February-March 1990 95p Issue 154
The Critical Journal of the British Science Fiction Association
Theme Issue Myths & Legends: Colin Greenland Off with their Heads! Garry Kilworth A Stone from Oberon's Castle
Gwyneth Jones The Mind of the Maker Joanne Raine The Quest for a Whiter Wash Vectorlssua 154 e Feb/Mar 1990 ISSN0S0S-1448 Contents 3 Editorial 4 Letters 7 The Quest for a Whiter Wash J oanne Raine looks at tM use of myth in conltmporary SF and FMtasy 9 Off With Their Heads! Colin Greenland amainu the roots of his own jicrion 1o The Mind of the Maker Gwyneth J ones compares thit crttllion of "ordinary" ftclion and my1h 13 A Stone From Oberon's Castle Carry Kilwortle looks at the roolSof his Ml'tl Hunter's Aloan 15 Book Reviews 15 The Archivist -Gill Al
Co-Edllo,s Boyd Parulson 11 Marlh Street, Bam>w...,._Fumess, Cumbria, LA14' 2AE Telephone 0229-32807 Kev McVaigh 37 Fn Road, Milnlhorpe, Cumbria, l.A7 70F Telephone 05395-62883 Reviews Edl10, Paul Kincaid Production A11lsi.nts Chris Amias, Paul Macaulay, Calia Cary, Brian Magorrian, Alison Sinclair, Camila Pomeroy, John Foster Production Con.ulUinl Bany Parilinson Typeset by PCG, 61 Schoo1Stme1, Banow-fl-Fumeu, Cumbrial.A14' 1EW. Tel:0229--36957 PJrlted by PDC Copyprinl, 11 Jeffrin Pass.age, Guidfon:I, &.ney. GUI -4AP Vee to, is pubkhad bimonthly by lhe BSFA. copyright 1989. Al opiniom expressed in Veck>f ant lhose ol lhe J"ldMclual contributors and mus I not be taken to iepresenl !hose ol lhe Ecli10n or lhe BSFA exoept where explicitly stali8d. Conlributors Good artides an, elways wanted. Al MSS must be ryped double-spaced en one side of hi paper. Maximum prelerTed length ii 3500 words; exc:eptions can andwil be made. A preliminary letter is useful but not euenlial. UnlOiicited MSS ca\l'IOl be mumed wi1hout 811 SAE. Please no• f\at there is no payment to,, publicalion. Members who wish 10 ,eview books must first wme 10 1he Edins. Art Cover a'f. il.Jstrations hi filers are always weloome. Votunt•r• TypislS pania.Jlarty (Atari ST Of IBM PC) wanM Contact Boyd Par'ltwlson .•.. Advertising Al adllerlising fSJfJ'I must be submitted as IYw camera-ready a,twori1; with al n8085Saty half1ones. All enqi...-iE,s on rates, sizes, elC. to the Pubidry Manager: Dave Wood, 1 Friary Close, Mame Hil,CIS'vedon, Avon BS21 70A n.•iiiaS..-...l'lc.--....i..1c...... ,u..,,,,1,yo.-10...-,~t2UCD1L1....,..a..,_.,...... ,.,._11,~-..-.x-cna1a has. is myth lha1 it has provided so W much ma.trarial for lhc IJcst and the v.-on:t writaa of our time? The Penguin Dlctlooary or Utenry Terms Aatesdefinitivcly:
-Myth i1 alWl)'I conoaned wilh autioD..., EDITORIAL This much we can Wldc:nWld, because we The Use and Misuse of Myth lcnow that people always need m explan ation or !heir workl. We loot back 10 our and Religion in SF and Fantasy primitive ances10rs and appreciate how mys- 1erious lheir world mUSl have seemed to them. In the last decade of the 20th century, however, we have advanced to a position By Kev McVeigh where we believe that we understand and can aucmpt to control all but a fraction of our surroundings and we arc now seeking information &om futhcr afield (both inwar ds and outwardJ). So, what role do myths have now? The fast part of the answc, lies in the idea that myths do go much furthc- than a-cation taJcs, to say something about our cvcyd1y existence. Of oounc the surface of the myth is a workt far re1110Yed from our own. and almost ccnainly always was, even back 10 ilS original time. Undc:ncath however, 11c an:herypcs which arc pmnmcnt. if JOme timcs malkable. lt is lhcse that I skilled •uth>r ctn use to coru;ider aspec:u: of contemponty life. The other part of the answer lies wilh ~gmd, those r.alc:s which may be truth. apocrypha or embellishment about real or arnalgamaud htstorical figllfU. and which have less to do with the make-up of the univa'se but still give us a mems of studying people. In many cases, most notably Anh\D', lhc$c figurea have become merged with archel)'pel, and lhe legends and myths are entwined a:nd indistinguishable. Within the genre mylhs a:nd legends are common material, rnos1 obYiously in the Fantasy mode, but also in SF, such u Dclany's NOYa , Gibson's Count Zero, and novels by Tim Powen, CJ Chc:rryh, Ian McDonald. Roger Zelazny •nd others. In Fantasy, despile numerous eJ1citing, lhoughlful •nd moving retellings, there is a repulation for umriginality and insipidncss Conned !hat an inleresting American new lhan Sir Thomas Malory was, but one of th.at would seem 10 be justified. Every cuJ. eomer, Eliz.abcth Hand, hu worked with llEm used all their availlble writing skills IO ture hu iu own vari11KmS on these myths 81bylonian myth lO grea1 effect. Why, then, tell the stoT)' in a mcmo.-lble f.shion. What I and legends, 50ffle runilar. othen unique, are these so unusual? Is the simple fact that would like 1a see is • few more wriiers Conternporflrj Fantasy, since Tollien, 5Ceffll the 1111hon have taken the trouble 10 research taking a Joa more lhought before embarking 10 be rrtpped within a narrow area of British olltu culD.lres enough IO apt.in the quality on well-worn paths. Ptthaps there is a belle( and Cehic myths. Arthurian legend is w;de, of these boob? No - and one mighl ciie path jusl off the tncli: a little? Perhaps the spread on lhe shelves. with some excellent Susan Sdtw1rtt as 111 enmpk or b.t Fan· journey will be mon: profitable if made in a eJ1amplei 10 dl005C from. but many more tuy outside the moR normal myth sequen compleiely diff=t direction? which lake half-rc:searchcd idcu and use ces - but tlw care is vtsy rdev111t. Many or lhem in pa.le imi1.1tion or succeuful WCfks. the cmunon myths •e so Clfflili• 1a U$e., Evm authors who are ixmnally teli.able have lhal aUlhcrial research may occasionally A p11de.aloftheblamelieswi.ththe rallm inlo this trap: KW Jeter begins become cornpl1CCnt perhap,7 It would be publishers. of coi.me. for mying lOO close lO Morb::11: Night skillfully. but the "lltrival" imdcntmdable - .ria all, six monlhs re the proven path. I know through discussing of Arthur 1US a rapid drift inro banality, lCll'Ch can be costly if it delays the final this with authors and cdi1ors, that editon do A select few writers hive ende•voured to book - but is it excusable? edit, uld can tum a compe~ novel into a use other myth cycles - Neil Gaiman makes I'm not denying the popularity or these work or higher quality. When it comes to passing use of lhe Aboriginal. Dreamtime in books, (lhough I remain lmCOnvinced thlt some or the more contrived and formulaic Sandman; Robert Silverberg and Geoff that is relev1111) orthequality0C those. like boob it has been my misforrune 10 buy ove Ryman have both examined the epic of G ilg• F1y Sampson. who hive considered new the past few yevs, I have IO wonder if they amesh; Stonn Constantine toolc elementl of aspecu or Anhur whils t maintaining an acc: have been edited at all, because ir they have, Cabalism for her Wraeththu boob; Lewi1 unte reflection of the original myths. It then how much worse were they before? Shiner made Mayan myth • central part of shook! also be pointed out that Marim Zim Publishing Kerns 10 be full or srrange Dtser1td C ities of the Heart... And I am in- mtt Bndley is no less ICCUfate about Arthur prac:tic:c.s. •
VECTOR 152 e 3 LETTERS
Write to: Vector 11 Marsh Street Barrow-in-Furness Cumbria LA14 2AE
Right of Reply no greater consideration. However, lhc word provide COYCflgC Of that overlap. Of )'OU length I sci my reviewers in the Ya.st majority were to go into• specialist SF bookshop you Last i.sslU! David Wingrcm- ailU:i.ud of cases is 400 words, or occasionally .50(). 'WOukl be astounded if !he only boob on its Pffl'l KU!Co.id. for tit#! wo.y lie is nuining In effect, mos1 or lhc reviews come in 11 shelves were SF. 1bcy s10ek Fantuy, Hor rite R~W'Ns ~dion. ofVutor... lll'OW\d 400-450 words. That is • longer re ror. mainstream, children's books, aitic:al view than thc vast majority of science fiction works and die like bcclllSC their customers It is not the place here to discuss the quality and Fanwy books will receive in the pages ue. interested in diem also. The membership of Chung Kuo, and whether or not it des of lntcrzonc, Locus. SF Chron icle, Critk:11 of the BSFA is similarly broad.) Though to crvcd pr&isc in its rcvicw, - tha1 is I m111cr Wave, or the nl.lXlnal i:wcss. Only I journal go b ack lO Wingrovc's earlier point. Horror for the individual reviewer 10 decide. How 1udi u Foundation ii liable to give length and Fan1asy titles arc more likely to receive ever, in defence of Ken Lake I will say this: ier consideration to a genre title, and they shorter noliccs than SF, but not exclusively it is not uncommon for review copies of review far fewer books each year. The lcnglh. ro. books to be sent out with publici1y material, I set my reviewers is actually not that much Given that the only major schism in die usually in the form of one meet of papa shorler than the length I have been set for history of the BSFA occured when the printed on one side. In the cue of Chung reviews in such publications u lhc Times British Fantasy Society wu crca1ed ou1 of Kuo, the book was accompanied by a pile of Literary Suppkmtot, and I have on occas• former BSFA members who rel! the BSFA A4 pages nearly as thick as an avenge issue ion rcprinled one of my reviews vcrbatim wUJ1't giving sufficient ancnlion to Fan1.asy of 1.nterzonc. This is several limes more from the TLS withou1 editing and wilhou1 it and Horror, it ICffllS daft to wntinuc lhan the publicity material for my 01.ha appearing any km.gcr lh.an the ovcr reviews adYOCaling such I narrow Ollllook. Thce's 1 book I have seen in more than 1CJl ycan of in lhal issue or Vector. I also. when possible, very broad nation of litel"l[Urc out !here. rcv;ewing, and even boob by authors such nm rwo reYiews of thc A1T1C book IO pl,Yide We're pan of iL Let us have the freedom to u • ivc Barker and Tad Williams (where a broader perspective - u I did wilh. Chung go where we please: within that nation rar.hcr the siu: of lhc adYance would suggest a Kuo. for insWICC., so that book received ab than be restricted by someone else's narrow major promolionaJ push) did nol rccei"e this ou1 900 words of reYiew in dill issue. dcfinilions. amount of hype. Furthermore. such publicity Naturally. in an ideal work! ii would be nice To conclude: I Ir.now lhar. Chung Kuo has malerial, and review oopies, would normally 10 run reviews of 1,000 or t,.500 words for not. in !he main. bcert kindly reviewed. Most be sent to reviews editors and magaz.ines: in each book. but if I were to do that at the audiors remain silent in lhc face of criticism, this case everyone I know who reviews SF moment only half • dozen books would be but I also blow that Wingrove has respond• on any regular basis received the book and fcatwcd per issue. not the 20-30 u 11 the ed angrily to others who have criticised his the hype. One can only assume that the pub momenL Quite frankly, faced with I dcci•ion work. One must assume that Wingrove lacks licity budget must have been huge, since of what to leave out in such I circumstanec, confidence in his own writing, and feels he many more review copies seem 10 have been I'm not s\llc th11 I would have printed any mus! respond to every anaclr. because he's sent out than for any olh.cr book. In addition. review of Chung Kuo. A$ someone who hu not certain that die work will stand on iu there is a strong feeling among those who reviewed for Vector under my editorship, own. In lhis instance I feel his response has have seen lhis material that mos1 if no! all of David Wingrove knows this. U he ii to claim been ill thought out. il appears to have been written by Wingrove that Vector is not providing adequate cove,. Paul Kine.kt himself - even lhc inlCl"licw wilh the IUthor age of SF, he could at least get his facts right Reviews Editor included among lhe material seems to have inthcfust placc. been conducted by Wingrove.. All of this is He also claims that I am featuring too unprcccden!Cd. and is a legitimate subject much Fanwy and Horror, and no1 enough AndfromKoslau for comment. Lake's theme was to compare SF, and suggcsu that this policy might. be the claims made for the book in this pub losing us members. At random I checked die I feel it was unfair to print David Wing licity material with the achievements of the reviews I had reviews of 15 SF books plus rove 's plaintive whinge without giving Paul book itself. I believe this I fair and legilim• one critical work on SF. there wcre 7 Fan• Kincaid the cha.nee to comment editorially, ate comment. and I believe that it provided a wics (including one. for instance. by lsuc but I really mus! set aside his praise of me as rcncction upon the work in question that Asimov) and 5 Horror (including one collec being "hugely erudite" for reasons that will made it c:nlircly proper entry in the review tion containing work by George RR Martin). emcrgclaterinthislctter. column. Were the si1uation to repeat itself l 1nough the question is: where do you draw There $CCms little poin1 in laking up his would, wilh<>ut hcsi1.1liol\ use such a review !he line? Should I have c,;cludcd the Asimov complainLS. I am sure Olher readers will do in lhc way I did, and I would continue to bcc.ause ii is Fanwy, though it is liable 10 be so: suffice it ror me to explain that the prcss dcfQ'KI Lake's right to mike sudi comment. far more popular with Vtttor readers than plug, the lenglh.y paean of sclf-pr-aisc and A$ to Wmgrove's wider auaclr. upon my• some of the straight SF titles reviewed? justificatim written by Wingrove himself. Kif and lhc Vtttor review column, there arc Nobody is going 10 be interested in every and iDdced lhe yuppiebac.lr. version of his simple facrual CfIOfS in what he says. For 1 book reviewed in Uty issue of Vector, my book. all came IO me direct fc. review; I was s1an. the avenge length of reviews in Vec job is to provide IS comprehensive a SllfYCY so shocked II thc blurbs lhat I asked Paul for tor is over 400 words, nol 300 words u he as possible of die boob th.at arc liable to be permission to review them in lheiT own righl claims. I will. on occasion. run I review of of intercsl to BSFA members. And since as woJb of fiction. and Paul agreed to give 300 words or ku for I book that bo{h thc there is considerable overlap between SF and consideration to whatever I WTOte withoui. reviewer and I feel deserves a mcnlion but Fantasy. Horr« and die mainstream, I must of course, committing himself in advance. I
