called Vurt (1993), which launched battle — although not yet won — from Asimov’s and The Magazine of Fan- a new Manchester-based publisher was theirs for the taking. [. . . It] tasy and Science Fiction, and the novel The called Ringpull and became a cult hit. He looked as if the last barriers to the Great Wheel (1997). It was not until Sum- followed this up with Pollen (1995), but it progress of the genre had been re- mer 2003 that The Light Ages marked his was not enough to save the publisher moved — and the one thing no one novel debut in Britain. from bankruptcy. Ken MacLeod, a friend could imagine was that new ones There is clearly a complex interplay of Iain M. Banks since childhood, would be raised against it (21). between the British and United States launched his first novel The Star Fraction markets, with either side at various (1995) at the World Science Fiction Con- This passage has much of the same points appearing to the other country to vention in Glasgow, a convention that rhetoric of the current generation of writ- dominate the genre. The perception from saw Pringle’s Interzone finally winning a ers considered to be part of the Boom. British writers and readers during the However, Stableford is talking about the 1980s and early 1990s was that they could

18 not sell their work in the US because they of Manchester: focused on the broken were perceived as being too-British; this glass and dog excrement surrounding ironically was at a time when American the tenements in Hulme and the Moss steampunks such as Blaylock and Jeter Side crescents which had seen riots in the could set novels in Victorian London. 1980s, and had become the province of Not only did Gibson’s novels include the squatter, the dealer, the student and near-future British settings, but also the infirm, to a soundtrack of pounding several of them were first published in bass. Within a few years of the publica- book form in Britain. Bruce Sterling, the tion of Vurt, urban renewal came to the cyberpunk subgenre’s best polemicist, area and the crescents and tenements clearly saw British writers Ballard and were demolished to make way for pret- John Brunner as forebears, and wrote tier low-rise flats. Whether the battle columns for Interzone. It might even be against glass and dog excrement will be argued that the downbeat endings of won remains to be seen. The novel also Neuromancer (1984) and other cyberpunk featured the club scene that had been novels owe something to British sensi- dominated by the Hacienda in Manches- bilities. At a panel I chaired on British ter. Noon in time abandoned Manchester science fiction in the 1980s and 1990s at for Brighton, which increasingly became the 1999 Eastercon, a member of the audi- the music capital in terms of DJ culture ence argued that, ‘we, from the American and a thriving club and gay scene. He side of the Atlantic, look on Britain as also temporarily abandoned sf after Pixel being a hot house of cyberpunk’ (Butler, Juice: Stories from the Avant Pulp (1998), Brown and Billinger 13; see also Cobley). although Falling Out of Cars (2002) saw a return to the genre. The sense of place in Noon was dupli- party more interested in big business 6. Cool Britannia? cated by other novelists who lived out- than unions, and in being tougher than Perhaps American eyes were also look- side London. Before Peter Hamilton their Conservative predecessors. ing across the water because of the fuss turned to his monumental Night’s Dawn Whilst some British sf writers may about Cool Britannia. trilogy (1996–99) he had set the Quantum have been carried along by the publicity The British New Wave seemed Murder trilogy (1993–95) in a near-future of Cool Britannia, and, with some excep- focused on and drew imagery from Rutland — a county that had been disap- tions, the default position of contempo- Swinging London, although many of the peared in the reorganization of local gov- rary British science fiction writers is on successful bands and musicians had ernment in 1974 and reappeared in a the left, it is difficult to think of a British emanated from Liverpool. Perhaps by further reorganization in 1997. Nicola science fiction writer sympathetic to the coincidence, the Boom emerged during a Griffith’s Slow River (1995), written in the Blairite cause. Blair’s love affair with ce- renewed period of optimism about the United States, recreated her previous lebrities, including Oasis and other pop cultural significance of Britain. This time home of Hull and the landmarks, includ- stars, must in part be Gwyneth Jones’s the musical powerhouse was Manchester ing the Polar Bear pub, of the inspiration for her near-future fantasy and there was a cross-fertilization of psy- Avenues/Spring Bank area of the city. Bold as Love (2001) and its sequels, in chedelia in the forms of acid house and Stephen Palmer’s Memory Seed (1996) dis- which pop stars of a more sixties vintage rave, as well as the guitar-based lad guised Anglesey and north-east Wales as share power. China Miéville stood as a bands such as The Happy Mondays and a post-apocalyptic city and landscape. Socialist Alliance candidate in The Stone Roses of the Manchester/Mad- Meanwhile there was the shared ex- Kensington and Chelsea and was hailed chester indie music scene in the late 1980s perience of the final defeat of the much- by the London Evening Standard (not and early 1990s. Rivalries emerged be- hated Conservative government in the known for its leftist tendencies) as the tween the music scenes of Manchester, landslide Labour victory of the 1997 Gen- sexiest man in British politics (Renton Sheffield, Hull, and Bristol, among other eral Election. For weeks the phatic was 25). late industrial cities, and the ultra-hip dominated by the question: ‘Were you up Camden, London. The Mancunian band for Portillo?’ — referring to the unseating 7. Eclipse Oasis — centered on the Gallagher broth- in the early hours of the morning by the Nature abhors a vacuum. It seemed clear- ers — went head to head on chart success openly gay Labour candidate Stephen est in the announcement of the novels with the southern art school mockney Twigg of arch-Conservative MP, Michael shortlisted for the Hugo Awards in May Blur and came out on top. Oasis looked Portillo, widely assumed to be a closeted 2001: A Storm of Swords by George R. R. back to the chords and tunes of The gay. The pleasure taken in the defeat of Martin, Calculating God by Robert J. Saw- Beatles and the Liverpool scene whereas specific Conservatives blinded many to yer, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by Blur drew lyrically on predecessors such the ironic possibilities inherent in J. K. Rowling, Midnight Robber by Nalo as The Kinks. Both had a sense of English- Labour’s choice of ‘Things Can Only Get Hopkinson and The Sky Road by Ken ness about them, as did Pulp, but an Better’ as their victory anthem. After a MacLeod. Martin was the only American Englishness that was capable of being brief early period of radicalism in the writer; the rest included two Canadians read ironically. Their vast audiences form of the introduction of a minimum and two British writers. The eventual were being eyed by a Labour Party trying wage (compromised as it was) and other winner was J. K. Rowling — the first Brit- to pull itself together after their defeat by reforms, New Labour seemed to progress ish recipient of the award since Arthur C. the grey man John Major of the Conser- to putting Conservative-type policies Clarke in 1980, indeed only the third Brit- vative party who on any rational level into practice. Portillo, in the meantime, ish recipient after Clarke (who had also 5 was surely unelectable. read Marcel Proust and seems to have won in 1974) and Brunner in 1969. Jeff Noon’s position in Manchester reinvented himself as a compassionate Generic American science fiction ap- surely helped him in the mid-1990s, in a Conservative, more caring than and ap- peared to be in some kind of trouble. period when publishing houses outside parently to the left of the Blairite Twigg. Cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk still of London appeared to be thriving. Vurt New Labour quickly became a political dominated the 1990s sf scene in America, could have been plotted on an A to Z map and a series of writers were being com-

19 8. Remix Iain M. Banks’s To some extent a genre is always parodic of itself. Just as parodies and pastiches Consider Phlebas had depend on the reproduction and recogni- the sort of tion of particular codes and conventions, galaxy-spanning plot so does writing within a given genre. The codes of genre science fiction, whilst they that we had perhaps may look back to Shelley, Poe, Verne, and thought was no longer Wells, were largely formulated in Ameri- possible . . . what Brian can pulp fiction magazines, within the period of the emergence of America from Aldiss has called the isolationism of the 1920s to becoming “widescreen baroque”, one of the world superpowers in the af- was evidently back with termath of the Second World War. One man, with his wits, and his bare hands if a bang. And moreover, necessary, can bring down an empire, it was up-to-date, and save the world. Except in short-lived well-written, fast, and marketplaces that have existed within Britain and the Commonwealth, there is cool’ (Ken MacLeod). a sense that British writers have had to parody American formulae to make their way in the marketplace — during the called “widescreen baroque”, was evi- period in which the British lost an em- dently back with a bang. And moreover, pire. it was up-to-date, well-written, fast, and pared to both William Gibson and Some authors have foregrounded this cool’ (MacLeod, ‘Phlebas’ 2). But the Quentin Tarantino. No new movement parodic intent in their writings; Ian novel, which introduced the left-of-cen- seems to have come along to replace it, McDonald clearly drew on Ray Brad- ter, post-scarcity, utopian empire known and many of the big writers of the 1980s bury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950) for as the Culture, is deceptive. The merce- seem to have been diverted into sequels Desolation Road (1988), as well as ele- nary hero, Bora Horza Gobuchal, is actu- to books by other writers and media tie- ments of Gabriel García Marquez, and ally fighting for the wrong side, against ins. Gibson is mapping a trajectory for Hearts, Hands and Voices (1992) drew on the Culture, but is brought in from the the mainstream, and Neal Stephenson’s works by Geoff Ryman, most notably The cold by the end of the book, if only in the output is slowing. The philosophizing Child Garden (1989) and The Unconquered name of a spaceship. Having established that underlay Kim Stanley Robinson’s Country (1986). McDonald’s Northern the peaceful, utopian, game-playing ten- Red Mars (1992) expanded through the Ireland-set Sacrifice of Fools (1996) mixes dencies of the Culture — usually viewed rest of the trilogy, and dominated Antarc- the police procedural with the sexual from the outside — Banks then increas- tica (1997); what many had first perceived politics of Gwyneth Jones’s Aleutian tril- ingly undercuts this in his portrayals of as hard sf had become much more cere- ogy (1991–97), which in itself offered a the processes by which other civiliza- bral and politicized. For whatever reason response to Ursula Le Guin’s The Left tions join the Culture. Sure, it is a utopia the genre seemed to losing its buzz. Hand of Darkness (1969). McDonald’s re- that these civilizations join, but the dice Pages of magazines, pages in journals, mix aesthetic, which draws to some ex- are loaded so that it seems in these civili- slots at conferences still had to be filled, tent on music culture of the 1980s to date, zations’ interests that they do join — and and so editors, critics and academics puts little store in originality, but more in in later volumes the Culture’s dirty tricks were casting around for new writers to the skilful blending of the individual ele- are more exposed. What begins as a left- interview or write about. At first the ments. Adam Roberts, a self-acknow- wing, anti-imperialist utopia ends up in smart money was on Australian science ledged fan of McDonald, is the author of self-critique. fiction, boosted by the 1999 Melbourne four novels to date, including Salt (2000), By then there was also Colin Green- Worldcon, the anthologies Dreaming which owes debts to Dune (1965) and Le land’s Take Back Plenty (1990), a caper that Down Under (1998) and Centaurus: The Guin, On (2001), which echoes Christo- featured Tabitha Jute and her spaceship, Best of Australian Science Fiction (1999) pher Priest’s Inverted World (1974), and Alice, who owes a debt to McCaffery’s and the non-fiction The MUP Encyclo- Polystom (2003), which echoes Bob ship who sang as well as to Lewis Carroll. paedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy (1998) Shaw’s Ragged Astronauts trilogy (1986– Jute is persuaded to transport a troupe of and Strange Constellations: A History of 89), as well as having virtues of their players from Plenty to Titan and is Australian Science Fiction (1999). Janeen own. caught up in intrigue and criminal deeds, Webb, co-editor of Dreaming Down But perhaps where British science fic- among the canals of Mars and the steam- Under, wrote that: ‘Whether we have tion has become most systematically ing jungles of Venus, which are inspired somehow arrived in the much discussed parodic and revisionary is in its revival more by Edgar Rice Burroughs than New new Golden Age or are undergoing an of the subgenre of space opera, which Scientist or Nature. As Rachel Pollack entirely different occurrence remains to had been more or less relegated to the wrote in her review: ‘the writer must play be seen, but we are certainly experienc- sidelines as contaminated by media sf — with or work against what has gone be- ing one of those spikes in literary output Star Wars, Star Trek, and so forth. Iain M. fore’ (Pollack 102). Having won both the that occur when conditions are right’ Banks’s Consider Phlebas had the sort of Arthur C. Clarke and BSFA Awards for (114). Greg Egan, Sean McMullen, and galaxy-spanning plot that we had per- this novel, Greenland eventually bowed Stephen Dedman were the three names haps thought was no longer possible. As to popular pressure and brought back to watch. Instead the eclipse of American Ken MacLeod writes in his introduction Jute in Seasons of Plenty (1995) and Mother genre sf allowed British talent to shine to the German edition: ‘Space opera — of Plenty (1998). Unfortunately the audi- through, marked by Charles N. Brown’s the colourful, violent, galaxy-spanning ence were less receptive this time round assertion in conversation that only Brit- space opera so many of us had read when — or Greenland’s grafting of a trilogy ish writers were being interviewed for younger, and which Brian Aldiss has structure on to a standalone novel failed. Locus.6 More successful was Harm’s Way (1993),

20 of a Commonwealth of Nations (who de- There is a ‘can’t do’ light in defeating us at cricket), and we are the odd one out in the European spirit that infuses much Union, resisting integration and clinging of British society . . . on to our pounds and ounces decades There is something in after we agreed to go metric in the 1960s and to our decimalized pounds (whilst the British character still mourning shillings). There is some- that loves a loser — thing in the British character that loves a Captain Scott, who did loser — Captain Scott, who did not get to the South Pole first, Eddie the Eagle, the not get to the South world’s worst ski jumper, and numerous Pole first, Eddie the others. There are also the internal divi- Eagle, the world’s sions as well — the distinct countries of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern worst ski jumper . . . Ireland, each with their own north– south, east–west or other divides. As a fractured country yet to relocate its rôle, pessimism is the only course to take. a steampunk tale where ships sail the The fracturedness reflects the multi- solar winds around the system. cultural nature of Britain, with some Space opera is also the starting point attempt to represent the diversity of per- for Alastair Reynolds’s novels, beginning sonal identity. John Meaney, for exam- with Revelation Space (2000). Dan Sylveste ple, attempts to imagine diversity within is a tough archaeologist and scientist, alien species rather than seeing them all futures (and pasts) where the program risking the lives of his team in his explo- as other; there are nationalities, different continues, where humanity makes it to ration of an extinct civilization on the cultures, subgroups, factions, and so Mars and even to Titan. If only for dra- colony world Resurgam. It is not long forth. That being said, Peter Kalu is prob- matic reasons, these are hardly trium- before his past and local politics catch up ably the only Black British science fiction phant missions; Baxter imagines a future with him, but it is clear that the previous writer, and the list of Boom writers is where more money went into space mis- species died out for a reason. It might be rather chappist — most of the female sions but also where more disasters also that he will not have time to investigate writers listed in section three are part of occurred. His attitude seems ambivalent: this as both an assassin with an anony- the children’s market. The male writers ‘though in some ways Voyage for me was mous client and the crew of a spaceship, are at least attempting to portray female an exercise in wish-fulfillment, I found I Nostalgia for Infinity, with its half-dead characters, including a series of lesbian could no longer believe whole-heartedly captain are on his trail — always assum- lead characters such as Greenland’s that throwing humans at Mars regardless ing that whatever caused the extinction Tabitha Jute, Malise Arnim in Simon would necessarily be a Good Thing’ of a space-faring species will not happen Ings’s Hot Head (1992), and the central (Baxter, alt.space 19). From the stories as again. As Paul Billinger notes in his re- characters of Geoff Ryman’s The Child a whole a curious sense of nostalgia view ‘the most sympathetic character is a Garden. There is a nod towards Islam in emerges — for failures that never hap- professional killer’ (30), and no one is several books, including Hot Head, and to pened, for lost opportunities for things to entirely who they seem: Sylveste is a the new Europe in Ings’s Headlong (1999), go wrong. In Titan there is an utterly modified clone of his lost father and has Paul McAuley’s Fairyland (1995), and convincing portrayal of the harshness of various other copies of his father, and has Gwyneth Jones’s Kairos (1988/1995). space, the dangers of exploration and pe- lied about his experience with the revela- In Ings’ work there is a portrayal of nultimately an almost Stapledonian tion space of the title; the triumvirate life after the cyberpunk future: after the sweep of a universe without humanity. deputizing on Nostalgia for Infinity have machines have gone out of control and Alas, for many of us, Baxter finds a happy their own motives; the assassin, press- chips have been banned in Hot Head. In ending — which for me is more interest- ganged by one of the triumvirate, is not Headlong, Christopher and Joanne Yale ing for its failure than its success. letting on about her true profession. As have been made redundant, and their There’s a curious and not entirely con- in Banks’s space opera, it is no longer chips have been removed. After they vincing eucatastrophic closure to Roger possible to identify heroes and villains both begin to suffer from Epistemic Ap- Levy’s first novel, Reckless Sleep (2000), with any certainty. petite Imbalance, Joanne dies and Chris- which might almost owe a debt to Brazil topher sets out to investigate, keeping (Gilliam, 1985). The world is literally fall- 9. The ‘Can’t Do’ Spirit one step ahead of European Union ing apart, thanks to a series of nuclear If the United States has been going agents. The novel, told in retrospect from explosions on undersea faultlines; Lon- through a period of expanding influence somewhere in Leeds, is suffused with a don is partially ruined and covered in over the last century, with each new nostalgia for the posthuman. Technology ash. There had been the hope of a colony, problem just a challenge to be solved, is not bad — you cannot live without it Dirangasept, but the colonists had been then Britain is very much a country that — but it is unlikely to make life any eas- attacked by unidentified alien inhabi- is declining, that can only see the prob- ier. tants, and the Far Warriors who had been lem. There is a ‘can’t do’ spirit that in- Stephen Baxter’s alt.space stories sent to operate remote control war robots fuses much of British society, largely show part of the tension between hope have been defeated. The Far Warriors, from our experience of declining public and pessimism at work. He is clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress syn- services (that seem strong across sorry that the Apollo moon missions drome, thanks to too much VR remote Europe). Britain is in a unique position ended and that human exploration did control of the robots, are now more or less with three different international struc- not continue further into the solar sys- blamed for the debacle. Veteran and poet tures: we are the junior power in the tem. In various short stories, as well as Jon Sciler gets a job testing a new VR special relationship with the United Voyage (1996) and Titan (1997), he creates environment at the same time that Chrye, States, we are the often-despised begetter a psych student studying the effects of

