SCIENCE FICTION FALL -QT71T TTT1TTT NUMBER 44 1982 XvHj V liL VV $2.00 HOW THINGS WORK BY NORMAN SPINRAD INTERVIEW: ANNE McCAFFREY FANTASY AND THE BELIEVING READER BY O.S. CARD SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW (ISSN: 0036-8377) Formerly THE ALIEN CRITIC P.O. BOX 11408 AUG, 1982 — VOL. 11, no.3 PORTLAND, OR 97211 WHOLE NUMBER 44 RICHARD E. GEIS—editor & publisher PHONE: (503) 282-0381 PAULETTE MINARE', ASSOCIATE EDITOR

PUBLISHED QUARTERLY FEB.y MAY, AUG.7 NOV.

SINGLE COPY — $2.00 ALIEN THOUGHTS BY THE EDITOR.A OTHER VOICES.52 BOOK RECIEWS BY WILLIAM GIBSON HOW THINGS WORK PHILIP M. COHEN BY NORMAN SPINRAD.8 DAVID PITT COVER BY STEPHEN FABIAN W. RITCHIE BENEDICT DEAN R. LAMBE TEN YEARS AGO IN SCIENCE FICTION JAfCS ANDERSON BY ROBERT SABELLA.17 STEVE ENG LEIGH KENNEDY PAUL C. MCGUIRE AND THEN I SAW... ALMA JO WILLIAMS MOVIE REVIEWS BY THE EDITOR.18 ANDREW M. ANDREWS SUE BECKMAN PATRICIA SHAW interview: ANNE McCAFFREY JOHN DIPRETE CONDUCTED BY CHRIS MORGAN.20 KENDRA USAK ROBERT SABELLA ALLEN VARNEY LETTERS.25 and a special review by GENE WOLFE TERRY CARR JOHN BRUWER IAN COVELL ROBERT BLOCH ALIEN CONCLUSIONS BOB SABELLA BY THE EDITOR.63 DARRELL SCHWEITZER BOB BARGER DEBBIE CROSS & PAUL WRIGLEY GEORGE WARREN MATT HARGREAVES INTERIOR ART— CYN MASON RONALD R. LAMiERT TIM KIRK—274718751 AVEDON CAROL

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6H0ST STORY. CAT PEOPLE. WHOSE LIFE IS IT, ANYWAY?. RICHARD PRYOR LIVE ON SUNSET STRIP. DIVINE MADNESS. SWORD & SORCERER. EYE OF THE NEEDLE. FIGHTING BACK. PENNIES FROM HEAVEN. VICTOR/VICTORIA. MONTENEGRO. BLOOD WEDDING. EVIL UNDER THE SUN. DEATH TRAP. CONAN THE BARBARIAN. THE CRYSTAL SINGER. WORLDS. TIN WOODMAN. FORBIDDEN SANCTUARY. OUTWARD BOUND. EXPLORING THE EARTH AND THE COSMOS. 34 IT S ALIVE! THE CLASSIC CINEMA SAGA OF FRANKENSTEIN.. 35 THE COMING OF DEMONS. GOR SAGA. HELLICONIA SPRING. IMARO. Blackwood's books. SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS. CONTEMPORARY LITERARY CRITICISM #21.,38 THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH AND OTHER STORIES. THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH. AS IT IS WRITTEN. WEIRDBOOK lb...... FANTASY MONGERS #3.. WHISPERS 15/16,. FASTASY TALES #9.... SORCERER'S APPRENTICE INTERZONE #1. EERIE COUNTRY #6-7~8-9. file 770:33... RIVERSIDE QUARTERLY #26. HOLIER THAN THOU #13. BEARDMUTTERINGS #21. FANTASY BOOK, AUG. 82. ANSIBLE #26. PAPERBACK INFERNO. INSIDE JOKE #11.. FANTASY NEWSLETTER #50. KADATH #5. CELLARS. CENTAUR AISLE. VISCOUS CIRCLE. THE DAWNING LIGHT. BIRTHRIGHT: THE BOOK OF MAN... THE SILVER METAL LOVER. HEROES AND HOBGOBLINS. PARTICLE THEORY. A STORM OF WINGS. THE MAKING OF RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. BARD. CLAN OF DEATH: NINJA... WEB OF THE SPIDER. LAUGHING SPACE. IS NOTHING SACRED?. SHADOWS OF SANCTUARY. EASY TRAVEL TO OTHER PLANETS.. THEY D RATHER BE RIGHT. I realize there are many SFR ALIEN THOUGHTS readers who valued highly the news column, especially the listings of forthcoming books. BY THE EDITOR To those people I advise a sub¬ scription to Andy Porter's SF CHRON¬ ICLE, since Elton tells me that SF CHRONICLE has the best, most com¬ plete new books listings of the big THE RETURNING PLAGUE three sf/fantasy newszines. is attacking I receive FANTASY NEWSLETTER, the book publishing industry. Ac¬ SF CHRONICLE, but not LOCUS, since cording to a WALL STREET JOURNAL LOCUS' publisher, Charlie Brown, re¬ story July 2, returns from book¬ fuses to trade with mere fanzines stores are reaching 701 of ship¬ or even semiprozines. (I'll never ments in some instances, with SOI forgive him that.) returns common. Anyway, the address for SF The ideal percentage of re¬ CHRONICLE is P.0. Box 4175, New turns is about 151. York, NY 10017. At the same time hardcover I don't know the price; Elton sales are down: 151 from April has my copies of the magazine. But 1981, and 13.41 in May, from a I'm fairly sure Andy Porter will year ago. send a sample copy of SF CHRONICLE The story says, 'It is a situ¬ for $2. ation in stark contrast with that [Now I'll get an indignant let¬ of the 1960s and early 1970s. In ter from the editor of FANTASY NEWS¬ those years the industry was ex¬ LETTER.] panding rapidly, aided by huge in¬ I may as well add here that I fusions of conglomerate capital, have no intention of adding a news new mass-marketing strategies and column by anyone else. SFR will tion lines [more accurately described cheap money. However, as the 1970s concentrate on being an opinion- as fantasy lines] are still selling drew to a close, and increasingly review zine. in the last two or three years, well enough to justify continued the conglomerates began insisting heavy production. on better business performance The summer's success of sf/fan- from their book divisions, and mar¬ tasy movies will help sf/fantasy keting money dried up; at the same book sales and convince publishers THE WRITER AS A SCRIPT PLAYER those lines are worth continuing time the unit cost of books rose makes steeply, making them less appeal¬ an d perhaps even expanding. Appar¬ ently the hardcore sf/fantasy hard¬ sense if you understand Transaction¬ ing to a public that was counting al Analysis and agree with its ten- its pennies.' core readership continues to expand and continues to buy. At Simon 6 Shuster, publisher According to TA we all carry and executive vice president Dan The assured continuation of the STAR WARS, STAR TREK, SUPERMAN and three emotional modes into which we Green says of the heavy rate of can shift as our internal needs returns: " perhaps CONAN movies in years ahead suggests a continually expanding dictate: the Child, the Adult, and Richard E. Snyder says of the (or maintained) readership accumula¬ the Parent. heavy rate of returns: "If this tion. If the Big SF and fantasy We also are given Life Scripts continues through the Christmas movies are only going to be releas¬ as children, by our parents (or season, you're going to see many ed at Christmas and early summer, those who raise us). Some Scripts booksellers and publishers fail the intervening months will perhaps are good: You'll be a winner! or be forced into mergers." drive the hungry-for-sf movie fan This kid will make a lot of money! to the sf/fantasy bookracks. She'll make some man very happy! What is happening is that con¬ And some are terrible Scripts: glomerates need high profits to pay You worthless little bastard! off their huge debts and to simply You'll grow up to be a tramp like pay interest on their debts. They your mother! I wish you were dead! have been selling off pieces of NO NEWS IS THE BAD NEWS And some are so-so: Scripts that their empires---mergers are indeed impose limits on success, love, tal¬ in SFR this taking place, book divisions are be¬ ent. issue. There is no SF News column ing sold off — Playboy, Fawcett, To fulfill the Scripts people and there won't be one next issue. Ace.... play life games. There's the ever- Elton Elliott has had increas¬ As times get tougher we can ex¬ popular Alcoholic game, the Drug ing difficulting getting adequate pect to see more hardcover and soft- game, the Sex games, the Kick Me cooperation from publicity direct¬ cover book publishers dealt away, game, the Rape game [played by men ors and editors in New York, and combined, even disappear. and women], the Everybody's Against cannot afford to make dozens of A year or so ago it seemed that Me game, the Now I've Got You, You phone calls to track down stories editors were playing a game of mus¬ Sonofabitch! game... or info on new releases, etc. ical chairs as they moved from pub¬ It's a fascinating way to look Then, too, he is Tired. He is lisher to publisher. Now actual at human character, personality publishing companies are engaged in burned out at the edges. And he and their imperitives. At least wanted to do an opinion column in that game. a dozen books have been written So we'll watch the-papers and SFR, for a change. about TA since Berne's bestseller And so in this issue is his the stats and see what happens up to GAMES PEOPLE PLAY of about 20 years new "Raising Hackles." It should and after Christmas, to the publish¬ ago. ing industry. raise a few in the readership. Judging from the steady influx Life Scripts are working, one of review copies, the science fic¬ 4 would think, in writers who choose to write for small press fiction But adamant idealogue Reagan and compel a cutback in those defi¬ outlets and [always for "good" will be forced to frustrate them cits else the Treasury be forced into reasons] avoid the larger markets; by vetoing every spending bill. flat-out monetizing of ever more and who choose a style and technique The two forces will likely cancel more of that debt—printing money, of writing which forces their work each other out. pure and simple, which would result in into small niches; who are content The Demo victory at the polls a fevered,pure, hyper-inflation to write low-pay genre fiction all will frighten what little liquidity and instantly destroy any ability by their lives; who aim for the Big is left in this country into even anyone to borrow money at any price. Bucks and get them; who antagonize shorter-term treasury bills and In a hyper-inflation you spend all publishers, editors, agents all the money-market funds. money instantly, before it loses value. time!; who hit big with a successful Here's the scenario: the Treas¬ [And it will lose value, by the week, book, then screw up endlessly and ury Dept, needs to borrow, in the day, hour, minute!] ruin their potential.... next 12 months, at_least 100 bil¬ The point of all this is to show The curious thing is one can lion dollars to finance the federal the inevitable, inescapable cycle see these Scripts operating in deficit. that operates once a debt structure others, but most always are blind Yet it is reliably estimated reaches a certain size relative to to the Script in one'sown mind. that there is only about 112 bil¬ the economy and the reserves of cash Of course, if it's a good Script, lion dollars of debt-free savings available to support it. you wouldn't want to change it. in the country available to be But ofttimes your Script is nega¬ borrowed. The more the deficit is cut tive or limiting ("Don't try to The Treasury will/is crowding the more the economy contracts, be a big wheel, son, you'll only out the businesses which desperately the more taxes shrink, which, like get into trouble.") and even if imst borrow to finance new stocks a receding tide, uncovers more and you do recognize it on an intel¬ of goods for their shelves, to pay more deficit... lectual, rational level, the interest of huge existing debts, To compensate for the on-going power source of the Script is out and buy new machinery and often collapse of the private debt struc¬ of reach, somehow. to pay salaries and wages until ture, the federal government would [That has been the key failure new inventory is sold. have to run deficits of...$500 bil¬ of all emotional problem therapy All of this demand for money lion per year? A trillion dollars systems—neutralizing or revers¬ will bid up the price of the dwind¬ per year? Those deficits could ing the deepset emotional conmands ling supply, and interest rates not be financed, and unless financ¬ that rule us from their unconscious will hit new post-World-War II ed the value of the dollar would or subconscious fortresses, noth¬ highs. This squeeze is called a plumet worldwide which would cause ing seems to work very often or "credit crunch" or liquidity crisis. import prices to escalate, cause well.] The time will come, probably be¬ foreign holders of U.S. govt, debt Sometimes the passage of time fore Christmas, when some business¬ to dump it, cause a huge surge in does the trick—perhaps the Script es will be unable to borrow at all, the cost of living, in domestic comnand system rots away (figura¬ and will go out of business. prices.... tively) or shorts out, or loses pow¬ Cause and effect, cause and er somehow, and one is freed to be This will all be masked by claims effect.. .chain reactions_ The a different person. More often an and counter claims, propaganda, lies, financial world is an ecology; emotional trauma fuses the Script dogma. screw up one aspect and it ripples or causes a deeper love-of-life But once the debt structure has through the interrelationships set of priorities to override the sucked up almost all the liquidity causing consequences unexpected and Script and disconnect it. in the country [and the world, to a deadly. Sometimes a great despair causes large extent!], the bubble self-de¬ us to trade in the old Script for structs by forcing up interest rates a new one—as in adopting a self¬ to the point of killing off its Especially in economics, THERE less cult religion, or in giving hosts. AIN’T NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH. oneself body, mind and soul to a Unemployment, less money to spend, cause, a leader, a state. (These bankruptcies all kill money by reduc¬ require closed minds, for once ing sales, values, prices. As the For this country, and most of doubt enters, the old Script will private sector diminishes in profits the world, credit has turned its be back in power or, worse, there and in bankruptcies, in salaries and other, hideous face to us and become will be no Script at all—terror wages lost, the federal deficits soar debt. for the weak-ego, other-directed personality. Another overwhelming focus for one's life must be found immediately!) So if you are a writer or wish to be, consider the markets, your ft>!OT cHARis/»v|T/c talent, your ideas...but above all consider your Script. rtxo-r

TIE FINAL PLUNGE... will take place, it now seems to me, in. 1983-84. The Democrats will probably score big gains this November in the congres¬ sional off-year elections, and will try to spend the nation out of its deepening economic problems. 5 And the cream of the jest is mobilized their army and airforce, out nuclear war; very probably their that even if Jinny Carter had been they shifted mountains of supplies maintenance, quality control and re-elected, and if the Democrats to the north... All that was not training levels are disastrously had not lost control of the Senate, kncwn was the timing of the move. low. With the development of a high- the dynamics of the debt cycle And for President Reagan to say on level computerized anti-missile sys¬ would have us just about where we TV that he didn't know ahead of time tem for defense of this country, ev¬ are now anyway. when the Isrealis would invade is en the Russian intercontinental mis¬ Reagan's tax cuts are a sham; an admission of dissembling [he sile threat would be eliminated, re¬ the 51 cut at the end of 1981 was didn't know the exact hour, per¬ turning this country to its Master eaten up by increased Social Sec¬ haps], or an admission that he is of the World status again. urity, state and local taxes. The kept (or chooses to be kept) ignor¬ tax cut of July 1, 1982 has been ant of spy satellite information, eaten up by more Social Security CIA, NSA, FBI, etc. analysis and tax increases, more state and local reports. tax increases, and price increases Our government can veto any PAY ME NOW OR PAY ME LATER... forced by increased excise and oth¬ Israeli plan, policy, attack by says Mother Nature, who is the cold, er use taxes. threatening to cut off their loans, unfeeling dealer in this game of Congress gives you a piece of subsidies, spare parts, bond-selling life. steak to eat with one hand, and privileges. Therefore, the Israeli Mother Nature is a anthropomor¬ cuts a pound off your ass with the invasion of Lebanon was made and is phic euphemism for Reality, and it other. continuin with our government's may be we use "Mather Nature" to The fact is this year's budget take the curse off the true and is larger than last year's! The terrible indifference of the uni¬ government is taking in more money verse to our individual existence. in taxes this year than last! Fed¬ Thus we clot together in fami¬ eral spending in the past few years lies and tribes and cities and na¬ has become an uncontrollable mons¬ tions to keep away the deep know¬ ter and will [in league with an ledge that the universe doesn't exraordinarily large private debt give a dry fuck if we live or die. structure] soon result in a financ¬ We tend to project a lot, too, ial collapse of unparalleled size in the psychological sense---and and duration. hedge our bets---by helping "those Woe, woe. Doom, doom, doom. less fortunate" [a bargain with I love it. God: see how good I am, you must take care of me after I die!] and of course the we also thus set up support systems ATTpj-nOU FATE for ourselves just in case disaster CS TRe-rrr h<^h. strikes us. We know in our hearts how cruel and indifferent we can be to others[only we becomes them GEOPOLITICS; LIES AND STRATEGY quiet permission. And that means in the costume of "Big Business", are the megafortunes, the monster trans¬ "the callous rich", and "stone- plainly visible in the Israeli in¬ national corporations which control hearted conservatives". vasion of Lebanon, but invisible to our country's foreign policy (and So we (in liberal do-gooder Americans who rely on TV news and most of its domestic policy) want short-sightedness) demand people newspapers for analysis and implica¬ this to happen. They lost fortunes live longer than they wish, demand tions. in Lebanon in the chaos and anarchy non-viable infants be kept alive In CONSPIRACY NEWSLETTER last that has been Lebanon for the past at all costs, and spend vast for¬ year my co-writer and I estimated few years, and they want their pro¬ tunes attempting to deny reality that the next Israeli move would be perty and opportunities returrEd. and impose equality. Thus low- into Lebanon, probably to the Latani Israel is doing the job for them grade morons and inbeciles are River. and Israel is getting something in pushed toward "normality" and What has emerged is a top-level return, count on it. The payoff "equal opportunity" straightjack¬ decision to solve the problem of the will emerge as time passes. One ets to satisfy our fear and guilts. PLO and the Palestinian refugees by obvious benefit would be U.S. toler¬ And so---after generations and means of a Final Solution. ance of the continued, gradual an¬ generations of doing good and being The strategic aim is to elimin¬ nexation of the West Bank and per¬ kind to the "less fortunate"—we ate the PLO and dismember or neutral¬ haps the Gaza Strip as part of Is¬ discover we have created an under¬ ize the Palestinians as a political/ rael. class of dependents who are emo¬ military force. The aim is to re¬ tionally and especially mentally Another strategic/geo-political store Lebanon to its former status as and physically incapable of func¬ fact which has already emerged from a neutral free-enterprise banking and tioning in our complicated multi- the Israeli invasion of Lebanon is conmercial center. There is a geo¬ leveled technological society and the immense technological superiori¬ political aim (I strongly suspect) culture. ty of U.S. arms over USSR arms. It to keep some highly valuable water- We can't use them to weed the is no contest and the Israeli im¬ source lands in southern Lebanon for gardens and do stoop labor; that provements on U.S. arms are without Israeli use/possession. would be demeaning to them (us). a doubt being incorporated into U.S. Geo-politically, too, the Isra¬ We find we have created an enor¬ planes, tanks, guns, etc. elis have shown that no nation in the mous service structure of middle- The Russians are a second class near east can stop them from doing class employees to care for and power and would lose a ground war anything they wish! As "a tool of maintain this underclass. And these against a well-trained tech western the American establishment, the Is¬ service employees have a strong anny and air force. raeli army and airforce is supreme. vested interest in keeping this [I have to wonder how many mis¬ The Israeli buildup of arms, men, vast accumulation of useless people siles they could launch in an all- and machines in northern Israel went in existence, and in fact in keeping on for at least six months. They 6 it growing. That's simple: these morons will society--of man’s psyche--as is the obligations coming due in the have babies without end, and will cynic and the realist. There are Social Security programs, it'll multiply marvelously, forcing ever- those who can be sensitized or alert¬ have to be faced. Mother Nature greater welfare and support services ed to Reality [my particular imper¬ lets a society get away with stu¬ and employees. fect version of Reality] and who may pidity and self-delusion only so Being 801 morons, these people benefit from my viewpoint. If so, long. are inherently credulous and ripe fine. for recruitment by the evangelistic But I don't care. It feels good religions who are naturally against to ventilate once in a while, and abortion. [Abortion is "murder" say these cynical rinsings and pronounce¬ they. Abortion is legal; thus it ments on the true and terrible nature becomes legalized killing of human of mankind and our condition on this life. A semantic difference.] planet is a fine therapy for me. I These Christian religions cun¬ expect it to at least interest and ningly believe in the perfectabili- fascinate and perhaps provoke some ty of mankind. Thus they advocate readers. women be forced to carry any and I love that phrase: true and ter¬ all pregnancies to term, and oppose rible. I owe Barry Malzberg a great THE all sex education and contraceptive thanks for coining it. information among the morons. Sex The collapse of the debt bubble is evil they say, and pleasure is a CORPORATION sin [but without sex and pleasure (which takes at least five years— their whole con game would be reduc¬ three or four to go, folks!) is forc¬ ed to the ancient fear-of-death ploy ing the beginnings of triage now— STRIKES BACK among the old, and that would dimin¬ cutting of welfare, medicaid, food stamps, etc., but only the punish¬ A NEW EROTIC SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL ish the revenues greatly.]. ment of underclass women for preg¬ BY RICHARD E. GEIS And so...and so...we have built nancies will begin to shrink the in social structures which allow de¬ THE STAR WHORES SAGA CONTINUES- gene-defective pool of unemploya¬ fective genes to carry on and mult¬ Toi King, Sex Guild Companion, is bles and begin to raise the quality iply, and we are in our temporary kipnapped by the corporation she of the human stock in this country. vast-suplus-of-wealth period carrying frustrated in STAR WHORES. Taken an ever-growing number of parasites. I know, I sound like a racist to Phallus, the pleasure planet, We have in cold reality under¬ and a bigot and all the bad names. injected with a new, powerful sex mined the quality of the human species But I don't believe blacks are in¬ drug, enslaved, she must make her by greatly defeating the natural selec herently inferior to whites or escape and seek a terrible revenge. tion process. yellows. [I could make a case that And sooner or later good old the Chinese are the true superior Mother Nature will force triage upon race on this planet, but I'm lazy.] the human race. [Triage is an out- It's likely that white morons and of-fashion, cruel word for the pro¬ defectives have been multiplying cess of culling, pruning, sorting, (better protected by white social choosing the best. You will not find workers, white Liberals) faster, it in many modem dictionaries. ] from a larger base, than blacks. I am not calling here for new, brutal social policies. I am point¬ It'll be interesting to watch ing at a reality. In the short run the social thrashings and twistings the world with greater and greater and rationalizations, lies, mis¬ difficulty will be able to cope with statements that will flow from the this underclass, and in the long need to address the problem of a run we are all dead anyway. vast army of unemployables (by present standards) which society My enemy is social delusion and must either support, put to work, idealism (often the same thing). I have a function of sorts in a minor or put a lid on and let die off. way in the debunking area, but the Tough talk. Tough problem. idealist is a permanent part of Like the multi-trillion dollar

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ORDER FROM: SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW P.0. BOX 11408 PORTLAND, OR 97211 HOW THIMG6 WORK

BY NORMAN SPINRAD

The scientist wants to know how mat¬ tion of its grindings with the art of HOW THINGS WORK ie the final erial reality works, the investiga¬ science fiction. That's material section of STAYING ALIVE: A tive reporter's ideal is a knowledge for a science fiction novel, isn't WRITER’S GUIDE by Roman Spin- of the fine detail of social politics it? At least one has been written, rad, to be published soon by with scientific precision, and the Barry Maltzberg's HEROVIT'S WORLD. The Donning Company. Their science fiction writer would like to No doubt there are some people science fiction line is edit¬ know how both of these realities af¬ who will consider such obsession ed by Hank Stine. fect the individual reality of cons¬ with the straight poop to have a para¬ ciousness. noid component. Learned professors have written treatises on the para¬ The science fiction writer would noid component of science fiction. like to know this because more often Dr. Strangelove and Dr. Frankenstein Unlike the rest of this book, than not he's writing stories set in are the most prevalent images of this valedictory essay is not being a future. Since he's writing about science. Reporters are obsessed with written as a column to a monthly a world as yet unknown to either sci¬ discovering evil forces everywhere. deadline; rather it is an attempt to entific verification or efficient put the evolutionary process of the muckraking reporters, he's got to im¬ On the other hand, it could be columns into some kind of overall agine how imaginary' changes in soc¬ argued that evil forces do exist perspective. Since this is a book by ial or scientific reality affect im¬ wherever there is power,-that scien¬ someone who openly admits~He is pri¬ aginary characters. In order to do tific descriptions of reality troub¬ marily a science fiction writer, it this with some coherence, he needs le the spirit, and that the universe might as well be a science fictional a general theory of how things real¬ really is out to get us, or worse, perspective. ly work. is entirely indifferent to our des¬ tiny. And in the process of writing And the only place he can derive these columns over evolutionary time, it from is the passage of his own Certainly science fiction writ¬ I think that one thing I've discover¬ consciousness through reality. So ers have ample evidence to support ed is that there is^ such a thing as the science fiction writer tends to the paranoid theory that sinister a science fictional perspective on have the scientist's curiosity about forces are against us. It is plain reality, a dialectic that can be ap¬ the way physical and cultural mecnan- fact that the literature of science plied to such sublimities as the pro¬ isms work, and the reporter's scep¬ fiction has been walled up in a crit¬ duction of visionary art and such ticism about the moral perfection of ical and commercial ghetto for the practicalities as negotiating a book authority. better part of half a century. In contract. What this science fiction¬ our struggles to breach the wall, al perspective really is, of course, Maybe that explains why there is though, we have perhaps sometimes is a question as unanswerable as such a magazine as LOCUS, why SFWA lost our science fictional perspect¬ "how do you define science fiction?" is both internally contentious and ive. Or, as Theodore Sturgeon puts But I think at root it has something externally militant, and why I wrote it, forgotten to ask the next ques- to do with wanting to know how things this book. Re-reading these columns, it Which is why. How things really work, not how seems to me that the basic thrust of all of them has been to investigate Why is science fiction consider¬ some authority figure tells you they ed beyond the sphere of discourse of work; not the rules of the game, how things really work in the art and conmerce of publishing. the New York Literary Establishment? but the game behind the rules. The Why has it been genrefied for fifty straight poop, the inside story. In another sense, the columns years under commercial pressure to¬ Kids who grow up to be scientists, have been a kind of science fiction wards a product marketed to juveniles science fiction writers or investiga¬ about publishing, a description of a and away from adults? cultural mechanism and the interac¬ tive journalists, all start out want¬ Why has this persisted for near¬ ing to know how things really work. 8 ly half a century? There are those who will argue Hand-held Computers! TV from Jupiter ly and psychically healthy civiliza- from a genetic perspective that this and Saturn! situation evolved from an unfortunate What we've got that the Japanese Is this not the material of sci¬ chance mutation. When Hugo Gemsback don't have is a deeply perceived dich¬ ence fiction? Can a literature deal¬ coined the logo "scientifiction" for otomy in our society between reason ing with this material be anything a new magazine in 1926, he was, in a and feeling, between logic and emo¬ but central to the cultural life of sense, inventing the science fiction tion, between the things of the spir¬ the United States in the 20th Cen¬ genre as a sub-genre of the boy's it and the things of science. adventure story. This created a pop¬ tury? We can barely form the concept ular mass culture market for a genre Apparently so. It has been treat¬ that science itself is a thing of that had never before existed as a ed that way so far. formula for commercial fiction. That the spirit and that "things of the new formula was circumscribed by the But not without cost. spirit" do not mean magic and the supernatural. general genre parameters of the boy's Which brings us back to where adventure story. It was a new mark¬ we are now. We tend to confuse the scientif¬ et. It attracted formula commercial ic method, which is a careful and We do know where we are now, writers. It created a certain image obsessively objective means for veri¬ don't we? We're in the United States of science fiction, later reinforced fying insights into the nature of of America on the planet Earth, push¬ by the emergence of science fiction physical reality and the scientific ing, you should pardon the cliche, fandom. impulse, which is the spiritual end, 1984. We don't seem to understand the emotional goal behind all this By now we all know what that im¬ how to make our modem industrial cold analysis. Namely the lust to age is. So we can see why it repel¬ economy work any more. It can't be know how things really work. How led writers who considered themselves because our technological level is all things really work, from the ul¬ to have serious literary ambition. declining. We're capable of launch¬ timate constituents of matter, to The image became self-fulfilling. ing Space Shuttles and creating de¬ the ultimate knowledge of the uni¬ Once an image becomes self-fulfill¬ signer genes. It isn't because we've verse itself as a synergetic system, ing, it affects reality. And an im¬ lost the cutting edge of pure science, to total comprehension of the phenom¬ age powerful enough to alter the real¬ our understanding of the physical par¬ enon of consciousness itself. One ity it epitomizes is bound to be very ameters of reality has never been may question the hubris of this tran¬ stable. In a sense, it defends its more sophisticated and comprehensive. own existence. Which explains why scendent millenial Faustian quest, the public perception of science fic¬ Our economic level has been de¬ but hardly the human emotion and vis¬ tion has until recently remained clining, in that, in national and in¬ ionary longing that motivate it in static through all the internal evo¬ dividual terms, we're poorer than spiritual terms. lutionary changes of the past half we were, and this as-yet-but-dimly- century. Once the literature of perceived devolution in standard of We also tend to confuse screwed- science fiction was epitomized by a living has already sapped the nation¬ up or imperfect technology with base¬ genre image, as juvenile cult mater¬ al spirit of its confidence in the ness in the goal of technological ial, all literature in this mode was upward evolution of our civilization. development. Which, of course, is to ghettoized behind that image and not Or maybe it's the other way use the best current knowledge of subject to ongoing critical attention around. how things really work to figure out from the culture at large. A chance how to make them work better. Tech¬ mutation had carved out an ecologic¬ After all, we haven't lost a nology will never be perfect until al niche and then been adapted by bit of scientific knowledge or tech¬ natural selection to fit its para¬ nological technique. It can't even meters . be said we know less about economics than our ancestors. But Sturgeon would still probab¬ ly insist that we ask the next ques¬ On the other hand, we do find tion. The mutation might have been ourselves in a society where science random, but the fact that it proved has become identified with radiation, viable, the fact that it ended up cancer and militarism, where reason being selected for, must have been itself is regarded with suspicion as due to the cultural environment. It the product of the uptight half of must have had a cultural reason to the brain, where the teaching of exist. "Creation Science" has become a ser¬ ious political issue. At which point, we must descend from lofty scientific metaphor into While our arch-competitor, ex¬ doun-and-dirty pragmatics. protege, and wistful current role Which brings us right back to model, Japan, happily relates to its how things really work. robots as creatures native to a tech¬ nological environment. I mean, look at the fifty years or so during which science fiction What we've lost that the Japanese had been a ghettoized genre. Passing¬ seem to have is confidence in a pos¬ ly strange. Radio! Television! A itive ongoing evolution of civiliza¬ world-wide economic depression! Larg¬ tion in a cultural and spiritual er-than-life maniacs in power in It¬ sense through science and technology. aly, the Soviet Union and Germany! In the United States, it's became A World War! The Atonic Bomb! The almost embarrassing to suggest in Cold War! The Cuban Missile Crisis! public the possibility that ongoing The Space Race! The Assassination progressive and enthusiastic develop¬ of JFK! The Sexual Revolution! The ment of science and technology is a Rock Revolution! Viet Nam! The Moon nepessary life-sign of an economical- Landing! Transistors! Microchips! 9 both our knowledge of the universe tion that goes unpublished because and our use of it are perfect. Judg¬ of excessive literary ambition. ing from our present state, we can And that such books more or less assume that we still have a way to still regularly emerge from the wall go- of noise. But maybe we can't assume that But for the most part these works we're going to get there. Lately have not passed into the general we've begun to confuse science with stream of the culture. Which thus magic, energy with metaphor, the has a void in what should be a cen¬ things of the spirit with supernatur¬ tral sphere of intellectual discourse al forces, how things really work The results of which are all too vis¬ with how we would like them to work. ible today. When an individual confuses how things really work with how he would All the more visible because what the American publishing industry like them to work -- when he runs in¬ and the American literary establish¬ to a wall in the sublime assurance ment caused to happen to science fic¬ that his will will allow him to walk tion in the past is now happening to through it --we say he is psychotic. fiction, period. When a culture begins to disregard the parameters of reality, we can Aside from science fiction, there only call it a crisis of civiliza- are a few other small areas of dis¬ course which mainstream publishing, which is to say contemporary corpor¬ The crisis is neither entirely ate comnittee conglomerate publish¬ scientific nor entirely spiritual, ing, is keeping in cultural purdah. for it is precisely a crisis in the Fiction exploring the effects of interface between the things of sci¬ drugs on our civilization. Anything ence and the things of the spirit, set in the counterculture of the between the individual consciousness 1960s. Anything centrally about and the total social and material Viet Nam, although that may be slow¬ surround. ly changing. This, of course, is also precise¬ Four central areas of concern, ly what most science fiction is about, wouldn't you say, for a struggling when it is about anything but a re¬ society trying to figure out where hashing of a basic formula plot skel- it is, how it got there, and what to do next? This is why any culture which re¬ When a society starts developing legates this central discourse to a multiple blind-spots of this magni¬ genre ghetto in order to dismiss it tude, it's already in a devolution¬ as trivial is in deep shit, because ary state, and it's only a matter of science fiction's sphere of discourse time before the next stage begins to is anything but trivial to the cris¬ take hold: Popular literature (in is confronting progressive technolo¬ the extended sense including all med¬ gical and scientific man. ia purveying fiction) begins to de¬ Just how trivial it isn't can be work. One that applies the test of generate into a mosaic of stylized read easily enough by the conse¬ reason to things of the spirit, and genres where the format is_ the story, quences of its absence from our applies the test of the spirit to where the formula js the content, civilization's main intellectual mar¬ what man might do with knowledge where the plot is a Skinnerian mech¬ ketplace. Where a culturally central and power. anism, and where all episodes are literature of science fiction should int erchangeab1e. stand, we have a stunted creature While we have been living through shoehomed into a commercial formula what is in essence a fifty-year sci¬ Soon fiction itself ceases to and struggling to maintain its integ¬ ence fiction novel ourselves, our become an arena of discourse for ex¬ rity. We also have a literature of "serious literature" has been moving ploration of the relationship between the impossible donning "sf” drag and further and further from any perspec¬ the individual and external reality. pretending to be mimetic, itself the tive close to this; and our popular In a sense, it becomes the relation¬ creation of the sf genre formula. literature, indeed our popular cul¬ ship between citizen and social mech¬ Coincidentally, in the society it¬ ture, has been moving further and anism. It becomes an agent of the self, we also have a growing confus¬ further towards empty format, to¬ social mechanism instead of an in¬ ion of science and fantasy, a schiz¬ wards what Michael Moorcock called quiry into it. It becomes entertain¬ oid chasm growing between the things in the very title of a science fic¬ ment. It becomes show business. of science and the things of the spir¬ tion novel, THE CONDITION OF MUSAK. Show. Business. Show business. it, and a deadly Cartesian fallacy Within the ghetto walls, it has People in show business are in the that they are antithetical. always been a struggle to prevent business of putting on a show. The We lack not only culturally cen¬ the literature of science fiction purpose of putting on a show is to tral science fiction, but a cultural from being reduced to the Condition make money. This show that attracts worldview that at least attempts to of Mizak. Yet somehow, the litera¬ the most customers will make the synergize scientific knowledge with ture never became entirely genrefied most money. Therefore one studies the spiritual world of the individ¬ into mental background music. Grant¬ the demographics. What kind of show ual consciousness, human goals and ed, a great ream of such stuff is attracts which consumers? What imag¬ desires with technological power. produced every year, but at least it ery can we key into that is already One that at least attempts to base can still be more or less said that implanted in the mass consciousness? its perspective of how-it-would-like- tljere isn't much good science fie¬ What plot-sequences exert the maxi¬ things-to-work in how-things-really- ld mum appeal? What story-elements build audience loyalty? What's the rification and blood-lust, you don't le who is himself struggling with best identification figure to use? have to worry very much about the in¬ the mechanism. dividual episode or book because You will note that this is exact¬ Because, second of all, people you've got the selling format down ly the sort of study that is done are not exactly in charge of publish¬ pat. before a major television commercial ing any more. The mechanism itself is made. Maybe that's where the pro¬ Now all this started out being a is in charge. Have we been secretly cess started. Commercials are de¬ discussion of the pragmatics of pub¬ conquered by an alien life-form? In signed to sell a product, not speak lishing from a science fictional per¬ a way we have, though this golem is to the mind or the spirit. They use spective, from an obsession with how strictly of our own creation. It's all the techniques of art but they things really work, but when you fin¬ called the corporate decision-making are not art because they have no ally do find out how the interface of process. artistic goal. But they taught net¬ commerce and art works, you do not Now in a general way, the corpor¬ work television how to design pro¬ end up in Kansas. ate decision-making process isn't duct to sell. Today, episodic tele¬ such a bad idea. Instead of Presi¬ vision, the form which utterly domin¬ Writer or editor, you can hardly dent Napoleon deciding everything ates the medium which utterly domin¬ be in the business of publishing with¬ out of his hip pocket, decisions are ates the mediasphere, is in effect out encountering moral confrontations made by committees which not even an endless series of conmercials for with the bottom line. The American the Chief Officer can override by an itself. publishing industry is moving towards act of will. This makes policy con¬ This is what it means to quite the Condition of Muzak with unseemly sistent and predictable. It allows literally produce a genre. When you rapidity. Is this because the people sophisticated market research to in¬ have the results of your study, you in charge are black-hearted villains put on production plans. It prevents then design a format around the tar¬ out to rot the brains of the nation? unsellable goods from being turned geted audience's psychological pro¬ Not necessarily. First of all, out on someone's whim. It minimizes file designed to sell the format it¬ where you do find a human being still fuck-ups. self as the product, and hire some in charge of making decisions, you This is all very well when you're writers to do episodes. will find at worst someone mindless¬ mass-producing cars or television ly serving the Sacred Bottom Line, sets or widgets. These are ethical¬ • and at best someone with a fancy tit¬ ly neutral technological artifacts. But when you're producing cultur¬ al artifacts that interact with the psyche of the consumer, the corporate decision-making process turns into Frankenstein's monster. format designed to push its particu¬ Because it is, after all, a dead lar buttons, just like a good TV com mechanism, a literal golem. It has mercial campaign. If you've figured no moral sense. It lacks a will. out the buttons right, the audience It just follows the program. It is will be led through a psychological¬ the program. ly pleasureable experience, and you