4 • VECTOR 154 LETTERS did not. therefore, as Wingrove claims, affairs - and particularly absurd given iu lished I book lhat has wor-kcd as well as this "judge the work by its ~atod macc:rial" slogan "Oh ,hit here coffiCI Charles Stros.s/ one. I have received more lcaers from reacl - I judged the associated material in its own Simon Ings" has been heard far and wide al crs than for- any other 1itlc, and every one right, the moTC so since part or ii was wrinen conventionS5ince 1988. says the same thing: I loved it; how long do I by Wingrove him.self. When will the arbiten of critical w~ come have to wait for volwne two? Additionally, However, the real purpose of this lettcr is to accept the fonn1tive influence of Ian it is selling extremely well. with not one to make I point which., as it happens, does Watson's Toilet Thing (The Power, Head return to date, and continual repeat orders. It impinge on Wingrove's work. insofar u it line, 1987) upon new British imaginative will shortly be out of print. claims to be based on "research" carried out writing? When will the British critical est The controversy generated by the advance years 1go into a country whose whole philo ablishment recognise radical developments - £260,000 for the lrilogy, being £86,666 sophy wu challenged in 1989 and will be so in diagnostic toilet seau by Toto and Nippon per title - has been lhe next best thing to challenged - and defeated, I am sure - again. Telegraph and Telephone (Zygote, Comput being condemned by Mary Whitehouse. Let's take ourselves back to December 1988. er Shopper, December 22 1989), and their Please do continue insulting this book in At that time, I submit to Jntermne an SF undisputable influence upon new writing in your editorials. story in which - purely as background to the no less a magazine th.an lnterzont ("lbc Deborah Beale plot - Eastern Europe has risen up against its Braining of Mother Lamprey" - Simon Ings Fiction Editor Communist bosses. I had a Solidariiy !awaiting publication})? Legend Paperbacks controllod govtm1cn1 in Poland in August We demand a fair hearing from the British Century Hutchinson Publishing Group Ltd 1989, Hungary 11ansfonncd into a democ science fiction press. . racy af1er declaring its Communist Party At very least, we demand a full and sin For £2f,(),()(}(} (as you paid) or £8 per obsolete, East Germany overthrowing its cere apology by Mr McVeigh for attenuating paperback (as I would have to pay) OM rulers, lcnocking down the Wall and prepar the credibility of a fine new writer by stress is eniil/.ed to ask/or S(}mething beyond ing for reunification in November, along ing ephemera at the expense of real UlJIO a "damn good yarn" which remains with Cuchoslovakia's revolution. Chrislmas vativc conlributions to the genre. wilhin conventional areas. 1989 brought a bloody revolution in Roma Simon lngs & Charles Stross I would never altonpl lo tell review nia wilh lhe murder of tens of thousands on Luitivist Pren, Bradford us 1hal they were "wrong" in 111.eir the streets and the overthrow of the Ccauccs judgement; but I do reserve IM righl to cus, and meanwhile there have been popular I was imdu tM impres.sion that Mr Str ~re.s.rmyownopinion. uprisings in Georgia and Armenia, Moslem oss was serioMS abolll ''TecMOgoth"; KM inspired trouble in Azerbaidjan... I think however, I apologiK/or any offe,,u. that's enough to pttsuade you that the cdi1- A.side from afS(} motti0rti"8 PIJl,I/ Wa It uem.s odd to cOWIJeract Kev's critic. ors of IZ had a hearty laugh and rejected the rd's ''Tinwthy and IM Toil.el Demon" isms with a staremenr of how well tM manusaipt out of hand which appeared in Matrix, I'd like to book is ufling and tM. amounJ ofJud Apart, of course, from the ones who took inform readers abow some works of this back from readers, as if to suggest that my piece u I fucistic attack on all they hold movement previously suggested by Dav this makes it a "good" book (whauve, dear, and who blackballed me for all time id Langford: Th, Tltrone of Sarurn; one of tMm is). II would be just as and set out to chive me from fandom. No, it Tiu Reproduttive C{.rurn; and Masters practical to suggest thal Jason Don.o• didn't happen - nobody would be SQ foolish ofthe Vortex. van has Talent because M selfs lots of as 10 base an SF piece on such an impossible Or, perhaps, Diarrhoea of a Mad records. sequence of nonsensical concepts. SF writers ,nan? Thi.son.e would rlUI and run! BP arc noted for their ability to extrapolaie KM likely trends into fanwtic but believable fut From Keilh Brooke urcworlds: my imaginative view of 1989 From Deborah Beale... wu just too unlikely to be acceptable - a Kev's right that there's a lot to look forward year ago, they would have been more likely The Dragonbone Chai r makes full use of to in the '90s - Difilipo, Shiner, McDonald, to acccpl SM Stirling's fascist Marching the a:invcntion1 d the fantuy novd bu1 Rymlln, Brown, Mct\ulcy and so on - but iu lhrough Georgia, recommended to me by doelnotreallyexie:ndiubotlndaries. Nevc:r ever there's still going to be a lot of dross that respected US author and SF researcher thdcn, ii. w01t1 rupeit,ly. War and PtKe ii about. Sharecropping hasn't really hl1 Brit• Tom Clueson. u worthy of publication! ain't, but the book U bcawfully written.. It i1 ain yet but it's lurking in the background, The leut I can do is to wish all BSFA wilhoul doubt one of the but Fant.uy Novels ready to be seized upon (it's the Kylie and memben I very happy decade and a quiet I have read and I eaaerly •wail the TICJlt Jason syndrome: "they've bought this - let's approach to lhc Millennium: meanwhile. if give them some more"; the market exisu, you want to rcacl real SF, try the news ··- John Newsingcr, V l 52 but catering down for the majority isn'1 what papers! books should be #for). There's the risc of Ken Lake I hive spent much time and paper over the militaristic SF looming, 100: the anthologies 11.5 Markhouse Avenue, London E17 8A Y pasl few months condemning the F-,1.uy and novels of Drake, Niven and Pournelle - trilogy 111d now find myself turning the There Will Be War, The Man-Krln Wars, pages c,..it of enth111ilsm rllhcr than duly... The Fleet, War W orld, etc. As Garoner Ed ltorlal - 153 Willi1ms lu.1 fin1-r1te IIOJyldl.in& 1ifl1 and I Dozois says in Best New SF 3, !cu "hope WII gripped by hit chlll'llct.cn and ltlling ... It that SF's famed predictive capacity is not From Chari.es Strrus and Simon Jngs iJ m11tetfully Clrried OUL .. Th.ii i1 I IClld worlcing all that well these days". That was itiooti "d1mn good yam" - and welcome. writ~n several months before US lroops We must protest at the cavalier attitude you AndySawyt:f staned running Panama with the support displayed towards Charles Scross's humor Paperback Purgatory, Pl 81 (according to one poll) of 90% of the US ously conceived "Tcchnogoth" movemcnL population. I suppose the "fighting mercen Placing a promising writer's running joke in Obviously the BSFA's reviewers do no! ary" SF gives us something to reac1 against your catalogue of cunent movemenu is to agree with your usessment of this book u - u witnessed by new anthologies edited by damn him with faint praise, and confuse new "crap". Harry Harrioon and Lewis Shiner - but I members with ephemera. We draw attention The whys and wherefores o f the prices don't like it: we need to be stirred out of our to our serious work in lhc field of literary dcmmded fOJ books in the cuncnt market collective apathy, but it's so much better cri1icism, vis I vis the Bowel Movement. place are the topic of an extended essay, and when it's a positivecollective apathy, but it's This hu been in existence, and studiously unfortunately not something I can go into in so much better when it's a positive stimulus ignored by Briti&h aitics, for several years the spaoc of a letter. Suffice to s•y, in my and not just a rcac1ion to something now. This is a qui~ unaoceptablc stile of seven years in ?3bli&hing I have never ?lb- negative.
VECTOR 154 e 5 LETTER S
To Lake issue wilh Kev', c:""iticisms of liltle contribution to the problems which face correctinsayinglhatthelinesindicalingthe l.ntenone over the last couple of ye.-s: I've lhcworld. arrival oflhcbipcdal apes. theAumalopilh also noted an increase in the quantity of WHurst ccines, and our present civilization do meet wnc. uninspired stuff. nor:only in IZ but in 7 Andrew Ave, Ilkeston. Derby DE1 5EB 11 the same point on one of the 5Clles. Three the late '80s crop of anthoklgjcj; u well, but million years sepcrat£ lhe.sc IWO sl.lges in that's only IO be upectcd. To start with IZ Why ~Id one aper:I a grealu thgrtt Eanh history. On the scale I uscd,3 million published maybe 20 5torics I ycai and that oforiginalily from a wriler jJ1.SI ~ c'11'M years is 0.109 of a millimetre. rar less than wu i1; this year they used 38 and there were SN! is blacl - IUUas tkre really is the thickness of a line. Hardly surpl'ising. another SO in Zenith. Other Edens m, The somdhing alim abow MT. Perlwps lhcrdore. that the two Jines meet at the same Gate and Arrows of Eros. not IO mcuion B111kr cowld ~ tNJde SCJm,t! relt!vanJ. point on the scale.. lhc likes of Fantasy Taks (10 s11ctch genre paillls abolll rat:i.sm. bwl tlsue is na inh Ken Lake SUffi$ up his approach to book boundaries), Dark Fantas~ and an cve:r. uelll reason why slit! ~ghl to have. reviewing when he says: " I am at pn:sent improving small press. There's more good KM ju.st as much an upen on the subject as lhe stuff being published, it's just more thinly author, and a darn sight less dogmatic 10 spread. To come bade to IZ, what about JG AM from Edward luhpole - lotig Ol'U· booL" How does one reply to such a state Bal\111d's "The Enormous Space" or Eric dWt! - a criticism of a review by Ken ment? I can only tell him tha1 one doesn't Brown's "Sw.Crysta\s and Karmel"? The Lau pwblishl!d in VJSO. write books on science (or book reviews) lo magazine's evolving and maybe not tuing flaun1 one's ego or opinions. One docs so 10 the risks th at it should but it's still Britain's May I respond to Ken Lake's strange anack explore and review subjects constructively, best short story outlet. on my book The Search for Ex!raterrestial many of which in SETI arc very complex. I Keith Brooke lnttlligence - one can hardly call it a book was able 10 do this with my book because of 12 Western Hill Road, Beckford review, more a destruc1ivc rampage. No pro some 25 years professional involvement in N'Tcwkesbury, Gloll(:estershirc, GL.20 7AJ fessional science correspondent and aulhor, writing on lhc various scientific disciplines which I happen to be, could have produced lha1 today form the background and rationale lhe kind of book hedcsaibcs. of SETI. In Reply to Ken Lake ... Lake aa:uses me of prov Kling m "unhelp Edw.ard Ashpole ful 1ext" addressed to my old Mother and Greenfield Con.age. Lampcler Vclfrcy, Fromll Htnst Auni who IMught lh11 "UlrOUffUtial is Narberth, Pembrokeshire something to do with yow- SIOmach". They On Chung Kuo. Ken Lake is right and did - but 1h11 was thc dedicarion. Mr Lake! David Wingrove is wrong: there is a body of Those IWO !.-lies, bolh into their 90s ll thc Bear/Shiner Interview 1i11:ra.1UTc about Chinese domination of time, never read a scjence book in their lives. America/the world. The most importa.nl is In one paragraph Lake complaim about I enjoyed the interview with Greg Bear and .John Hersey's White Lotm, which does no1 the f:rcquenl use o f "if", "ooukl" and Lewis Shirler in VISJ, although I do wish ge1 a mention in Trillloo Year Sprtt, but is "may"in 10pics whete utremc caution must th.at Charles Slr055 had allowed them to praised by Neil Barron in Aoalomy or reign. In the next paragraph he accuses me of speak for themselvr.s r.athet than trying 10 Wonder. This is no little known work. being "dogmatic". foree !heir comments lhTough his own eilhcr. my 1976 Bantam paperback is a 10th He complains of my use o f Arthur C pereeprual grid. Cybcfpun.k was a particular printing since lhe novel wu first published Clarkc•s priN:iple of ttthnical pufectabtliry movement; movements come and go; and if in 1966. Hersey h.-1 an adY&nllge (like - "dragged in for no good reason at all", he bolh writers say lhat they've not only gone Ballard) or a Chine.sc childhood to shape his says. A cueful re.-1 o f lhc book will show on to olher things but never felt themselves novel. I feel tha! Wingrove is not helping this principle to be an importanl concept in pm of the movement'• core in the first place himself in handling Chung Kuo; surely its several areas of SETI. then it seems a bit silly of Stross 10 keep merits should speak for lhemsc\ves, he Lake complains about the view, which I dragging them baclc IO confront his own should not have to poinl lhem out? covered in some dellil, that " life as we obssession wilh iL Perhaps one wouldn't Lake 's discussion ofmy review ofOct.avia know it may be the only life there is". (Ibat mind so much if Stross showed more interest Butler's Imago: Xenogeoesls m - I have is, life everywhere in the universe may be in and grasp of the ideology behind Chair now reviewed two of the Xenogenesls based on carbon and water dependent). He is man Bruce's manifestos (has he actually trilogy and Butler's earlier Kindred. She is entitled to lhc view that life evolving on read Cheap Truth?). bu1 on the ev;dence of an extremely odd writer. olhcr planets may be based on diffc:ra11 what published work o r his I've read he As a black woman one wou1d have chemistries. He may be righl. but there is no seems far more concerned wilh the surfaces thought th11 she would have a lot of original evidence to suppon this view. Whereas, o r the thing. Indeed. his story "The Boys " ideas. She has not. Kindred wlS me)o. thae is plenty of biological information in lnlenone 22 struck me as very much an dnmatic, and no1 much more of • con1 - available which indicllel 1h11 life as we appropriation or part of the scenario o f ribulion 10 a view of the ant£ bcllwn south know it may be a universal phenomenoo. Bruce Sterling's Scblsmatrb:, but wilhoot lhan Gone With The Wind. Then the Though molecular structures and p-ocesscss demonstrating much if any awareness or the trilogy 1«med IO accepc the idea of racism/ are bound 10 be different on diffaent planets. metaphorical weight borne by the decaying speciesism. and justified the near cJltCJ• because of the nature of evolution., the same Llhabi1.11Slherein. rnination of hwnanity as if their ecological basic chemjstry may be used. Trouble is. we Josq,h Nk:hol~ niche in the universe h.-1 been made can't confirm this - unless some bacteria are 51 Frinton Rd. Stamford Hill, London obsolete. Perhaps Xenogenesls is mean! IO discovered on Man, which seems unlikely. be an allegory with hwnans standing for However, the ""life as we do not know it" Mr Stross is a dt!wloping wrilu with whites and lhe alien Oanbli rtp£esenting argumcm is irrelevant lo the cue for re WI t:Zet!SS of Ollluuia.ma raJN!r ,Jian a blacks. There must be many blacks, though. search in SETI. There is alre.-ly enough def1£il!nc1 of 1alail. Yow criticism of who would resent being represc:n1ed IS scic:ntificjuslification. as the curren1 obscrv- his /,rs: publishl!d s1ory is valid, but complete baswds on being given technical 11..ional p-ograms by Harvard University, also adds 10 my poilll aboui 1M failure superiority. Given our cum:nt society many Ohio State University, NASA and other of lnlt!l'?JJ nt IO dc'ldop 1hl! radical blacks (like many whites) are alienated. but groups dcmostrate. ficri.on1hl!yaspire10. lhey arc not al iens, and we should (in answer Lake's prize paragraph begins: "Basically, Jouph also criticised 1ht! standard of to Ken Lake's final question) reject any Ashpole sell his whole book down the proofreading: we do try 10 claeclevery reading lhat implies one part of humanity is river ... " I do so, apparently, because or two thing as thorowghly as possibk.. Ur,for1- nol really a parL I don'! know what Butler charts (on pages 11 and 13). Lake confuses UNJJely, SOmt! mistakt!sdoslipthrough, thinks about race, but I can re.-1 what she one chart wilh the other and gets his meas wsually the "'°st obvioJI.S Ollt!S. has written, and what she has wriuen makes urement wrong, but we'll kt lhat pus. He is KM
