Steam Engine Time Featuring James Doig, Lyn McConchie, Gillian Polack, Barbara Roden, Frank Weissenborn, George Zebrowski and more! Number Eight May 2008 Table of Contents Steam Engine Time No 8 was edited by Janine Stinson (tropicsf at earthlink dot net), PO Box 248, Eastlake, MI 49626-0248 USA and Bruce Gillespie (gandc at pacific dot net dot au), 5 Howard St., Greensborough VIC 3088, Australia, and published at www dot efanzines dot com . Members fwa. Print edition only available by negotiation with the editors; first edition and primary publication is electronic. A thrice-yearly publishing schedule (at minimum) is intended. All material in this publication was contributed for one-time use only, and copyrights belong to the contributors. Next editorial deadline: August 10th, 2008. Illustrations Ditmar (Dick Jenssen) - front cover; Brad Foster - 19, 28; William Rotsler - 16, 51, 66; Sheryl Birkhead - 22, 25, 35, 44; David L. Russell - 14, 29, 47 Photographs Courtesy Mariann McNamara – 3; courtesy John Litchen - 33 3 Editorials: Jan Stinson: “It’s Just the Normal Noises In Here”; Bruce Gillespie: Thanks 4 2006 Campbell Conference Speech / George Zebrowksi 14 Letters of Comment: Lloyd Penney, Greg Benford, Brad Foster, Ned Brooks, Barry Gillam, David Jacobsson, Taral Wayne, Amy Harlib, Darrell Schweitzer, Cy Chauvin, Arthur Hlavaty, Robert Elordieta, Damien Broderick, Chris Garcia, Terry Jeeves, Peter Sullivan, Mark Plummer, David J. Lake, E. B. Frohvet, John Litchen, Martin Morse Wooster, Billy Pettit, Franz Rottensteiner, Jerry Kaufman, Eric Lindsay, Anna Davour, John Purcell, Gillian Polack, Andrew Weiner, Fred Lener, Douglas Barbour, Tim Marion, Ray Wood 47 Literary Censorship in Australia and Olaf Stapledon's Sirius / James Doig Reviews Section 51 Colored New World: Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy / Frank Weissenborn 57 In Fury Born by David Weber / Lyn McConchie 59 Overview: The writing of Simon Brown / Gillian Polack 63 The Terror by Dan Simmons / Barbara Roden Steam Engine Time May 2008 2 Jan’s editorial Bruce’s editorial “It’s Just the Normal Noises In Here” Thanks I could also have headlined this editorial “Welcome Back, My Friends, To the Show That Never Ends” — but the above quote floated into my brain first and, indeed, seems more suited to my topic, which is: it might look a lot different, at first, but it’s not. This is the first ish of SET for which I’ve done the layout design. Those of you not fainting dead away at the prospect will, perhaps, be pleased to see some of the stylistic habits I used in my fanzine Peregrine Nations make their way here. The first, of course, being the loccol placement. The reaction to putting the locs first in PN was nearly unanimous in approval, and I believe placing it near the front in SET will be generally approved here for one reason: doing so picks up the ‘conversation’ where we left off in #7 (where the locs were at the end of the ish). This editorial is acting as a sort of preface to the design changes, which is why it appears before the locs in this edition; editorials in future editions may be placed elsewhere. The second major change is the page design. Now that SET is Holding the trophy: members of the Peter McNamara Award primarily an electronic publication, page count is less of a Committee, Swancon, Perth, Easter 2008 (l. to r.): Pat McNamara, consideration than is total file size. Thus, while the graphics will Dianne De Bellis, and Justin Ackroyd. Missing: Mariann McNamara. still be included on interior pages, we’ll try to keep them as small Thanks, Jan, for prompting the revival of Steam Engine as possible to facilitate shorter download times for those, like me, Time (with No 4), and hence being an important part of the team of who still have to use dialup service for the Internet. It’s a money people who, over the years, have arranged that I should receive the thing, people. nice awards. The latest, as you can see from the photo, is the Peter I add my congrats to those of others for my co-editor's McNamara Award for lifetime achievement in Australian SF. It is McNamara Award win; it'll go nicely in that display cabinet he has. named after a man who, with his wife Mariann, built much of the The featured article this time is George Zebrowski’s rabble- “Australian SF boom” of the eighties and nineties. Thanks to the rousing speech from the 2006 Campbell conference. You’ll notice committee for this year's award. Also much thanks to Elaine, who that great waves of change have spread over the publishing industry has put up with all this fanac for umpteen years, and all the people worldwide as a result of this speech. Not. who have supported my magazines and writing since 1968. (A week after the photo above was taken, Justin presented me with the trophy at the April meeting of the Nova