October-November 1990 125p Issue 157
The Critical Journal of the British Science Fiction Association
Gregory Benford on Shared Worlds
David Brin Interviewed
Kim Newman on Films of the 1980s ...... The Uninformed - Heart: Bettelheim'--'-. and sf Cover An by Karel Soukup Vectorl,t-,_J , ~- I '-< I •
Issue 157 ISSN 0505-1448
Contents
4-Letters 7 - SF Cinema In the sos Film critic and au1hor Kim Newman looks at 1hL mgh- and low-points of genre film-mo.Jang in thL 1980s 9 - David Brin Andy Sawyer mer the American "hard sf'' author on his recent publicity tour of thL UK andpro~·ilks a profile of him and his la test Mvd, &rth 12 - The Uninformed Heart BeudhLim. sf, and 1uhnology as a god by Sm·e Pa/mu 15 - Book Reviews Nightrall -lsoacAsimov &: Robm Silvubug • Ratspike-JohnB/anche & Ian Miller Blood and Iron -Les Edwards• Earth-David Brin The Folk or lhe Fr inge-Orson Scou Card • Moonheart - Charlu tll l.inr The Goth ic Ta les or Marquis de Sade - Marquis {ll Sak (tr. Marga~ , Crosland) The Lost Yea rs-IM Dillard • Sorcerer's Son -Phyffis Eisenstein Double Helix Fall-Neil Ferguson• The Stand -S1ephen King The Bad Place - Dean R Koontz • The Night or the Moon bow- ThomLJs Tryon The Blood or Roses-Tanith Ue • Buffalo Gals- Ursula UGuin The Land of Eternal Fire - TP Newark • The Barsoom Projecl -LarryNiven &: Steven Barnes Nara bed la Ltd -Frederik Pohl • Star Scroll - Mdanie Rawn Escape from Kathmandu- Kim Stanley Robinson• Summertide-Charles SMffield Carrion Comfort - Dan Simmons • Voices-nm \t.ynne-Jones Perspectives-John Spencer • Skin ollhe Soul -Lisa Tu1tle (Ed) The Ice-Shirt- William T Vollman• Angel Station-Walter Jon Williams Gypsies-Rohen Charles Wilson • Soldier or Arete -Gene Wolfe
Co-Editors Boyd Parkinson 11 Marsh Street. Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, LA14 2AE Telephone 0229-32807 Kev McVeigh 37 Firs Road, Milnthorpe, Cumbria, LA7 70F Telephone 05395-62883 Reviews Editor - Paul Kincaid Production A ssistants - Chris Amies, Paul Macaulay, Catie Cary, Alison Sinclair, Camilla Pomeroy, Brian Magorrian, John Foster Production Consu ltant - Barry Paric.inson Typeset by PCG, 61 School Streel, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria LA 14 1EW . Tel: 0229-36957 Printed by POC Copyprint, 11 Jeffries Passage, Guildford, Surrey. GU 1 4AP Vector is published bimonthly by lhe BSFA. copyright 1990. All opinions expressed in Vedor are those of the individual contributors and must not be taken to represent those of the Editors or the BSFA except where explicitly slated. Contributors --Good articles are always wanted. All MSS must be typed double-spaced on one side of the paper. Maximum preferred length is 3500 words; exceptions can and will be made. A preliminary letter is useful but not essential. Unsolicited MSS cannot be returned without an SAE. Please note that there is no payment for publication. Members who wish to review books must first write to the Editors. Artists - Cover art, illustrations and tillers are always welcome. Advertising - All advertising copy must be submitted as blW camera-ready artwork with all necessary halftones. AU enquiries on rates, sizes, etc. to the Publicity Manager: Dave Wood, 1 Friary Close, Marine Hill,Clevedon, Avon 8S21 70A
Vtttor 157 Beyond the Fall of Snobbery by Gregory Benford
f all fieJds, perhaps we should expect the autmrs only greed. Nonsense, in general. might happen thereafter - but did they7 I'd Oscience fiction to change most qWck John Clute has ceased to fathom much of always wondered. The idea of trying to think ly, often in unexpecled directions. what goes on in sf, and actively regards suc beyond the world of 1948 science, within Curiomly, we often 50CJll. to cast change in ce:ss 15 1 sign of failed standards. which he crcaled Against, came up naturally. the role of demon. Thttc arc more reasoned rapanses: Nor My far funtte, in fact, differs radically from Nowhere is thi5 more obvious than in the man Spinrad and Gardner Dozois think it his. yet is consistent with his vision. (Huck railings against ..shared world" fiction. Since represents I terrible decline of artistic stand Finn didn't contradict Tom Sawyer, either: I stand pan]y indicted in this regard, by writ ards. There are occasional mutterings about that's one oflhe rules.) In 1948 nobody knew ing a book wich Arthur C Clarke, Beyond the how the field is seeing more "generic" of DNA or uw the potential of bioengineer FaH of Night, I've been mher bemused by worlcs, meaning action-adventure which ing. And there have been black holes, the froth kicked up. merely usessfprops.lbislaSlobservationis cosmological changes galore, and much else I recall the fwiow condemnations a few quite true, but independent of shared worlds; since. By writing beyond where Arthur had years back of sequels - particularly tri it's an outc:omc of the need for product. left off, I could also comment on how time logies. Does no one notice thal a novel driven by chain stores. changes aesthetic and other attitudes. Maybe Hemingway thought the best in American lit I'm reminded of John Berger's definition I could even slip in a little sex ... The prospect erature is a .sequel - indeed, following on a of hack work, describing oil painting in wastootastytopassup. boy's book, Tom Sawyer? Ways of Seeing, 15 " ... nol the ra;ultofcithcr Generally, I see no reason why several So it goes wilh sharing common liierary clwnsiness or provincialism; it is the result of authors, writing under common assumptions. ground. Are we thrown into moral confusion the market making more insistent demands CaIUIOI produce admilablc work. The fact.th.at when we hear Rhapsody on a Theme by than the art." Fair enough; but this can hap marketing practices stress One Big Name in Paganini? Do we indignantly march from the pm in any contcxL Working in a known the packaging is perhaps sad, but I think well concert hall when assault.ed by Varbdons oo region of concept-space docs not necessarily meaning critics like Norman Spinrad a Theme by Haydn? imply that territory has been mined OUL Nor underestimate our savvy readers. A quick Does it lnlly never occur to critics tha1 re is fresh ground always fertile. glance al jacket copy tells them what they're inspecting the asswnption.s and methods of Behind a lot of repugnance for the market getting. As rcce.nt a suc.cess as Poodle classica.l works could yield new fruit? That a is that old stereotype: the artisl as Grcal Man. Springs. in which Rober! Parker comgleted fresh narrative could both strike out into new Such wonderful figures arc conswned by the manuscript Raymond Chandler struggled tenitorywhilereflectingonthclandscapeof struggle, partly again.SI lack of understanding, with while dying, points out a certain engag the past? Recall that Hamid followed on and partly against hunger, partly against inner de ing zest can come of such work. drew from several earlier plays about the mons. This U I peculiarly western vision, a Much of the attitude about this pn.ctiec sameploL romantic one, and it falsifies our own cxperi strikes me as a warmed-over version of the I make no general case abou1 "franchis crw;:c enormously. Ard in contemplating the High Aht vs Low Commerce clichC. Non· ing" or shared world works. precisely Life of profcssKlnals, believers in this hoary sense. of coUJse. One of the critics' worse because they are w varied in method and image go for the easily understood.. sopho habits is seeing li1eratwc in moral terms accomplishmenL There is the Thieves World moric motivation: bucks. alone. Refusals to read any work besmirched Sffles (which apparently began th11 particular Of course money miners. But IC! me speak by this "taint" is simple-minded and, in a awcach); Heroes in Hell; varioU5 military for myself. I didn't undertake to write Be critic, cowardly. It is judging a book not motifs;Silverberg'shomagestoseveralear yond lbe Fall of Night with Arthur Clarke merely by its cover, but by its contracL litt wrilttS, including CL Moore and Joselfl for money: I have quite enough. I did it to get Commerce means contradiction, freedom. Conrad; stories sel in worlds invented by at material I could not otherwise, and to point the right to be wrong. Even. yes. the right to Isaac Asimov and Clarke, nolably the series up my subject by I direct comparison with 1 be tacky. by Paul Preuss; the new offshoot of lhe Tor classic meditation from anOlhcr age. l'drathertakcthepositive view: What new Doubles in which newer writen write sequels The topic came up while ArthUJ and I were avenuesdocsthisevolutionofthefieldopen? or prequels to classic novell1S... quite 1 spending I pleasant summer afternoon tour How do we criticise the work7 What's per nnge. It seems to me thar the preseoce of ing the Air &. Space Museum in Washington, missible? 0'11 grant that not everything is.) sevttal such stories on Nebula and Hugo bal OC, escorted by the ircsent museum director These are interesting questions which re lots argues for :some quality. and Fred Durant. a past director and old quire that we reinspect oUJ assumptions. Well edited (and there's the rub), 1 proje,c1 friend of Arthur's. We began to speculate on They could help us all understand where this can employ divcne talents at their best. My how spacecraft could change in the really fast-moving genre is taking us. We, above all, first experience WIS with Heroes in Hell, long tenn. That led to wondering how far one must consider change with an open mind. which got two award mminations that I re could plausibly extrapolate into the future And I, for one, don't think our destination is call, and one Hugo. Yet the series overa.11 with known scientific laws. With Against the some dreadful commercial abyss. failed beclllSe of lack of I sure editorial hand. Fall of Night Clarke opened grand new Copyright Cl 19!10 by Abbenford Assoclatas I realized mauers had gone awry when I themes in sf, and reflection on what events never heard anything about what the other and scientific progress have done to tmse aulmrs were doing, and ended up writing my ideas since could tell us much, I thoughL The above article arrived after the second and last piece in the dark. Fred Durant added that the possibilities now copy dale, but because of its some Some recent commentators (notably Brits: were so much larger than anyone, even Art what controvertial ideas we felt we David Gamett, John Clute) speak sloppily hur, could have glimpsed then. had to squeeze it in somewhere, thus from I deep well of ignorance about this, I remarked on how that novella ends with a the editorial we had intended to run u/vsing to read any mch work, ascribing to compressed plot summary of things which has been shelved until next time. - BP
Vector 157 Letters
Reviewing no1 enough is being dc:m to promoie lhcm. M for Kev's ridiculous final comments New writCB an, by definition. more de5,tn, about P"cfcrring a review of a new book to ~~: ing of our Sl.lppon than boring old farts. ilic latest volume from Eddings - if you c::,:~ ~x¢! ~v:!er: Thcrfore, we shouldn'1 waste time and space don'1 gel both you don't get the balance or book reviewer and how reviews should be on the latest volume in 111 interminable fan the breadth (of reviewers. of readers, of in used, but miss lhe main poinL tasy by David E.ddings but insleld dcvOle sight) to make lhc discovery of a new writer Seeing a book title advertised. you loolt time and space and money to the struggling noticeable or woriliwhilc. Vec:tor docs re fiflil for its author: if you are familiar with new writers. This injunction. presumably, view new wri1e:rs (in the same issue of Vector previous works, tha1 may help you decide being directed at publishcn 111d readers as in which Kev's editorial appears, there arc whether to buy this one - but while you may well u reviewers. h is seductive - but it is reviews of new writers like Storm Constan pick up a copy and read the blurb, you uc wrong! tine, Paul McAuley, James Lovcgrove and aware that this is thcpublisher'sbcst attcmpt U it true that not enough is being done to Allen SICclc, and !here are reviews upcoming 10 persuade you to buy, not any kind of bal support new writers? Well, there seem to be a of new writers like Neil Ferguson, TI> Ne anced view of the contents. lot of new writers about al the momenl, and I wark and Anne Gay), yet we shall continue to Cecil points out that we revicwCis do not would suggest lh111 lhey are so visible pre revciw more established writers also. Not to get to choose the books we arc asked to re, cisely because 1 101 more is being done to do so would be ID fail in our duty to our view. True, but on several occasions I have support them ili111 Kev would suggesL For a membcrs,andlOourgenrc. begged Paul Kior;:aid or Andy Sawyer to send star!, and far u\d away lhc most importanl And remember, science fiction is all about me this or !hat title because I feel I shall thing, they arc being publishod. Pan is pub disoovcry. Of course we can discover the something helpful to say about iL On at leasi lishing Eric Brown. Si.man & Schuster is pleasure of I new wriier. Bui let us not forr;e1 one occaskln IOO, l have repack.aged and rc publishing Kim Newman. Macdonald is pub that we can discover the pleasure of an cstab nunod a book sen! to me for review - I lishing Anne Gay. Golla.nC2 is: publishing lishod writer also. Woukl Kev want to deny found its basic philosophy so offensive that Keith Brooke. Unwin is publishing Gill Al us 1hc chance to review new books by Chris anything I wrote would colour-eel by my Ullcf derman and Colin Di.J.On and Simon lngs. At lOphc:r Priest, M John Harrison. Gany distaste, and I kit wmeonemore in tune with lhc same time NEL, Legend. Unwin. Macdo Kilworth, JG Ballard, Brian Aldin, Keith Ro 1h11 ouuook shoukl have lht chance to write nald and GW Boob have all published berts, etc.? They've all hem writing 20 years aboutinsie.i. original anthologies (1 lifeline for new wri or more, welcnowthesortofthinglhcydoby Both BSFA magazines have an exuUmt len which I, as a "'new wri1er", am most now, we don't need to be IO)d about iL Qr iJ and varied panel of rcvicwcn. Just u every gnitc!ul for). I have been involved in scicrice Kev lcuing his prejudices show, and forget book bears the name of its aulhor u a guide ficlion for IS years, and I cannol remember a ting: that science fiction fights against to you of its contents and style, so every re• time when w mAnY British publiJhen: have prejudice? view is labclk:d wilh a name so lhat we can done w much for so many new British wri Paul Kincaid say "Ah. I always approveofK'srevicws"or <=. "Y's reviews always annoy me - we have These new wriien arc getting into pinl, nolhing in common." If (as in older timC5) their work j5 available in bookshops, it is Again, from Ken Lake: reviewers' names were kept secret. you bought and read. it is reviewed. and ilicy are would have cause to complain. for that name being brought 10 people '• auention enough l c!~:~c~i:.'~1r!'!~eri:~v:~~~~g~ isyourguidctointcrpretingthcrcviewitself. for people like Kev to fulmina\.c against how Helen Wright's lovely book ever since I read Every BSFA member's likes and dislilccs little support they arc getting (which is all it on lhc rocommendalion of Peier Pinto of differ from every other member's: how, then, part of the publicity process as well). Of The Papcrbook Back Shop [North Road, can lhey cxpccl all reviewCB to express course more could and should be done, of Lancaster), 171d cannot understand why identical views? We have been selected for 1 course some writers will slip, undeservedly, oilicrs have nol hastened to join me. number of reasons, of whlch one has to be through lhc ncL Thal is the way o f things. We On the oilier hand, I am told thai i1 is BSFA Iha! we arc regarded as having some expcr• should continue to rail against il, we should policy not to print reviews unless a review Lise and IOme sf background - asking a nco do wha1 is in our power ID prevent il, but we copy has been received. I fully aJ¥fflate lhe to rcvicw Harrison's "Eden" bi.logy woukt should not lcl Iha! blind us to what is being reasoning here- if you don'l stick to this, be as sn1pid as asking a Sun re.ado's view of publishm will qui1 sending out copies at all Vec:tor. ""-Nor should we let it prompC us to wikt and But from 1imc to time I encounter a book. Western saloons uud to sport a sign: ridiculous demands on the part of lhc new usually by a "ncw"(ish) author, which is so "Don't shoot the pimisl: he's doing his writtt.ltisWtrcalistic,forinsU:nee.,forPanto wonderful I want 10 rush around ielling besL" The point is lhat the pianist didn't put the same promotion.al budget behind Eric everyone., and others which are so ,ppalling I write lhc music - he merely iruc:rpn:ts it and Brown lhan they do behind. say. l..any Niven. fed I must wun you all about lhem.. To these puts his own gloss upon iL If you. dear In all pooability. Brown's fuse book wiU ends, I have on numerous ~ions sent in reader, foci you'd make a bellCt pianist. ask make a Jou., and I huge publicity budget reviews "on spec," but have stopped doing to be added to the panel But fusc, be hones1 would be more likely IO inaea..sc lhc lass and thisulhcyarcnotprinted. enough to admit your own buill-in biu, your so make it more difficult IO publiJh 111ything tr the BSFA can pcmiadc US publishers to own inadequ.clcs and your own preferem:es. by Brown (or any Olhcr new writcT) in the ICnd review copies of aU upcoming sr books, Ken Lake furure. If, however, the loss is not too great lhat would solve all your problcnu: if they 115 M:ukhousc Avenue, London Et7 8AY and the book galhers some respect.able 5aks won't, why nol al least have a s.eparate "un figures and reviews, then Pan will have the solicited reviews" or "new discoveries" ammunition ID put more behind him in fu section in V«lor or Pl (or bolh) in which V156 - Editorial rurc. I'm not saying lhi5 is how things should obsessive review writers like me can appear be. but it is how lhcy arc. And if we trample with critical c.om.ments on books lha1 would over them too violently we run the risk of oilicrwisccscapenolice. hurting the new writers rather than helping However, I do feel iliat you over-empha oh Vector 157 British sf" who, you say, "have a tendency to will otherwise remain undiscovered. It would portance of short fiction, partiCIJ/arly in ignore new authors unless they happen to be seem, in the case of McAuley's book, that Iha s f genre, and also Iha importance friends." To be honest, if publishers were to Orbil have made 'linually no effort what• of non-lictioo (including non1lenre rely on this small, enthusiastic band of con soever lo promote it, which makes you publications - The Whole E11rlh Re 'lerted fans for their sales, nary an sf book wonder why they bothered publishing it in view is one good example. having would appear in Britain. Our importance - if the first place. Publishing is a business after published both Bruce Sterling and Ur only the publishers would listen to us - can all ,andnotacharity. sula LeGuin in recent