21 cannot unproblematicly ‘inhabit’ the US national identity, but ends up using the The key to British tropes and devices despite the ideologi- cal mismatch. This is particularly true of science fiction must be Baxter’s alt.space stories. a sense of irony. Paul Kincaid and Colin Greenland, talking about the other British writers who emerged at the time of the British New Wave, both identified a voice that was present in the works of Keith Martians, or was about the real world. Roberts, D. G. Compton, Richard Cow- Martin Amis scores points for dealing per, Michael Coney and Christopher with the nuclear bomb in Einstein’s Mon- Priest, among others. Greenland identi- sters (1987) but loses them again for fied it as being ‘ironic [ . . .] It’s informed claiming this is the first fiction about the with a sense of literary tradition, not sim- bomb — and for his allegation in a docu- ply spinning out words and racking up mentary that science fiction readers are a pages. It feels the tensions and connota- bit like trainspotters. Ian McEwan, Will tions of language, so it’s richer in history, Self, David Mitchell, and Louis de and mood, and atmosphere, and the Bernières have all used fantastical ele- shades of character. Time and memory ments in their works, to some success. are every bit as important as space and This has some way to catch up on theater, action’ (Butler, Greenland and Kincaid where plays on quantum physics, prob- 23). That same voice seems still to be at ability, chaos theory and so on by Alan using VR, starts to interview him for her work in Boom writing, although the rela- Ayckbourn, Tom Stoppard, and others project. Sciler discovers that his fellow tionship to the tradition has become have been acceptable for years. veterans, also VR testers, are being killed more problematic. In a novel like Jon The mainstream media in Britain is one by one. Courtenay Grimwood’s neoAddix (1997) beginning to take science fiction more This future is unremittingly grim, and there is an acknowledgment of earlier seriously, although there is still a slight the outlook bleak. VR should be a great cyberpunk and its forebears with its sneer in some presenters’ voices on BBC new hope for escape from Earth, but naming of its protagonist Alex Gibson, Radio 4. Cadigan, McAuley, Newman, seems to be another chance for Armaged- and there is another (albeit pointless) tip Miéville, and others are increasingly be- don; indeed it might be infected by the of the hat to the closing line of Arthur C. ing called on to review films for the radio, telepathic aliens unwittingly brought Clarke’s ‘The Nine Billion Names of God’ but not as often as the mainstream writ- back from Dirangasept by the Far Warri- (1953).8 ers of their generation. The Independent ors. The novel even offers up the possi- Boom science fiction should not be and The Guardian both review science fic- bility that Dirangasept is itself purely a taken at face value. In the few happy tion frequently, even allowing the cover- simulacrum, and that the aliens were endings something more sinister must be age to spill over beyond the monthly simply monsters from the id. VR is no taken into account — characters may round-up of five or six novels into a five- solution to real world problems. As Steve have achieved their desires but at a cost. hundred-word review. The Guardian not Jeffery wrote in his review: ‘Levy’s debut In the bleak endings many ironies come only reported on Priest’s win of the Ar- is assured but tries perhaps too hard [. . .] together, including the consequences of thur C. Clarke Award, but gave him to be too many things at once: sf thriller, the characters’ actions. But perhaps the space to discuss his inspiration for The fantasy, dystopia and romance’ (Jeffery bleakness itself needs to be ironized as a Separation (2002). The Independent, The 28). However, this intergenrification is pose, a nod to the depression of Douglas Guardian, and The Times all carry obituar- typical of the British Boom. Adams’s Marvin the Paranoid Android, ies when British science fiction writers and before him Eeyore in A. A. Milne’s die. 10. Irony Winnie-the-Pooh (1926). Quite often — Not all is rosy though. In 1983 the The key to British science fiction must be and this can be a problem as well as a British Book Council compiled a list of a sense of irony. There is something in the strength — the resolutions do not resolve twenty young British writers who British psyche that sees things doubled, anything. seemed promising — including Martin and refuses to let the addressee know Amis, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, which version is meant. Politeness is a and the already veteran Christopher key sign of contempt, insults a sign that 11. The Mainstream Priest. Two lists later and the broadsheet you have been taken into their heart.7 Since the actual readership of just science newspapers wondered what had hap- John Wyndham’s novels were long fiction in Britain is rather small, and new pened to the 1983 generation — indeed thought to be cosy catastrophes, but in fans of science fiction seem more inter- where Christopher Priest was now (this fact they are more bleak than Wynd- ested in films, tv and comics than the being symptomatic of the publicity his ham’s readers initially perceived written word, British science fiction is publisher had lavished on his latest (Wymer 1992). We simply misread him dependent on the mainstream. In a sense book . . .). In 2003, China Miéville was and missed the irony. Perhaps irony is there is a tradition of British mainstream specifically excluded from the list be- particularly prevalent in British science writers being allowed their one generic cause of his generic status (Jack 11). The fiction: if we assume that the scope of the dalliance — think Conrad and Ford’s The barricades have been drawn back, but genre has been shaped within a US mar- Inheritors (1902), Forster’s ‘The Machine not that far. ket context, it has been influenced by a Stops’ (1909) and Orwell’s Nineteen whole series of ideologies such as the Eighty-Four (1949). Sometimes it is less 12. ‘[. . .] these moments are cyclical. American Dream, life, liberty, and the happy — E. P. Thompson’s overly long We’re lucky enough to be in a time when pursuit of happiness, and has developed The Sykaos Papers (1988), or P. D. James’s sf is loud and proud and exciting. It won’t a range of narrative tropes and devices The Children of the Moon (1992), which last forever. It’s fun milking it while it which engage in, mediate with, or resist could not possibly be science fiction be- lasts . . .’ (China Miéville in Butler, these ideologies. Clearly a British writer cause it was well written, was not about ‘Beyond’ 7).

22 13. An[drew]thropic Principle Greenland and Jones, then I would have the infrastructure to support the renais- The Boom exists because I am here to been able to refute it thus’ (Butler, ‘Fore- sance we seem to be engendering’ (Kin- observe it. sight’ 3).11 In noting the buzz about Brit- caid, ‘Golden’ 531). Perhaps I flatter myself. I do not wish ish sf being at the cutting edge I still The first sign of this may have just to claim that I am single-handedly re- sounded a warning, sceptical note: arisen in July 2003. Under the watchful sponsible for the Boom, but I have been eye of veteran sf editor John Jarrold (who in the right places a number of times, and [. . .] the image of Colin Welland at had published Banks, MacLeod, and oth- helped to provide a space for discourse the Oscars, shouting, ‘The British ers at Legend and Orbit), the Earthlight about the Boom, as well as adding my are coming!’ does loom rather large imprint of Simon and Schuster UK had own voice. In 1995, the year of the Glas- at this point. grown to rival the position Granada/ gow Worldcon and various British Hugo (And then a more science fic- Panther/ Grafton/ HarperCollinsVoy- wins, I became co-features editor of Vec- tional image, of Kevin McCarthy ager had held in the 1970s and 1980s. tor, the critical journal of the BSFA first stopping cars, and screaming Earthlight republished the sf back cata- published in 1958. Whilst Gary Dalkin, ‘They’re coming! They’re com- logue of Ray Bradbury among others, my co-editor, and I were more interested ing!...’) (Butler, ‘Foresight’ 3). and new novels by Byrne, Calder, in media than our predecessors (for me- Cobley, Grimwood, Holdstock, McDon- dia, read film, tv, and some comics, not ald, Whitbourn, and others. Jarrold de- By the time I wrote the following edi- necessarily sf),9 we both agreed that the cided to go freelance and was replaced by torial, I had spent three weeks in Mel- field was being destroyed by what Mike Darren Nash, who continued to maintain bourne — where both Ash and Perdido Resnick was calling wookie books — tie- Earthlight’s prestige as HarperCollins- Street Station were hot reads — and I had in books. We would rail against them at Voyager seemed to dwindle to myriad been to the Hugo Awards Ceremony any opportunity — in editorials, in arti- editions of Tolkien and a handful of other where Rowling won: cles, and in responses to letters of com- classics in uniform, dark blue, editions. ment. At the same time, we took every However, Simon and Schuster have de- opportunity we could to promote inter- There’s a sense, which we’ve been cided to restructure, in the process clos- esting novels by British writers, in a sense trumpeting for a couple of years ing the Earthlight imprint and ousting wanting to put the British back into the now, that we are in a boom time for Nash. It might be that this marks a death BSFA. In the run up to the BSFA’s fortieth British science fiction, in the last of sf as the list is to be absorbed into anniversary and the 200th issue of their eighteen months or so we’ve had a Simon and Schuster’s Pocket Books im- magazine Vector in 1998, we held a poll couple of novels which have been print, and thus not necessarily distin- to establish the most popular British sf respected by gratifyingly large guished as science fiction. The mood, novels. The results were published in the audiences on both sides of the At- however, is more that the books will no 201st issue; and at the following year’s lantic, and both seem to be making longer get the kind of specialist attention Eastercon I ran several panels on the his- inroads Down Under in Australia that Jarrold and Nash were able to give. tory of British science fiction to the then (Butler, ‘Hugos’ 3). It is too early yet to tell whether this is the present day discussing the results.10 beginning of the end of the Boom.12 A coincidence of connections led The Boom was off and running. It is perhaps very British to expect it Mark Bould and myself to the launch of In film, the British did not come, as all to fail — but there is some part of us China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station Goldcrest, the producers of Chariots of that is forever Eeyore. (2000), Mark conducting an interview for Fire, went belly-up after a series of poor Vector with Miéville and an invitation to choices — such as editing out Mark both of us to hear him speak at Marxism Bould’s performance from Revolution. Notes 2000 on the subject of Marxism and fan- Some British directors, actors, and writ- 1. The Whitbread Prize is a two-step tasy. In an editorial for Vector I com- ers are enjoying Oscar success, but process, with individual awards mented on the Marxism 2000 event and largely in American films. Is the Boom and juries for novel, first novel, non- added: ‘With writers like Miéville, doomed? Entropy, after all, is a favored fiction, poetry and children’s fiction, MacLeod, Meaney and many more, sf in metaphor of British sf — and everything with the children’s fiction award Britain at the end of the century seems to must pass. With so many writers active, sometimes being announced at a be revolutionary: clearly in a tradition, can the market sustain them all? How different time of year. These win- but still finding new ways to tell new many more will the American publishers ners are then judged together to gain (and old) stories. Could this be another take on? Meanwhile Tor has set up a an overall award. Golden Age? Or am I being just too uto- British imprint, mostly publishing 2. For a critique of Pfeil’s position see pian?’ (Butler, ‘Revolution’ 3). By the end American authors, and this is likely to Butler, ‘Modelling Sf’. of June the following year critics such as offer the existing sf imprints — Gollancz, 3. Among other spaces, the Boom was Gary Wolfe and John Clute and authors Headline, Earthlight, HarperCollinsVoy- discussed as a piece of guerrilla pro- such as M. John Harrison were talking of ager, Penguin and Little, Brown — a run gramming by Harrison, Miéville, a Boom, leading to the guerrilla panel at for their money. As some of these are and others at 2001: A Celebration of 2001: A Celebration of British Science Fic- connected to US companies, could these British Science Fiction (28 June– tion. face a US resurgence? Tor is piggy-back- 1 July 2001) endorsed by the organ- Not that the feeling was unanimous. ing off Pan Macmillan — home to izers (Farah Mendlesohn, Andy After a paper at that conference (on sci- Miéville, among others — so for how Sawyer, and myself), by John Clute, ence in a number of British plays) Nicho- long can the two remain distinct? Brian Aldiss, Ellen Datlow, Gary las Ruddick argued (without using the Worried voices are already beginning to Wolfe, China Miéville, Farah exact word) that current sf was banal and mutter. Paul Kincaid has noted in the Mendlesohn, and myself at a panel that literary values were in decline; as I pages of Science Fiction Studies that: ‘the at the 2002 ICFA, by Paul Kincaid wrote in an editorial: ‘If Miéville, pool of British publishers is growing and myself at The Goldfish Factor MacLeod, Meaney, Grimwood and Rob- smaller, and looking at the current eco- (the Science Fiction Founda- son had been in the room, let alone a nomic climate, I suspect that advances tion/British Science Fiction Asso- slightly older generation of Baxter, will be falling, if they haven’t fallen al- ciation joint AGM event) in April ready. [. . .] I do wonder whether we have 2003, and at the ICA in May 2003 in

23 events organized by Miéville and being just too young for the nell, grew tired, the producers Harrison. Gary S. Dalkin and myself Quatermas serials — are the vari- simply had his ship rejuvenate often turned to the topic of the state ous series for children by the ani- him into Patrick Troughton; in of British sf in our editorials for Vec- mators Oliver Postgate and Peter time he regenerated into a fur- tor from 1995 to present. There have Firmin: the proto-fantasy/faux- ther six incarnations, most re- no doubt been other moments. To Norse tales of Noggin the Nog and cently in a television movie. many of these people — along with his archenemy Nogbad the Bad, Whilst the character and the for- Mark Bould and Istvan Csicsery-Ro- the uncanny tale of a stuffed cat mat of the series would change nay Jr., who patiently watched me Bagpuss (1974), but most impor- from year to year or producer to scribble on the backs of envelopes — tantly the science fiction series producer, some things remained I clearly owe a debt. The Clangers (1969–1974), featur- constant — beyond the attractive 4. [2004] But see section 13 and note 12. ing a whole family of aliens who assistant ready to scream at the 5. [2004] See Luckhurst for a longer sounded like swannee whistles first sign of danger. Reason and treatment of the context and project and co-existed with a soap rationality had priority over of New Labour’s ‘New’ Britain. dragon. Despite the making of force; the Doctor rarely fired a 6. This was over breakfast at ICFA only a handful of episodes of gun and always tried to solve a 2002. In 2002 there were six inter- these and other series, they re- problem rather than calling for views with British writers Miéville main a strong presence in the violence. The production values and Siegel (March), Baxter (April), psyche of any British thirty to were better than the budget Joyce (May), McAuley (June), Gai- fifty something, creating a my- would suggest, with gravel pits man (September), which clearly thology from the simplest of ani- and quarries across the south showed the period in Spring and mations. east of England standing in for Summer to be dominated by British Rather more sophisticated in alien planets (or, in one episode writers. However there were also six technique were the marionette when they did land in a quarry, interviews with British writers in acted series of Gerry Anderson: for a quarry). 1995 (counting Pat Cadigan) and in Supercar (1961–1962) featuring a Blakes Seven (1978–1981) was 1998. car that could fly or be a subma- created by Terry Nation who had 7. This is not just an English phenome- rine, Fireball XL5 (1962–1963) created the Daleks for Doctor non; there is also a divided con- with a space patrol, Stingray Who, although some credit sciousness at work in the Welsh, (1964–1965) in which various un- should also be given to script Northern Irish, and Scottish, either dersea menaces are met, Thun- editor Chris Boucher. The series as writers from those countries are derbirds (1965–1966) featuring an began with Blake being shipped subsumed into metropolitan, Lon- international rescue team and for political reasons to a prison don life or as the apparently English Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons planet and his escape with a mot- claim authenticity from ‘provincial’ (1967–1968) in which the alien ley band of prisoners. They lo- roots. For two examinations of a Mysterons are trying to infiltrate cate a ship, named the Liberator, Scottish dividedness see Middleton Earth and Joe 90 (1968–1969) and begin a series of attacks on and Butler, ‘Strange Case’. where a nine-year-old-boy is the evil Federation, personified 8. I am not making a nonsensical claim used as secret agent. The series by the shaven headed female that writers from Britain are ironic were backed by a comic — vari- Servalan. Whereas Spock and and writers from the USA are al- ously called TV Century 21 and McCoy might banter in Star Trek, ways sincere — a list including TV21 — which featured both here heroic Blake, cynical Avon Twain, Bierce, Vonnegut, Michael strips spinning off from charac- and cowardly Vila and the others Moore, and the Coens would refute ters in the various series, and in- would argue, fall out and even this — but that the dominant mode troducing characters from future plot against each other. It was of narrative voice in British sf is series. Together it formed a sin- impossible to tell who was a hero ironic. gle continuity for the range of the and who a villain, even down to 9. [2004] Despite this interest in media, Supermarionation series. the apparent central character there is a regrettable absence of any Stephen Baxter, an avid reader of Blake, written out at the end of real consideration of comics in the comic through the 1960s, has the second series only to return either this article or the rest of the written: ‘it was an important and as a possible traitor in the blood- British Boom issue of SFS, as John formative part of my life, and no bath that ended the final series. Newsinger pointed out in the next doubt of others’ (Baxter, ‘Adven- Whilst Doctor Who had dabbled issue. I regret this absence and that tures’ 8). The Anderson series with moral ambiguities, here none of the people we invited to continue to gather viewers as there was no moral certainty at contribute (including John) covered they are repeated to this day. all. the topic. I had drafted a section on For a slightly older audience There are various other tele- media (predominately television), there were the two long-running vision series that are remem- but dropped it because Mark Bould series Doctor Who and Blakes bered with various kinds of was covering the ground in his arti- Seven, the former beginning 23 affection — several incarnations cle (Bould, ‘Monster’). In the ab- November 1963 in a Saturday of The Tomorrow People (1974– sence of that article, let me reinstate teatime slot on BBC1 and featur- 1978), a partial adaptation of The that deleted version of section 9: ing an eccentric old man — ap- Tripods (1984–1985), intended as parently an alien — who a replacement for Doctor Who, as travelled through time and space well as occasional plays by Nigel There is a shared media back- in a spaceship disguised as a Po- Kneale, serials by Michael J. Bird ground to the Boom writers aged lice call box, rescuing people and and so on. Perhaps more impor- between thirty and fifty, which saving the day. When the initial tant than any of this, though, is has informed their aesthetic. One actor in the rôle, William Hart- the shared heritage of main- of the earliest — this generation