Mob.) Steam Engine Time May 2008 3 of a company’s earnings even when your work is individually We Are Not Alone: accounted a loss, or further enslaved when the publisher refuses to revert rights through the subterfuge of a token “in print” claim, to A Talk by George Zebrowski beef up the assets column, which includes losses. “Publishers kill authors by creative bookkeeping,” wrote [George Zebrowski is an award-winning novelist, story Richard Curtis in his pioneering study of the 1990s. “By depriving writer, essayist, editor, and lecturer, best known for his authors of vital information about book sales, delaying novels Macrolife and Brute Orbits, among many others. His disbursements interminably, obscuring the meaning of figures, new book is Black Pockets and Other Dark Thoughts, a manipulating collection dates of subsidiary income, and withholding Publishers Weekly starred title. excessive royalties as a cushion against returns, many publishers figuratively strangle writers and literally poison their good will.” The following was delivered as the Keynote Address at the Royalty statements are fictional because, as more than one Campbell Conference, University of Kansas, July 6, 2006. accountant has noticed, the information provided tells you nothing Also available at beyond the fact that someone wrote it down and forces you to take his word for it. http://www2.ku.edu/~sfcenter/Zebrowski.htm] I refer mostly to big publishing, which today is better at hiding its ways, not to the often brave small and midsized venture In the midst of a writing life which I still think of as “only so whose failings arise from having to share breath with T-Rex far,” this talk is a kind of stocktaking, and also a belated alarm, distributors who make and keep a dishonest environment since others have come this way before me; but this time these encouraged by the big houses. The smaller houses are slowly taking words and their supporting research are being sent to New York publishing back to its roots, especially in science fiction, even as State’s dedicated Attorney General and next Governor, Eliot the big houses are seeking to sell off divisions and bury the records Spitzer, who has said that he never hesitated to step into a buzz of a diseased past before it can be excavated. saw, and never asked whether an issue was large or small but only The most surprising thing is how well known and if it was right or wrong — and I take him at his word. uncontested the facts are and how little has been done to change I want to thank James Gunn and this Center for the chance them. Writers grow used to things and have to choose what to do to present these comments in a serious forum. first. Even if I could pay the legal costs, I cannot sacrifice the time Please keep in mind that I will be juggling what may seem at needed to find out what happened to the “bragged about” last 300 first to be two sets of differing problems — the writer’s working copies of Brute Orbits, my 1999 Campbell Prize winner, or try to conditions and the character of science fiction. They do intertwine. discover the why of the ever-receding earnout figures for my Star I will abridge and simplify, because I have an hour gun to my Trek novels, where the records probably no longer exist. head; but there will be some hope waiting as I hurry through what’s Publishing contracts are inherently one-sided, and illegal to wrong with contracts, royalty statements, with the dark castles of one degree or another, because they fail to perform what is publishers’ warehouses, and with the plight of writers, one part of promised while saying that they will, by claiming in too many pages which is the unsurprising victimization of SF. of non-English that they are not responsible for anything even when The position of writers much more resembles that of “Bambi they are. Publishers get defensive toward protesting authors who Meets Godzilla,” than that of partners in an industry. Adapt or get point out this and other failings, even threatening them with “junk squashed; usually get squashed, and contribute to the larger tally Steam Engine Time May 2008 4 publication” — a minimal edition, for show, which only claims to the case, even with words on paper. fulfill the contract, by putting them on an economic blacklist that Slowly, contracts have been contrived to disable a writer’s amounts to censorship. These threats are well known even among awareness of his protections, turning him into a leashed migrant-- authors who earn good money, so called in the allowed accounting, by denying the larger legally recognized relationship on which a and is carried out in other contexts, as when a publisher wishes to contractee welfare depends, that of the implied contract built on downsize books from planned hardcovers to a smaller printing in the good faith clause.