years, and lie only in our publicising those books they Taking up Kev's final point; yes, I would Re/Search's JG Ballard special issue don't take up, pointing out the manifold stu like to know more about new writers and par• is another). Also, ifs in such pidities of their policies when they do publish ticularly about those titles which may not be smalVunderground magazines that them, and spreading the incesmous word published in this country. To quote just one many s f writers began their careers, among our own tiny ginger group. I fail to be kind of material which could be covered, including, dare I say, a certain Keith convinced that we affect the the Great British Don Webb's brilliant Uncle Ovid's Exercise Brooke, and where many established Public in any way at all, and it is they who Book, which I was lucky enough to glimpse, writers can still be found - the first buy enough copies IO make sf publishing and which was mentioned in an earlier Vee. issue of the American small press viable. tor editorial, is pubfuhed by perhaps the only mag S1range Plasma had stones by The fact thal they tend to buy the works of American university press not to be rcprc Paul Park, Gene Wolfe. Erie Brown those authors you denigrate. rather than those sertted over hcte. It deserves to be widely and RA Lafferty. you praise, reflects nothing more than the in read. Somelhing about it, and the possible Secondly, and perhaps more im• effable ignorance of the GBP, and its availability of imported supplies, would be portantly, we'd like to recognise lhe impcf'lience to our civilising influence. most useful. efforts of these small presses. There Having said that, naturally I support your Stuart Falconer soems to be a general assumption aims and look forward to the day when in 70 Willow Way, Ponte land Iha! a sma!I press isn·t a "real" pub fonncd sf-nal rC'liewing will percolate Newcastle Upon Tyne NE20 9RG lisher and so whatever they publish through to the laypre.ssinBritainasithasin cannot be taken seriously. Why this Australia: that's where we need to make our assumption exists is a mystery; per. voices heard! You can get Uncle Ovid's, and haps it"s because they're mostly run Ken Lake much else besides, from Andy Ri by amateurs from their home, with chards (Cold Tonnage Books, 136 very little interest in actually making New Road, Bedlont, Feltham, Middx any money from their venture. but from Stuart Falconer TW14 8HT): you might also try the also perhaps rrs lhe idea that if a pro New Science Fiction Alliance (NSFA, publisher won·t publish a certain work F~1~~:~gw:~ld f:;; toK;;r o~~~ Chris Rood, 16 Somersall Lane, then it must be crap, even if it event example of lethargy on the part of the pub Chesterlield S40 3LA) fOI" other such ually gets published by a small press. lishing/bookselling establishmenr. small publications, like Misha's Whatever lhe reason, there are a lot I have been trying for some weeks to get Prayera of Steel or Congor Beasley"s of publications which deserve more hold of Paul J Mcauley's novel, Four Hun• The Magic Deer. than a listing under "fanzines" in Ma- dred Billion Stars. It was mentioned at the BP 1rlx bottom of the full.page Orbit advert in IZ 35 Your point on Pulphouse: first, as being "out now," (May). We are reason you've got to deline the term "under• ably well served with booksellers in Magazine Reviews ground· . Although this might be uS&Q Newcastle. There is a large WH Smith-one to describe any publication which is of the largest in the count,y- as well as small and exists beyond our normal major Waterstones and Dillons branches, and 1b:::~t;i~ar,~:e~:=t; ::it: social sphere of existence (ie, you an independent local outfit called Thomes. I magazine, and long o'ierdue. Short fiction is won"t find it on lhe shelves of your have checked roughly once a week since the the cutting edge of sf, it's where the new local newsagent, nor win you find advert appeared. No one has had the book in writers appear, where new ideas are tossed much mention of it in professional stock. I was informed by WHS that Mcauley about, its where all the eno-gy is. And the publications, etc), but mostly ifs used is not one of their stock authors (hardly sur "underground" magazines are the cutting to define publications and publishers prising with a first novel) and therefore they edge of short sf. I hope its going to be a which are reactionary and against the did not keep it. I placed an order and am now regular feature. (One thing I'm curious about: grain. Pulphouse, from what rve read keeping my fingers crossed that it will event• whenever there's talk of the underground ol it. seems to be quite conservative uallytumup. press you see New Pathways, Journal and traditional in its tastes, having Some years ago I worked as a book depart• Wired, Semlotext(e), etc, but the one that's more in common with Asimov's than , mcnt manager for WHS at one of their overlooked is Pulphouse - I've nevo- ac say, New Worlds or lnlerzone. There smaller branches (Hartlepool, in fact). The tually read Pulphouse (can't afford to) but are many such ··tannish" sman system in those days used to allow for new from what l ~ seen about it I'd have presses - people who like to publish titles, including those by unknown authors, to though! it would fit right in with the best of sf as they perceive it to be. who are be ordered on a sale--or·retum basis for the them. Any ideas why?) quite content with the way things are first eight weeks. The number of copies or Keith Brooke (not that this makes them unworthy Of dered by the branch often depended upon 54 Hawthorn Way, Northway "bad" magazines). how hard the pubfuhers pushed them. Sale• Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire GL20 STQ However. on lhe Hip-side of the or-return provided a margin of error which small press coin. Semlolexl(e) and gavenewauthorsachance. New Palhwaya, etc, are experimental Some authors take a 101 of promotion to get The Magazine Reviews last issue and most definitely unconventional their careers started. (lrecall Jeffrey Archer's were somelhln g of an experiment, bu t and non-restrictive in their definrnon of first two books making almost no initial im we do hope to do something like this sf. They are reactionary and against pact.) Strangely however, the major publicity on a regular basis in future issues of the grain, often demanding change is always resef'led for those authors whose Vector. The reasoning behind the and diversity, often disillusioned and books are going to sell anyway, whereas the genesis of lhe Magazine Reviews is disatislied with the state ol modem sr real effort is needed for the new authors who two-fold: firstly, we recognise the im - and the gheno. They are thus more Vector 157 easily definable as ~I.Wldergrotrid" not in Britain; I have one in the Swcs. but lopromot.cafag;uc. and are quite dsliod: lrom lhe usual even lhat look years lo achieve. 0 roukl rc J ohn Brunner blend of smaJ press actM!y, Pulp COWII wmc horror s1orics ...!) The Square House, Palmer Street, South house ioduded. As a result. rm frequently wkl by people I Pethc:rton., SomenetTA135OB BP talk lo II cons and elsewhere lhat lhey are searching for lhis, that or lhe or.hef of my novels, only to discover lhat it's out of pinL Demons & Dreams A fow items have recently resurfaced or are in lhe process of doing so: I have beside me We welcome all letters on advance copies of Arrow's reprint of T he any subject to do with Vec lv:~~i~ik:e~e~~ ~::e: :::~:::~: Crucible or Time, for instance, and Stand The Best Fantasy and Horror 2 in a rocent o n Zanzibar is also due back to press. But a tor, though we reserve the issue of V«:tor l156). However, I'm per recent nolic.c in an American magazine (a right to print them here and plexed at lhe criticism lhat we Mdo not rarety! I seldom get reviewed nowadays) of a provide a biography of each author. Tull$ one "classic: reprint" of The Com pleat Traveller also to edit them if necess- has no irxlicalion of previous publishing his in Black said: " ... answered one long quest ary. Please mark clearly tories._.•· This simply is not so. In evcey of mine- to finally get my hands on [lhese) in.stance. Terri WlJ'dling and I do indeed pro stories." For heaven's saku! TM Compleat anything which is not for vide the publishing history of each author Traveller In Black first appeared-in the publication as "ONO". All included. US - in August 19861 (Okay, lhe $hort ver EllenDatlow sion dales back IO 1971, so he could have letters of comment should r;/oOMNIMagazine meant his qucsl for lh1t had been a kmg one. Evcnso-!) be sent to: Most of my 'p-enlicc work is better left on Vector An Appeal lhc second·hand stal ls. On the other hand, there are books I feel desctVe another outing. 11 Marsh Street hankstoalongsucccssionofmishaps, I Would readers of Vector do me a favour and Barrow-in- Fu rness Tam nol among the writers who have been tell me which they ue? Have you seuchcd fonunatc enough LO establish a lasting rela unsuccessfully for a book of mine? Let me Cumbria LA 14 2AE tionship wilh a regular publisher - a1 lea.s t know. It'll give my agenlS leverage in trying AFRES HLOOK AT SCIENCE FICTION The British Science Fiction Association provides a FO unique perspective on science fiction and fantasy today. THE REVI EW OF SCIENCE FICTION Vector One of the leading criticaljournal1 in Britain - 'a required title' aay1 Arn>to,ny of Wonder! In it1 fifittn ynnorpublimioa, FOUNDATION 1w Cll&blialml 1 Recent issues have included interview1 with Bruce St.crling, «pu11fion11problbly1bebeslcri1ic:oljournalor1ei Veclor 157 SF Cinema in the 80s Kim Newman cience fiction movies scooted out.of by cancer, is one, and John Carpenter's lavish Real Thing, when combined with the over Sthe 70s on a roll with even dogs like honorshow The Thing is another. Allen, an drive pacing and generic confidence or the The Black Hole and Star Trek: The imitation itself, seems fated 10 be bes1 re American genre movie. The first great syn Motion Picture benefitting from the com membered by its own imitations, most thesis of this form came &om Aus11alia, with mercial impcws of the Spielbcrg-Lucas particularly James Cameron's Allens which, George Miller's Mad Max 2, an old, okl rollcrcoasu:r that had been started by Star as tmsc of us lucky enough to see the full cut siory confidently told with a despairing vi Wars and Close Encounters. 1be early 80s can attesl, is a dccpcr, cleverer and more sat sion of the future and Mel Gibson's 5craggy were distinguished by the best, mosl fun of isfying rerun, slightly less daring in its charisma to show off the way the genre was the popoom piclW'C$ in the Spielberg-Lucas imagery but far more impressive in its mar going. Mad Max 2 is a mean movie. and it vein - Battle Beyond the Stars, Flash shalling of such trivia u plot. performance was promptly imitated all over the globe, in Gordon, Superman - bu1 lhings were al and charac1e:rs. Scott really became a genre pictures like John Carpenter's Escape rrom ready changing. The Empire Strikes Back superstar with Hl:ide Runner, an infuriating New York, with its severed heads on parking and Return of the Jedi were mammoth mess of a film which accurately captures the meters, hordes of Italian and Filippino superhits, but a decade later it's hard to tell imagery of 80s written sf way before William sch!ockers and even in arty items like Luc them apart. or to remember much - apart Gibson got to it, but trips over its original Besson 's absurdist warriors of the wasteland from the ha1dul teddy bear things and other source novel all the way, and makes you re picture The Last B attle. Nuke awareness such Muppet sicknesses - that comes from alise that the only memorable people in came and went through the decade, with fre them rather than Star Wars. ET the Extra Sc.ott's universe arc robols. Like his sub quent "serious'" movies dotted in among the Tcrrestrlal, coming along in 1981, topped sequent Legend. Blade Runnt! r never broke Mad Max clones - Threads, The Day the Star Wars gross, and encouraged a series even at the box office, but has been recycled After , Special Bulletin and Testament, all of benignly smug befriend-the-aliens movies by adverts for banks, soft drinb, body-sprays TV movies, were it-could-happen-here exer from the charming Splash! through the sickly and such ephemera. a fact that is at once cises. while smaller panic items like Miracle Cocoon and the mechanical Shor-t C ircuit to ironic and chilling. Mlle or period pieces like Desert Bloom and the nauseating Mac a nd Me, but it too hasn't Gilliam is actually a more interesting film F.a l Man and Little Boy c.oncentrated on the aged all that well. The sloppiest of Spiel maker than Scot I, but just as frustrating in his cultural a.ndsocialrealitiesofthealOmic age. berg's picwrcs, it seems like a machine-made mix or brilliance and awkwardness. Time However, the Bomb did encourage dreary hi1, and the comparison with Splash! reveals Bandits is a Monty Python movie that suffers whinges like When the Wind Blows and just how prescxually charmless its central re &om the way it substitutes dwarves shouting Letters rrom a Dead Man, not to mention lationship is, and the director was forced 10 at each other for hwnour - compare lhe Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice, so ii wam'I all retreat from its high ground in10 the Indiana sharpness of the recent Bill & Ted's Excel good stuff. Jones movies on one hand and spikier pro lenl Adventu re as it gets 10 the same theme While there were big budget duds like Sat jeclS like Em pire or the Su n and Always on - but it ncvcnhclcss shows !he kind of fairy urn 3 and Outland uying 10 learn the lesson the other. While Lucas has reserved his pa- u.lc bizarrelic the dirocior is capable of. of Allen, the cheapies were turning out 11onage for a succession of disastrous Brazil is one of the key films of the 80s, but s11eamlined items like Alligator, Android, fantasies - Labyrinth, Howard the Duck, as American distribuiors poinl0d ou1, it's 20 Forbidden World and Nigh! or the Comet, WIiiow, anybody? - Spielberg, if airily minutes too long. Marvellously set-designed, and Cameron - who had made an inauspi guilty of producing Harry and the He nder art- Vtttor 157 [YII Dead, finally coming up wilh the live nlng Man and Blood ol Heroes. and lhe en •nd retro-chic hllheno confined to Eastern action uansfonncn of Robot Jox, perhaps tire Star T'ffk cycle were nndom •nd European pictures like Gentle.men, I have the IT10$l apensive " B" of the period. The pointless, sometimes distinguished by special KIiied Einstein and Tomonow, I 'll Wake final product of this line of lhoug.ht must be effecis, usu.ally not. 1ne mos1 successful Up and Scald Myself with Tea. Part One Tun Bunon's Baboan. which blends the-= retro-chic itan of lhe decade wu Michael evokes the SOs •nd Part 1'hr= is a Verne-style tion movie wilh the tu.lllrc of Brazil and Laughlin's Stnnge lnuders, although Big Western, but lhe middle section is lhc mos, Blade Runner, and comes up wi!h an • t:.ur Meat Eater, Night of tbe Creeps and Par frenetic, taking a trip IO a future that looks disl comedy so d:1.1k that ii.I SUCCC51 al the box ents also have a plcuana 50i feel, managing b-=k on the 80s • nd finds nosulgia in figures office is • minor mir•de. Cameron, mean• mainly to critique the Eisenhower dec;:ade like Khomeini, Reagan and Michael Jd.son. while, slowly submerged himself in The even as Ronald Reagan wu uying to bring it and to an alternate pusent lh•t wgges1.1 Mad Abyss, unleashing a Mu's world gone weird. school of similar Troy Wilh e.uictly lhe same 80s Tempcs1 pictures (U- nostalgia fevcr lha.1 g• ve Yiathan. Deepstar Six) rise to the rock 'n'roll de most of which hark signer adven revival and back to Allen for their Reagan's I Lo~ Lucy plot. family values, the Back to The genre autcurs of No one makes films as the Future pictures dis the 70s kept going des scc1 America, and find it pite the rising tide of wanting. Perhaps the mma dircel•to•Yidco dogs. messy as Larry Cohen, but subYersiveideainall 80s George Romero 1umed cinema is lhrown away at in the sw-prisingly op the climax of Roger Rab timistic Knlghtrklers. bit, when Bob Hoskins which might be the las1 no one else would dare to •nd Roger prcven1 Chris Jimmy Carter er• lDphcr Lloyd from ruining movie. before gelling Los angcles, and thm:fore grim1g1inwith Dayol do a picture with Michael avcn the 80s from ever lhe Dead, the mos1 happening •1 alt Adrni1, rulhlessly downbeat of tedly, the Back to the his zombie movies, and Moriarty about killer Futun U casino hell is the lltilled. more con wone than wh• l we lived vcntion•I mad science lhrough. with Nixon WU of Money Shines. Like yoghurt, so that's just the in power, but no1 Iha! Romero. Larry Cohen much. Zemeckis' sf is w•:ssl\ld; with a series about the Past, Present of films lhat failed to price you have to pay. •nd Future, but •1 least - find their audience., unlike Luca.s' •nd Spiel mingling hil audacious berg's - it's no1 abou1 ideas wilh his habitual elves and fairies and - doppineu to often unlike Scon's and Came wonderful effect, as in ron·, - it's no1 about Q. The Stuff, Island of being Cf'UShed by the fu the Alive and a few ture. At the end of the horror pictures and thrillers. No one mak~ bM:k. This suange 1u1in threw up a few saga, Michael J Fox asks Uoyd whether he films LS messy LS Larry Cohen. but no one punk-art oddities around the edges of the intends to take his Oying stc•m train time else would dare to do a picture with Michael genre, like Ale.1t Co.1t'1 Repo Man. Joe machine bM:k to the future, and the mad Moriarty abou1 killer yoghun, 50 that's just Dante's wistful Explorers, lhe New Zealand scicntis1 quips "no, I've already been there" the price you have to pay. David CroncnbeJJ The Quiet Earth and The Nnlgator, Phil before heading off in the present for oul.Cf swlCd the decade with Scanners and Vldeo Kaufman's The Right Stuff, Marie Ro spaoc. echoing lhc finales of films •:s dis drome, which h• ve mor-e ideas to the minwe m-k's Sta.tk, lhe bliufully wifuhionablc par•ie as Explorers, Dig Meat Eau,r, Rcpo than anylhing else in lhe cinema, and also The ,\d\'eotures of Buck•roo Banzal Pctc1 Man and The Right Stuff, and suggcstin& conuiYe to be live years ahead of anything Wo llcn's deadly friendship's Dnth. Jolm that perhaps the genre, u well •:s science and coming ou1 of wri1u:n sf, reshaping familiar Sayle's The Brother from Another Planet, humaniry, can still grow at its own pace. can themes in a uniquely cinematic manner. Ex Alan Rudolph's playfuJ Trouble ln Mhxl still thrive in lhe unknown 90s and beyond. .. ploding he.ts and mammary screens became •nd the J11»1t:llrd-colouted Earth Girls an pwe, and Cronenberg. like everyone else, Easy. all of which seem ITIOfe 8(11 than such had to make an ordinary Stephen King ~ap machine-made gimme..some-money picwrcs Already well-known tor his film aia.. r.ation. The Dt'lld Zone, before getting back u Krull, Slipstream or Masters o r the cism, Kim Newman