The corporate decision-making process is programmed to maximize profit and minimize loss, which is a Now that so much of publishing reasonable prime directive on which has become just another arm of the to base a business. The modem corp¬ media conglomerates, this sophistic¬ orate program has a huge data-feed ated bottomline approach to selling from marketing research. It also product has reached into the more has access to all the marketing ex¬ perts it needs. It has precise dem¬ ographic information on its targeted consumers and sophisticated means but sophisticated corporate approach with which to zap them. Therefore, to selling fiction is a lot more dutifully programmed creature that sound bottomlinewise than depending it is, it follows the prime directive on the inspiration of creative tal¬ with utter zeal, and uses all means ent for your fortune. If the psycho at its disposal to maximize the bot- logical profile of the targeted aud¬ ience indicates a libidinal charge The horrible thing about the on physical fear, give them physical corporate genrefication of American jeopardy. If they're fantasizing publishing is that no human villains violence, give them knife-flics and are responsible. The mechanism is gore. If it's power, give them mag¬ responsible because the mechanism is ic. If it's SSM, there are any numb in charge. But mechanism has no er of image systems which will allow sense of morality or esthetics. them to get off on it without rais¬ Right on the interface between com¬ ing them to guilty self-knowledge. merce and art, between utter bottom- Even if it's love, you can genrefy line commercial logic and the things the sequences into romance. of the spirit, we find not human be¬ As long as you lead the audience ings wrestling with the inherent am¬ by the backbrain along a skein of biguities but an inappropriate decis¬ events keyed to evoke primal emotion ion-making mechanism running out of like lust, hate, fear, terror, hor- control. publishing it was genrefied all the talking about the tradition of other same, if not entirely as a litera¬ than their own tribe. Like the Aca- ture, certainly in a marketing sense. demie Francaise, they become a self- When book publishers began doing defined elite genre. Everything not science fiction, they took their pack¬ included in the genre is excluded from aging motifs from the pulp magazines. the tribal sphere of discourse. In¬ Not surprising then that science fic¬ stead of a Rome to which all roads tion looked like a pulp genre, liter¬ lead, it becomes a stone fortress be- ally perceived as such on the racks. seiged by sub-literate barbarians. It becomes exclusionary. It seals Now in a properly functioning itself off. literate society, there would be a critical comnunity capable of in¬ As soon as it does so, of course, sight into such a malfunction and it becomes fair game for the market¬ having the cultural clout to get it ers. They know exactly how many cop¬ repaired. ies this genre will sell -- and the This is exactly how it is possible numbers ain't too terrific -- how for a sophisticated technological so¬ But there has been an even worse important it is in the balance sheet. ciety to develop huge cultural blind- malfunction in the overall critical spots in areas of central cultural community itself, far-ranging, multi¬ And so you have the present sit¬ concern. The more sophisticated and plex and not bom yesterday. uation. "Higher Criticism" written complex a culture gets, the more by critics other critics would like things tend to get turned over to Until the development of mass to grow up to be is ascended to bab¬ homeostatic decision-making mechan¬ printing, about the early 19th Cen¬ ble. It becomes more and more Tal¬ isms. Mechanisms which are program¬ tury say, there was obviously no mudic. It becomes more and more med to follow some simple prime dir¬ such thing as "popular literature". about its own theories and less and ective, but which are not programmed By modem standards, very few books less about any primary object of to judge its appropriateness. All were published, and in small print¬ discourse, which is to say a work of it takes is for one of these mechan¬ ings, and reading was entirely an fiction. It's published in obscure isms to be really badly placed, and elite taste. journals but nevertheless it's good enough to make its creators academic almost anything can happen against Then, of course, publishing be¬ superstars. all human reason. came a mass market business, maga¬ Which begins to explain how it zines were invented, literacy became Unfortunately, the fiction in was possible for the sphere of dis¬ general, and all sorts of genre form¬ this country that calls itself avant- course of science fiction to be con¬ ulas were concocted to appeal to the garde is published in tiny editions signed to purdah through a half-cen¬ "low brows". The "high brow" liter¬ for little or no advances by small tury of rapid evolutionary change ary culture, the writing and critic¬ presses, and usually never sees a during which it should have been a al community in England first con¬ mass market edition. Which is to central cultural concern. fronted with this cultural revolu¬ say it sells zilch. Which is not so tion, needed to develop some mechan¬ surprising, seeing as it's targeted When Gemsback genrefied "scient- ism for separating the wheat from the at a minuscule audience of mandarins. chaff. - ifiction" as a sub-genre of pulp ad¬ Of course, by now "mainstream ser¬ venture fiction, a fundamental mis¬ When books were relatively few ious literature” is quite a separate perception was perpetrated which has and far between, each one could be genre from "non-commercial serious dogged American science fiction ever an event in the little world of let¬ literature" and its demographics since. While a genre format can be ters, but when mass publishing came look a bit better. Here you have overlayed on science fiction to pro¬ in, it became necessary to apply the power-base of the New York Liter¬ duce a comnercial genre like westerns categorical exclusions from the ary Establishment, which is to say or romances or gothics, science fic¬ sphere of critical attention, or be the commercial high-brow critics and tion cannot be defined by a format. swamped by the slush-pile. Thus the their favored writers. You can sell Westerns and historical genres are pragmatic ancestors of Leavis' ossif¬ books in this genre. The critics are defined by their settings. Detect¬ ied Great Tradition and the present- still reviewing books. They're ex- ive fiction is defined by its plot. day mandarinate of letters. cerptable for good jacket quotes. Modem romances are defined by their There are publications well-targeted For of course, the moment "high archetypal character relationships. to the audience in which to buy ad brow literature" self-consciously space. PR access to the electronic But science fiction cannot be split itself off from the genres of media is relatively good. You can defined along any of these paramet¬ "low brow" commercial literature, it even break a best-seller out of this ers. It isn't a place, it isn't a was on the way to genrefying itself. time, it isn't a plot, it isn't its genre from time to time. characters. It is inherently dif¬ Hasn't it already identified ferent from everything else that has the targeted market and defined its What is lacking in all this, of become genrefied. It confuses the parameters? Hadn't it already creat¬ course, is any critical overview of mechanism. It does not compute. ed a visible influence establishment the literary culture entire. Where to be the object of PR courtship? a culture lacks a critical overview, Science fiction never really fit¬ For a long time now, of course, uncritical and unselfconscious mech¬ ted its genre parameters because no anisms will begin to control more genre parameters could define it. publishers have known where to adver¬ tise "high brow lit", how much to and more decision-making processes. It never really belonged as a sub- And of course, the more decision- genre of boys' pulp adventure. Prior spend on it, how many books you can to Gemsback, science fiction exist¬ expect to sell and the politics of ed like any other novel. Twain and securing reviews in the right places. Shelley and Wells and Verne. Certain¬ ly not enough people for a real SFWA When a group of writers and crit¬ neu) Releases , f party. ics start talking about a "Great Trad¬ ition", it is not likely they are But since science fiction had entered the arena of commercial genre 12 rvss making is given over to unselfcons¬ cious processes, the less chance there is for a critical overview to develop. Instead, blind spots develop. Science fiction is removed from the sphere of cultural discourse. High¬ er criticism loses contact with real¬ ity. Academe loses contact with creative artists. Publishers lose control of their distribution. Areas of occlusion spread. A generation gap opens up. "Science" and "feel¬ ing" become dichotomized. No one seems to know how to make the econ¬ omic mechanism work. Popular cul¬ ture visibly declines into episodic Muzak. Alienation increases. Crime increases. New religions spring up. Things fall apart, the Center cannot hold. Because there is nothing at the sively evolving technology and true- ciety alert to possible pits in the Center. No critical overview. No ly integrated them into their cul¬ road up ahead. viewpoint that transcends the mechan¬ tures . ism. Only a steadily-increasing But even more central a cultural mindless entropy, as a civilization's "Western civilization" is real¬ vacuum is the progressive evolution¬ destiny is taken out of the hand of ly "technological civilization", not ary overview that should be science the human spirit and given over to a geographically-distributed culture fiction's higher cultural function: decision-making social mechanisms. but the current dominant stage of namely to evoke visionary possible overall human evolution. futures towards which the spirit This of course, has happened to could aspire, visions at least theor¬ almost all civilizations thus far to If we are lucky, it will prove etically capable of being realized. emerge on the planet Earth. All pre¬ to be an evolutionary step further industrial civilizations achieved towards planetary and transplanetary After all, where else are we go¬ long-term stability by multiplying civilization adapted to mastery of ing to get visionary images of our their homeostatic decision-making the evolutionary processes themselves evolving possible futures? If sci¬ ence fiction isn't performing this mechanisms to the point where even If we are really too far gone the inner life of the individual social function, then fiction isn't, along our current vector as some period. was ritualized by his role in a soc¬ would contend, we could go the way ial mechanism programmed with theo¬ of Romans, Manchus, Aztecs and dino¬ And what we are left with are cratic absolutes. saurs. the statistical bureaucratic least- The stability of perfect adapta¬ surprise images of the futurologists, tion to an historical ecological H H » devoid of the art that connects pre¬ niche. diction to the life of the spirit. Or images from the past served up by But when the historical environ¬ Just like a science fictional prophets and preachers and gurus, ment changes, ancient civilizations perspective to pursue an obsession filled with concern for the things that have existed in sublime stabil¬ with how things really work into a of the spirit, but devoid of a con¬ ity for centuries are overrun by in¬ doomsday scenario! nection to the possibility of ongo¬ dustrial man. That's why they were ing progressive evolution. Or the pre-industrial civilizations, and future strictly as hardware from the But science fiction is or should that's what "post-industrial civili¬ frontiers of technology. be another overview beyond the soci¬ zation", should we sink to that state, al mechanism, another attempt to Science fiction really is a uni¬ will be like. ruthlessly elucidate how things real¬ que perspective on the future, in Without overviews that look be¬ ly work. And when it adopts the the sense that nothing else can per¬ yond the mechanism, without conscious doomsday mode, the intent is to create form its higher function. It is, awareness of culture creating itself, a self-cancelling prophecy. Whether ideally, fictional art informed by without a progressive evolutionary that prophecy be of totalitarian the visionary scientific spirit, a perspective, a civilization can hard¬ thought-control, nuclear destruction, poetry of imagery derived from the ly be expected to evolve progressive¬ a new dark age or the decline of in¬ imagination but constrained by the ly. The scientific method is such telligent and idealistically coninit- best available knowledge of how an overview, and what we sometimes ted publishing. In a weird way, the things really work. call "western civilization" was not doomsday scenarios are relentlessly As such, of course, it isn't a the only one to evolve it. But "west¬ progressive -- the people who write perspective on the future, but a mul¬ ern civilization" was the only one to them are proceeding from the assump¬ tiplicity of perspectives on a nult- use its knowledge of hew things work tion that pitfalls in the road ahead iplicity of futures. Aside from to create an exponentially-evolving can be avoided if we can envision anything else, it redefines the re¬ technology. Indeed, "western civil¬ them. lationship of the individual psyche ization", including as it does pieces Indeed, one of the cultural func¬ to the future by creating a concept of Africa, the Middle East, the Sov¬ tions science fiction should have of the future as something we create iet Union and Japan ---and we gener¬ been performing more centrally all by our actions in the present, as ally understand what we mean when we along is that of generating self¬ something we have a say in choosing, say that -- consists precisely of cancelling prophecies, of keeping so- as an ongoing upwardly consciously those nations which have acquired evolving process, as destiny rather sophisticated science and progres¬ 13 than fate. avant-garde became foundation mendi¬ usual laggardly fashion, is beginning cants and the "serious novel" became to learn from the grass roots. Even a commercially endangered species, though science fiction had been con¬ science fiction survived as a liter¬ fined to a genre ghetto, and not with¬ ature supported entirely by the pro¬ out detrimental effects on the qual¬ ceeds of sales to readers. If this ity and seriousness of the literature has always been a two-edged sword, itself, its inherent sphere of dis¬ it has also always meant that a need course was becoming more and more cen¬ for such a literature has always been tral to the problems of society, and felt by more than enough readers to the general public consciousness was support its existence. inevitably developing a hunger for something like science fiction in its Since I started writing the intellectual center. Even if it did STAYIN' ALIVE column for LOCUS, of not know yet that something existed course, the publishing industry has gone well into the process of genre- to feed it. fying everything else the way it has In other words, up until, say, always genrefied science fiction. This is a perspective that is STAR WARS, there were many people At the same time, science fiction's not addressed by fantasy or the "con¬ who would have had an itch scratched market share was being pushed up by temporary novel" or any other form by science fiction who barely under¬ the grass roots. It became noticed. of fiction except science fiction. stood what it was, to whom it was It became bigger business. It be¬ Because this perspective is a func¬ somehow inaccessible. came enmeshed in the corporate de¬ tional definition of science fiction cision-making process. itself. What made science fiction inac¬ cessible to the general reading pub¬ What will happen next? Well, for Of course science fiction itself lic? Well, of course, the sleazoid one thing, we're seeing the emergence is full of the opposite; dire warn¬ packaging didn't exactly attract an of more than one sf genre. In other ings of inevitable human surrender to intellectually upscale audience, words, the total market has now be¬ blind ritual, of robots or computers since they were not part of the demo¬ come big enough to carve up into taking over, of the degeneration of graphic slice at whom the stuff was more finely-tuned demographic slices. civilization, of the ultimate des¬ commercially targeted. Which in turn cent to cultural hive-mind where did not have a positive effect on the On one level, a genrefied market autonomous human consciousness no ambition of the writing. Of course designed to key into adolescent pow¬ longer exists. there was always a sophisticated aud¬ er fantasies marketed towards the ience of some size who recognized What science fiction really is demographic perception of the STAR what was going on behind the packag¬ all about in the end is both sides TREK and STAR WARS generations. ing. And so, ambitious science fic¬ of the coin, the struggle within our Cti another level, science fic¬ tion novels tended to be written for own nature, the dialectics of human tion as usual for what is perceived destiny. this perceived reader, someone who as the core audience by the industry already knew the language and imagery. When these matters are discussed even today -- the science fiction This, in a way, encouraged some only within a minor genre literature subculture. fine novels to be written, since they they might as well not be considered And on a third level, that feat could in effect be written for people at all as far as the society at of prestidigitation, the mainstream who knew as much as the writer. There large is concerned. The results we science fiction novel. is something to be said for the com¬ see all around us -- a society that paction achievable by use of a com¬ seems unable to form a positive image The what? plex system of stylized imagery shar¬ of an achievable progressive evolu¬ The mainstream science fiction ed with the readership. tionary future, or at least not one novel. "Mainstream" now being de¬ in sync enough with the way things But of course, to those who don't fined entirely by the bottom line. really work to be viable as a pos¬ speak the secret language, it's all Mainstream meaning an "A" book with sible future. A society on the very about as accessible as the Mayan Co¬ A marketing and "genre" meaning a B threshold of an interplanetary age dex. book with B marketing. When every¬ which cannot make a planetary economy thing becomes a genre, the only mean¬ The Space Program, STAR TREK, and work. A society which has lost its ingful genre distinctions are the then STAR WARS broke the secret code. confidence in social and technologi¬ numbers. Just as I once defined When men were really going to the cal evolution, which is beginning to science fiction as "anything publish¬ Moon with comuentary by Walter Cronk- lose the distinction between science ed as science fiction", so do indust¬ eit, all the space imagery of science and magic, and which is beginning to ry parameters new define "mainstream" fiction stopped being proof of crack- consider reason itself as suspect. as anything published as an A book. pottery and started looking like pro¬ phecy. STAR TREK in a way was a work But science fiction, ghettoized RIDDLEY WALKER, for example, was of genius. For the first time, some¬ though it be, still exists, and with mainstream in boards, but won’t make one invented a science fiction genre a strange grass-roots vitality. No it as an A book in paperback. CHILD¬ format targeted at a mass audience. one supports it with grants. Science REN OF DUNE became a best seller fiction writers for the most part without real A book treatment, a In its three years of lousy first-run don't get to ride the literary lec¬ grass-roots effect. But GOD B1PER0R ratings, an average of 20 million ture circuit or do the Johnny Carson OF DUNE, even with its pulp title people saw each episode. Over the show. National publications don't and hardcore science fiction content, years, probably every man, woman and shower science fiction with public¬ was no surprise best seller; it was child in the United States has become ity. The Literary Establishment ig¬ marketed as an A book and became a familiar with the Starship Enterprise, nores it. Yet there it is, with some¬ mainstream best seller according to its Vulcan First Officer and its thing like 15% of the fiction market. expectations. somewhat paranoid crew. It has ent¬ ered public folklore. Maybe people aren't as dumb as What is beginning to happen is blind social mechanisms. Maybe they that the publishing industry, in its are not even as dumb as their demo¬ And it brought science, fiction graphic profiles. While the elite 14 imagery with it. It made all that space stuff ac¬ For one thing, the top end is cut The cross-breeding of science cessible. And George Lucas cashed in off. fiction and fantasy has evolved a powerful genre fornula with deep big. You knew it from the moment he Daring the 1970s Science Fiction psychological attraction for a larg¬ started the film with "Once upon a Boom, we saw some science fiction er audience than ever before, partic¬ time in a galaxy far, far away ..." novels sell big within the genre. ularly among adolescents trying to He wasn't wasting any time establish¬ I think we're going to see less of develop positive self-images in a ing science fiction imagery for a that. As soon as publishers conceive society in deep crisis. Once again supposedly uninitiated mass audience; of a science fiction novel as having George Lucas had it right. By mar¬ there you were right in the middle of mainstream demographics, they will rying hardware to the mystical Force, it before the first shot. pull it from the regular genre sci¬ he simulated the longed-for fusion ence fiction line with its genre The publishing industry, being of science and spirit, and in a man¬ packaging and package it as a main¬ not nearly as capital-intensive as ner which zeroed right in on the na¬ stream science fiction novel to be film-making and therefore not as para- tion's frustrated adolescent power- marketed accordingly. noidly attuned to the latest Nielsens fantasies. has taken longer to realize that 'sf A genre logo on a science fiction But what he created was not art; imagery is no longer inaccessible to novel will place a ceiling on its by his own insistence, it was "en¬ a mass audience. sales. A genre publishing program tertainment". STAR WARS perfected will ultimately lose the science fic¬ But you don't have to be a genius and updated the old genre formula, tion novels it would most like to to finally realize that if a science fusing "science fiction" with "fan¬ publish, at least in terms of its fiction movie can be the biggest tasy" to create the "sF' or "science bottom line. The books that should grosser of all time, there are more fantasy" format. And the elements be leading its line will be published than enough demographics for a very of the mythos were as ruthlessly ar¬ on other lists within the same house. large national best-seller which does ranged along marketing parameters as A strong genre package becomes its not require tens of millions of cus¬ the Iron Dream that Hitler sold to own self-defined upper limit. tomers . Germany. The fabulous Carl Sagan deal Paradoxically, though, there is The adolescent ingenue in all of puts the seal on the mainstream sf the possibility of applying a varia¬ us who is the secret hero of history, A-book bestseller. $2 million. $1 tion of the overall strategy to sur¬ who will finally stand revealed as million in pre-sold foreign rights. vival at a high level within the the darling of destiny. Lots of lit¬ A movie deal. All on an outline. genre. Because a mass audience for erally faceless enemies to slay along Who can deny that this is the major mainstream science fiction has come the way, no more subject to our human leagues? into being, it doesn't necessarily sympathies than a Kraut or a Dink or Now a lot of people grumble that mean that the audience for genre sf a Slope. Wonderful battlescenes to Sagan could only make such a deal has shrunk. Far from it. for an unwritten first novel because he was already a big-time celebrity with ready access to the creme de la creme of media PR. And of course that's all true. But the point is, that there's noth¬ ing very unusual about it. This is the way block-buster best sellers come into being. The point is that all this raz¬ zle-dazzle and moola is not precluded. for a science fiction novel. A nov¬ el about first contact with intelli¬ gent aliens, yet.

So from here on in, we're going to have A science fiction novels and B science fiction novels. Just as every genre of the mainstream mosaic now has its A and B books. Now in the nature of things, there's probably room for no more than half a dozen viable A mainstream science fiction novels a year. And by the nature of things, those who know how to do these deals or who have best-seller credits rather than genre credits are going to get the lion's share. At least until more science fiction writers receive a higher (and lower) education in how things really work in the marketplace And even then, there still aren't that many chances to break the bank. So, like most other fiction writ¬ ers, science fiction writers are go¬ ing to have to contend with genrefied publishing. It's a new game now.

big bucks for the corporation makes choices affect the bottom line. In big bucks for the writer in the usual a healthy society, this is an exquis¬ proportion. itely balanced feedback relationship of satisfying ambiguity and complex¬ Yet since by the very nature of ity. genre publishing there are a large number of what are considered inter¬ When the bottom line exercises changeable books published every overweaning domination, the corporate month, written for low advances and mechanism dominates art, and pres¬ not promoted, less attention is paid sures it down towards the lowest-com¬ by the corporate decision-making pro¬ mon- format denominators. First the cess to what is really inside their literature devolves under negative interchangeable covers. It's still evolutionary pressure, and then the highly possible to get non-format sf flop rate soars (as in new TV form¬ published. It's also still possible ats) , because the mechanism is not to publish your taste. programned to factor in abstracts like "quality". Which, however, The question facing all writers sometimes does come home to roost on of fiction in the 1980s will be how the balance sheet in its own sweet to interface with the new realities time nevertheless. of genrefied corporate publishing. Strategic decisions will have to be Should art absolute ever win a TEN YEARS AGO IN SCIENCE FICTION — made, but also esthetic and moral total victory over commerce to the SUMMER, 1972 ones, and they won't be easy. point where a mode of fiction becomes entirely a dialogue among writers BY ROBERT SABELLA A science fiction writer, given and critics in the absence of a dem- talent, will have three options: ographically viable audience as re¬ The neverendipg game of musical to attempt the mainstream science flected by sales, it's almost by de¬ editors continued with Betty Ballan- fiction novel, to fulfill the genre finition out of business, as witness tine leaving Ballantine Books to do format or to write what you want to the plight of the "avant-garde". freelance editing, Ellen Asher leav¬ write for its own sake and then do ing New American Library and Freder- what you can on the market. ik Pohl quitting Ace Books because When creative artists can main¬ In reality, of course, we will of dissatisfaction with their pay¬ tain creative control of their own ments to authors. New editors in¬ all be doing mixtures of all three, work and still make a living within cluded Olga Vezeris at The Science in the name of survival, art or something like economically viable riches. Fiction Book Club, David Harris at parameters, when the artistic impulse Dell -- another in their long line Publishers, and particularly ed¬ and the overall bottom line can be of editors vowing to "revitalize the itors will also face a similar de¬ balanced against each other by SF program" -- and Charles Platt at cision every time they publish a people rather than by homeostatic Avon. list. In the best of all worlds mechanisms, you can then at least The Hugo Awards for 1971 includ¬ according to writers, editors would have some kind of shotgun marriage always buy what is closest to their of commerce and art in which both ed TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO by hearts and then cause the house to are forced to comprehend that there Philip Jose Farmer as Best Novel, "The Queen of Air and Darkness" by sell it like hotcakes. In the best are times when both interests must Poul Anderson as Best Novella, "In¬ of all worlds according to the cor¬ be served. constant Moon" by Larry Niven as porate decision-making process, prof¬ This is a spirit that is fast Best Short Story and A CLOCKWORK it is maximized, period, and by the disappearing from the world of fic¬ ORANGE as Best Dramatic Presentation. best available means. tion publishing. But it is a spirit which has not yet expired within Important stories published in¬ In the real world, the way things what still remains a science fiction cluded Joe Haldeman's "Hero" which really work is that neither the ideal comnunity. Ghetto survivors cannot would be nominated for a Hugo Award world of the writer nor the cold help but have street smarts. And and eventually become part of THE equations of the balance sheet can visionary dreamers can learn how to FOREVER WAR. GALAXY serialized Rob¬ exist in isolation from each other. do business. And have been known ert Silverberg's DYING INSIDE and Any more than the things of the spir¬ to kick ass. Ballantine Books published Frederik it can exist in isolation from the Pohl's THE GOLD AT THE STARBCW'S END universe of mass and energy. With¬ From a science fictional perspec¬ which marked his return to freelance out some attention to the balance tive, that's how things really work. writing in a big way indeed. sheet, we have the present commercial¬ The price of liberty is taking care ly non-viable avant-garde, all but of business, and the business of pub¬ invisible, and not all of it is empty lishing needs human spirits at the pretension. Without some idealistic helm. We still retain that, however intent, the ratings go down after uncertainly, in the sf realm. If we the first year or two and the flop look unflinchingly at what's happen¬ rate increases. At present the flop ing to writers in general, we may rate is over 501 in the publishing realize we still have a handhold on industry, a rate of failure which something precious worth preserving. seems to be accepted as normal at a Worth making certain economic com¬ time when the industry is singing promises for. the blues. But not at the expense of stayin' If you address the dialectic of alive. art and conmerce from a science fic¬ tional viewpoint, the way things real ly work is that economic choices in¬ evitably have artistic and social consequences, and esthetic and moral 17 AND THEN I SAW....

GHOST STORY (r) focussed on four old men who as youths killed a young woman mostly by accident and dumped her body in a local lake. Lo, fifty years later they are overcome with terrors and guilts and "visitations" and die off one by one until at last the crime is uncovered and the corpse/ghost, at last at peace, is taken from the lake and liquifies/putrefies before our very eyes. Given Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Fred Astaire and John Houseman as the oldsters, the movie should have been better. It wasn't primarily because of the one-note roles and the simple sto¬ peace is very easy to believe; a SWORD AND SORCERER (r) ry- successful sculptor and painter, a promises much Worth seeing, though, on cable, man in love with life and living, with a fine crypt scene in the be¬ or as part of a low-price double- triple feature at a theater. an auto wreck has made of him a ginning, but the sorcery aspects of mind without a body—and the tor¬ the film fade away and the movie ture is too much to bear. becomes another cheap-jack ho-hum Except to my mind he was bearing revenge-and-overthrow-the-evil-king CAT PEOPLE (R) asks too much of its up very well with all those wise¬ plot with tedious and incredible audience: that in ancient times, by cracks, jokes and philosophical forays into the king's castle. supernatural means, panthers mated observations. There is a good special-effects with native women in Africa and The problem with the movie display at the end as a man turns produced children who could change (and probably the play) is that into a serpent creature. from human to cat (usually against the lead's depression and despair The beginning and end of the their will) and who can only mate and emotional agony are not starkly film are good, evil sorcery; the with others of their kind. presented and driven hone. The long middle is dull swordplay, in author/screenwriter/producers felt spite of the hero's use of a "magic" And now, in modem New Orleans a need, I presume, to take the curse sword which has three blades a brother (Malcolm McDowell) and a off the terrible existence of the sister (Natasia Kinski) are forced which he can launch at an attacker man with wit and humor. by circumstances and their cat na¬ by pressing a button in the hilt. I believed Dreyfus was totally tures to mate---but against her will as she fights knowledge of paralyzed, but not that that mind her parentage and special powers. wanted to end. There wasn't enough Add a romance with the local bitterness and cruelty and pain. zookeeper (John Heard) and some EYE OF THE NEEDLE (r) excellent mood photography, music is a World and special effects showing/indicat¬ War II spy story set in England. ing the Change from human-to-cat, Donald Southerland plays the clev¬ RICHARD PRYOR LIVE ON SUNSET STRIP and you have a gripping film. er, intelligent, ruthless German Natasia is nude often and long, is a filmed comedy concert which spy. and her proud, slim, muscle-lean is funny, but not nearly as funny Excellent acting, direction, body gives one the feeling that as his first comedy concert film. pacing, etc. A gripping story. by God there is a big cat in His constant use of four-letter Kate Nelligan [I'm not sure how some there waiting to take over. She words gets tiring. Most of it is of these names are spelled] as the moves with catlike grace. gratuitous and used to trigger em¬ vulnerable wife of a crippled RAF This is supernatural fantasy barrassed laughter from his middle- flyer is superb. There are some and difficult to swallow. But class white audiences. graphic lovemaking scenes. watchable.