VECTOR 154 e 6 here can be few people who have no! T been brought up on the mythologies of earlier ages. They fonn the basis of The Quest for most fairy or folktales. and many nursery rhymes. A sizeable proportion of childrens' li1en.twc is still devollld to their retelling or a Whiter Wash re-cnacuncn1 in a modern setting (Alan Gamer or Susan Cooper's WOW arc good cumples of this) and they also make lheir mark on much .tult fiaM>n - mainstteam u Joanne Raine takes a genre trip from traditional heroic myth well as genre. to contemporary kitchen sink myths and sees some interesting What is mythology? It is the recollection of , ..Gokkn Age" when mankind and a sights along the way pantheon of gods were much more closely involved with ach other; when every man or W'Om.lJ1 ope:ra!A!d under a fate or geu, when they sMw themsclvu lo be merely Who's Afraid or Beowotr instead. when evay .ction had I peculiar significan human after all. our retribution is swift Mm Another popular strategy is to tdl the myths ce.. Tales oftima Jona gone. and races tha1 such IS Ian Botham and Ollie North know from the viewpoinl of an observer or predate man's dominion. this10lheirC051. pn:,tagonist&omthetimeinwhx:hlhcy MOR kriously, it if conc:cntnltcd history, Many mythical heroes have a number of happened. and sometimes rationalising them lhe evidence of the invasion and rcinvuion incidents in common in their slOl'ics bc:causc in lhe process.. The Arthurian myths in of a people by a 1Ucccs:1ion of foreign influ universally, people [eel the need to belie,,e in particular have &equcnlly been reinterprei:cd ences, bringing new wellpON)'. new ways of the c.paciry ID achieve certain fundcncntal in Iha manner. i=easingly from lhe point lhinki:ng, induding a new theology, imposed goW. He or she (usually he) U the answer IO or view of lhc female elements or the on the. old. driving it underground into prayers. delivers us from enemies. brings legend, badly 5UVcd by lhe more b'adilional folktale and fireside5Ulfy. gifu of new proc:,essa, techniques. objec:ll or vcn;ions. The Mists or Avaloo by Marion Mylh also answers buie ye1 awkward ways of thinking. He can ch.uige the rules. Bradley U one of the best ex.amples or lhil. questions such • "How did we <=Unc IO be John Brunner's '"Travdlu in Black''. a man A major mylmlogical motif is lhe quest or here?", "Where will we go when we die?" or many names, bul one nature., walks journey. Much space opera can be seen in and seeks tojUAify the here and now, thce,; th.rough a world where chM>I once ruled. and this light. as can Sw Trek's much extended isting social system. the reason for ndition• slill hu lhc upper hand. A typical hero in mi11ion "'to aplore new worlds and boldly al rile.I and amoms. Some of the baste this sense he is: go where no man has gone before... clements of lhe myth are at least 5,000 years Som,e write:s have highlighted ~ _.sut,jca 10 ccnain laws not bind.ins upon old and every race or culwrc hu its own col intdlecr.ual need for mythic survival, whilst ordina,y pcnaN. In. ciompaualO'}' rawon. lection - some more fully docwncnled than rdelling elements 10 SCJ'Ve their own needs. be wu also fm: from certain · ocher law,. others. Or, as Robcn Graves put il: In Tht Last Unicom, Peter Beagle has more oommonly in force. 2 Schmendrick. the Magician call up the spirit M)'tholoCY i1 tk mldy ol whaievet religiou1 We both love and fear the hero - his presen• or Robin Hood in ordo- to impress Captain orheroiclcgcnd1are10f0ft:ign10a111xl ce and hi5 gifts may have lfflhivalmt results. Cully, the self-srylod oullaw, intmt on en1'1uperienoelha1heCU1n01bclicvethcm " Dr Who" is s universal culture hero, app• elevating himself IO legendary 5talll5: IObo:true. 1 earingaratimeofnecd.defeatingtheenemy E!fortlenly proud. .. Lhc bowmen m
VECTOR 154 e 7 THE QUEST FOR A WHITER WASH
mythological reson.nces can be found. ln Horwood, with two books about eagla. and a In lhe coUoction Red as Blood (or Tales Count Zero, William Gibson hu Baron trilogy about moks. is lhe cum:nt leader on rrom the Slsters Grimmer) Tanith Lee Samcdi and the voodoo pantheon inhabiting what MOOl'cock c,Jls the "Epic Pooh" likes well-known fairy tales and stands them cybcnpace for their own designs. school or Fantasy. on their heads. alk,wing women to be villain Science fiction and mythology help mm• Harlan Ellison in Dtatbhlrd Stories and hero, and yet always intensely remale., kind IO face their feats and offer some placed modem icons such u the towa block not eternal lOmboys, running out to play in IOIUIM'.ln. They attempt 10 allay the conflict into ancien1 mythok,gical id.tings. JG Bal their b,Olhct"s bcnowed clothing. between wh11 is and what is not; rationalise. lard has done similar work., particularly with Despite the plelhoni. of anti-heroes who or make sane lhal which forever changu. a modcmiscd zodiac. Rachel Pollm:t in provide their own anWtgonisl in the Science fiction has in some respects taken Unq11t:nch1ble Fin ae&1cd hCf own myth shal.!Qed f-=ets of their psyche, and the ovc:r from theology u a means of speculai ologies of a future Earth afta an unspeci6cd creation or modem mythic figures such u ion beyond thc known world. Yet, even disaster, ~ myths and miracles play a Marilyn Mootoe and John F Kennedy, when the truth is Jcnown, the myth still ling vibrant part in everyday life. Again. they are science fiction hu not creaLCd anything new, ers. like Ray Bradbury's Martian Chron lhe direct descendants of the ancient mylhs, merely reused and re-upla.ined the o ld in a kles set in a Mars ofthc Mind. hut retokt in rich and compelling language. varieiy or ways. Sadly, it is outside genre Many writers create their own mythol The following is part or lhc myth of Dust fiction that a new mythic s1ereotypc: has been ogies a.s a buis for alien culnu-es, plundering Father and Mothe.rsnU::c, hut i1 could equally created, one for women tha.t men cannot or Earth's mythologies for inspiration. Joy have been Isis and Osiris: will not au.ain. In the land of the Oxo advert. Chan! in Red Moon and Black Mountain B11twhen1heran1othechild,1hcd.i100vcrcd in a place forever kitchen, the minor career takes us into a world of Star Magic, where woman, housewife and mother juggles the iu mouth closed, iu: throal still, iu: eyes a ln'serrina. Daughter of the Stars, battles pieces or her life, the uick being IO keep briglu yellow and 0011\Cd with im1&C1 from Fcndul, the fallen one, their conflict hcrakl them all moving forward ll the same time. Dust Father'• sm,. It wun't the baby ed I around by b.1tlcof eagles: 1inging,butl0ffltthin1blaclcand&hrivdled Her magic lies in the objects her, crea!ed by men for lhc use of women; her The red moon cut iu dim light over .U, th.11. hung round iu neek. Mothcmillr.c quest is for the perfect dinner, the cleanest civin1 lhecno& Ind lhc bladtuglc1 • 1hcc:n klcicdcloM:r,shcuwasev~fin&cr,all house, the white.st wash. • d JUl.len crimJ011, and n~, lhe Qlhcr, curled and shrunken.. " lie'• ali"<," lhc with a JOl11t1K,qui1eout dpbeein this wbispcml, and lhc SOW'ld boomed through xcneolnrifc. 5 thcpftd.llikean1valmchc.. " llc'•alive!" 7 f ~ La,ou ... Encydopedla of Many other writers have covered similar Mythology ground. noublyTolkcin and Donaldson. Hamtyn, 1972 p.V Donaldson's and ChKnt's books are cum Has anything new come oul of liw: uplor 2 The Complut Traveller In Black plcs or our workt breaking inlO lhe mythic ation or mythic archetypes? Mos1 Fanwy is age or anolha. the participanu becoming still in din,ct line or descent from the fabu- ~:,~~~.3 parl of tha1 myth. Another ex.ample is 10111 epics of Gilgamesh. Ulyues, and the 3 The BrkSge by lain Banks Pan, 1987p.160 Mythago Wood and iu sequel Lavondyss.. Icelandic sagas. Even the increased role or ln the la1ter, Tallis becomes her own myth in women - negligible in traditional mylholo. 4 The Ulst Unicom by Peter S Beagle Unwin, 1982 p.58 a breathtaking tr111Sformation scene. How. gies - has socn them step inlO prevM)usly male enclaves or mylhlc stereotype. There 5 Red Moon and Bladt Mountain ever, in Slttping In Flame. Jonathan Carroll by Joy Chant doc, thercverse: are remale warriors for uample (though few Unwin , 1985 p.30 go as far II Geoff Ryrna.n's hero/heroine in The bell rans. I an1wen:d it. The innam af1er The Warrior Who Carried Life in actually & I knew who 1he wu, I realised again that :jt~i: ~!::'1 adopting the male form). direc1 desccndents Legend. 1988 p.244 IIQlhingbdonewilhoutrcgrcL of the Amazons, though in very few cases She w11 wuring a Jong ,ed cape thll docs any femininity survive. The character 7 ~na:h::11:~r• covetedhcrhudu welluhcrbody.Shc Starhawk in Barbara Hambly's Ladles or Gonancz, 1988 p.212 ~ ~~:.~~!:;.ex colouted P:in, lips u Mandrlgyn and its sequel The Witches of Wenshar is one or few where you don't ge1 au.led the feeling th&l the writcr just decided to Not all mylhs are human. Watn'Shlp Joanne Raine is tM Manbuship Down has bred many suc:ces.sors - moles, subltituie ""she" for "he" in a couple or S«retaryoftMBSFA b.:!gers, foxes. cats and ugles. William places.
B e VECTOR 154 ederico Garcia Lorca said th111 he was F for a Spanish balladry that was "anti-picturesque, anti-folkloric, anti Off With Their flamenco". I'm for an English-language fantasy that's anti-mythic, anti-folkloric, anti-archetypal. Fantasy with teeth and without reverence, fantasy that provokes rather than consoling, that confronts rather Heads! than celebrating. If we have to be under the influence of an Oxford don, let's make it Author and critic Colin Greenland looks at the roots of his own Lewis Carroll instead of JRR Tolkien. fiction in a piece originally published in the 1989 Alice was a proto-feminisl heroine, an World Fantasy Con Programme Book ... everyday young woman caught up in a mad world where mandarins bolh ludicrous and cruel bully her backwards and forwards with now, is a space opera. Tabitha Jute drives a eJ:aitation of nonsense. ruthless illogic. Alice tries hard to make space barge around the developed bits of the All the successors of Humpty Dumpty and sense of these dreams that are not hers, in solar system. She's only doing her job, witil the Queen of Hearts. fact. but her society's. In the end, only she "s beset by a bizarre tToupe of stToJling I don't see lhe recovery of ancient beliefs, violent defiance is possible. The women in players, poslhurnans, weird aliens and the quest for lost talismans, lhe unearthing of my books are the same, unintentional misfits. Space opera is • mythic fonn, a buried menhirs, as liberation, only as heroines, struggling with all the grotesq treasured subgenre in the subcultural folklore compensation, and a terrible incitement to ueries the world provides - or as many of of SF that could well do with being dragged nostalgia, which is rife everywhere over here themas l canen\ist. outintothelightandgivenagoodshake. in the Merrie Englande Theme Park. Jillian Curram, in The Hour or the Thin Like the Red Queen. Nostalgia bleeds energy like nothing else I Ox, inherits her mother's business and Whereare therootsofmyfantasy?Inlhe know. As the facts get grimmer and less considerable power. and makes a mess of it. imagination. In the popular imagination, as I negotiable. as social sttatification and The impending war with lhe Escalan Empire inequality become more rigid, nostalgia and brings opportunity and profit to her sen1imentality thrive, oozing out of every competitors, but it ruins her. She joins lhe crack in the structure. It's at the time when army and endures months of manoeuvres it's most glaringly obvious that Arthur and se:itual haJTas51Tlent without seeing a Space opera is a doesn't live, that no slumbering archetype is single enemy. Her enemies are her superiors. going lo rise up out of the mound and save When lhe Esc.alans move into Belanesi, she mythic form, a us, that the market for Arthurian Fantasy and deserts and leads a guerrilla band into the treasured subgenre in beer mugs and tea towels is guaranteed to jungle to strike back against lhe invader. peak. That's one bandwagon whose tyres I'd There she finds a purpose. an alien species, the subcultural dearly love to slash. quarrelsome allies and a foreign lover for I don't mean there's anything wicked or none of which any source in her life has folklore of SF that wrong with writing Arthurian Fantasy, or prepared her, ne ither lhe lore or her former Wagnerian Fantasy, or role-playing Fantasy. servants nor the official myths or her could well do with I'm with Michael Moorcock, when he says indoctrination. there is no virtue in form itself. A fonn is Serin Gui\le, in O ther Voices, meets a being dragged out only as good or bad as the writer using it. myth. He is walking arowid, and he has no These days people seem to be writing lhese business to be. He has been brought to life into the light and things absolutely blithely, as if the form and abandoned by lhe people who made itself had virrue, moral virtue, a sort of him. Myths can kill. (Read CJ Cherryh's given a good shake ... restorative innocence. "The world is all T heDreamstone.} right I guess, but I'd like 10 find some Serin Guille is lhe daughter of a tax. Like the Red Queen. buried tTeasure." Thomas Disch said that, idermist and a gypsy. She is introverted, but when he said it, there was irony in iL sulky, unpopular and unloved, the victim of Whatever haJl)Cned lo irony? her parents' mutual misery. The Eschalan Lewis CaJTOll believed in innocence too; Empire rules her people, lhe little mowit.ain see it landscaped, populated and furnished but his Alice is n't innocent, even if he state of Luscany. Serin doesn't particularly by genres of arts both popular and canonical: thought she was; and it im 't innocence that mind, !hough she doesn '1 particularly like writers like Angela Carter and M John saves her. • lhem. Others are mO£e hostile, and Serin is HaJTison and Raymond Chandler; SF, suddenly caught up in a chain of violent Fantasy, Horror, the Victorian oovel; events lhat force her to grow up pretty fast contemporary indie pop music; painters like So is Nette, puppet Princess of Luscany. Rousseau and Giorgione and Ernst; films Colin Greenland is the awhor of Surrounded by foreign monsters who tell her like Brazil and Dune and Paperhouse. Daybreak on a Differenl Mountain , what to do and when to smile, she eventually Twining around !hose are the roots in Tlte Hour of the Thin Ox and Other loses her rcmper. After lhat only violent e:itperience, in growing up as a beneficiary of Voius (allpublished by Unwin), as defiance is possible. the establishments of a derelict empire and a well as reviewing regularly for the Follclore, in Other Voices. amounts to the declining welfare state. Being a half-member Sunday Times and Foundation. body of traditions and assumptions that keep of all manner of social and cultural groups His latest ,wvel, Ta U Bad PlenJy, a people identified with itself and doing as and institutions: Europe; the middle class; a which he has already menJioned far as possible the same things it has always "public'' school; Oxford University; hippies; a~, is now wilh his publisher and done. Serin. more or less unintentionally, SF fandom; SF professionals; Er.glish is expected to be publish£d in th£ shows Princess Nette lhat the time has come literati; Colorado yuppies. The arclietypes of summer. He also informs us thal he for something else, a conscious shove at a my life have all been things to beware: will also have another story in torpid culture. fetishes of con1rol, myths of disinformation, Zenilhll. And lhe mylh has his part to play too. gibbering figures of aulhority in absurd Take Back Plenty, which I'm writing uniforms containing power by ritual and lhe