24 stream programming such as been active in Hollywood; Neil Gai- — . ‘alt.space.’ Vector: The Critical Journal Blue Peter, Tiswas, shows featur- man is likely to join him. of the British Science Fiction Association ing northern comedians, Monty 10. Each voter was given five votes 197 (January/February, 1998): 17–19. Python’s Flying Circus, The Good- which would be weighted accord- — . ‘Freedom in an Owned World: ies (especially the episodes ‘Kit- ing to their ranking. The top ten was Warhammer Fiction and the Interzone ten Kong’ and one where 9th Coney, Hello Summer, Goodbye Generation.’ Vector: The Critical children’s tv characters take- (1975) and Brunner, The Sheep Look Journal of the British Science Fiction over the world), Fawlty Towers, Up (1972), 8th Roberts, Pavane Association 229 (May/June, 2003): and Blackadder among many oth- (1968), 7th Wyndham, The Midwich 4–17. ers which have added to the un- Cuckoos (157) and Tolkien, Lord of the — . Titan. London: Voyager, 1997. conscious linguistic resources of Rings (1954–1955), 5th Wyndham, — . Voyage. London: Voyager, 1996. the writers. In Vurt the charac- The Day of the Triffids (1951), 4th Bax- Billinger, Paul. Review of Alastair ters hallucinate a typical Satur- ter, The Time Ships (1993), 3rd Brun- Reynolds, Revelation Space. Vector: The day night’s viewing from the ner, Stand On Zanzibar (1968), 2nd Critical Journal of the British Science 1980s. Clarke, Childhood’s End (1953) and Fiction Association 211 (May/June, 1st Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four 2000): 30. To shift from influences to the influ- (1949). The most popular writer was Blackford, Russell, Van Ikin and Sean enced, it is clear that the heritage of Arthur C. Clarke. See Butler, ‘Best’. McMullen, eds. Strange Constellations: British television sf and fantasy has 11. Contrast this statement a year later A History of Australian Science Fiction. had a influence on recent television from Miéville on the Boom: ‘Gener- Westport, Cn and London: Green- — a remake of Randall and Hopkirk ally, good to excellent “literary” wood Press, 1999. (Deceased), the darkly surreal League quality’ (Butler, ‘Beyond Consola- Bould, Mark. ‘Alloyed Optimism.’ SFS of Gentleman, and even in the details tion’ 7). 29.3 (November, 2002): 531–2. of the British Queer as Folk (one of the 12. [2004] A success story I neglected to — . ‘Blowing Raspberries: An Interview central characters’ Doctor Who fixa- discuss was Peter Crowther’s series with China Miéville.’ Vector: The tion was inspired by creator Russell of novellas and story collections un- Critical Journal of the British Science T. Davies’ own taste, indeed Davies der the PS Publishing imprint, Fiction Association 213 (September/ has penned some science fiction se- which included works by Baxter, October, 2000): 5–9. rials for children [2004: and was Barclay, Campbell, Chadbourn, — . ‘Bould on the Boom.’ SFS 29.2 (July, tasked with reviving Doctor Who]). Gallagher, Gentle, Lovegrove, 2002): 307–10. In addition, British writers have had MacLeod, McAuley, McDonald, — . ‘What Kind of Monster Are You? a huge influence in other media, no- Miéville, Newman, Roberts, Ry- Situating the Boom.’ SFS 30.3 tably comics where Alan Moore and man, Smith, Tuttle, and others. (November, 2003): 394–417. Neil Gaiman, among others, have Crowther has also edited the first Brooke-Rose, Christina. A Rhetoric of the helped to invigorate the mode. issue of a quarterly magazine, Post- Unreal: Studies in Narrative and [2004: The weekly comic 2,000 AD Scripts, dated Spring 2004. Also in Structure, Especially of the Fantastic. (1977–) has had an incalculable in- 2004, David Pringle came to the end Cambridge: Cambridge University fluence upon British sf, most obvi- of his tenure as editor of Interzone. Press, 1981. ously through the Judge Dredd The schedule had become erratic, Butler, Andrew M. ‘The Best of British.’ strip. Artists included Brian Bol- and it looks as if the economics of Vector: The Critical Journal of the British land, who went onto to work for DC, fiction magazines had finally caught Science Fiction Association 201 including Batman: The Killing Joke up; however the baton has been (September/October, 1998): 18–19. (1988) and Dave Gibbons, who also passed to TTA, which is revamping — . ‘Beyond Consolation: An Interview drew for Doctor Who Weekly and the magazine. Pringle’s importance with China Miéville.’ Vector: The drew Watchmen (1986–87), and went within British science fiction, and Critical Journal of the British Science to work for DC. Writer Alan Moore, the emergence of the Boom, is Fiction Association 223 (May/June, who had collaborated with Gibbons unique – he is not the only begetter 2002): 4–7. on 2,000 AD, Doctor Who, and Watch- of it, but he did more than most to — . ‘Billable Time: An Interview with Pat men went on to work for Marvel, DC allow it to come forward. Cadigan.’ Vector: The Critical Journal of and alone, producing such seminal the British Science Fiction Association works as Swamp Thing, V for Ven- 225 (September/October, 2002): 4–8. detta, Batman: The Killing Joke, From Bibliography — . ‘Modelling Sf: Fred Pfeil’s Hell, and The League of Extraordinary Aldiss, Brian. Billion Year Spree: The Embarrassment.’ Foundation 72 Gentlemen. Other significant figures History of Science Fiction. London: (Spring, 1998): 81–8. include Grant Morrison, Bryan Tal- Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973. — . ‘Strange Case of Mr Banks: Doubles bot, John Wagner, and Dave Ballard, J. G. ‘Which way to inner space?’ and The Wasp Factory.’ Foundation 76 McKean. Neil Gaiman wrote The New Worlds 40.118 (1962): 2–3, 116–18. (Summer, 1999): 17–27. Sandman and Miracle Man, as well as Banks, Iain. The Bridge. London: — . ‘The View from the Foresight collaborating with Terry Pratchett Macmillan, 1986. Centre.’ Vector: The Critical Journal of on Good Omens (1990) and J. Michael — . Walking on Glass. London: the British Science Fiction Association Straczynski on Babylon 5.] Finally, Macdonald, 1985. 219 (September/October, 2001): 3. the British film industry remains — . The Wasp Factory. London: — . ‘The View from the Hugos.’ Vector: immersed in heritage and comedies Macdonald, 1984. The Critical Journal of the British Science penned by Richard Curtis, although Banks, Iain M. Consider Phlebas. London: Fiction Association 220 (November/ Bond has at least one foot in the sf Macmillan, 1987. December, 2001): 3. camp. However recent years have Baxter, Stephen. ‘Adventures in the 21st — . ‘The View from the Revolution.’ seen low budget sf and horror films Century: The Future History of TV21.’ Vector: The Critical Journal of the British such as Reign of Fire, Dog Soldiers and Vector: The Critical Journal of the British Science Fiction Association 213 28 Days Later. Clive Barker has long Science Fiction Association 224 (September/October, 2000): 3. (July/August, 2002): 4–8.

25 Butler, Andrew M., Tanya Brown and Jack, Ian. ‘Introduction.’ Granta: The — . Pollen. Greater Manchester: Ring- Paul Billinger. ‘The Best of British IV: Magazine of New Writing 81 (Spring, pull, 1995. The 1980s and 1990s.’ Vector: The 2003): 9-14. — . Vurt. Littleborough: Ringpull, 1993. Critical Journal of the British Science Jeffery, Steve. Review of Roger Levy, Palmer, Stephen. Memory Seed. London: Fiction Association 212 (July/August, Reckless Sleep. Vector: The Critical Orbit, 1996. 2000): 11–14. Journal of the British Science Fiction Pfeil, Fred. Another Tale to Tell: Politics and Butler, Andrew M., Colin Greenland and Association 211 (May/June, 2000): 28. Narrative in Postmodern Culture. Paul Kincaid. ‘The Best of British II: Jones, Gwyneth. Bold as Love: A Near London and New York: Verso, 1990. The 1960s.’ Vector: The Critical Journal Future Fantasy. London: Gollancz, Pollack, Rachel. Review of Colin Green- of the British Science Fiction Association 2001. land, Take Back Plenty. Foundation 51 210 (March/April, 2000): 20–3. — . Kairos. London: Unwin Hyman, (Spring, 1991): 102–3. Clute, John and Peter Nicholls, eds. The 1988. Pratchett, Terry. The Colour of Magic. Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. — . Kairos. London: Gollancz, 1995. London: Colin Smythe, 1983. London: Orbit, 1993. — . North Wind. London: Gollancz, 1995. Priest, Christopher. Inverted World. Cobley, Michael. ‘Young, Wired and — . Phoenix Café. London: Gollancz, 1997. London: Faber, 1974. Fairly Dangerous: The Secret History — . White Queen. London: Gollancz, — . The Separation. London: Simon and of British Cyberpunk.’ Vector: The 1992. Schuster, 2002. Critical Journal of the British Science Jones, Langdon, ed. The New SF: An Pringle, David. ‘Interzone: How It All Fiction Association 221 (January/ Original Anthology of Modern Began.’ Vector: The Critical Journal of February, 2002): 6–8. Speculative Fiction. London: the British Science Fiction Association Collins, Paul, Steve Paulsen and Sean Hutchinson, 1969. 152 (October/November, 1989): 6–9. McMullen, eds. The MUP Kincaid, Paul. ‘The Golden Age is Now.’ Pullman, Philip. The Amber Spyglass. Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction and SFS 29.3 (November, 2002): 530–1. London: Scholastic/David Fickling, Fantasy. Carlton: U of Melbourne P, — . Thomas More and Utopia. Paper 2000. 1998. given at SFRA Conference, New Renton, Alex. ‘The Sexiest Man in British Gentle, Mary. Ash: A Secret History. Lanark, June 2002. Politics.’ Evening Standard (2001): 25. London: Gollancz, 2000. — . A Very British Genre: A Short History Reynolds, Alastair. Revelation Space. Greenland, Colin. The Entropy Exhibition: of British Fantasy and Science Fiction. London: Gollancz, 2000. Michael Moorcock and the British ‘New Folkestone: BSFA, 1995. Roberts, Adam. On. London: Gollancz, Wave’ in Science Fiction. London: Levy, Roger. Reckless Sleep. London: 2001. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. Gollancz, 2000. — . Polystom. London: Gollancz, 2003. — . Harm’s Way. London: HarperCollins, Luckhurst, Roger. ‘Cultural Governance, — . Salt. London: Gollancz, 2000. 1993. New Labour, and the British SF — . Science Fiction. London: Routledge, — . Mother of Plenty. London: Voyager, Boom.’ SFS 30.3 (November, 2003): 2000. 1998. 417–35. Robson, Justina. Silver Screen. London: — . Seasons of Plenty: Book Two in the MacLeod, Ian R. The Great Wheel. New Macmillan, 1999. Tabitha Jute Trilogy. London: York: Harcourt Brace, 1997. Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Goblet HarperCollins, 1995. — . The Light Ages. London: Earthlight, of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. — . Take Back Plenty. London: Unwin, 2003. — . Harry Potter and the Order of the 1990. — . Voyages by Starlight. New York: Phoenix. London: Bloomsbury, 2003. Griffith, Nicola. Slow River. London: Arkham House, 1997. Ryman, Geoff. The Child Garden, Or a Low Voyager, 1995. MacLeod, Ken. ‘Phlebas Reconsidered.’ Comedy. London: Unwin, 1989. Grimwood, Jon Courtenay. neoAddix. The True Knowledge of Ken MacLeod. Ed — . The Unconquered Country: A Life London: NEL, 1997. Andrew M. Butler and Farah History. London: Allen and Unwin, Hamilton, Peter F. Mindstar Rising. Mendlesohn. Reading: SFF, 2003. 1–3. 1986. London: Pan, 1993. — . The Sky Road. London: Orbit, 1999. Speller, Maureen Kincaid. ‘Emergent — . The Naked God. London: Macmillan, — . The Star Fraction. London: Orbit, Property: An Interview with John 1999. 1995. Meaney.’ Vector: The Critical Journal of — . The Nano Flower. London: Pan, 1995. McAuley, Paul J. Fairyland. London: the British Science Fiction Association — . The Neutronium Alchemist. London: Gollancz, 1995. 201 (September/October, 1998): 6–9. Macmillan, 1997. McDonald, Ian. Desolation Road. New Stableford, Brian. ‘Science Fiction in the — . A Quantum Murder. London: Pan, York: Bantam Spectra, 1988. Seventies.’ Vector: The Critical Journal 1994. — . Empire Dreams. New York: Bantam of the British Science Fiction Association — . The Reality Dysfunction. London: Spectra, 1988. 200 (July/August, 1998): 21–4. Macmillan, 1996. — . Sacrifice of Fools. London: Gollancz, Terran, Chris. ‘Mining the Interzone: Hartwell, David G. and Damien 1996. David Pringle Interviewed.’ Matrix: Broderick, eds. Centaurus: The Best of Middleton, Tim. ‘The Works of Iain M. The Newsletter of the British Science Australian Science Fiction. New York: Banks: A Critical Introduction.’ Fiction Association 121 (September/ Tor, 1999. Foundation: The International Review of October, 1996): 18–20. Holdstock, Robert and Christopher Science Fiction 76 (Summer, 1999): Webb, Janeen. ‘A Literary Foment: Priest, eds. Stars of Albion. London: 5–16. Australian SF Now.’ SFS 27.1 (March, Pan, 1979. Miéville, China. Perdido Street Station. 2000): 114–18. Ings, Simon. Headlong. London: London: Macmillan, 2000. Wymer, Rowland. ‘How “Safe” Is John HarperCollinsVoyager, 1999. Noon, Jeff. Falling Out of Cars. London: Wyndham? A Closer Look at His — . Hot Head. London: Grafton, 1992. Doubleday, 2002. Work, With Particular Reference to — . Hotwire. London: HarperCollins, — . Nymphomation. London: Doubleday, The Chrysalids.’ Foundation 55 1995. 1997. (Summer, 1992): 25–36.