is becoming a hisstridein,o[ allthings,lhcrcmakcofThe Universe, not to mention the lhirrySOffll!lhing more and more prolific author. writing Fly, a duingly biurre item 1h11 did without u.ce:s5CS of Hooey, I Shrunk the Kids. Fi as Jack Yeovil for GW Books' 'War lhe usual melodramatics, and lhc uncatcgori nally. Carpenter's They LIYe blamed the hamme,~ series, publishing his sablc Otad Ringers. rcrum-io-the-pa.st feel of Reagan ·1 America second novel B•d Dre.ms (Smon & There were lots of remakes, and harking onaninvasionofvcry50s-stylcalicns. SchlJstor) in September, and he's also back movies. Carpenter's Thing and But U\e ultimaJe 80s sf nga. replacing the editing a boolt called WIid West Croncnbc:rg's Fly were authentic 80s movies leftovcr 60s and 70s acws of lhe USS Enter Movlea (Bloomsbury) - how he with 50s roots. but Tobe Hooper's disas11ous prise and the Sw Wars nga. must be Roben found the time to write the above for Llrdorce and Invaders from Man, the re Zemeckis' Baek to the f uture series. Along Vector, we may never know. makes of The Blob. Little Shop o r Horron, with his Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, these Not or this Earth and Godzilla, derivative time travel items inuoduccd American cine• muscle-strainen like Predator, The Run• ma IO notions of alicmate worlds. paradoxes Veclorl57 David Brin profiled by Andy Sawyer he conversation began in the splendid thinker as he explains the background to where skin cancer is common - and as little Tinterior of Watcrstonc's bookshop in Earth and its concern with enviromental is- regarded - as swtbum is today. And where Liverpool where David Brin - in the someone has dropped a micro-black hole into middle of a tour to publicise his new novel "Now we have the only civilisation which the Earth's core. Earth - rhapsodised about lhe availability is capable of feeling guilry about its achieve As well as indulging in speculation about of culture ("We now have more and better ments, to determine not to despoil the the nature of black holes and "strings"', and musicians available to us at lhe flick of a environment." It's misguided, even danger offeringseveraldifferentstrandsofthe"Gaia swi1eh than did the Emperor of Austria.") ous, 10 idealise previous "natural" states. hypothesis"', Brin pays homage to other and continued in the equally splendid if over Previous civilisations have wrecked environ works of sf, and presents possibilities for !he blown (not to mention loud!) interior of a ments: wejusthavclhecapacitytodo itona development of !he next half-century. The Lime S1reet pub. larger scale. Within a few generations of hu book"s picture balances between warning and The sf writcr who is by training a scientist manity's arrival an Easter Island all the Uccs celebration. h has the most unexpected "vil is not a particularly American phenomenon were gone. Jian" nation in a limited nuclear war !hat has - as British names such as Arthur C Clarke, "American Indians left not a single large been suggested - but once you've read Brian Stableford, Robert Holdstock and Paul mammal species on !he continent except the abou1 ii, it makes perfec1, and alarming. J McAuley remind us - but there is a par· bison and they were working on !hat, stam sense. The final apotheosis is one which has ticularly strong strand in North American sf peding whole herds across cliffs for lhesake oc.cured in other works of fiction, but Brin is which smacks of the laboratory rather lhan of killing two or three." Some people talk careful no1 to glorify its mystical connota the library. about lost arts, "but most of the sword-ma tions. Earth is a blockbuster with a One reason for this may be the greater kers who ever lived are working right now in multiplicity of viewpoints and a large cast of status in the USAofthescien1ist/technician, the USA- and producing better products!" charactcrs. lfithasaflaw,it"sinlhenatureof or, more accuraieiy, the lessu status of such Brin's first novel was Sundlvcr (1980), its structure as • symbolic mmder--mystcry in Britain where the Humanites take pre which so far has resulted in two sequels. where the identity of the villian is obvious cedence in the dass structurc and the thought Startlde Rising (Nebula, Hugo and Locus from !he stan but that of the victim becomes of a writer not indebted to the "Great Tradi awards 1984) and The Uplin War (Hugo less and less clear. Bui that is the poin1, and tion" is still dubious. Another may be the and Locus awards, 1988). He has also pub !here's a set of deliberate ambiguities in the roots of US sf in magazines devoted to popu• lished T he Practice Effect (1984), The ending to cause the reader to think. Jar science: "sdentifiction" as a literary or Hearl or the Comet (I 986: with Gregory Earth appears at a time when media and subliterary device for explaining the theory Benford), The Postman (1986: Locus and governmental attention to environmental is and effects of science. Sneering at all this John W Campbell Memorial awards) and !he sues is at a unprecedented heigh!, and both seems remarkably snobbish, as if an enthusi story collection The River of Time. British re fle<;ts and contributes to the debate. Can we asm for the world and how it operates is readers may especially remember his stories survive'!Brinhopesso. something to be condemned, something "The Giving Plague" (Interzone 23. Spring, "I've been called an optimisl, but I don '1 which cannot really co-exsis1 with good writ 1988) and "Piecework" (IZ 33, January believe it. I think we're heading for 50 Vt!ry ing and magnetic narrative technique. 1990). ~ we're in Liverpool.I pick upon the rough years, and the first test of maturity as a David Brin, whose scientific background local sening of " Piecework". There arc also race - which is putting away paranoia and (Cailech: research engineer; Ph.d. in Space British references in ''The Giving Plague" creating co-operative institutions. Tolerance Physics; Postdoctorate at California Space and Earth. "Why confine yourself to one and disrespect for authority is lhc West's Institute: papers in journals from Applied country'!"' He lived in London for a year. in great gif1, as opposed to the suspicion of !he Optics to the Quarterly Journal or the 1987. "I was supposed to lecture at Westfield others and reverence for tradition. We don "t Royal Astronomlcal Society) is impeccable, College but that was largely trashed by Mag know yel, though, if this is •·sane" behavioUJ, talks about asking classes of gifted children gie (!he protagonist in "The Giving Plague" if it will contribute to our long-tcnn SlllVival. "Who would like to live in the past'! ... and refers to "'The Thatcher massacre of British but we're seeing hopeful signs in Europe. the girls would raise their hands. We've Science"] so I did a lot of writing. The Not just the European Community. but the allowed women and girls to become alienated "local" setting and atmosphere !hough, entry into Europe of the Eastern Europe from technology, yet only I few would live in largely derives from I BBC TV special on states." long dresses and then they'd only possess Liverpool. But what about the possibility of a total two or three, uailing around in the mud and The new novel. Earth, published by Mac collapse in !he ex~Soviet satellites? dogshit." His enthusiasm for the idea that we donald, is Brin 's biggest ye1, a mosiac "No - impossible! Europe west of !he live in a better society than at any rime in the snapshot of lhe planet fifty years hence after Urals will fall into the West. Perhaps some past. and the potential inherent in Western lhe Greenhouse Effect has really taken hold. states will fall into the paranoia belt, others civilisation, is intense, if not uncritical. He It's a world where refugees from drowning into the Eas1, but even if the United States throws out ideas illusUating sf's unique com lowlands have taken to the sea, where Ra doesn'I succeed. Europe will pick up lhe bination of popular writer and populist boys and radical Gaians bicker and posture. threads." Vector 157 IN'Itri'ffE Paranoia belt? East? Al ooc poinl Brin another the inspirational establishment of the human mind with its contradictions and in the quoted the term " evil empire" and mentionod one tlung that CAJ'I bring lhcsc battered com way the human race is viewed as - u it how the USA had refrained from obl i1erating munities through- a faith in somethlng were - "thoughts" of a larger ecology: the enemy in 1946- bu1 he also emphasised more than their isolation. It may be partly due "Each of Ill is both many and one, all at the that this would have had ominous effects and IO Krantz's guill, but even iO, heroism, re nme time... E... Pluribus... Unum?" (pp 111cssed his loathing for the Reagan/Thatcher sponsibility and community arise out of his 405/6) Brin cilCS thls discussion when he re ideology. He underlies the liberal individ ambiguous motives. Earth - especially IO turns lo .. tolerance". The human seU is ualisim whlch can be especially disccmcd in wards the end when we have almost multi-levelled: "Look, the human brain con The Postm an: .. JclTersan said there should incarnated god-figure bucd upon the Gaia sisu. of n:plillian - mammallian - forebrain be a revolution every 1wcn1y ycan. 1 prefer to "ICienlific myth.. and the cyberpunk cliche - different levels. 1nis im't thc Asimovian link it with 1wispot cycles; thc last great US of a vast data-net - builds upon this ..oon opp::tSition of lower sdf and godhood, .. he revolution was 1968 whlc:h left everyone Cll• venient fw:tion. " Bui is;n'1 this failh buil1upon poinu. out; our godhood can include our hausttd. I think wc'rcdueamthcronc.now." Wltruth? lower selves. Uhwnanity's destiny is in 50fflC U he workinc to dfea du•ngc w:ilh his "We'regoingtotV:dhctocs. r m trying to 10rt or apotheosis., it's into a godhood which writing? "U I OJuld have been • ~y good st..iw the sto:ngth of the Commons; we need reOocts a multiplicity or viewpoinu.. 11'1 pcr scientist, J would have been. I was a !Ueha", c:cmmunity and the individual lo take pan in hapl' thl1 upmsionist hummism which arxl a eood one. If you're a wri1er, you hope lhe foment of individual deblJC. We all have pmly underlies Brin.'s involvcncru in 1hc you're notju.stdivcrting. Tiuit's a worthy job. myths. Those people chose ID believe be search for utta-lCITcsttial intelligence. but it's no1 all thcrc is to it. Thctc arc jobs IO cause lhcy needed to." He ccts in before me with a clichc about be done, participating in changes. .. Earth There's certainly a great deal in TM Post uobiolo&Y being 1hc one hard science with comes with an afterword, a reading list and man ID suggest that Gordon Krantz.'1 - no evidence for its subject matter. Following SOfne suggested organisations IO join, &om followers? victims? - ,re not 10 much dupes the publicity tour he will be atiending the Greenpeace to Amnesty International. but rather arc ranind~ of the potential or lntcmationa..l Conference on fu.obiology, However, whai makes Brin's novels inter their communitie11 and selves. This is ideal which will discuss the search for planets, esting is not propagandising for wtirthy ism rather than cynicism, as if deep down proto-evolution, higher levels of evolution causes, but the way he laeklcs moral ques they are aware of the fiction but don 't care. and lhc activities of different SETI groups. tions of some complex.ity and ambiguity. In Whereas Orwell castigatod this human foible He outlines the fundamentaJ proble ms o f The Post man, the hero's taking on the u doublethink, Brin celebrates it as a model SETI: mantle of a postal operative of a non-exsis for rcc:onciling competition and co-operation. "Why isn't there any evidence so far of ant ·•Res10red United Stat.cs" 17 years after In Earth, I.here's much di1eU5sion of the aliens? It comes down to two theories: the the Big One is on one level a scam. but on multiplicity of "selves" - both within the "bazooka" theory - someone go1 thac lint 10 VctlOr 157 and destroyed mos1 of the others; or the cated cave-sys1cm? "NoL.. [pause] con e:ii:pens1ve "w&1crworld" theory - th&1 the life-mne in sciously." And how about another character's Whal's next? Another "Uplift"book is due our solar system goes ou1 far beyond Mars, lament for the disappearance of his previous for 1992. "I refuse to write two same but Mus is too small to possess the essential symbol, the daily postman? Another pause, universe books in • row. It makes you lazy. I waler vapour. We are closer to the interior and a smile. "What could I be refcring to have other things to say," boundary of the life-mne than we though!; if there?" It's as if he doesn't want to be Looking for Brin behind his deservedly Venus was in Mars' orbit. ii would be well thought of as ux, clever in • lilerary sense. well-regarded sf, he comes across IS some within the possible range of life, but we are "TilC theme lhroughout my novels is 'I'm thing of the evangelist. more of the teacher. exceptionally hot and dry, with-despite our just a fucking Cro-Magnon man doing the Several times in the middle of an opinionated oceans - more oxygen and less carbon diox best I can'," But he works hard at his craft. discussion, he would back off by admitting ide and water than mosl such worlds. The Drafts of his novels are extensively circulated the speculative nature of his ideas, or refer usual life-bearing world would produce and note taken of the comments. Does he ring to the size of his ego. There are writers beings without fingers or the use of fire. In make major changes? "No. I'm the writer. of his kind of sf who have fossilised into th e telligent dolphins or squids, say." The aim's not to make major changes, but to role of guru. But if sf has any role at all So we'd come out of the sky to these crea note where the reader puts the book down - outside stuffing wallets it is as a vehicle of tures and give them a w hole new iconoclastic ideas. Brin's model of a universe. "We can be ... post-n'!" multi-consciousnC5s within and in Communication is obviously a cluding ourselves may be confusing major theme in Brin's work. with but it does offer a way of dealing his information "Ne1" in Earth and with the logical contradictions of the entire symbol of the "Post some of his stances. Picking and man". taking up the ideas of Ah yes, the movie. choosing in the ideological super interpersonal communication, be market? Maybe, but it emphasises nign authority, co-Qpaation. that any ideology is full o f contra irupir&1ion, social rcspoo.sibility... Brin reels off a dictions. His definition of the He doe.sn't disagree, but is at pains currenl mind-sets which dominate to strcs.s how he sees himself as a the work! were followed by more popwklr artist when I mention qualifications than I've directly in themes. "The myth of the suffering series of adjectives dicated. · romant ic artist is a good way to grab David Brin's fic1ion is marked by the girls but basically it's garbage." an intelligence and social concern He prefers to address an everyday describing the which makes it stand out. He is pu audience rather than the literary ticularly good at sf's genre-strength: elite he claims British sf writes for. the speculative short story which "MukTwainismyrolemodel. You screenplay. They are shows well-drawn characters in a read him as a child, and reading future into which we can sec th e again as a 19 year old student think- scientific and moral comple:ii:ities of ing that you've just been given a not complimentary. our own world developing. In a 'children's book' you see so much genre plagued by nihilism or facile that you think you muSI have had an acceptance of "It'll all work out", abridged edition as a kid. You go Brin's optimism does have a back home on vacation to fmd your thoughtful core to ir. We may get own copy and realise thai you there in the end. but we'll have to had/I'/. Whereas Joyce deprived the world of to cat. sleep, feed the kids, make love. And I work hard at it. "We have defeated para more of his wondenul short stories and go back and tighu ,, that scene." noia," suggests Brin: "The next lo go will be rumed to Ulysses and Finnegan's Wa ke And he's proud of the fact that T he Post machismo" - which is something barely which only ten lhousand pwple in the whole man was one of the recommended tit1cs for touched upon in Earth, although he is work• world have read. Okay, he was a genius ud young adults of the American Library Associ ing on something with the title The Council he wanted to e:ii:tend the range of the novel. ation. ud of the lencn he gets from readers. or Woman. It's not so much that words like bu1 ... " " You tend to disregard the leitc:n saying "optimism .. or " sentimeorality" ue inappro While not d isagreeing, I try to think. of an 'Your book stopped me from committing priate ad_jcc:tives but they are incomplete: attack but with two literature degrees I suicide., because anotMr book might tip valid pans o f the human mind. haven't read either of Joyce's novels, so I them over the edge, but I did get. for instance, Brin describes himself as " not an atheist; change the subject back to sf. 1be references a letter from • woman in Aorida who wa, a not an agnostic", but he nevertheless believes to other sf novels in Ea rth: Sheckley, Brun poslal operative who told me that the book that we must act if "we arc doing this on our ner (whose Stand on Zanzibar is stopped her moping abou1 a shitty job." He's own." "This" involves cleaning up the name-checked twice in the Afterword), Gib prouder of the fact that the book is read in planet. reforming institutions - and moving son, whose books are an obvious source for high school than that Warner Bros. are mak into space. Sf is entcnainment. but also an Brin's "Net" ("But Gibson's version. if it ing a movie out of it. inspirational tool by which these goals can be e:ii:isted, would be insa.v"). It's a matter of Ah yes, the movie. Brin reels off a series of striven towards. acknowledging sources for ideas, in the same adjectives describing the screenplay. They Early on in the conversation, he made a way IS /Q/:IWJI ideas are acknowledged. are not complimentary, statement to the effect that "Intolerance While there's an obvious difference between "lbey'll have lo trash it." should be stamped on," and waited for my Brunner's despair and Brin's reminder that So will it happen? reaction. " You laugh, but that's the point: there's a lot in modem society to be thankful " I have no idea. Except for the title, it's not that in our culture we can laugh at such a for, he's careful to point out how anger and like the book. lbey tell me that following the statement." guilt can focus attention on a problem. book would be 'too expensive'. The action I find myself disagreeing with some of hi s Given these references, and his admiration scenes in the book feature two or three ensuing remarks. But I do like that. for Twain, is there a nod to Tom Sawyer people. In the saeenpl1y they have the I like his sf, too. when 1wo characters, like Tom and Becky wreckage of downtown San Francisco to con Thatcher, find themselves lost in a compli- struct - and they say the book's too Vector 157 II C,ISCC:, VER the new worlds Jack Vance Lyonesse Ill: Madouc The third eagerly-awaited volume in Jack Vance's legendary Arthurian epic saga. £12.95 hardback £7.99 trade paperback Ian Watson Salvage Rites His latest collection of superb stories. 