VECTO R 154 e 9 nc:cuponatime. I was talking 10 a O writer and he started to tdl me about an idea lhat he had. h was some The Mind of the thing about the feedback systt:m of hislOry. Unscrupulous govcmmcnts airtwush II\CCWl venient events from the history books., as if Maker they could take conool of lhc pasl lhat way; m•ybe !here's a mysterious 1ruth buried in that deception. Something about the way we An Artist's Impression become, or perhaps we always were. respon• sible fo r all the cvc:nu tha1 have made u.s Gwyneth Jones looks at che "use and misuse of mych in Fantasy" wha1 we arc ... The writer burbled on a bit, having the usual difficulty one has in con and considers whecher mych is any differencfrom "ordinary" veying lhc abhorrcn1 naked singularity of an fiction, or noc. And 1/ it really mane rs, anyway. idea without its clothing of fiction (it's always the SlorJ that's clear). At last light her employer. But i£ you take aw1y the linscl ually or individually ii is produced in the dawned: oh, I think I know what you're get shared-\lfllvene, you only find the real Iha• same way thal I produce my own s1or~ I ting al, I said. I've even read lhc stol)'. h's rcd-univenc widcrncath. Each stof)'. how now know something about myth lhat I cal led "Let's Go To Golgolha!" Argh! uc ever distan.1 it may seem on the surface, is didn't when I was fust inlroduccd IO Ovid b.imcd Mr Kilwalh (for ii was he). You're e1pablc of being unpacked and lraCcd out and Anon and the rut of the gang. (Oby, right. I've wriuen it already. Phew! What a until its c:annections with all the others arc let's be pedantic. I fed as if I know this.) lucky escape. .. But having embarked upon revealed.. Each exprcssKm is a lx>logramic Myths, we uc told in primary school, are the lh is dangerous uain of though! we found ir fngmm1 of the lftis1's notional theory of way IJ"ICicnl peoples uplain for themselves lwd IO put on the brakes. b ..originality" everything: alw1ys the same whole, always the way the world works. Tiicy arc function- reaUy such a virtue? The trulh of experience revealing some new aspecl as it rums around 1lly indistinguish1ble, th1t is, from natural is that a big pan of feeling that you've got and uotmd in the light of eaperiencc. If an science, and eventually people came to hold of I good story, is the way that it won't artist, 1 writer's work. IU>es happen to decay realise th1t S11urn didn't eat his children. leave you until you've written it seven into contradiction and repetition, it im"t • in just the ume way that people eventu1lly times; and its contradiction too ... The trulh is fault thlf can be conoclCd by "escape" into came to realise that there is no crys11l lhat however degraded the process may have something completely diffcrenL The essence ~phere sepu1ting us from the filled stus. become lhcrc is anistic validity in the heart of an (of fiction) is replication with var• of the endless sequels and pra:i,uc1s of our iat.On. an cndku cl1Tnbering over lhc same particular genre. Suppose I write a story 30 landsclpc, dcfUU1dy contained but imp ycan from now, set in the same world and ossible to exhaust by If!)' means or m,pping. wilh the same characlefs as a MYCI I brought The only way to get out of thll (w)hole. is to out in 1984. Rich and C.moia as I will no siopwritingaltogethcr. doubl bc-(ha!) -J will be able iowilhstand bravc1 y the SOUl"5 and slurs on my characlef that follow, the mut~ about burned-out Wtu.l's all this go1 to do with !he "use and hack.I and cynical exploitation of one's own misuse" or mylh in contcmpan.ry Famasy? younger self... but how wiU I answer the (I'm 001 planning to tact.le religion and SF gentler puzzlement of readers who wonder by lhc way, because I think for my present how on earth anyone can do lh117 The same purposes those terms arc contained in the rabbit out of the same hat. 30 years on - other two). A great deal, I believe: bec1use surely thll contravenes the most basic Jaws myth-making and writing fiction are not two of nature ... All I'll be able to say is that it activities, they m one (I could here insert doesn' t seem thll way IO me. Within lhc academic references: er Levi-Strauss, cf anist'1 mind time doesn'1 pus in the same Dcnida. er Barthes, "proving" this state way IS it docs out in the big world. It's ment. but why bother? I don't believe it bec K.ilworth time in here. The present. furore ause those chaps said so, I believe il because and the past of my fiaion arc contiguous. I believe iL You make up )"OW' own mind). There is no space between the 30 year old When considered IS "myth" fiction is taken story and the one I'm thinkin& of today ... 10 be a complex but single ,ocial entity, • thoughwhetherlhat30yearold51Q')'is "the consensual "stof)' of everything" thll a same" as it was when I first wrote it is society tells itsdf. The ~oeivcd conunsual another question.. Maybe it never was "the narure of these anonymous collections .. the same" to begin wilh ... mythsoflhcGrubandRomans .. , "the my• Every anist keeps on working out the ths aid lcgcnm of Ireland .. conceals • fairly same theme. their own personal obsession. obvious truth: thae were alw1ys storytellers. over and over again. Subjectively, it may Some of !he namca: survive, some of them seem like a loosely related sequence. You don't. But !he oonsensual notion enshrines write that good story, the one about the another truth lh1t 1ppliu just IS much. dear nature of time. n times, and then move on to readers. to !he fiction !hat you and I are col I new theme ... But an acute observer (if \ectivc\y producing today. Fiction regarded you're lucky enough to find one) will say of as myth is the individual artist's experience all the themes that seem '° scpararc ..U JU, turned insidc-0uL The work! that a body of 1h~r~ she gou ogoin: it's probably somel• myth "ellplains" is • single whole too. his hing 10 do wilh hu 1oi~1 training ... Writer A the one we live in - dcrmcd somehow or industriously chan.gca: the sccne,y for ~h olhcr,aa:ording10cwrcn1fashioo.in"spaoe episode; writer 8 is IOO lazy, and re-uses and time •• ; 001 inca.haustiblc. and JUICCU&ruy backdropi; and charxlt:rS until they fall apl· containing every variation or itself upco and rl; writer C has allowed herself to become includingdircctcontradiaion. alienated from her means of production and Bec;:au.se I am sure th.11 this is a-ue: !hat uses the mllS•produccd scenery provided by myth is the JamC • fiction, and thll conscns-
10 e VECTOR 154 THE MIND OF THE MAKER
Ph1ogiston is one with the God or Thunder practical ICITnS (either emoiional or intel\e British modem tradition of MacDonald. and the promise of the rainbow - ct patiti ct crual), or indeed capable - finally - of being Tolkien, Lewis ct al. Baldw- 1M bl!lJw1if11.l is patila. Now here we could diverge into the disenrangled from the state of consciousness ckod, is ckad... Osiris is Kal.tered in frag Big Bang theory of human knowledge: itself. The explma1.ion tacked on to the edge ments, and Isis sea:rches for him to renew the everything was once packed into one tight or the story, aka the plot (or even the "idea" world; Orpheus's severed head flo ats sing little ball. it was along time ago and it's all cg, Mr Kil worth 's nolion about Klein bottle ing down the river. And from this tradition flung far apart but that's how come absol history) is a kind of necessary deception, a has sprong an amazing proliferation of the utely different disciplines like physics and putting of limits on something indetcrminale classic story of the hero-saviour who comes fiction seem 10 have access to information as a temporary convenience; as such it's the to renew the world: The Downfall of th e about each other that they can't have got only ficrional (in the sense of " not true") Lord of the Rings and The Return of the hold of by any means available in the pres part or the enterprise. King. There's a sense there's nothing else ent state of things ... But let's put Science for the fiction- maker to do besides retelling aside, along with Religion, and get back to the great old tales, but "myth used cons the story. What I know is this. II is patently The defeat or reason leads us back to myth, ciously" tends to set up a negative interfer. obvious that Ovid, say, didn't believe that a in what maybe a never-ending oKillation, ence pattern. What we are getting at here is a char with furry legs chased a lady into a sw from fiction to physics and back again. The confusion between the plot and the story: amp, whereupon she turned into a recd and defeat of 19th century realism in fiction endless reiteration of just one of those useful he turned her into a particularly fine brand of cunently leads the mainstream literary world explanatory punchlines, "and that's how the pick-up arm. But Um was because, says back to magic, which is very satisfying for prince won his kingdom", and a pitiful received wisdom, he was a sophisticaied de those of us who never lefL And the whole dearth of expressive exploration of this cadent mylhologisez-, (like Mr Kilworth, Mr enterprise or fiction begins once again to world. The real strength of mythic writing - Holdstock etc in our own sophisticated dec express the whole strange landscape of the the freedom from the the consuaints of adent day) and he wu consciously imilarillg, time/space and all the rest of those either/or or m,ybe cannibalising, Anon, who did bel traps - is in danger of vanishing completely ieve things of thaJ. sort. Not so. Thtte never from the genre that kept the true faith . wu such a person. The mind of the mak:CT ... set out in search of You might think things would get bencr in docsn'1 work like 1h11. lhe work of thoughtful fanwists who rcilly The rule of K ientific melhod. which has the Real Original care about what they write. But the other directed the course of our jew-greek intel trap that people fall into lies in wait part• lectual hislory for so Jong, has a dominant story: the real Arthur, icularly for those who really care. Those basic assumption that the most important who, despising all modem imitations, set out part of any exploration or the world is the the real Gilgamesh, in search of the Real Original story: the real conclusion it comes lo: the Did product. Un Arthur, the real Gilgamesh, the Ultimate der this rule, fiction itself is only respec1able the Ultimate Myth Myth that lies al the heart of things. But this in so far a.s it delivers the rational goods: an search for the ultimate is a cul-de-sac itself, explanation of the observed phenomena that that lies at the heart in so far as it leads a writer back into the stands up to test and produces some kind of depths of historical time or into any other psychological or sociological result that's of things. But this notional simplification of the landscape. The either right or wrong. "Myth" with a capital cult of Osiris is not ancient. It seems to have comes to mean a large-scale operatic produ search for the sprung up, fully formed, about two thousand ction possessed of the mys1erious quality of years ago. And why IWl? That's probably "Beauty" or "Profound Truth" ( ...quite dif ultimate is a when the brilliant storyteller who invented ferent from the ordinary kind). useful for its the whole thing lived and worked. Like all healthy cathartic effect; "myth" lower case, cul-de-sac itself. .. the operatic myths that we so admire, this is i.s dismissed as a kind of cod-physics and the purity of a sophlsticatcd distillation chemistry that wouldn'1 fool a (modem) process: if you try to dig down further, to chlkl. But coming back to the surYiving oral mind's world, its conflatioru of time and uncover the rt!al story, all you get is a fiction of vanished societies as a working space. its conacte metaphors. its experi handful of mud Searching for the real liiil storyteller in my own right, it is clear 10 me ments, its packed, allusive imagery. So much and Osiris in the ftttile murk of pre-dynastic tha1 somelhing very different from this is for the use of myth in contemporary Fantasy; Egypt is something akin to searching for the going on. The carual coda ..so tha1.'s how business as usual. Whal about the misuse? genuine, original Warha mmer novel, hav the milk go1 in10 the cocomn" ... meant no Paticncc, I'm geuing there. ing found one of the late-period stories th at more to Anon than to Ovid himself. The I believe it is a mistake (though I do ii all acrually seems pretty good! It would be the mi.steiU, the "bad science" of the myth: the time) 10 think of SF/Fantasy as the one same if the myth was not the glorious oper• "this story explains how death came into the true church of fiction, the unsullied spring, atic tale of the Wounded Saviour, but some world'' I recognise as the lhingl use called a and " 19th century realism" u a narrow, pur thing rich and bizarre and "contradictory" "plot", which I use in the full knowledge itanical breakaway movement (that has fail about the raw and the cooked. The more I (because I'm a genre writer, and we're more ed hahaha}. Modem Fantasy, SF, and "the learn of myth the more certain I'm that there aware of these things) that it is neither ori modem novel" ue all products of the same was nevtt any story looking for someone to ginal nor, on its own, particularly inter historical background. 111d therefore it is not tell it, it was always the other way around. esting. Myth does nol intend to explain. It surprising that the heavy.industry operatic intends to express. The whole story e:xprus version of "Myth" has become the dominant tS, through all its bi.zan-e details, something form in contemporary Fantasy. And in SF The final subject of all our mythologising is particular that is only story so I can't write it too, wherever " Myth" is used consciously. nothing more or less than the human mind: here ... something (for instance) about dealh. After you've discovered that mosl of the apparently fant.asists can't live with this How it feels to find out, whether sooner or myths of the ancients arc no more than so knowledge, and can '1 live without it (it later, that you're no1 going to live forever. many layers of ol»oletc scientific theory: wasn't me, guv. I never had anything against And maybe something about what th e neither more nor less respectable than phlog my dad. It was this other chap; ii wa.s perception of ends and cut off points in iston or monads, two divisions of mythology Gilgamesh... ). There's no reason to suppose general docs to the mind. Ficlion/myth, like remain - "folklore", which is crude and do that the myth-makers of the past were any writing itself, is an activity or encoding, of em't matter, and the real stuff, which is pure more forthright. It was always someone else expressing one sci of stales-of-affairs inter and deep and beautiful and resonant with whal done it: brought death into the world. ms of anothtt - experience into signs. The meaning beyond reason. Thus goes the anal or stole fire from heaven. But to look for that benefits or this activity arc no1 reducible to ysis or the 19th centwy; and of all the Great someone in the flood-plains of Mesopot-
VECTOR 154 e 11 THE MIND OF THE MAKER amia, or UJlder a glacier, is I clear case of back to origins is still • canard. There's without personal interest, because I recently repres.sion (or rather, a bcuer translation) of nothing new or inteJ:esting to be disoovere.d found myself trying to pick out a name (one a putting aside of something that's in the wtdeJ: the roots of those mowitains (10 quote of !hose meaningful, resonant type of names, way at present. but must be preserved. one whose lilt'l:ary cxe<:utors have prove.d the you know what I mean) for an extremely Maybe the various attempts, conscious and same exhaustively ... ). Indeed, I'd say the one plausible and attractive devastator of lives unconscious, to test the hero-myth to des single important "mistake" contemporary and worlds; and I kepi coming up with tn1ction that are going on 11 the moment fantasists make (not me, of course!) is to things that sounded an awful 101 like Lucifer, signal an accept.ance that the theme is played look backwards and mistake that for looking S1.ar of the Morning. Who is wlfortunatcly, out for the moment inwards: to write (in any sense) about the my greek-jcw 5Ubconscious (a printer's Robert Holdstock, in Lavondyss/Myth "pa.st" of inner, or the outer world, rather error, I know, but I always leave in the good ago Wood, goes delving in the bones and than the world u it ishnaybe. ones myself) tells me, the prince and ruler of the snow of the last European glaciation for The territory is given. What fanwists real this world witil the end of time. Better try to the original nuclear a-agedy ... finds it, and ly ought to be doing - u mylhologisers - is keep on his bright side, ch? Better pretend finds something so bare, bedraggled and lhin lrying to find ways to express why things arc wcthinkhe'slhcgoodic... (the skeleton of story) that he seems lO have the way they are in that realm. What about Only an example. But that's the son of accidently dug through lhc treasure and out this "Metaphor of Light" for ins1ance? Why curiosity I know I like in a story. The kind of the othc:r side. The passage is either curious is it thal we call Light the good, and swear - why? - that myths should nol try to ly naive or a carefully calculated statement - that it prevails against Darkness, when every answer (can't be done!); but to enjoy. I've not been able to decide which. But body knows that the opposite is the cue? Programmes for improvement arc always whichever, I certainly hope he has finally When in fact it is clear u daylight that noth absurd. Ai; is any attempt to disentangle knocked this particular metaphor of depth ing turns to corruption fut.er than a good genesis &om structure. The users of mylh and origin on the head. The central, hidden cause; when we know w:ry well that virtue can't help iL The misuscrs p-obably have places are by no means necessarily the only thrives in obscurity, in opposition. excellent and extremely intelligent rcuons places where we live and grow. Any tree out-of-office: that m111ky intuition makes lhe for doing what they do. I just wish they'd do Jover should know thaL discoveries, not number-crunching. "Brill les:r of it, quantitatively. Less words per The mythopoeic "thoory of everything", iant" intellect fudges its experiments and book. Jess books per monlh. But that's a ofsomcultim111e(human!)story111thchcart dreams its truths. Columbus wu completely problem of encroaching industrialisation, a of things, has a great, almost irresistable in the dark about his destination. When the different kind of psychological phenomenon appeal - and for good reason. Of course IGng returns he stan"es the peasants and beats altogether. And frankly much more scarey there is wch a story: or rather that is the his wife. The glorious revolution inevitably than any monsters of the mind. • story, in the end. There can be no other. I ends in a bloodbath. Religions founded in would go further: I would say that cons modest obscurity get their Saviour's name in ciousness itself, in its initial conditions. lights and speedily become u corrupt u Gwyneth Jone:r i:r the au.tharofthe contains the simple codes that start up and hell ... the worst wars of all arc the just ones. ,muh-acclaimed Di11iJre E 11duranre define all of our myth and religion. Whether And whenever I say to you "it's perfectly and Kairos, both ofwlti.ch are you find that tautology mystical. or just clear", what I really mean to say is "don't publi:rhed by Unwin. obvious, is a matter of opinion. But harking uk me to explain-" ... I uk this question not BET YEAGER IS ONE HELL OF A LADY - TOUGH, INDEPENDENT, A REAL FIGHTER. AND WHEN SHE SHIPS OUT ON THE SPY VESSEL 'LOKI', SHE HAS TO USE ALL HER INGENUITY TO STAY ALIVE ... "Close-quarters tension. with never a dull moment and rarely a safe one ... This is a book you live in the reading" Locus £7.9S Large-format paperback £ 12.95 Hardcover