26 Pioneer Award Acceptance Speech

Andrew M. Butler

[The SET editors tracked down Andrew the wrong person, and I had to turn my really couldn’t be avoided. Then there is Butler’s article because it won the most computer back on to double check what my health — I registered with a doctor recent Pioneer Award for an essay writ- the message had said. You see, ever since and had a medical, which revealed my ten about science fiction. Also, Andrew I’ve been writing I’ve written under the blood pressure to be so high that it was is one of our favourite SF critics. The pseudonym of Andrew M. Butler, and so practically off the scale. In fact they had award was made formally at the 2004 perhaps the judges confused me with to send for a bigger device to measure it conference of the Science Fiction Re- somebody else, such as, say, Andrew with. Given the blood was so pressur- search Association held at Skokie, Illi- Butler. ised, it was then rather odd that they then nois. Andrew faced the problem of (Actually, there is an Andrew Butler, had to extract any to take to test, when travelling several thousand kilometres who edits or has edited one of the Tolkien surely it should spurt out at the tiniest to receive an award from a committee Society magazines in Britain, although to prick. I’m now on beta-blockers and the chairman (Paul Kincaid) who lived not the best of my knowledge I’ve never been pressure’s coming down. far from him in Britain. Hence, his confused with him. It may, of course, be There are, of course, people I should acceptance speech was delivered by that he’s been confused with me, which thank in my absence — although perhaps Maureen Kincaid Speller — friend of rather suggests I should offer a third they’d rather not in case they get the Andrew, partner of Paul Kincaid, and apology, to him.) blame. Obviously thanks go to the people founding editor of Acnestis — at the I am also confused with Andy Saw- who judged the award and to those SFRA 2004 conference.] yer. I have to be careful what I say here, people who have organised this year’s because I have nothing against Andy SFRA conference; as a former co-organ- Sawyer, but it’s just that Andy Sawyer iser of an SFRA conference I have some I’d like to begin with two apologies: first does such a good job of being Andy Saw- idea of what you are going through right I am not Andrew Butler. Nor for that yer, that I can’t begin to compete. I can now. matter am I Andrew M. Butler. remember a Liverpool PhD student sug- Thank you to Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Secondly, I, which is to say Andrew gesting a drink after work, which was a Jr, whose suggestion that Mark Bould and/or Andrew M. Butler, channelled pleasant idea, but inconvenient as I lived and I should do a special issue of Science for now via Maureen Kincaid Speller, am two hundred miles away – whereas Fiction Studies on the British Boom we sorry not to be with you at this confer- Andy was rather closer – and then there learnt of by reading the journal. I jotted ence, because I would very much have a letter of complaint from a reviewer down my ideas about the boom on the liked to receive this award in person – in whose name had been misspelt in Foun- back on an envelope and Istvan nodded part because it might be the very first dation and who, by the way, had enjoyed sagely, before taking it away with him, thing I’ve won. talking to me at a conference (to which I presumably to ensure that I’d never write Actually, I might be lying. I have this hadn’t actually been). I presume that was the article. dim memory of a school sports day, Andy Sawyer again at that conference. Thanks to my old comrade, Mark where I led the field in the egg and spoon I have to say, and this is partly why I Bould, who generously indulged my race. insist on my middle initial and partly a neuroses as they developed at the insti- Then there was the occasion when I result of it, that I live in constant fear of tution where we worked together for came second in the Science Fiction Foun- being exposed as the charlatan I so clearly three and a half years, and whose article dation raffle, and won a pile of signed am. This is not some inverted modesty on (Mark Bould, ‘What Kind of Monster Are Neil Gaiman comic books. First place my part or fishing for compliments, but I You? Situating the Boom’, Science Fiction went to John Clute who, if I recall cor- am genuinely surprised by the fact that Studies 30.3 (November 2003), pp. 394– rectly, won a Happy Meal at a major anyone wishes to read what I write. The 417] was written in tandem with my own. burger chain. I think I got the better deal. M. is a comfort blanket. The shy, retiring, I suspect we both ended up stealing from But I did plan to be with you today. It introverted Andrew Butler can sit at his each others’ drafts, and it must have been appealed to my sense of humour that computer, drafting a script that Andrew those bits that swung the award for me. evening when I received an email about M. Butler can read out – but Andrew I’ve learnt so much from so many of the award from Paul Kincaid, the chair of Butler could never say those things. In you, and I’m constantly struck by the the Pioneer judges, who lives some fact Andrew Butler would be reluctant to excellence of the science fiction academic twenty minutes away from me, giving be with you because he’d be embar- community, as scholars and as friends. me news that meant we both needed to rassed. My fear is that if I lose my M., then Thank you all. fly a few thousand miles and across sev- you’ll never hear from me again. And now thinking back, I can remem- eral time zones to shake each other’s (I realise, of course, that this may ber more details of that egg and spoon hands. I did wonder whether it would be mean some concerted campaign to leave race. It would have been 1975 or 1976, more convenient for Paul and I simply to out my M. from each appearance of my and it was actually my birthday. Think of invite all of you lot across to visit us. As pseudonym in future, precisely in the me being five or six and in short trousers. it is, you are being addressed by someone hope that I disappear.) I presume I’d already demonstrated my even closer to Paul, and that appeals even Neither of us can be with you for two prowess by coming a distant last in every more. further reasons – I am right in the middle other race else I’d entered, but for some At first, I confess, I presumed that of hitting a marking deadline and this reason I went in for the egg and spoon Paul’s email was a joke, or that he’d got

27 race in which you had to balance an egg- keep my nerve and my balance . . . Five So this is the first thing I’ve ever won, sized ball on a spoon over fifty yards, yards. Four yards . . . Three . . . Two . . . and I’m flattered and flabbergasted and without the aid of glue or your thumb. I And then I looked back to see how far honoured beyond words to receive it, turned out to be good at this, and in fact ahead I was. Disaster! I dropped the egg. even in absentia. If you do find yourself was leading the field. The crowd were By the time I’d scooped it up, everyone in Canterbury (especially if you picked cheering me on as everyone else was else had crossed the line. Later that day I up a bottle of Laphroig in duty-free), do dropping their eggs all over the place. I had to retire to bed with sun stroke or drop in so I can thank you in person. was a good dozen yards ahead of who- heat exhaustion. Thank you. ever was in second place, if I could only There’s a moral there, I suspect.

Dissenting opinion

If this goes on: Butler, Science Fiction Studies, Interzone and the ‘British Boom’

Paul Brazier

[The following section was first pub- I would expect a critical investigation case, but the current ‘boom’ features lished as ‘If This Goes On’, Interzone such as this purports to be to attempt to mostly writers who were already active 193, Spring 2004, pp. 59–60; also re- examine the evidence, all of it, and draw when Labour came to power, so while viewed were Gwyneth Jones’ Midnight conclusions based on it. Instead of this, the government may have encouraged a Lamp, Mary Gentle’s 1610 and Eliza- we get a hotch-potch of assertions that pre-existing trend, it seems ridiculous to beth Hand’s Bibliomancy.] select their evidence and ignore large claim that they are responsible for it, I don’t know much about Paul Brazier, tranches of what has happened since however in favour of them you might be. but I do know that he has been involved 1984. Matt Hills now offers an intriguing in the publication of David Pringle’s Following the Miéville interview, look at counterfictions in Kim Newman’s Interzone for some years, and, since there is a farrago entitled ‘Thirteen Ways work. Again, there is a lot to think about David has relinquished editorship of of Looking at the British Boom’ wherein here, but precious little to do with the the magazine, has announced his own Andrew M. Butler, having apparently boom, and also precious little to do with subscriber site, quercus.com, which made notes towards an essay, then finds science fiction. I like Kim Newman and I will feature high-quality new short sci- that he can’t make a coherent essay out of think he is a fine writer, but I have read ence fiction.] those notes but doesn’t want to waste all few of his books because I often don’t that work so publishes the notes un- understand the post-modern cultural ref- digested. erences in them. I would have put him We don’t often review academic journals The point apparently being made is down as a horror writer but Hills claims here [in Interzone] because they plough that, unlike the New Wave, there is no his rewritings of Robert Louis Steven- their own furrow and it is parallel and one movement that has given rise to this son’s Jekyll and Hyde story mean he is rather distant from our focus on fiction. ‘boom’; there are just an extraordinarily reinventing Gothic SF as a counterfactual However, Science Fiction Studies No 91 diverse number of different people who or, to use the more familiar term, a paral- ($US12, SF-TH Inc. at DePauw Univer- have all made it happen. This collection lel world. All very interesting but not my sity) purports to be a first attempt to of undigested nuggets concludes with idea of science fiction, and certainly not examine ‘The British Boom’. I place that Butler quoting largely from his own central to ‘the boom.’ title in ironic quotation marks because I work elsewhere, which only reveals how Joan Gordon returns with a long essay disagree that any such thing exists and self-referential the whole process has on China Miéville. Were they really so find the essays offered here unfocused, been. short of material that they had to feature unconvincing and extremely partial. Next up, Mark Bould makes a brave the same author examined by the same The issue begins with an interview by stab at linking the ‘Boom’ to the Doctor critic twice? Perhaps so, because the next Joan Gordon of China Miéville and as Who milieu and media SF in general. This piece is the text of a largely autobio- such it is an interesting piece of work. is an interesting point of view. There is graphical talk given by Stephen Baxter However, it quickly becomes plain that certainly a stream of continuity that can’t about baby boomers. It is fascinating in the editors of this magazine see Miéville be ignored here and I would have liked itself but adds little to the debate about as somehow embodying or representing to see more. However, instead, it is fol- ‘the British Boom.’ the British Boom, whereas the books he lowed by Roger Luckhurst trying to Finally, Andy Butler and Mark Bould has published are no more than some of claim that the ‘boom’ is somehow a prod- offer a selection of comments from other the more recent representatives of a solid uct of the Labour Government’s cultural leading lights in British science fiction, a trend in British publishing that has been governance. He makes an interesting kind of letter column before the fact, and growing for the past 20 years.

28 most of the penetrating comments that not a boom, but the emergence into no- Astounding/Analog characterises the appear in this publication appear here. tice of a long-established steady growth, Golden Age of science fiction, while The section closes with a long list of writ- a simple resurgence in science fiction in Michael Moorcock and New Worlds does ings that might or might not be consid- Britain. the same for the New Wave. But this new ered part of the boom. But their sins are more heinous even movement, this so-called British Boom, is And I threw my hands up in despair. than that. Much is made throughout this not magazine-focused at all. Of course, It is mentioned several times that the publication of the fragmentary nature of Interzone has launched the careers of definition of science fiction that Science what they are trying to discuss. Of course many novelists from Stephen Baxter, Fiction Studies uses has been revamped it’s fragmentary: they’ve pulled in every- Richard Calder, and Greg Egan to, lat- recently to allow more discussion of re- thing they can find that might be labelled terly, Liz Williams, and it is difficult to lated works such as fantasy and horror. fantastic in any way in order to justify assess accurately how much influence However, this reading list and the pre- talking about works of fantasy as being the fact that there was a home-grown vious list of authors who might be at the centre of their subject where they professional magazine market has had — deemed to be part of ‘the boom’ seems should have been talking about works of certainly, several of the new writers that determined to rope in every single science fiction. I have introduced here are now produc- author who has published anything even They got closest to understanding ing and submitting novels to publishers vaguely fantastic from the past twenty what they were doing when they dis- and I have high hopes for them — but years and, by excluding nothing, effec- cussed cultural continuity. The editors, most of this new resurgence is novel- tively fails to draw any kind of boundary the people who buy books that then sell, based, and it is sad to have to acknow- around its subject area. they are the ones who have made this ledge that perhaps the magazine as the Its sins of inclusion, however, are happen and they are the products and guiding light of a generation of novelists massively overwhelmed by its sins of manifestations of that cultural continu- has had its day. omission. To fail to examine the role of ity. There are far too many to name them Nevertheless, to ignore the work of Peter F. Hamilton in starting the snow- all, but certain names spring immedi- the editors in the trade today is quite ball rolling is to ignore the core power- ately to mind — Malcolm Edwards, John simply to ignore the reason there is any- house of the current success of science Jarrold, Jane Johnson, Peter Lavery, thing that could be termed a boom. This fiction in Britain. Equally, to overlook Cathy Gale, who originally encouraged issue of Science Fiction Studies adds no- Iain M. Banks is to dismiss an extra- Peter F. Hamilton and, of course, our thing to our understanding of where it ordinary talent who has succeeded in own David Pringle — have been there, came from or where it is going. If you bridging the gulf between mainstream soldiering on, largely unacknowledged want real insight, look rather to the his- and science fiction and insisted that each outside the trade, but doing the work that torical record of Interzone to give you side take the other seriously. And to pass has made modern British science fiction some notion of what might have caused over Alasdair Reynolds is miss the prime the success it is. today’s boom. David Pringle should be example of what they are talking about, For many, John W. Campbell editing proud.

Thank you, everybody for raising the money through the BBB (Bring Bruce Bayside) Fund to send me (Bruce Gillespie) to Corflu in February 2005.

The Fund has been subscribed beyond the wildest dreams of me or the administrators, but we still have available copies for sale of

The Incompleat Bruce Gillespie A selection of Bruce Gillespie’s fanzine writing

$10 from Bill Wright, Unit 4, 1 Park Street, St Kilda West VIC 3182 or see me at Corflu or Potlatch in San Francisco in February.

29 Letters of comment

E. D. WEBBER Libanius, an academic/rhetor [rhetorician?], (having landed a spot on Tor’s mailing list, I CoA: 19 Leslie Avenue, Goroken NSW 2263 which is an exterior one delivered mainly as a get books from them regularly now). If I can’t To Paul Kincaid: While it is quite true that public speech, and Augustine’s Confessions, manage to sell a review of it, I’ll certainly historians and novelists tend to be interested which is the type specimen of the kind I like. review it for SET. Glad to hear you got home in the process of change and, for the sake of I want to correct Arthur Clarke (back cover safely after what must have been a focus as a means of maintaining the reader’s of SET). What Belloc wrote in his comic poem bewildering experience at those airports on attention, what I found lacking in your alterna- ‘Lord Lundy’ was this, in a speech from the Duke, Sept. 11 — and I bet that’ll be writing fodder tive civil wars thesis in Steam Engine Time was the ‘aged grandsire’ to the failed politician: soon enough.] a greater view of the states involved. At the risk of painting too large a canvas, the American The stocks were sold; the Press was squared; TOM COVERDALE War Between the States was essentially a con- The Middle Class was quite prepared, Flat 10, 25 Docker Street, Richmond VIC test between the industrialism of the northern But as it is! . . . My language fails! 3121 states and the agricultural ones to the south. A Go out and govern New South Wales! Belated thanks for the latest Steam Engine Time. contest between raw materials and techniques, I’ve been dipping into it along with my morning in other words, and the British interest from the That last is one of my favourite lines of English muesli. Not up to the last SF Commentary, but sidelines had as much to do with its own poetry. still well worthwhile. I’m thinking of ways I can industrial interests in cheap raw materials as it Paul Kincaid’s piece on alternate Civil Wars pay for my subscription with some wordage but did anything else, up to and including slavery. was very interesting to me. I have read Ward first have to finish The Hook Book, which I’m The supply of cotton is but one example, Moore and Churchill. If the South had won working on with Ray Wood. What sort of articles capitalised as it was by Britain. So too was the independence, it might have been a disaster for are you either looking for or short of in (a) SF American, and Argentinean, cattle business, Britain in the twentieth century: Britain could Commentary, (b) Steam Engine Time? explaining after a fashion why neither Ameri- not have won in either world war without huge 23 January 2002 cans nor Argentineans are lamb eaters to this American support . . . but Churchill was wrong day. Men on horseback against the tillers of to single out Gettysburg. I think the most [JS: See the introductory matter in thish for Jeffersonian notions of a rural republic is crucial time for the North was the autumn of more details on what we’d like to see in SET. another way to put it, as is the truism of 1864. People were thoroughly tired of the war, I’d like to see some articles that give an Argentineans being Italians who speak Spanish and if McClellan had won the election in Novem- overview of books dealing with a particular and think they’re English. This was while Aus- ber, he might well have made peace. But then theme; in a recent ish of Peregrine Nations tralia was riding on the sheep’s back and the came the great victory of Sherman, taking (my genzine), I ran an article on Indian industrial establishment was being sys- Atlanta, plus a spectacular success by Sheridan eschatological SF novels. It wasn’t tematically neutered, due to the imperial in the Shenandoah valley. Those triumphs en- all-inclusive, but several works were interests of what was then Great Britain. sured that Lincoln would win, and facing four mentioned, many of which I’d never read.] We see the Americans doing much the same more years of Lincoln, the South had no hope. thing throughout their empire — which their 11 January 2002 RICK KENNETT court stenographers say does not exist — PO Box 118, Pascoe Vale South, VIC 3044 today. The raw materials in question may have SEAN MCMULLEN I liked your piece on SF biographies and auto- changed, oil and other opiates having sup- GPO Box 2653X, Melbourne VIC 3001 biographies. I could add to Alan Stewart’s planted king cotton, but the techniques of 2001 felt like a ghastly year for us as well. The additions Lovecraft: A Life by S. T. Joshi, Robert socioeconomic imperialism have not. Were the worst of it was when we were on the way back Bloch’s Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized South to have won in its war to secede from the from the US, two hours out of Auckland, in a Autobiography (is Merv Binns aware he’s men- American Bismarck’s, howsoever ungrammati- United 747 when the September 11 attacks tioned in this?), Rod Serling: The Dreams and cal, ‘more perfect union’, it would undoubtedly began. As you can imagine, the cabin staff were Nightmares of Life in the Twilight Zone by Joel have become a de facto British dominion of pretty edgy, then we were confronted by most Engel, Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Televi- influence like Argentina until the shift of money of New Zealand’s police force in the airport sion’s Last Angry Man by Gordon F. Sander (OK, from London to New York caused by World War terminal. After being put aboard a Qantas flight I’m reaching with these two, but if Serling I. to Melbourne, then grilled by the Common- wasn’t strictly speaking a genre writer he was As for the slavery issue — and I say this as wealth Police (no, we had not noticed anyone the next best thing), On Writing by Stephen King a former civil rights worker in the sunny south- suspicious on our flight), we floundered out, to (as much an autobiography as it is a ‘how to’ land of my former country — issues come and be confronted by the media. I am not a good book), and Dean Koontz: A Writer’s Biography by go but vested interests have an annoying habit passenger at the best of times, so I was a bit Katharine Ramsland. of remaining the same. NAFTA, for instance, of a basket case by now then. Confronted with In SET 2, a letter of mine is immediately does not include the free movement of labour, a microphone, camera and the question ‘What followed by one from Cy Chauvin. According to and our leaders’ pipe dreams of a free trade pact do you think of international terrorism?’, I came the editor’s introduction to my story ‘Due West’ with the US was just that. out with some brilliant, witty, memorable reply in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 12, Mr Chauvin Still, your article about alternative civil wars along the lines of ‘Someone ought to do some- is actually a fictional character invented by me. was an interesting read. thing about it!’ Well, I had been in the air for Quotie: ‘Kennett does write the occasional 30 December 2001 17 hours, and did I mention the three earth space opera, most notably in the Cy Chauvin tremors that happened while I was trying to series of stories.’ I presume this is a slip of the DAVID J. LAKE have a quiet beer in the LA airport lounge? pen by the editor/copy editor/typeset- 7 Eighth Avenue, St Lucia QLD 4067 Catherine decided to call in at her school once ter/printer and not leakage from an alternative Steam Engine Time is fun. I liked your piece ‘The we got home, and she arrived to find a general universe. I’ve since pointed this out to Cy and Pure Quill’: I actually often find autobiographies assembly in progress and prayers being said for we’ve had a bit of a chuckle over it via email. more interesting than novels — but only what her safety. 23 January 2002 one might call interior autobiographies, not just 17 January 2002 accounts of what happened and what triumphs ERIC LINDSAY or disasters the hero experienced. The contrast [JS: Thanks very much for taking the time to PO Box 640, Airlie Beach QLD 4802 existed even in the 4th century AD — I have loc SET, Sean; I have a copy of Glass It is always good to read a lengthy, detailed read the so-called ‘autobiography’ of one Dragons in the To Review pile of books review such as Claire Brialey provides of John