DIVINE MADNESS (r) is a Bette Mid- WHOSE LIFE IS IT, ANYWAY? (r) dler concert---songs, fun, sketches, FIGHTING BACK (r) is made credible by Richard Drey¬ jokes. She's the new, more-talented is almost stun¬ fus' ability to convince you that Mae West. I'd like to see this ningly honest in its racism and again. he really is totally paralyzed class hatreds, cultural clashes. from the neck down. From there his An Italian neighborhood is desire to be allowed to die in 18 being run down and shot up by black crime, dope, prostitution, vandals. the thirties, is inveigled into pos¬ EVIL UNDER THE SUN (pg) One Italian deli-owner organiz¬ ing as a gay young man who is pretend¬ es a citizen patrol and doesn't back ing to be a woman. elegant, well-structured and off when violence escalates. Robert Preston, ever delicious, as well-mounted Agatha Christie murder In the end after killing and a swishy queen, is her manager. mystery, with Peter Ustinov playing beatings, the neighborhood park She becomes a hit of Paris and is her detective (a Frenchman--Belgian? is cleaned up and cleaned out, soon making a great deal of money --whose name I cannot remember or the local kingpin pimp is blown for herself and Preston, when she spell) with just the right touch of away, and all's right with the meets and is strongly attracted to vanity and compassion and integrity. world. a visiting mobster played perfect¬ Diana Rigg is fine as the bitch There is a token black among the ly by James Gamer. Broadway star who is murdered, Roddy Good Guys. Lip sendee is paid to A comedy of errors, sexes, pre¬ McDowell is fine in his usual malic¬ the lip-service law-n-order dogma conceptions and misconceptions. A ious/peevish style, and James Mason of the police. The real message fine supporting cast. Leslie .Anne is almost invisible as a soured, desp¬ is vigil ant ism-is - the-only-real- Warren is particularly great in every erate Broadway producer. Maggie aspect as Gamer's doxy. Smith is fine as the resort owner Tom Skerrit (of ALIEN) is the in whose hotel (and island) the tough, don't-scare hero. murder mystery takes place. The movie has a kind of raw, Kell done. Well done. honest realism and some hilarious MONTENEGRO (x) ribald humor. shows Susan An- spach as a going-crazy houswife in Sweden who runs off to live DEATH TRAP (r) PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (PG) for a few days among a low-class is a quality murder is set in ensemble of gypsies who run a low- story with some clever, surprising the Impression thirties and is an down bar and who put on sex/strip twists and turns. As a failing odd mixture of song, dance and drama. shows for their patrons. playwright, Michael Caine is murder¬ Steve Martin plays a selfish, adult¬ There is startling humor, ously fine, and as his special erous salesman who seduces a school startling ribaldry, some nudity, friend and cohort (as well as look- teacher (Bernadette Peters) and honest talk—and murder. out-for-#l-gaymate) Christopher abandons her to her fate. She The last scene will surprise Reeve is shown as a very' good actor turns to prostitution, meets him you. It's a surprising, memorable as well as a big, handsome hunk. Poor Dyan Cannon, the wife/vic¬ It's a sordid, depressing sto¬ tim, is killed off too soon; she's ry with no sympathetic character always easy to watch and in this in it at all—except for the blind BLOOD WEDDING short role shows a great acting girl who is murdered. is a filming of what range. Steve Martin dances and sings might be described as an opera per¬ I didn't like the ending: it's formed solely by dance—modem okay. Some fine production numbers asking too much that the movie was and I suppose satire of the Musical Flamenco dance with pantomime. The a play all along, or that the psy¬ format cliches, but the movie cheats story is of adultery' and a knife chic neighbor woman could be a fine fight in the name of revenge and by trying to play it straight while playwright, too, given her broken honor. injecting itself with mockery now English. and then. Everyone was high on it The dance troupe are shown get¬ except the audiences. ting ready for the performance, and then going through a complete dress rehearsal. CONAN THE BARBARIAN (r) was dis¬ VICTOR/VICTORIA (r) f It's an extraordinary film and extraordinarily effective as drama. appointing to me. I imagine Conan farce in which a starving, desperate The dancer-actors ard actresses are to be leaner, smarter, with humor singer (Julie Andrews) in Paris, in exceptionally talented and skilled. and a cunning mind. In this film I got a Conan more beefy, dumb, in¬ articulate and brutish than I want. I also got a plodding story of revenge again. I got a lot of end¬ less traveling across barren lands. I got lots of gore, though, well done, and I got bizarre religion, exotic places, temples, sorcery, and James Earl Jones as a serpen¬ tine sorcerer/religious leader who had killed Conan's parents and sold the boy into slavery. I got some heroic, colorful battle scenes. But Arnold Schwarzenegger is, at least in this first Conan film, too stolid, too animalistic, too lousy an actor, too clumsy with English. The director, John Milius, seems to have been equally clumsy in his decisions concerning scene structure and linkages. The movie doesn't flow---it staggers. It is at once too serious and too ludicrous to take seriously. INTERVIEW

AKE Yoy VOuJ oR, anne McCaffrey MAve YOU EYSP 5££N, A n^CENTAL-

The month of April 1926 saw two significant science fiction births. It was the month when Hugo Gemsback brought out the first issue of AMAZ¬ ING STORIES, the very first magazine devoted to science fiction -- an e- vent which marks the appearance of science fiction as a separate and SFF;: I ’ d like to start at the begin¬ McCAFFREY: Yes, ISLANDIA. (Laughs) distinct literary genre. It was al¬ ning by asking how you got into writ¬ I discovered it when I was fourteen. so the month in which American auth¬ ing science fiction. Did you read it It opened a whole new world. I had or Anne McCaffrey was bom. when you were young? been reading some other utopian nov¬ els -- I also read them for my major As a girl, Anne McCaffrey gave McCAFFREY: 1 read it:> but it: was in college -- but they were just uto¬ up writing in favour of opera and not called science fiction then, you pian, not science fiction. In the the theatre. In the 1950s she tried know. (Laughs.) circles in which I moved as a young writing again and had two stories girl science fiction was not recog¬ printed in United States magazines. SFR: But some of it was ... nised, although my mother had, as I Her first novel, RESTOREE, was pub¬ said, loved A. Merritt's stories. I lished in 1967, but it was her sec¬ McCAFFREY: Some °f was 311(1 is read most of Merritt when I was in ond book, DRAGONFLIGHT, published in now, but not so much in the thirties my early teens, as well as Edgar Rice 1968, which really put her name on when I started reading A. Merritt. Burroughs and Anthony Hope's RUPERT the science fiction map. (Two of its In fact, my mother gave me a copy of OF HENTZAU and IKE PRISONER OF ZENDA. constituent parts won awards: A Hu¬ ARGOSY magazine with THE SHIP OF ISH- So I always tended towards that ro¬ go for "Weyr Search" and a Nebula for TAR in it. Now, before that I had mantic end of fiction. "Dragonrider”.) Other dragon novels been brought up on Kipling -- the set on the planet Pern followed at marvellous Indian stories. So I'd SFR: You mean you liked the romant¬ intervals. So far there have been sort of been prepared for science ic element and you also feel it in¬ DRAGONQUEST (1971, DRAGONSONG (1976), fiction. And I discovered Edgar Rice fluenced what you came to write? DRAGONSINGER (1977), THE WHITE DRAG¬ Burroughs for myself. Tarzan and ON (1978) and DRAGONDRUMS (1979). also the John Carter series, which I McCAFFREY: It must have done. She has had several other science much preferred. To this day, when fiction books published, notably THE I reread Edgar Rice Burroughs, I SFR: Do you still find the time to SHIP WHO SANG (1969) and TO RIDE PEG¬ think of oranges, because as a small read science fiction by other writ- ASUS (1973), as well as two antholo¬ girl I'd sit on my back porch with a gies and three romances. These days plate of oranges all cut up into sec¬ she lives in Ireland (in a house cal¬ tions so that I could eat them while McCAFFREY: You have to, if you're led Dragonhold) and spends most of I was reading and go through what writing it. (laughs) her spare time raising and training was available of the John Carter horses. - series. SFR: Well, that's not what every¬ body else says. Some science fic¬ On the third of April, 1982 she What I did not realise was that tion writers say no, they very rare¬ flew over to England for the day to Edgar Rice Burroughs was a war cor¬ ly read a science fiction novel by sign copies of her new novel, THE respondent in the Pacific Ocean at anyone else. CRYSTAL SINGER (Severn House, L6.95) the time I was eating oranges and at Birmingham's Andromeda Bookshop. reading his books. It was with a After signing her name hundreds of great sense of shock that I realised times throughout the afternoon (while later that he had died somewhere in McCAFFREY: I think you go through simultaneously chatting with some of between that point and my recognition periods where you're searching for different things from science fic¬ her many fans) she graciously agreed of science fiction. tion. When I started reading science to be interviewed. fiction, knowing it was science fic¬ SFR: Which authors have most in¬ Anne has silver-grey hair, and fluenced your own writing? tion, in 1950, I was hungry for sci¬ she was looking extremely elegant in ence fiction. In the fifties, my a full-length coat of grey suede. Kipling, Austin Tappan god, I couldn't wait, you know? I She is a cheerful extrovert, very McCAFFREY: Wright ... was clamouring for it. Where's the friendly and forthcoming on the sub¬ next book? And there wasn't enough ject of her life and work. to satisfy my desire. That's when I SFR: Ah, ISLANDIA. started writing it. And then in the sixties science fiction was building. It was being carefully built, let us say, by the Milford Science Fiction Conferences which Damon Knight, Judy Merril and Kate Wilhelm took on. CONDUCTED BY CHRIS MORGAN They wanted to improve the product, and they succeeded beyond their mod- SFR; So do you know that your new taken out when I put the novel to- est ambitions of the time. I got in story or new book is good? gether, so you're not missing any- in the late fifties, early sixties. thing. But I had only intended that Damon Knight always said that sci- McCAFFREY: I never do! (Shakes one story, ence fiction went in twelve-year cy- head emphatically; laughs.) Once I've cles, and perhaps he's right. STAR got it down I think, oh, what have I SFR: Then at what stage did you TREK gave it a tremendous impetus in said now? Oh, God, it's going to think again and continue the series? the mid-to-late sixties and then the come out in print! Oh, agony, agony, men landing on the Moon in '69 made agony! And then, you know, about McCAFFREY: Now, John Campbell -- you another tremendous impact, and people two or three years later I reread can't imagine this because you've got began to think they could take their something and I think, hey, that's to see John Campbell with his ciga- science fiction books out of the not bad. Hey, what's coming next? rette in its holder, gesturing at brown paper covers and out of the Then I know I've done it right. you. You've got to get the voice, closets and start reading it in pub- But it takes that time not of gesta- and you've got to see crew-cut John lie. Since then it hasn't looked tion, but of aging, like wine. There Campbell sitting opposite you, saying back. are one or two stories I wish now I (assumes deep male voice), "Now, Anne, hadn't allowed in print, but writers I think you've got some very fertile SFR: Did you go to those early get pressures put on them and it's material here. I would like to see Milford conferences? very difficult to resist. you develop this. You set up a sit¬ uation and I want to see -- puff, puff McCAFFREY: ®y golly> 1 did- SFR: Have you attended any of these " those dragonriders fighting Thread." writers' meetings lately? SFR: Did you find them useful? So at top speetj i wrote the Did you learn your craft of writing McCAFFREY: I haven't been to a Mil- story "Dragonflight", and he said, at them or were you already an es- ford conference since, oh, 1975 or "Anne, you haven't ,told me anything tablished writer when you first went 1976. I'ts mainly been they've been I didn't know. This is a good bridg- to them? at awkward times for me, and also the ing material, but it's not telling fact that I finally got a story that the story." Then I wrote "Black McCAFFREY: No, I wasn't establish- most 0f the Milford conference liked Dust" and he said (assumes Campbell ed when I first went to one. I was and I decided to quit then. (Laughs) voice again), "Yes, but you haven't very pregnant with my daughter, George shown me the riders actually contend- anne. Judy Merril invited me up to When you wrote "Weyr Search", ing with Thread, and you haven't Milford. And I went up, great with the very first dragon story, did you solved their problem. There are only child, and met, to my eternal delight, have any plans for a series of books? 192 dragons, in one weyr, and you say Rosel George Brown and Kate Wilhelm. there were six weyrs. What happened We were all, shall we say, freshmen McCAFFREY: No, no! (Shrieks in pro- to the other five?" at the same time. And you learn by test.) I wrote a short story about observing, I think, as much as by dragons, period. You know? In fact, SFR: Were these things that you'd hearing your stories criticised. I i almost didn't write it, because I thought of? am not a critical writer. I'm not had gotten the first 25 to 30 pages too good in a conference situation done, and then I wasn't sure when I McCAFFREY: No! (Shrieks; covers myself, because I'n not analytical reread it whether it was any good at head with hands.) He was pointing enough. It was listening to what all. So I took it up to Virginia out the weak links. So he made me other people had to say that helped Kidd, my agent, and asked her to read write the part "Dragonrider", the me, not so much the criticism of my it. She said, "Oh, Anne, please fin- two-parter in ANALOG, and pushed me story. Later I was asked to be chair- ish it", so I went back to the type- on. I think I wrote the second person of the English Milford confer- writer after a lapse of about two 20,000 words in about a week, which ences because I was a Hugo and Neb- months and finished what became is the biggest output I've ever done, ula winner and I was a well-known "Weyr Search". Now, it was an incon- With managing three kids and a hus- author. Jim Blish was physically venient length at 28,000 words, and band at the same time it was a bit not up to being chairperson, so I John W. Campbell, the editor of ANALOG much. But I did it. He published was asked to take over, which I did asked me to edit out about 8,000 words that as "Dragonrider", then Betty for four years. When I submitted a because he felt it should be in one Ballantine bought the four sections, story which most of the conferrees part rather than two. So I did edit including "Dragonflight", which John liked, I decided that's it, I'll quit it, but I put back in all that I had had rejected, and that became the while I'm ahead. (Laughs) Otherwise, most of my stories were ripped into tiny shreds. I must say they were better for dissection, because out of them came such things as "To Ride Pegasus" and "Crystal Singer". And some of my other good ideas were ex¬ panded and assisted by the criticism I received at Milford conferences. It's a daunting experience, and I do not recommend it for just any young writer. It can be destroying to hear your own work criticised. You come out of the session in which your story is being alalysed into little shreds and you head for Idle nearest bottle of booze. After a while you do leam to be self-critical, but not self-destructive.

21 novel DRAGONFLIGHT. Then Betty and ed, and I was. The genesis of that SFR: My point is that I was disap¬ John wanted me to write further about was that Roger Elwood, the mad anth¬ pointed when I read DRAGONSONG be¬ the world of Pem and I did a first ologist, had asked me to do another cause I was hoping it would be the draft of DRAGONQUEST. I sent it to young protagonist in a book and I had same as DRAGONFLIGHT and DRAGONOUEST. Virginia Kidd and she sent it back to tried to work with the Menolly theme I was expecting another hard, adult me with two words: "Bum it". I did. for Roger. I couldn't push it very novel and I was disappointed. far, so I had written about the smal¬ And about a year or two later lest dragonboy, and he published McCAFFREY: (Chuckles.) Yeah. Well, I settled down to re-write DRAGON- that. By the way, that is one of my they were definitely published as QUEST as it -- well, not as it is to¬ most reprinted stories, "The Smallest young adult books in the States. day, because I'd gotten about 370- Dragonboy". It's all over the world. odd pages done and I couldn't push It's been scaled down for poor read¬ SFR: But in Britain the publishers it any further. Well, when that hap¬ ers and for second-language readers, didn't make that distinction. Were pens it's a signal to the writer so it's had a very good track record. you annoyed at that? that he's either boring himself and At any rate, I went back to the orig¬ will bore his reader, or there's some inal Menolly material, and suddenly McCtfTREY: No, because if you're plot flaw that he hasn't figured out. it started to flow, and I wrote writing for the young adult line in So New Year's Eve in 1969, Betty Bal- DRAGONSONG and delivered it. On the England you have to scale it a lot lantine invited me up to stay with way back to Ireland, on the plane, I lower, curiously enough. So Corgi her at Bearsville. I took the manu¬ thought, you know. I've got Menolly themselves decided not to make the script and we went through it page where I want her, with the master distinction, and I'm just as glad. by page. And about half way through harper. So what happens to her when she looked at me and she said, "You she gets to the Harper Hall? So I SFR: I notice that you're always know what the problem with this story wrote a letter to Jean Carle saying, very quick to point out that all your is, Anne? You're trying to tell it "Would you be interested in a con¬ dragon books are science fiction rath¬ from the viewpoint of F'lar and Les- tract?" and she was writing to me er than fantasy. sa. It's not their story. It's at the same time, "Anne, would you F'nor and Brekke's". And suddenly possibly consider writing a sequel McCAFFREY: Well, they are. all the problems just refocused. I to DRAGONSONG?" (Laughs.) So, any¬ knew she was right. I reworked the way, that's the genesis of DRAGONSONG/ SFR: How much scientific advice have first couple of chapters. The rest SINGER. Then I had a chance to buy you had on aspects of Pem --on was as it had been written. a house and I did not have enough things like your dragons breathing mcney for the down payment, so I fire and Thread falling? SFR: Was this the way that the other wrote Jean Carle and said, "Can I dragon books developed -- you were write a third book for you?" And asked by a publisher to write some she said, "Yes". Meanwhile, the pump McCAFFREY: Hal Clement helped me more and you had to push things along has been primed for THE WHITE DRAGON with the solar system. I have since in different directions? Or did you and I'm feeling more comfortable a- heard from an astronomer in Australia have an overall acheme at some point? bout it. And so I wrote THE WHITE who tells me the spectro-analysis of DRAGON. Rukbat, the sun that I picked, proves McC/fFREY: No! (Laughs.) I really it could not generate planets. How¬ wish I'd had an overall scheme. I I wrote "A Time When" for Bos- ever, when I was writing John Camp¬ wouldn't have made so many mistakes kone in 1975, and I incorporated that bell told me, "Oh, it doesn't matter. and inconsistencies that I now have material in THE WHITE DRAGON, and There's no way they can find out." to rationalise. But halfway through then wrote DRAGONDRUMS. At the time, in the 1960s, they did that discussion with Betty Ballantine not have the sophisticated spectro- she asked, "You can't just leave SFR: Do you find that you enjoy analysis, so it was perfectly within this marvelous idea of a white drag¬ writing novels for juveniles? my rights to choose Rukbat out of on. You've got to write a book cal¬ the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC astronomy McCAFFREY: I'm not writing for ju¬ led THE WHITE DRAGON." (Originally, maps as my sun, so I did. It looked that was Andre Norton's idea -- she veniles. I'm writing less complic¬ like a good name. And that the drag¬ said you've got to have a sport, so ated novels with a fairly even plot line. I'm not talking down. ons could be genetically developed why not make it a white dragon?) from the fire lizards is eminently Well, I said sure. At that point I plausible, but it cannot be stated was very broke, and I knew my mar¬ SFR: No, you're not talking down at the time DRAGONFLIGHT starts. Be¬ riage had failed, so I signed a con¬ but wouldn't you agree that they're sides, I didn't think of it then. tract for THE WHITE DRAGON, which I more suited to a juvenile audience? did not deliver for seven years! It McCAFFREY: Not according to my fan SFR: Also, the bio-engineering tech¬ was very kind of Ballantine. So the nology has been lost by inhabitants series was not planned as a trilogy. mail. You know they were written for Atheneum? of Pem, so it's not even known how Now, what happened after DRAGON- QUEST was that I was scared out of my tiny mind about writing THE WHITE DRAGON. I'd done two books which were very successful. And things sort of hung there. Then in 1974 or 5 Beth Blish, who is Jim Blish and Virginia Kidd's daughter, was talk¬ ing to Jean Carle at the US Publish¬ ers, Atheneum. She said, "I wish that Anne McCaffrey would do a ju¬ venile female protagonist in a book, aimed at the teenage market, because we have tremendous requests for this." So Beth organised the contract and queried whether I would be interest¬ the dragons came about by the people who has been kind enough to fill in iting each other at the time and she who are using them. what I needed to make it scientifical¬ had written a story she wanted me to ly sound. Also, certain characters read. She said she didn't know wheth¬ developed that I hadn't expected. er it was sword-and-sorcery or fan¬ Oh, yes, completely lost. McCAFFREY: For instance, Lanzecki, who develop¬ tasy. I said, "It isn't sword-and- So, since I'm writing the story from ed into a much stronger character in sorcery or fantasy, it's alchemy and the point of view of the people who Killashandra's life. THE CRYSTAL academe". And she said, "Hey, that are contemporary with it, I cannot would be a great title for an anthol¬ do a lot of things that I want to. SINGER as it is at the moment, from Severn House, is the first two stor¬ ogy." I said, "Good. Let's try and I went into the subterfuge of saying ies, or rather the first and third find someone who'll do it and I'll "Eureka! --my mycorrhizoid spores" stories as they got printed, greatly write a story for it too." Well, for Thread, but mycorrhizoid spores expanded. I hope to do a second nov¬ I never wrote a story for it, but I are perfectly legitimate in Arrheni¬ ended up compiling the stories that us's theory of space traveling, which el. There will not be a trilogy. were in it. It was a good anthology is what I used from the back of my I'm sick to death of trilogies. You in 1970 and it still is. head. Also I very definitely state can push material only so far before that the dragons have two stomachs, it begins to get very thin, and I in one of which they digest the phos¬ can see two novels in the CRYSTAL SFR: Because, of course, it was re¬ SINGER idea but no more than that. printed only a year or two back. phine-bearing rock. Well, phosphine Have you any plans to edit more gas, when it hits oxygen, ignites. story anthologies? Now, okay, that's not Larry Niven- SFR: And you haven't written that t>y>e science, it's soft-core science second novel yet? fiction. McCAFFREY: No. (Laughs.) I'm not McCAFFREY: No, because I'm busy very good as a compiler or an editor. writing DRAGONLADY. I recognise my own limitations. SFR: 1 understand the next dragon book is going to be called DRAGON- SFR: I know that a lot of people, LADY. Where does that fit in? SFR: When I read the Killashandra stories I noticed a very strong Irish including my wife, would very much flavour in them -- the names, the like to get hold of a copy of COOK¬ McCAFFREY: Well, because so many characters and so on. Was this cons¬ ING OUT OF THIS WORLD, your very en¬ people told me where I ought to put cious at the time you were writing? tertaining anthology of recipes sug¬ my next book, I have not. TLaughs.) gested by science fiction authors. I went back in time to something I Are there any plans to reprint it? mentioned in both DRAGONFLIGHT and McCAFFREY: (Laughs.) It was, be¬ cause I'm always looking around for DRAGONSINGER -- the Ballad of Moreta's character names and I've learned to Ride. So I've gone back to the time McCAFFREY: Actually there are. Bal- keep long lists of typos and odd lantine was going to reprint it with of Moreta, which is, if my memory place names. At that point in time pictures of dragons here and there, serves me, about 1200 years back I was very deeply into Ireland and I and I thought that was a cheat, so from the 3700-AD-or-so setting of the rest of the Pern books. was surrounded by all these marvelous that has since been dropped from the alien names like Ballybran and Bal- plans of Ballantine. Hank Stine of Starblaze has said he'd be interest¬ SFR: Have you finished that novel? lybrach and Shankill and Shanganagh and all the rest. They seemed easy ed in publishing an updated COOKING to use. After all, people with cer¬ OUT OF THIS WORLD and if his bindings McCAFFREY: No. I'm half-way through tain ethnic backgrounds are going to improve I'll do it. name alien planets after things that How about your three non-sci¬ SFR: Let's turn to your new novel, are familiar to them, simply to give SFR: themselves a feeling of home. So the ence fiction novels? How did they THE CRYSTAL SINGER. Briefly, can Irish background is there. come about? you explain the relationship between it and the four original Killashandra stories which appeared in Roger El- SFR: How did your science fiction wood's CONTINUUM anthologies? anthology ALCHEMY AND ACADEME come McCAFFREY: I've always been inter¬ about? ested in romantic fiction, as I said. McCAFFREY: Someone once said to me In fact, RESTOREE, let's face it, is that he thought Killashandra was a McCAFFREY: Well, that came about a space gothic, in which I take all beautiful name for a heroine and I because Sonya Dorman and I were vis- the elements of a good, swashbuckling agreed with him. And that night, contrary to my habit, I got up out of bed and went to my typewriter and typ¬ ed out the first two pages of "Killa¬ IWHY' NOT Hoii OFF oD THE- 7=t>(SOfJ£> APPLE/ shandra -- Crystal Singer". At the YcxJT aAAJGfiVAATY /S hp£NY , Doc same time Roger Elwood, the mad anth¬ IS XEALOC/SJ AWt> 5MOUJ ologist, was looking for material and Hire has TKoMiseb this was a fairly explicit sex re¬ '£> BAKE cbeam lationship which Virginia didn't think that Roger would stand for, Pf« For. the but he did. And he wanted more. He WHot-e ujeek! wanted four parts for the CONTINUUM series. So I delivered the four dif¬ ferent stories, the fourth of which got literally stomped on at a Mil¬ ford conference. Certain ideas were suggested to me at that point by Jim Blish and John Brunner which I did not take up -- mainly because I don't have the scientific background. But since then I've found a gentleman in England, who works with aerospace. space adventure except I have the way, in THE CRYSTAL SINGER, Killa- THE CRYSTAL SINGER heroine with all the answers rather shandra Ree begins by learning that than the hero, which I thought was a By .Anne McCaffrey she'll never be a top-rank solo sing¬ nice change. People realised I was Severn House, L6.95, 302 pp. er, due to a slight voice defect, so having them on. Now, in the sixties, REVIEWED BY CHRIS MORGAN she enters the dangerous and demand¬ when the gothics were very popular, ing profession of crystal singing, I was asked by Pell to do one and I Undiluted wish fulfillment is an where she achieves almost unprecedent signed and did one, MARK OF MERLIN, intelligent choice of plot for any ed success extremely rapidly. There which I'd actually written the first author who intends to write a popu¬ are considerable similarities be¬ four or five chapters of to satisfy lar novel. This involves creating a tween THE CRYSTAL SINGER and DRAGON- the composition requirements of a likable protagonist, with whom most SINGER. Both have female protagon¬ course I was taking at Harvard. And readers can identify and showing him/ ists (though Killashandra is in her I'd put it aside. Many years later her rising from humble origins to early twenties, some ten years older I took it out again, shook it, blew great glory. It's the plot form than Menolly) who are undergoing vo¬ the dust off, reworked it and it be¬ which Robert Heinlein christened cational training, so that the ac¬ came MARK OF MERLIN. .And then I "The Little Tailor". It may not be tion of each novel is concerned with signed a three-book contract with particularly believable but it sells day-to-day events and almost all the Dell, of which THE KILTERNAN LEGACY books. characters are either members of a and RING OF FEAR were two. But then student peer group or instructors. Dell ceased to correspond with me It is this plot-form which Anne In both cases the institutional boss- and I had no editorial feedback, McCaffrey used in DRAGONSINGER, show¬ man takes a particular interest in and that was it. I've got five ro¬ ing the underprivileged but talented his prodigy; while Robinton's inter¬ mantic novels sitting half finished Menolly rising to become the pride est in Menolly is at most paternal, and no market for them. of the Harper Hall. In the same Lanzecki's interest in Killashandra is sexual as well as professional. SFR: I'd have thought that publish¬ Not least, the thread of music runs ers would want to publish you what¬ strongly through both books, as does ever the book was, including romances the author's normal over-emotional

Where THE CRYSTAL SINGER differs from DRAGONSINGER is in its high- technology gadgetry and its alien planetary background. The professioi of crystal singing exists only on th< planet Ballybran. By a combination of technology, perfect pitch and en¬ ormous determination, crystal sing¬ ers tune the naturally-occurring veins of living crystal to particul¬ ar frequencies, then remove matched chunks with sonic cutters. These crystals, vital in communications anc spaceship control systems, are of e- normous value.

Four Killashandra stories appear ed in Roger Elwood's CONTINUUM anth¬ ologies (1974-5). In that abbrev¬ iated form they were unimpressive. Now two of those stories have been expanded and buttressed with consid¬ erable skill to form THE CRYSTAL SINGER. In particular, the strange and complex symbiotic relationship between crystal singers and a micros copic alien life form endemic to Ballybran is well handled. The out¬ crops of crystal, often beset by deadly storms, achieve grandeur here and the addictive rapture of crystal cutting becomes an impressively pow¬ erful force. Of the characters, only Killa¬ shandra, Lanzecki and a couple of others are more than ciphers. There are some slow passages in the action and the book would have been improv¬ ed by cutting fifty pages. Also, it contains far too many typographical errors. I Even so, there's much to enjoy I here. THE CRYSTAL SINGER is one of I Anne McCaffrey's best books; certain ly it will delight all her fans. LETTERS