12 e VECTOR 154 nglish is a dynamic language and A Stone from E because of !his our l.l5C of the word "myth" has broadened to cover meanings other than a story concerning Oberon's Castle belief in supernatural beings involved in the origins of peoples. One of the newer dcfin i1ions is thai the word myth is a euphemism for a lie. To me this is a strange evolution, Garry Ki/worth explains the need for applying a refi~i?n because I believe thal a.t the bouom of every to any fictional society and slwws how he worked thJs mco classical myth is a fundamental truth. When Kev McVcigh wrote to me about this his novel, Hunter's Moon subject, he said, "I understand you 'invented' a set of Creation Myths for the foxes in Hunter's Moon ... " and he suggested I write about how this was effected. His understand of some kind needs to put across at least a before 700 BC at a time when the classical ing is unwiningly incorrect. I did not invent sen.st! of supernatural beliefs held by the myths were the religion. Thre.e hundred these myths, at least. not from dust. I used an members of that society. In other words, the years later there were a lot of highly established myth or legend as a keystone and people in the book must have a religion of intelligent Greeks 11IOund, mostly Athcniaru: built I.he can.id myths around it. some kind, intenpcned with other aspec:Ui of inventors, mathematicians, philosophers, It's because I believe that there is an their culture. though this religion need no! engineers, cartographtts of both the eanh intrinsic truth somewhere in every estab come to the forefront. It doesn't necess,rily and the night sky. Did these men, some of lished myth, that I feel it would be unhelpful have to appear on the page, but there must be them geniuses whose work is still impon,zll to a novel to complciely "invent" such a circumstantial ev idenoe to suggcs1 a belief, today, cast off their beliefs once they talc that mw1 11 the same time be super however faint. Why do I think this? I'll became independant th.inkers with strong naturally complex aNJ. acceptable to the sub answer that with another question: do you powers of reasoning? The answa lies in a conscious. A mythology must be believable know of any race on earth which has no little story. in the way that an uplifting novel must be re1igious beliefs what.soever? I think not. Not In 415 BC the Athenians had an empire satisfying. h must have a shape and content one iribe or people. whethtt il had conLaet which they wished to extend to enoompass that feels satisfying, and above all it must with othtts or remained isol•~ has come Sicily. Their best general at !he time was a feel whole. An individual a1.1thor cannot oul of the stone age without a religion of brilliant young man called Alcibiades who invent a myth from 5CJatch and make it somekind was chosen to lead the huge, expensive sound convincing. It lakes a race of people ls it because, in the beginning, all peoples expedition against the Sicilians. Unfortun to fonn a mythology, out of their beliefs, for were primitive? Primitive peoples are sup ately, Alcibiades was accused with a number if they were not at some time believed to be posed lo be superstitious, fear the spirit of comrades of mutilating some statues of true acoounu of supernatural happenings world. Now that we have become civilized, Hennes that stood in the doorways of Athen they cannot be myths. One can ta.kc a myth sophisticated modern societies we may have ian houses and temples He was recalled from and use it in a work of fiction, but one outgrown the need for myth and re ligion? the expedition to Athens (a journey or many cannot produce a myth out of a work of Welt for a start, "primitive" doesn't mean weelt.s) and stood lrial. He managed to save fiction. Mary Shelley's monster is a mythic "simple". A primitive culture can have an his own life, bUI lost all status and faded into al creature because she did not invent him. cxirerncly complex structure, in which the relative obscurity. Several others accused He is a revived corpse and is a myth in spirit world is fitted together so tightly with with him were put to death. several cultures, going under various names, the real world they are impossible to Religion, even to such a clever race as the one of these being "rombic". Certain peop separate. These cultural mosaics often sur Ancient lonians, was taken very seriously. les believed in vampires long before Bram vive civilization. Certainly the Islamic faith Qf course, you might set OUL to write a Stoker's Dracula found himself on the pri is so tight.ly interloclced with a Moslem's novel abou1 an alien lifeforrn which has no nted page. Robert Holdstock:'s Mytbago everyday life there are few practical tasks religion, but if you do be sure to make it a Wood uses many established myths as foun from managing a busineu to fetching water dull rocklike being with no imagination, no dation sumes. lhe most ceniral of which. is from a well thal do not involve religion. vision and no sense of purpose. the wodwo, the man of the woods and from Ouistianiiy too, though we do not ofttti the woods. recognise it, is strongly connected with At the heart of any good Fanwy is an British work and play days. One docsn 't have to read very much of my established myth, taken and reshaped or What of those civiliutions which fim fiction to realise that I am a religious man. used as • basis for expansion into a fabulous came out of primitive societies? What is it That is, I believe in a supernatural being, talethathasanunderlying ringoftruthtoit, that captivates us mo.Jt about, say, the superior in spiritual enlightenment to myself. because the supernatural oore of the story Ancient Egyptians? Their inventions and Because I was raised a Christian I am today was at some time believed to be rca.1 by the discoveries in engineering? These wae a Christian. The cultw-e of my home country members of some culture or anotha. The astounding enough. Their medical achieve was founded on strange pagan religions original cornerstones of my Hunter's Moon mmUi? These were amazing. I doubt either about which. I know little, but which have canid myths will be revealed later in this ofthesc,orotheroftheseaspecuoftheir been smothered and absorbed by Chris article, though I run a dangerous risk in society are as intriguing to the majority of us tianiiy. This Christianiiy (strongly connected allowing these revelations. Explaining the as their religious beliefs. The engineering with both Judaism and Islam) pcnneatcs creation of a mythology is a bit like ex behind the pyramids, the mclhod of pre Brilish lives of believtt and atheist alike. plaining the meaning or a joke: exposition serving the corpses are ofintttest to catain whether they want it to or not, from holidays reduces any mystique to the banal. When people, but most of us are more fascinated to 00W1 appearances, from art to craft. from being given a description of Oberon's castle, by Horus and Isis and Bubastis and all the birth to death. It enriches our culture with one would not expect to be told how the other gods and goddesses, along with the magnificent architecture, paintings and poet monar was mi.xod and applied, nor how and world they inhabit. What about the Ancient ry. Thac are Christian symbols everywhere, where the granite was mined to provide the Greeks? Was religion something they held decorating town and country. stones. onto, simply as a mark of respect towards the I do not altogether believe in the trappings beliefs of their primitive tribal ancestors? of Christianity: thae arc many aspects of the Did they merely pay lip service to those established church and its bible thal I con I believe that any fiction featuring a society beliefs? Homer wrote his works sometime sider coniradictory and foolish, but I need
VECTOR 154 e 13 A STONE FR OM OBERON'S CASTLE some sort of a tempora] path 10 the supreme mps into which they were driven. However the foxes in Hunter's Moon, but have been being I think is either within or withoul us. the Kinghound. Skellion Broadjaw, insisted added to and embellished by the wolves or and so I use that which has been provided on single oombal with a she-wolf, to confirm Midnight's Sun, the next novel in the same for me by my ancestors. I have no arguments the dogs victory. His 11TOgance and pride vein. As I said at the beginning of this for those who do not believe, which is why I were responsible for the eventual defea.1. of anicle, they arc not tOlally original. They do not evangelise. In !his I am probably the dog nation, a loose confederation of have some basis in est.ablished myths. The more agnostic than Christian. You cannot argwnentativc uibes in the first place. Firstdark. is loosely taken from the Aust rationalise a belief in a supreme being: you Skellion Broadjaw was ripped from tail lo ralian Aboriginal DreamtitM. The Battle of have to accept it, emotionally, and dispense throat by Shcsta-thc-she and the dogs were Steep Slope is a shadow or the Battle of with logic. Once you start saying "show subsequently routed by a lesser nwnber of Marathon, not a true myth, but with some me .. or "where's the proof" religion bec wolves, who took the Kinghound's heart and legendary aspeclS to iL A-0 and offspring omes something else, faith becomes buried it at the roolS of a tree. To this day the was suggested by the Greek myth of Cronos. unnecessary. My story "White Noise" in dogs still hold the name of Ske\lion Groff is a kind of god, an expedient belief. David Garnett's first Zenith anthology had Broadjaw in contempt and since they have The confederation of the Dog Tribes was exactly this theme. I was not sw-prised and no knowledge of the exact burial place of his based (not a myth of course) on the deser1 was quite happy to learn that the Turin heart they piss at the base of all trees, just in Arabs. And so on. Shroud was a fake. The five senses do not case ii happens to be the right spot. The contemporary religion of the foxes, lead to the supernatural, the emotions do. It was not long after this battle that the involving omniscient fox-spirits who are th e The body of religion is ninety-percent dogs, their haLC for the wolves bubbling "angels" of these creatures, guiding the mystery. I love that mystery. It holds my life over, had a secret meeting with the giant Jiving to dead loved ones, and the dead souls together. One of my all-time favomite tales Groff, a being fashioned entirely from the 10 their rest. was suggested by a Japanese is "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and belief of men. Groff had already reached myth that witches can change themselves if you took away the mystery of religion into foxes in order to escape theiI pursuers. from that story you would be left with grey The way to recognise a Japanese fox-spirit is .... 10 klok above its head for a small white There arc those who would I\Ol wish lO The five senses flame. In order 10 change lhe fox back into promote rclig,On in their fiction bccausc they its hwnan form. a witch-hunter must bum a say it is responsible for much of the violence do not lead to piece of wood exactly lhe same age of lhe and war on the planet. This is of course witt:h. (Presumably you have to know your complete nonsense. Idealists, extremists, the supernatural, wiu:hes, to guess the right nwnber or years!) megalomaniacs, politicians, fanatics, cu:: In !his case, I mCiely took the image of the thcx arc they who promote violence and the emotions do. fox-spirit, discarded the wiu:h part, and used destruction. They may use religion as an it for my own purposes. excuse, but it is people who cause wars. The body of religion is l have laid myself on the line here, We need beliefs of some kind. Homo because in turning over the carpet and Sapicrui arc not the most ancient or creatures ninety-percent showing the weave, l have probably robbed on the earth, but they have been around for any furure readers of Hunter's Moon of a quite a time now. Recently the race has mystery. / love little of the mystery behind the myths. come lO depend more on (equally unreliable) However, I believe that what I do is take one science and technology than on mysticism that mystery. or two sl0nes from old castles - from many and magic, but still those beliefs persist, different cultures - and use them as the even dominate certain sections of the globe. It holds my life keystones to new keeps. llus is not a Surely we would have evolved out of such a reworking of myth (for an example of that state by now, ifit were not necessary to us? together. you need to read an old English narrative poem called "SiI Orfeo" which is a reworking of the Orpheus myth. Hades Hunter's Moon has at its heart a set of down into the moilen core of the earth and having been changed directly into Fairyland) creation myths which the prOlagonists, the taken a handful of fire. throwing it up into this is prcxlucing new t.alcs from ancient foxes, believe or disbelieve. (They have their the sky lO make the sun. {It wu said that he beliefs. There is much that was "invented", atheists, their agnostics, too!) ln the begin threw the molten stone so hard its soul such as Groff throwing the ball or lava in10 ning there was lhe Fir:stdark.. when A-0 a became detached from its body and this is the sky 10 form the sun, though l 'm sure supema1ural hermaphroditic giant fox wal now lcnown as the moon). Canids had keen someone will write and tell me this is "a ked the earth, swallowing rocks and spewing noses to guide them and form olfactory belief amongst the Aka tribes or nonhcm the molten lava to make mountains and picrures of the landscape, but men relied on Borneo" or something similar. I do not trust val leys. The roekswerestilllivingcreatures vision. They needed light IO hunt by and my subconscious to be entirely original. at that time, moving sluggishly over the Groff, their agent, had provided this for Maybe I've seen something somewhere, worlds steaming crust. (It was when Man some obscure fragment of mythical verse came, out of the sea-of-chaos, that rocks and "'=·The dogs rumed 1raitor and 1gre.cd with scratched on a shard of pottery, which was stones were frightened into immobility.) Groffl/J leld men from the sea-of-ch10s and flicked out from behind my brain like the A-0 gave birth to the lesser foxes, who into the real world. There men and dogs playing card in the Louis McNiece poem. • spread and came into contact with wolves would be brothers, helping u.ch other to and dogs. Foxes remained solitary, while eradicate the wolves and foxes. dogs and wolves formed packs, and were Men came, bul enslaved the dogs and once therefore not drawn into the conflict between they had no more use for him, gave Groff a thetwolargcrcanids. palace of ice (which cost them nothing) in There were territorial wars fought between the snowy regions of the earth. In time they Garry Xilworth is tM author of Tht the dogs and wolves, the most famous of were able to forget their Conner agent and Nig ht of Kadar, A.bandonati and, of these being the Battle of Steep Slope, where being made of nothing but belief he turned to course, Hunttr':s Moon, among ot~r the dogs descended upon a superior army of mist which was blown away on the wind. Mvels. He is, howevtr,probablymost wolves. The momentum of the hounds, Then Men, with their slaves the dogs, apprecia.tedfor his :short fiction . mistakenly set running down a steep slope hunted down wolves 1nd foxes ruthlessly, by the yowl of a dog which trod on a thorn, driving the fonner up into the ice country, carried them like a wedge into the wolves, and the latter underground. many of whom drowned or sank in the swa- These, basically arc the initial myths of