30 Kessel’s Corrupting Dr Nice. However, at the PayPal, whereas American and British fans they clearly intended, into Western Europe, same time, if you haven’t read (or even heard seem to have no problems.] destroying enough to set back the dawning of of) the book, any actual reading now seems the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration by somewhat superfluous. [JS: Did she really give JOSEPH NICHOLAS a hundred or more years? that much away? Perspective is so individual; I 15 Jansons Road, South Tottenham, But perhaps a listing alone of these other didn’t get that impression at all from reading the London N15 4JU, England alternates is sufficient to explain why no one review.] I feel I ought to say something in response to has attempted them: they are just too damn Maybe I should just make sure I read a bunch Clare Brialey’s comments on John Kessel’s Cor- complex for any one person to explore unless of reviews, sort of like Cliff’s Notes, and not rupting Dr Nice, if only because it mentions my that person has an entire lifetime in which to bother with science fiction at all. That would review a number of times. I re-read that review, do so. But then again, I wouldn’t mind reading certainly save shelf space. It could go on the and glanced through parts of the novel, after novels drawn from these premises. [JS: If Steven shelf next to Thesaurus of Book Digests, invalu- reading Claire’s article, but on reflection would Barnes can take Socrates escaping as his starting able when you need a quick rundown of some pretty much stand by what I said. It’s not the point and write two novels as a result, I think classic you have neglected to read. [JS: And, greatest novel in the world, and doubtless it’s at least probable that someone could take one like pumpkin pie without spices, lose much of the someone somewhere will one day write a more of your examples and run with it.] flavor thereby.] It was long past Enid Blyton consistently funny one, but its twin satires — 16 March 2002 time before I finally discovered that books were of rich Northern tourism to the Majority World, produced by authors (what a concept!). Like and the quest for ceaseless novelty (there and ROB GERRAND Bruce, I initially thought they were part of the at home) by the citizens of the rich North — 11 Robe Street, St Kilda VIC 3182 very fabric of the universe, revealing truth, struck me as well realised. It might be — I enjoyed Gregory Benford’s ‘Waiting for Shake- liberty . . . oops, getting carried away there. although it’s surely unlikely — that one has to speare’, and Russell Blackford’s response. I However Moskowitz’s two volumes of articles experience something of this tourism/novelty wonder if Benford had posed his question more basically revealed that these people were not gig oneself to fully appreciate what Kessel is generally, would he have found an answer? In really in touch with reality. After all, why write saying; perhaps it’s therefore more likely that other words, has there been a second Shake- for next to nothing? [JS: There’s a lot to be said Claire’s sense of humour is just not congruent speare in any form of literature, not just in for not acquiring information on people one with Kessel’s. Oh well. science fiction? admires; so very often, something they’ve done Paul Kincaid’s article about alternate histo- There have been many great writers, I would will cause them to turn into clay-footed nitwits ries of the US Civil War seemed well researched, submit, but none that has been called another in the eyes of their admirers. It isn’t true for all although US history isn’t my forte (most of my Shakespeare. We should therefore not worry too admired persons; the more I learn about Russell knowledge of the Civil War is derived from much that science fiction has yet to throw one Crowe as an actor and a person, the more I like western movies!) and I can’t therefore comment up. [JS: Dialectic differences are so interesting; him, despite his shortcomings (and there are a directly on what he says; but what struck me as this phrase conjured up a startled turkey vulture few). The early SF writers wrote for nothing I read his article was just how many alternate for me. They vomit when startled, and their diet because that’s all that was on offer; I can’t fault histories of the US Civil War there are by com- consists solely of carrion.] them for that, because all these years later there’s parison with other possible subjects. More interesting is the number of important a group of people still reading their work and Where, for instance are the alternate histo- writers the field has nurtured. To the names talking about them.] ries of the English Civil War? (Indeed, why are Benford mentions I would add Philip K. Dick and 5 February 2002 there none?) One reason might be that no Jack Vance, both of whom have bodies of work matter how the English Civil War is rerun, you increasingly relevant, fascinating and thought- JANINE STINSON still end up with the Restoration in 1660 — but provoking. PO Box 248, East Lake MI 49626-0248, that of course addresses the particular example It is worth reflecting that Tom Shippey USA rather than the general issue. Several possible starts his book J. R. R. Tolkien, Author of the Perhaps, given your previous concerns about reasons for the overbalance in favour of the US Century, with the statement, ‘The dominant finances for pubbing SET (and if you haven’t Civil War suggest themselves — genre science literary mode of the twentieth century has been done so already), you should have a chat with fiction is largely a US creation that will neces- the fantastic. This may appear a surprising Eric Lindsay and Jean Weber about how they’ve sarily draw heaviest on US themes; the causes claim, which would not have seemed even re- set up a PayPal payment system for their pub- and consequences of the Civil War still resonate motely conceivable at the start of the century lished works. That’s how I paid for a copy of in contemporary US society; the US Civil War and which is bound to encounter fierce resis- Jean’s book on Microsoft Word and made a was one of the modern world’s first industrial- tance even now. However, when the time comes donation to GUFF for a copy of their 2001 trip ised conflicts and for that reason more to look back at the century, it seems very likely report. [JS: I still think this is a good idea.] If amenable to ‘scientific’ study of its outcomes; that future literary historians, detached from you’re worried that connecting a personal and so on. (A simpler reason might be that US the squabbles of the present, will see as its most checking account to a Web entity is dangerous, writers are largely ignorant of other nations’ representative and distinctive works books like you can always create a separate account for histories.) But that still doesn’t explain the J. R. R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings, and also payments made to and by you. That way, your failure of other writers to get to grips with other George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal personal money is still safe and you have a way turning points in history; turning points that Farm, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and The to increase the distribution of SET along with could have affected the path(s) taken by the Inheritors, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five getting money for it at the same time. I feel world as a whole rather than one individual and Cat’s Cradle, Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand safe in saying that at least 30 per cent of the nation-state. For example, suppose the Roman of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Thomas Pyn- people who’d download a copy of SET would be siege of Syracuse in 212 BC had failed, leaving chon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity’s willing to pay at least $3 to $5 US for it. Heck, Carthage still in control of the Western Mediter- Rainbow. The list could readily be extended back if you could get at least 10 people to cough up ranean and Greek cultural hegemony un- to the late nineteenth century with H. G. Wells’s that much, you’d be ahead by 30 to 50 bucks! challenged in the Eastern half — would there The Island of Dr Moreau and The War of the And it’d save you money too. It wouldn’t be a ever have been a Roman empire, or a lasting Worlds, and up to writers currently active . . .’ money-making enterprise by any stretch of the Roman polity at all? For another example, what I agree, though I would not include Pyn- imagination, but it’d put you a bit ahead when if the Byzantines had held or even defeated the chon in such illustrious company. Early last it comes to paying for print copies. Muslim forces at Yarmuk in 636 AD — would century it included Kafka, Huxley, Havel. Later, 24 February 2002 Islam have been confined to the Arabian pen- Borges, Barth and Burroughs. insula, never to become a global political force? For science fiction is — to take Christopher [BRG: Had Bill Burns set up efanzines.com Or what if Ogadei Khan had not died in 1241 Priest’s pregnant definition in this same issue in February 2002? I doubt it. That’s the main AD, forcing a recall of Mongolian forces from — the literature of visionary realism. If you way we now hope to reach casual readers. Central Europe to participate in the election of have something interesting to say these days, Australian fans report difficulties in operating a new Khan — might they have carried on, as it is usually said in a science-fictional way.

31 Blackford writes: ‘Some of the great mod- grounds, while somewhere off in the distance TERRY JEEVES ernists — Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound — gave the world ends. (OK, that’s overgeneralised; 56 Red Scar Drive, Scarborough, permission to those who followed to produce Ballard’s catastrophes, particularly The Crystal North Yorks YO12 5RQ, UK fragmented, obscure, essentially private World, are beautiful.) But Thomas M. Disch Benford (and others) seek a new Shakespeare, works . . . This has opened a gulf of incompre- wrote one of the worst of those, The Genocides, but aren’t they looking in the wrong medium? hension between much serious literature and before he’d set foot in the United Kingdom. Rather like seeking another Bing Crosby among the general reading public.’ I’d say the situation of SF by mainstream a bunch of pianists. Bill was a playwright, not Who else finds most ‘mainstream’ writing writers in the U.S. is not as bleak as Gene a book author. If they want a playwright, how dull or trivial? Alas, this also applies to much Stewart suggests. Gore Vidal and John Updike about Alan Ayckbourn? [JS: Perhaps the intent published as science fiction. have both written SF with impunity (Live from was to discern whether there is (or was) an SF Yet whether it’s published as magic realism Golgotha and Toward the End of Time, respec- writer comparable in stature to Shakespeare, and or with no SF badging, the writers with some- tively), and while Margaret Atwood is Canadian, not specifically a playwright; that was my im- thing to say usually use an SF or fantasy form. United Statesmen (and of course -women) have pression, at least.] This is because, I think, SF has resurrected the often claimed her as One of Ours, and did not I also enjoyed the Chris Priest speech. role of myth and story in literature. The sense stop doing so after The Handmaid’s Tale. The His Inverted World is one of my favourites. of wonder in great works such as Clarke’s The strangest reaction was back in the 70s when He always finds a new and different angle City and the Stars is all the stronger because it Thomas Berger did an uninspiring take on the to write about — see The Space Machine, his resonates with our internal mythos. good old gynocracy theme (Regiment of Women) Wells pastiche. Nice to read his comments, 17 April 2002 and some mainstream reviewers praised it, add- as health and finance keep me away from ing that of course those sci-fi writers never cons these days. ARTHUR D. HLAVATY came up with interesting ideas like that. I hope (10 June 2002) 206 Valentine Street, Yonkers NY 10704, we’ve gotten more sophisticated since then. USA [JS: We certainly have, but I often wonder if the MATTHEW DAVIS I particularly liked your article on SF bio- mainstream reviewers have.] 15 Impney Close, Church Hill North, graphies and autobiographies, and I agree there I enjoyed the Benford/Blackford dialogue. Redditch B98 9LZ, UK should be more. Robert Silverberg, for instance, I first encountered this discussion in Guy Lil- The first article I turned to was your own ‘The has a fascinating personal chapter in Hell’s lian’s Challenger, and was amused to see them Pure Quill’. Before I make comment I thought Cartographers (it begins, ‘Autobiography. say SF is an art form like jazz that doesn’t need I’d just point out a few books you missed. Most Apparently one should not name the names of a major Shakespeare-like figure, just as Ken notably there was a book of essays, Fantastic those one has been to bed with, or give explicit Burns did a Public TV series telling us that jazz Lives, edited by Martin H. Greenberg with auto- figures on the amount of money one has earned, had such a figure: Duke Ellington. (I wouldn’t biographical/critical essays by R. A. Lafferty, those being the two data most eagerly sought quite call him a Shakespeare, but the TV series P. J. Farmer, Norman Spinrad, Mack Reynolds, by readers; all the rest is legitimate to reveal’) may be a sign that we’re finally getting over the and others. Borgo Press and the Twayne writers and a more professionally orientated one in his racism that kept the Duke out of discussions of series have published critical studies of various Worlds of Wonder (now reprinted as Science comparable modernist giants like Eliot and twentieth-century SF writers, which take in Fiction 101), but I faunch for more. I eagerly Picasso.) biographical material. The various reference await the promised Cordwainer Smith and Tip- Anyway, I basically agree with Blackford, guides by the Gale Research Group (Contempo- tree bios, and I think Theodore Sturgeon would but I’d go further. Shakespeare did indeed work rary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, be an excellent subject for one. in a visual medium, but his work came down to Something About the Author, etc.) include most Judith Merril’s autobiography has just been us, and has had its influence, as words on a of the significant SF writers of the last 60–70 published; Clute and others have found it tan- page. If all that survived of a Kubrick movie years, and have given many of them the oppor- talisingly incomplete, as her writing energy (particularly 2001) was the screenplay, most of tunity to compose autobiographical essays. It’s appears to have given out halfway through. the experience would be gone. In general, I’d also worth mentioning that SF and Fantasy, Still, I am looking forward to reading it. say that SF movies are a different art form from while overlooked in the newspapers and jour- All I know about L. Sprague de Camp’s Time SF books — not better, not worse, but different, nals, have more reference guides available than and Chance is that he admits to not having a just as no one would say opera is the same sort other literary strands, including contemporary sense of humor, and what I read of the book of thing as poetry. mainstream fiction: numerous encyclopaedias, when we excerpted it in New York Review of I loved Christopher Priest’s hilarious de- the St James Guides to SF, Fantasy and Horror, Science Fiction gave me no reason to doubt his scriptions of his dealings with publishers, the Locus Indexes to fiction, and the H. W. Hall sincerity. We published a highly condensed including the one who found The Affirmation Indexes to Criticism and Non-Fiction. With Good Parts Version, and I fell asleep several too long a title and the one who ‘corrected’ his magazines, fanzines, and conventions, any SF times in the course of proofreading it. dedication. His books always sound fascinating, or fantasy author will have many more venues I would never call Orson Scott Card a fascist but I assume from his remarks on starting and and opportunities in which to make himself and — more like a conservative who thinks he’s a finishing that he still insists that a proper novel his work known than any comparable writer in liberal, which may be easier to do if one spends runs down, rather than ending. (I will resist the contemporary fiction. much of one’s time amongst the Latter Day temptation to describe that as British. Phil Dick As for why there are hardly any SF bio- Saints. He reacts to Lit Profs with a remarkable himself rarely knew when one of his books graphies. First, it’s necessary to have some per- display of fear and loathing. (See his essay in should end, a trait lovingly pastiched by spective regarding the publishing market for ‘Meditations on Middle-Earth’ on how those who Michael Bishop in The Secret Ascension.) biographies. Fullscale biographies are very claim to enjoy Ulysses could not possibly get I also like his prescriptive definition of rarely written about contemporary authors, and any real pleasure except that of ‘decoding’.) science fiction as the literature of visionary then it’s usually only the multi-million-selling I am sure that Christopher Priest is right realism. It describes the essential conjunctio household names. I may be wrong, but SF that there are bigots who think of some SF as oppositorum at the heart of SF, as do the doesn’t have any current author such as Stephen ‘too British’. I can’t imagine anyone finding a classical ‘cognitive estrangement’ and (my own King, whose fans will buy anything with his national flaw shared by such enjoyable writers favourite, generalisable from its original use as name on, so there isn’t the financial security as Eric Frank Russell, John Brunner, Barrington a description of Illuminatus!) ‘straight-faced for publishers to put money behind such a J. Bayley, Ken MacLeod, and Jasper Fforde. bullshit’. project. [JS: What about Arthur Clarke?] Look- Perhaps it is the erroneous assumption that 8 June 2002 ing at your bibliography, it’s telling that almost ‘British’ means catastrophe novels. I have never two-thirds of the books are from small presses been able to distinguish between ‘cosy catas- or the smaller university presses. trophes’ and the less comfortable sort. To me, Second, it’s only within the last 10–15 years they are all tales of grubby little people squab- that many of the most famous names in SF died, bling in meticulously detailed mundane back- so for the 20–30 years before that it was