LETTER FROM GENE WOLFE POB #69 Barrington, IL 60010 May 19, 1982

'I'd like to make a couple of comments on Darrell Schweitzer's ex¬ tended and very kind review of THE SWORD OF THE LICTOR. 'Toward the end of his review, Darrell says, "What I particularly don't like is finding out on page 146 of the third volume that the stars of (are is meant, I suppose) visible in the daytime". That the stars were visible by day did not seem to me particularly important. (They are visible by day now to some people, of course.) What I thought important was the reason, the dim¬ ming of the sun, a point that was made over and over. That the stars could be seen in the day sky was strongly implied on page 110 of the first book, THE SHADOW OF THE TOR¬ TURER: "Behind the altar rose a won- the next paragraph: "...I was struck begs off he'll no doubt continue vised for the purposes of a major by how much lighter it was than the to do the reviews of The Book of civil defence exercise called "Opera¬ true sky, whose blue is nearly black the New Sun. And of course you tion Square Leg" held in September even on the brightest day". can write and correct errors and of that year. The shaded areas ind¬ icate the extent fallout was assum¬ 'On page 228 of the same book misperceptions as you will. ed to have reached approximately (I am using the hardcover) Agia tells ((The wonder of SFR is that three hours after the attack. Severian that a trumpet will sound I manage to keep on publishing when the top of the City Wall appears it on time all the time. A lot 'I don't imagine this copy would to touch "the edge of the solar disc". of people say the magazine is great stand reproduction for SCIENCE FIC¬ That is to say, toward evening, but and fine and excellent-yet I see TION REVIEW -- which is a pity, since while the sun is still well above areas I could upgrade and expand if they saw it your readers might the horizon. On page 233: "...the to make it even better, if I had come to appreciate why a lot of peop¬ silver voice of a trumpet called to the time and the will. The maga¬ le in Britain feel we are living in the renascent stars". Thus the stars zine has never satisfied me and an occupied country -- but anybody are already visible and growing has never been as good as it who would like more detail could try brighter. On page 235, after he, could be...and probably never will sending a dollar and a couple of In¬ Dorcas, and Agia have walked from be.)) ternational Reply Coupons to CNO, 11 the Inn of Lost Loves to the Sanguin¬ Goodwin St., London N4, and asking ary Field, Severian mentions that for a copy of their "Activities Plan¬ the sun has not yet set. It's like¬ ning Map" which is overprinted with ly that there are other instances; I the Operation Square Leg fallout have not searched the whole book for LETTER FROM JOHN BRUNNER The Square House, Palmer Street 'I hope a lot of people will 'In your footnote you speculate South Petherton, Somerset pick up on this suggestion. They that I may be holding a crate of England TA13 5DB would find the map most informative. SHADOW hardcovers. I wish I were. 17th May 1982 In particular, I'd like Mr. Smith I do have a few copies of the third to see a copy; it might help him to book, THE SWORD OF THE LICTOR, which 'It's seldom that I read such escape from his fantasy world and I have been selling at the cover unmitigated crap as was contained in come back to where the rest of us the letter from George H. Smith in live ... or die. your Summer, 1982 issue, where he 'Of course, this idea may well 'Although I enjoyed Darrell's said inter alia: "Brunner is way be abortive. I write at a moment review and agreed with much of what off base with his fear of becoming when, thanks to the incompetence of he had to say, it seemed to me a re¬ involved in a war between the United the British government and the in¬ view of the series to date rather States and USSR. All the missiles transigence of the Argentine one, than of SWORD. (Surely, a "Type A" are aimed at the United States ..." World War III may quite possibly reader might be forgiven for think¬ (Emphasis mine.) ing that the play is in the third already have begun.' book; it is in the second.) Have 'What planet is this character you considered having another re¬ living on? Clearly he doesn't in¬ viewer review SWORD? habit the real world! Europe, in¬ ((Luckily, the war over the Falkand cluding Britain, is littered with Am¬ Islands was completed fairly quickly, 'SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW is a erican forward bases. Does he hon¬ the Argentines lost, their government wonder. Tom between the desire to estly imagine that in the event of a has been reshuffled, and one hopes the read it all at once and the knowledge Russo-American war the Soviets would Argentinians have learned that their that it is sweetest sampled slowly, refrain from attacking them? Does government tells outrageous lies and I have done both, as usual.' he imagine that civilians and non- is never to be trusted. But, then, combatants would be immune from the every government tells its people out¬ consequences? How can anybody, these rageous lies (on occasion, sometimes ((Darrell periodically claims var¬ days, be so totally ignorant of the at every occasion) and is in any ev¬ ious books in advance for review, actual situation? ent never to be trusted. as he claimed yours. Since he has reviewed the saga so far, and has 'By the time cruise missiles ((It is my fond belief that in¬ the courage and memory to go for¬ have been deployed in Britain, we ternational finance has reached the ward (plus the intellectual and shall be in an infinitely more ter¬ point in influence and control that academic training), unless he rifying position even than we are Big Money can prevent a massive nu¬ now. It is known that the Russians clear war between mere nations. believe Cruise to be a first-strike I'd far rather have my nation and weapon, and also that while a defence the entire world governed secretly against it is technically possible, by Bankers than politicians or gen¬ they have admitted they simply can't erals. And realisitically, I don't afford it. Against a first-strike see any alternatives to those choic¬ f PiPJtt, Let ne iwna*»c& voiA weapon only a first strike can be es-if a choice is involved for I To THE Me**8*6 of- TH6 effective — and that will mean blank¬ anyone who controls less that a hun¬ eting Britain (and any other country dred billion dollars in assets.)) foolish enough to allow the evil things on its territory) with a sat¬ uration bombing pattern to catch them |& liL on their way to their dispersal sites. # LETTER FROM IAN COVELL 'Even prior to this horrible mis¬ 2 Oopgrove Close, Berwick Hills take, we are in a pretty pickle, here Middlesbrough, Cleveland in Britain. I append a copy of a England TS3 7BP map from the NEW STATESMAN of 3rd May 30, 1982 October 1980, showing the plot of nuclear strikes against Britain de- 'Orson Scott Card's article is funny, marvelously orchestrated. 26 makes a dreadful logical sense in di¬ book-length joke then sits back snig¬ ■fas, Gais does pay rection and reasoning ... and makes gering when people talk about it as me wonder which category OSC thought a true fantasy. Zelazny pisses me he belonged to when he was doing off sometimes. (Graffiti: "Life is critiques. I'll take a wild guess like a pubic hair on a toilet seat; and say the last paragraph showed sometimes you get pissed off") his lonely stand, the parfait knicht 'Page 49 -- McGuire doesn't men¬ in thin armour braving the mobs of tion the (I think) central line in critic-criticisers ... heroic, I call ISLAND CALLED MOREAU when Aldiss makes the point that being changed '(Pace your review of GALAXY OF from animal to human may be a step TERROR, Page 22, and coupling ... er down the ladder rather than up ... adding it to other such films like page 51, I can't work out whether INSEMINOID and ALIEN -- which wasn't McGuire's throwaway review (?) of "allowed" to show why the alien want¬ the Norman book is an insult to the ed human bodies, though it was okay author or an insult to the (review) to see it wiping them out -- it makes reader -- if anyone can tell me what me wonder if modem schlock horror this book is about from this, I'll" maniacs didn't happen to see an old give them a book of their choice; a Boob-Babe-Bem magazine cover and waste of 2 inches •. .. I wish Alma Jo say, "Hey, what if that cat really Williams, Page 52, would tell me wanted the woman ..." Thus do our where she got a copy of THE EROTIC excesses transmit even unto the sec¬ WORLD OF FAERY because I have been ond and third generations a curse trying to locate a copy for three ...). years and nobody has ever heard of it before now! And probably won't 'I like Schweitzer's pickaxe ap¬ hear of it again. It seems in-depth proach sometimes, though I don't studies of the underlying sexuality think I've ever agreed with him of fairytales -- which suppose the when picking a really good book, but underlying sexuality of children -- the thing I really dislike about him are not welcomed either by the "pub¬ at the moment is his unending attempt lic" or the literati. Myself, I've (relatively), an average page per to review a Lovecraft book in every always found it interesting -- (like minute, but I do read everything on column. This seems almost like nep¬ suddenly discovering that the origin¬ the page. I do however, read Doc otism, and in any case, grates. al texts did not say Mary was a virg¬ Smith, and van Vogt, and similar and What's worse is that -- unlike REH in, but a "young woman" and so des¬ find them easy, enjoyable reading. whose undiscovered stories keep turn¬ troying the basis of the Catholic Why? Because, horror of horrors, ing up, or being rearranged through¬ they write simply. Their concepts faith in perpetual virginity; or out the myriad collections -- DS may be grandiose, the morality shift¬ just keeps reviewing works out for reading THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY GRAIL and realising that the marriage ing or non-existent, the plotting forty and fifty years and purely re¬ wildly improbable and convoluted, print books. at Cana was Jesus' own) -- that the fairy tales were carefully bowdler¬ but their prose is straightforward; 'The letter from "Piers Anthony" ized and it's difficult to reinstate in its simplicity they hang occas¬ proved to me, once and for all, how them. The original Cinderella slip¬ ional insights and humour. Le Guin intelligent the man is. He has the per was made of fur, which I submit does it too. As for Schweitzer's facility of expanding the meanest conjures up more connotations than a "(not) being elitist", anyone who concept to book-length. How he does stupid glass thing (which, bad trans¬ can interpolate "recognizes the ab¬ it, after reading him for 12 years, lation or not, may really have been surdity" and not consider that elit¬ I still don't know. It isn't pre¬ inserted to show clarity and purity) ist has slightly thick blinkers to cisely "formula writing", as he ... yet, even knowing this, the glass his eyes. I grant my real objection thinks, because his characters change slipper stays in and the fur one is to all this is that he supposes I dis¬ -- though it's easy to detect echoes like the NEW SUN series because of its sloth, its lack of incident. I of relationships down his books -- 'Page 57 -- two quick comments: and his setting vary too widely for don't. I dislike it because it's by My quarrel with FUZZY BONES which I Wolfe.) easy pigeonholing. Indeed, Anthony found enervating, has to do with the can write from seemingly every moral "new" characters Tuning introduced 'Lastly, let me say I don't stance I've ever met. From the -- like the mess later writers made particularly miss the card coloured light joy of the Xanth series (the of Doc Smith (*) and his morality; covers. For me, SCIENCE FICTION RE¬ 4th is a bummer, though) to the vio¬ I never knew Piper to turn a girl in¬ VIEW has always been the content lence-pornography of NEQ THE SWORD to a whore for plot purposes and rather than the package. I'd read (whose mutilated hero I think I once such a use of character seems to un¬ it on newsprint, which I consider read about in one of those 50s "men's dermine the essential joy of the a compliment. magazines"; something like "Crazed series. '(A dark last comment: Does Red Dwarf and the Crucified Love¬ anyone, with me, consider that Si- lies"). I've always found him easy 'In FANE Alexander's dedication mak's production has gone up and to read -- and ... the point is, I is to Jack Vance. Steve Lewis seems sacrificed the depth of his earlier suppose, that Anthony is worried his totally unaware that much of the books because Simak wants to leave output is suffering, and he's wrong. book -- in setting, character, hist¬ ory and relationships -- is an homage his heirs as many items of estate 'If Bob Barger, page 39, is right to Vance. Since, unlike Zelazny, as possible?) about CHANGING LAND being used as a Alexander made a point of mention¬ prequel to the W.H. Hodgson book, ing this, it's the reviewer who mis¬ then I can only cry "foul" and "pig" sed the whole point this time round ((I'm afraid Darrell is guilty this and "swine" and "oh, cruel fate" be¬ .v and not the reader. issue, too, of reviewing Loveoraft cause if there is one thing I can't reprints. Well, it's his area of stand, it's an author who writes a 27 expertise, and he has carte blanche. ((Curious that the Puritan im¬ its usual high standards. Congratu¬ 'As your readers may have guessed pulse—pretend sex doesn't exist lations on yet two more in the long I'm editorially involved with AMAZ¬ -has survived so long. In fact, line of Hugo nominations. Is it ING now, the same way I was with IS- I'm often surprised at how long true that if you win just two more SAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGA¬ the anti-life, anti-pleasure dogma awards they will rename them after ZINE. (The only other person on the that fuels Christianity has lasted you?' Philadelphia end assisting George so long. I suspect Christianity right now is John Ashmead. My only owes its entire continued exist¬ contact with the Lake Geneva opera¬ ((Of course Orson knew he would be tion is selling a story to THE DRAGON ence on the existence of venereal exposing himself to the arguments last year.) Right now we're seeing disease; without the retribution you put forward, when he wrote the of Syphilis, Gonorrhea, and Herpes, rather rarified stuff, most of it piece and sent it to me. You have the anti-pleasure dogmas would with¬ solicited, simply because the gener¬ to give him credit for courage, if er away. When science does manage al run of would-be writers don't naught else. to make venereal disease a thing of know about us yet. But things are the past (proably by designing a ((No, it isn’t true that if I beginning to fall into familiar pat¬ virus to kill the appropriate dis¬ win two more Hugoes the award will terns already. ease virus), it will inadvertently be named after me. Who would ever 'Allow me to let you and Millea also make Christianity a thing of want to win a Geiso? Or a Dickie? in on a secret: It's a seller's mar¬ the past. Speed the day!)) Or an Erwin? (middle name). )) ket when major names are involved. Or, more precisely, it's a seller's market (for the short story editor) when dealing with any writer who can make a comfortable living writing nov¬ # CARD FROM ROBERT BLOCH els. There is absolutely nothing an 2111 Sunset Crest Drive editor can do to make short story Los Angeles, CA 90046 writing financially worthwhile to May, 1982 someone like Niven, Heinlein, Steph¬ en King, Arthur Clarke, etc. Any¬ 'Orson Scott Card's "How to be body who can get a six-figure advance a Science Fiction Critic" has amusing or even a five-figure advance (or and seemingly valid categorizations maybe high four-figure advances on a -- but while they may indeed apply regular basis) doesn't need the money to critics, they don't embrace writ¬ a short story can bring. He or she ers. Or not at least science fic¬ has to want to do the story. tion writers, who seem far more com¬ patible and less contemptuous of one 'This means that the magazine another. editor has to rely on newcomers or at best, up-and-coming writers. Sure, 'Last Saturday night, at a party you can get material from the big given by Jerry Pournelle, I found my¬ names. IASFM became Gene Wolfe's reg¬ self seated between Theodore Sturg¬ ular market. It published several eon and Norman Spinrad, watching # LETTER FROM DARRELL SCHWEITZER stories by Brian Aldiss. It also 113 Deepdale Road Steve Goldin and Kathleen Sky talk¬ published Niven. But these people Strafford, PA 19087 ing to A.E. van Vogt. Now, what didn't exactly fill the pages. If April 29, 1982 critic would find all these diversi¬ an editor has some financial clout, fied talents to his liking? he might get two or three stories a 'The loss of the colored covers year from someone like that. They 'Thanks for a delightful issue!' as an economy move doesn't upset me might fill ten pages in the issues all that much. Far better this than they appear in. Major writers have you return to newsprint interiors. not been making short fiction a sig¬ The heavy covers perhaps cut down on nificant part of their output for shelf wear, and make library copies many years now. Even one's discover¬ last longer, but I keep mine in their ies get away after a while. Barry original envelopes. The newsprint in¬ # LETTER FROM BOB SABELLA Longyear is mostly doing novels now. teriors guarantee loss of the text 13 Marshall Tr Somtow Sucharitkul continues to be after a certain time. The lighter Hopatcong, NJ 07843 an editor's delight, because after covers don't. 16 May 1982 having broken into the book market 'To clarify matters for Millea in a big way, he still does a large 'Concerning the latest issue of Kenin, the apparent contradiction amount of short fiction. (Most of it, SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW, I did not en¬ about the availability of publishable admittedly, things to be cobbled into joy Orson Scott Card's "How to be a material, and small press magazines books later.) Critic" at all. If it was meant to getting overstocked, isn't all that 'There are not "at least twice be funny it fell considerably short mysterious. If she published OWL- as many literately-written stories of the mark; if it was serious then FLIGHT on a monthly basis, I'm sure it was sad indeed. The author ended she would understand. Small press without glaring weaknesses received by any prozine as it has room to up appearing one of two ways: Either magazines get overstocked because print". There are about half as he has been burnt by critics in the they rarely publish more than one many as it has room to print (in past and felt the need for "striking or two issues a year, and sometimes science fiction as opposed to fan¬ back", or else he fell into one or (as in the case of FANTASY TALES, tasy). This is why you see stories more of his critics' categories him¬ for example) the total wordage of an with glaring weakness in professional self and felt the need to confess in issue is quite small. If she had to publications. Since the boom in the public. find 70,000 words of publishable fic¬ novel market in the early '70s, you tion a month, or thirteen times a 'The fact that I try to be a see them with increasing frequency. year, her opinions of the market critic myself has no bearing on my An editor with a good budget and some would change greatly. opinion in this matter, of course. taste can only try to see to it that 'Otherwise, the issue was up to 28 he gets the few really good things that come on the market, and that 'No, Card has been widely accus¬ sell's review of my WE ARE ALL LE¬ his worst is a little less bad than ed of having characters who do not GENDS, I think I should point out everybody else's. come to life, whose emotions are not that the book is not a novel, but a skillfully conveyed to the reader. collection. If you read it as a nov¬ 'The reason small press magazines His stories have been accused of be¬ el, looking for novel structure, you can exist, paying 1$ a word on publi¬ ing failures as far as human inter¬ will conclude that the "fix-up" job cation, in the midst of virtual star¬ was poorly done. These days, when vation at the 3-6* level, is that est goes. So he wants us to believe that there's not really anything so many novels are assembled out of the small magazines publish types of short stories, a simple collection fiction (mostly fantasy) which are wrong with his writing. It's the critics pigeon-holing him. Either of stories featuring the same charac¬ not adequately represented among the ter and arranged in chronological newsstand magazines. I will agree that or he just doesn't know what the words mean. order is a rare creature indeed. As with Millea that there is twice as someone pointed out, when you incor¬ much good fantasy available in short 'On the matter of pulp fiction: porate a short story into a novel, lengths as there is space to print It isn't dishonest of me to ignore you have to change the meaning of it. Probably ten times as much. the Shaver Mystery. Shaver's first every word in it, because the parts Far more of it is being written than appearance was with I REMEMBER LE- of a short story point inward, to science fiction. But if there were, MURIA in the March 1945 AMAZING. the story's own self-contained struc¬ say, ten professional fantasy maga¬ (There may have been some letters in ture, while a chapter of a novel zines, all monthly or bi-monthly, late 1944; I'm not sure.) But I was points outward, to the overall struc¬ with a wide variety of editorial talking about FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, ture of the book. With WE ARE LEG¬ tastes, the whole small press field 1941-43. Shaver was not yet a twink¬ ENDS, I didn't attempt any such would be wiped out. le in the Grand Dero's eye then. change. Any of the stories should But FANTASTIC ADVENTURES (and AMAZ¬ 'Linda Blanchard is wrong when be able to stand alone. I guess I ING) were already incredibly succes¬ she says that editors won't publish will have to coin a term for such a sful, as is evident from the amount stories with unhappy endings. They book. It's a non-fix-up. of paper allotted to them. They will do so, but reluctantly. This published pulp science fiction in its 'To Bob Barger: The thing about means that the downbeat story has to purest state, with virtually all the THE CHANGING LAND is that when a be considerably better than the up¬ "content" (as editors now use the book fails as a story and doesn't beat one. A trivial, downbeat story term) filtered out, completely acces¬ engage the reader emotionally, all tends to be dull. A trivial upbeat sible to everybody, not at all dis¬ the literary references, echoes and story might be mildly amusing. I turbing or challenging. This sort allusions in the world won't save it. think readers and editors would rath¬ Yes, the book is of interest to Hod¬ er be mildly amused than mildly de- of writing did very well until the pulp audience turned to TV. Is it gson fans, to a point. But I once any coincidence that western fiction read part of an awful novel, DAGON, by Fred Chapell, which did not hold 'If a tragic story is richly im¬ my interest, for all it had something agined and intensely moving (Rand B. to do with Lovecraft. I later sold Lee's "Full Fathom Five My Father it to a fanatical Lovecraft complet- Lies", for example) it will sell even if the author has never been publish¬ ed before. ((I suspect Orson's piece in SFR 'Orson Scott Card's article is H4Z struck a nerve. Hou else to an incredibly naked display of psy¬ explain your "second hand" attack chological defense mechanisms, which on him? There are many reviewers offers no insight into the nature of and critics who think him a good criticism, but makes perfect sense writer and one who can do very when you realize that the author is good characterization, indeed.)) a relatively new writer whose career got off to a financially impressive start, but who has been widely per¬ ceived thereafter as not being very good. (I feel rather neutral in this,, because I have never reviewed a Card magazines disappeared about the same book, or read one of his novels. Ad¬ time as the surge in TV Westerns at # LETTER FROM BOB BARGER mittedly, the short stories I have the end of the 50s? 5204 Dayton Blvd, #6 seen do not make me want to read one 'To Dean R. Lambe: Those women of his novels.) The gist of the art¬ Chattanooga, TN 37415 writers who felt that the Scithers icle might be stated as: "If you May 15, 1982 IASFM wouldn't buy stories with think Orson Scott Card is a lousey strong heroines were probably 1) not writer, you're a provincial, narrow¬ 'One point Paul McGuire over¬ aware of the contents of the maga¬ minded asshole. Here's why." Really, looked in his review of William Tun¬ zine 2) rationalizing away the faults the article is so much a cry of hurt ing's FUZZY BONES, is a point that of their own stories. If they read that Card should be embarrassed to worried me a great deal. H. Beam Pi¬ thp magazine they would find large have published such a thing. But he per and Robert E. Howard share a numbers of female protagonists and seems to have no shame. great deal of similarities, both in women writers. I can think of one their lives and their work. Both di¬ 'I wonder if he really believes issue in which the majority of the ed under similar circumstances at that "cardboard characters" is a kind contents were written by women. The the height of their writing careers, of pigeon-hole like "sword and sorc¬ rejected stories may indeed have had and both (probably as a result of ery", "space opera", etc. Do pub¬ strong female characters. This was having a perhaps small but very loy¬ lishers label their books "cardboard not why they were rejected. al following at the time of their character novels"? Does Lin Carter 'While I am reluctant to qualify deaths and, later, of having their edit an anthology of "cardboard char¬ anything as favorable as Mark Man- work largely unavailable) developed acters" along the lines of FLASHING a considerable "cult" following SWORDS? 29 in the years after their deaths. 'Robert E. Howard's work, of cellent pastiches by a very good writ¬ sad comment on the confusion and dis¬ course, has been the subject of a er. Does the publication of Tuning's organization still apparently exist¬ great deal of commercialization in FUZZY BONES signal such an era of ex¬ ing in regard to who actually owns the past two decades — very little ploitation to come for the work of the legal rights to Howard's original of which has done anything to enhance H. Beam Piper? The early Howard Conan stories, 1 read in a movie maga¬ the understanding, appreciation or pastiches by deCamp can readily be zine that the movie's makers were un¬ even popularity of Howard's original rationalized away as needful, for able to get the rights to adapt an work. It isn't unfair, I believe, to legal reasons, in order to get How¬ original Howard story for the script. say that Howard's original work has ard's original work back into print (Perhaps just as well, since the been diluted. Watered down by an (diluted with deCamp pastiche, admit¬ story they did whip up for themselves endless stream of unoriginal and tedly, but hell, nothing's perfect, was superior, at least in a screen¬ hackwork pastiche and comic books to and there come times when you just play sense, to any single Conan story the point that someone unfamiliar have to take what you can get). that Howard wrote.) Of course, while with Howard's work and who would like But most of Piper's work is already it would be well advised to take any¬ to read Howard, is often hopelessly into print, and also I doubt the un¬ thing written in a movie magazine confused. There are many newcomers ique situation that necessitated de¬ (with few exceptions) as merely a ru¬ to the field, for example, who be¬ Camp having to write Howard pastiches mor, one can't help but wonder if lieve the character Conan was origin¬ in order to get the original Howard perhaps the confusion and apparent ally created by L. Sprague deCamp -- back into print could ever occur disorganization in the area of Conan as witnessed, Brian Earl Brown tells again in a couple hundred years ... isn't simply a matter of too many me, by a radio quiz show in Detroit The question in my mind is: fingers being in the same cookie jar. that, at least temporarily during 'Do we need H. Beam Piper pas- 'Fuck, maybe if Piper's work the program, held that the answer to gets exploited and "popularized" to the question "Who created Conan?" the extent Howard's has been, we was not "Robert E. Howard" but rath¬ 'William Tuning shows himself to might see a movie someday that is as er "I,. Sprague deCamp". be a good writer and a man very int¬ loyal to Piper's work as the Conan erested in and respectful of. Piper's movie was to Howard's. But the odds 'DeCamp, of course, can hardly original creations. FUZZY BONES was are astronomically against it, I be held responsible for this situa¬ good for what it was. But is there tion. In both the Gnome Press and any guarantee Tuning will write the Lancer Books eras of Howard fandom, next pastiche? Or the one after ((As my review shows, I thought it was he who did his best to get that? the Howard books in print, keep them less of the movie, CONAN THE BAR¬ in print and bring Howard's work to BARIAN than you. a larger readership. Unfortunately, 'On the other hand, all the ex¬ {(You never know who will he doing this required him (for complic¬ ploitation and commercialization of disoovered/eormereialized/exp loit- ated legal reasons apparently) to Howard's work, especially his charac¬ ed by movies next. We may yet see write several Howard pastiches. ter Conan, did serve to popularize a DUNE movie. )) These pastiches were pretty good too, the character (if not Howard's orig¬ not at all like most of those today inal work) to the point of bringing ... in fact, not at all like deCamp's the material to the notice of movie own recent Conan pastiches, which makers -- with absolutely and unbe¬ have been dreadful. lievably the end result being the recent release of CONAN THE BARBAR¬ 'But the point here is, the ex¬ IAN, a movie that despite all odds ploitation of Howard's work began was loyal to Howard's original con¬ very innocently with a series of ex¬ cepts on all levels. And yet, as a

30 # LETTER FROM DEBBIE CROSS & PAUL WRIGLEY 5429 SE Bush St. Portland, OR 97206 June, 1982

'In December of 1980, a talented 7WSfAVZlVE? young science fiction writer passed away. In memory of Susan C. Petrey, the Portland Science Fiction Society has organized a fund to help other promising science fiction writers attend the Clarion Science Fiction 6cd> lerreti- Writers' Workshop. Susan herself selected to attend Clarion but was unable to do so because of lack of funds. Out-of-state tuition and ex¬ Otyees UC* $A?' penses this year is over $1100. 'We are currently attempting to raise sufficient funds to enable us to award an annual scholarship from the interest. We are raising the only (minor) goof he made this last old joke, as you can see.) The guy money by auctioning donated items at time was to believe Random about con¬ writes and writes and finally calls conventions. Our biggest auction tinuing Fawcett after the purchase. the operator over and says, "Here it will be held at OryCon, in Portland, The truth is that normal non-cynical is; please send it just the way it over the weekend of November 12-14. realism would assume that all pur¬ stands". The operator reads it out Some of the items we have to auction chases are being made in order to loud just in case: "BOOGITY BOOGITY snatch up backlists, fold the firm BOOGITY BOOGITY BOOGITY BOOGITY BOO¬ and eliminate competition. (This is GITY BOOGITY BOOGITY STOP". The op¬ 'A letter from Damon Knight why Playboy Press -- hiss,the viper! erator hands it back and says, "Fine, to John Varley rejecting "The -- is having trouble finding a buyer: sir, but you only used nine words, Persistence of Vision". Its backlist is weak and not worth and you paid for ten. Shall I add A signed manuscript of TITAN. paying very much money for. I sob one more 'boogity'"? The guy reads Signed master galleys of WIZARD slightly while I say this, having a it over carefully and then shakes and the collection of short neglected novel among that backlist his head. "No", he said. "That'd stories, THE PERSISTENCE OF VIS¬ be silly". The moral of this story ION with corrections by the is that you don't have to buy the 'In point of fact the whole pub¬ whole package.' Signed typewritten manuscript lishing business is being run much with hand corrections of "The the same way Charlie Finley used to First Day of May" by Kate Wil¬ run the A's: If the son-of-a-bitch ((It is said that in the land of helm. is hitting .290, sell him to Dubuque; the True Believer, the secret Non- if the pitcher's ERA is under 3, Believer is king.)) 'As we are still soliciting dona¬ trade him to Upper Senfgurken for tions we intend to put out a cata¬ two sorearms and cash.' logue of all the items for auction, in September. If any of the readers 'The only outfit doing well cur¬ of SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW are interest¬ rently in the New York publishing ed in receiving the catalogue, they mess is Gallen, who is getting con¬ # LETTER FROM MATT HARGREAVES should contact us at the above ad¬ tracts when nobody can. Reason: 17341 32nd Avenue, S. #D-118 dress. Non-attendees of OryCon will While one stands to make not very Seattle, WA 98188 be able to make bids and the method much dough off Gallen's books (few May 21, 1982 of doing so will be explained in the of them sell over 100,000) there is catalogue. no risk in them at all in most cases, 'Few things have really made me since the tax shelter pigeons that mad within the field of Science Fic¬ Of course, if anyone should wish Gallen, who is basically a very smart tion but something has just come to to donate items to the charity auc¬ lawyer, represents are picking up the my attention and I would be interest¬ tion, we would be extremely pleased printing bill as writeoffs. ed if anyone else knows about it or to receive them.' 'I am surrounded by True Believ¬ knows why it exists. ers. If I express doubt in something 'It seems that the Science Fic¬ the True Believer truly believes, he tion Bookclub has two pricing struc¬ automatically puts me in a bag; I am tures in relation to the price that obviously a True Believer in some is quoted on each month's alternate # LETTER FROM GEORGE WARREN other True Belief than his. I think selection. I received the July, 1982 BOX EB that perhaps I do not Truly Believe flyer which had as the alternate se¬ Pacific Grove, CA 93950 much of anything. Not all the way. lection, COILS, by Zelazny and Saber- May 8, 1982 Jack Woodford used to tell a joke hagen for $3.98; however, a friend of which I think to the point here: mine who lives about four blocks a- 'I am going to get a rubber stamp The guy comes into the telegraph of¬ way got the flyer with the price of saying "latest SCIENCE FICTION RE¬ fice (Jack was a telegrapher once) $2.98. This is the second or third VIEW superb" and let it go at that. and says, "I want to send a telegram flyer he has gotten where the price Perhaps I will have postcards print¬ to New York". The operator says, was lower. Also there is a code num¬ ed. Meanwhile, pass along my con¬ "Fine, here's the form; you get ten ber on the front of the flyer in grats as well to Elton Elliott; I words for a buck”. (This is a very the upper right hand comer, this still don't see how he stays on top number just also happens to be the of the publishing news so well; the 31 price for the alternate selection. 'I don't know how long this low¬ # LETTER FROM RONALD R. LAMBERT what he/she wants in the forms and er rate has been used but I do not 2350 Virginia style that satisfies them the most. like it. I feel like I'm supporting Troy, MI 48084 ((That's true of every genre, the other guy's discount price. It May 11, 1982 even the academic novel dripping is hardly a big matter but every mi¬ with adultery and symbolism. nor ripoff by somebody adds up over 'How come lately you've been so ((Of course a well-told story keen on shlock? If you want to write is preferable over a poorly-told pom or pulp fiction, that's your one, but that says nothing: who is 'Has anybody else noticed this business. But in issue #42 you sug¬ it told for? Kids? Young wives? difference for the prices? Either gested that everybody should write Teeners? Macho men? The same sto¬ way I had to get it off my chest.' like they were writing for TV, and in ry can be told excellently twelve issue #43 you say that for most read¬ different ways for twelve different ers quality writing is counterproduc¬ readerships I)) ((First I've heard of it. Glad you tive and wasted, and you ask what is brought it to our attention. Any¬ wrong with giving readers cheap one have an explanation?)) thrills in the genre of their choice. Are you trying to corrupt the young, Socrates? # LETTER FROM AVED0N CAROL 'There may be a place for shlock. 4409 Woodfield Road It sells. But I regard shlock as a Kensington, MD 20895 genre unto itself. Some people will 3 April, 1982 # LETTER FROM CYN MASON POB #5102 read shlock, but they will also read 'I was just noticing your ex¬ Seattle, WA 98105 quality SF, because like most people change with Darrell Schweitzer in May, 1982 they like to read in more than one genre. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #42 about the Gor books and pornography, in which 'A private printer in Tacoma re¬ 'Surely, a well-told story is you say, "The GOR books are not porn¬ cently noticed one problem we new preferable over a poorly-told one. ography! ... Call the GOR books porno writers often have at conventions. All readers may not be consciously in theme if you like; but they’re We don't have much at all to sign aware of the ingredients of quality not porno in execution or in current at the autograph tables. (Like me. writing, but no one is insensitive legal definition". I've got a story coming out in Is¬ to the net result. aac ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZ¬ 'Well, maybe not. There are cer¬ 'After the money is spent, then INE next month, but that's all I've tain distinctions between the GOR got in print in the SF field, cur¬ what pleasure remains for you in series and most porn (a distinction rently. At cons I end up signing what you have written, if you cannot which can be found between other non¬ take pride in it? The way to ensure the program book.) So this fellow porn and up-front porn as well) -- that you will always be able to take came up with the idea of printing a the most refreshing thing about porn¬ hardbound, illustrated anthology pride in what you write is to write ography, to me, is that it seldom specifically for and by Pacific NW well.' stoops to a lot of phony psychology writers. It'll be a limited edition, and sociology about how women like probably about 500 print run at most. ((Hey, I never mentioned schlock. to be raped and abused and whatever. And I've been blackmailed into edit¬ I don't like deliberately bad writ¬ In Elvis Presley movies and John ing it -- honest, I'm not masochis¬ ing. I do like writing that is ex¬ Wayne movies and Robert Heinlein tic, really I'm not. cellent of its type, as effective books, it may be implied that the way to deal with a woman who isn't 'We're going to probably call fiction, which means holding the reader, gripping the reader. responding the way a man wants her it WET VISIONS. The theme, such that ((I've seen some romance novels to is to give her a spanking; and it is, is stories (no more than which I cannot read because I hate in GONE WITH THE WIND we may be told 10,000 words) about wet planets, wat¬ gooey sweet-young-thing-in-love that if a woman isn't interested in ery environments, etc., or things to fiction, but which I recognize are a relationship with a man, he should do when you can't go out. excellently written as fiction. I rape her to get her interest; but 'The money isn't so great. I'm ' imagine those authors are loved pornography, mercifully, doesn't paying l*st a word (I'm really look¬ by their readers. generally do that sort of shit. In ing for reprints, at that price, but ((Some of the 1960s sex novels S/M pom, consent before the fact is will certainly consider original were very well done erotica. Even usually carefully spelled out in stories if anyone is desperate enough today there is porno writing being fact, and porn doesn't try to gener¬ to go for it.) and the author may done which is extremely effective alize about the rest of a woman's have his choice of being paid in that it gives the porn reader life, behavior and character from how she likes to fuck. Norman, on the other hand, does have this apal- ling tendency to pollute his erotic fantasy with a lot of silly theoriz¬ ing about how all women like to be pushed around and humiliated both in and out of bed. This may be lots of fun for a detailed sexual fantasy, but it is lousy sociology, and Nor¬ man/Lang seems to believe that women really do enjoy being treated the way the Slavegirls of GOR get treat¬ ed. 'The conventional legal and Moron Majority-style objection to porno¬ graphy is that sex is really dirty and material which is designed to sexually stimulate the reader is onment which is largely hostile to¬ men for professional dominants? Why therefore by definition dirty. There¬ ward women and where the society is do submissives complain that it's so fore, a book which clearly intends to composed largely of males (and of wo¬ hard to find a dominant? I may be arouse the reader, and which seems to men who are there only to provide en¬ the only person to have done such re¬ have little other purpose ("redeeming tertainment to males). Teenagers can search -- the scholarly stuff I found social value" -- the assumption being walk into a bookstore and buy GOR was so scanty one could hardly come that to stimulate sexually cannot pos¬ books, too, while they may be afraid to any sort of conclusion at all about sibly be of value) is porn. Using to go downtown to buy porn, only to it. I did find that many so-called that approach, I think it is fair to be told that they are too young to scholars and experts have assumed in call GOR pornography, even if it purchase "adult" materials. Maybe if their work that males are generally does step outside of some of the con¬ porn shops were more convenient and into sadism/dominance, and that fe¬ ventional boundaries of porn. Not cordial to women, they would be buy¬ males are into submission/masochism all pornography is very much more ing straight porn -- but in the real -- but I found no documentation that graphic than GOR (much of the Milan world, the GOR books are just more established that in any way. The House-porn and the French bondage easy to purchase (and cheaper too). only work I could find on the subject books -- all of which are straight¬ showed fairly consistently that the forward, unpretentious, pornography 'You also say that pornography number of female submissives is no -- is without depiction of graphic is largely a male power/sex fantasy greater than the number of male sub¬ genital sex.) media. That's funny -- now you sound missives (if anything, there is a like Women Against Pornography. The slightly greater percentage of male fact is, a large body of pornography 'There are a lot of classic works submissives), and that the number of depicts female dominance. S/M porn¬ of BSD literature in which people male dominants is no greater than ography shows a far greater propor¬ hardly ever even get their clothes the number of female dominants (a- tion of female dominance, in fact. A off, and of course, the preponderance gain, if anything, there are more fe¬ substantial segment of the male aud¬ of lesbianism means very little (if male dominants). I interviewed mem¬ ience for S/M pom prefers female any) penetration by the penis. A lot bers of the S/M community, and I was of S/M porn concentrates so heavy on told that there were lots and lots hard-core teasing that sometimes you of submissives around, but far fewer can get through an entire story with¬ dominants, and that the smallest out anyone ever having come into skin numbers were for male dominants. I contact with another person. Many was also told that it is understood photo layouts never show the dominant in the S/M community that "the bot¬ at all. Taken in that context. GOR tom controls the scene" -- that is, looks even more explicit than a that the submissive is the person great deal of hard-core porn does who really has the first and last (take a look at BRUTE magazine some word on what will be done in S/M time.). experiences, and the "top", or dom¬ inant, simply responds to that. It 'Your analysis that women who sure doesn't sound to me like a lot read GOR books are women who have of guys are just trying to get their weak egos and who accept the belief rocks off by pushing women around. in male supremacy --well, I don't think so. I used to think there 'Don't get me wrong -- I'm not might be something to that popular saying that there isn't porn around notion myself, but after a while I which is oriented towards male dom¬ began to notice that there seemed to dominance, and many of them look at inance, and even to abuse of women be a lot of women around who had a pictures of women who are tied up or by men. There is some woman-kill very strong sense of self, were re¬ being spanked and identify with the pom around, and I certainly find it latively demanding people, did not woman in the picture -- they are not frightening (and so do a lot of S/M show any adherence to the myth of thinking of that model as being their dominants, both male and female). male supremacy -- and who, neverthe¬ "slave"; they are imagining them¬ But the pom-shop owner I talked to less, had lots of submissive/maso¬ selves in her place. More than half said that there wasn't very much of chistic sexual fantasies. I think of the personal ads placed by men in a market for it, compared to the more there's something else going on in S/M magazines are from submissives common sort of S/M porn, and I think S/M that most people haven't noticed seeking dominants -- and many spec¬ it's very telling that I found in and I think it has to do with the ifically ask for a "firm mistress" my survey of the literature stories fact that people like to be pamper¬ who will force them to wear women's which portrayed female dominance over ed, understood, catered to and people clothing. males which were written by male like to feel that they are with a dominants (who happen to be SF auth¬ person who can be trusted and relied 'I was so disturbed by the WAP ors with well-known pseudonyms, which upon. The role of the Dominant in slideshow of nasty pictures of women is why I knew they were by dominants) S/M sex is a largely nurturant one -- being really abused, which was accom¬ -- that tells you something about not a genuinely dominant role. The panied by a speech which sounded market realities.' Dominant's "power" is illusory --it startlingly similar to what you say is controlled entirely by what the (propaganda about how men get-off on ((But I would assume that the "us¬ "Submissive" really wants. And what the idea of brutalizing women), that ual" pom fucking, sucking, even the Submissive really does want is I seriously spent a few years doing some anal and lez activity—is the to be turned-on, to feel not just survey research and interviews of major retail item, and is, judging physical arousal, but a full-body people about the subject. I knew from pom films and magazines, made psychological arousal that can't be there was something wrong; if all it up of (in effect) the worship of measured by laboratory equipment. is is that men want to dominate wo¬ large male sex organs by women men, why do prostitutes have so many who are required to let semen 'So why do women read GOR books? stories to tell about the men who spldtter on their faces and be Well, you can buy them in bookstores pay large sums of money to be whip¬ otherwise and sequentially humilia¬ in shopping malls. You don't have ped? Why is there such a demand from ted in like vein. "Proof of cum to go to "the block" where those is mandatory. " sleazy little shops present an envir¬ 33 WORLDS Contact is made, though not the Stars" series. Will -- or can By Joe Haldeman quite the kind anyone, aside from -- the alien ambassador from the in¬ Pocket Books/Timescape, $2.50, paper the telepath, had in mind. Despite terstellar civilization which con¬ a somewhat preachy ending, there's tacted Earth in the first volume A hundred years from now, "the a lot of good, old-fashioned space help in the development? Or is he Worlds” are satellites with a total opera adventure and sense of wonder there only to hinder it, to keep hu¬ population of half a million and in TIN WOOIMAN. mans on the reservation, so to speak? "the world" is Earth after a century All in all, it's a fascinating story of changes, few of them good, includ¬ and the universe in which it takes ing a Second United States Revolutioa place is developed in great detail. Haldeman's flip and fascinating hero¬ The only problems are the ones that ine, Marianne O'Hara, is from the FORBIDDEN SANCTUARY are caused, I suspect, by forcing it into the "family saga" mold, i.e., largest of the Worlds, New New York, By Richard Bowker and is on Earth for a year of spec¬ Ballantine/Del Rey, $2.50 it's about a hundred pages too long, ial education and is unintentionally and the major characters -- various caught up in the activities of a An interstellar ship --a huge members of the super-rich Saunder, group of underground fanatics intent blue pyramid -- appears in New Eng¬ McKelvey and Whitcomb clans -- are on fomenting the Third Revolution, land one day. The quite human-ap¬ all too often irritatingly conven- virtually destroying Earth in the pearing aliens apparently have no process. The bare bones of the plot technology other than whatever it is don't sound that intriguing, but that enables them to travel between the incredibly detailed future world the stars. Back on their home plan¬ that Haldeman has created is itself et, there is an embryonic cult that fascinating, and the way it is shown bears a suspicious resemblance to EXPLORING THE EARTH AND THE COSMOS to us through O'Hara's eyes is both early Christianity. Learning that By Isaac Asimov spellbinding and funny. In WORLDS a similar religion exists on Earth, Crown, $13.95 Haldeman seems to have combined most one of the crew, a secret member of of the virtues and none of the faults the cult, jumps ship and is spirited Carl Sagan may, by virtue of his of Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. away and hidden by a Catholic priest. TV appearances and a handful of best Heinlien and thrown in a touch of The efforts to get the deserter back sellers, be the best known and best J.D. Salinger. It's the sort of eventually involve the whole world, paid science explainer today, but book you may skip parts of in your including the Pope, and almost every¬ when it comes to clarity, versatility rush to find out how it turns out, one proves to be a hypocrite to some and easy reading, he has to take a but then go back and read everything extent. Despite an ending that is back seat to Isaac Asimov. Where you skipped because the writing it¬ either inspirational or irritating Sagan often emotes and uses superla¬ self is so entertaining. Cdepending on how much of a Chris¬ tives to communicate his enthusiasm tian chauvinist you are), FORBIDDEN for science, Asimov lets the facts SANCTUARY is one of the grabbiest speak for themselves, as they do and most exciting books of recent very well in EXPLORING THE EARTH AND TIN WOODMAN months, with well-developed charac¬ THE COSMOS. By David F. Bischoff § Dennis R. ters and the pace and style of a top-notch suspense thriller. The book is divided into four Bailey sections: space, time, matter and Ace, Paperbk, $2.50 energy. In each, he takes you from the earliest discoveries and explor¬ A few hundred years from now. ations to the very latest frontiers Talents (mainly telepaths and em- of knowledge and sometimes beyond. paths) are a minuscule and despised In the "Horizons of Space" section, OUTWARD BOUND minority, and few even survive child¬ for instance, he starts with prehis¬ hood. Most of the few who do sur¬ By Juanita Coulson toric man's knowledge of the world vive are isolated, some in asylums, Ballantine/Del Rey, $2.95, paper. around him, takes you through the others in the interstellar explora¬ early Viking explorations, the exped¬ tion ships of the Space Service, Whether a safe and practical itions of Columbus, Magellan and all where most malcontents and freethink¬ faster-than-light drive can be de¬ the others, continues with the rud¬ ers, both Talent and normal, are safe¬ veloped before two thousand would- imentary space exploration of the ly "stored" and unable to cause troub¬ be interstellar colonists go into last few years, and ends with spec¬ le back on Earth. One particularly cryogenic suspended animation and ulations about colonizing other stars. powerful telepath is sent to try to start on a probably pointless seven¬ make contact with what appears to ty-year sub-light journey is the ma¬ It is not the simple recitation be a living, organic interstellar jor question in OUTWARD BOUND, the of facts, however, that makes the ship in orbit about a distant star. second volume in the "Children of book so interesting, but the way Asi¬ mov can weave back and forth through dozens of fields of knowledge and put everything fascinatingly into perspective in a way that standard BOOK REVIEWS BY GENE DtWEESE history or science texts rarely do. For example, in explaining hew Eur¬ "Now, Evelyn, you're all ingly and ever more deeply involved opeans became a world power through alone in this dim, dark, in European politics and religion, exploration and colonization, he al¬ dank, dingy, ancient, ooz¬ starting when the mutineers inadver¬ so tells of 15th-century Chinese Em¬ ing, slimy castle at four in tently save the life of the about- peror Yung-Lo, under whose leader¬ the morning. Your mother's to-be-executed Conradin, 16-year-old ship China became the most powerful been carried off by the mon¬ grandson of Frederik II and pretend¬ nation on Earth, largely by virtue ster, your father's been kil¬ er to the throne occupied by his of its sea power, having successful¬ led by the wolfman, the ser¬ would-be executioner, King Charles. ly explored and raided as far away vants have fled, your lover Despite a generally slow pace and a as the Red Sea and Egypt. However, is being chased across the few other shortcomings, mainly hav¬ under Yung-Lo's overly salf-satisfi- moors by the dogs. I want ing to do with the very human and ed successors, who thought inter¬ to get the feeling from very medieval-seeming aliens and course with the rest of the world you, as you come down this their "science", THE COMING OF THE unimportant, China "drew back with¬ stairway, that you're fed DEMONS is engrossing from the very in itself in self-imposed isolation up with it all!" first page, particularly in its de¬ and left the rule of the sea to oth¬ tailed and thoroughly convincing de¬ ers", and, as a result, "lost the piction of the cynicism and savagery As in many books about Hollywood, race to become the first world pow¬ practiced by virtually all powerful however, there are more tragedies er", all of which has an intriguing political and religious leaders of than laughs, but they are all equal¬ parallel in the current United States the time. ly as interesting despite occasional tendency to pull back from the so- heavy-handed writing. ("He was a- called "space race". warded the megaphone", for example, There are a few nits that could meaning "He was named director".) be picked, sush as Asimov's insis¬ Among the personalities who, unlike tence on expressing everything in Karloff himself and Elsa Lanchester, GOR SAGA metric units and only in metric units, had less than happy endings are: By Maureen Duffy even the height and weight of humans, Viking, $13.95 Colin Clive, the original Frank¬ but those are only minor drawbacks enstein, who died at 37. in a totally fascinating book that Despite the title, GOR SAGA has takes you, literally, from before [Wight Frye, Frankenstein's hundi- nothing to do with the execrable the discovery of fire to a quasar backed assistant, an excellent stage Tarl Cabot or Counterearth, but is a billions of light years away that actor who died at 43 after a career refurbishing of the Frankenstein shines with the light of a hundred that went steadily downhill the last story set in a near-future England trillion suns. ten years of his life because of vaguely reminiscent of CLOCKWORK OR¬ typecasting. ANGE. An irresponsible scientist (whose name, oddly enough, is Nor¬ Lon Chaney, who had a drinking man) uses his own sperm and the ovum problem at least partly because he of an ape to produce a test-tube hy¬ hated his father, not only because brid which he raises as an "experi¬ of undeserved childhood beatings but it's alive! THE CLASSIC CINEMA SAGA ment". The hybrid -- Gordon, or Gor because he always had to compete OF FRANKENSTEIN for short -- thinks he's just a with his memory. By Gregory William Mank dark, somewhat hairy human, as does A.S. Bames 5 Co., Paper, $12.95 Bela Lugosi, who turned down the everyone else except his father, the part of the monster in the first mov¬ only person who knows the truth. This authoritative and well-il¬ ie because it had no lines and be¬ The first two-thirds of the book, lustrated trade paperback is the cause it didn't fit his romantic im¬ while Gor is growing up and being ed¬ book for anyone interested in horror age of himself, and yet whose best ucated in various foster homes and films in general or Frankenstein performances were as Igor, a grot¬ schools, is slow and easily skiranable movies in particular. It covers in esque, broken-necked hunchback, in but the last third, starting when detail the eight Frankenstein films two later Frankenstein movies. Gor's father turns violently and ir¬ made by Universal, starting with rationally against him and Gor es¬ In short, IT'S ALIVE! is not on¬ Karloff's 1931 FRANKENSTEIN and end¬ capes into the "non-civilized" areas ly hugely informative, greatly en¬ ing with the 1948 comedy, ABBOT AND of England, holds your attention very joyable, and wistfully nostalgic, COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. It al¬ well, particularly when Gor and his but can at times evoke as much sad¬ so briefly discusses almost every friends start searching for evidence ness as does the fate of the monster other Frankenstein movie ever made, of his real parents and eventually himself. both foreign and domestic. What confront his father. makes the book so hard to put down, however, is not the movies per se but the accounts of how they were made and of the lives of the people who made them, which make up a good THE COMING OF THE DEMONS eighty percent of the text. By Gwenyth Hood On the lighter side, for instance, Morrow, $13.50 you learn why the wolfman's appear¬ ances were so limited in 1945's The Pelezitereans, nomadic sur¬ HOUSE OF DRACULA. The yak hair need¬ vivors of a planet long since destroy¬ ed for the werewolf makeup was run¬ ed, approach 13th Century Earth. ning low because the studio hadn't Forbidden by their Prime Directive been able to get a new shipment from from interfering with the civiliza¬ Asia since before the war. tion of any inhabited planet, they Or you are given one director's send down only a small exploratory memorable scene-setting instructions craft. Because of a pair of lowborn to Evelyn Ankers, as quoted by co- mutineers aboard the craft, however, star Ralph Bellamy: the Pelezitereans soon become will¬ 35 THE VIVISECTOR BY DARRELL SCHWEITZER