'Has already established a place in the front rank of contemporary writers.' Sunday Times £3.50 paperback Kurt Vonnegut Player Piano His first novel - a modem SF classic 'George Orwell, Dr Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer.' Time £4.99 Palad;,1 paperback Charles Platt Soma A return to the fabled world of Piers Anthony's Chthon. £3 .50 paperback Grafton Books Widening Your Horizons • GRAFTON BOOKS Science Fiction and the Uninformed Heart Steve Palmer rw10 Bettelheim, the great psychoana society, was the introduction of a lone, ab embodied brains so slippery !hey can never B lyst, child psychologist and writer stracted god - Yahweh, Allah - and the really be found, nor understood, and who died in Mwch 1990, apparent1y by his appearllllce of various humanist principles exisr in a world so dehwnanised !hay can own hand. In 1960 he published The In• such as hwnan equality. only be indicated, never touched. fo rmed Heart, 1. book inspired by the year he Now, in the Twentieth century, paralleling The computer is seen as omnipotent; in a spent in the concentration camps of Dachau the demise of patriarchal religion, a new god similar manner to people's consideration of and Buchenwald, and which sought to under has taken the place of the old. This is iechnol money, computers are visualised as saviours. stand how people reacted when in extreme ogy; the abstracted projection of people's It is imagined that if only there could be more situations. inner selves, of their isolated, unemotional and bener computers the world's problems His remarks on science fiction appear in a intellects, of their obsession with time, effi would reduce. The so-called developing na chapter devoted 10 the effect of a dehu ciency, money and order, and of their tions are sold technology which is so above manised, technological environment on dehumanised psyches. Bettelheim wr01e what they know it causes worse problems people. For Beudhcim, this was charac (quotinganothersowt:e): than those it was sent to mitigate; the compu terised in his cra by faclOries, capitalist-style If we look at science fiction in this ters and modem machines stand idle because mass consumerism. the conceniration camps, perspective. we line! ii concentrating there is no organisation, education, finance, and the general air of mechanisation. on "problems ot space and time; the or suppon for them. The section was called "Machine Gods" individual's sense ol reality and ident Science fiction and technology came sim and was based on the observation that, in ity; problems ol prolonged isolation ultaneously from minds regressed beyond society as it has been and is now, people tend and individual existence in mortal their earlier infantile levels to an almost to glorify or project what is imponant. or combatwilhmacllines." foetal world of greed. a world in which all what they see most clearly, in themselves. In Bruno Beue\heim needs were provided for by some gigantic sf, "the prefabricated daydreams of a techno The Inronned Heart. Penguin, 1960 external entity, and the problem with identity logical age," Bettelheim saw that people Science fiction has provided an admirable was solved not by drawing on inner human were simultaneously haunted by and depend miTTor to the minds of men (for in the period resources but by taking in characteristics of ent upon machines; that they were setting up Bettelheim was referring to there was a pre that entity. technology as a thing above people, not as a ponderance of male sf writers), describing These phenomena. most apparent between servant of people. Technology was bocoming imaginary machine foes, future worlds chaI the thirties and fifties, are now more subtle, a god. acterised by all-encompassing clockwork appearing for example as a sudden rash of Early peoples tended to extract lhe essen perfection, gleaming metallic cities. These cyborg films (cyborgs laking their qualities tial quality of phenomena and deify them; images were new imaginary Heavens, both from machines and men with hypertrophied thus all the early pantheons consisted of desired and feared by men, who as they de muscles -you never get a weedy cyborg, do many gods each with some small area of in vised them knew they were within the realms you?). By and large, films have opted for one fluence or control. There is evidence that, of possibility. of two possibilities with their machine-hu although matriarchal religions of lhe Neoli This new god has become something of a mans; either macho cyborgs who kill if you thic period were not universal, they were monster. Being a crearure or men's unemo sneeze in lheir general direction, or infant ro influential.presentingaviewoftheuniverse tional minds it knows no natural limits; the bots smothered in sentimentality. Both are in which the female was mos1 important, extraordinary pace of advance and the head projections of the modem male mind - often deified in three incarnations: the young long production or new things testifies to the largely infantile, largely narcissistic, and woman, the great mother, and the old woman. expansion of this new god. its lack of human lacking identity. Bettelheim wrote: This reflected the viewpoint of Neolithic so limits, and its ability to transcend the role of a It seems that ii we project our wish ciety. The earliest patriarchal religions were means to beoome an end which Brian Aldiss ful and anxious fantasies not on projections of various societies - the Swne described as " ... anew sovereignty that may manlike objects but on complex ma rian, the Egyptian, the Assyrian, the Hittite, provemoredeadlythanthelas1." chinery we run the risk of losing our the Semitic - into a cosmic order. So there ln recent times, computers have become psyctiologicalidenUtyasman. came gods of agriculture, war, cities, order, the face of the god; in William Gibson's tri Bettelheim, The Informed Heart and so on. About three thousand years ago a logy, his paean to surfaces, people are In parallel with these thoughts, Bettelheim further refinement, mirroring the advance of manipulated by artificial intel!egences - dis- noted that as writers described the extreme Vector 157 13 outpOSts o f technological advance, they were people, particularly men. is euessed in their from his previous arguments. The semi-ma also haunted by the destructive power of their assumpt.ion either of stereotyped or non• chines in their world dominated by machine creatioM. Mirroring the increasing destruc• human shapes. gods have nothing inside their human-shaped liveness of m achines through the twentieth Thus the future worlds of the cyberpunks shells, but could not come close 10 one an century, from guns to tanks to planes and are filled wilh people altered by biotcchnol• other even if they h ad. No machine, nor any bombs to nuclear weapons, came a realisat.ion ogy; the bizane fauna of Broce sterling's machine made into a deity, can have compas in sf of the possibilities of global h olocaust Sch ls matrix for example. The cyborg or sion for, nor even interest in, mere human Some writers gleefully pounced on this possi genetically altered human being is a stock. beings. The si7..e of technology and the im bility, and some still do, blithely zapping the idea of sf. Even Stableford and Langford's mense vistas conjured up by s f. while a world in order to bring in their own version future history The Third Mlllenium is measure of people's imaginations. are more a of humanity; others described them, but kept packed with human transformation. measure of their inability 10 fmd themselves their upper lips stiff. Both types remain alie The depicted human identities of these wri and others in an automated world; theoreti nated. Isaac Asimov wrote; ters, combined with prevailing patriarchy and cally, there is no limit 10 a mechanical world. l suppose lhal scienoe fiction writers the onset of technology, gave rise IO eulogies and men have no1 yet understood that hwnan and readors were. on lhe whole, of the naked intellect whic h passed the boun beings are small. ploased {about Hiroshima) - if not at daries of the merely silly. The imaginatioll.l Some modem sf is changing, however. The Iha effect ol the atom bomb itself, of these writers worked in such a way that appearance of women writers, and the some lhen at least at Iha crystallisation into what reluctant move towards !act ol something that had been so three.dimensional characters by men writers. science fictional. mirrors the change in attitude of men and Isaac Asimov women to ont another; but the attitude IO Nightfa ll O ne, Panther, 1971 No machine, nor technology has remained much the same. For The other main theme taken by Bettelheim eumplc, the fear ofhumaniiy's end as a biol in his piece is that of dehumanisation. He saw ogical entity has changt.d from one entailing in science fiction three symptoms: dehurnani• any machine made machine domination to one entailing domina sation by name, by disregard for the body or tion by biology fashioned by machines its absence, and by the absence of intimate roughly in their o wn image. human relatioll.l. Sociel)', however, lags behind the individ• 1n Asimov's story "Nightfall", characters into a deity, can ual vision. In America. military men now let were given the names Aton 77, Theremon some software take decisions for them. For 762, Becnay 25, Sheerin 501, Genovi 41. Sor some reason such software is called an "e:t 5, Faro 24, Yi.mot 70. Latimer 25, Vendret 2. have compassion pert system". Other groups are trying to All these are men. Each name is interchange mimic the brain by building "nelD'al net• able with, for e:tample. R2D2 and C3PO; works" which will apparently provide even when read ing the story, I wondered if there for, nor even more wonders. The e:tistence of technology would be any difference if the actual charac as an end in itself could be a fatal problem, te r of, say, Thercmon 762 was switched for and sf does harm by tending to perpetuate the C3PO. People bcc»me androids and vice interest in, mere myth that what people have made and could versa. make must be good and right. This early use of depersonalised names The most realistic image of wh.at Cllfl be was a symbol of the disregard science fiction human beings. done in the real world has come with EF had. and sti!I has to some e:ttent, for real Schumacher's vision of lnt.enncdiate Tech human beings. It helps explain the attitude nology. It would be wonderful to see some Literature has to sciC11ce fiction. For writcr5 science fictional depictions of future lnler• such as Asimov, Aton 77 and his associates " ... most of the heroes arc basically minds mediate Technology. However, I suspect that were not c:tperienccd as real people, but as without a body." we arc doomed for some time yet to endure, husks; the absence of innes hwnanity was Patriarchy suppressed emotion. but tech and perhaps eventually wmship, the new ml• symbolised by the absence of human names. nology actually killed it; thus the chine gods; could Gwyneth .Jones· Similarly. lhe use of surname only, no! unemotional iniellect WIS free to roam ter VENTURan embrace ever become real? limited IO s f, indicates alienation from char rains dehumanised to the level of the To conclude in Bettelheim's own words: acters; thus Bruce Stc:rling's Abelard Lindsay machine. Before the seventies men were It can be shown lhat the influencing is called Lindsay, whlle Gibson's hero in forced to suppress emotion. a simutaneous machine, too, began as a projection ol Ncuromancu is Case. tenet, rooted in Greek society, glorifying the the human booy. but lhe essential Even when tllC more blatant name.forms rational intellect and eventually bringing ap point is that it does not retain lhi s had died out. science fiction was for a long plied science and the fict.ion that image; it becomes ever more complex time unable to transcend a small number of accompani~ it. The result WIS depictions of and the psychotic person ends up stereotypes which were similarly husk-like: the isolated, unemotional int.ellect which, feeling controlled by mechanical de lhe masculine astronaut hero, lh e scientist from a suitable distance, could no! be distin vices Iha! no long8f resemble (and his beautiful daughter), the hard-nosed guished from the typical computer. anything human or even animal-like. military man, the foreign baddie, and so on. This, the ultimate stripping of humaniiy Thus modem man. when he is The distortion or absence of the human from its own brains, is de.scribed by Bruce hauntod, whether sane or proloundy body is one of sf's most popular th emes, one Sterling in Schlsmatrb: as making human disturbed, is no longer haunted by rarely !Ouched upon by literature or other feeling too mild to notice; one of his charac• other men 01' by grandiose projections genres (e:tccp! fantasy). In psychological cir tcrs. with a new consciousness of cold, of man. but by machines. cles. fantasies. obsessions or nightmares pragmtic logic, e:tpericnc:es humaniiy as a Bcndhcim, T he Informed Heart about changes in the shape or size of the body buried subconsciousness. The author who arc most often intcrprtted as implying ident confesses to being a gadget freak writes ity problems; it is perhaps no coincidence about gadgets, though many seemed onc:e to Bruno Belle lh elm: Recolleclion1 that the future excursions undertaken by so have been people. a nd Refl e<: llona , lhe psychologist's many sf writers happen in and around strange Bettelhcim's third point, sf's disregard for memoirs, is published by Thames and bodies. The lack of idcntil)' fell by so many intimllC: human relatioruhips, follows on Hudson, £14.95 14 Vector 157 Book Reviews Edited by Paul Kincaid Nightfall what lhe different suns look. like and their having to share Ra tspike with Miller as Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg posiiionsinthesky. Blanche obviously sees Miller as something Gollancz, 1990, 352pp, £13.95 With liulc difference in quality between of an inspiration: but equally obviously he the two, a lot or people who liked the story can't Miller like Miller can, so he suffers ~!~~ may find they enjoy !he novel. rather in comparison. Also, he suffers from a l~/:!:p~o~al! ~ai:a:Cq:~:. LI Hurst penchant for Games Workshop-type imagery, who inspired by it. wrote "Nightfall". It de which is an area of c\ichc even Les Edwards scribes a planet with six suns which never avoids like the plague. knows darkness until one fateful day. With Ratspike In short, Ian Miller says his own things in Robcn Silverberg as his collaborator that J ohn Blanche & Ian Miller his own way in places much better than Rat story has been expanded into this novel. That GW Boo~, 1990, £12.99 spikc. and both Les Edwards and John is: the first two thirds of the novel are based Blanche have an unbecoming obsession with on Lhc story, the last section which describes Blood and Iron cliche and are best avoided until they magi life after the catastrophe is new. Les Edwards cally cure themselves by putting their brains What has been added to expand from 40 GW Books, 1990, 98pp, £12.99 in touch wilh their hands. pages 10 350'! First. a section describing the Richa rd M iddleton original llfchacological work which confirms !hat society is destroyed by fire every 2049 B ~:~rs~~~ t:~ ::~l~~~r:: years. Second, the background to the mathe sentcd therein. Also judge them by the cover Earth matics which lhrows lhc theory of universal price. Aie they wonh it? David Brin gravitation into doubt and leads the asa-ono No. Macdonald, 1990, 601pp, £13.95 mers to think that Lhc eclipse is approaching Les Edwards gets an "art book"all lo him as the 2049 year cycle nears its close. Third, self. Lucky him. Not sure 1.bout us, though. ihe introduction of a bit of xeno-psychology He has covered Horror, Fantasy and sf; and in T ~:i~n~v~ :tJ!l~k~:1:·inth~o;';~ which explains how a whole planel c,.n be Blood a nd I ron there is a representative from st.seller lists, his answer to the likes of Eon. I driven mad by Darkness. And founh, the role all. He has teehnical sk.ill Cid infinitum, a good use ihe 1enn "designed" advisedly. During of the religious cull who know from their colour sense, and photo-realistic painting the long gestation of Earth, Brin has con Book or Revelations that the end is nigh. down as pat as Jim Bums and Chris Foss. suhed many people about its contct11 and These eonsti1u1e the first two sections or Unfommate.ly, somewhere along lhc line (be structure (even I was sent a copy of a late the novel, and end with the original story's fore he siarted painting book covers) his draft on disk to read critically), and he has last line: "The long night had come again". brain got disengaged from his painting hand, taken on board a wealth of advice and criti However, lhe night is not absolute, and lhe so all we have arc Horror, Fantasy and sf cism. It is hard to imagine a more thoroughly whole tone of lhe novel is much lighter and cliches depicted in 1. way which leaves as researched book:. more optimistic lhan the short slory. ln the little lo the imagination as hardcore porno The seemingly inevitable adjunct 10 this la.st third, "Daybreak", nearly all of the main graphy. These cliched images no doubt sell approach is that there is usually some loss of characters have survived with their senses in "the product" very well, but books are more inspiration. a tendency for the prodoct to tacl; they also tend to survive lhe barbarism than product and book covers are more lhan come out looking, like the camel, as if parts into which society has collapsed. The short adverts, so Blood and Iron really didn't ap of it have been assembled by a commiuee. It story implied that the situation was much peal to me at al!. is 10 Brin 's credit that he largely avoids this, worse. In complete contrast is Ian Miller. His art and has produced a s10ry !hat is very readable The names of some characters have work: is executed in inks and is evocative, in parts, although a bil indigestible lo swal changed, lhe six suns now have names in eerie and very, very sharp. You'll have to see low at one sitting. stead of Greek letters as their identifiers, the his work to understand that last comment, but The basic storyline is as strong as anything role of the cull is changed, and the lead roles don'1 look at it in Ratsplke because most of Brin has done; a complex singularity (noth arc now taken by minor characters from the the evocative, eerie e!C quality is lost in a ing so simple as a black hole for Brin) has story. There are one or two other small welter of what I assume is meant lo be sexy fallen into the Eanh 's core and is eating away changes which seemed to have little point - designing - heavy black borders, black ink at lhe planeL What is it? Who made it? How for inst.anee, lhe original game of "multi splodges, inset artwork, and biz.arrc com will !hey get ii out? Scope there for I good chcss" has become " s1oehastic chess". And ments (viz.: "Bring me his testicles!") shon novel. Bui this book is set about 50 whru. is still missing is a good description of John Blanche is terribly unfortunate in years in the future (jus1 about the mos1 diffi- VeclOr 157 15 cult time LO 5et any story). and takes on board answer were No, it would make this book no stal.c dichc; and its display of "fantasy pro !he entire saga of coo-doom in as realistic a more lhan an inlerCSting sidelight on lhc ho ducts" such as a Ring or Power, names way as possible. locaust in. sf. peppered with apostrophes like Ak'is'hyr and As the title implies. Earth is about !he fate UHurst Ur'wcn'ta.. and the discovery oflnncr Power of the entire plane1 - i1 might just as well and Secret Destiny. al.I sccn shopworn. Bui haYc been called HGaia". ~arc~ dc5pite all this, the novel held my atltruion Kl here, there and {nearly) CYerywhefe OYer Moonheart oonsislcntly and enjoyably. lhe 5Ulf'at:C or !he plane[, and I role c:all or Charles de Lint lnomas Hcngwr is wanted.. 