14 e VECTOR 154 difficulties expcricnccd by an alien shapc changcr in a hwnan female's body whm 11- !Cmpting to rdicvc bend£, and you hive a recipe for fUSl-orda merual constipalion. Book Reviews Out ol Pbau. the lint boot: in lhis trilogy. showed some promise. but unfortunately Robot Adept fails to realise iL 1hc parallel Edited by Paul Kincaid worlds plot is now complicilled by allowing the two prougonisis' girlfriends to switch back and forth. u well as the herou them- 5e:lvcs. This allows Anlhony to describe The Archivist to whose paniculu .. bcJt" ii was. The mys scenes 1wice (good for !he word count if no1 Gill Alderman lCI)' appears resolved: at lust Brian Aldiss for the re.tu), and to discuss sc.r. a loL {No. U11wui, J989,380pp. £/2.9.5 himself selected these 26 stories, ranging in I didn'I quite Ke the connection either. Why time from "Old Hundredth" (wri11en for lhe do middle-aged SF writers drone on so rc The bcsl wo rks a.re no1 about one thing. splendid 100th edition of New Worlds in morsclcs.sly about se;i;? Look st Asimov.) They may tf)' to tell one story, but, either 1960) through to '"Bill Carter Takes Over" The last third of the book is ruthlcs.sly shov through chance or cunning, other things find (1989). He aJso providcJ an introduction, ed to a close, u !he characters decide to res the ir way in. I 1111 not sure that after only explaining the impossibility of drawing a olv e the plot conflicl with a game. I expect one lf\d a ha.If readings I can do justice LO neat division between SF and Fantasy. Ind they'd got as bored as I had by then. The Archivist. It is a book of huge variety: eed, a good proportion of the stories would, Moving swiftly on, we come to Total set in a dislllnt future. in a po51-indusuial by my definition, be scicncc fiction (like Recall, a novel based on a short story by society, on a pland which has given up "Old Hundredth" itself). And Fanwy. for Philip Diclc and soon to be a film starring space uavcl, in a new feudalism. uotic and Brian Aklis.s. is a far more individuaJ and Schwarzenegger. Dick's typically clever and drug-laden. thll is also a world whic::h is intense thing lhlll we find labelled as Fant tmdcrswed idea was that, instead of actually matriarchal and brutal. asy by the lhclf-rull down in WH Smilh's. going for a holiday. you could simply have In this v.·orld. lMugh. Gill Aklerman "I ay in my flCl.ion to keep thc nutty dcmcnt memories of the holiday implllltcd. Anthony follows lhe events of sucet arab Cal, u he is wilhin bounds. Dngons. vamplfU. elves, has grotesquely inflated lhis short s1ory into W:en up by Magon Nonpareil. the archivist singing swonh, etc.. do not c:nacr httc. For a novd by adding 5e:venl chapters of poin1- of the title. and the struggle of Nonpareil IO all my aspirations iowuds madnc,,a, an old lcu chuc aQion i la Star Wars. in which n:-inrrodocc a rcligKlrl whk:h recogniJes male ratiorulis1 taint remains" (p.3). The Kttings only !he heft! has a loaded gun. Well. it supplicvits, and consequently undermines and themes nnge incredibly widely - from a should sui1 Amie. Dick's ending has also the control of the u.is1ing gynuchy. gho51 by the Norfolk BroD Of I liL criL been undcnnincd by a standard save-ihe In some ways Cal has ii easy - he has academic getting hiJ supemanaal come world finish. where Mars is given an mamged LO ICK:h himself to speak and read uppance at Barmuplc. through the BaJkans, atmosphere in a mauer of minutes, jwt in most of the uotic languages of the Guna's to India, Mala::ia, and Hclliamia, and from time to save hero ITld heroine &om suf lhrcc con1inenu.. he is abo a non-pcuon. for the indefinable pui to "the days beyond the focation. Great visuals. dreadful science. To he has escaped lhe 00mpulsory cu1c mark fu1ure" (p.263). (You'd find the full list of be serM>us. this son or raking-over or old ing thlLI the gynarchy impose. He is able to stories in Matrix 84, p.12) There's an equal ideas is going to kill lhe field. Shared• move bctwcx: n the rt.d light dislric1 of the rlllge or tones and moods, from the comic of universe. AN O\hcr presents. set in lhe dty iu,d lhc courtyards of high society, ye1 "Bill Carter Takes Over" or "The Ascent or world of... for Heaven's sake. go out and he is uoubled and cannot come to terms with Humbelstein" to the horrific rairy-taJe:s of buy something original instead or lhis stuff. the elev•1ion which helps him esc•pe a death "You Never Asked My Name" or "Lies!" SF is meant to be the literature or ide u; th11 sentence for murder. And in rum he is lcd lO (the l1t1cr like Cinderella rewritten by Paul dOC.'Jn't mean ideas r«:ycled more often than invc,uigue the creation of history even while ine RCage). But certain perennial Aldissian Engli sh tap water. because the result. in both hcparlicipates inthemakingofiL themes crop up in different guise1 through cascs,ismuck. In the later parts or the book. evcnlS Kem out the thiJiy years covered by this collect Gareth Davies to fly put, and CaJ becomes more or a ion: mtably obsessive love. and the romantic cypha. but no interest is Jost, there arc so con1crnpluion of put gkmcs. many strands IO follow. In mmy ways this is a greater remiJdcr of The State of the Art This is a book that is bound to be discuss AldiM' tremendous talents than Best SF lainM. Banks ed because ii is one of the ITIOSl elabome lhat Stories. if these two volumes arc ..ything to Ziuing, 1989, 116.00 I know in its treaimen1 or feminism and go by. even the third one which he claims to [crninist worlds.. It is a far more imaginative be on its way - Best Nondesulpt Stories - A Dozen Tough Jobs interplay or the fabulous lhan Joanna Rus.s ought to end up on all our she.Ives! Howard Waldrop or Sutttte Elgin have achieved. However, Edward J ames Ziuing, 1989, J/6.JXJ mullifauted u it is. lhae will be some who argue that this is not a feminist work but, Them Bones perhaps simply one which uploilS it, or per Robot Adept Howard Waldrop haps one which uses ii as an idea. like John Piers Anthony legend, 1989. LJ2.95 Irving's The Workf According To G arp, NFL, 1989, 286pp, LI J.95 ltb, .I6.95 pb or pcrhlp1 uses it u ju.st another deooration Them Bones, Howard Waldrop's ftnt MIio or a weU -wrough1 and jewelled fiction. Total Recall novd, i1 one of the stranger enlries in the Jewelledthisccrtainlyis. Piers Anthony aJtemar.e history/lime travel sub-genre with UHurst Morruw, 1989, U6pp, J/6.95 Madison Leake Yazoo being 5e:nl back in time from the SI.an or the 2151 century af1er Do you like cake? Enough lO read a nuclei! holocaust IO the early 20th ccn1ury. A Romance of the Equator five-page description of a brownie-baking The inhabitants or the 21st centuty reckon Brian WAldiu contest? Then Robol Adept is for you. The they can change history without any of the Gollan.ci, /989, 345pp, £13 95 rest ofus will probably find it u indigestible strange paradoxes that arc always predicted u the fictionaJ results. Add in two chap1crs in such scenarios, but Yazoo ends up much My o nly real complaint .tiou1 Aldiu's Best mainly devoted to 1troke-by-1uoke desc further back in time in I Miss issippi delta SF Stories (1988), which I reviewed in Vec riptions of several table-tCMis matches, where a suangc band of Amer-Indians battle tor 147, wu that the volume gave no clue u together wilh a detailed discussion of the with Azlecs. whilst woolly mammolh roam
VECTOR 154 e 15 REV IEWS around and Anbr mue the trek acr°" the insulmen1 with linle enthusiasm, and found you're.putting the bread in the IOQlef. Atl111lic Dee.an for rude purposeJ.. ii reflecu.d many of its pe:!eccs,or's The c:cnual charlClers uc Libby, who Yamo is the ,dymoe rider for a W"ger shortcomings, amon3 which I m1111 menlion makes a borderline living fn,m her ranch; group and this band IIC wiped OUl by anoth the use of three virtually identically IOW'lding Sam Coldpony. her Ute Indian hand; Bo, a er band of Indians 1gain after inadvertently words - yea.say, naysay and heysay - where cousin or Li bby's ex husband dying or Aids. giving them ll1l the 'flu. which, or course, it is obvious thst any group under suess will whom she takes to live and die on her ranch; wipes a hell of a lot of them out. need le be able IO identify each term and Sam's esuangod daughter Paisley who I'm delibcn.tcly leaving the storyline here immedi11ely IJld wilhout any confusion. stilllivesontheUterescrvation.Alls.eems as skeichy as possible bea.lUC the joy of This time. Benford even manages LO insert nonnal and everyday \Dltil we le&m that WaldropisdiscoveringalltheliUlciouc:hes. - into the speech or a race many ,ens or !here uc unicorns on Libby's Tlllch. and that Waldrop has I mu,,cllou.sly bent ICruC of thousands or yurs in our furure - a pun on the unicorns uc sK:lt. From then on the humour, and his res.each is fau)tlcu (how "real pain" and "champagne": anyone who myswies abound. There is a link IO a paral can one warp something properly withou1 iJn&&ines this could still be meaningful is lel world on Libby's ranch through which knowing all the .ctu.aliLies?). really confused aboul langu.,,ge. the uniooms come and throogh which A Doun Tough Jobs. unfornmately, does The blurb informs us tha1 "Benford's Libby's old IV reoeives signals rrom the not live up IO the stmdards of Them Bones. canvu in lhese novels is immeNe'0 and this other wc.-ld. There •e ghosis and the Str1J1gc It's a rc•tclling of the Gre<:o-Roman legend is uue: he is., after all, liking us 10 the Hub or portent or a two headed calf, the sense or of The Twelve Labours of Hercules set in the Galaxy, where suns are gathered like crisis grows convincingly through the novel, Mississippi in 1926, and read!: very much lightbulbs at Blackpool. Unfortuna1tly, his so thal these events are linked - somehow - like something that Waldrop has bctfl unable canvas bears a picture !hat is no more than as perhaps there is some link be1wcen the to complete properly but wants to see in the scratchings of a tiny mind. depicting the sickness of the unicorns and the Aids which print anyway. It's perfect small preH curio activities of a tiny group or hum1111 who i1lcillingBo. material and coruainJ m:imy of the 1ypical have no ;du how the spaceship they live in h wu ll this poin1 that Bishop lea me Waldrop touches:, b.11 they doo't come natur works. and who make a habit or ignoring the down. The links may be dear IO him. but I ally to lhls aory and appear ham-flS!Cd. freely offered knowicdgeoflhe "aspects .. of found the las1 quarter or lhe boot confusing, Waldrop is 11 worlr. on a new novel at the their mere knowledgeable and intelligent and unfortun&Jely I wu not sufficiently grip momeni.. but nc:-=(U 10 be CATeful k$a his rcnbears which have been integral.ed into ped by the C"Cl\tl and characlCn LO nud IO prolific shon SIOfy output makes him viable theirbrains. .blow more about the Sundan::e and go lo the only lo small pruses: much u Kcilh Roberts In other words, we're back to that weak. effort to look it up. 1ne book docs resolve in the UK and Lafferty in the US have corny cop.-0ut or SF wrilin3 where, by many of the problems it poses but nol in already become. A Doun Tough Jobs malting everyone stupid, the author no ways I found convincing or even, I'm sad to should be read by anyone who likes Wal longer needs 10 think up anything intelligent say, particularlyinteresling. drop and lus ability to re-worlt established or clever for lhemto fightagainsL It makes There is a 101 there, the man can write, the material in very peculiar ways, but will no difference whether the threll is an armed characters are good - but they don't involve never count as anything more lhan a 1ke1Chy killer spaceship shadowing them, falling into me, I don't care enough about !hem or their curio in his portfolio. a river because fasi-moving water is \Dl situation LO pit the book above average, a Jain Banks has beccme one or Britain's known to lhem, or having to close off aeveral decision I made with regret and some puz most respected wri1cn both inside and out or decb of the ship bccmse. nobody can mend '1
16 • VECTOR 154 , DISCOVER THE NEW WORLDS