FANTASY AS A PUBLISHING GENRE, they certainly don't want books with quests, adventures, and which strive to be "literary" in a at least some physical ac¬ PART 1*5 static, non-narrative way. This is tion. so obvious it's a big secret. Here 3. Characters who do things we have the very essence of why rather than sit around and As has been pointed out at vast THE LORD OF THE RINGS will always, bemoan their fate. length elsewhere, fantasy threatens always, always outsell J.G. Ball¬ (or promises, depending on your ard's THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION, or 4. Primitive, or at least pre¬ point of view) to take over the the novels of D.G. Compton, or, industrial cultures, replete science fiction market. This is for that matter, those of Mack Rey¬ with barbaric splendor, the an easily demonstrable phenomenon: nolds. glamour of antiquity, etc. fantasy books, usually parts of vast 5. A feeling for the natural and sprawling trilogies, tend to Where did the Sense of Wonder world. This may be the most sell better than science fiction. go? It went into fantasy, or, more important feature. Stories More and more are being published. accurately, it was rediscovered about future advertising ex¬ Any book editor can tell you that there. It is now seeping back in¬ ecutives in glass cubicles far more fantasy novels are being to science fiction. We are begin¬ can only have so much aes¬ written than science fiction nov¬ ning to see the influence of the thetic appeal. I think there els. The ratios they give you may Tolkien-type fantasy on science is a very deep psychological range from four-to-one to ten-to- fiction. But there is no reason appeal in stories which one. I heard one admit publically to assume that science fiction will place the characters in the that he hadn't seen a science fic¬ lose its identity in the process. context of nature. We are tion submission in a month. Every¬ This is just another influence to lacking something in a world thing was fantasy. be incorporated, the first clearly of grafitti-covered subway identifiable, genre-wide trend since cars and glass skyscrapers. If we're to arrive at any un¬ the collapse of the New Wave. derstanding of this, first we have (You'd better shut me up before I start babbling a- to recognize and ignore the reac¬ I don't think anybody understood bout such old-fashioned con¬ tionaries—you know, the kind of what was happening when DUNE became cepts as beauty.) people who insist that fantasy is wildly successful, but over the bad for you, makes you immoral from past few years it's been abundantly 6. A sense of man's place in the too much smiting and not enough obvious that the most successful universe. This is supposedly honest killing, or makes you go science fiction novels are those the special province of sci¬ blind and makes your palms hairy. that read like fantasy, such as ence fiction, but it is too These are usually not quite middle- THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, THE BOOK often ignored. The wonder aged writers who were Young Turks OF THE NEW SUN, THE SNOW QUEEN, etc. that some of us at least can a decade-and-a-half ago. They've Without considering the specialized, feel looking at the stars on turned reactionary for the same usually metaphorical things you can a dark night with a clear reason ANALOG partisans did in do with myth, the "fantasy" char¬ sky—and thus experiencing 1967. They resent being pushed a vision which the overwhelm¬ out of the limelight by a...ah, acteristics of these books are roughly as follows: ing majority of the popula¬ dare I say it? Hell yes... new wave tion never has—might just of writers whose backgrounds, as¬ 1. A vast, vividly realized as readily come out as fan¬ pirations, and literary ideas are setting. tasy. More often than not, very different, if not downright 2. A storyline of broad scope. of late, it has. Fantasy has alien.

The question before us is this: will science fiction as we know it be supplanted by imaginary-world, myth fantasy the way the lost race novel was supplanted by the inter¬ planetary romance?

I think the answer is no. All a science fiction novel has to do to capture the same audience is to meet its needs. Myth fantasy has certain special strengths. It can do things science fiction can't. But I think the secret of its mass appeal is simply this: story-tell¬ ing on a grand scale.

Audiences are tired of glib re¬ hashes, of over-domesticated futures with no wonder left in them. And got science fiction's old Sense of Wonder. 7. All of the above, with und¬ ertones of mysticism. The point I want to make is that none of these characteristics, including the last one, precludes the story's being science fiction. It just happens that fantasy nowa¬ days better serves the needs of the audience. A science fiction novel which does all these things, and perhaps more, will be just as suc¬ cessful. Which brings us to:

HELLICONIA SPRING By Brian Aldiss Atheneum, 1982, 361 pp., $15.95 This is a classic example of a science fiction novel which has vir¬ tually all the appeal of fantasy, plus unique science-fictional char¬ acteristics. It is sure to be a best-seller. It is even the first volume of a trilogy. What more can a publisher ask? Expect the third volume to make the general best¬ seller lists. Further, it already is a #1 best-seller in England. I can't say I was surprised to read that in the latest LOCUS. Consider¬ ing all the above, I can only say it figures. wonder about. The weakness of this with Helliconia's intellectual ren¬ HELLICONIA SPRING is the story book is that one rarely gets involv¬ aissance. The story of knowledge is of the rebirth of civilization after ed with the characters. They are often stronger than the story of a long winter, in the literal sense believable, certainly. They never individual people. In some ways and otherwise. The planet Helli- do things which real human beings the book ia reminiscent of the work conia is located in a binary star wouldn't, but we never really get of James Blish, who was always at system, and experiences extremes of to know them. We are detached ob¬ his best either in purely intellec¬ heat and cold on a roughly 2500 year servers, rather than participants. tual realms, or when describing cycle. In the few lifetimes covered phenomena. in the first volume, the environment This is largely due to the changes from arctic and barren to scope of the book. When the sheer The lack of strong characters temperate an d forested. Consequent¬ size of the overall story precludes will detract a little from the ly the way of life of the human in¬ any "plot" other than the most ri¬ book's appeal, but not very much. habitants must change drastically. diculously drawn-out curse/revenge/ The real protagonist is Helliconia They start as Eskimos and end as quest sort of goings-on, there are itself, about which many questions farmers and city-dwellers. basically two approaches open to are left unanswered, notably how the writer. He can either tell this superficially absurd biological The place of man in nature and closely-focussed stories set at setup came about. About half the in the cosmos is depicted in a rath¬ crucial stages of the overall de¬ life on Helliconia are of Terrest¬ er extreme way. Every change, every velopment (the method used in A rial origin, including not only ho¬ aspect of life is controlled, as the CANTICLE FOR LEIBOVITZ), or take mo sapiens and various domestic ani¬ people half understand, by the pos¬ that overall development head on, mals such as pigs and geese, but al¬ itions of the two suns in the sky. developing a lot of little plots so deer, bears, mosquitos, fleas, Culture is completely shaped by, and along the way. etc. There are hints throughout at the mercy of the environment, all Aldiss chose the latter course. that Helliconia is an artificial the way down to the devastating creation. It is closely watched plagues which only break out when Only the prologue, which is a more closely focussed adventure of dis¬ from orbit by Earth folk who realize conditions are just right, and which covery by one character, is really how odd it is. We shall see. decide the fates of nations. involving. Hie rest isn't quite Aldiss handles this with con¬ alive, as various conflicts, natur¬ siderable intelligence and a good al changes, and historical movements interweave. The reader's interest eye for detail. His setting is IMARO completely believable. He seems to is held, but it's the fascination By Charles R. Saunders understand how such societies and one might have for crystals growing DAW Books #459, 1981, 208 pp., $2.50 ecosystems work. (Only one thing in an indoor rock garden. The most failed to convince: How come cavern- plot-oriented sections aren't nec¬ Some of you may have heard of dwellers, who may not see the sun essarily the most interesting. I Charles Saunders. He is one of the in years, don't have epidemics of found the most exciting parts of the major names in the world of small- rickets?) book proper to be those having to do press fantasy magazines, for all You will certainly remember the that he has never had a story in a setting. It's the people that I 37 newsstand magazine, and has only a couple mass-market anthology appear¬ courses are taught, and also of in¬ ances. The advantage of the small terest to rich fans. It contains 75 fantasy magazines is that they've essays, most about 4000 words long, developed a lot of talent over the some much longer, about just about past ten years or so. The disad¬ every important SF writer from Mary vantage is that they tend to keep Shelley to the present. Of course that talent locked away. It is you can argue that so-and-so is left necessary for any writer who's go¬ out, but it's hard to come up with a ing to have a real career to break really major figure who is. Most out of them eventually. It's nice of the pieces are of very high qual¬ to see Saunders breaking out. ity, far more interesting to the knowledgeable reader than these en¬ He is, in terms of technique, tries usually are. Peter Nicholls a competent but not outstanding wri¬ on Heinlein struck me as particular¬ ter. His uniqueness is his subject ly good. The only really dubious matter. He writes about Africa, one is Colin Wilson on Lovecraft. its legends, myths, customs, cult¬ His judgements seem strange in the ures, etc. , often changing names light of Lovecraft's posthumous ca¬ and otherwise faking it as most reer in the last 15 years or so (e.g. '■medieval" type fantasy writers do the statement that Lovecraft as a with Europe, but still incorporat¬ figure is more important than any¬ ing a lot which is fresh and new and thing he wrote) and he is also quite genuine. sloppy about facts. I made a quick list of obvious biographical errors: The hero Imaro is already the star of a well-received series of # HPL never played with other stories. This novel is a fix-up of REFERENCE: kids as a child. [His letters des¬ some which have appeared in such cribe such activities in detail.] places as DARK FANTASY, DRAGONBANE, # His marriage broke up because and PHANTASY DIGEST. It isn't a BLACKWOOD'S BOOKS he didn't like physical contact. collection disguised as a novel for By John Robert Colombo [His wife, who survived till, I commercial reasons, but an attempt Hounslow Press (124 Parkview Ave., think, 1972, said otherwise. Actual¬ at a genuine novel. The original Toronto, Ontario M2N 3Y5, Canada), ly the problem was a lack of money, stories have been rewritten. There 1981, 119 pp., $7.95 and HPL's refusal to move to Chica¬ is a unified narrative beginning go when Sonia got a job there.] with Imaro's origin as an outcast Hounslow Press publishes small of dubious parentage who leaves a editions of Canadian-interest books, # $240 for "The Dunwich Horror" barbaric, cattle-herding people. They are doing an Algernon Black- was the largest sum HPL ever earned We then follow his career as he wood bibliography because Blackwood in his career. [He got more for grows in sophistication, encounters lived in Canada for a while and his two sales to ASTOUNDING.] civilization, and chases after the wrote several stories with Canadian # He travelled only as far south various people who done him wrong. settings, most notably "The Wendigo." as Virginia. [He had a couple of About the first half of the book BLACKWOOD'S BOOKS is the first ref- long visits in Florida, and was fond goes by without the seams showing. erence work on this important, if of Charleston, South Carolina, even Then they begin to show. The last sometimes overshadowed (by Lovecraft writing a guide to that city, which two episodes are clearly just epi- especially) writer. It contains a is in MARGINALIA. ] sodes, for all the last one, "The listing of all his books, including City of Madness," may be the best. the contents of his story collec- And so on. No excuse, Mr. Wil¬ The problem is that, having gotten tions, plus three appendices: a son. None at all. through with Imaro's origins and brief life of Blackwood, an article The book as a whole is, by con¬ growth into manhood, Saunders does- on Blackwood's Canadian years, and trast, quite worthwhile. n't seem to know what to do next. an appreciation by Walter Gillings. Imaro ceases to grow. He gets out It contains a lot of information for of tight spots by sheer brute the Blackwood devotee, but one only strength, usually fuelled by relent- wishes for more, like a listing of CONTEMPORARY LITERARY CRITICISM #21 less hatred, which seems to be his where the stories originally appear- Edited by Sharon R. Gunton most salient characteristic. The ed, and of title changes. (I bring Gale Research, 1982, 600 pp., $95.00 adventure may be exciting, the set- this up because I have a copy of THE Obviously very few individuals tings unusual, but for all the mon- NORIK AMERICAN REVIEW, Sept. 1931, are going to buy this. But these sters he kills, Imaro doesn't have containing "The Fire Body" by Black- things are interesting to page much personality. At the very end, wood, which is not mentioned in Col- through in libraries, and they're when he meets up with his sidekick, umbo's book. An uncollected story? the place to start if you're doing an educated pygmy, he comes alive a How many others are there?) serious research. CLC #21 consists little, but it isn’t enough. of excerpts from criticism of import¬ There's no great insight here. _ ant writers, poets, filmmakers, The book doesn't tackle heavy them- SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS screenwriters, etc. As science fic¬ es. But it is one of the more orig- Edited by E. F. Bleiler tion becomes more respectable, more inal and readable action/adventure Scribner's, 1982, 623 pp., $55.00 and more SF writers are included. fantasies to come along in a while. Yet another high-price, high This volume has a section on Roger Hopefully Saunders will continue to quality collection of author studies Zelazny. Also of science-fictional grow as a writer. intended for libraries. The field interest: Monty Python and Seigel and Schuster (of SUPERMAN fame). for such books must be pretty crowd¬ ed by now. But this is a good spec¬ imen of the type, and worthwhile for any' university where science fiction 38 REPRINTS: SMALL PRESS

THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH AND OTHER STORIES MAGAZINES By H.P. Lovecraft Ballantine Books, 1982, 208pp., $2.50 Reviewed By

THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH Darrell Schweitzer By H. P. Lovecraft Ballantine, 1982, 241pp., $2.50

These two collections are made There's an impressive pile of up mostly of Lovecraft's "dreamland" zines to be reviewed this time. The fantasies, which are, as he admitted, whole Small Press seems to be out in heavily influenced by Dunsany, but at once, and those not will ignore force. Therefore, no introductory which remain a unique accomplishment it. This isn't the sort of thing remarks, save that Small Press maga¬ in their own right. The star attrac¬ that's going to see a mass market- zines tend to stay in print for tion is the title novella in DREAM- paperback edition soon. months or even years, so reviewing QUEST, which is one of the oddest a six-month-old little magazine is pieces in all fantastic literature. The story was apparently writ¬ ten arounf 1912 and sold to the considerably less useless than review¬ You will either love it or hate it. ing an ANALOG of similar vintage. It's, as the title suggests, a dream legendary THRILL BOOK, which fold¬ fantasy, which might also be des¬ ed before publishing it. The manu¬ WEIRDBOOK 16 is the latest mani¬ cribed as the work of a berserko- script remained in limbo for over festation of the Grandaddy Of The necrophiliac Lewis Carroll. It has fifty years, passing first from All, the oldest surviving fantasy all sorts of distinctive touches, Street and Smith to Conde Nast, small press magazine and the first including an army of cats, friendly then to the George Arents Research significant one in the current phase ghouls, and a "marvelous city" of Library at Syracuse University. of the field's development. Unfor¬ dream which, in classic Lovecraftian All this while it remained unidenti¬ tunately, this isn't the best issue, fashion, turns out to be a trans¬ fied, since it was originally sub¬ mostly because nothing really stands mogrified version of the hero's own mitted under a pseudonym. Up until out, the way Thomas Lyman's "The native Boston. The level of inven¬ his death in 1961, Smith apparently Prayer Machine" did last issue. The tion throughout is staggering. The never tried to rescue it. Only re¬ only story I'd consider really bad details range from impressive to cently, through diligent research, is "The Hell of Black Lines" by the silly. was it recognized for what it was. perplexing William Scott Home, who wrote one splendid story years ago The other stories, most of which The curiosity value is undeni¬ able. As a reading experience, and has been unreadable since. His also deal with the idea of "dream¬ prose is absolutely torturous. Brian land" as a real underworld or other it's the sort of standard pulp ac¬ tion fiction which is diverting in Lumley tortures us a bit less in dimension, vary greatly in quality. "Treasure of the Scarlet Scorpion", "Through the Gates of the Silver small doses. Whenever a pulp writ¬ er had trouble plotting he fell back which is a perfectly well imagined Key" is a particularly mind-stretch¬ and structured tale, replete with ing cosmic exercise which is still, on that old reliable: hero gets his fanny caught in a bear trap; spends amusing ironies, but told in a hokey I think, conceptually far ahead of "archaic" style sure to scrape fing¬ most science fiction being publish¬ the rest of the story getting out. So, in an oriental setting, there ernails across the blackboard of ed. It must have seemed staggering your brain. There's even a barbarian in 1934. are chases, fights, the discovery of a lost city, a chance encounter who barbarously mixes words like "cer- DREAM-QUEST is the stronger of with a mysterious Chinaman (of which tes" in with perfectly modem idiom. the two collections. THE DOOM THAT nothing comes), more pursuit by gi¬ James William Hjort's "Yhagni's CAME TO SARNATH contains many minor ant apes, and finally a maiden res¬ Priest" is a Cthulhu Mythos story pieces, in addition to seme fairly cued from an evil rajah. In modem which will delight people who like important ones. Of particular in¬ editorial terms, the story has no to be reassured that they still do terest, for all it has nothing to "content" and is a classic case of write 'em like they used to. I found do with the rest of the book, is action being substituted for plot. the writing adequate and only occas¬ "In the Walls of the Eryx," Love- The writing is a lot more straight¬ ionally turgid. There is a quite in¬ craft's only interplanetary story, forward than Smith's later work. It teresting touch as the hero wakes up which shows how well he could write lacks the poetry of his more famous with his memory gone, having forgot¬ straight SF if he tried. prose, but is also easier to read. ten about his blasphemous involvement The illustrations by R. J. Kru- with Outer Horrors. He's wiped clean powicz show a good sense of color, and has to choose good or evil. (Im¬ AS IT IS WRITTEN but as drawings they might politely agine if Wilbur Whateley woke up one By Clark Ashton Smith be called amateurish. morning and didn't know he was a bad Donald Grant, 1982, 125 pp., $20.00 guy.) Unfortunately, before this conflict gets anywhere, the Usual This early and long-lost novella y one of the stalwarts of WEIRD TAL¬ Ending sets in. (A Cthulhu Mythos ES is worthy of more attention than protagonist doesn't protag, you see. the latest Robert E. Howard barrel- He merely exists to be eaten.) There scrapings simply because, unlike are moments of effective grue. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith dead has "Leanthe's Tower" by Colin Sax¬ not proven more prolific than most ton is rather well written, and sur¬ living authors. Grant's deluxe, prisingly erotic for a magazine like limited edition is just right for this. But it doesn't make lots of it, because those readers seriously sense. There's this totally innocent interested in Smith will grab it up 39 Young Thing in this paradise without anything at all to do. Doesn't she er (by John Stewart) to its back col¬ ifically, I have THRONE OF BLOOD in get bored out of her skull? or cover (by Hannes Bok), it is a mind), but Page's is sometimes subtle superb production job. When you in the wrong places, and given to al¬ "How Jacquerel Was Slain by the start thinking about what this digest¬ most ridiculous exaggeration in oth¬ God Brann" is an adequate sword and sized magazine would cost if issued ers. I just cannot believe a medie¬ sorcery piece by Janet Fox, who some¬ by a conmercial publisher as a trade val-style battle in which only one times tends to forget everybody but paperback, the five-dollar cover guy is left standing on one side, the most important people in a scene price doesn't seem exorbitant at and nobody on the other. Battles rather in the way that, in movies, all. are not like that. If they were, the hero and villain can meet in the no one could afford to fight them. midst of a thundering battle, and The new issue is devoted in part suddenly there's no battle anymore. to the works of Ramsey Campbell, and "Nemo Me Impune Lacessit" by When the villain dies, he does so in includes an interview with him, an Michael Shea is a Cthulhu Mythos silence. I wonder why the assorted article about his work and three orig¬ story, better than most in that it guards and the like don't merely inal stories. Of these, "Out of Copy¬ is written in a modem style rather skewer the heroine when she's stand¬ right" is probably the best, deftly than an adjectival first-person de- ing around, having overcome the vil¬ mixing horror and sly humor. It's lerious, but essentially trivial. A lain. about a sleazy anthologist who comes cuckolded husband who just happens All this makes "The Innocent Al¬ to a bad end when he dares to meddle to be a servant of the Old Ones feeds tar" by Edmind Shirlan the best story with the text of a story he's pirat¬ his enemies to Things in various ela¬ in the issue. A smooth, unobtrusive ing. "Conversion" is a rather minor borate ways. There is no complica¬ style and a charming plot keep you gimmick piece, which hinges on a sud¬ tion or particular point. going: A girl is raised in total is¬ den shift in perspective. It's the "Fair Trade" by William F. Nolan, olation from the world so that she sort of story that would be wrecked "Old Woman" by Joel Hagen and "The will not be "infected" with evil. if I gave away the ending, so I won't. House at Evening" by Frances Garfield Of course, this total innocent is "Eye of Childhood" is very typical are all rather routine, although the just what the local coven needs for Campbell, all about brooding menace Nolan is surprisingly effective for their human sacrifice. Enter a cel¬ and slow decay in a particularly what it is: a corpse-comes-back-for- ebrated white magician and general grungy Liverpool slum. (I wonder revenge story told in hillbilly dia¬ master of the occult. If Shirlan de¬ how the city fathers take the way lect. velops his characters a little more, he might have something like a lat¬ WHISPERS continues to maintain ter-day Jules de Grandin series go¬ the high standard it established for ing. (And, taking a warning from itself when it began nine years ago. Quinn, his might be less hackneyed.) Not all the stories are great, but some of them are, and issue-for-is¬ sue it's considerably better than My own contribution to this is¬ any of the newsstand magazines. (WHIS¬ sue is a one-act play, "The Forest PERS 17/18, out soon will be another Dream", which, it may surprise read¬ double issue, this time devoted to ers to learn, was actually written Stephen King, with new material by to be performed. Directors and pro¬ him.) ducers inform me that it's glorious¬ ly unstageable. You see, when I FANTASY TALES is another old wrote it, I was mostly familiar with standby, now in its sixth year of college theatre, and I naively de¬ publication. FT seems to be the signed the thing to be put'on in most "pulpish" of the major small such a fashion. But the difference press magazines. The stories tend between college theatre and profes¬ to go for unmitigated fright effects, sional theatre is that a college often with twist endings and a genu¬ production has no budget and a lot of ine zest for grue. The writing is The other fiction in the issue usually on a quite competent level, free actors, while a professional one ,is of varying interest. Karl Edward but most of the stories draw a "not has no budget and actors who want to Wagner's novella "Beyond Any Measure' quite" reaction from me. be paid. Plays which take place in superbly mixes reincarnation, vamp¬ a single room and have a cast of ires and modem decadence. It's a Issue #9 is one of the best. All three are very much in demand these relief to encounter a modem-scene the stories are to some degree enjoy¬ days. What makes a director cringe horror story that doesn't have a able. There are no masterpieces, at my little extravaganza is not that vaguely Victorian air to it. Here, but nothing is noticeably bad either. sanebody falls off the edge of the where the Victorian elements enter, world at the end, but that I blithely they belong. Otherwise the charac¬ Adam Nichols' novelet "Dead Birds call for a troop of belly dancers, ters exist in a London that includes Singing in the Black of Night" is an army, a whole court full of noble punk rockers, THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW the author's debut in British small lords and ladies, etc. ("Enter as and cocaine parties. press magazines, we are told, without many as possible", as was allegedly mention of appearances elsewhere. If written in the margins of Shakes¬ "The Red Death" by Ray Russell this is a first sale, it's a pretty peare's scripts.) is actually a screen treatment of good one. There are static para¬ what would have been a much better graphs of exposition, which a more This issue of WEIRDBOOK has an version of Poe's "The Masque of the experienced writer would know to effective cover by Stephen Fabian, Red Death" than was actually filmed. avoid, but Nichols shows a definite fair to middling interiors by various It is excellently illustrated by Fa¬ flare for atmosphere and a middling artists and some poetry. Accompany¬ bian. ability to depict character. The ing it is FANTASY MONGERS #3, a col¬ characters are quite convincing while lection of letters, comnents by the "The Warrior Who Did Not Know the story is in progress, at least. editor, revievsand ads. Fear" by Gerald W. Page almost cap¬ tures the fantastic, brooding atmos- The most serious flaw is that as the WHISPERS 15/16 is the first new phete of a good Samurai movie (spec¬ ending approaches, one realizes that issue of this top magazine in about the story is an adaptation of a song two years. From its front color cov¬ 40 Fairport Convention does, called "Crazy Man Michael". Now, adapting ley is the weakest story in the is¬ there is a small and loyal audience a song into a story is a perfectly sue, little more than a synopsis of out there. That's the basic prereq¬ valid technique. A song will usual¬ events. I can't say I was much im¬ uisite for a successful little maga¬ ly just relate events. The story- pressed. zine. I think INTERZONE is going to writer's job is to force it to make Last but not least, "October do well, and further, I think anthol¬ sense, supplying motivation, back¬ ogists ought to watch it closely for Treat" by Philip C. Heath. A bunch ground, additional incidents. Often stories of interest to a larger aud¬ of country kids decide to cap off this requires a considerable amount their Mischief Night activities by ience. of invention. The best results come killing a vampire. It's all a gag, It's not quite fair to say the when the author intersects with the set up by one of them. Things do magazine is what NEW WORLDS might ballad, rather than merely following not go as the perpetrator expects, have been like if the stories were it. Nichols begins well, but toward nor, to Heath's credit, quite the the end just follows, and if you know coherent, but it is accurate to say way the reader does either. that any of the stories in the first the song, you know how the story turns issue could have appeared in the la¬ out. To sum up FANTASY TALES: A fair¬ ter NEW WORLDS. Certainly the best ly good fix of this sort of stuff for "The Grey Horde" by David Mal- of them is Keith Roberts' "Kitemast- addicts, but it isn't likely to hook pass is admittedly a Clark Ashton er" which has all the characteristics anybody new. Better than average Smith imitation, better than most, of a good Roberts story: vivid, at¬ packaging, including an extremely ef¬ but there are no surprises. The eld¬ mospheric and filled with details of fective wraparound cover by Jim Pitts. ritch doom comes on schedule, but Mal- a carefully-worked-out alternate pass does have some power of inven¬ On the subject of basically okay technology. The observation kites tion. He does not, alas, have a stories, there are two in the most (used by people in a post-holocaust careful eye for detail. Consider: recent (#14, Spring 1982) issue of world to watch for demons) are full An army of reanimated corpses can’t SORCERER'S APPRENTICE. "From the as good and as well realized an in¬ be killed, and cannot know fear. So Tree of Time" by Fred Saberhagen has vention as the highway-traveling what constitutes defeat? Why should Sherlock Holmes and Dracula working trains in PAVANNE. they retreat in disarray? Malpass together to solve a mystery. All John Sladek's "Guesting" is a never tells us, but they do. very charming, but I didn't like the resolution hinging so completely on not-quite-successful bit of satire, "The Frolic" by Thomas Ligotti an arbitrary rule of vampiric lore about an extra-terrestrial who is to is a moderately effective there's-a- be presented to the world on a TV invented by Saberhagen. Also charm¬ lunatic-on-the-loose story, compar¬ ing, if slight, is "The Sword and variety show, then gets cancelled in able to many such efforts by Robert the interest of ratings. There is the Curse" by Lee Duigon, in which Bloch. a barbarian hero in a typical wish- some good comic invention here, but it's scattershot, not building to fulfillment imaginary world comes a- "The Laughter of Han" by Lin Cart¬ any particular point, as in Sladek's cross a hideous menace: an enchant¬ er is one of his Dunsany-derived Sim- best work. ed sword which removes all cliches. rana stories, basically a barbarian version of "The Emperor's New Cloth¬ Now to turn to a major new entry "The New Rays" by M. John Har¬ es". Zun, the warrior, is incredibly into the field, INTER20NE #1. I've rison is ahout a woman undergoing macho, you see. He goes out of his been predicting a magazine like this way to seem fierce, to maintain his difficult (if vaguely described) for years. Basically, the sort of image. Ultimately this does not treatments for an unspecified dis¬ fiction we used to call "new wave" ease. There are odd characters and work. doesn't have a wide enough appeal to odd happenings at the clinic, and "The Strange Years" by Brian Lum- support a commercial magazine, but nothing makes a large amount of sense.