1be Canadian clwKterS which certainly bi:eaks lhe rule I Pon, 1990, 485pp, £13.95, t:l.99pb Parapsychology Branch want IO racarch wu giYc:n (by a certain Or D Brin) when upon him. K.icnn Fog. his awrcnticc in the starting OUI to write fiction: no more lhan six, "The Way" which provides the book's or lhe readers lose ud. There ue also rrick r:p:k ~~ikc~!=ly =-°7~ "Magic", is looking for him. JamicTamson. sy effects lhat I dislike. Brin started using a characters function more as plot-propulsion a wcallhy literary philanthropist who owns Mac II while writing Earth, and has aonc dcYiccs than psycliologiCl.lly solid people; its Tamson House in Ottowa {where all the Yari OYcrboard wilh different typc£accs and com dialogue sometimes Ytcrs down into s1iff, ous sub-plots cYentually collide), wanLS him puter graphics. He has also managed, by including an Afterword, a "bonus" shon story (crap) and acknowledgements to get the page collJII up 10 uactly 600. C~ on. DaYid. for Chris.sakes. Who needs it'? But haYing picked the nits, I can come dean and admit that I like the book. There's still too much 10 take in. even after reading ii onc:eon screen and once in proof; I'll be &lad to 1tt a finished copy for the third reading. Thcrc"s hard sf as good as anything being done at lhc moment. there's the eco-thrillct clemcn[, !here's new religions, there's CYcn "freon.. u a swcarworrl. I NJJe blockbus1c:rs, coukin'1 stand Eternity. Jollhcd Stark and Yowcd neYcr 10 read another eco-noYcl. But I loYcthisone. John Gribbin The Folk of the Fringe Orson Scott Card U&erul, 1990, 243pp, £11.95hb, £5.95pb 0 5 T~:ri:s ~t~: :N:! ~:: ~:;Jd ~; m, describing how lhc yaJues of a Mormon society arc helping 10 rebuild something of America in lhc mid-wesL Three things stand out about lhcsc stories: Firsc as a Yision of the holocaust they arc not Ycrydiffcrcnl from. say. Brin's The Postman or SWlwick's In the Orin, and much before. Second: they arc about a mixed 10Cicly - of bclieYCJS and non-belieYefS, so lhat WC only KC Mormonism from the owsidc. And lhird. most or the non-believers· discoYcrics of the nl[UJc of Mormon £ailh come as something of an anticlimu or disappointmtnL For in siance, Sall Lake City has been flooded and lhe Temple lies in the middle or a la.kc: some gentiles decide to raid the temple for il.S hid den lrCll\lrc lc£t before the flood. AYoiding the guards. I.hey diYc and bring up shccLS or . metal: bw these MC not plates of gold, but old cans prcucd flat with inters.sions written on u=" them - "Dear Lord heaJ my girl Jenny < please I pray". The ability IO intercede lhc God is obYiously i.mponan1 IO the Monnons but it is different for an non-belicYer. Appar• ently He does not answer Yer/ often, if at all. This third point raises a critical p-oblcm: should I ask whelhcr Card intended his readers lo feel the values of Mormonism'? And should I answer lhat question'? For if lhc 16 to explain the disappearance of his niece. a moralist, how account for the ironies of original development for Dillard. who wrote Sara Kendell. And S11r& Kendell wants him to vice'! In "Eugene de FrllJ\val" incest is pun the novelisation of Star- fuk V) who pur explain the use and pUIJ)Ose of a bag of ished by a last-minute muiliple catastrophe, loins the Vulcan equivalent of a magkian's strange artifacts fowid in her junk-shop. In bu1 not before the father-daughter relation spirit for the Romulans, thus bashing the the book's "Otherworld" of sixth-century ship has come to seem the most desirable one story into an ill-fitting dovetail. North America he is wanted by Taliesin. a in the story. "Florville and Courval" tele The novel appears to be like the cover, a bard exiled from Gwynedd by Hengwr, and graphs the working-out of its interlocked very dull rough d.tafL by the tribes of that continent to assist in crimes, but contains a most instructive com Ter ry Broome combating the evil Mal'ek'a whose true parison of deathbeds: a religious woman dies identity is nameless. The narrative moves be in terror, a woman of the world in peace; the tween the two worlds, and Tam.son House (a one regretting the good she hu failed to do, Sorcerer's Son mysterious "good" Amityville with an entity the other amusing herself by letting her heirs Phyllis Eisenst.ein of its own) straddles the two times. There is a gamble for her effects - she has, after all Grafton, 1990, 379pp, £12.95, £7.95 pb retinue of minor characters from two cul only Jost the years in which a woman ceases rures, including manitou (elves), Indian to be desirable. squaws and sorcerers, hit men. a streetwise Whether de Sade is a misogynist is an ar T !:asn:;~e~g:o= ~c:~ s;:n~as~~! no-shit copper with marital problems, his gument for IIJ\other book. In Gothic Tales well .....,-jtten one perhaps, the fluency of the wife. a biker called Blue. and dozens of evil there are women victims, but there is every author and ha control over language wcie tragg'a (ores. basically) who provide the thing 10 suggest that that is because they exist quickly apparent. but it was less clear blood 111d gore. in 18th century French society. Some of the whether she had the imagination to equal Two things elevate the novel above medio stories here are only IIJ\ecdotes - 'The them. However, as the book progressed it crity. The fint is the narrative technique - Chastised Husband" and "Room for Two" demonstrated a pleasingly independent line events arc seen through the eyes of a u.nge of - and ii is in these short works that men are of thought which I suppose one should ex characters al different times in different ways disadvantaged, humiliated or mciely acquies peel but which one doesn't always get from (from the 1wo different worlds) which gives cent to women's desires. The novellas - Nebula award nominees. the book's "universe", characten and plot a "Eugenie de Franval", " Aorville and II begins when a sorceror, Smada Rezhyk, certain depth. width and breadth that would Courval", "Emilie de Tourville"' - show proposes marriage to another sorceror, Dcli otherwise be absenl The second is its philos women as men's victims, or sometimes as vev Ormolu. Rejected, he fears that she migh1 ophy of good and evil: for much of the novel Fate's victims; but always as a result of their attack him, and decides to get her pregnanL the reader is challenged to judge whether Ta gender. Either their passions or their power to so limiting her powers while he strengthens liesin or Thomu Hengwr is the malevolent give life bettays them. his defenses. An ensnared fire demon, Gil power, a problem shared by many of the Like Les Llasons Dangereuses, lhese d.nun. is given the form of a handsome young characters. The solution 10 this central prob stories have the air of the Age of Reason: knight. Mellor, and gains entry to Delivev's lem is that Thomas Hengwr has been, bruta.l, cynical. m111ipulativc, and betrayed cutle and bed. A boy, Cray, is born who is unknown 10 himself, Jekylled and Hyded into (always betrayed) by moments of unaffected taught that his father went to continue his a Gandalf and a Sauron - Mal'ek'a - who feeling. The loss of any control leads to disas mission and never returned. As he grows up, manifests himself for a final banle in Tamson ter. Which may of course be why the age Cray wishes passionately to be like his never House, by this time transported to the Other gives rise to sadism, a practise in which con seen father. and to discover what became of wo rld lock stock and charactci. Like Ged trol is the essential fac10r. him. Cray's quest for his non-existent falhci, &om Lcguin's "Earthsea", victory over evil Mary Gentle and the events which rise from that, is lhe can only be achieved by lhe reunification main narrative of the novel. with good. Its IIJ\ old theme interestingly None of this may strike you as being very handled, in a novel lhat gels airborne despite The Lost Years original, indeed the plot isn't. The originality iu excess weighl JM Dillard lies, and perhaps this is the vital place for Davkt Mitchell Simon & Schiuter, 1990, 307pp, £12.95 originality in a quest fanwy, in the world created. Rezhyk enslaves fire demons by means of rings which hold their names and The Gothic Tales of the Mar r ;;;.~e~f:~ ~veth;e!a:;::eea:i5: thus give him powa ova them. Dclivev hu events of the first film. bu1 this novel covers powci as a weaver, controlling spiders, quis de Sade only about a year (two further novels are snakes, plants, living aeaturcs. But where Marquis de Sade planned to continue the sequence). It is ex Delivcv is kind and loving, Rezhyk is a cold (tr. Margaret Crosland) cessively self-indulgent: there's a failed intellect whose aims are knowledge IIJ\d the Peter Owen, 1990, 183pp, £12.95 attempt to give the Tarot a rational respect powci lhat such knowledge can give him. ability, and a number of awkward references The worlds of the demons of fire, water, air T ~~u::ai::n f;\c;::ari~y ;ein:ad:i:ut~; to the original series and the films. Dillard and ice are convincingly realised, even when the crew's farewells with !he kind of sketched in lightly, as are the characters, so Laclos, 111d for more reason than one of the treats mawkish reve1ence which marred the films, the reader does have an interest in their event heroines is a Mademoiselle de Tour takes lOOpages to sel up lhe mind-numb ual fate. caring what becomes of them. ville/fourvel, and one of the minor villains and simple plot, introducing a selection of This is a well wriuen, well conceived called Valmont. The stories are bawdy; some ingly characters one hopu will be taken up book. cenainly more than jus1 another fllJ\ humorous, some pretending 10 a high Gothic minor novels because they make little tasy. It is not for arachoophobes, lhough, the - if not actually camp - tragedy. The in future number of spiders would make you blench! reader will look in vain for the genital-by sense hcie. The story lacks momentum. Sarek Helen McNabb gcnital descriptions of multiple sex found in (Spock's father) IIJ\d Uhura are kidnapped by Justine or 100 Days or Sodom; for the de the Djanai. Kirk his immediate superior light in cruelty, the bloodshed, tonures and and and love-interest, Ciana, negotiate for their mutilations which give sadism its dictionary Double Helix Fall release while acting as diplomats be1ween the definition. Neil Ferguson Djanai and the lnari, whose differences the Allhough aiypical in that sense, these late Abaciu, 1990, 272pp, £3.99 Romulans have exploited Meanwhile, stories showcase the contradictions in de y and his love-interest, Keridwcn. join et in San Francisco in 2023, a generation Sade's fiction. If he is a libertine. where does McCo Spock and his fiancee on Vulcan (hardly IIJ\ Safter the Great Quake, this is a Bravt one put the apparently-straight moralising'! If Vector 157 17 New Workf.like dystopia where social s1arus survivors of the plague. The Koontz novel on the othef hand. suf. is determined before birth. lhe population is The Stand wu fim published in 1979. fen fu more from structure and Jack of kepi quiet with continual 1V soaps, and Lllcc m1111y novels it went through a mewnor narnrive flow, lhan ii docs from any evil in gang, o r 11ateless outcasts - the Zappers - phosis from "a manuscript of over twelve tent. Pushed very much as a be.st seller a la play Cll•and•mouse with the police in their hwdred pages Ion& and weighing twelve Slq)hen Kine. the average c:hapt.er length is polDlds. lhe same weig.ht u the sort of bowl somelhing less than four pages • and even """''Double Helix Fall tells of the few citiz.ens ing ball 1 favota"" (Dansc Macabre) to 50me then. some ue sub-divided funhc:r. This pro or !his society who a:re not whll they seem: four hundfed pages shorto. In the introduc• duces a conswu chopping from one narra1.ive Sollyheim. the ancient origina!Of of genetic lion to the new venion. Kini explains: strand 10 anothef. and whils!. (ifhlMled cue engineering, escapiflg from his luxury prison The wls W9f8 made at the behest fully) it CUl be a useful device to develop a cell; Annie Bernier, the President's daughrer, of !he aocounting department They plot, all it docs here is to drown the reader in who heads for the hills to join the Zappers; loted up production costs, laid these confusion. The " Bad Place" seems 10 be all Rick Stator, robot private eye who believe! nexltothesalesolmypreviouslOU'" in lhe mind of Frank Pollard, an apparent him.self to be human and is on Bemier's uail; books and decided that a cover price drifter who awake! on the street suffering BeMy Cznetsov, murderous police chief pre ot $6.95 was about what the market from amnesia. The story unravels as he ap pared to do 1111ything 10 preSCIVe the status would bear. proaches a Private Eye to find out who he is, quo; and Spight. tramp with a dialogue con No w, in response to readers who have and it seems that murder is never far away. si51ing or Captain Beefhean qooLCS. heard this story, King hu restored some The characters are nat, stcreotypical ciphers, And everyone i5 officially dead. At the mo• parts, re-written others and generally updated rather than poople with whom you can feel ment or binh the individual's entire life is The Stand. sympathy. I found the writing hurried and already mapped out. so it is incapable of The plo1 remains the same. it doesn't take simplistic and was astounded at the Los evolution: therefore dead This rums out to be any new 1wisis. but ii Wes longer to get Angeles Dally News verdict, ")w a wider pilfl of lhe paranoid delusion behind Cme1- where it's going, ii takes the scenic route. The imaginatiOfl than Stephen King, he also sov's dcs:ire for power. The whole of society bulk or the re-writin& addcs textta"e and de writes a bell.tr senteflCe". One 10 miss, I'm revolve! around the sy5tcmllic dc:n.ial or life.. tail. Other parts add characters and situations ,frud. symbolised by the Double HeliJ: Fall ma to flesh out areas where evenu seemed to Al.3n Dorey noeuvre pcrfonncd by the Z:lppc:f's in lhcir hwry along just a liulc loo quK:kly and easily power-kitcS. 1be Zappc:rs consider them in lhe 1979 venion. These changes have selve! alive. though officially non~nt; made a good book into a bcuer one. T he The Blood of Roses lhe vast majority of the people believe them• Stand is sf by any definition you ~ to Tanilh Lee selves dead. lhough really alive: Sollyheim is apply, and is a fine example of the kind of Legend, 1990, 678pp, L14.99 thought dead in lhc oldfashioned u:nsc and writing lhat separates King rrom the horde of rums up inconveniently; Rick Stator seems hisimilalors. hum1111 but started life in a laboratory. Jon Wallace A ~~~i;:': ~;m~~ldlhi: ;~~: This anempt 10 define life U the COf\trlr)' by the Royal Society for me Pro1eetion or of dellh, rllher than or artificiality, is remi Trcc.5 or some similarly august body. Ms Lee niscent or much or Philip K. Dick's work. The Bad Place is a prime candidate. Ferguson's androids not only dream, they Dean R Koontz The story is set in a typically oppressive love. S1a1or come! to accept his humaniry at Headline, 1990, 372pp, £12.95 Lee universe: a medieval somewhen and a the same moment !hat it is denied him; he has Central/Nonhcm European somewhere. The to accept that he knows the name of his cre The Night of the Moonbow central idea is interesting, the Christian Eu ator and lhat the creator h.u failed in il.5 Thomas Tryon charist subverted into a celebration of mission to dcslroy its creation. As in F ran Hodd.er, 1990, 320pp, £13.95 vampirism. Anjelen, 1 would-be sacrifice to kensleln, lhe Monster is far the less the Tree deity rescued by lhe Church Pater• monstrous. nal, exploits lhe opportunities offered by a Compared with olher work by Ferg\150n, T::r1::~i:h~~~i~an~~-::: prierf 1 tninin& IO undermine that instiru tion: Double Helix Fall is a little restrained. This of which strives for polished effect. Tryon's he is also lhe embodiment of the oklc:r pagan is less a reflection on lhe book itself, u Of\ is by far the more readable. Set in a 1930s relieion s1n1nlin1 for swvival. To ca.in his what sr in the 1990s is trying to be abouL Summer Camp in the USA. and working in revenge, he crca1es people in his own image. ThU is a compete:rU , f novd though. which is overtones of antisemilism and the dangers of His ICOOnd lltcmp!. Anillia, gives birth to enough. (over) organised rdi&ion qaiJut a backdrop Mechail, and both challenge Anjclen's con Cbrlstopbt.r Amks of youthful innocence pas.sin& inlo lhe awk trol by acating others and ul1im11ely by wudness and realicy of ado1csoenoe, it's seeking to rerum 10 lhe Tree.. Meanwhile lhe almost a Lord ol the flies for Middle Ameri Chrislerium fm1 e.xpands, with decadently The Stand ca. Only here adulll exist and are ponraycd decorated new buiklings, lhen aumbles in10 Stephen King u uncaring figureheads, whilst the teenage decay u the real nature of the Knights of God Hodder and Stoughton, 1990, 1007pp, boys do their ulmOSI to get rid of the new ueexposed. £14.95 Camper in some rairly evil-minded ways.. The biblical parallels were clear first time The novel flows effortlessly, characias are around; it was unnecessary 10 retell !he story omewhere in California. a biological well-rounded. but ultimately there isn't very in deail from each main charac1c:r's poiru o r Swarfare laboratory has a .spill, then a se much there. Whal is clever about it. though, view. The image of the man becoming one curicy breakdown. A man CSCapCJ, lakes his is the realistic relationships between the boys, withthe trcc/aossasChristianity is distorl.Cd family and flees across counrry. Before he their foibles, loyalties, the daled codes of by the older religion, rccun frequently and is dies, he infects enough people with lhe super honour, camp riruals and sl1111g -phn.scs: the neatly refleclcd in the peasant custom of wor• nu virus that he carries to start an epidemic reader cerlainly foeb part of the camp, and shipping in front of the Tree when there is no tha1 wipes out the greater pan of the popuJa. forthat,empathiseswiththeortcnpersccut.ed priest aroWld. The main characters seem to be lion o r the USA (and presumably the World). Leo Joachim. The elemenlS or ranwy belong ciphers, perhaps deliberatcly as some of the From th is beginning, Stephen King builds an more to the realms or secret societies, proto inciden1al characters, such as the Adminis epic novel which moves from lhe horror of masonic rituals, ralher than any oven tress or Velcsa, uc credible people. The biological wurare 10 a nightmare, in which fanwtical events, and it is this which disap chronology is confused so that the expected the forces of Good and Evil suugglc for the points. Nevcnhcless, worth your auention. climu, the revelation to lhe world of wha1 is 18 Vector 157 going on in the Chri1tc.rium, is suddenly dill glcs. BufTakl Gals could make the reader mcnt arena" whe:rc gamers can role-play for missed as having happened a couple of look II lhc. neighbourhood moggy in a simi real-without getting hun. It's all done with centuries earlier. larly re- defined manner: that is. until we mirrors, or rather with actors, holograms. This is a rambling, self-indulgent novel "climb up into our own head" aga.in. subsonics, hypnotics and special effects. This whkh might, with some aeativc editing, Mlcha, IFeam time the game is not just for fun- it's a Fu make aread,.blcshortstory. ln its present Rippe,, designed IO instil in its chubby form it shoukl be pu]pcd and recycled. players a new altitude towards food. This par Valerie Housden The Land of Eternal Fire ticular Fat Ripper is the Funbu1wintcr Game; TPNewark confusingly this Nouc word is used to de Mullc-, 1990, 232pp, £11.95 saibe something acrually based on Inuit Buffalo Gals mythology. UrsulaLeGuin Michelle Stw'gcon. who played the identi Golfuncz, 1990, 196pp. £13.95 i-=:•F7:-~~:~~~~ ca.l game some years ago and was aickcd inio stantioople.. Newark's fusl book, Medieval using real bullets wilh fatal oonsequenccs. re 0 Warfare, was p.iblished while he was still at turns with a precarious hold on her sanity lo ~1~~\~::S:: school; since then he has p.iblishod no !cu try it again. She is the calalyst of a new chain toL dismiss= such a volume u pretentiow; - than eight non- fiction boob ranging in sub or evcnu u thec:ulpr:it, still in place ar. Dream her attempt to find common cause with the jea from Celtic wmiors to the American Park. tries to preveni her from revealing his sensibilities of the (economically powerful) WCSL 1nis is his fmt novel, a:nd it bodes well identity. American New Agers) - but Lhis is far &om for the futuR. The Roman Empire has almost Add to this other plot strands concerning being lhccase.. his about man's perception of cunpletely ra11ci., only !he Byun.tine JPlinLer hacking. the tcrrafonning of Mars (the bu- the life fomu with which he 1hard (and survives; the HWlS discover lha1 the Romans 500m Project of the title). the efforts of a might potentially share) Lhis and other pla of ConstarUinopk have suborned 50mc Ar daswdly Libyan baddy to wreck thc project, a Vector 157 19 mains that just as one. is immersed in the these planets (and the Aldcbaranian moon) Pol is -.tually the child or Roclsua's RPG/fanwy clement the viewpoint swilehcs Pohl out-momten sf's own :roopaphy. 1bc daughtc:1 Ianthe.. conceived whe:n she entcred to Alex Griffin. Securi1y Chid or Dream founccn-foot ma:n05-likc PUTcck live in bam Rohan's bed. pretending to be S;oncd. Park. You re-adjust yow thoughts. remember boo skysaapcn; supcr-iruclJigent transparent 1nc conservation and natural hiltory of whac you last lc(1 Alex. ge1 immersed once shrimps swim lhc stinking canals of Htumw: dragons continues to run through this secom more in lhc my11eries and l«hnicalitics or lhc •n ocarina-shaped organic robot oompriscs book, interwoven with the hllrrWl struggle "real world" and, kl., you're ,witched blck •n orchestra; nouu. poodle-sized "bed over thc dragon-lands. Pol hu grown up •gaintolhc ..game". bugs", arr. the Eyes of lhc omnipo!Q\t. learning laughtly and Sunrunncr skills on lhc In an Afterword lhc authors say '"This wu omnivorous Molhcr, hcnc.lf a jumbo sca-anc illand of Dorval. Wt he ~tums to lhc main •n ambilioU5 pn;iject. Dream Park was ran monc. Pohl sends-up many things: the ways land to bc,c;ome embroiled in a dark ploL tasy wrapped in science fiction wnpped In of accountants, booking •gents and their Much of lhc -.lion invo(VC$ ownership of the mystuy. Tbe Barsoom Project is cut &om clicnu; xenophobic chauvinism; grand opera Sw Scroll an ancient document which gives lhe 1ame pattern. Our intent has been to blend (while revelling in it) - Ml world com details of 1pells which. in the wrong hands, dozens of individual UITT;ads of information posed. .. complctc.ly or make- believe". He can be used for evil purposes. into one (we hope) seam.lC$S tapestry." I give even parodies sacred sensa.wund&. "It was a The politics is very complicated and I them ten out of ten for trying but. sadly, I wholly fascinating, absorbing, incredible found the list of characters at the end or the don't think their plan quite came off. Dream spectacle," says his protagonist (a baritone book very useful for frequent reference. I also Park is, in some quarters, regarded as I clas whose voice and sex life, once ruined by re-read many passages &om the firs1 book sic and. therefore. I suppose, The Darsoom mumps, have been restored by Narabedla and have learned more abou1 the economy Proj«I might •lso be considered •.s such by Ltd)," -Good God, actually setting foot on and l0pogr1phy of the dragon-lands. But Me some - but not by me. an alioaplan.cf!" Yci so assured a writer is lanie Rawn hu also supplied many personal Keith Freeman Pohl that he c1n with case in the same novel wuchcs. For example. some of the Sun.run. evoke a genuine sense of wonder. as when ncrs suffer from scasicknC$S. a human the Hyades •nd Aldebaran rising are viewed weakness which I have not prcvKlusly lcnown Narabedla Ltd from the second moon's LookouL toafflic1fantasticalchar1c1.ers. Frederik Pohl The novel's first 40 pages •re in lhc scyle MartlnBrke Gollalt-CZ, 1990, 375pp, £13.95 of a private-eye thriller. Thm. getting into sf gear, i1 presents its diverting conflation of grand and space open. spiced with a some Escape from Kathmandu nc.J::!~.~a:J~::1~ times Thurbcresquc humour (lhc episode or Kim Stanley Robinson very funny one. In The Way lhe Future Was lhc New York w..idrivcr and a leash-led 11ot Unwi.n 1990, 314pp, £12.95 Pohl wrote that almost all 1eienc:c fiction wri ta "bedbug", for example). Tensions ters are UFO sceptics. no1 because bc1wccn staying Narabcdla:n-happy and re contaetees' s1ories •re too f•nwtic but be turning to Earth arc, a shade ambiguously, T ~~tkis~w~arso;:~!~t:O": cause. !hey aren't fantastic enough. Aftcr resolved in a contrived but not wunoving Kim Stanley Robinson given his prcvKlu.sly seven munchnc chapters of Narabedla Pohl conclusion. This .. highly polished mtcrtain published work. It is certainly not sf, cameo makes his bid for lhc fantastic ultimate. The mcnt". or sf romp, lhcatric,Jly e:unvagant appcanncet &om 1undry yetis and lhc t.bled coniacting and transporting of cellists, con though it is, docs anfully interject many hu cil)' of Shangri-La no1withstanding. On the traltos, castrati. baton-twirlers and other manely signiftcanl and certain curiou.sly whole, though, it is a plcuanl surprise. artistes is lO providccxotk: entertainment for speculative themes. Escape from Kathmandu is a collection the Fifteen Associated Peoples. The operation K V Balley of four 54:p;irate bu1 closely interrelated ke.eps knowledge of the People's existcnee stories. They arc set in Nepal, and the book is hidden from humans, while philanthropically clearly some kind of homage to a country feeding a third-world Earth items of suppor Star Scroll which Robinson hu obviously spent some tive know.how (a quasi-Hce<:hoean motif!). Melanie Rawn timein. So a miscellany of talented. temperamental Pan, 1990, 591pp, £13.95, £7.99 pb The stories revolve around a small band of and cocentric deportees has been gathered on expatriate Americans, especially 1wo the "1.erraformcd" second moon or a gas ~~= trekkers, Fredi Frederic.ks and George Fergu gian1 nearly sixty light-yean. from home. T~!e ... ::;~m!; !::!; son. 1n the title 110ry they rescue a yeti An open company - the Greater Bolshoi another generation. At lhc end of the f11S1 caprured by an unscrupulOU5 scientific team. - is formed io WC Don Glovannl I P•· book, Rohan killed lhc evil Roebtn., bccarnc and in "Mothef Goddessoflhc World", man• gllaccl •nd ldomeneo to lhc planc1S of the HighPrinceinhis1tcad,,andmarricdthc age IO make a 1mall detour across the mos1 Prmtl and lhc Hrunwians. In populating Sunrunntt Wiich. Sinned. However. lhciJ' son inhospitable ITIOW'ltain wiJdcmcu in lhc 20 Vector 157 world and climb Everest totally unaided by Sheffield is a past president of the Ameri novel than a puzzle embellished with cud oxygen or modem climbing equipment (a bad can Astronautical Society, and his board actors. case of authorial wish-fulfilment here I Earthwatch - a collection of photographs Ken Lake think). of Earth taken from space - was an obvious ''The True Nature or Shangri-La" has our best seller. As a novelist, however, I have heroes grappling manfully with the kaf always found him disappointing, though I Carrion Comfort kaesque intricacies or Nepalese bureaucracy would not wish to attack him and his work as Dan Simmons to prevent the building or a new road to the viciously as some critics have in the past. Headline, 1990, 690pp, £14.95 magical city. Finally, "The Kingdom Under The present dull and unimaginative dust ground" finds Freels and George co-operating wrapper does absolutely nothing IO awaken Voices with Nepal's political opposition, giving Ro in me any intae:st, let alone excitement, while Tim Wynne.J'ones binson the opportunity for some oven the discovery tha1 it is Book One or The Hodder and Stoughton, 1990, 312pp, politieal criticism of the cunent Nepalese Heritage Universe made my approach even £12.95 regime. more lukewarm. This lack of expectation The writing is good and consistently funny, was, I confess, heightened by his dedication without ever being side splitting. This is an - IO four young ladies "and everyone else S:u!': o:::. ~:if~=:~ tar~::er:~ obviously affectionate view of Nepal, despite whose (average) age is sixteen." those sf authors now choosing to plow a lu whieh Robinson weaves into the book a con This is not lO suggest that the iochnology is crative furrow with the contemporary horror siderable amoun1 of serious crit.icism of the simplistic or the planing at the level of novel. He's obviously a versatile chap, hav political system in Nepal, criticism which is juvenile space-opera. The technology is in ing won the World Fantasy Award with Song sadly IOpical in the first half of 1990. deed beyond our grasp, the science ultimately or Kall, and is probably bes1 known in sf I am not sure what kind of market Kim indescribable, and the underlying tale is of fi elds for his Hyperion series. Now comes Stanley Robinson is aiming at in writing this mankind's expansion into a Universe already Carrion Comfort, which is likely IO provide book. It will not appeal automatically to his indelibly changed by the wor~ of the long many happy and busy hours for Mr Sim regular sf audience, but if you like good writ dead Builders and inhabited by a well-varied mons' accountants, pitched squarely at the ing, and have even a passing interest in range of alien peoples. Unfonunatcly, Shef nasty end of the market but perhaps lacking Nepal, Tibet and the Himalayas, this is a field is far more at home with his i11lri1,;a.1ely that psychopathological twinge so deftly book well worth reading. imagined supersciences than with real handled by Clive Barker. Neale Vickery people, and the novel's personae mos1!y do It's the old one about mind vampires se no more than react - according IO their sim cretly controlling the rest of the human race. plistic characterisations - to the exigencies The body COWlt would not disgrace a limited Summertide oftheplo1. nuclear conflict, which indeed is what we are Charles Sheffield "To have a plot, you mus1 have conflict" promised by the twist-in-the-end-tale end, the Gollal'ICZ, 1990, 257pp, £13.95 goes the writer's basic tenet, and this allows equivalent of the last reel when the vampire for conflicts of desire, personality or belief. climbs out of the coffin again ... There I've ~~~~:~ Unfonunately, al l too often it means the cre gone and spoilc it for you, which is perhaps a p~:: th;fwri~:~:~ar~~t ation of illogical or unreasonable characters good thing because this is a truly loathsome background information about anifacts and "because that's the way people are" - but work; each decapiLation, disembowelment galactic features presently unknown to the !his fails to work unless the author can per and dismembennent lovingly described and reader. suade you that the internal contradictions and liberally spiced with a few juicy rape scenes. English scientist Charles Sheffield takes illogicalities make sense to us as far-from It is, regretLably, an intelligently-written the coward's way out: between each slab of logical people ourselves. These characters arc book, but the main problem is that much of plot we get a couple of pages of "quotations" constructed solely to allow Sheffield's com the background and plot hinges on the Nazi from the son of basic reference work that plex, fascinating and wtdoubtedly death camps, again described in some detail. used '° be found on every sixteen-year-old's intellectually challenging scientific creations and I would respectfully suggest that Sim booksllelves, providing us with a wealth of to exercise their influence upon them. The mons is here dealing with horrors that might mostly unnecessary scientific background on personae are hard to empathise with, and the best be left out of the pages of a lucrative each new objec1 after it appears in the story. reader's loyalty may switch from one to an best-seller. other, a fatal flaw in what is ultimately less a Vector 157 21 It is a relief to tum to Tun Wynne-Jones' whole hwnan race. This masculine self-assur able - noies. glossaries and source data) is Voices. a slim and sensitive work which is ance can put a collection like this, which 30 000 BC, the latesl 1987 AD. The ICX[ only likely to prove a sore disapp::iintment for fans announces that its stories are written specifi roughly observes sequence. Thus into a pre of Simmons browsing along the same cally by women. on the defensive, as if historic (Eskimo ancestral) sub-section, "The bookshelves. Decapitations are kept to a women were some sort of minoril)' interest Hermaphrodite", a fable·like insight inio pri minimum, and the horror while still there is group. Of course. no apology is needed and mal bisexuality, is in1erpolated a chapter moreofthepsychologicalvariel)'. in an admirable introduction Lisa Tuttle "San Francisco Transvestites 1987"; and A young Canadian nurse, recently separ stakes out the territory that she and her fellow prehistory is immediaiely followed by a "do ated from her husband under circumstances authors are laying claim to by right cwnentary" chapter concerning events in not fully described. is exploring the West There are. she writes, some fears that are Greenland dated 1390 - 1646. By "chapter" Country when she comes across a roined common to both men and women, but others I mean one of the captioned short sections castle, some attendant ghosts and a talking appear IO be personal and individual, deriv ranging from a hundred or less to a thousand hole. It is swiftly apparent that she is in flight ing from our gender identities. As she puts it, or more words into which the narrative is from her past, which she is eventually forced we all understand the language of fear, but divided. to confront The author blends complex sym men and women speak that language with These somewhat disorienting juxtaposi bolism, p:,st-Freooian psychology and different dialect This book is a deliberate at tions are not arbitrary and do at length shape fantasy elements, as well as a degree of dry tempt to make women's voices heard in the a c.ompelling mosaic. The pacieming of irony, most noticeably in the conversations field of horror fiction and on these grounds feuds, journeys, matings. murders, sympath with the hole. It all sounds a little bizarre, but alone deserves to be unreservedly welc.omed etic and shamanis1ic magic which largely he writes well and affectingly, and ii works. What of the collection itself! Out of 17 comprise it is back-grounded by that vast It wi!l be lucky to sell a hundredth of Sim siories only a few failed to satisfy. The stories northern myth-land stretching from Midgaard mons' efforts, already being given the dump by Melanie Tern, Josephine S11.11ton, Teny beyond Ginguna Gap to Niflheim and Jotun bin treatmehnt in p:,pular bookshops, and McGarry, Ann Walsh, Pauline Dungate, heim. There are literally hundreds of actors that is the real horror. Sherry Coldsmith and Melissa Mai Hall are on the scene: Bearsark and Slcraeling, god MartlnWallcr aU successful exercises in horror. My fa and mortal, ancient and contemporary. Pre vourites, however, are Lisa Tuttle's "Mr eminent are the witch-like Freydis, daughter Elphinstone's Hands," a despairing tale of a of Eric the Red, and her arch-enemy, the Perspectives young woman whose body involuntarily be beautiful Gudrid Thombjomsdottir. Over and John Spencer gins discharging ectoplasm; Cherry Wilder's above the human content, however, there is Macdonald, 1990, 255pp, £12.95 "Anzas Day," a p:,werful story of homicidal the mythic and the cosmic. The horror of the misogyny; Ann Goring's "Hantu-Hanru." a entry of Freydis into Niflheim appalls. The ver the years, many people have claimed colonial fiction of varnpirism and madness; section "the Sun and the Moon" , mythologi Othat they have been kidnapped by alien and Karen Joy Fowler's "The Night Wolf," a sing their circumpolar appearances, is beings and taken away for a while to a space grim story of child abuse that should be re strangely, uniquely. beautiful. That section craft or flying saucer. This is a fascinating quired reading. carries a footnoted quotation from Howard belief, and there is no question that many of Best of all, however, is Suzy McKee Char Hinton's The Fourth Dimension counter the abductees sincerely believe that their or nas marvellous "Boobs," a sort of "Female p:,inting myth with a quite other, but not deal really occured. Their various stories Werewolf in America" story. Young Kelsey's irrelevant, mode of observation and specula have a great deal in c.ommon, in particular the discovery of her lycanthropic abilities and tion - a frequent function of numerous emphasis on medical examinations by and/or her wreaking of vengeance on the obnoxious footnotes, epigraphs and allusions. sexual relations with the aliens. It is signifi Billy Linden is an absolute delight "Who The Jee-Shirt recipient of the Spectator cant,too,thatinmanycasesthefulldetailsof would think that somebody as horrible as Shiva Naipaul Memorial Award, is a long and the ordeal are recalled only under hypnosis. Billy Linden could taste so good?" "The sustaining work that can be returned to time Likeflyingsaucersthemselves,thesestories Afterward" is worth reading as well. This and again for its icy and human horrors, its tell us more about the human psyche than story a!one would justify getting hold of the human and arctic splendours, and for the they do about intersiellar navigation. They book. vista it opens into those regions of the mind tap deep veins of the unconscious areas of John Newsinger where landscape, legend, myth and history our minds, in the same way as (for example) merge. the tales of child sacrifice and ritual abuse KV Bailey that have persisted over the centuries, di The Ice-Shirt rected at whichever sub-group of social William T Vollmann pariahs was most vulnerable at any given Deutsch, 1990, 404pp, £14.95 Angel Station time. There is certainly scope for a compre Walter Jon Williams hensive examination of alien abduction escribed as a component of a multi-vol Orbit, 1990, 393pp, £12.95 stories but this, alas (though by a leading Dume "Book of North American member of BUFORA) is not iL It's woolly, it Landscapes", this metafiction creatively in ~:~ waffles, it's full of undigested anecdotes and lerweaves and "novelises" material from the ~ !