David Eddings THE DIAMOND THRONE: Book One of The Elenium At the dawning of time, arrives Bhellium, the mysterious flower gem - and David Eddings's most ambitious fantasyscape yet. 'Heartily recommended ... promises to be as good as or even better than The Belgoriod.'G.M. Febn.iory Trode Paperback Martin Hocke THE ANCIENT SOLITARY REIGN A journey deep into a world of compulsive adventure, survival and wonder, as an ancient community of Barn Owls faces a dev.astating encroachment. januory Trode P~rbad< Robert Holdstock LAVONDYSS MYTHAGO WOOD In an ancient English woodland, the most haunting myths and magic of our collective unconscious have come unforgettably alive. 'A new expression of the British genius for true fantasy. ',..u,.,.. i;;.t.iu,iE11 ) Phyllis Eisenstein SORCERER'S SON A mighty saga of heroism and treachery from a major international fantasy writer. 'An original fantasy . . . attractive, admirable and rare. 'STEPHEN JI. DONALDSON February Hardbock/Trade Pa~rbadc David Zindell NEVERNESS David Zindell's spectacular world-creation has won stunning praise for its originality and imaginative vision. ' It is my occasional luck to open a book and know, within a few lines, that I've hit upon something rare and precious. Nevemeu is such a novel . certainly a masterwork.'vECTOJI February Paperback REVIEWS 11e large chunks of undenea action th.u CG1 Eykar Bek is thc exception. His search inv Wom•n'' by Christopher Evans has •n only won: bcner on the screen. olves Rover C•pain Kclmz and Eykar's iruroductionaplaininglh• litis ''thefourth The plot is simple. A US nuclear sub is frimd and boyhood lova-, the D•rkOrcamcr. of five ucrics about •n •nisL.. (•nd) SW1k by a UFO returning lO iu: undenu base Servan D L• yo. Also on the journey. as a invisiblespiritaeaturcsc:allcd c:himcr•s," - like Wyndham's Bathies, lhcK aliens have _.,,ant.isthc"fcm" Alldefa. ,.When the Music Siopped", by G Kilworth evolved on a ga,: g_i.uu or whaieve:r and •c The slory is tokt by e.::h or the prott,g• and C Lehmann is • collaboralivc effort •b only happy in the abyssal a-cnches of the onists in tum. Sometimes Alkten. is barely out jazz and nosiaJgia. "Wintatimc Beauty .. oceans. Unlike the aforementioned, they arc mentioned by the men yet she is c:onstaruly by Christin• L•u is about untCIChablc friendly, or at least largely indifferent., to prescn.L Women arc property, no1 people, fit children. "Pusion pily" by Keith Brooke is mankind, until we show signs of blowing up only for breeding and slavery - they •re a.nother t•lc I didn't understand. "Losing thciradoplcdplancL even considered a.s • source of food. Control" by Chris Morgan and "Heart's Herein lies Card's first problem. His ram• The book ends with the unc11pccicd result Desire" by Lis• Tunic arc both slight but pant, red-blooded pauiotism - "He didn't orEyk•r's quest •nd with Alldcra's C$Capc. cuily undcmand1blc stories of the land in work for glory. He worked for America." he MotherUncs is set in the plains •nd is which something strange appears ou1 of nys of the leader of the Navy hit team sent Alkter1's swry. h shows 0£ two different so nowhere. other strange things happen, •nd IO rescue lhc sub- sits oddly with the film's CictiC5, the escaped "£ans .. , ~eating lhcir thc,ppearancco£thcthinginthefintplacc green lheme, of aliens bringing us IO our old lifestyle and rorcver dreaming or The isnotu.:pl•incd. senses before we wreck the pl.aneL Hok1J1n; •nd the tribes of Nwomen", whose The l•sl suxy is also the longest. ..A Tup W:cwisc his Colby, down-heme Sl)'k. Jives revolve around their hones. Yes folks. ok:v Too Fu.. by Bri•n Akiiss: m ca5Y •nd allhough ideal for his Alvin Makrr cycle, is this is the one where the women m•tc with enjoyable WC about an •ltem•tc workf. with h11d1y ideal for a hard-nosed, hiJ,h-tcch their hones! some nice IDuches. but buic:•lly I shaggy thriller. Thestoryc:onccmstheconflictbc:twccnthe dog story wriucn with tongue in check. Inevitably, the Navy team leader decides IWO sociclies and Alldcra •• personal growth ln oonclusion, I would judge the col• to blow up the aliau - who mu$1.. af1cr all. from "fem" to ·•wom•n•·. She must look J«tion well wonh reading for the sake 0£ the be godless Commies - and is foiled by the after herself and her child. thcresu!I of rape, jewels in it. Some or 1hc remainder is tricksy crew of an undersea oil prospecting vehicle and dc<:ide whethcr 10 return to help The swff by wri1crs determined to be obscure. prcss-gmged into going 1f1cr the sub. Hum Holdf•sl "fems". Perhaps rcadera will write to ask what the ani1y is taught a wc\1-descrved lesson. in the Both books Mid the interest and •re stuff was •II about. (Or perhaps not?) Some shape of a giant worldwide tidal wave which written in a lucid style. The charac1ers •re uc rather prissily English. In • few pl•ces I must h,vc been a whiu for the special effe complex and fully rounded. There •re m•ny detected Whit sccrn.s to be • bad cMicc of cts team but docs not work on paper. themes: the oonflicl between men •nd wom words. For instance, by• wriler who sh•ll be To analyse such • oovel too deeply, tied •s en. youth •nd t.ge, p1SSivc •nd active, •nd nameless; "the interruption was 1m•ssail• ii is IO I purdy visual medium, is to brcaJc I norm1d •nd settlcr. 1blc". ( ..unuu.illble .. ?1) It's all a milter 0£ butterfly on I wheel But Card sets himKlf The initial p-a-nise is n.thcr strong. the tutc, Isuwcsc. up for dw. in hil self._...ing Af1£1'WOfd in men are such irredeemable baswds. never. Jim England wluch he •ucmp15 to justify writing lhe thclcss, the plot is well worked out • nd eno book. rllhcr than pocketing lhe money and ugh loose ends • rc left for lhc du:rd book. running u som as he decently could. Although I pR:rcncd the second more ope.. The Bureau of Lost Souls Bw he is still working in Hollywood clich imistic book. both •re well worth reading. Christopher Fowler es - lhe widerse• vehkle c•plain is estran• Barbara Dav~ CUIIJUY, 1989, 244pp. £11.95, £5.95 pb gcd from his wire, its brainy but difficult designer, and lhey are only reunited after not This c:ollcction of short stories is cuily the one but both arc brought back &om the dead. Other Edens Ill best of the yc•r so far. 1bc dust-j•ckct might "But don't forget ... you still have to sec it Christopher Evans proclaim th• t Fowler has pitched camp some to believe it." says Cameron in his own and Robert Hold.stock (Eds) where between JG B•llard and Stephen King. postscript. Paradoxically, reading the book Unwin, 1989, 2J7pp, I4JO but on the evidence here I have no hcsil11ion makes me less tempted toscelhe film-or in swing th• l he hu staked his own claim II )cut until ii comes round on video. This is I oollection 0£ 16 British SF. Fantasy firmly in the lantoryo£ originality. MartinWalltr and Horror stories by wrilen both old and E•ch story is of 1h.igh quality, wriucn in • new, and with plots both old am new. very •ssurcd fashion • nd set in an apparently The ruu. '1'hc Grey Wethcn", hu Keith £•miliar urban landscape. But u the rcadcr Walk To The End Of The Roberts IT)'ing tooh•rd. uusual, to paint a becomes drawn into the dram•.• re•lity shifts World and Motherlines tit.her dull, dct•iled sunc. Amidst lengthy to one side and the sting in thc tail hits descriptions or the commonplace, he fits • home. Very few IClcgr•ph their intentions, Suzy McK.cc Chamu l•ie of psych;,mcuy - in its pscudoscicntific and consequently. you jU1l w•nt to keep on Womtn's Prus. 1989, 436pp, £6.95 sense.. There follow two sLOrics or undis reading. The title story is a cue in poinL These two books. published in the seventies., linguuhcd •nd whimsica1 F• nwy. The Wisely uvcd for the lut piece in thc book. it belong IO • lriJogy; 1pparently the final part fourth and firth, '1nc Way 10 His He11t" by 1clls or Daniel H•rpcr·s first days •t work is being worked on. This is their first publi ShuJ)' C.01dsrnith, and " Rairunak:cr Cometh" with thc Civil Service, deep in the heart of c1tion in I single volu.mc. by l•n McDonald, •re •lso Fantasy but office-block London. The writing is econo The setting for both books is • faminc literary ability sparlclcs in them both impre mical •nd telling. and 1lthough short stories riddcn, post-holoc1us1 workl, where while ssively - especially in the cue of the latter, rarely lend themselves to decent c:h11actcr men blame everything else for the Wasting. which starts off: "Seven dry YIClfS lie like iution, Fowler mMagcs ID m•kc the office In The Holf•st. the .. uruncn" - animaJs and seven while scars scrawled ICJ"OSS the staff seem plausible. Daniel soon Jcuns of non-whitu - h•vc been tot•lly wiped out, shoulders of the dying iown:· TilC sillth •nd the s• d demise or his prodeccssor Md qui •nd women - seen u the prime culprits •nd seventh - Simon tngs· fim published story ckly discovcn thal there's I whole lot more now ca11ed "fems" - barely survive •s sla and Gill Aldcnn•n 's "Counuy M•uen", to his job llwi 1imply sorting and deleting ves. ln the plains or grasslands, unkrown to succeed in baffling this reader u to wh• t peoples' @cs from his oomputcr terminal lhc men. women live very diUerent lives.. euctly they were about. The eighth. ·1nc Oa:asion•lly there - tchoC5 of olher 11o-ri Wilk To The End Of The Work! is set Droplet .. by SM Suter. is a welcome tcn. Robttt Aickman for one. and this lends in The HoklJw •nd is the story of one man's cu:mple or .. hard'' SF abou1 exotic physics the colJcction IIJl air or iniegrity which might q1.1CSt for his [• tho. C•lling themselves and • Stanford Linc•r Collidcz-...Cry" by otherwise have been lacking. In '1nc An Seniors and }union rather th•n F•lhcrs and Louise Cooper is her second published short Nouveau Fireplace", • young coupk move Sons. men·, blood-tics arc usually unknown. slOry. and emotive F•nwy. "The Wailing into I Victorian Tcrr•cc • nd SCI IO with the 18 e VECTOR 154 SPRING PAPERBACKS FROM GOLLANCZ HOTHOUSE TO THE LAND OF BRIAN ALDISS THE LIVING The Hugo Award-winning novel ROBERT SILVERBERG from one of the most consistent :_v.;. i --;\ A story of the Afterworld by one British wrrrers in SF today. ~·~r of science fiction's most 'Exciting and eerie ... That W;i,_. ,, distinguished veterans, steaming infernal forest and its ~ -•f..-: , featuring Gilgamesh, the mighty fantastic denizens are a...! .....:.., Sumerian warrior, and his powerfully visualised. This is a search for a real existence. '.An Cwork of genuine creative " enthralling quest'- The Times • imagination' - Kingsley Amis, • LEAD TITLE • First UK paperback pubbcallon The Observer March £3.99 320pp 0575044969 VGSFClass1c March 0 .50 224pp 0575047356 BILL, THE GALACTIC CLONE HERO RICHARD COWPER ' HARRY HARRISON An outstanding piece of SF 'Simply THE funniest science satire, which clearly establishes fiction book ever written' - Terry Mr Cowper as one of the most Pratchett accomplished writers in the March £2.99 160pp 0575047011 genre ... this brilliant book is l destined to become a science fiction classic' - Sunday Times I • I March £3.50 192pp 0575046945 HORROR " _ . il(!J RED PLANET ----- ROBERT HEINLEIN THE FUNGUS One of Heinlein's most enduring HARRY ADAM KNIGHT SF adventures. 'Memorable 'A spectacularly gruesome nasty descriptions of journeys down written with inventiveness, grisly the greatfrozen Martian canals, wit and considerably more through thousands of miles of intelligence than almost any of ~ haunted landscapes where the its competitors' - Ramsey very flora creak with dryness'- Campbell • Daily Telegraph Golla11czHorro• March £3.50 Z24pp March £2.99 176pp 0575046473 I• 057504al\8 V G GOLLANCZ REVIEW S rdurbiJ.mcnt; thc. modem-day process or Ian Flc:ming and Frederick Forsyth. This is a greued &om the okt. dart muae,; inio the gmtrificalion suddenly becomes a lot fflOft boot that lllCS OONempOrary acienlific lkvd· light pixes of our mordem wwld. menacing u l},ey begin to hear scnu:hing opn~ jlut fu Acmina: used 50'1 rocketry Jon Wallace sounck rrom behind the bricked up in Moonn.ker - u a badr:poWld. Then ii fue-pl.ce. adds lhe other .lcic:nlif1C trimmings - refer RefflO"ation rears its head in '"The Muter cnc:es io thc Gaia hypothelis, the srcenhouse Songs of a Dead Dreamer Builder" where a young New York girl buys effect. gene mapping - for 11CfUimilimdc.. Thomas Llgoni 1 down-at-heel sp,:tment.. Sh£ ai:x:ep5 lhe Pulling all this together, Gribbin has wri Robinson, 1989, 275pp, l5_9') privations brought llbout by the .if or decay ue:n a good entertainment. but I couldn'1 like in the buikiing simply because the view itserioU5ly. This book appeared in a limited edi1ion .auslhcrivcrissobreath-taking. A(ricnd LI Hurst published by Silver Scarab Prcs.s in 1986. rccommmds a Muier Builder 10 design and All the slOries have been revised, several rc!tlfbish the apartmenl, bu1 allhough he om.ill£d and some new ones added IO !his ~ an u..pcn job, he begins to ucn a Act of Love edition. Llgotti hu been popular, panieular suange sexual hold over her. Th.iJ is a very Joe R unsdaJe ly in small press magazines, for some years. well constructed story and really shows writ KwteU, /989, JO/pp, 110.95 though more in America than in Britain. ing skills and imagination coming iogcther at This edition should t:.ing him to • wider thcirbcsl. Dark Visions audicnce,dcscrvedly10. I have rarely found a volwnc as satisfying Stephen King, Dan Simmora These 20 stories have appeared in s\lghtly u this; I had my doubts after the comparison & George RR Martin different form in publicatiora such u Fant with Billiard and King, but this collection is Golla!ICl, 1989, 264pp ,l l 1.95 asy Tales, Dark Horizons, Prim, [1111, undoubledly worth your mos1 urgent anen- Eldrilcb Tales, Ctbulu and Dagon, among Joe Lmsdale has wriuen s lot or stuff c:rou olhers. They ll'C sectioned off inio "Drums Alan Dorty ing a k>1ofgenres, bul this is thc first UK for Slccpwdkcn". "'Dreams for Iruomn publiea.tion of his finl novel. Acl of Love is iac:s". and .. Dreams for the De.I.". A iwo a deleclivestory, set in Houston.. telling thc page inlroduc:lion by Ramsey Campbell h)'I Father To The Man story of how a sadislic murde:ra wu u-ackni of Ligoui: '"He belongs to the D'I06t honour John Gribbin down by a police delCClive oblcs.ted with the abk u-.t.ition in the fiekl, dw of 1Ubdccy GollDnct. /989, 22/pp, £1295 c:rimcs.. It is a 11ery mcdioac delcd.i11e saory. andawe:some:nessrathcl'thanthcrelenllculy itise.asyioguess thcidenli1yoflhetilla grapruc:· He has • knack or wggesting ICJ This is I lhriiler wriuen using SF u-appinp - hc's the only Suspr,cl who doan'1 1e1 killed nm, most con11incingly in "The Frolic". 1 the. whok story leads up to thc. revelation of and yet I could forgive that in a 1'101/el. What talcthal llkuplaoeinthehouseofa prison what Dr Richad Lcc. has been doing for nine. I couldn't stomach {literally) wu the caural psychiau-isl: you may guc.s.s at the ending. year1 with a srnngc child growing up in his premise lha1 we .-e all necrophiliacs if we but even u ii h.its you. you are reeling al the secret labon1ory. The dcnooemen1 comes u woukl only admit ii. The book dwells lovi sheer suspense and audacity or the writin&, something or a shock - in other words. u a ngly on the Cll1ling up of bodtel and u:ults For Ligotti is a stylisl an 20 • VECTOR i54 REVI EW S In thiskindofstoryitisimportantlhatwc gravity to nullify this. Apart from the fact This is a well paced, highly intelligent care or hate lhe characters enough to feel. 11 that if we had aruigravity we wouldn't need thriller with lots of good ideas. While lhe Ille least. sad or relieved at their demise, and such super-subways, the whole point of the main questions are finally resolved in the lhat we are reduced to nail-biting at lhe ten idea is that anything falling through such a nanative, McDeviu leaves it up IO the reader sion of the various situation, but wc'renoL It tunnel, between any two points on the surfa to tie up some of the subsidiary loose ends. is immediately clear that the ou1-and-out ce of the Earth, would take the s= time on The tension never flags, and the climax Jives rotter, Joboam, along with C.vp, Kerlew's its journey. in/ru fall under the influence of up to expectations. Allhough not earth shaman instnx:tor, are behind all the lribe's the Earth's gravity. Like an astxonaut orbiti shatteringly great litcrarure, this is still good misfortunes, and will get their come-uppance. ng the Earth al high speed. both the train and entenainmenL Carp's death is unusual but Lindholm's passengers would effectively be in zero-G, Valerie Housden failure to provide the story wilh a sharp and regardless of the speeds they reached. fully-realisedfocusmakesitanti-climactic. The illustrations are an ideal complement The use of magic, refreshingly subtle, to this texL They are crap. too. About what Alligator Alley ambiguous and sparingly deployed, could be you would expect from an artis1 who spells Mink Mole&. Dr Adder explained away as superstition if it were not his name "Sidd". Of course, aeslhetic app Morrigan, 1989, 300pp, £/3.95 zrade for Carp's dying words, but chis treatment is reciation is highly subjective, and some edilion, £45.00 sp«i.al edilion to Lindholm's crediL Kerlew's two mystical people (Sidd's mum, perhaps) may like the experiences, with a wolf-pack, and with the pictures. But you can get an idea of how Take a trip down Alligatoc Alley and you spirit of dead shaman. are the most int IICCW"ate and relevan1 lhey arc from the fact enter a world which is not quite our own, a riguing sections of the novel. thal a section on colonisation of Mars is landscape Iha! is dark and bleak, filled with Lindholm has a long way to go to wrile a illustrated by a picture of Jupiter. Don't violence and treachery and bloody murder. meritoriow book, but she shows more prom waste time or money on either the pictures or Inspired by the wors1 acid-nightmare of lhe ise than most. the words. book's psychopathic narrator, each lunatic Terry Broome John Gribbin incident runs into the nex1 with rarely a pause for breath, encountering on the way trails of dying geriatrics, revenge-<:razed History of the Future A Talent for War Black Assassins, endless reptile-infested Peter Lorie & Sicki Murray-Clark JackMcDevin swamps of madness. And every now and