32 unlikely that anyone would attempt a biography years. One might not make money on it, but one BOB SMITH of Heinlein, Sturgeon, Leiber, et al., either can do it quicker and easier now. Of course, Bradbury NSW 2560 because no publisher was interested, because whether a small press will publish a biography We can look at your look at biographies and any prospective biographer was too politic to still depends on whether the writer in question autobiographies, and ask ourselves ‘why?’ Your pass comment on an author still alive and well, had a significant enough impact on SF to bibliography, on the surface, seems reasonable, or else for the fear of the sheer stink that would warrant a biography, and a life of enough except that we have become familiar with an arise by trying to unearth dirt from the closeknit interest to make reading about it worth a awful lot of SF writers over the years, and most world of the 30s and 40s, when everyone seems reader’s time.] of what we have read was pretty straightforward to have a different interpretation of who did Look at the last few months of 2002: when biographical material that did not influence our what and when to whom. And now everyone an SF author dies, the tendency is to wrap this continued reading of that particular author. who knew them is just dead. Most biographies all up, say how sad, point out a few notable Unlike mainstream literature, it seems to have are written either by academics or journalists. works, and hope that there’ll be a revival of his taken science fiction quite a while to reveal the This is not a constituency that is much inclined works in a few years’ time. Much of the SF naughty bits. But that seems to be the flavour to dip into the world of SF and the murkier readership is a casual readership. For all that of recent years, in many aspects of the media: waters of fandom. Journalists who do love SF they have favourite authors, they don’t go much revealing the unpleasant and tragic sides of Big are usually too busy trying to get their own deeper than that. Almost 20 years on, who cares Name lives. From the science fiction fan’s point novels published or working to hire on the about (choose a name, any name, it doesn’t of view, perhaps it’s a case of ‘familiarity cobbled-up biography of the latest flash-in-the- even have to be from SF)? Most writers who died breeds . . .’ We were familiar with our favourite pan pop sensation to even begin such an 20 years ago won’t get a biography. SF is no SF writers via fanzines and brief biogs in undertaking. Most of your listed biographies are different in this — unless a writer suffers some anthologies, etc., and we happily referred to the works of people who really care about this terrible affliction, is sex-mad, or was a highly them on a first-name basis, or nickname. Would or that given author, not respectable authors controversial figure in his lifetime and therefore we plunge eagerly into the details of their lives? with an advance. [JS: I’m missing something offers the reviewing cadre a healthy dose of For the most part, we already knew their lives here. Are you saying that those listed bio- prurience. SF can offer this, but it probably were little different from ours. Their names graphers are not respectable and get no advances wouldn’t do the overall image of SF much good. were, in the main, only famous in our genre. We for their biographies? Or are you saying that the Maybe someday someone somewhere will write all have our favourite biographies and auto- listed biographies are on writers who are not an Eminent SF Writers about Sturgeon, Heinlein, biographies, and what a science fiction writer respectable and get no advance? What do re- Campbell, Asimov and Hubbard, but I wouldn’t has to say seems tame by comparison. If you spectability and advances have to do with the hold your breath. [JS: Perhaps someone is work- have grown up on a rich diet of prose writing biographical worth of any given writer?] ing on such a book this very minute . . .] about great people, then the likes of Pohl’s Besides, writers’ autobiographies are not 11 June 2002 ‘memoirs’ is almost boring (and I’m an SF fan), much sought after in the publishing world. The and Miller on Hubbard is fascinatingly readable majority of autobiographies are ghosted sports, STEVE SNEYD for all the wrong reasons. Sure, biographies and media and music personalities. Writers’ auto- 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, autobiographies are Big Business, but wouldn’t biographies make up a mere fraction of the West Yorkshire HD5 8PB, UK we rather leave our favourite SF writers with a yearly turnover, and about half of those are Re the ‘cosy catastrophe’: modicum of mystery? I have no doubt the posthumous or as near as dammit, a favour to • It’s surprising how the name of John completist collectors amongst your readers will a long-serving list author. Most SF writers write Lymington is always ignored. To me he add a few more to your bibliography; didn’t up until their dying day, trying to sell novels was the subtlest of this group of writers Grania Davis write about Avram Davidson, and and stories, to remain viable commercial names, in his echoing of external collapse with Frederic Brown’s wife ditto? and therefore have little time for such an internal character flaws and social decay. Steam Engine Time 3: I have a lurking sus- uncertain project. The only SF writers who do • It’s a neat irony that Aldiss himself picion that Greg Benford’s tongue was firmly in seem to work on autobiographical materials are produced a very elegant ‘cosy catastrophe’ his cheek when he wrote this piece about those who have withdrawn from writing fiction, in Greyboard, with its elegiac Wind in the Shakespeare and SF, but it was entertaining. I which therefore places them in the perilous Willows feel; and Michael Moorcock stays hope that back in the 1960s the young Greg position for a publisher of being an SF writer in the same frame in his Jerry Cornelius Benford put that academic in his place. Perhaps who is no longer writing SF. [JS: So where do works, with JC as a lifestyle guru while if he had come down a few pegs from Towering writers’ blogs fit into this scheme? A lot of worlds are going to destruction all around. Genius, some interesting comparisons could currently working writers have them, and a lot I enjoyed K.V. Bailey’s elegant discussion of have been made with science fiction; but old of biographical material gets into those blogs.] the mind-borne cosmic voyage genre. The tra- Will stands alone. Many who found SF fascinat- The last 10 years of Leiber’s life saw almost dition persists: the Poet Laureate (Andrew ing over the years were happy to leave no new fiction, but with columns in Locus and Motion)’s ‘Millennium’ poem took just that form. Shakespeare behind ’em at high school; ironi- Fantasy Newsletter he’d already begun examin- To describe Keith Roberts’ The Chalk Giants cally, nowadays a good film or TV adaptation of ing the course of his life, resulting in a piece as evidence of a fear of the future seems unduly the Bard’s work will attract more attention than like Not Much Disorder and Not So Early Sex. reductionist. It could equally be read as an any of the so-called SF nonsense that appears. The matter of fanzines and magazines is effective meditation on the cyclic theory of I chuckled at the hoary chestnut of Edward important, too: as I mentioned above, SF history — a post-nuke future recapitulating the Devere that Greg tossed in, particularly since authors have more places in which to expatiate various stages of prehistory. his descendant is still making waves. I like the and blather, which to a certain extent precludes 11 June 2002 comparison with jazz (particularly if one has the need for them to say more. Across interview grown up with SF and jazz); but really, science after interview, fanzine piece after critical re- fiction, whatever end of the time scale one view, by the time he dies, it’s an unlucky author discovered it, is what the individual makes it. who hasn’t had much of his working life and [BRG: Bob Smith died several months before 12 June 2002 salient intimate moments displayed before any- John Foyster, in 2003. He discovered fandom one who cares to take notice. [JS: Given this, in the 1950s, was an important figure of the MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER it shouldn’t be too difficult for a person to collect Sydney scene during the 1960s, then gafiated PO Box 8093, Silver Spring, MD 20907, as much of this material as is still available, after being one of the main organisers of USA combine it with said person’s own perspective Syncon II in 1972. In the last ten years his Many thanks for Steam Engine Time Nos 2 and on a particular writer, and have a biography letters of comment have again graced the 3. I found Bruce Gillespie’s article about bio- published. There are plenty of small presses pages of fanzines throughout the world. The graphies and autobiographies fascinating, available, and there’s always the POD compa- following is by no means the last letter of since I collect these books. As a result, I found nies as well. It’s much easier to publish (but not comment that he wrote:] some errors, and several books that Bruce so easy to sell) a book these days than in previous missed:

33 • The Judith Merril book, Better to Have wheeling nature of early jazz, but if the future their own way into the genre. [JS: SF and Loved, is not a biography, but an of SF resembles that of jazz, SF is a genre in publishing have changed a lot since their time; autobiography that Merril did not finish permanent decline, which it will only survive how much of their experience is still germane to by the time of her death in 1997. It was because of patronage. [JS: Why does the next writers today? Much of what writers learn about completed by Merril’s granddaughter, question have to be ‘What sort of jazz?’ My the technical aspects of writing are common to Emily Pohl-Weary, from a partial understanding was that the analogy between SF all fiction (characterisation, story line, setting, manuscript and from tapes dictated by and jazz that Benford made was to include all theme, etc.), and not specific to SF. Heinlein, Merril. forms of jazz (as science fiction includes many Campbell and Asimov had the pulps to push their • L. Sprague de Camp also published an ‘sub-genres’). And if you think the future of jazz careers along, at first, then went primarily to autobiography, Time and Chance (Donald is in jeopardy, what evidence do you have that books when the pulps died. Today’s writers have Grant, 1995), which won the Hugo. supports your theory? I went to see Bela Fleck the Web, which I find at least minimally analo- • Russell Miller’s biography of L. Ron and the Flecktones this summer and, from what gous to the pulps, as it is a medium which often Hubbard is Bare-Faced, not ‘Barefaced’, I heard there, at least one form of jazz is alive, has no quality meter included.] Perhaps they Messiah. My understanding of the lawsuit well and living in the US. If you’ve never heard believe that the greatness of those mentioned with the Scientologists is that the of Fleck, then you haven’t been paying attention is magnified through the lens of time, and their hardcover editions were allowed to be to jazz lately. As for the ‘highly paid superstars’ own place in the SF pantheon will be similarly published in Britain and America while of jazz, you don’t name them. Rock and pop enhanced given enough time. Is there anything the paperbacks were blocked. generally have a handful or so of ‘highly paid to learn in a biography or autobiography, or are • SF interview collections include at least superstars’ at any given time, and the rest are they simply interesting and pleasant reads? Are four volumes of Science Fiction Voices from mid-range in popularity, climbing up or down they complements to fan histories, especially Borgo Press, of which I believe one is by the charts at any given time, so if the same is true the Knight book on the Futurians? I tend to the Darrell Schweitzer and three are by Jeffrey for jazz, then it’s nothing extraordinary. The pleasant read, myself, based on the few bios Elliot. Confusingly, Schweitzer has a only patronage jazz needs is listeners; the avail- I’ve read, but I’d be happy to be proved wrong different volume called SF Voices (T-K ability of music via the Web has made it possible with some educational and informative books, Graphics, 1976), which has earlier for thousands of musicians to provide their like Jack Williamson’s book. [JS: Someone interviews. Paul Walker’s Speaking of music to potential listeners (regardless of their should be paying attention to this. It sounds like Science Fiction (Luna Publications, 1978) musical capability) in an inexpensive way, and a great idea for an article.] includes interviews conducted in the early often without a record company included. Niche Emily Pohl-Weary has published and publi- 1970s for Luna Monthly. Larry McCaffery’s marketing is now in its heyday; just look around cised her biography of Judith Merril through a Across the Wounded Galaxies (University of the Web.] signing promo tour, which has gone through Illinois Press, 1990) is pompous and 13 June 2002 Toronto several times now. I cannot speak of academic, but nonetheless has sub- the success of the book, but it has been long stantial interviews with Russ, Sterling, LLOYD & YVONNE PENNEY awaited, especially by those in the Toronto Benford and other writers. Last, Stan 1706-24 Eva Rd., Etobicoke, ON M9C 2B2, community who had long-time involvement Nicholls’s Wordsmiths of Wonder (Orion, Canada with Judith, and even those who really didn’t 1993) has 50 interviews with SF, fantasy Steam Engine Time 2: like her all that much, of which there were more and horror writers, but fully half the Not only is there a need, there is a demand for than several. One critic we all know said that interviews are with SF writers. a fanzine, or more fanzines, that actually dis- Judith was respected and loved, but she wasn’t • Piers Anthony has followed Bio of an Ogre cusses themes and ideas in SF. Fandom and the all that likable. with a second volume of autobiography, reading/watching public, all consumers of SF in In the letter column, Gene Stewart says that How Precious Was That While (Tor, 2001). its various forms, discuss all aspects of both science fiction is moribund unless it can come • Keith Roberts’ Lemady is a curious written and visual works online. But, as I’ve said up with new wonders to dazzle us. As SF con- autobiography, since the framing device elsewhere, there are so many SF&F books avail- tinues under the management of new writers, of the book is a dialogue between Roberts able, and a dwindling number of literate its ability to dazzle us is more a function of our and one of his characters. This may be one readers, and the possibility that any group of increasing age than any failure on SF’s part. SF reason why the first edition did not appear readers has read the same book is fairly low. needs not only new wonders, but new readers from a major publisher, but from Borgo Nonetheless, that group is there, and they need who need dazzling, with, I hope, some of the Press in 1997. to discuss those books, and possibly draw in dazzle that may have bounced off our thicken- • The author of the authorised biography of those who haven’t, and point them towards ing hides. When readers of any genre fail to get Arthur C. Clarke is Neil McAteer, not something good to read, or steer them away that same spark from their reading, they find ‘McAlfer’. I own this book but have not from something bad. something new to read. So, as some of our own read it. The review of John Kessel’s book reminded numbers leave to reclaim the spark in another Perhaps Christopher Priest would be less me of some suspicions confirmed by a local pro genre, say, suspense/mystery/detective fic- bothered by Sturgeon’s Law if it was inverted; author . . . watch for the promotional blurbs on tion, as many of them do, I would hope that instead of saying that 90 per cent of everything a book’s cover, and the more there are, or the some who get tired of Clancy, Steele, Grisham is bad, why not argue that 10 per cent of more effusive they are, the greater the prob- and the like might see what we’ve been reading, everything is excellent? ability that the book’s a stinker. The lack of and like it. [JS: One of the things that sucks Priest is right about the best German and these blurbs indicates a publisher’s confidence about getting older is that one has seen a lot French SF authors not being translated into in the quality of the book. I guess the more the already, and that makes it more difficult for an English. Perhaps an enthusiastic print-on- praise given, the more the book needs it. [JS: artistic work to ‘dazzle,’ as it’s too easy to see demand publisher would do the job. I could also That still depends on the book and the publisher. influences and then pick the thing apart. I have see a small or medium-sized publisher issuing It’s not a general rule among all publishers, in to tell that part of my brain to shut up so I can these writers as literary SF, with the first edition my experience. Steven Barnes’ Lion’s Blood enjoy the work, more often than I care to recall.] being a trade paperback. As for Priest thinking had some major endorsement blurbs, and I found You ask about articles detailing how I dis- that Americans would find ‘glamour’ an ‘eccen- them all to be quite accurate (and I loved the covered a particular writer . . . I could write tric’ spelling — doesn’t he know that one of the book).] I think when it comes to biographies about how I discovered the work of Richard highest-circulation fashion magazines in the US and autobiographies, readers and proto-writers Matheson, but I did so through the media, is Glamour? from decades past might have read those books Matheson’s Twilight Zone screenplays, and then Gregory Benford has made the argument to find out what steps the greats took to become through the movie Somewhere in Time. It does about SF being ‘jazz’ before, most notably in a great. Today, I find that many modern SF writers get very literary as I try to find all of Matheson’s preface to Foundation’s Fear. But, of course, the have little or no knowledge of those greats, or books, and enjoy all his SF . . . Matheson’s next question is: what sort of jazz? Perhaps don’t really care to know how Heinlein, Camp- horror leaves me cold, as does most horror. Benford likes the improvisational and free- bell and Asimov did it, and are content to carve Anders Holstrom mentioned in the WAHF