41 The story is what is sometimes called Who Never Grew Young", in which the (I think the term comes from Stanley natural universe is so repelled by Schmidt) "macro-murky". You can tell the horror of the Hiroshima bombing what is going on scene by scene, but that time starts running backwards, not overall. (The opposite is "micro- away from the event. Hi at story murky", where you can't tell scene by works because most readers share or scene, or even paragraph by paragraph at least understand Leiber's feelings as in a James Sallis story.) Harri¬ about the A-bomb. But I have a hunch son obviously has a lot of talent. that seventy-five years from now He occasionally writes very well in¬ some inhabitant of a space colony is deed. I keep waiting for him to going to access the Collected Works turn into a major writer. I'm still of J.G. Ballard on the library com¬ waiting, unfortunately. puter, read "News From the Sun" and find it quaintly incomprehensible. This leaves us with two stories which are not science fiction or fan¬ INTERZONE is worth getting. If tasy, but what the editors loosely it doesn't repeat the mistakes of the call "imaginative" fiction, "The Cab¬ past, it may turn out to be influent¬ inet of Edgar Allan Poe" by Angela ial well out of proportion to its Carter, and "Hie Brothel in Rosen- circulation. strasse" by Michael Moorcock. It seems to be their intent to stretch things considerably further than is usually done in the commercial mag¬ azines, and this may well turn out Just in: four issues, published to be the real strength of INTERZONE: simultaneously, of W. Paul Ganley's the inclusion of "odd" stories that EERIE COUNTRY (#6-9), which is a com¬ don't fit into any convenient genre. panion to WEIRDBOOK, consisting of Hie Carter is certainly worth reading. the work of lesser-known authors. It's basically a sensitively-done This looks very much like the WEIRD- series of impressions of the child¬ BOOK of ten years ago. The writers hood of Poe, which in a speculative include John Wysocki, Walter Shedlof- way, suggests the origins of many of sky, Gordon Linzner, Phyllis Ann Karr, his obsessions and themes. The Moor¬ W. Fraser Sandercombe and others fam¬ cock piece is an excerpt from a novel iliar to long-time WEIRDBOOK readers. of the same title. One gets the im¬ The artwork ranges from good to ab¬ pression that Moorcock, after all solutely awful, the cover on #9 (by his other varied accomplishments, Dan Day) being the best, the complete¬ would now like to be a great Victor¬ ly inexcusable mess on #6 (by an ian novelist. Of course, he can put "artist” who shall remain nameless) a lot more explicit sex into his work being the worst. EERIE COUNTRY is than could, say, Thackeray or George not of as great interest as WEIRDBOOK Meredith. The excerpt doesn't really but it may be just the thing for fans stand on its own, but is well writ¬ of Weirdbook Press publications. ten. It's probably a good book. Charter subscribers to INTERZONE get as a bonus a limited edition pam- jhletcontaining a novella by J.G. WEIRDBOOK. W. Paul Ganley, POB #149, Ballard, "News From the Sun", which Amherst Branch, Buffalo, NY 14226. was originally published in a Brit¬ $4.50 per copy, 3/$10 or 7/$20. (Note ish magazine, AMBIT. I don't know address change. The P.O. switched if they have any left, but you might boxes on him.) ask. The story is the absolute quin¬ WHISPERS. Stuart Schiff, 70 Highland tessence of anti-science fiction, the Avenue, Binghamton, NY 13905. premise being that because space Double-issue $5.00; two double-issues flight is such a violation of the $8.75. laws of nature, there being things Man Was Not Meant To Know, astronauts FANTASY TALES. Stephen Jones, 73 have brought back with them a "time Danes Court, North End Road, Wembley, disease", which causes people to Middlesex, HA9 QAE, England. lapse into unconsciousness (or time¬ 75p or $2.50 per copy. lessness) for increasingly long per¬ SORCERER'S APPRENTICE, Flying Buffalo, iods, until they have only a few min¬ Inc., POB #1467, Scottsdale, AZ 85252. utes of awareness a day and starve to $2.50, 6/$12.00. death. True to form, the typical Ballard protagonists are at first INTERZONE. 28 Duckett Road, London passive to impending disaster, then N4 1BN, England. British subscrip¬ begin to think it a good idea. Also tions are 5L per 4 issues; American true to form, the speculations on subscriptions are $10.00 for 4 is¬ the nature and perception of time sues, and should be sent to INTERZONE; are fascinating, and th6 story has Patchin Place, New York, NY 10011. moments of stark, bizarre beauty. EERIE COUNTRY. Same address as WEIRD¬ But it is robbed of much of its power BOOK. $2.00 per copy. Subscriptions by Ballard's insistence that space beginning next issue, 4/$6.00. travel is evil. Fritz Leiber used a somewhat similar idea in "The Man 42 fantasy looks to the past while sci¬ ence fiction looks to the future. Richard Geis, my esteemed editor, has suggested that it is the result of more women editors and more women reading SF. I suspect that it is a little of all of the above-mentioned factors as well as the impact of that dreary Dungeons-and-Dragons game (a game so intellectually debil¬ itating it's worth a column all its own, except I don't want to give TSR any more publicity than they de¬ serve; they've already done enough FANTASY AS CANCER: PART I damage this year by foisting George Scithers on us again). The one cause that nobody has mentioned specifical¬ In my years of reading and re¬ ery -- elves and trolls, demons and ly, although Greg Benford came close porting SF, I've watched the field, dwarves, sadistic macho muscular in his article, is that the current impacted by the financial success of sword-n-jockstrap barbarian warriors, popularity of fantasy (which I sus¬ STAR WARS, grow and change. I have masochistic nubile barbarian maidens pect is more a marketing perception not liked a lot of what I've seen. (great role-models for young kids than a genuine consumer taste) is a And over the years I've developed there) -- the science fiction book reaction against technology. Most some pretty strong ideas and opin¬ is a rarity. Some statistics from of the editors new to SF and a lot ions about SF. But, I've always the last several months of new pap¬ that aren't, are subconsciously felt constrained, hemmed in by the erback releases marketed as SF: need to be objective in my news re¬ only 46% were even remotely science . porting, lacking the appropriate for¬ fiction, and of those more than half um in which to express my frustra¬ had occult/fantasy imagery on the tions with, feelings and observations cover (they were being slanted to a on, the SF genre. fantasy audience) and others were There are tremendous problems questionable as science fiction, as with the current state of science witness the following blurb from fiction and future columns will deal James Kahn's TIME'S DARK LAUCHTER with a great many of them, but for published by Del Rey Books: this first column I will conment on "Five years have passed since what I think is the most pressing. Josh Green, the Scribe and A problem so dangerous it threatens Beauty the Centaur set out to destroy the entire meaning of SF, across Southern California and to irrevocably change the whole to find the creatures who genre. It is fantasy. Fantasy is a had destroyed their homes cancer attacking the SF field, drink¬ and carried off their human ing away its precious bodily fluids of reason and rationality. (Gosh dam, golly gee whiz, guys and You ever notice when you go to gals, I guess that's real SF.) Only buy SF, how much of what is marketed one out of five books were science as science fiction is really frntasy? fiction and all were by authors with I have. When I started reading SF a track record of at least five pre¬ there was a good chance that when vious books. (More on that last you picked up a book labeled SF it item later.) was science fiction. It had some¬ thing to do with knowledge, the em¬ The fact is fantasy has sup¬ frightened by technology (as are most pirical method -- and ofttimes., planted science fiction in the SF readers and others). Most have a Lib¬ *shock* even science. The author field. For those who are concerned, eral Arts background, and the Liberal tried to make whatever fantastic pre¬ three major questions arise: What Arts collegiate institutions in this mise appeared in the book plausible, caused this, what will the results country have been anti-tech since usually by glibly-worded rubber sci¬ be, and what can be done about it. the start of the century. I ought ence, but still plausible. Oh, sure, to know -- I have a Liberal Arts de¬ there was the rare fantasy novel or I don't know if you can point gree in English, I've seen the Lib¬ sword-n-sorcery story but they were to any one particular thing and say eral Arts professors' reactions to the exception and it was easy for the that is what has caused the cancerous technology up close and personal; reader, who like me, liked science growth of fantasy in SF. Norman Spin- most go into a spas attack at the fiction, but disliked fantasy (and rad has commented that the takeover mere mention of the word computer, its bastard off-spring, sword-n-sorc- of the entertainment media by corpor¬ let alone science. Most scoffed at ery and occult horror), to avoid it. ate conglomerates has had a lowest SF, although a surprising number conmon denominator effect on movies/ like fantasy. I had a Shakespeare TV and SF (among other areas). Fan¬ prof who confided to me one day that Today the SF field is quite tasy is certainly the lowest common he wished he'd been bom in the days different. The bookstore shelves denominator of SF. Gregory Benford, of aristocracy for he disliked demo¬ abound with fantasy and sword-n-sorc- in a marvelous article in Charles cracy intensely. He referred to it Platt's PATCHIN REVIEW, "Fantasy As sneeringly as "the great leveler." Pollution," says good fantasy is Of course, what he conveniently for¬ easier to write than good science gets as do most readers of fantasy fiction and also points out that and other yeamers for the past (like the SCA), is that if most of them BY ELTON T. ELLIOTT 43 had been bom in the past they would have been serfs or slaves who would most likely have spent their entire existence (of about 35 to 50 years max.) in the fields at hard labor. And if one of the vaunted nobles de¬ cided he was going to attack another noble?and said serf's fields or house was in the way, tough. The great leveler, indeed. Now somebody reading this is going to say, but there are a lot of computer programners who like fant¬ asy, and some even belong to the SCA; they're certainly not anti¬ tech. Well, of course they are, I said it was mostly subconscious in some cases. The results. One of them is al¬ ready apparent; I see a lot more first fantasy novelists than I do science fiction novelists. Another result is a growing disillusionment with the SF field on the part of both older and younger readers. Countless times I've been in stores or at clubs when SF was brought up, and many people said that they used to read SF but the current stuff just wasn't as good. When pressed, most admit¬ ted that it was the fantasy which they detested and there is so much of it today that they can't be sure of buying science fiction when they see SF or science fiction on the spine of a book, so rather than has¬ sle, most just stop reading SF; oth¬ ers only read a few authors they can

Now most of these people are not your hard-core fans or convention goers. Some people have stated that a few of the less sophisticated edi¬ tors would go to conventions and af¬ ter a weekend of seeing pasty untan¬ ned flesh parading around in a vari¬ ety of "barbarian" costumes, decide that SF readers read mostly fantasy. This might have happened (I mean, how many publishers do market surveys to attempt to find out who their read¬ ers are?), but as for those who hold the notion that most convention go¬ ers are fantasy fans, or if they aren't, at least they haven't notic¬ fantasy to put food on the table. ly enthused by faaantasy would just ed what is going on in SF or don't The end result of fantasy's cancer¬ grow up. I mean I enjoyed fairy care, I just wish they had been to ous explosion could leave the SF tales when I was a child. But I a few panels at this year's Norwes- field as stagnant and stultified as outgrew them. Most of those writers Con. In particular the "Illiterate the Western or the Gothic, or as and readers who enjoy faaantasy are, in SF' panel, where a few unprepared stodgy and stuffy as the academic I'm afraid, arrested adolescents who writers got an earful (with Norman novel. It will also mean many long¬ can't see how ridiculous and juvenile Spinrad leading the verbal charge time readers like myself moving into the writings of most fantasists from from the back of the room). the thriller/suspense mainstream con¬ Dunsany through Howard, Lovecraft and temporary /near-future genre where the I believe that what we are see¬ up to Terry Brooks, have been. You plots are exciting, the writing is would think that the readers of ing is a possible exodus of disgrunt¬ better and there isn't a trace of faaantasy would get tired and want led readers from the SF field. At faaantasy. In fact, I think the some mature adult literature for the least, less of a willingness on thriller/suspense near-future genre the part of many readers to take a is already taking over a great deal chance on an unknown first novelist. of territory abandoned by the SF This in turn will make it more dif¬ field (but that is another column). ficult for newer science fiction The rest of us can begin fight¬ writers who could help revitalize Finally, what can be done? ing back, and more on that in my next the field, but will be shut out of Well, it would help if most current¬ column. most markets or be forced to write 44 FANTASY AND THE BELIEVING READER

Bf ORSON SCOTT CARD

For the last half-century Eng¬ assertions of causal relationships ed by "reality" and what might be lish-language literary criticism has -- from this there is no appeal. On authoritatively invented by the been captured by a system of belief the other hand, when Stephen Dedalus writer. Where an individual writer called Modernism or, in its later argues that HAMLET is Shakespeare's and his audience place themselves permutations, New Criticism. If lit¬ working out of his own psychological on that continuum varies from work erary criticism were merely a club problems caused by the death of his to work, even from paragraph to para¬ for people who think they understand son Hamnet, we can protest that this graph and individual readers, too, Ezra Pound, there would be no reason argument is false or invalid or not will bestow or withdraw authority for fantasy writers and readers to justified by the evidence. The cen¬ from a story on a historical or fic¬ take it into account. Unfortunately, ter of belief in criticism is histor¬ tional basis depending on their own however, this particular school of ical -- the ultimate authority from expectations and experience. literary criticism has acquired the which there is no appeal is the status, in too many minds, of Truth. "real" event. Since, of course, the Too many writers, eager to understand "real" event is forever unascertain- able, we can quarrel forever about what it is that makes their stories WAYS OF BELIEVING happen, have learned to say "Clas¬ proof in criticism (and all history). What does HAMLET really mean? Is sicism" and "Romanticism" as if When a writer tells a story to the story we tell about HAMLET true Hulme's use of the words made any his community, he will, consciously or false? In the meantime, however, sense; to speak contemptuously of or not, assume that the community while we may assert that Stephen Ded¬ "naive identification" and the "path¬ will define itself in relation to alus 's account of HAMLET is false, etic fallacy"; and to discuss their the story. I have noticed differaices we cannot say meaningfully that it own work as if the reason for writ¬ in the way I believe stories, whether is "true" or "false" that Dedalus ing stories were to convey meanings fictional or historical, and for said it, for Dedalus exists as a in such a way that only a trained clarity I distinguish three general character in fiction and if Joyce reader can receive them -- and the types of belief: epic, mythic and tells us Dedalus said it, we must untrained reader can receive nothing critical. These names are not arb¬ accept this without appeal, unless at all. With more and more fantasy itrarily chosen -- I mean them to Joyce himself gives us reason within writers being affected by this crit¬ resonate with many old intentions and the text to doubt his own statement. ical movement, and more and more contrast with many old extensions of critics turning their techniques to This distinction between fiction¬ the words. However, they are not fantasy, it is time that this school al and historical centers of belief parallel terms, and I wish them to of literary criticism were put in per¬ is rarely clearcut, however. Histor¬ be; and since I will use them in a spective in relation to fantasy ical and realistic fiction both imply restricted and in some ways arbit¬ stories. some appeal to the historical center rary way, right alongside the more of belief, for example. In earlier traditional meanings, I will risk an¬ AUTHORITY FOR BELIEF times, writers and readers were not noying you with affectation and will so fussy about what must be justifi- distinguish these special senses and Literary criticism is the stories odd grammatical uses of the words we tell ourselves about our stories. with etymologically unjustifiable When we speak of a literary work's but visually parallel spelling changes. "meaning" we may be telling a story about how the author intended the Epick is all story that is receiv¬ work to be read, how the proper aud¬ ed by a group as its own story --as ience of the work would have under¬ true of that group. It is all story stood it, how the work is received that tells who we are as opposed to by a modem audience, what the work who they are. Most of the Old Test¬ tells us about the author and his ament was originally written and community or even how we think the read epickly, because the audience work should have been written and was the people of the book. They re¬ how it compares to that standard of ceived it as an account of how we measurement. In all cases, however, came out of Egypt, how we prospered we are telling a story -- that is, or declined in accordance with our we are giving an ordered account of obedience to or rebellion against casually related events. God. Mythick is all story that is re¬ By tacit agreement we believe ceived by readers as true of all hu¬ our literary stories in one way, as man beings, and therefore lets each fiction and our critical stories reader define himself as like or un¬ another way, as history. No one like the characters in the book. It would attempt to prove that, say is believed on a personal, not group HAMLET is "true" or "false", though level. we regard it as being a. truthful play. No one would dream of criticizing Epick and mythick are alike, how¬ Shakespeare's writing of the play be¬ ever, in this: The decision about cause Claudius didn't "really" kill whether or not to believe is not Hamlet's father. The center of be¬ consciously made. The story simply lief in fiction is in the author's 45 is or is not true. The self is nam- ed by the story, and so to doubt the At that moment I seem to be func¬ or CLQUfZSW. IM A /li-LfAid. story is to rename the self. tioning as a critickal critic, for UJITH A MiVAE UlKE <5T£. I am aware that my definitions, my Critick is all story that is re¬ naming, my stories about stories SlhBSTKO ceived by readers as being detached about stories are all artificial con¬ IaJHAT ELSE- ) SEf from them. It defines the reader structs and not "true", but merely neither as a human being nor as a useful. However, this account of my member of a group. Rather, critick- own attitude is also a story and to al readers evaluate the meaning or be critickal I must call it into ques¬ truth of the story consciously, usual¬ tion, because in fact I would not ly detaching the meaning from the write these ideas if I did not, at story itself. some point along the way, believe in Because critical readers read, them. I at least believe in my un¬ not believing, but instead identify¬ belief, which certainly names me as ing and detaching meanings from the a believer. Which could bring me to story, they are incapable of proper¬ paradox if it were not for the fact ly receiving a story that was writ¬ that part of the story that I tell ten mythickly or epickly: They can¬ is that belief is, at some point, in¬ not receive a story that was written escapable. Whoever detaches himself from belief. Likewise, mythick and from one story and ceases to name epick readers, because they believe himself in relation to it invariably as they read, do not usually discern attaches to another story, if only and detach meanings. The two meth¬ the story that he is now detached. ods are not compatible. Once I have Of course you see where this treated a story critickly, I am no leads. Coleridge and Wordsworth longer capable of treating it myth- mist define themselves as different ickly or epickly; I can only pretend from their predecessors and yet iden¬ to do so, or tell myself a story tify themselves as belonging in the about what it was like when I was same company. They are Milton, but the capitalist story probably still capable of participatory reading. they are not-Milton, just as a child believes the mythick stories of grav¬ names himself as Mother and not-Moth¬ ity, humanity and fair play. The er. They treat their predecessors' critic who no longer believes in the stories critickly, detaching them¬ Bible epickly or mythickly probably selves from those stories. They re¬ still believes in the objective real¬ place it with their own epick story, ity of bread and the causal relation¬ CRITICISM AS STORY which they believe and which accounts ship between chewing, swallowing and for their predecessors and themselves surviving. Because the critickal Because criticism is also tell¬ and sets the world in order. T.S. view is only possible to the unbe¬ ing stories, however, it is important Eliot and others must repeat the liever, and all thought and language to remember that a critic can be task,- endlessly redefining themselves depend ultimately upon unquestioned treating a literary work one way and It is the universal pattern of all belief in something at some point, treating his own story about that writers that they must both identify to regard the critickal view as div¬ work in another. Critics generally themselves with and distinguish them¬ ine is to consign oneself forever to read all literary works critickly, selves from their predecessors. hell. which leads to attempts to decode Yet this account (an oversimpli¬ FAERIE QUEENE, map ULYSSES, patronize fication of Bloom) is also a story. the naivete of Edgar Rice Burroughs, It is epick to those who believe it or despise the superficiality of as a true account of how we (litera- Pope. The critic almost invariably THE CRITIC'S TALE teurs) work. It is mythick to those believes his own story about these who believe that this process of nam¬ works. Only a few critics in each The novel began as a rebellion ing through doubting old stories and generation are able to write their against romance. Romance, which had telling new ones is universal. criticism critickly, to detach them¬ been the soul of an age in which real selves from their own stories about knights shed real blood, no longer stories. Those who tell themselves the satisfied uncourtly writers, who story that naive (mythiclal or epick- turned to writing romances about al) belief is primitive, while de¬ their contemporaries and called them tached, critickal understanding is "new" romances, or novels. The novel more advanced, are inevitably dis¬ caught on, not because it appealed turbed by this circularity, for if to intellectuals, but because ordi¬ qd/o^PATOlATi OHST. YoufL the critickal view is "better" or nary readers loved it. more elevated, this account of it makes true critick forever as unap¬ Since then, however, the novel proachable as true reality. The has been captured by another story, fully detached stance is impossible, a critical tale of self-existing because the detached stance itself texts, in which it is praiseworthy requires belief in detachment. to put distance between the reader and the story, in which it is for¬ But this is not disturbing to bidden for a "good" reader to ident¬ those who believe that only a small ify with a character or consider his number of our stories can be received own experience of the novel as any¬ critickly. We could not live if we thing more than the "pathetic fal¬ were critickal about even a small lacy". All that was valuable in nov¬ fraction of the stories we are told. els was that which was publicly veri¬ The critic who no longer believes fiable. In this way criticism could 46 approach the absolute correctness of science, in which only repeatable The bourgeois, unprfestly reader perience that was far better than public experience is regarded as val¬ leaves his dull world of work and anything the critic-priests ever id. worry and escapes to a land of magic, gave them. where good and evil are clearly sep¬ Literateurs found this method We can see this process at work arated, where he can pretend that he exciting and productive, and so they with THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The book is the strong and fearless hero, believed it and started acting it was written by a formidable scholar, where he doesn't have to cope with out. They kept their distance from but he was not a critic-priest. He reality. And since this reader does the texts they read, and instead an¬ was a lover of old stories that were not read deciphering meanings from alyzed, breaking stories into pieces, told back when people willingly sat the text, he is obviously not seeking discovering connections between them, open-mouthed listening to tales of truth, but rather avoiding thought. and then writing elaborate discurs¬ heroes. Saga, epic, myth, fairy Only the stupid or the lazy read it. ive paraphrases of the "meaning" of tale -- and Tolkien set out to write this or that great work of litera¬ Thus the critic-priests tell a just such a story. He declared again ture. The result was the creation story about fantasy that explains and again that he detested allegory of a special priesthood of correct away their inability to apply their in all its forms, including modem readers, together building a tower method to it. Any work that cannot symbolism. He was not writing mean¬ of stories about stories which, pre¬ be coped with is disposed of. And ings. He was telling a story. Of sumably, would take them to heaven. so the critics have created their course, the critic-priests already epick tale of good literature clear¬ have an answer to that. Never listen The result was sometimes absurd¬ ly separated from bad literature, to the writer, they say. Only exam¬ ity, as when scholars who did not believe in Milton's God thought they in which a few strong, heroic writers ine the text. Writers have an embar¬ and critics stand against the evil, rassing way of scoffing at the crit¬ could understand Milton's work. And as these priests of detached and swarming masses of subhuman intel¬ ic's interpretations. The text, lect, hewing the monsters Fantasy, however, submits silently to torture transcendental reading told each oth¬ er more and more stories about stor¬ Mystery, Science Fiction, Gothic, and dismemberment. Historical, in order to rescue the ies, writers began to believe them In LORD OF THE RINGS, the three virgin damsel Truth and take her and write fiction for them. Such characters of Frodo, Sam and Gollum safely home, where she may be raped fiction was no longer written to be are really three aspects of a single at will. believed. It was written to be ana¬ character. Frodo is the superego, lyzed and translated into discourse, The tragedy is not that so many Sam the ego, Gollum the id. We have and the only story that was believed critics believe this story and act the story firmly under control, for anymore was the epick tale of the it out, dressing up in their tweeds we have renamed the characters to pure-minded critic, who, using ab¬ and sweaters to go quarrel about mi¬ place them within a non-threatening solute standards, officially given nor points of doctrine at MLA and tale. him by observation but actually given other conferences. The tragedy is him by God, decided what was good Or try this: The scene at the that those who are condemned by them, Cracks of Doom is the temptation of and what was bad in fiction. Tremb¬ excluded by then^ also tend to be¬ ling, the writers who believed in Christ. The ring is Satan. Frodo lieve this story, and regard them¬ is the sin of pride, succumbing to this story awaited the verdict of selves as second-class citizens. the critics, who sometimes turned Satan's offer of all the kingdoms of The result is that they either apol¬ the world. Gollum is the sins of their thumbs upward, but more often ogize for the stories they love, the flesh, who used the ring for mur¬ proved their power by destroying deny those stories, or try pathetical¬ der, theft and catching fish, and the poor supplicant with his first ly to make those stories fit the finally, in the scene at the Cracks novel. standards of the critic-priests, who of Doom, it is no accident that Gol¬ Unfortunately, the majority of occasionally, grudgingly, admit such lum bites off Frodo's finger and then, literature in the world does not fit works into the canon of minor works. in his triumph, dances his way back¬ this critical method. When most But only after the "meaning" of the ward into the fires of hell. Glut¬ stories are analyzed, they break down work has safely been detached and tony destroyed itself and Frodo, as into a jumble of meaningless frag¬ translated into discourse. And oc¬ the will to power survived only be¬ ments that seem almost interchange¬ casionally a work of fantasy is so cause he was broken and maimed. On¬ able with the fragments of every important that it cannot be ignored. ly Samwise, the person who was, sig¬ other such story. To the critic who Then the critics must work over the nificantly, untouched by the power guards the temple doors, such tales story unbidden, getting it under con¬ of the ring, emerges unscathed. And are plainly unworthy offerings at the trol as quickly and thoroughly as pos¬ so we have an allegorical reading altar, for they cannot be consumed sible, lest too many readers discov¬ which can be extended quite interest¬ by the hungry horde of priests be¬ er that they have had a powerful ex¬ ingly throughout the work. hind the curtain. It is dust on their tongues. Fantasy is one such sort of writ¬ An2> Now A FiKstT PoK ing. Critics examine it and find NiETIuoPLK TELEV/SfOM, J-Atxes strong-thewed heroes saving damsels AW> ^EMTLEMEn l IUST£A> OF in distress, magic rings and proph¬ T^VlEWIMG^ -fflEioex; OjE-'fsE- ecies, dark forces opposing the to bright light of goodness, and the ' snuff the critics say, "Cardboard characters. AUTHOR.! Endless repetition of meaningless conventions. Hack writing. Child¬ ish oversimplification of good and evil. Obviously written for the adolescent mind. Wish-fulfillment. Bourgeois and fascist and sexist and racist. Pure trash". And ah! the most damning epithet of all: "Escap- discourse. Its fit reader cannot re¬ We also hear the stories other people main aloof and detached from the tell us about ourselves and about story, searching for meanings in the themselves. A child, engrossed in interstices of the tale. The fit play, performs a socially unaccept¬ reader of fantasy is not a spectator able behavior in his pants; his moth¬ but a participant. Mythickly or er, who believes certain tales about epickly, the fit reader of fantasy such things, says, "That's so filth- attempts to believe, and if he does y", and the child believes. "You not believe, it is because he and are so dumb", and we believe. "You the writer cannot comfortably dwell are so beautiful", and we believe. in the same unconscious world, not Our very self is constantly being because fantasy itself is by nature revised according to our experience unworthy. and the stories others tell us. This works in the other direction too. We are constantly revising our experiences according to that set of THE ACT OF READING unconscious beliefs we call our "self". We believe some stories, In a sense, all reading is part¬ we doubt others; we unconsciously de¬ icipatory in that it requires the cide some experiences are important reader to follow along the sentences and remember them, and decide others and apprehend the words. Readers are trivial and forget them. Thus We can search the LORD OF THE are trained to recognize discrete ourself edits our experience of the RINGS for patterns of imagery; we can symbols as letters, and discrete world, and our experience of the decipher the meaning of the different groups of symbols as words. The very world revises ourself in unmeasur¬ races; we can talk at great length fact that words are separated by neat able unaccountable ways. about the bourgeois virtues affirmed little spaces, and sentences by uni¬ by the scouring of the Shire, and versally agreed-upon marks, carries That is how we read, except that argue about whether Sam or Frodo was its own meaning. But readers do not the events of the story have already the figure most rewarded. Yet is think about the symbols they are been edited by another person. The any of this what made LORD OF THE reading while they are reading. author's absolute control over the RINGS a powerful experience to mil¬ They simply receive them, and uncons¬ written text translates into a great lions of readers? ciously sort them out. Each symbol- deal of control over our ordering of Already, however, albeit with group arouses its own set of respons¬ the events in the story. We edit the best intentions in the world, es in the reader; but even then, it the story unconsciously as we read, LORD OF THE RINGS is being required is not the words we read, but the deciding what is important and what in college courses and is undergoing relationships between the words. Of is trivial, what is true and what just such critical treatments. I do means nothing by itself. But add is false, but to a considerable de¬ not resent this because there is more and more words, and of becomes gree we will still be influenced by something inherently bad about crit- ripe; a reader receives of different¬ the shapes the writer has imposed ickal reading. On the contrary-, ly because of its context, and re¬ on the tale. ceives everything else in the sent¬ there is an excitement to the ritu¬ Furthermore, the writer's shap¬ ence differently because of is there. als of criticism. It is an emotion¬ ing of the work is also unconscious al experience to take pieces of the In receiving stories, we go to a greater degree than critical broken-up text and assemble them in through a similar process. We are theorists would like to admit. Even a meaningful pattern. It is, in fact, told of certain events, with a cer¬ writers who follow a tight plan, con¬ a valid creative act to tell such tain pattern of causal relationships trolling, as they think, every word, stories about stories, and I think among those events. Each event every gesture of a character, every that is much of the reason why the changes our view of all other events. meaning of every line -- even they critic-priests have survived so long. And, as with reading letters and are still, as human beings, trapped Anyone who has read the rhapsodies words, the overwhelming majority of within that set of beliefs that is of Frank Kermode or the great sagas those changes, those relationships themself. For their decisions about of Northrop Frye knows that within among events, are conceived uncons¬ what is true and important, their the conmunity of critic-priests ciously, uncontrolledly, and we nev¬ selection of events, eventually there are powerful, true-seeming er notice them at all. comes down to what feels important tales. and what feels true. This model of how we receive The danger is not in the fashion¬ stories is remarkably similar to how In this unsortable storm of be¬ able critics' tale-telling, but in we receive the events of our own lief, there is no such thing as pub¬ their insistence that these stories lives. Things happen; we act, oth¬ licly verifiable truth, because there about stories be believed, not as ers act. Each event is unconsciously is no such thing as perfect comnimi- fictions, but as objectively true assigned a causal relationship -- cation, and without perfect conmuni- •history7 And most critical comment¬ either intentional, mechanical or cation there is verification. The ary is as helpful in understanding random --to all other events. And doctrines of the critic-priests are stories as Genesis is in understand¬ from all this we develop the uncons¬ really an attempt to surmount this ing the origins of life. It is very cious but unquestioningly believed problem by cutting story down to a lovely, but it doesn't account very story of the world that makes us who more manageable thing: discourse. well for all those fossils. The we are. We call this "real life" as Detached reading gives the reader epickal stories of the critic-priests opposed to fiction, but in fact our the illusion of control -- the illus¬ however exciting they are in their own lives are merely stories we have ion that "good" writers are in con¬ own right, do not even begin to ex¬ unconsciously told ourselves about trol of their stories, the illusion plain what really happens in the ex¬ events. Oir self exists only in our that "good" readers can receive the perience of participatory reading. memory. meanings of those works. In fact, however, a detached reading is not Fantasy cannot be read critick- , But it is more complex than this. ly. It cannot be translated into a reading of the story at all. Hie 48 detached reader is not allowing the writer to give him vicarious memory with belief, a story must be admit¬ or not, whether the story itself is of events that were ordered by anoth¬ ted to the canon of great or good true or important. But in the mean¬ er hand. Instead, the detached read¬ works; to be admitted to the canon, time, the tricks can keep working er is continually rebuilding the a story must be designed for crit¬ for a long time. events and language of the story in¬ ickal reading or already have such In each genre there are ways of to his own safe and comfortable dis¬ a strong claim to greatness that creating the illusion of importance course, which he knows he can deal critickal interpretations have been and the illusion of truth. The crit¬ with because it is his almost un¬ forced upon it. ic-priests, in fact, provide one of changed self. In the critic-priest's epick the most powerful machineries for This method works. But it is, story of stories, fantasy is by def¬ sustaining an illusion of importance. if you will forgive the term, escap¬ inition unworthy of serious attention How many people would choose to read ist. The detached reader is escap¬ because it must be believed mythickly Henry James or Virginia Woolf if no ing, not from that set of fictions to have any value at all. But fan¬ one told them that THE AMBASSADORS called reality, but from that most tasy is hardly alone in that exclus¬ and TO THE LIGHTHOUSE were pivotal dangerous and fearful of all things, ion. All art that is, in Hulme's or seminal works? This is not to the true story. The closest thing term, Romantic, and all fiction that say that these novels are not really to true coninunication between two is Romance, belongs outside the courts important or true, merely that they human beings is story-telling, for of the temple. Fantasy is certainly depend on the critical story about despite his best efforts at conceal¬ not identical with other sorts of ro¬ them for most of their readers. With¬ ment, a writer will inevitable re¬ mance, or we would not be able to out that critical buttressing, most veal in his story the world he be¬ name the genre and believe the name. readers would give up in despair by lieves he lives in, and the partici¬ the time they reached James's thous¬ patory reader will forever after car¬ We do not start out believing andth comma or the second page, which¬ ry around in himself and as himself whatever the writer throws at us in ever comes first. a memory that was partly controlled a story. Each genre and subgenre by that other human being. Such has its own way of inducing us -- or In the genre of literary stories, memories are not neatly sorted into seducing us -- to keep reading long the writers openly call for that same fiction and real life in our minds. enough to believe. Importance and critical approval. And to attract I know, of course, that _I never truth -- that is what we look for in it, they create the illusion of im¬ stood at the Cracks of Doom and watch¬ all our reading of stories. When we portance primarily through imitating ed Gollum die. But that faith in reject a story we usually do it be¬ the vices of the "great" novels. the distinction between my own ac¬ cause it failed in one of those areas They make their works deliberately tions and the actions of fictional because we do not believe it or be¬ boring, put as much introspection characters is merely another story cause we are bored. In coarser terms between events as possible, and in I tell myself. In fact, my memory we either say, "Oh, yeah?" or "So short imitate the conventions and of that event is much clearer and what?" forms of their genre to signal to the reader that this is a work which more powerful than my memory of my The writer, because he is tell¬ may well meet with approval from the fifth birthday. ing a story that feels important and oracle. Also, the literary genre true to him, does not ask those You see why the critic-priests writer often tries for obscurity, must shun participatory reading, questions of himself. But the read¬ forcing the reader to probe for hid¬ must deny it, must refuse it. Part¬ er does not, a priori, agree with den meanings because there is no de¬ icipatory reading puts your very self the writer's assessment of what is tectable surface sense. In short, at risk. It will and must change important and true. Therefore the such works seduce the reader into who you are. This may be much of writer uses tricks to keep readers the rituals of critickal reading. the reason why most people never paying attention for a while. Even¬ read stories at all after they leave tually the tricks break down, because The literary genre also sets up adolescence. Consciously or not, they are only illusions. Eventually the illusion of truth. In the real¬ they do not wish to change, and so the reader will decide, consciously istic novel, the writer spins a web they avoid an experience that will unavoidably change them. The critic- priest, with his detached reading, does precisely the same thing. He avoids the experience of reading a story, in exchange for the experience of affirming the story that he is a superior, elevated, fit and above all non-bourgeois reader. It is a story that is not dissimilar to the story of the divine right of kings or the infallibility of popes: It bestows power and privilege, provided that enough other people believe it. Of course, no one, not even a critic-priest, really reads every¬ thing critickly. The emotional im¬ pact of believed stories is at the heart of even the most detached of formal criticism. Canonical texts are all right to believe. The blud¬ geon of detached reading is only used with full force against non-canonic- al stories -- that is, against those very stories which cannot possibly be comprehended by a critickal read¬ er. It is a catch-22: To be read ■vwieu. 49 of detail that corresponds with ver¬ world-changing struggle between good discourse, and therefore removed its ifiable contemporary experience. The and evil. All of civilization as effect. The power of fantasy is not reader recognizes these details and we know it seems to hang in the in the fact that a sacrifice has ta¬ they keep him believing that what is balance. ken place, but that the participatory going on here could happen in the reader remembers the experience of real world, that it is true. In the But those elements are not uni¬ sacrificing. What makes the Riddle- self-conscious novel, the narrative versal in recent fantasy. Most mod¬ master of Hed important is not that voice is either mocking or mocked, em fantasy sustains the illusion of there is an identity crisis when God undercutting belief by drawing the importance in other ways. One use¬ turns out to be the Devil, but that reader to an ironic platform from ful device, perhaps most effective I the reader remember experiencing which author and reader together can because this is a generally irrelig¬ the terror of that moment, without despise error. This, too, draws the ious age, is ritual -- not just for comfortably naming it "identity cri¬ reader into believing the author by magical purposes, but for purposes sis". It was myself at risk, myself accepting his choice of what to dis¬ that can only be called worship or who suffered. And the very subjectiv¬ believe. celebration. The ceremonial honoring ity of the experience makes it resist How are the illusions of impor¬ of Frodo and Sam before King Aragom the fashionable language of criticism tance and the illusions of truth is one such ritual, in which each of today. them, given a new name and a new created in fantasy? Where the real¬ Does this mean that all critic¬ story, is presented formally to the istic novel depends upon recognition ism of fantasy is futile? Of course people of the land for public honor. of details of contemporary life, not. What it means is that we must One thinks also of the parallel scene the fantasy writer has long depended be aware that the fashionable crit¬ in STAR WARS and the honoring of Thom¬ on recognition of conventional de¬ ical paradigms are completely inap¬ as Covenant as a hero in his own vices. Because the writer is invok¬ propriate to fantasy -- and to most world after his return from the Land. ing events that the reader has belies fiction that real people like to ed before, the reader is induced to read. The Modernist epick is an as¬ Another device that sustains the believe again. However, competition sertion of power over all story-tel¬ illusion of importance is one that with the novel has forced the fantasy ling, and it must be not just doubt¬ troubles many critics -- the almost writer to use both methods. ed but destroyed, and not just des¬ inevitable cruelty of fantasy. Vio¬ troyed but replaced. It would be lence alone is, indeed, an attention- The conventions are still there, foolish to replace it with another getting device. But the cruelty of but a wealth of detail is also pro¬ map to be laid over stories to "make the most powerful fantasies goes be¬ vided. The detail in fantasy, how¬ sense" of them. It is the idea that yond mere blood and thunder. In Gene ever, does not correspond with the one must make sense of stories at Wolfe's SHADOW OF THE TORTURER, the contemporary experience. While the all that is harmful. Stories are scenes of death are all ritualized, causal relationships among events sense, and do not need to have any¬ and pain is a sacrament; in LORD OF are recognizable, the details create thing made of them at all. Critick¬ THE RINGS, too, Frodo is made holy a world that is changed in certain al reading of most stories is unin¬ by his suffering, and his dismember¬ important respects -- the possibil¬ telligent unless it follows a genu¬ ment becomes part of his name. Ste¬ ity of magic, the distance from the ine mythick or epick reading: It is phen Donaldson's leper, Thomas Coven¬ present time. Yet, in the best real¬ time to stop crediting the criticism ant, lives in a ritual of self-prot¬ istic fashion, the modem fantasy of those who have not read with be¬ ection, in constant fear of unspeak¬ writer gives us so much detail that lief. It is time to propose new can¬ able, insidious decay. There is the story seems to be taking place ons of great literature, new methods something about the ritualizing of in a real world. This works only of critical approach, and new purpos¬ suffering that makes it seem moije because the realistic novelist has es to be accomplished in the examina¬ important. In the story of Christ, taught readers to believe in detail¬ tion of a text. The elitists have it matters less that Jesus died than ed realities; but then, it was only sneered at good stories without any that he chose to die, that his death necessary in fantasy because the answering scorn quite long enough. realistic novelist taught readers was important to other people, that to expect detail and doubt whatever it was excruciating and slow, that What sort of criticism is valid? did not have it. it followed certain forms and cer¬ Since every story is, in a way, a tain words were said. A common form revolutionary act, and since stories The illusion of truth, however, of execution was turned into a holy can be powerful forces for changing is not so important to the fantasy and important thing because of the individuals, they inevitably have reader as the illusion of importance. way the story of it is given to us. moral force and can be dangerous. The critickal reader, in ridiculing These same elements of ritualized Any critic who reads a story that is fantasy, usually makes much of the cruelty are no less powerful in fan¬ morally detestable to him has a per¬ fact that the stories seem so pre¬ tasy, and so they are frequently in¬ fect right to answer the story on tentious. The characters and the voked. those grounds. Since every writer narrator so often speak in a formal, has different strategies for handling Behind the illusion of importance elevated language -- Ursula LeGuin the illusions of truth and of impor¬ however, fantasy really is important even considers this essential. The tance, it is also appropriate for a to the believing reader. The point stories always seem to be about a critic to call attention to stories of fantasy is not its novelty -- the offend his personal taste. That is, same conventions can be endlessly after all, what I am doing right now. repeated because what matters is not There is always roam for critical re¬ the event, but the way the events sponse to stories, as long as it is are fit together and the importance understood that such responses are ec¬ that is given to them by the charac¬ ters. Losing a finger is unfortun¬ centric and we do not allow any one ate; Frodo's losing a finger is his school of thought to have a privileg¬ personal redemption and the redemp¬ ed position -- especially not a tion of the world. And yet as soon school of thought stupid and arrogant as I express it in words like that, enough to consign an exceptionally I have paraphrased and turned it to vital and powerful literature to ob¬ livion. 50 opinionon sf by leading sf fans, with a lead-off editorial of no- SMALL PRESS NOTES holds-barred opinion by Nicholas. Nicholas has had American and BY THE EDITOR English fan writers and editors in a froth lately. Try it if you can.