Pyramid, 1989, 224pp, £/0.95 Kinnell, 1989, 3/0pp, £/ 1 .95 then you encounter an illustration by Ferrel, depicting scenes of the trauma and chaos in This is the bigges1 load or metaphorical The prologue, a stilted conversation between which our anti-hero constantly finds himself. dingo-droppings to be dwnped on my desk an overambitious bishop and his old friend. The narrator is, of course, Mink Mole in a very long time. The idea is greal - to an able but unambitious abbol, in the cem· himself; one of the " High Grade" genetic provide an overview or the nex1 millennium. etery of an out of the way religious com ally engineered "manimals" fathered by lhe But the execution i5 abysmal - unimaginat munity. providc5 a most unpromising swt lo JXlSSibly-long-dead Dr Incubus. Part man, ive, poorly illustrated, and stuffed with this novel. Be patient, it gets better almost pan mink, part mole ... and who's to say inaccurate science erroneously extrapolated. immediately. which part is the most violcnl, the most You can get a reel for the level of S<:ien Amateur archaeologist Gabriel Benedict is needlessly destructive, the most feral? But tific (in)competence from the fact tha1 the one of 2,600 passengers on an interstellar that's only part of the story. because he is all author gives the name of "the single parti ship that fails to emerge from hyperspace. these things and more; as he moves through cle" needed "to tie together all the theories His heir, Alex, is told that his uncle WIS on the novel, as the plot thickens and becomes and experimental work" of modem physics the brinlc of his greatest discovery: a relic more and more bewildering (as you lhink as "the magnetic monopoly". The correct thal will rewrite the history of the war fought you're getting the hang of it, then something name is the magnetic monopole; and in any against the aliens 200 years earlier, and re el.se happens), he begins to question his own case it is Ml the single particle needed to appraise the standing of that war's greatest motives, whether or not he reacts through make unified physics work. hero. However Gabriel's house is ransacked wild instinct or perhaps through some son of Although much hippy-style lip service is and the files siolen before Alex can take pos insidious mind-control, lhe ubiqui1ous paid to the work of David Bohm, Lorie fails session. Being stubborn. he embarks: upon a ..hum-&-eye" . Perhaps ii is Dr Incubus. still to understand wha.t quantum mectwucs is all quest lhat lakes him IO all the shrines of thal alive even after all this time, playing pupPCt about He quotes Einstein's "God doesn't war to try and iden1ify the artifact that no eer with his favourite offspring? Or perhaps play dice" remark, without seeming IO real one, nol even the aliens, wants him IO find. the Operative, killing off the population of ise that the consensus today is that Einstein A reader familiar with the thriller formula Florida IO meet his own dire ends? Or was wrong. He tells us, on the subject of the may identify the object sooner than I did, as perhaps the mysterious Dr Adder, Incubus' Deity, that Stephen Hawking's book A Brief the most important clues are intxoduced early infamous rival? Or perhaps Mr Bathtub, who Hisiory of Time "seems to be more a search in lhc story and repealed at appropriate literally Jives in his own little world? forthemcaningofGodlhanascicntificpro intervals. I indulged my imagination and But maybe Mink Mole is just insane, posal", which is strange, since Hawking, an came up with wildly exotic guesses, but WIS maybe he's just a figment of his own imag avowed atheist. explicitly says thal his view not too surprised by the revelation in the ination, a character in his own novel? Or, of the Universe leaves no room for a creator. final chapter. worse still, maybe he's somebody else's fig And Lorie thinks that "sub-atomic particles The complex JXllitica.l situation of the menl, in somebody else's novel? can travel any disWlCC, through any sut:8- immediate pre-war period togelher with the Sometimes I WIS never quite sure, but I tance at the speed of light". Try telling that reactions of various factions to the oUlbreak perservered IO the end, where everything to aprown at the heart of the Sun. of hostilities are especially well done: dispar makes some kind of sense, eventually. It Lorie's worst sin is that he doesn't under ate colonies desperately clinging to their would be wrong to say !hat I actually "enj stand what he is talking about. and has not auionomy, lhe mass hysteria of a mob bay oyed" Affigator All ey. This is not light done his homework. SF fans may already be ing for alien blood, a government taking reading for one of those long q-ain journeys familiar with the idea of boring a tunnel in a advan11ge of another's weakness IO claim that makes for a pleasurable read. Nevenhe straight line from New York to Bombay (or disputed territory. Characters although func less I did like this book; it has a dark and between any other two JX)inll on the surlace tional are never merely puppets bu1 are well grim sense of humour, is populated by of the Earth), a subway system through wh drawn, complex flesh and blood. Contempo unsympathetic though well-drawn charac ich trains could ron direc1, with a journey rary journals or the war make both that time ters., and it drifts from one bizarre rorreality time of 52 minutes. Lorie worries that the and the people writing the accolDllS come to the next. rarely pausing long enough for colossa.l accelerations involved mighl squash alive. Al.so very effective were the "quotes" the reader to catch up. creating a sense of the passengers, and proJXlses a fonn of anti- at the beginning of each chapter. something much bigger than we might alre- VECTOR 154 e 21 RE V IEWS .tybeabktopm::eive.Inlru5,espcctl Susan Bishopric. Dfumei of Bondoid SUJ>'" changing duel with Daine. h may be would ~end it, and my bQI advice erspy q:ri,c5 ant closet Godzilla fan. significant lhat the aspects or lhis boolr. lha1 I would be to follow John Shirley's advice in Which makcl ii ob¥ious. cvm. for tho5e found diualisying wc:re cuc:lly the same u hisintroduclion; una:quaim.ed with Newman's net: mcord u the ones 1h11 didn'l work fOI" me in filmaitic,lhatlhisisprimaril:y a movie Neuromanttr; perhaps rbi'1try10!olk>wilall100 lcp::ally,IOO • it's something eua.Jy__ fan le& il c:any fllll· Buc:klc buff's book. Daine's city, • monochrome endemic to fust novels set in a comp.1tc f.-.tasy world in which it'• always two-thirty generawi environments. youndf int.o Mok'• aukin1, rmoking old in the morning and raining. is peopled by the NcvQ'lheless, truJ: is strongly rccomrncn• Buick, feel froc IO OO'lcr y«.or eya when he shadows of actors and lhcir roles, endlculy ded. It's a of hu a couple of tak a lhcairvcsa1high spceds, md wt.'11 101 fun. play ing out their own plots, cropping up u ingellOU.I p\01 twists, and bodes very well 1eewhcrey RIGHT-$N FOUNDATION TARGET THEREYIEW OFSCIENCEFICTION A masterful satire of ln 110 fif,ttn ~nn ofpublinlion, FOUNDATION bn es11blilbcd • contemix>rary society =~~~''°" u prob1bly ,M ~ tritlClll ,ournal of k,itnc,, f,ciianin,h• which blends the grip ping suspense of a thriller with a darkly •-Co,tt,nuo10 bo: ,., Mdawaylh ;ljllli~AY FOUNDATION II publllh ntouul,..~•~ """'•"'lL54(UK o...J J,..J.,-(1:t,.OIJ ,1,fau ..,,1 • .,1,;, _ _,..., (£/J.SO .,, -4 US 111.0IJ ,.,J- aail (USU/Dlla0t-ol}• f.lS,l•.JC...... W. ,.....,.._.,,_.,,rt!l.M L. RO N tfUBBARD (IJSUJ,-ujrn. T...... ,1t,_,,...... ,.'"1,..•.U II ,J,.,,,.,,9 """"'...,Nn.SF,_....,_ ..... _...... ,..,,,,,..,,,,...... ,°"'9-,..,.,.. .. ____ n.S.-.-ht..""""""'- .. £3.95 ~:~'fe!~~~re sold 78 Hol~ A__ Redhol. Surreo, AHl 2NL N,..,..,.E.1--r«,,ffh..-,~•-- o..,,,.-. IIMAZAJ. T.e (0737) 766760 c.op,.,gt,tO 1989 NEWEAAPutilicabanaute lld Allngt,is...... i. The'Mlrds · M- Esth ea T...... ,...d LAon Hubtwd lo• ,y 22 • VECTOR 154 R EV IEWS conjure up FlrC either a a saying aid or as a of the living are r.- more polCllt than the "Everything in the Garden" arc from an rcaJ fie,y weapon. They arc opposed by dead". Mouof~storics wacpublished in anlhok>gy and Argosy rcspcctivdy: "Mrs 1raditionllists, and there is war with a rival a slightly different form in the 1%05 and Cibbcr'• is new. The tone of the collection is state. 1970s; one is new. set by the title in lhat all of the slDries arc The politics lost me. lnslUd I found myself The book ii illustrated, and each story from the darka side of the fantuy spectrum, noting details: the Women Aschcn of Stron prcCaccd, by the allllw:>r. h is inlroduccd by bar '1'hc Snake Princu.s" which is a mlin ghold; lhe fact lhat in crisis people exclaim, Robert Hold.stock. strca.m piecc. 1101 .. Oh God!", but '"Oh Goddes.s!" M05t "Susan" is the story of a schoolgirl with Troe ID Robcru' work as I whole the or all, the carefully though! out natural his sirangc powers, and her cffoe1 on people - longu storiea arc the bcsl. the 5hortCf lhc tory of dragons: how lhey live, mate, and an aging ICaChet fearing a lon.cly rctitcmcni. wcakcsl. The writing is always of a high hatch.... and for a brief period afia hatching, a mad Jcilla, ha own mother. It echoes the sandard bul as stoTics "Everything in the breathe fire which tumS their cggshelb into wt11111waed question "Who arc you?". Garden·', "Susan.. and ''The Snake gold. ''The Scarlet Lady'°, nmlled by a garage Princcsi" don'1 quite click. "The Eastern Perhaps the moral of Dragon Prince is owner, is the story of a cu wilh a bad 1cmpcr Windows" is ast.a.ndard " Hell is like this ... " not so much that conscr,,ation even of un and a Wle for blood. It predates Stephen story you'll have ,cad before in F&SF and popular specie, is imponant; bu1 tha1 c.onscr King., Christine. "Winlefwood", whils1 being quite good in vation can onJy 5UCCe«l if there's money to '"The Eas1t:m Windows" shows us Hell as iis cvocllion of "psychic filth", docl have be made OUI of iL a pa-ty whcrc strangers are doomed forever nlherastockcnding. Dragon Prince is ddinitr.ly Fanwy; IO eat. drink and repeat banal convers&UOnS The highlighu uc the two novdeis. ''1hc Rawn has ae.atcd sufficient natural hillOfy - with the gr.:lual realization that something Scarlet Lady" 1dls of a cu that hu a history for ii even to CO\Dll u science fiction. Bui is wrong. of killing lhings and is a good maighl• Ragnarok is neither Fanwy nor science ··wi.nlcrwood'· illus1r1tcs the moral that forward Lale. "Mrs Cibbel•' has 111 thc smne fiction; it is an hisl0rical novel. what you do ID others can rebomd. This narrl!ivc sircngths and also evokes a Admittedly the hcroinc, Rhianneth, knows story 0£ one man's fear of I house. and ilS marvellous atmosphere of fifties London about potions, lethal and benevolent - but so contents is supposedly based on a rca1 redeemed by the pictwc/ghost of I rune. do pharmacists. She sees the fulllfc in 1 building. t«nth century woman. scrying-slonc. - but we al.I have vis.ions of "Mn Cibbc:r" is again supposcd.ly The book has an iniroduction by Robcn the futmc. although wecan't wait around for inspired by ,cal li[c. Sci in 1950s Covent HokblOCk. and eight illustrations by the Jc.VttalccntuncltorulisethcirfulfilmenL Garden. wilh echoes 0£ the 18th ccnrury. it author. Worth I look. Oh yes. the special She bcwitchu ffl£ll with her good looks and usa I tr.litional device - the nairator edition has an U.lfl Slary "The Evcnl.. penonality - but such hu been lhe chum ldlinghil5tory10arricnd.withhintsth.ll.it which is also available scparalely. and curse of many women in fact and fiction mayno1bcl0lal.Jytruc. Paul Fraser from Anne Boleyn to Jane Eyre. "C,ome on. You'R-making ii. .U upu you No, Ragoarok (the Saxon name for the 10along." Twilight of the Gods) is 1n historica1 novel "Naturally •.• Whi,1 dse did you c.xpea? The Child Garden set in lhc Ock Ages. in norlhem England. You've 101. IO Jive me credi1 !hough: the Geoff Ryman Rhiannclh (a Romano.Celtic princess, bearer dcu.i}•,pn:ayc:onvincing." Unwin . /989, 388pp. £12 .95 of the traditions of the Fdlowship of Caer Melot) is the arranged bride lo English Aelh· ''The Snake Princess .. is, LOUChing tllco( A version of Part I scriali.scd in l nttrzone as clric.. Anne Thactay rela&es Rhianneth's the bond berwccn a lonely boy and a "Love Sick:nes.s" was I t:rilliant novella. upcrience wttil lhc heroine becomes a fairground woman. She sea what the boy's though ii, conclusion was sunlingly grandmother. It may not be fanwy under the destiny oould be and lrics IO help him enigmatic. Small wonder. i1 was actually thc meaning o( the aci. bul it is a good ,cad achicvcit. prelude lO a much longer, richer and more nonelhclc.u, and painu a vivid and human Finally, "Everything In The Garden" uses comple:,i; Part II. Plot is difficult ID abstract picrurcoflhcpcriod. ycl ITIOthcr device, the diary. ls it all in thc from lhis kaleidoscopic nmativc, roaming mind or is the giant oak lfee Rlllly out to get the bordctlands o( high (11ll&Sy. low "Bui !here IR- no dnpd" Eanfrilh p0IU1Cd. disappoinled. .. And no maaioc:• thchcroinc? comedy. sum:alism and science fiction. Roberts is a fonnidahl.e writer. It is hard 10 Crudely, in Pan I. girl (Milena) meets girl womn1 aa aUI'" Rhianneth dR.• him dole, fml1 eilheJ: his style or chlracteriu.tion. (Rolfa): girl: losCI girl: inhaiu a wk. laying lhc ham uidc. "You don'1 need loves m11ic IO be a hero." she Aid. .. And whm AlmOSphac abounds. ranging Crom hyst• Milena is a Cuch «plwi become actrcu: crical panic 10 a delicate AJieflCS5 touch 10 Rolf• a genetically engineered eight foot lall you'R- arown, you'U find dngoru rul or suit each talc. All have pace and hold the polu•bcar woman. The task is IO direct Tbt enoughlivinainlhcbearuofmen." intacst in I finn grip. My f1vouri1e was Divine Comedy as operL The locale is lhc MartlnBrkc "The Snake PrincCH". 2.oo (the National Tlu:.11rc) and other areas Recommended re.:ling, even if you don'l of the Pii. a nco•mcdi1cval. technocratic, normally like ghost slOria. dystopian "Futu1e Tirne1" London. Framing Wi nterwood and Other Barban Davies action involves rehearsals of Love's Labour's Lort, a comedy in which a death Hauntings The news o( a new book by Krilh Roberts inl.emlpu: romance; a purgalOI)' is imp05cd; Keith Robert, brings grCII anticiJ>lbOh IO lhoK of us who paradise is postponed. Part n is the 110ry of M«TigtUt, 1989, /82pp, I/195, Special have read his moll rcsonant and cndl.lfln3 the Dante production, inlegwed with tlw or EdilionUO work such a Pavan~. The Chalk Gla.nts resistances 10 the "viruses.. of knowledge The latest offering from Keith Roberts, and Klieworld and who look forward 10 and indoctrination in the conditioning "child author of the classic Pavanc and the more similarcxccllen1worb. garden" and I sacrificial rcs10ration of the recent BSFA award winning Gralnnc, is a Wlnlerwood and Other Hauntings isn·1 human life-span, curtailed when cane.er was book of 7 d\on g.hosl SIDrics. NOi all are of the I-IJllC quality as those, unfortwalely, abolished (mortal swings and romdabouts). 1raditional - ID quote the aulhor. "the ghosts 10 what do WC have? Well. basicalJy, I Epigraphs uc keys 10 meaning. The mixed bag. Two stories. "Sus.an" and "The pl'c!llOry epigraph ii born ''The Ory Scarlet Lady", arc from the mid-sixticl Salvages ..: Part rs opens the Inferno: Part Correction Sdcnce Fantasy'1.mpulsc; "WintaWOOd" D' s the Purgatorio. Eliot's lines have 10 do On paae I• d iuue I.SJ lhe 1WIOI' and ''The Snake Princess.' arc from Corn. with lime and memory: Danie's, ftrsi with mentioned wu Mary PMChal. DIil ..Mvy Pn.1chett., u wu prinled. Apologies f« any ILIU Maauine (I amsidc:r mysdC a Robcru abanlion and confusion, lhcn with catharsis c:onf\llioll UW may II.Ive eaUICd. complctist and I never even knew these and the coming uccnL Geoff Ryman', existed); "The Eastern Windows·· and narrative mikes concrete an Eliotian lhcmc VECTOR 154 • 23 RE V IEW S "in my beginning is my end". In doing so ii has a wife at home, but Fink doesn't know tha1 one day I will reread the entire canon, draws repeatedly on words and images from 24 e VECTO R 154