~~=;. is,:c:tu~::;• tube" it fails to pull the material together into a Eddas, the Norse Sagas, anthropological and brotherandsisterflcethcauthorities withthe coherent account It left me unsatisfied and historical writings, and from the author's own help of her lover, the younger son of a rival longing for a better book. Not nicommcndcd. field research experiences. Vollmann, in an trading family. By accident they make First DarrollPardoe appended noie defining his "Symbolic His Contact, discover a means to a quick fortune, !Ory", says he aims to creaie "an account of outwictheirrivalsand livehappilyeverafter. origins and metamorphoses which is often I had hoped that this kind of thing had been Skin of the Soul un1rue based on literal facts, bm whose un- put to death. Only the boldest imagination, Lisa Tuttle (ed) 1ruths further a deeper sense of1ruth." Such and the most skilled prose. can add life to this Women', Press, 1990, 23Jpp, £5.95 as sense conveys that the metaphorically "icy subgenre, and Williams has never had those hearts" of the westward-moving Norsemen attribuies. Previously his sl)'le has been tenth here have been iMumerable c.ollcctions destine a cruel impress on Vinland, once rate 1.elaz.ny; here it seems more like Tof horror stories writien by men, although frost-free, but then donning the "ice shirt". tenth-rate Gordon R Dickson. they invariably suppress any gender label and The first date in a chronology (there are Perhaps Angel Station would be readable instead purport to speak on behalf of the fir[)' pages of essential scholarly - but read- if you didn't know better, but so many little 22 Vector 157 things niggled and jarred thl.l. it WIS im• seems they have never lived anywhere for seems to lake us away from what is most possible IO find any rhythm. Williams' over long, and the mobiliiy which gives lhe book interesting. And because each episode is useo[lhe word "glilChTI iodescribc Beautiful ill name is a ramily joke. ()n]y when Kuen's comptetcly shut off by the wall of £orgeuin&, Maria's une,;pb.incd ment.l power over elec son. MJChael. begins to eMibit the talent for we are denied the gradual build-up of clues tronic equipmenl; the vay name .. Buutiful inter-war-Id travel which she has suppressed from the past to aeate a revelation. The Maria; ""random use or lhe infinitive "be" in but which is exploited by her more f'lamboy• reader muu supply Lacro's memory in order pbce of assorted fint. second and lhitd per ant sister and absent, wayward brother, does 10 hold the entire enterprise together. son pronoun-verb combinations u a their difference from other humans ba:ome One effect of this is an emotionaJJy cold supposed concession to far futuJe language e,;pliciL They karn thll their parents were and distanced novel. When Latro needs 10 be change; an alien calkd Beloved and her au "made" (in a 5Cmi-magical way)in a panllel re.minded in each chapter who his compan lOnomous unit GenenJ Volitional Twelve; reality in which the USA is called the .. Novos ions are, and when he has forgotten the commonplace drug use, of drugs called Red Ordo .. and endowed by the DeJense Research woman he loves lhe day after she is killed. Foui- and Blue Seven; Ubu plays a futuristic Institute in Washington with the 1bi.lir.y to there can be no true involvement. Dcspile guiw. All of these dichs and a dozen more travel the "plenum", the sum !Otal of lime Latro being regularly reminded of his love, are sprayed aimlessly throughout the book, and space. This throws some light on the and a suggestion of buried emotion. too much spoiling what would be a poor novel without abuse (self-defeating, despite the internal jus hu already been Josi for there to be any ge• them. They don't ever ring uue, they have no tification) they suffered as children from their nuinescnseoflou. internal logic, no rational basis IO justify their adoptive father, and upon the rlmily's habit The technical problems crea1cd by !his existence. Is ii not time we had a little ration of moving. In an unfortunate plot twist the StruCIUJC are handled brilliantly by Wolfe. ality in Science Fiction? It might dcstracl us, institute is approached by the powerful Vati Soldie r or A.retc is 1 better book than its if only briefly, from the non-u.istent chanc can 10 find the offspring of the family and predecessor; the necessary repetitions, the re• terisuion. nodcscripl settings and rehashed force them lo travel behind Islamic enemy minders 10 Latro to write in the saoll. and of plot droppings of novels like this one. lines for no readily appvent reasan. There who his companions are, being achieved far Angel St.Ilion is 10 dull that its most not can be no Q.Cuse for such sloppiness if the more smoothly and efft.etively. It is a virtuo able foatUJe is the bizame proofm& erTon writer seeks 10 C$llblish I credibk:. self-sup so performance, but one wonders whether it which have passed dm,ctly from the Ameri porting, altem11ive realil)'. will win the applause, or even the 111ention. can TOR edition inio this lateJ" UK edition. A Writingbelievablelictionofthistypcin a of anyone not already a devotee. correction sheet is av.Wable from TOR world alJ"eady populated by Roberts and The pl.()( has to be clisinterTcd from the 5hould you be unwise erough actually to buy Cowper is quite a challenge. Th11 said, this breaks. leaps and recapiwlations dictated by this book. boolc never loses its capacity IO entertain lhe narrative fom,. Latro, with a varying K~vMcVelgb right royally, and why indeed should there group of companions, journeys through not be accessible books in the genre whose Thnce. then 10Athens, Spa:rtaand Delplu (OT main function simply is IO entertain? Thoughl. Rope and Dolphins as lhe.se three Gypsies Mkbael Furn are known in the tut). and lhe:re arc further Roberta Charles Wilson appearances by gods and ghosts along the Orbit, 1990, 311pp, £6.99 way. At one point he lcams a memory-train Soldier of Arete ing device which promises IO make Latro a w~~ Gene Wolfe less frustrating narrator; but then, in Spana. ~;e~i:r s~:"s:~~°'1IO:;~ New English Library, 1990, 354pp, .some treachery happens which lhrows him places where I had been on holiday. Egocen £13.95 inlO a sort of fugue sllte again. and in the tric perhaps, but I used IO imagine that if I final section at the sacred games in Delphi it concentrated very hard I couJd be there. Both he nonnal impeutive of a novel is for is like we are right back at the bcgirnW1ii or u children and adults, the characters in Gyp Tward in time: the fu1ui-e is a mys1ery but the whole enterprise. Wolfe h as always used sies can open doon IO alternative realities the past is clear with all its resonances and indirect style. and subjective viewpoints and be there in both thought and body. Mean• implications running through the s!Ory IS a which can'1quitegrasplhe full picture at the while they are wllched by the Grey Man, steadily developing theme. In his sequel IO lime; coupled wilh the limitations imposed whom they see u a lhreaiening pursuer. Soldler or the Mlil. again narrated by die by the structure o f lhe book it is often diffi. This is I.hat alJ-too-rare animal: a review men:enary, Latro, whose memory extends no cult 10 disentangle the very bloody and boot it is possible IO forget lhaJ. one is re further than a day inlO the pas l. Gene Wolfe dramatic incidents which make up this novel viewing and simply enjoy. The scyle is ckar, defies this conventional strueture. H~ the and find out wh11 is acwally happening. the char1cterisalion sharp, with obvious past is closed off, and !he pedictians and Nevertheless, o n the evidence of this volwne. moral positions; a more psychological ap soothsayings which litter lhe book mun the the suxy or l..arro should be emerging from proach might obscure the ploL fuwre is often more clearly lcnown. The for the SMdow CISt by the New Sun. To Karen. Laui-1 and Tun as children. ii ward progn:ssion or the novel therefore, PauJKlnc:akt Vector 157 23 The Scions of Shannara The events in The Renegades or Pero run is a largely amiable but tangential introduc Torry Brooks con=tly with those of The White Dra tion to Pcm. If you are familiar with the other Orbit, 1990, 390pp, £12.95 gon, and many are common to both. Thi.I can books lhis doesn't really add very much, but be a problem: the main plot is already famil it is a light romp through familiar territory. iar to anyone who has read the earlier book, Terry Brooks on the other hand sets The The A:1n~~i:~!' Pern especially the central discovery of the origim Sdons or Shannara 300 years after The Bantam, 1990, 384pp, £12.95 of Pcm's firs1 colonists. For the ITI05t part the Wlshsong of Shannara. The Four Lands are characters are lhc same too, with the reap now domina.1.ed by lhe tot.alitarian Federation, pearance of Jaxom, Ruth. Shana, Piemur and lhe elves have vanished, lhe druids are no T~::r; ~ks r:;ese:::~:, ~r Torie. pill5 cameo appearances from other more and only lhe unwilling descendants of commercially successful series, and achieve farniliarfaces. Shannara 's earlier heroes possess the magic contrasting levels of success. The principal additions are the eponymous needed to save lhe Lands ... Add to lhis un McCaffrey simply slots another slOry into renegades, a collection of misfits and outcasts promising scenario a quest for each hero and the previously est.ablished dragon world Pem gathered together Wlder the leadership of the standard fantasy formula is complete. while Brooks takes lhe Shannara series 300 Thella, the renegade Lady Holder of Tclgar. Though no great stylist. Brooks is a compe years beyond its las1 incarnation. There a:re The main plot revolves around Thella's de tent enough writer, but he occasionally other differences: McCaffrcy retains at least sc.ent from noble birth through rebellion to succumbs to lhe temptation IO rescue his he the fonns of sf while Brooks writes out and defeat and subsequent thirst for revenge. roes from impossible situations wilh out sword and sorcery; and the Pcm story is Whatever you may think of McCaffrey's revelations of magic never before seen (lhe essentially light entertainment as against "dragon" books (I confess they are not to my "wilh one bound he was free" syndrome) and Shannara's dark fantasy. The basic difference taste) there is no denying her abilities as a his ploning relies upon too many fortuiious !hough is that Mccaffrey is the better writer storyteller. Even though many of lhe main coincidem::c:s 10 be uuly believeable. and her book works whereas Brooks never events are not virgin territory I wanted to The Scions of Shannara is the first of a quite encourages the reader to that suspen keep reading to find out what happens. H you new trilogy and the ending leaves lhe reader sion of disbelief so essential to good fantasy. haven't read McCaffrey's previoll5 books lhis hanging unsatisfactorily in mid advCflture. The Renegades or Pem, though more limited in ambi1ion, is a more wonhy addi tion to a previoll5ly successful series. Neale Vickery The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories Richard Dalby (Ed) ReTlenldltor Robinson, 1990, 654pp, £4.99 Midnight Tales Because of an increasing work-load due to his being Bram Stoker Peter Owen, 1990, 182pp, £13.50 promoted, Paul Kincaid will be stepping down as Reviews Editor for Vector as from this coming T~:~~ ~ llu;~~pe.:al~~i;:ro~l:: for neglected masterpieces, while lhose who Christmas. While we're sorry to see Paul go, a new fam,)' a collection of ghost siories ID Lake on Reviews Editor is needed as soon as possible so that holiday might prefer something less scholarly but more (I hope you recognise lhe pun) an efficient change-over can be made. The job is an ghostly. The Mammoth Books are aimed, perhaps, important and demanding position, requiring great at "holiday-goers", but holiday-goers who commitment, good organisational skills and above all a are by no means newcomers IO lhe field and welcome something different. Richard Dalby keenness to to a difficult job well. has brought 1w considerable expertise to bear If you feel you have these abilities and would like to be in a volume which shows lhe range of the ghost slory without necessarily relying on old considered for the post, please write to the editors at favourites. True, classic authors are here: from Sheridan Le Fanu and Edgar Allan Poe 11 Marsh Street 10 Ramsey Campbell and Karl Edward Wag ner by way of MR James, EF Benson, Barrow-in-Furness Charles Dickens, Henry James and DH Law Cumbria LA14 2AE renc:c. But lhere are also scarcer, less collected items such as Nugent Barker's (a copy of your application to both editors· addresses "Whessoe" IO be found in lhis well-lhought out collcction. would be greatly appreciated). Some siorie:s are anecdotes rather than stor~s. and some demand an appreciation of changing literary fashions - William Hope Hodgson's "The Valley of Lost Children" runs stickily with sentimentality. But high points are Ramsey Campbell's definitely Jamesian "The Guide". Robert Aickman's "The Unsettled Dusi" which shows how a 24 Vector 157 ghost story can have chilling psychological slightly and the ending docm't seem to fol home. He adds, "if a great deal more time undertones, and Mark Valentine's "The low entirely logK:ally from previous events. had been set aside for research, this listing Folly",• wry updating of the old 1ndition of The style i1 intelligent though sometimes might have oontaincd 500 entries rather lhan lhe "psychic investigator"; while a taste of the alliteration hilll you in lhe eye and points 300." One wonders, therefore, why more Mark Twain ("A Ghost Soory") or Oscar to a poet struggling to escape. An addiction 10 time was not set a.side. This is an astounding Wilde ("The Cantcrville Ghost") serves to adjectives is lllsoevidenL The major flaw is admission of dereliction or duty. If the book refresh the reader for further forays into the the decision to portray alien language in 1111 couJd have been nearly rwice as comprehens more conventionally spooky. alien way, so that lhe verb is at the end of the ive wilh just a little bit more effort from Midnight Tales is perhaps one for the spe sentence. For example: Justice. then it might have been worth doinr;. cialist. Bram Stoker's olhcr work is doomed "No need for worry is. Toh. No-one after His oommenlS upon lhe books he does in to be overshadowed by Dr1CU!a, Ind MMl us will come". clude are al least adequate, though I would nigbt Tales contains "lhe. Dream in the Reading every sentence rwice to under question his judgement in certain instances. Dead House", an episode cut from the fint stand ilS meaning becomes a little tiring; ii But lhere is no excuse for the sheer laziness chapler of Dracula, and two expurgated gets berween the reader and lhe story. Tius which marks dw very inadequale book. chaplers from The Jewel of the Seven Stan. seems to have been • calcullled risk by an Paul Kincaid &litor Peter Hlininr; sets the s10ries well in author familiar wilh foreign languages - but context, showing !heir genesis in dinner-table it didn't pay off. convem.tiom wilh lhe actor Henry hving, Mlndsiul is ccnainly not u good u Le Alien Zone: but this doesn't mike up for their frequent Guin at her best, using The Left Hand or Cultural Theory and Contemporary mediocrity - particularly the short-shorts Darknes5 for comparison. Considered on its Science Fiction Cinema which were to make up a colleclim. whose own merits. it is a-editable but flawed. If she Annette Kuhn (Ed.) projecw:t title Haining hu rcswrectcd. On cm curb her love for over-poetic language Verso, 1990, 231pp, £24.95, £8.95 pb the other hand, Dracula fans and lho5e who and remember not 10 get berween the reader like Stoker enough 10 collect his wotb will and the s10ry I'd say this author is one 10 Clive Barker's Nightbreed welcome this books awearance. and then are watch. Clive Barker two SU>ries here which are certai.nly unforiet Barbara Davies table - the gory and Poe-esque '1be Fontana, 1990, 239pp, £9.99 Squaw" and "Dualists", oneofthemosttas- 1eless s10ries I've read. which if filmed or Science Fiction, Fantasy o~~g;~ ~i:;:':\!°:;r ~ii:~ written in• contemporary idiom would cause and Horror Reference Television Studies al Glasgow University, uproar among Guardians of Decency but brings together 18 essays: four are reirinted which is mainly notable bec.ause of its glori Keith L Justice St Jamea, 1989, 226pp, £18.00 from Sdence-Fktlon Studies, olhers from ous numb grue&OfflCness. specialist media joumals, and three are di Andy Sawyer rectly contributed. The excellent editorial Ti~;~:~~ ~~is~":i ~:: ln11oduction discusses and inter-relates the and Film". It is intended 10 provide librarians range of approaches: "sociological criticism, Mlndsail with a convenient bibliography (complete Marxism, semantics, structuralism, psycho Anne Gey with short analysis) or reference works on analysis, deconstruction (and) feminism". Orbit, 1990, 303pp, £12.95 science fiction they might be considering The Allen and Blade Runner are cited buying for their library. As such, one would more or less throughout these approaches. 