FILE 770, #33 Edited and published by Mike Glyer, INSIDE JOKE #11, $1.00 5828 Woodman Av.,#2, Van Nuys, CA Published and presided over by 91401. 5 for $1. USA; $1 each to Elaine Wechsler, 418 East Third foreign lands by airmail. Avenue, Roselle, NJ 07203 News and views of a fan nature; In a real sense, INSIDE JOKE is scandals, another commentary on the an apa---an amateur press associa¬ prospects of gerrymandering SFR and tion. People send her typed/pre¬ LOCUS out of the Hugo fanzine race pared copy of a certain size, to or creating a semi-pro category for certain specifications, and she us and other over-1000 circulation has the pages printed, collates zines. Why, why do they hate me so? them, mails them to the contribu¬ I haven't won a Hugo for four years! tors, trades, etc. Of course, I do think LOCUS should Thus everyone who wishes to be blackballed? contribute and pay the printing/ if you date back to the 50's mailing expenses can be a fanzine in fandom, this is a nostalgia trip. editor, publish a personalzine, whatever, on the cheap. Very at¬ RIVERSIDE QUARTERLY $1.25 For others, it's faanish history. #26, tractive. Edited and published by Leland Sa¬ There will be a test next week to piro, Box 1763, Hartsville, SC 29550. determine your grade. Nfy only grotch is the print re¬ duction is too extreme for these Just when you think Leland has tired old eyes. disappeared from fandom forever, out FANTASY BOOK Aug. '82, $3.00 comes ;in issue of RQ. This is the P.0. Box 4193, Pasadena, CA 91106. usual mix of scholarly articles a- Published by Dennis Mallonee. FANTASY NEWSLETTER #50, $2.50 bout sf and its writers, columnists, Edited by Dennis Mallonee and Nick Edited by Robert Collins letters, and art. The art is better Smith. Published by the College of Humani¬ this issue. ties, Florida Atlantic University, Impressive fiction by Alan Dwan Boca Raton, FL 33431. Foster, Diane Ekiane, Nancy Springer, The cover is a lot cluttered by HOLIER THAN THOU # , $1.50 in USA, Katherine Kurtz, Charles, L. Grant, 13 listings of features and contribu¬ equivalent in international postal and others, with a 1940 story by L. tors, but it has a lot inside, in¬ reply coupons for foreign fans. Ron Hubbard. [Read this early story cluding (let's be fair) what seems Edited and published by Marty Can¬ and then get a copy of his new 839- to be a complete New Books listing tor, 5263 Riverton Place, #1, page novel from St. Martin's due from major and minor publishers, North Hollywood, CA 91601. out early October and see if the master of Scientology has improved sf and fantasy. A large, old-fashioned faanzine his fiction style. Trouble is, the Editor Collins got burned to devoted to fans, their views, feeli- new novel, BATTLEFIELD EARTH, is a crisp by Karl Edward Wagner for ings, with a nod to sf and that priced as of now at $24. per copy.] creatively editing/rewriting parts boring stuff. Most of this issue The covers artwork for FANTASY of Wagner's previous column on is the letter column where the Big- BOOK is fine. But except for the fantasy. But Collins did print Name Fans gather egoboo off the work of Lynne Goodwin and Walter Lee this column uncut, I presume. I tree of life. Ha! is subtly amateurish inside. hate to see a grown fan bleed like this. Heh, heh.

BEARDMUTTERINGS #21, Available ANSIBLE #26 $2. for 5 issues. for 'love, not money.' He trades Edited and published by Dave Lang¬ KADATH #5 $4.00 and likes letters of coranent. If ford, 94 London Road, Reading, Edited by Francesco Corva desperate, send a scuz bag, used. Berkshire RG1 5AU, England. Published by Kadath Press, That's not love, but it does signi¬ Corso Aurelio Saffi 5/9, fy strong emotion. Dave write a chatty, revealing, 16128 Genova, ITALY. Edited and published by Rich Brown, acidic, funny newszine of the pro¬ 1632 19th St., #2, Washington, DC fessional and fan goings-on in the Color covers, heavy stock, 20009. U.K. Recomnended. slick book paper...top-notch artwork by Jim Pitts, Allen Koszowski, Steph¬ en Jones.. .many more. Rich asks, in his editorial, This issue is dedicated to the "Are Fans Snobs?" This is a ten- PAPERBACK INFERNO Vol 5, No.6, 15p Occult Detectives of fantasy and page essay-editorial and is mimeo¬ here features five new stories by graphed on yaller twilltone from an [or about 304 in American coin. Ghod knows how to get a copy without Ardath Mayhar, Manly Wade Wellman, electrostencil whose copy had been Brian Mooney, Mike Chinn, and Brian reduced in size on a photocopier. spending at least 304 to send 304.] Edited and published by Joseph Nich¬ Lumley. All this makes for squinting. But This edition (and likely the the cartoon art throughout is excel¬ olas, Room 9, 94 St. George's Sq., Pimlico, London SW1Y 3QY, England. only one, ever) is limited to 500 lent by Dan Steffan. copies. A collector's item as There is a Ted Johnstone re¬ Personal analysis, review and well as inherently worthwhile in print, and a Ted White column on itself for the fiction and art._ Raleigh E. Miltog and STAR*ROCKETS. 51 OTHER UOICES