34 column that issue 1 had ‘Not even any frivolous the archetypal SF plots: alien invasion, the trip own expense, Das Druidentor, in Germany a illos to take the edge off’. Any complaints from to another planet, the mad scientist, etc. But bestseller and the bestselling title in its quarter him about the cartoon on page 31? was Wells a Shakespeare? Rather not, as he in the Bertelsmann Book Clubs, but neverthe- lacked the verbal skill of the Bard. less nobody was interested. Donald Wollheim Steam Engine Time 3: On the Continent, Jules Verne created published a number of translations as a hobby. Congratulations to Ditmar on his Ditmar! Well world-stretching voyages extraordinaires, but Michael Kandel was supposed to do a translation deserved, and overdue, too. did he have any language skills? Did he use of Marek S. Huberath’s The Nest of Worlds for I’m thinking that trying to find a modern characterisation? Jamais. Harcourt Brace, but that was a couple of years Shakespeare in SF’s writers is like trying to As a Middle European reader of SF I under- ago and the novel still hasn’t appeared. I read describe how sharp a knife is. Perhaps some are stand that German authors are mainly left out somewhere that Eschbach’s Der Haartep- sharper than others, but for most, as long as it of the general discussion because of the lan- pichknopfer would appear in English, but I do cuts, it’s good. I don’t know how constructive guage barrier. Who else but Kurd Lasswitz was not know where; but at least in France Eschbach it is to try to crown a king or queen among our ever translated? Have you or your readers heard and Kai Meyer, another of the young successful writers . . . there’s always enough egoboo to go of Herbert W. Franke, Gisbert, Haefs, Marcus writers, appear to do very well. around, and credit to go to those who have Hammerschmitt, to name a few of the better After the fall of the Soviet Union, no SF given us that fleeting sensawunda. German authors? works of the highest quality appeared that Early in my SFnal career, I read a lot of John There are also such outstanding East Euro- couldn’t have been published in Soviet times, Wyndham . . . Chocky, The Midwich Cuckoos, The pean writers as Stanislaw Lem and Arkadi and and the general run of SF there seems to be very Kraken Awakes, The Chrysalids, The Day of the Boris Strugatski (who wrote Roadside Picnic, my low, with many US books being best-sellers Triffids, more. At the time, I found Wyndham alltime favourite SF novel). there that nobody has heard of here. The Stru- one of the few British authors I could read and I would not compare Lem to Shakespeare, gatskys are still by far the best Russian SF enjoy. About a year ago, I had a job interview but the author of Solaris and The Futurological writers, with nobody else even coming close. with an insurance company who also owned and Congress and The Star Diaries and a large number The book markets in Poland, the Czech Republic operated a magazine for the insurance industry. of essays could be ranked with the likes of or Hungary are full of American bestsellers, all The man who interviewed me was named John Ursula Le Guin or George Turner. Unfortunately, the trite stuff that the readers missed out on Wyndham. We had the interview, and then we Lem disqualified himself in later years by pro- during Communist times, and while many excel- talked for the rest of the hour on his namesake’s ducing suboptimal books like Fiasco or lent books get published too, their sales figures fiction, with which he was well acquainted. I self-pitying essays in which he claims to have are usually minuscule. didn’t get the job. I’m sure Mr Wyndham and I been the apostle of cyberspace. 20 June 2002 would have been too busy talking to get much The whole debate is rather futile. As Russell done. Blackford suggests, if a book is well written and ANDREW WEINER There’s so much that I’ve read that has been puts forth brilliant insights into human pro- 26 Summerhill Gardens, Toronto discussed in these pages that I simply can’t gress, critics will not regard it as SF. Who is the ON M4T 1B4, Canada comment further on. And of course, there’s so most influential SF writer? Wait 200 years to The Shakespeare of SF: that would have to be much I’ve yet to read. I have a nagging fear find out. Philip K. Dick, wouldn’t it? Although based not that as the field continues to grow in size, we’ll 19 June 2002 so much on what he actually wrote (it’s hard to be less able to discuss any given book or short imagine widespread quoting of Dick’s phrases story because there is so much to read. We’ll FRANZ ROTTENSTEINER and sayings) as his impact on the culture. Just have to further specialise in a particular sub- Marchettigasse 9/17, A-1060 Wien, before reading Benford’s piece, I saw a trailer genre or author or theme of writing, and the Austria for a new-to-video SF flick — as soon as I saw balkanisation of SF fans and readers will con- Shortly after the sad news on John Foyster I the aircars, I knew it had to be Dick, and it was, tinue. (Worth discussing? Maybe we should.) received the latest issues of your fanzine Steam the much-panned Impostor. [JS: Just goes to [JS: Yes, let’s. You first.] Engine Time, and I always wonder anew how you show it’s all a matter of taste – I kinda liked that 18 June 2002 manage to put out such interesting publications movie.] Dick’s vocabulary of the future — that, without any pretensions, manage to main- androids, aircars, wallscreens — has become ULRICH SPIEGEL tain a high level and to be entertaining at the synonymous with masscult sci-fi. Huelsenpfad 8, 51491 Overath, Germany same time. I was especially pleased to see Dave I remember seeing a British TV adaptation Does science fiction need a Shakespeare? Is Langford’s perceptive review of Kubin’s The of Impostor around 1962, before I was really there a best science fiction writer? Other Side, and Christopher Priest’s remarks on aware of Dick’s work. No aircars, but quite First, the bard was a playwright, so he the German writers Andreas Eschbach and Mar- engrossing, with what seemed a rather auda- appealed to which muse? Drama was his genre, cus Hammerschmitt. There have always been a cious resolution back then, but would surely be as was poetry, whereas the candidates in the number of European SF and fantasy writers an inadequate payoff to a full-length movie science fiction area are mainly novelists or short highly regarded in their own countries (at least now. Too bad Kubrick never got his hands on story writers. by the fans), and even some that were huge ‘The Electric Ant’. Was Shakespeare generally accepted by his bestsellers. But that had very little effect on 14 August 2002 contemporaries? I think he was seen as an foreign markets, and I cannot see any change entertaining author, but it was idealising pro- here; and if there is any, it is to the worse. KIM HUETT fessors and the Stratford industry that made There is little exchange in SF between Euro- Flat 29, 63 Pearson Street, Holder ACT him into the bard. I am a long-time member of pean countries, even between closely related 2611 the Deutsche Shakespeare Gesellschaft, so I rate languages, such as Italian and French, or French As somebody who has long enjoyed a well- Shakespeare over 90 per cent of all written and Spanish; the only current exception seems written biography (most of the folk I’ve been literature, including our own Goethe and to be Polish and Czech, at least from Polish to interested in weren’t the sort to sit down and Schiller. However, Shakespeare’s talent was Czech, since a number of Polish writers (above write about themselves) I can empathise with absorbing various literary sources and combin- all the fantasy humorist Andrzej Sapkowski) your disappointment that so few have been ing them with everyday life in Elizabethan and seem to be hugely popular in the Czech Repub- written about or by SF authors. Jacobean England, adding a vast amount of lic. But compared to the number of translations This is doubly disappointing, given that I insight into the human psyche, plus a variety from English, these do not matter at all. And have read Hell’s Cartographers from cover to and dexterity of language never later paralleled, into English it doesn’t work at all, except per- cover several times over the years and enjoyed and presenting this blend as only a great author haps for some private contacts and small the various histories. Not evenly, though I must is allowed to do: he never dared bore his publishers. There is the case of Wolfgang admit that Robert Silverberg’s story enthrals me audience. Hohlbein, a guaranteed bestseller in Germany, head and shoulders above all others for reasons Gregory Benford is right in insisting that SF with some 16 million copies in print. He had I can’t clearly pin down. I only know his is the started at the top with H. G. Wells, who created one fantasy novel translated into English at his only piece that makes me want to lay down the

35 book and start writing myself. made the comment that the best SF critics were tured the fond boyhood memory I have of that On a more positive note, at least we have, in Australia, because they were furthest re- better than the novel itself did when I reread in addition to the more usual resources or moved from the influence of the authors. (I it and subsequently wrote him a letter about it private papers and surviving friends and rela- think he was right.) [BRG: In my better for Vector. I don’t wish to diminish anyone’s tives, fanzines. A careful search will turn up moments, Cy, I probably still agree with you. On opinion of The Chrysalids. I only wish I could something by or about just about any author the one hand, I realise that becoming friendly evoke again the wonderful pleasure and visions you care to mention. [JS: The nonfiction book with the overseas authors and editors over the I had when first reading and re-reading and Meet Me At Infinity did a good job of collecting last thirty years has corrupted the Australian re-reading that book so long ago. It’s just so Tiptree’s articles in magazines and fanzines, as critical scene completely. On the other hand, amazing what one finds when re-reading books: well as unpublished writings. I found it a very getting to know something of the lives of some I never noticed the wonderful period charm of useful and insight-provoking read.] With other, writers — preferably dead writers you’re never The War Of The Worlds before. That never meant higher profile writers I wouldn’t be surprised if likely to meet over a dinner table at SF conven- anything to me as a teenager. at least a career outline and some insight into tions — can tell you a lot about their work. 13 February 2003 them could be divined by what’s been written Crossley’s biography of Stapledon had that effect in fanzines. Of course, to make use of it some- on me. Sutin’s biography of Dick is a constant MATS LINDER body would need to search those fanzines. source of valuable insights about PKD. Knight’s Gustav Adolfs vag 7B, S-761 40 Norrtalje, How right are you about the unobtainability book about the Futurians illuminates an entire Sweden of the Hubbard biography? I have a copy here era in a way no other book does. These are hardly Elaine Cochrane’s appreciation of R. A. Lafferty that you may have if you’re at all interested. exercises in hagiography, unlike (say) most I hope will draw more well-deserved attention More importantly, I know the nearest branch of Locus author interviews.] to this mad genius whose work is like none other the ACT Library has a copy, because the bugger I see the Judith Merril autobiography– but, it seems, is nowadays very difficult to come leers at me every time I walk down the bio- biography has just been published. But Doris by. I was lucky to start collecting him in time, graphy isle. Scientologists worldwide may well Lessing has also published a three-volume auto- many years ago. have bought a lot of copies but I suspect they biography, and it seems to me that, while she It is always fun to read other people’s lists fell well short of their objective. Buying up all has obviously written much else besides science of favourite works in one aspect or another. the copies after all would be a project that fiction, she must be included. Besides her five Inspired by the ‘Essentials’ lists, I started think- requires years of searching to scoop up all the ‘space’ novels, there are The Memoirs of A Sur- ing and came up with another such aspect which secondhand copies. Actually if I were the pub- vivor, Briefing For A Descent Into Hell and the I have not seen implemented before . . . Among lisher I’d be thrilled to learn the Scientologists last section of The Four Gated City, which is set all the books I have read there are many which were planning to do this. I could put out two in the future. (This is much more science fiction I consider great but there are only some of them editions and offer one for them to buy while than Merril wrote.) And The Four Gated City also — indeed not very many — which I would sneaking the other out the back for everybody has Lessing’s description of her visit to a One really, really want to re-read. (For instance, I else. I just know they would fall for this trick Tun meeting in London in the 1950s, which she want to re-read Crime and Punishment but not since the only Scientologist who understood also writes about in her autobiography. The Idiot; in this case, as in many others, it is capitalism was Elron himself. I also recently completed reading The Invis- quite difficult to pin down the reasons why I I see in the latest issue that Greg Benford ible Man: The Life and Liberties Of H. G. Wells by remember reading the one with such enjoyment likes the idea of naming Stanley Kubrick as the Michael Corain. The author stated in his intro- and fascination but not the other — although Shakespeare of science fiction. The proposition duction that he had admired Wells, before he perhaps finding it just as ‘good’; whatever that fails to move me, on the basis that films are so began the research on this biography, and then means.) long and you have to sit there and watch them found many things that had been neglected in Here, then, in no particular order, is a list all the way through to properly appreciate the previous biographies. Some of the emphasis is of SF and fantasy novels that may not be among story. Clearly an inferior medium to books, on the numerous affairs he had (all while he the ‘best’ or ‘most important’ ones that I have which I can read in small amounts, at times and lived with his wife — although forcing his wife read — but that I am looking forward to reading in places that suit me. [JS: Now that there are to change her first name upon their marriage again. (And which in some cases may turn out VHS and DVD players, one can do the same somehow seems even more odious) but quota- to be a disappointment . . .) with them as one does with a book, so this isn’t tions of various racist and anti-Semitic remarks • High-Rise (J. G. Ballard). Will not as much of a problem as it used to be.] But then, in Wells’ first non-fiction book seems even disappoint me; I’ve read it twice already. the twentieth century was a time of resurgent worse. The book describes Wells’ vision of the A fascinating counterpart to Lord of the fascism, so a fascist medium like film was an future (I believe it’s called A Modern Utopia), Flies, but this time with adults; riveting appropriate art form. If we really must consider and seems so reactionary after his evolution of and disquieting (just read the first other media beside books then my vote would mankind in The Time Machine. But perhaps not. paragraph!) go to Outline’s classic 1981 single, ‘The Cicada (I reread The Time Machine and The War in the • Echo Round His Bones and Mankind Under that Ate Fivedock’. A classic SF story set to three Air after reading the Wells biography, and while the Leash (Thomas M. Disch). The only minutes of snappy pop rhythms perfect for I still enjoyed them, there are so many comic thing I really remember about these books bouncing along to. Let’s see you do that to book ideas in them: eating human flesh, all the is that I found them very interesting. And 2001: A Space Odyssey. [JS: Well, I could do that tentacles — even in the wonderful scenes on well-written, of course. to Space Oddity (David Bowie), especially with the beach in The Time Machine at the earth’s • The Owl Service (Alan Garner). Such a the title song; it’s a bit slow, but still dance-able. end. And the time traveller doesn’t seem to beautiful, sad and moving little book! I’d give it a 75. ‘Return of the Giant Hogweed’ mind too much leaving Weena behind; she • Skallagrigg (William Horwood). Bought on by Genesis (the version with Peter Gabriel) also simply disappears: I don’t think he returns for a whim many years ago; proved to be an fits this slot.] her. Perhaps this is a result of Wells’ attitude original and gripping story about people 29 August 2002 toward women.) affected by cerebral palsy; contains a I tried to read Arslan after reading your slight fantasy element, and why it is not CY CHAUVIN review (I already had the book from the W3F more renowned in the SF/fantasy world I’ll 14248 Wilfred, Detroit MI 48213, USA collection) but quite quickly found it becoming never understand. Your article about SF autobiographies and bio- too sadistic/violent for my taste; not that you • Hard to Be a God and The Second Martian graphies is interesting. In some ways, it’s didn’t warn us. (Perhaps I thought the writing Invasion (A. and B. Strugatsky). Master- interesting to see you writing the article, be- would be too exquisite to resist.) [BRG: It’s the pieces by the masters of stories with a cause in the early days of SFC you used to take old problem, isn’t it? A book may tell of violent moral content (but without a boring the point of view, I thought, that one should events, but the writing itself is not violent. moment); will keep you thinking for a judge the fiction as fiction alone, and not be Arslan, rather, is one of SF’s few essays in long time afterwards. influenced by the circumstances of its writing complex and sinuous irony.] • Some of Your Blood (Theodore Sturgeon). or the author. And then Franz Rottensteiner Kev McVeigh’s article on The Chrysalids cap- Remember very little of it apart from how