1 expect it to be • fairly comprehensive survey Films as diverse as The Thrmlnator, 2001: A P:U~~~~ ~ :C~w:,;t;:-ed~ of key reference worh on the 111bjecL Yet Spact Odyssey, lnvaskln of the Body Snat "Reminiscent of Ursula Le Guin al her within my own fairly small reference library I chers and the Star Wars and Star Trek best"? Does it really help the prospective discovered 50 boob that were nol among the scquenc.es get oonstant analytic Ind herme reader? To which type of Le Guin does it 304 COVQ'ed in Justice'• volume. What's neutic IJ"eatmenL Central to one of the most refer - The Eartbsea Trilogy or The Left mo~. lha1 .SO included many which I would closely argued and in1erestingly docwnented Hand or Darkness? have consido-cd rW'KlamenuJ elements of any essays, Giuliana Bruno's "Ramble City: MlndsaU is the lint novel by Anne Gay, a sf referenoe library, including Twentieth Posunodemism md Blade Runner", is an full-time ie..:her or lhrtt. la.nguage, - this Century ScleDCt Fktlon Writers edited by account of the role of lhe "replicant" in lhc fact is relevant, bear with me. Cwfu Smith. The Jewtl-Hlngtd Jaw by Sa condition o£sciuzophrc.niL Film u • rework A starship of ookmists from Earth cruhcd muel Delany, Mk:roworlds by Stanislaw ing of lhe primal scene is lhe subjec1 of on Rosaria many generations ago. The oolo Lem. Explorations or the Marvellous by Barbar• Creed's "Allen and the Monstrous nists' descendants have split in10 factions, Peter Nicholls, The Entropy Exhibition by Feminine". a theme echoed in Daniel each pursuing • different way of life and Colin Greenland. Sclentlfk Romance In Devin's "Primal Conditions and Conven holding different beliefs about what hap Britain by Brian Stableford. Only Appar tions" (unintended doub~ entendre!), which pened when lhe stanhip landed. tntly Real by Paul Williams, Benchmarks moves from a parallel study or basic sexual Tohlllla, lhe hCl'oine, is • membu or the by Algis Budrys, Scien« Fk:Uon Handbook motifs in traditional. mythology Ind science "Green". This nital, largely patriarchal, by L Sprague de Camp... I oould go on. The fiction to an original psychoanalytic interpre vegetarian IOciety ekes out a precarious ex point is if I book such u this is not compre tation or Bodysnatcbers. Several essays are islCOCe - burning and killing the native flora hensive, ii is useless. Anyone building a sensitive 10 the respective "languages" of and fauna and trying 10 recreue Earth condi science fiction reference library who turns 10 cinematic and literary science fiction. An tions. The "Reds", are cantivorcs who live in this volume for assistance will be missing nelle Kuhn suggeslS that lhe 5pecilll effects harmony wilh Rosaria's strange environmenL some of the very boob which no reference technology 0£ science fiction cinema (with There is a feud between these two societies. library could afford 10 be wilhouL what Steve Neale in his contribution seems IO 1he. plot clLalysi is the ll'rivlll at the "Green" Justice as good as admits lhat the book is be its clement of self-reflexivity) is what dis colony of lwo captured "Reds", and lheir skimpy. In his introduction he tells us that tinguishes it from other film genres, and from subsequent effect on Tohalla's life. "Over 200 of lhe boob annotated in this vol scienc.efictionwriting. Anne Gay hu created • credible planet ume are repre.se:nted in the personal reference Modes of specta10rship, and spectacle as wilh oonvincingly al)Cfl flora and [aunL Her collection of the oompilc:r." In other words, narrative. are frequent lhooretical oonsider dwacletS ue detailed and well developed. more than JWo-thirds or the book we com ations in Allen Zone. The privilegedly with re11.i5tic flaw1. But the plot loses its way piled without him even hiving lo leave his environed and voyeur-like si1ullion of the Vector 157 25 cinema spectator cannot, however, enter into though. everything is significant and the out Where some people would disag,rt.e with his/her confrontation with the published film come of a literal banlc of the se,;es depends me is this: I don't find the 1wo books very play, even when stills, drawings. and repre upon it. She would rather not shape ctwi.ge, funny; but, that does not stop them being sentations of special effects are as well but her "chiklrcn" lack her inhibitions as very clever and a good read. selected, reproduced and deployed as they are family ties wind ever more tightJy. WHurst in Clive Barker's Nlghtbreed. Divorced The blurb says "The Silent City" engages from their medium. and lacking colour, music with imponant issues ... in a plot full oftwist.s and motion, stills can only remind or signify: and surprises". For once you can believe Black Milk but they can, and here do, assist awareness of what is found on the back cover. It does all of Robert Reed how the visual nanllive is progressed. being, that. and more, and I heartily recommend it to Orbit, 1990, 327pp, £6.99 scene by scene, woven together with point everyone. My only question is why has it of-view and \oc11ional directions. dialogue taken a decade 10 arrive here after its first. lack Milk has not gone off. but it isn't and description, into the ghostly ye[, para French. publication in Canada? Bfresh. doitically, articulated analogue of a cinematic Martyn Tayklr The plot is strong, and very simple: Earth's eitpcrience. The movie, written and directed ecostructurc has become genetically "Tai by Barker and based on his Cabal, is the end lored" by the archetypal Promethean product of what he calls in his FOfeword "the Roderick at Random scientist, Dr Florida, a sort of tragic techno constant configlD'ation .. to which "the im John Sladek Wonka. Reed's Earth is admirably real in its ages that fin1 play on the screen inside your Kerosina, 1990, 317pp, £13.95, £40 own 1erms. not a Utopian/Dystopian model. skull" are subjected. Such manipulations and Collector', Editiol"I Like Dr Frankenstein, Dr Florida's downfall transformations are described in the Introduc is ambition: he plans to sow life in the 11.mOS• tion. with generous illustrllrion and a weallh ph.ere of JupiLer but his indes1ruetible. or illuminating anccdo1e: and the JC$Ults are T~a1th:,=~~ i°!m~~~sU:,~ genetically synthesised sparkhound.s escape made specific in the presenlat.ion of the play cent roboL They were originally one work and threllen IO annihila1e life on the mother it.self. It is 111 admirably produced book of but on the grounds of siu their original pub planeL in1erest to all devotees of the horror-fant.uy lifflQ" divided them. and then published this The narration is more inlercsting. The slOry genre and its cinema - and 10 cineasleS in one only in paperback. Eight years later is told by Ryder, a sensitive boy with an general. Kcrosina have brought out the first hardback eidetic memory (genetically tailored) who KVBalk!y edition. comes into contact with Dr Florida. The The novel begins with Roderick working novel is an account of the collision between as a bowl-washer ll Danton's Ooggic Di Ryder's Innocent world of trcehouses, gangs The Silent City nette, bu! he docs not manage to keep even and playground politics. and Ryder's Experi Elisabeth Vonarburg that job and is soon reduced to destitution. eix:ed world of aduhhood. &exualiiy and Women', Pru,, 1990, 247pp, £4.95 hanging out with beggars and freaks. He global disas1er. Dr Florida is interested in wants to help but when he offers assistance to Ryder's perfect memory as a defence agairut ,•Never judge a book by its cover". How the police, they ignore him. an understandably hostile posterity. He is also lnle. I only wish. my heart didn't sink when The original novel, Rodulck, described inLercstcd in Ryder and his friends because he ever I receive a Women's Press or Virago his being created in secrecy and illegally. and is a nostalgic, troubled old man, l!IIIJanced by book to review. Not that women can nol, do people have been hunting him ever since (in the vitality of youth. He is a memorable chu not. wrilC the most e,;cellent sf - Angela cluding a one-legged man after the fugitive acter, dcspilC his silly name. Caner, Christine Brooke-Rose, Ursula Le robot). but Roderick stays free. However, Whal bothers me about this novel however Guin, et al - but those I have read from everything goes against him. yet for all his is that I feel it docs nothing new. I am con lhese "commiued" presses have often an cduca.tion - and Roderick i1 a very well in sciously aware of the presence o f Wyndham noyed me with bad science, bored me with tentioned robot keen on &elf-improvement and Clarke (global entropy and giftcd child half baked polemics and dispirited me with and eager to help others - he does not re ren), Twain ( a child's first person narrative), writing of the dires1 quality. All ioo ofu;n the alise how bad the world is. At one stage we Borges (perfect memory) and of coune Huit wholes have been less than the sums of the hear Roderick's fanl.l.Sics, all taken from Icy (genetic manipu.lation). There is noiliing parts. Elisabeth Vonarburg begins in familiar books of c,;tremc violcnoe, but they don't wrong with using this set of widespread de· ltnitory - a cil)' hermetically scaled from mean anything lo him until 300 pages Iller it vices. but I feel th11 the 1Wthor has not the vaguely contaminated outside in which strikes home and he becomes a robot suicide. creatively, originally. or even IS competently the clecl go out of their foetid minds with The Roderick books arc the product of a as any of the writers mentioned above. Ccr• angst and ennui. Elisa though. is no1 only one massive intention. The plotting is very ela ta.inly, the novel was enjoyable, the of the last - entropy docs rule - she is borate and Roderick him.self is only one characterisation animated and the dialogue different She rebels against her father/lover strand of the novel. there are two or three convincing, i:..it I can't write a glowing re and leaves to rocreate the world. others which. are intenwined. Equally. they view for "Black Milk" because I don't foci The ftrSt section of the book is weekly are works of Swiftian satire - but very that it matters very much. written. Jacking anything original in concept black. The moral thll Roderick has to learn David Mltc:htll Had I not been reading this for review I (and which kills him) is that nearly everyone would not have got to page 72. Which would is self-interested, most of those that are not have been my loss. Once Elisa leaves the City arc perverts, and the rest are affected by a Good Omens everything changes. As the ideas take life - cruel indifference. Torry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman Elisa is not only more than she knows she is With their background in robotics the Gollancz, 1990, 268pp, £12.95 more than she wanlll to be - so does the books include philosophic and logical discus quality o r the prose. sions as well as a wide range of literature, and he trade of the humorist is both difficult It is difficult to discuss the plot of her ad they are full of pastiche and reference - how Tand skilled. The mistake made by so ventures without giving away the twists, many people now remember television's The many is to asswne that making people laugh which is nol the pwpose of a reviewer. Elisa Fugitive and the one-armed man? or that is all tha1 is required, but of course it's not as is a shapcchanger who spends much of the George Orwclls first book was about his c,; simple as thaL Take, for cxample, Ann•ged story in male fonn. even falling in love IS a pcriences washing dishes in a large Parisian don, probably the. most unpromising subject man. At the time this seems pleasant enough, hotel? - and in that sense are dcn.scly writ- for a single joke. let alone a sustained humor bul not significan1. In Ms Vonarburg's story, ous piece. It would be all to easy to traru!P'CSS 26 Vector 157 the unmarked bounds of good taste and pro MotorcyclislS of the Apocalypse, and Agnes accwate descriptions of places and people duce an intensely repellanl and wlfunny Nuuer's lasl surviving descendant, probably that are almost photographic in their detail work. However, Terry Pratchett and Neil Ga.i the only person who really does know what's andcolow... man, both skilled practitioners of the art of going on. "I hate GAPs for being such dung humour, have taken such unpromising ma Gaiman and PralCheu pile on the absur beetles. They ain't beans. they ain't terial and turned it into an amusing and ditie:s but the plot, for all the diversions. is ca11s, they ain'I spam or kikeibutsu entertaining novel. How come they succeed still thatgreatoldstoryofaraceagainsttime minoemeat or evoo wiggers." where others might fail? They succeed be to save the universe IS we know it, and the Kumo moved towards the booths cause Good Omens is not laugh-a-minute, characters in it are familiar types, not so full of mingei, eilher Japanese, or knockabout fun. Rather, it relie:s on sharp ob much black and white as varying shade& of American folk art. She stopped and servation of the human condition, and flashes grey. Great truths are revealed. like the M25 watdled a potter wheel his pot in !he of insight which leave the reader wondering being discovered to be a sigil of great and old way. Evoo washi was ottered hern · why he hadn't noticed lhal before 01 nodding evil power (hence it's always jammed and Kumo stopped in front of a stall wi!h in recognition of shared but secret knowl under repair), and that quite often, despite the rice paper, just as she did every mar edge. More imponantly, lhey understand lhe mess they're making, il's better to let people ket day, to stare. Paper, ca11vas, these function of juJ.taposing the totally absun1 muddle through. making mistakes here and things were so rare. with the uuerly mundane. and they know there, and then learning the hard way, rather It is in the art lhat the sharp contrasts of when 1o puncture the inflated bubble of than laying down finite laws, and dividing this society become obvious. The drab, human pretension. Finally, their individual people into good 01 evil. Thal's the essence of brown world of the Dcd-Tck gives birth LO style& are complementary, Pratchett the light an effective piece of humour. It says things bright vibrant (if occasionally violent) art• hearted entertainer, while Gaiman brings a one might not have e:,;pccted to hear, and says fonns which seem to be the only spark of darker humom:, with just a hint of underlying them in very entertaining ways. innovation left in the world. Even the mur nastiness. Maureen Pocter derer stalking the artists sees his crimes as an So, in the Pratchett and Gaiman universe, art form. Armageddon is going lo happen neJ.t Satur But all of this is only background. The day, just after teL It's even, and Red Spider White Web strength of lhis novel is in the characters. uncharacteristically, been accur11dy prophe Misha They seem at first to be mere ciphers brutally sied. by one Agnes Nutter. This puts Morrigo.n, 1990, 216pp, £13.95, £40 struggling through a brutal world and scrap Azirphale, angel, antiquarian book dealer, Collector$ Edition ing survival by any way that they can, but as collector of books of prophe:sy, and his friend the story unfolds, they begin to show olhcr Crowley, one of the~ sorts of demon, in a ~t~!r~~ de.:per aspecu of their natures. Misha ti es all quandary for they 'n come to like Earth just R~:v~tt' .::t~a ':a::: of this together skilfully, transforming char as it is. md to understand and appreciate iu peopled by hard, cruel people. her view 0£ the acters who seem at first to be without any inhabitanlS in a way lhat, they suspect, God furure is bleak and unremitting. Society is redeeming features into people that we can and the Devil don ·1. However, stopping the split between the dreamers of Mickey-san, learn to cue about. Apocalypse isn't that simple, particularly IS the workers of Dogton and the rest, the dregs Red Spider White Weh is not an easy they need to kill the Anti-Christ, something who struggle and fight for life in Ded-Tek. book to read, the depressing background, the they're not too happy about, particularly But Ded-Tek is where An survives. A pitiful violence, the complex. prose sprinkled with when he happens to be a fundamentally de colony of artists string together vivid holo Japanese and jargon, make for an unsettling cen1 eleven year old boy, with a dog, a gang grams created from salvaged image& and mu, but the strength of Misha's vision, her and currently very keen on supporting the sounds from the past and survives by selling compleJ., sometime& charismatic characters environment; all in all, a latterday William these imag~ in the markeL are enough to 1ranscend this and hold the Brown. Just to complicate mauers further, This novel is full of teuwe. The prose attention through to the last page. there is that little problem of the Witchfin swilChes from the uncompromising jargon of Jon Wallace der's Army, all two of it, the four the dialogue and background to the starkly IMPORTANT NOTICE Due to a variety of difficulties, including late copy, inexperience with a new computer system, and finally culminating with an inefficient postal service, this issue of Vector failed to make the required deadline last time round and was thus not printed. As a consequence of missing those 24 pages, we will be adding extra pages with each issue until those 24 are made up - this will allow us a greater flexibility with the next few issues, with longer/more features and reviews, and also create less strain upon our collators, saving them from having to collate two issues at once. The editors wish to apologise for this cockup, and would also like to express our gratitude to our readers for being patient with us . Vector 157 27 David Eddings The Ruby Knight Book Two of The Efenium The enthral/mg sequel to The Diamond Throne Sparhawk sets out to seek the Bhelli um, a fabled long lost Jewel that could save the Me of the Queen of Elema 'Promises to be as good as or even better than The Belgariad. ' G.M . £13.99hardba.ck A.A.Attanasio The Last Legends of Earth Two bi//1on years from now. m1//ema after Earth has shartered, an a//en being reincarnates humanity from its ONA. The story of man begms agam bur with fatal consequences 'A grand and glorious visionary epic ... I loved it.' Robert Silverberg £14.99 ha.rdback £7 .99 trade paperback Peter Straub Houses Without Doors From the childhood of a characrer m Kolo ro the Midwest c,ty immortalised m Mystery • s,x e/ectncal/y charged stones from the Master 'In any genre, a world-class author. ' Clive Barker £13.99 hardback Janny Wurts Keeper of the Keys The second novel m her dazzling Cycle of Fire sefles, as Jame faces the ultimate challenge. death or enlightenment The world Janny Wurts writes about is wonderfully vivid.' Stephen R Donaldson £3.99 paperback Philip K. Dick Counter-Clock World As rhe old emerge from rhe1r graves. the Library expunges rer:ords of ev2nts which have no longer happened Bur when a powerful hlad leader 1~ f['born_ murde1 seems the only solution ·He has stamped himself not only on our memories but in our imaginations.' Brian W Ald 1ss £3 .SO paperback Grafton Books Widening Your Horizons • GRAFTON BOOKS