36 very good I thought it was. it still my Stephenson favourite, even it’s the worst piece of fiction ever written. I • Pillar of the Sky (Cecelia Holland). Another above Snow Crash. don’t feel as bad about any of the fiction underrated masterpiece; one of the best published I do read as such. Unfortunately I stories about political power (although ERIKA MARIA LACEY BARRANTES became the person she’d shove every new ‘chap- set in Stonehenge times) I have ever read. (current address uncertain; somewhere in ter 99, because I haven’t decided where to put [JS: I enjoyed this one a lot too.] Queensland) it yet’ my way, although they always were • The Man in the Maze (Robert Silverberg). Reading about books I’ve already read is inter- blessedly short. A ‘minor’ work from his golden age, esting enough; I’ve managed to get my hands I think that ‘Call Me Dumbo’ is a brilliant probably, but such an original story! on a copy of Corrupting Dr Nice, long before I story, one I’ll be remembering for a long time. • Untouched by Human Hands, Citizen in received Steam Engine Time. (Long ago now!) I I read that in my early university years, too, and Space, Pilgrimage to Earth, Notions: do remember it, which is a lot more than I can so I’m all the more impressed I remember it. I Unlimited, Store of Infinity and Shards of say about most of what I consume. That’s a good think that perhaps the reason why I edged away Space (Robert Sheckley). Short stories sign. I could see how it was meant to be funny, from doing English at university was the pre- than which almost nothing is more fun to but didn’t think it much so — I kept griping ponderance of Dead Old Men in the literature read. about the stupidity of the woman running they were making people read. I had a look at • Gloriana (Michael Moorcock). Simply around Dr Nice and falling in love with him. the required readings list . . . and was promptly marvellous; this is what ‘historically Maybe the reason for why there aren’t many scared away. The sole ‘science fiction’ subject inspired’ fantasy is all about but what so autobiographies or biographies of SF writers is was no better; they made people read Stephen many other writers have botched. [JS: that they’re being written about in fanzines or Lawhead’s Song of Albion trilogy. Not the best This treatment of Elisabeth I made her have done so themselves. People have ‘when I of things to read, especially not when the tutor sound too ditzy for my taste; I suspect I met so-and-so’ or ‘the time Harlan nearly shot was known to have chosen it because of liking never understood what Moorcock was me’ . . . wait, that last one did get written. Fans Celtic imagery. trying to do in this novel.] can also talk to longer-established fans who’ve Kincaid’s information about history . . . • Nature’s End (Whitley Strieber and James met up with these folk and get to hear anec- never knew most of that. Just don’t read enough Kunetka). I have a soft spot for dotes about what Writer X did when certain about history, I guess, sticking too much to environmental-disaster stories; this is one things happened. Just my theory on this. social history and social commentary than any- of the best. (Two other fine ones — I laugh at the description, ‘I stickytaped a thing else. If the First or Second World Wars Wylie’s The End of the Dream and Brunner’s portable brown-paper cover which I used to hadn’t happened . . . I wonder how we would The Sheep Look Up — I have already cover my paperback books’ — the only books I be today, technologically and medically speak- re-read enough.) [JS: I still have my copy ever wanted to do that to were the Mills & Boon ing. If nothing else the wars did a lot to spur of the Strieber and Kunetka, even after the I used to read as a teenager. I kept being people into doing all kinds of things and con- former’s rather embarrassing venture into hyper-aware on the trains I was reading them tributed immensely towards rights of women ‘true life’ books with his alien-abduction and didn’t want others to know. Not an unusual and those of non-white ethnicities in the first tales. These days, the events in NE seem reaction, if the advertisements in the back of world countries. Now that I’d be curious about. even more likely. Maybe it’s time someone the books were anything to go by: they sold I’ve never thought of Sturgeon’s Law, as wrote about it?] plastic covers with a discreet Mills & Boon logo Christopher Priest mentions it, that 90 per cent • The Prometheus Crisis (Thomas N. Scortia down one end ‘for your privacy’. In the end I of everything can’t be crud, like with sunsets. and Frank M. Robinson). Another disaster said sod it, I want to read this and anyone who What a marvellously uplifting thing to say. So novel; this time about nuclear power. Very objects can just stick it up their nose. Now I positive. Really, one person’s crud is another’s realistic and insightful, as I remember it. spend my time trainspotting science fiction treasure. I’ve been shown this time and again, • Last and First Men (Olaf Stapledon). How readers instead. working in an art gallery. If I had a tenner, as could I not include it? Perhaps the reason for why there are few Priest puts it, for every time I heard someone • The Once and Future King (T. H. White). autobiographies is that people don’t want to say ‘my three-year-old could do better’, I’d be Such a masterful combination of fairy tale speak about their lives, or they’re not quite with a rather fat wallet. Actually, I would dearly and real people, anachronisms and interesting enough. I think that one for Tiptree love to put up a sign on the front desk saying realism (at least so it seemed to me). Will would be quite excellent, actually, and there’s ‘I charge to hear about how your child/grand- never stop moving me. apparently one written by Tiptree’s mother . . . child could do better than this art, or what you • Dune (Frank Herbert). I would like to see which I haven’t thought about in ages and consider to be real art’. if it is still as exciting as when I first read ought to make an attempt to find. I love having it more than 30 years ago. access to feminist science fiction fans. Find out On to Steam Engine Time 3: • 1984 (George Orwell). Such good writing; all kinds of fascinating things. The Shakespeare of science fiction. I don’t think such an interesting story. I love reading about people’s lives. I’d be there can be any such thing. There can be such • Castle Crispin (Allen Andrews). A moving, interested in the more fascinating people. I find of movements — choose one’s movement, point adult sequel to the more YA-oriented (but unfortunate, however, that a lot of people feel at a writer, a number of writers. I am hardly a still fine) The Pig Plantagenet. Why is it that to write about themselves means to begin historian, but I think the phenomenon of not better known? with ‘I found fandom when I was 10, buying Shakespeare is something unduplicable, due to • The Food of the Gods and The Island of Dr science fiction magazines’, etc etc. I long for a social atmosphere and historical antecedents. Moreau (H. G. Wells). I have already different start to that story. Horror of horrors, At Shakespeare’s time, were there as many re-read The Time Machine and The First Men I find myself skipping the beginning of those writers as there were in the 1920s of science in the Moon. articles when I see them in fanzines these days, fiction, for example? Or of people since then? I • The Lord of the Rings trilogy (J. R. R. going to the second or third page (if they’re don’t think so. Shakespeare could become what Tolkien). Have not read it in 30 years — that long). [BRG: But that’s how we all started, he was because his plays were performed and will I still enjoy it as much? except for the small number of fans whose par- have still been performed since then. He could • Glimpses (Lewis Shiner). A fascinating ents read and collected SF. It was the thrill of be the influence he was because not only did story in particular for those of us who were first discovery, first of the books and then of each he write, they were shown, and they could be young at the time of Hendrix, Doors, other, that made us into SF fans.] seen and read. You can’t exactly say that of Beatles and Beach Boys, by yet another Erickson saying he’d never become a famous science fiction, not if you’re trying to point at underrated fine SF writer. author was something I found rather refreshing. someone of that same influence. Science fiction • Jack of Shadows (Roger Zelazny). Great It reminds me of an acquaintance of mine who’s has had a lot of people contribute to it. When fun 25 years ago . . . been writing for about as long as I’ve known it comes to movements, then yes. One could say • Zodiac (Neal Stephenson). Another story her. I guess one would call it an epic fantasy that William Gibson’s the Shakespeare of cyber- about environmental problems, written novel. I suppose. She’s never read a bit of punk, for example — just about everyone’s with such vitality and humour as to make fantasy in her life, and possibly, quite possibly, heard of him. He’s been quoted as influence for

37 movies, books, music, you name it. The whole definition of his terms. He defined Shakespeare eminence gris as well. In such an openly question of a science-fictional Shakespeare is early on as ‘a towering figure who could take pseudonymous field it seems quite tempting. completely inappropriate. It’s very different. the form to its heights, never to be equalled’, John Russell Fearn, perhaps? Lionel Fanthorpe? There’s no need for one, for science fiction is and supplemented this with the thought that No, it really is all too distracting: far too far not such a hard thing to really point at sometimes. ‘Shakespeare came to the young English stage only from Benford’s respectful definition but I like the idea of people who are influences on and made it grow up’. On several occasions, he even from my alternatives. movements instead, despite not thinking that identified Shakespeare’s primary challenge to It will come as no surprise to those readers there’s much of a movement going on at the would-be imitators as his ‘range’. Against these who know my tastes that what I’d personally moment. criteria, Benford found all writers somehow like to look for is SF’s Marlowe. And, preferably Science fiction of the day is television and lacking, but suggested that the director Stanley to stretch a point and find one that won’t die film. Most of the fans I know, people who are Kubrick might have embodied more of the quali- with too much potential unrealised this time. quite into things, are into the medium — they ties he was looking for. In the same issue of SET, Russell Blackford can watch an episode of a TV show every week, I wonder if the task would have been easier took a different tack — as no doubt the editors taking up to 24 hours to find out what happens if instead he had looked for a science-fictional intended — picking up Greg Benford’s Kubrick in their favourite show (or, an hour a week.) Shakespeare against different criteria: rather proposition in order to ponder whether it is in Films? How about people who design science than an icon, the embodiment of a canon, what fact cinema which has produced ‘the towering fictional games? I don’t have any idea about if he looked for someone who was writing at a works of the genre’. Having selected and devel- this, because it’s not my thing, but I’ve friends time when the genre was the most popular it oped this hypothesis, Blackford went on to who get twitches at the mere thought of getting had ever been (or, perhaps, ever would be demolish it by demonstrating that the domi- their hands on the next game from their favour- again), who was as notable for the length of nance of big budget movies with an SF flavour ite game designer. their career and for the number of works pro- in the mainstream of popular culture is built on I’ll always think that Babylon 5 was abso- duced and preserved as for their quality and their popularity in the youth market. SF-like lutely clever with the story arc across the diversity — and indeed who was often equalled movies are kids’ stuff, and thus clearly not seasons, and that was a movement in the in terms of plot, characterisation and sheer comparable to Shakespeare. science fiction genre, where it was once epi- poetry by a number of his contemporaries whose This approached a parody of the dismissal sodic (and a lot, unfortunately, still are). output was simply not as prolific? Someone of all forms of SF — most damaging for novels Reading The Chrysalids was a requirement at whose work was derivative, in plot terms at — by the critical mainstream: the attitude, in high school, along with the barrage of texts like least, and often rested on audience familiarity fact, which Benford described when he noted Ruth Park’s Playing Beatie Bow (an Australian with his basic story in order to do something that ‘SF has become the pre-eminent genre’ but time travel novel!) and a bunch of classics best different with it? Someone whose jokes have that it is still ‘excluded from serious considera- forgotten. (Wuthering Heights as a romance? I often not survived either the cultural shift in tion’. I found more cause and effect in these wanted to strangle everyone for being a bunch standards of humour or simpler shifts in collo- statements than may have been intended. of twits, Cathy running around killing herself quial language? Someone who was, above all, Blackford went on to claim that the degraded out of spite and Heathcliff being an absolute popular and whose work played to all elements image of SF in public perception is quite under- arse? Sheesh. So then I’d go to the library and of the crowd in a way which can seem variously standable, which I suppose it is if you’re willing get a bunch of Mills & Boon instead.) exquisitely balanced, economically astute, or to consider mass market mainstream movies to For the first time, I didn’t mind going disappointingly disjointed? be the core of SF. For all that Blackford ulti- through a book and dissecting it. I loved doing No, of course it wouldn’t. But it might have mately rejected the idea that the majority of that for The Chrysalids — a couple of the widened the field. It might have opened the SF’s masterpieces lie in the cinema, his argu- assignments I had to write are up on my way for more of the writers who started in pulp ments overall seemed to run on rails from which website, actually, for all that they reflect my fiction. It might have included (with no detri- he seemed surprised the steam engine couldn’t mental age of the time. One of the things we ment intended by association) Brian Stableford break free and still keep moving freely. He also had to do was make our own cover for the book. or Michael Moorcock or Iain Banks or Harry examined the development of the English I drew a picture of a nuclear bomb cloud and Turtledove, or even Anne McCaffrey or Piers poetic tradition, subsequently claiming that he had under it the words: ‘the devil is the father Anthony. And it might have ended with the could not find the equal of its great figures of deviation’. I was all of 14 when this was near-outsider, in several senses, Terry within the SF field: a proposition which surely happening, and by the end of high school I’d Pratchett. Like Shakespeare, Pratchett is a pro- leads the witness to agree that no, the great moved on enough that I had read more (and so lific author who uses often familiar plots and innovative, memorable, thought-provoking ended up in psychology, damn it). Just recently scenarios (including Shakespeare) in new ways, writers of science fiction in the late twentieth I had the opportunity to pick up a bunch of who is widely popular, who creates enduring century are not immediately comparable to Wyndham books very cheaply, and was espe- characters, who has a very distinctive turn of Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Yeats et al. Yet cially excited about The Chrysalids. I had to work phrase, and who — even though he may not be what we have from all these canonical figures with that book for something like a month of the greatest or more critically regarded author is distance, building on decades or even centu- my life. I haven’t expended so much energy in of his time — is likely to be remembered, due ries of critical acceptance and academic something I liked since. I wonder how the book not least to the wide number of texts in circu- authority; read what the intellectuals of the day would hold up to being read now, nearly ten lation, the almost universal contemporary or their own contemporaries within the field years later. A number of those I read fifteen appeal, and the ready availability of copies of said when their work was unblessed by the years ago no longer hold up (Tolkien is an the text. I think there’s a more than superficial canon and there’ll be at least as much criticism example of this). resemblance. — especially for anyone who has received popu- 10 August 2003 Definitions can be distracting. Benford him- lar success — as credit. self mentioned in passing the speculation that Yet when you examine SF novels it’s often CLAIRE BRIALEY the works of ‘Shakespeare’ were written by the clear that they are part of the same literary 14 Northway Road, Croydon, Surrey CR0 Earl of Oxford, thereby cracking open the can tradition: the most immediate and overt exam- 6JE, UK to let slip one worm but hoping to leave the ple to hand is Damien Broderick’s latest novel [A review of SET 3 from Claire’s personal others wiggling in the darkness. By introducing Transcension, which in its culminating vision of fanzine No Sin But Ignorance 46, April to the argument all the other candidates be- the transcendence of human consciousness sees 2004, but it looks like a loc to us:] loved of conspiracy theorists — Francis Bacon, the characters expressing their experience Elizabeth I, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe through apposite paraphrasing of Milton, Dante Greg Benford wrote an article about science (in which case, as Woody Allen mused, ‘If and the like. And no, this won’t get the popular fiction . . . his central interesting idea was to Marlowe wrote Shakespeare’s works, who wrote success of the latest film or tie-in or novelisa- try to identify whether SF has yet had, or in fact Marlowe’s?’) — it could be a fascinating game tion; nor will it get the critical acclaim that it needs, its Shakespeare, although, perversely, I not only to choose a Shakespeare front-man should because it’s SF. found that its greatest interest lay in Benford’s figure in SF but to attempt to establish his So how can we assess our own great figures?

38 Russell Blackford acknowledged in his SET piece Michael Waite, who located and sent a Terence Green, Greg Pickersgill (‘Your that if any of the key figures in recent SF are copy of H. G. Wells’s An Experiment in fanzines and SET definitely reawaken my the equal of the literary greats of the past it is Autobiography; Damien Broderick (‘Have interest in fanzines; they all about not yet obvious. And in concluding that SF’s you read Swanwick’s Jack Faust? something for a start, about books and great works are more like the product of a jazz Interesting; not as clever or well written music that either I know or might have an band than a classical symphony, Greg Benford as he thinks, but nifty in its way, and with interest in or otherwise be simply argued that ‘New Orleans never needed a Shake- more than one quite dazzling setpiece, not engaged in reading people’s opinions speare’. To me, the strength of contemporary SF least the delicious explanation for thereof’); Sydney J. Bounds (‘An SF is a cumulative one, in much the same way that Mephistopheles’ name. (Faust kickstarts Shakespeare? Wells must be the obvious I consider Shakespeare’s greatest value to be as the Industrial Revolution in 1500; horrors nominee. I can’t imagine anyone coming a major contributor to the vibrancy of the wider inevitably ensue.)’; Ian Sales (‘Greg along now and taking over from him . . . fields of Elizabethan poetry and Jacobean Benford asks if science fiction has a The photo of John Wyndham reminds me drama. There may be no towering individuals Shakespeare. Well . . . yes. Peter F. of evenings at the White Horse where that we can see from here; but perhaps that’s Hamilton. And yes, I am prepared to John, Sam Youd and others were busy not only because we’re too close to see but also defend that choice :-) I have my argument solving the world’s problems’); Toni because so many SF authors could loom so high. all worked out . . .)’; Sandra Bond also Weisskopf (‘Recently published is a neat (No Sin But Ignorance, No 46, April 2004, picked up Arthur Clarke’s misquotation book by E. Hoffman Price, The Book of the pp. 11–12) of Hilaire Belloc’s ‘Lord Lundy’; and Dead, which contains short bios of other confesses that ‘sercon fanzines usually pulp writers’); Willam M. Breiding; and defeat me when it comes to loccing Frank Weissenborn. because I read so little SF nowadays’; Lee We Also Heard From: Harding, Robert Day, Dwain Kaiser,

Wildside Press is proud to present another volume in its Author Study series: The Cherryh Odyssey, edited by Edward Carmien (0-8095-1070-7 [hc], $32.95; 0-8095-1071-5 (tpb), $19.95; cover art by David Cherry). For over 30 years, Hugo Award-winning author C. J. Cherryh has been writing science fiction and fantasy novels of depth and complexity. Her style ranges from deadly seriousness to the driest humor, and her charac- ters reflect the diversity she sees in humanity’s future among the stars. But how did she develop her writing skills? What led her to writing SF and fantasy? What impact has she had on the field? What is coming next? And what’s with the H at the end of her last name? The Cherryh Odyssey answers most of these questions (a writer has to have a few secrets). With an introduction by James Gunn and articles by John Clute, Janice Bogstad, Betsy Wollheim, Jane Fancher and others, The Cherryh Odyssey is a must-have book for Cherryh’s fans as well as anyone interested in a wide-ranging and readable scholarly study. Editor Edward Carmien is himself a fiction writer and an academic and is uniquely positioned to select the writers, scholars, editors and others who appear in this work.

Praise for The Cherryh Odyssey:

‘C.J. Cherryh has written some of the most important science fiction of the last thirty years, and is one of the small handful of major female writers of hard sf, and yet astonishingly she has received very little critical attention. This collection of essays, together with its wonderful bibliography, ought to be consulted by everyone interested in the very best of modern science fiction.’ — Edward James, author of Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century, co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, and Professor at University College, Dublin

‘C. J. Cherryh is one of the great SF and fantasy writers of the contemporary period, and a book of essaysand analyses such as this is long overdue. This is where all future Cherryh scholarship will begin.’ — David G. Hartwell, editor for Tor Books, anthologist, and publisher of The New York Review of Science Fiction

‘The Cherryh Odyssey is a full-spectrum portrait from both peer and scholarly sources of one of speculative fiction’s most innovative and far-reaching minds.’ — Lynn Abbey, co-creator of Thieve’s World and author of more than a dozen novels, including the ‘Orion’s Children’ series

The Cherryh Odyssey is now available from Wildside Press. Online orders can be submitted at www.wildsidepress.com, or send your order form request to: Wildside Press, P.O. Box 301, Holicong, PA 18928-0301. Other inquiries: Edward Carmien ([email protected]), (609) 921-7100 X8235.

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