CELLARS teria of sirens, the clat¬ By John Shirley ter and grind of street con¬ Avon, 1982, 29S pp., $2.75 struction. Normally, the activity would have pleas¬ REVIEWED BY WILLIAM GIBSON ed him. Today it was an Got a littie something for you unhealthy swarming, like here, friend. Come closer. Yes, the scuttling of cock¬ it's one of those, the kind of urban roaches surprised late horror novel that yearns to burrow at night in the kitchen into your brain like some sleek bio¬ when the light is suddenly mechanical grub, some parasite out turned on. Like something of Giger. Hard to find, these days, that had crawled up from for all the promised horror of the underground ..." Stephen King-clone section of your Step right up, friends. It supermarket rack. But CELLARS, I only wants to have a go at your assure you, is the real thing, the true quill, the genuine article. If this one doesn't do it for you, you are hopeless. Twisted, perhaps genuinely evil, maybe even dangerous, CELLARS is Shirley's most accomplished work to CENTAUR AISLE disabled child led to the central role of puns and the hero's terrible date. By Piers Anthony spelling? But that doesn't account Taking full -- one might almost Bullantine/Del Rey, 1982 294 pp. , $2.75 for the tiresome obsession gf every¬ say, unfair -- advantage of the aver¬ thing in Xanth -- or so it sometimes age reader's familiarity with the REVIEWED BY PHILIP M. COHEN seems -- with looking up the hero¬ workaday King-clone, Shirley frames ine's dress. Ihe characteristically his nerve-toxin text in a plot-skel¬ Those who have read the first Anthonian disposal of the villain is eton worn smooth as an old junkie's three novels of Anthony's Xanth tril¬ also interesting. con. You slip into it and it's cozy ogy (A SPELL FOR CHAMELEON, 1977; /Anthony often works out the en¬ as your down jacket from L.L. Bean, THE SOURCE OF MAGIC, 1979; CASTLE gineering consequences of a piece of just as familiar, just as .‘American ROOGNA, 1979] need only be told that as apple pie; it's SEVEN FOOTPRINTS this is more of the same, though not magic in great detail, but the whole TO SATAN, every Fu Manchu book, dime- as good. There's a fine map of Xanth system doesn't bear examination. You must be prepared to suspend dis¬ store Lovecraft ... then you start this time. to notice how the prose is kind of -- belief -- by the neck, until dead -- well, kinda prehensile, and there For the benefit of newcomers: and maturity as well; the ideal aud¬ are these images, things you know These books take place in Xanth, a ience of this bonk is probably four¬ you've actually seen, seen in city place where magic works. Xanth has teen-year-olds. If you do, it's fun. streets, but you didn't want to been colonized from Mundania (our I like silliness, and if .-Anthony is think about them, and .... world) via connections scattered not as good at it as D. Manus Pink- •through history and around the globe; water, Douglas Adams or Monty Python This book is as compelling as the main quest in this book is to I still find him enjoyable. Not the art of the insane, but don't as¬ rescue the King of Xanth, lost try¬ worth $2.75 this time, though. sume I mean that Shirley is in any ing to set up a regular trade route way not in control of his material. to Mundania. The cover gives you a There will be times when you'll wish good idea of the motley collection of he would lose- control and let you amateur adventurers that goes to the off the hook .... rescue. My favorite is the ogre, who's smarter than advertised. Setting a "conventional” horror VISCOUS CIRCLE story against a realistic backdrop All natives of Xanth are bom of New York City poverty and degrad¬ with an individualized magical pow¬ By Piers Anthony ation is about as easy as making Love- er. All immigrants magically learn REVIEWED BY DAVID PITT craft's monsters seem like bad news its common language. We can tell in a Nazi concentration camp, but this is English, because the basis VISCOUS CIRCLE is the fifth nov¬ Shirley knows that and lets the of Xanthian magic is not the Law of el set in Anthony's Cluster Universe. horror-fantasy breed and writhe just Similarity of mana, but puns. Mtn- It's about Ronald Snowden, a "grown below an appalling surface of real danian cherry trees bear cherry bombs Solarian male verging on the nether human agony, real greed, real lust. in Xanth, pineapples become fruity of prime", who's a Transfer Agent. This is a dark book. grenades, centipedes grow fivefold It's his job to have his mind sent into nickelpedes. The punning, more into other entities' bodies. In this "Farther down the street subdued in earlier books, goes wild case he is sent into the body of a the air was raucous with here from the title onward. I won¬ Band, a doughnut-like being whose civ¬ the calls of sidewalk vend¬ der if Anthony's having a learning- ilization happens to live too close ors, the constant churn of to an Ancient Site. At least, so traffic, the periodic hys¬ 52 the humans feel. The Ancients are millenia-dead beings whose other sit® Norvis is not the main character acter, there are few real people yielded the secrets of Matter Trans¬ now, although he still plays a prom¬ at all, and the only continuity de¬ mission and Transfer, so whoever con¬ inent role in the events that unfold. velops from short introductory ex¬ trols a site controls power. His cabin boy, Kris peKym has grown cerpts from two encyclopedias of fu¬ up and becomes a major revolutionary ture history -- one pro-human and Earlier agents never came out, leader almost by accident. one pro-extraterrestrial. Beginning so the humans feel the Bands are try¬ with the first practical FTL drive ing to keep the Site for themselves. The themes begun in the first around the year 3000, Resnick traces Ronald finds the reason: The humans book are sustained and developed man's spread throughout our home gal¬ have been sent without retaining very well in the second. In its own axy with a pseudo-historical over¬ their selves. They actually become way, the second book is stronger as view obviously modeled on at least Bands, and Bands without memories of a novel, as the first was basically part of the actual past history of self. The Bands want no part of the three novelettes tied together. Western Man. I doubt that even Toyn¬ Ancient Site. They are a peaceful There were plans for yet a third nov¬ bee would approve. society and go to their heaven, the el taking the culture further into Viscous Circle. The very thought of the future, but it was abandoned The vast time-span, as well as war causes them to disband. But Ron¬ before completion. Part of it was the stages of organization fron Re¬ ald, who is now the Band Rondl, gets finished as a novelette. It is a public through Oligarchy to Anarchy the crazy idea of defending them¬ shame it was not included in the -- the rise and fall, and rise again selves by force. He gets up an army. present book. At this late date, it of human destiny over thousands of is highly unlikely that Silverberg other sentient races -- will recall This novel is a fine examination and Garrett will ever get together some aspects of Asimov's classic of Ronald/Rondl' s dual allegiance -- again on the project. FOUNDATION trilogy. But BIRTHRIGHT, to the Bands, one of whom he has be¬ lacking as it is in any memorable come for a time, and to the humans, The Afterword by Silverberg tells person or event, will hardly survive whom he later learns he comes from. how the late John W. Campbell of ANA¬ with such popularity. The work The situation is well-devised and LOG got them to change from the hack¬ might be popular with racists (so shows us our society from an outsid¬ neyed "humans deal with alien cult¬ long as they misunderstand the final er's viewpoint. The Viscous Circle ure" approach to the viewpoint of chapters), since "manifest destiny" the aliens. of life-after-death is wonderful; it and "white man's burden" are very shows Anthony's marvelous imagina- ************************************ much a part of galactic conquest. Certainly, it will please sexists, ************************************ for herein Man's destiny, with few exceptions, is the work of small-"m" man. The worse of science fiction cliches and misunderstood scientific BIRTHRIGHT: THE BOOK OF MAN concepts abound, and Man simply nev¬ By Mike Resnick er changes from "the meanest SOB in THE DAWNING LIGHT Signet, 1982, $2.75. the valley". Even as black humor, By Robert Randall; Robert Silverberg it's entertaining. and Randall Garrett REVIEWED BY DEAN R. LAMBE ************************************ Donning Co/Publishers Resnick has done an amazing 1981, 176 pages, $4.95 thing. In a time when publishers REVIEWED BY W. RITCHIE BENEDICT often lose their hearing aids for story collections from a-single auth¬ THE DAWNING LIGHT is the second or, Resnick has sold a bunch of THE SILVER METAL LOVER volume of a two-part set that was a story fragments, brief character joint collaboration between Robert sketches and narrative episodes, and By Tanith Lee Silverberg and Randall Garrett when has called this potpourri a novel. DAW Books, New York, April, 1982 both were in the beginning of their The gimmick, the grabber here, is 240 pp., $1.95 writing careers. the span, the scope of the 26 epi¬ REVIEWED BY JAMES ANDERSON sodes that cover over 20,000 years The first volume told of a plan¬ of human history in the galaxy. et, Nidor, that had a stagnant trib¬ True, the plot of THE SILVER MET¬ Not only is there no central char¬ AL LOVER is basically a sex revers- al agricultural society until stim¬ ulated by men from Earth who had a form of religious worship spring up about their orbiting spaceship. In THE SHROUDED PLANET we followed three generations of one native family (humanoid but hairier than humans), and saw the culture take a quantum leap from the tribal stage to early industrial within about 60 years. The "mover and shaker" of this plan¬ et, Norvis, forms a political party to rid the planet of both Earthmen and the priesthood that has formed based on the worship of the space¬ ship in orbit. As the second volume opens, the society has the attributes of our world, circa 1880. It is also ripe for revolution and the men from Earth are viewed as the local equi¬ valent of George III or Louis XVI. 53 al of Lester del Rey's "Helen O'Loy". Yet even in defeat the charac¬ tually a "monument to beer" presided The main character, Jane, is a rath¬ ters show their strength, rising over by brewful priests. er spoiled rich girl who falls in above the inhuman people around them. The section on natural fauna is love with a robot -- a perfect man The book ends with hope, not depres- a poetic zoo: A Galapagos giant tor¬ in every way except he is not human. toise, dinosauri, two mating sala¬ Beset by problems, Jane gives up her THE SILVER METAL LOVER is a un¬ manders (guess how they do it), amoe¬ rich life of luxury to live with Sil¬ ique book despite its unoriginal ba and octopi, etc. (Has de Camp ver, so named because of his silver plot. The style is flawless and the read Hilaire Belloc's BAD CHILD'S skin. As time goes on, both the girl writing is refined. Overall, it BOOK OF BEASTS?) The poet was once and the robot become more and more must be considered a critical success chased by a hippopotamus: human. And when the machine becomes as well as a work of pure enjoyment. too human, it is recalled by its man¬ "The buzz and click of cam¬ ufacturers to be destroyed. Thus ************************************ the lovers are forced to hide from eras then aroused the bur- the authorities while trying to make It champed its jaws and a living in the slums of the city. bounded at us with a thund¬ If the plot seems well-worn, Tan- HEROES AND HOBGOBLINS erous hoot. ith Lee makes it seem brand new. And George and I like rab¬ She brilliantly contrasts the dark, By L. Sprague de Camp bits ran, the hippo in cold and heartless world of the city Illustrated (color plates) bv Tim pursuit." where people do not care for one an¬ Kirk other, with that of the slums where Donald M. Grant, 1981, W. Kingston, RI There are also tribute verses to Jane and Silver find the first real Boards, d/w genres and to their authors. Edgar happiness of their lives. Only the Signed by poet 5 illustrator Rice Burroughs and his John Carter poor people show any warmth, as they $25.00 of Mars get repeated nostalgic nods respond to the robot who is program¬ and "Conan the Linmerian" is the Cim¬ REVIEWED BY STEVE ENG med to do nothing but care -- unlike merian's career in fifteen limericks. the rich inhabitants of the world. As most writers know, it is eas¬ There are some serious poems, Even Jane is a rather cold individual ier to be negative. When you are reminding us of de Camp's cold-eyed in the beginning of the book; only only inhibitedly Serious, you may look at Man and his foibles else¬ when she meets Silver and forsakes hope to be mistaken for "profound". where (as in the aphorisms in his her wealth does she achieve humanity Whereas anything light can be quick¬ 1972 SCRIBBLINGS). "Psyche" is ex¬ and learn to love. ly called "superficial" by the gloom- ceptionally good, revealing the brute For pure emotion and depth of y-at-heart. This is especially true lurking behind the mask of so-called character, Tanith Lee has no equal. of poetry. Critics underrate humor¬ "human" reason; "Warriors" is a de¬ She fills the characters with life ous verse; and they are usually si¬ lightful evocation of past heroes and makes the reader love and suffer lent on the issue of technique, know¬ who are contrasted with desk-bound, with them. Jane matures before our ing full well that the light versif¬ Lt. de Camp, U.S.N.R. He expected¬ very eyes as she sacrifices every¬ ier must have considerable skill with ly slams modem art and poetry and thing to be with her silver lover. rhyme and meter. for all his science background, he extolls the more old-fashioned, dig¬ Once in the slums she must swallow De Camp has been writing mostly her pride and make a living by sing¬ nified personal code for men and wo¬ humorous verses for over twenty years men. For instance, he's not afraid ing in the streets with Silver for As we might expect, his more irrever¬ the money she needs to survive. to use the word "fuck" in a poem, ent poems are at the expense of the but he is peeved by those always When tragedy strikes, the reader various genres that his prose takes compelled to use the word. But there cannot help but be moved. It is ev¬ more seriously. This book draws is not much windy "philosophy" that ident from the beginning that the from such earlier collections as DE¬ older men often feel obliged to give match between Silver and Jane cannot MONS AND DINOSAURS (1971) and PHANT¬ nor those poems of personal bitter¬ last in such a cold and heartless so¬ OMS AND FANCIES (1972). It is div¬ ness which middle age seems to in- ciety. The question is, how long ided into sections and the first is can the ill-fated affair go on before on "places", a good opening for the the authorities put a stop to it? author of LANDS BEYOND. A typical site is "Tintagel" where we learn the British have Americanized King Arthur country into a tourist trap. With its nostalgia for the "real" kingdom of Arthur -- "The neigh of knightly steeds, the clang of steel, the trumpets, and the sigh of Guine¬ vere" -- it is one of the book's best poems. "Jewels" is a pleasant Nature Poem, comparing the over-gem¬ med glamor of Teheran with the poet's native Pennsylvania. The section on archaeology has poems on the topics we would expect from the author of THE ANCIENT ENGINEERS (1977). "Ruins' is a flawless and for a change, ele¬ giac poem about a city wracked by war. Unlike seme fantasy writers, de Camp has probably seen the places he writes about (this side of Atlant¬ is), such as Mayan ruins and Avebury. We learn for instance that the ro¬ mantic megaliths of Camac were ac¬ This is an enjoyable gathering class folk just don't seem to int¬ of verses. Most of the time the poet erest fantasists. (They're harder avoids the perils of traditional pro¬ to fit into this type of fiction sody -- the affected jauntiness of a for several reasons, so who needs regular beat, the syllable forced to them?) With this in mind, a perfect take a wrong stress or the contor¬ hero would be an upper class warrior tions of sound and sense that rhyme who for some reason or perversity can inflict. And the topics are im¬ lives among and like the lower class. mensely varied in these one-hundred That describes Galen Homwrack. verses; more than many poets, de Camp At the end of THE PASTEL CITY has the eye for the tangible -- the about a thousand people dead per mil¬ specific plant, rock, tree, place, lennium were resurrected. The Re¬ god or event. born Men (and women) live in a mix¬ The volume's binding is rich ture of past, present and the imagin¬ brown, leather-looking texture, ary. With difficulty, Alstath Ful- stamped in gold. Type face is sans- thor can separate them; Fay Glass serif, not ideal for the fantastic, cannot. but adequate considering the tension Returning from THE PASTEL CITY, between archaic subjects and modem emerges as a controlled, generic sceptical whimsy that characterizes sort. The story is so well-written the events of which occurred eighty years before, are Queen Methvet Nianv de Camp. Paper is light buff. Such that I cannot exactly say why it Tomb and the enigamatic and immortal bibliographic information should be left me untouched. "Teeth Marks" Cellur. Returning from the moon is embodied in a colphon like Arkham and "giANTS" were also well-written House's; Grant's superb physical but without the heart of the above- Benedict Paucemanly. standards for books deserve such a mentioned stories. "Strata" dealt THE PASTEL CITY was about slight¬ notice. Tim Kirk's title page and with geologic time travel, had won¬ ly over-the-hill heroes: Realistic six full-color illustrations (one of derful characters, but was ultimate¬ and realists, cynical, disillusioned which is also the dust wrapper) are ly disappointing. "Precession" sometimes cruel, always courageous, a rich complement to the poems. faded away, which may have been in¬ and possessed by a sense of loyalty ************************************ tentional, being a story of entropy, and honor. They were complex and but the effect didn't work. "To fascinating. In A STORM OF WINGS See" and "Winslow Crater" were intel¬ the characters are small-minded and lectual fluff. The book is definite¬ selfish, defeatist or 'more than half ly worth reading --in fact, having insane. In this unpleasant company, PARTICLE THEORY and re-reading, if I may urge you to Tomb, the brutal dwarf who likes By Edward Bryant buy it. Even the most mediocre Bry¬ killing, comes across as comedy re¬ Timescape, $2.95 ant story is comparatively un-medio- lief. ere. REVIEWED BY LEIGH KENNEDY ************************************ In the first tale of Vericonium Mr. Harrison used metaphor and flow¬ I don't doubt that Edward Bryant ing description in a remarkable ser¬ is one of our best, and do have re¬ ies of images which read like an grets that he doesn't produce more. epic prose poem. In this, the sec¬ PARTICLE THEORY is a collection of ond tale, he does all that and more. his short stories, some of his high¬ In fact, he lays it on with a shov¬ est quality, which range over eight A STORM OF WINGS el. More is less in this padded years. The personal and impersonal By M. John Harrison work (and he uses parentheses so apocalypses of "Particle Theory", Timescape/Pocket, 189pp., $2.50 nuch it goes beyond mannerism to which combines cancer and novae, left affectation). No matter how flowery REVIEWED BY PAUL MC GUIRE me with a reverberating fear of the it got, THE PASTEL CITY seemed nat¬ Universe. "Hibakusha Gallery" has In Mr. Harrison's 1971 novel, ural and was smooth. A STORM OF always been a favorite of mine -- THE PASTEL CITY, his brooding hero WINGS is self-conscious. For examp¬ it is the fascination of a survivor has a dream: "In the soft black le: with holocaust. "Hayes and the Het- space of his head a giant insect hov¬ erogyne" (a tale from Cinnabar) has 'Cellur. Ten thousand seas¬ ered and hummed, staring gloomily at the makings of a classic -- warmth, ons once were his, years beat¬ him from human eyes, brushing the humor, time travel, biological extrap¬ ing like hearts! Their geo¬ walls of his skull with its swift olation and social issues. "Shark" metries could tell us. They wings and unbearable, fragile legs. and "Stone" both would have made ter¬ are the spoor of Time itself, He did not question its philosophy. rific movies; we all know that he did we but know. Cellur the The ideographs engraved on its thor¬ wrote them long before JAWS or THE Bird Lord! Now he speaks — ax expressed a message of Time and ROSE. These stories are strong and the universe, which he learned by 'All are assembled in the memorable. heart and immediately forgot." In throne room but Alstath Ful- In Bryant's introduction, "Hans the next chapter a legend was casual¬ thor.' Christian Sauropod", he speaks of ly mentioned in parenthesis: "... Then follows a fifty-nine-word his writing process as an accretion, no one knew if Paucemanly had actual¬ sentence (in paranthesis) about Ful- like coral deposits. In his best ly attempted the Moon-trip in his thor's madness-eroded features and stories this multi-layered depth legendary boat Heavy Star..." With¬ heaving lungs as his past pursues gives us stories which are complex in ten years, those two quotes have him. and fascinating. Unfortunately, grown into the novel's sequel. sane of his work, which is near¬ THE PASTEL CITY was fast moving. In addition to warriors and great, suffers from toft-rigid an TWo wars were fought in 157 pages. wanderers, sword and sorcery almost accretion. "Thermals of August" A STORM OF WINGS is half finished exclusively deals with the upper and centers around a woman that I be¬ before the adventure even gets start¬ lqwer classes. Working and middle lieve Bryant was trying to strip ed. any sexual stereotyping from; she 55 ************************************ THE MAKING OF RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK Mr. Taylor's prose is convincing CLAN OF DEATH: NINJA By Derek Taylor even when he writes of giant spiders, By A1 Weiss and Tom Philbin Non-fiction, Ballentine Books, half-human and half-goblin "hounds", Pocket, Non-fiction, NY, $2.50 New York, NY, 182 pp., $2.75, illus. a variety of wizards, a talking horse which can ride between worlds -- and REVIEWED BY ALMA JO WILLIAMS REVIEWED BY ALMA JO WILLIAMS all this appears in only the first Messrs. Weiss and Philbin are re¬ third of the novel. Here is The book all you RAIDERS spected martial artists and authors fans have been eagerly panting for. The second third is a 95-page and have done an excellent job of Derek Taylor does a neat job of int¬ tale. While narrowly escaping with showing that truth may be stranger erviewing all of the principals of his life the hospitality of a Jutish than fiction, especially if it comes this popular epic serial (if Lucas king, Felmid throve in his lot with a from the Orient! The history and and Spielberg have their way), and clever and courageous Briton woman techniques of the ninja are graphic¬ giving fascinating glimpses of the named Regan. The two of them at the ally explored; how this group of sub¬ professional workmanship and craft start of this tale finally reach a tle Japanese assassins came into be¬ that goes into the special effects, Briton city, but not safety. When ing; tricks of the trade; and modern- make-up, realistic props, dangerous Felmid's ancient sword is stolen, day ninja. stunts and of course, the acting. he leaves Regan to pursue the thieves Japanese authors and film makers Be the first on your block to get with the help of a witch's familiar. have explored and exploited the the lowdown on the snakes in the It's a cursed trail and schemes as world of ninja in much the same man¬ Well of Souls, or Harrison Ford's well as swordplay are needed. ner as our Western history does for own death-defying feats. Learn how Felmid journeys to the halls of the last frontier and the cowboy. to make your own mummy and see why the sea-wolf Lord Cerdic in Westri, a staged fist-fight looks more real¬ hoping for passage to Erin, but be¬ Through good P.R. men, the ninja istic on the screen than the real, comes involved with a dwarf, a fear¬ was eventually looked upon as the unrehearsed thing. some past enemy and a mysterious original Superman,, full of fascinat¬ ing mental and physical prowess. After reading this book, you witch-woman. Japanese Momma-Sans used the ninja will have an excellent insight into as bogeymen, to silence recalcitrant the hard work that acting really is Finally, the bard becomes involv¬ children. all about. Recommended. ed with Huns, a werewolf, warriors ************************************ of Count Artorius (called King Ar¬ The literature and films depict¬ thur in updated legends of a later ing ninja are just arriving in the age) and lost Roman treasure. West. This book will explain what is real and which is fantasy. High¬ For lovers of magic, history ly recommended. BARD and/or swashbuckling adventure, here By Keith Taylor is an excellent novel about an earthy ************************************ Ace Books, 293 pp., $2.50, 05000 x and genuinely likeable Irish hero. Cover Art by Don Maitz ************************************ REVIEWED BY PAUL MC GUIRE WEB OF THE SPIDER By Andrew Offutt and Richard Lyon For fans such as myself who Timescape/Pocket Books, 268 pp. still lament the loss of Ted White's plus 24 pp. Glossary and Gazetter FANTASTIC, all I need say is that $2.95 Keith Taylor is Dennis More (the latter being the pseudonym) and the REVIEWED BY PAUL MC GUIRE bard is Felimid mac Fel. I will let the Erin rover introduce himself to Volume three of the WAR OF THE the rest of you: WIZARDS trilogy is a complete novel which can be read, understood and '"I'm a bard, and that is enjoyed by persons who have not read only a lesser degree of Druid. the first two. Its hero is a volup¬ You had them here once. Where tuous pirate captain named Tirana I come from, bards have been Highrider, who is almost as clever known to sing armies to de¬ and courageous as she thinks she is. feat or victory and kings off The novel opens with her a prisoner their thrones or onto them. facing torturous execution. In hair- My grandfather Fergus is Chief raising fashion, she escapes to a Bard of Erin. We're descend¬ subterranean grotto where she finds ed from Cairbre, the bard of an arcane treasure which involves the Tuatha de Danann. My her in a conflict with the most an¬ line have been poets and harp¬ cient, powerful and evil beLig in ers in Erin since the world her world. This is all part of a was new, and magic's in our plot to destroy her wizard ally, heart-marrow."' Pyre. But Pyre has an unwilling al¬ BARD is one short novel and four ly, a "faceless" gray knight who long stories which together form a can't remember who he is. Sea bat¬ continuous narrative. The bard is a tles, magic, dragons and so on fol¬ man who can work magic with his harp low in an eerie and exciting adven¬ and wreak havoc with his sword. ture. Excellent writing (Tiana's And yet his greatest weapon is his black foster-father's battle with wits. His world is post-Roman Brit¬ the Moonstalkers is marvelous) and on (about 497 AD). If one grants welcome and refreshing humor lift the magic and wonders, it seems a this novel far above the usual by- realistic depiction of that barbar¬ the-numbers sword and sorcery. ic people and savage land. 56 ************************************ LAUGHING SPACE All these and many more forbid¬ By Isaac Asimov § J.O. Jeppson den delights await the unwary between Houghton/Mifflin, 1982 GOTCHA! GAMES LIKE the paper-thin covers of this magnif¬ S21 pages, $17.95 THIS ONE COULD SET icent bargain. (There are maps in it too!) Conan, Thongor, King Kull REVIEWED BV ANDREW M. ANDREWS SCIENCE FICTION BACK and the rest of the heroic fantasy FORTY /EARS ... . OH, heroes pale before the exploits, the Nearly every' science fiction writ¬ trials and tribulations of the er gets struck with a terribly devas¬ WELL..GIMME ANOTHER Thieves World inhabitants. Those tating disease known as the "original musclebound superheroes probably anthology' affliction", inflamed with wouldn't make it alive out of The the crippling desire to make some Vulgar Unicom, if they even got easy dollars without a whole lot of that far into Sanctuary. Robert E. creative anguish. Howard, move over. Thieves World But it disturbs me when most of rides again! Recommended for strong- the anthologies turned out these days stomached readers only. Others need don't even have original material. not apply. In fact, if LAUGHING SPACE is any ex¬ ************************************ ample, most stories are reprints, some for the tenth time. But this one is rewarding enough if you like to re-read stories you first read in your favorite science EASY TRAVEL TO OTHER PLANETS fiction or fantasy magazine and re¬ By Ted Mooney read a short time after. nflfl Farrar-Straus-Giroux, NY, 1981 But the feelings are mixed to¬ 278 pp., $11.95 ward the latest, LAUGHING SPACE. REVIEWED BY SUE BECKMAN It's rife with Asimov wit and jovial¬ ^ ALIEN ATTACK ity (did you know "Isaac" is Hebrew What a book! I loved it; I hat¬ for laughter?) and Jeppson gaiety. ed it. It was like nothing else I But it's all so juvenile, so preppy they are a fiesta of the grotesque have read before. That alone serves and hilarious. and light. It contains plenty of as a kind of recoimendation, but this cartoons (by Fisher, Nick, Amo, They are artful, acid conmentar- book is definitely not for everyone. Ross and others) not to mention fic¬ ies on the idiocies (and idiosyn¬ tion by Sturgeon, Bester, Knight, The story, set vaguely in the crasies) of life: from hum-drum rur¬ Jeppson and Asimov themselves, and near future and covering about two al towns to massive, impersonal cit¬ weeks, is rather simple and in sian- a potpourri of poems and other ies. things. mary will sound soap opera-ish. I can tell Wilson likes to throw Melissa is a 29-year-old marine bio¬ It's like scrambled eggs and ham: wrenches everywhere at our media- logist. She lives with and loves it becomes expensive, salty, crusty bolstered lifestyles ; but he does so Jeffrey, a school teacher. She also and unpalatable to those well-accus¬ with grace and gaiety. lives with and loves Peter, a dol¬ tomed to science fiction. Maybe it ************************************ phin. Melissa is involved in a pro¬ is meaty enough for a neofan. ject to teach Peter the art (the fol¬ I suppose the book could be ex¬ ly?) of human speech. She shuttles cused for Asimov's witty introduc¬ between her aquatic habitat in the tions and the always amusing car- SHADOWS OF SANCTUARY Virgin Islands and her dryland apart¬ Edited by Robert Asprin ment in New York. Jeffrey is jealous ************************************ Ace Science Fiction, 338 pp, $2.50 of Melissa's emotional and sexual involvement with the dolphin. The REVIEWED BY ALMA JO WILLIAMS dolphin won't eat when Melissa is away. Melissa's mother is dying of O.K., habitues of The Vulgar Uni¬ lung cancer and needs her daughter's com, Volume III of the Sanctuary support. Melissa's best friend, Nic¬ IS NOTHING SACRED? Series is here! Rowena Morrill's ola, is pregnant (again) and fears third cover for the THIEVES WORLD By Gahan Wilson the wrath of her violent Barcelonan anthology shows the sleazy tavern St. Martin's/Marek, 1982 lover. Everybody needs Melissa. with its food-carpeted floor and its 128 pages, $5.95 Conflicts abound. Also stress, deadly inhabitants waiting to welcome strife, fear, passion and more pas¬ REVIEWED BY ANDREW M, ANDREWS the unwary reader into Sanctuary, sion. People discard old lovers, anus of the Ranke Empire. The stor¬ take new ones, travel a lot on air¬ As a rampart against the quirks ies are in the same vein as the first planes, meet for lunch at expensive of big cities, overpopulation, the two books: raunchy, disgusting, restaurants and order things like rampart mediocritization of individ¬ thoroughly readable and engrossing. bluefish salad and Moules Marinier- uality, and as sheer satire against Behold, Tempus, the Imnortal es. a mechanized world, cartoonist Gahan Hellhound, is finally rescued from Wilson offers us a melange of little But the story also includes the Kurdish vivisectionist by Shadow- people, fat people and plenty of things you won't see on daytime TV. spawn, the Pickpocket. Watch Enas plain weird things in this collec¬ Some of New York's inhabitants suf¬ Yorl, the involuntary shape-changing tion of cartoons. fer from information sickness. The magician, give the gift of soul-see¬ victims of this biological future The cartoons in IS NOTHING SACRED ing to a failed artist -- with unfor- shock suddenly begin to bleed and have been dragged from the musty, al¬ seen results. See Cime, Tempus' babble on city sidewalks. There's ready forgotten pages of such maga¬ hell-raising sister, seduce and slay a special ward for them at the hos¬ zines as FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, Sinctuary's sorcerors. pital. There's also a special mem¬ THE NEW YORKER, PLAYBOY and as such 57 ory-elimination posture one can as- sume after a hard day absorbing in¬ which species Mooney prefers). The talgics ask anybody over forty what formation. The author's approach to author has tried in this first novel was wrong with such a happy, innoc¬ this negentropy theme is low-keyed to be shocking, irritating, awing, ent time, this is the book to hand but compelling -- like a muffled memorable -- and he's succeeded. them. scream. The narrative contains many A caveat: If you're thinking of seemingly irrelevant statements like Among these rebels is industrial¬ sending a copy to your aunt who has "In the air, there were jet planes, ist Howard Kennedy, who has the same a penchant for dolphins, think twice. helicopters, invisible particles" noble dream as Asimov's Hari Seldon, The story is far from pornographic, (p. 14). Mooney's sophisticated and as part of that dream, offers but it's way past what your aunt characters may, for their own peace sanctuary to Hoskins, Billings, Joe would call racy. of mind, wish to ignore the world on and Bossy. But because Bossy can the molecular level, to forget the ************************************ only rejuvenate those flexible in foul-smelling corruption of Nona's mind enough to offer no resistance cancerous lungs, to take no notice to the process, the old prostitute of the pollution and death that re¬ can be rejuvenated, but the profes¬ sult from human carelessness. But sor cannot; the derelict, but not can they ignore any of it? Do they they'd rather be right the industrialist. And Middle Amer¬ have a choice? They unwittingly By Mark Clifton and Frank Riley ica, feeling justly cheated, explod¬ suck in information like they absorb Illustrated by M.W. Carroll es, in a climax that ends in a law¬ vitamin D on a sunny day. Donning Press, Starblaze Edition. suit and an attempted Federal take¬ over. They are victims swept along in 173 pages, $4.95. a rip current of headlines, radia¬ Original Copyright ASTOUNDING Science But Bossy is a machine and a tion therapy, birth control, particle Fiction, 1956. machine will work if you use it physics, scents, sounds, lights, Reprinted 1981. properly and this, too, is an article speed, past, present, future. And of American faith; the inventors most of the human characters are REVIEWED BY PATRICIA SHAW come to a conclusion Heinlein came weak swinners. Their unconscious re¬ to in an earlier story, and the same sponse to this sensory overload is solution. an unhealthy dose of Death Wish: Me¬ How would you like to be made The book is flawed. The very lissa continues to smoke, Nicole young again? Young, in perfect authors who turned the book into a steps out of a speeding car, and so health, with your mind -- reason and long plea to give up unpreconceived on. They are powerless. They specu¬ intuition both --as keen as your value judgments, or die, have filled late on the growing threat of nuclear senses and as flexible as your body? the book with them: Hysterical ti¬ war with the same emotion one would But in order to do so, you would rades against respectable people, invest in, "Think it'll rain?" The have to give up all preconceived established morality, female opin¬ only control they exercise is over ideas and moral imperatives that ions and Middle America in general. their sex lives. Jeffrey, in a burst could not be constructed from prov¬ It is the cry of a pair of intelli¬ of insight, remarks that "... desire able facts. Most people would rath¬ gent and sensitive youths against might be compounded of fear -- fear, er be right -- and die. their oppressors, without the slight¬ at bottom, of being so thoroughly at This is the theme of this Camp¬ est attempt to understand the oppres¬ the testy mercy of disorderly events" bell -era classic, now reprinted in sors, or imagine that the people (p. 215). The characters emerge as a slick-covered trade edition. It they so condemned were oppressed in actors, or more precisely, reactors. is the stoiy of Bossy, the computer their turn. The authors would never The " stage" is the real star, and that began as an intelligent weapons- have been rejuvenated by Bossy; its performance is flawless. guidance system and Joe, the student like the people they decry, they too, Mooney's style is extraordinary. who unaccountably knows his way ar¬ would rather be right. Point of view shifts frequently and ound Skid Row and is a telepath, But it's a powerful and excit¬ without warning. Seemingly unrelat¬ and Professors Hoskins and Billings, ing book, a good read and it makes ed events share space within a para¬ valiantly fighting a climate of intel¬ an important statement about living graph: Ch page 11, Melissa is play¬ lectual repression. in repressive times. ing catch with Peter. She drops the As the story opens, all four of ************************************ ball into his mouth, and in the next them are on the run from a Federal sentence, her mother, in far-away indictment and a lynch mob. The New York, drops a cup of coffee. Feds think Bossy is a weapon; the Sometimes, as in this example, there mob has somehow been convinced that seems to be a spiritual connection, Bossy can tell right from wrong and but most often these unexpected a- is equipped to make value judgments sides are linked only by their simul¬ -- and is a thredt to established taneity. Mooney further complicates morality. Both groups are quite things by tossing in a lot of unex¬ right. plained jargon and bizarre behavior: In the back of the car on the way Established morality, in this from the airport, the girls "...have case, is the rigid Dick Jane pat¬ both assumed full Mobius position, tern of existence, a quasi-military also known as single-surface posture, dictatorship behind a facade of dem¬ also known as second return posture ocracy, a blind terror of ideas on ... They are practicing Klein bot¬ the part of the average citizen and tle-breathing as well" (p. 177). the values of what we now call the Mooney is having fun while the reader Moral Majority; not hysterical and struggles along -- not a relaxing defensive as it is today, but so read, but worth the effort. Much of firmly in the saddle that only a few Mooney's phrasing is absolutely ir- self-conscious rebels can fearfully ridescent, and he gives some wonder¬ or covertly question it. It is, in ful glimpses of the world from a shcrt-t, 1956 and whenever young nos- dolphin's perspective (it's obvious 58 SATYR These thirteen tales -- thirteen FORERUNNER By Linda Crockett Gray was a lucky number and sacred in the By Andre Norton Playboy, 224 pp., $2.50, 1981 Old Religion -- begin with a fascin¬ Pinnacle Books, Inc. ating introduction by the editor who REVIEWED BY JOHN DIPRETE 1430 Broadway, New York, NY 10018 seems not only to know but to love Paper, 282 pages, $2.50 her subject; and then begins by mov¬ SATYR is a fast-moving, eerie ing from Baba Yaga in space, to Tan- REVIEWED BY KENDRA USACK tale of rape and horror. A modern- ith Lee's quasi-Chinese city terror¬ day incubus stalks, prowls and at¬ ized by a great magician of unknown Andre Norton has once again prov¬ tacks. Women fall prey to the goat motives, to C.J. Cherryh's war-weary ed herself as the grand-dam of sci¬ beast's satanic powers. Rape Crisis knight saved from a career of brutal¬ ence fiction. Center supervisor Dr. Martha Boozer ity by She Who Protects Her Daughters, As she does in many of her battles the havoc and panic of a and then to an Andre Norton story city terrorized by supernatural go¬ works, Andre Norton introduces us set on another world in another time, to a strong, female protagonist. ings-on. of psi powers and old gods and a wo¬ In this case, her name is Simsa. man with talent in hiding. The book has a drawback --in She is a burrower. Burrowers are the form of grandstanding. At a "The Sage of Theare" by Diana the lowest class of people in her women's gathering, the participants Wynne Jones, makes a point about ord¬ society. They are scorned by the condemn pornography in overly-moral- er, freedom and self-fulfilling dregs of society as well as the up¬ istic fashion. Certainly the author prophecies; Jayge Carr's "Reunion" per classes. She is also outcast has the right to inject a political sends Orpheus into Hades again, but from the burrowers. Simsa was under and/or social statement; the points this time Eurydice has been chosen the protection of Ferwar (The Old raised (which denigrate pornography for Persephone's role. "Act of One), who had trained her to tell as women-hating filth) are perhaps Faith" by Galad Elflandsson, sets a the difference between the rubbish cogent, but the shrieking militarism gentle healer, a priestess of Freya, and the true treasures of Kuxortal short-changes the book's purpose -- against a Christian zealot in tenth- (her society), a city which has re¬ which is, quite simply, violent sus¬ century Norway, while Katherine Kurtz built itself many times. With these pense. (Neither does the half-dres¬ takes us to her alternate world of treasures, Simsa hopes to make her sed woman on the cover help.) the Deryni for a tale less of witch¬ fortune. She goes to the spaceport The main character is a crusader craft than of witch-hunting. "Witch to sell them, and meets a stannan. type -- with a tough-talking, one- Fulfillment" by Jean Lorrah is a hil¬ He is excited over the artifacts be¬ track mind. A turn-off. arious sendup of popular romances, cause he believes they will lead and presumably of those who read him to his brother, who disappeared Despite this, the rest of Gray's them; read it for the pastiche, and a few years ago. fantasy offers a highly readable -- laugh. "Science is Magic Spelled Simsa and the starman are forced though at times gloomy and unfair -- Backward" mixes a nuclear power plant, portrait of city life and its deni¬ to leave Kuxortal because a lord is an ambitious young rationalist engin¬ disturbed by the starman's questions zens (carrion?) found there in the eer who finds her mother a dingbat, seams, lurking... and wants to capture him. The lord if still lovable, a witch out of also wants to destroy any people A pretty good horror-thriller of the "Jewish-mother" stereotype bag, that help him. sex, myth, nightmares, death and dark- all stirred by Jacqueline Lichten- berg via an earthquake into the same With Simsa and her animal com¬ ************************************ point Jane Fonda once made. Lich- panions in tow, he goes through a tenberg and Lorrah are friends and series of adventures and discoveries have collaborated on a book; they -- they cross a desert, find a mys¬ seem to use the same needle on pop terious pool which heals the body culture, and does it hurt! and soul and they find the ruins where Simsa rediscovers her myster¬ HECATE'G CAULDRON Charles Saunders has another ious ancestor. Edited by Susan M. Shwartz well-crafted tale of African magic This book is strongly based on DAW, 1982, 256 pp., $2.95 and customs in "Ishigbi", a tale of twins destined to be witches, one Andre Norton's complex mythologies REVIEWED BY PATRICIA SHAW of whom accepted fate and one of -- those of the Forerunners, who whom rejected it, and of their final preceded all other societies in her known universe and the mystic know¬ HECATE'S CAULDRON is an anthology meeting. Saunders is always worth looking for in an anthology of magic. ledge of the Earth-Mother Goddess about witches and witchcraft: seri¬ whose powers are contained within ous witches, benevolent witches, vin¬ So is Diana Paxson, whose next- the organic part of the universe. dictive witches, magicians, priest¬ to-last tale, "The Riddle of Hekaite" esses, espers, those in touch with could stand as a companion piece to She also bases this book on a the Old Gods and the very Queen either of the early Mary Renault solid understanding of archaeology Mother of the Old Gods, Hecate Her¬ books and is as beautiful. The proud, and the people, who pursue archae¬ self, Queen of Old Age, Death and aging Queen who fights her destiny ology for its intrinsic value. Wisdom. and meets the Goddess; and her husband However, be forewarned, this Gods and witches dearly love a who must be hauled back from the hero's death that seems his best and book is not the definitive work of riddle, and the stories are full of the Forerunner series. It adds new classic riddles to exercise the read¬ only choice, for he, too is growing old, are people one remembers long mysteries, as well as solves some er's mind. Like magic itself, these old ones. stories span time and culture so after the book is closed. that a coven can persuade a nuclear There is also a tale of Japanese If this is your first experience power plant to take certain precau¬ magic in which a woman warrior must with Norton's novels, you will enjoy tions while the Russian witch Baba fight and come to terms with the her mythology and carefully woven Yaga can try to sell a clumsy jug¬ fact that she has lost a limb. plots. If you are a long-time fan, gler the feet of John Travolta, Fred settle down with this book and en¬ ************************************ Astaire and Muhammed Ali because joy. "they had soul". 59 ************************************ MALLWORLD DARK FORCES Matheson pere et fils' "Where There's By Somtow Sucharitkul Edited by Kirby McCauley A Will" about a man buried alive who Donning/Starblaze trade paperback Bantom Books, 538 pp., $3.50 is trying his damnedest to escape 194 pp., $4.95 from his coffin; Joe Haldeman's REVIEWED BY ROBERT SABELLA "Lindsay and the Red City Blues", REVIEWED BY PAUL MC GUI RE Manley Wade Wellman's "Owls Hoot Along with the recent surge in in the Daytime" and Joyce Carol There are seven stories in this popularity of fantasy has cane a par¬ Oates' "The Bingo Master" were all collection, united by all taking allel resurgence of supernatural hor¬ primarily about people in supernat¬ place on the Mallworld. Humanity ror stories. This genre satisfies ural settings rather than settings has been confined to their solar sys¬ the same basic premise of science which only incidentally included tem by a force field. In "A Day in fiction and fantasy: the readers characters. Mallworld", a young girl from the willingly suspend their disbelief Bible Belt runs away to the colony for one outrageous idea, but the The other stories ranged from of over 20,000 shops to pursue the rest of the story must follow logic¬ disappoiitments to outright failures. impossible dream of reaching the ally from that central idea. After Rather than discuss them all I'll lost stars. "Sing a Song of Mall¬ this premise, however, SF and SH use T.E.D. Klein's "Children of the world” concerns both the society of take divergent paths. Where SF ap¬ Kingdom" to illustrate their fail¬ the young rich (reminiscent of Tan- peals mostly to the intellect and ings. Much of this 66-page story ith Lee's gang in DON'T BITE THE SUN) sense of wonder, SH is concerned was fascinating. It had a believ¬ and fugitive children who live like with mood-setting and the arousal of able main character as well as a mice behind the walls. When a holo- various shades of fear. These shales promising plotline. An old man re¬ vision personality learns that the range from vague unease (remember covering from a heart attack was son of the richest man in the solar Fritz Leiber’s OUR LADY OF DARKNESS?) placed in a boarding home by his system has had himself turned into to pure terror (DRACULA, et al). son who feared he was unable to care "The Vampire of Mallworld", he sets for himself. At the boarding house out to learn why and cure him. In DARK FORCES amply demonstrates the son met a colorful cast of sup¬ "Rabid in Mallworld", a working-class what is probably SH's biggest weak¬ porting characters and heard a fas¬ ness: since the authors are usually woman discovers a shocking secret cinating old legend about Earth's about the all-powerful alien Seles- pre-occupied with arousing emotions original race which arose in Latin pridar. In "Mallworld Graffiti", a they often violate many other rules America before being driven out by of good story telling. This results hopeless addict finds himself when invaders millennia ago'. Perhaps my in stories totally dependent for he literally meets himself. The mistake was in expecting something their success on the successful mani¬ protagonist of "The Darker Side of good to come out of all this develop¬ pulation of the readers' emotions. Mallworld" is a female who works as ment. Alas, after 66 pages all I got a bogyman to scare people into keep¬ The problem is: how many last-min¬ for my efforts was a brief glance at ute frights can work before the read¬ ing up mortgage payments on their some ancient monsters, a quick chill children. Finally, a surfer vs. ers get bored with the repetition of up my spine and good-bye to both cardboard characters and unanswered "The Jaws of Mallworld". Yes, it ancient legends and hoary characters is a shark, and of course, the fate questions? without a single sentence of explan¬ of the world depends on the outcome. This criticism is not meant as ation. This was a textbook example of the entire story being aborted by A well-conceived future-point- a condemnation of the whole of DARK FORCES but a reflection on the same¬ the author's quest for that "one of-view combines with wild mistakes ness of many stories. There are sev¬ last scream for the road!" It is and confusion about "the past" (al¬ eral which rise above the overall the same flaw which afflicts nearly ways stated with absolute certainty), mediocrity. Stephen King's 40,000- half of the 23 stories in this vol- throw-away phrases, and bits of de¬ word novel, THE MIST, is an out¬ scription to build a remarkable im¬ age of this world. Mr. Sucharitkul standing thriller. There was no¬ One last thought: not a single thing subtle in its premise of old- has fine senses of wonder and meta¬ story in DARK FORCES featured an old fashioned monsters lurking in a phor, humor and humanity. The book mansion haunted by the reminders of contains the original pulp paperback blinding mist, but King is a fine its evil past. Instead there is an illustrations and a few new drawings. writer who can make the hoariest excess of crime-infested ghettos cliches work. He understands that The book also includes Mallworld com¬ where danger lurks in the form of the primary concern of SH should be mercials. My favorite is for The rapists and muggers. Frightening? the characters' reaction to the hor¬ Cult of the Month Club. MALLWORLD Sure, but it seems like much of the ror. If the readers can relate with succeeds and entertains on several glamour of SH has been stripped away levels but I hope someone proofreads the characters then their breath and replaced by "Starsky and Hutch" will rise or fall with every unnat¬ it before the next printing. with screams. Where's the sense of ural creak that threatens them. ************************************ wonder in that? King also writes a full-fledged ************************************ LOOlDf THlS> 'S' TRETTV story and not merely a series of in¬ STUFF-1 cidents leading up to the tradition¬ al "one last scream for the road!"

Ray Bradbury's "A Touch of Petu¬ A CHOICE OF GODS lance" had no monsters and was more pure fantasy than SH. However, it By Clifford D. Simak was quite unsettling and genuinely Del Rey, 201 pp., $2.50 thought-provoking, a welcome rarity REVIEWED BY JOHN DIPRETE in SH. Other good stories included Ga- It's been frequently observed han Wilson's diabolical "Traps", that earning Nebulas and Hugos can about a squeamish exterminator who ignite or re-spark a professional is beginning to suspect that the writer's career. It's certainly no rats are gaining the upper hand; coincidence that, ever since Simak's Grand Master Award in 1977, his nov¬ 60 els (both new and reprint) have come like a flood. The current three dox amusements and imbuing them with have been released from Del Rey, all more dignity than you might expect. stamped with a familiar Simak blue¬ Holmes even provides an introductory print: robots, the rural future RPG and dungeon, as well as discus¬ and religion. sions of such accessories as minia¬ ture lead figurines, hobby magazines All share similar cover art: and computer adventures. PROJECT POPE Can '81 reprint) has robots trimming a rose bush on its As it stands the book is an okay cover; SPECIAL DELIVERANCE (a new introduction for beginners, and for hardcover) has a robot pouring cof¬ bewildered parents of devoted adven¬ fee; A CHOICE OF GODS Ca '72 reprint) turers. Especially useful for the has a robot on a Brillhart cover -- former is the last chapter, "How to head bowed, praying. Get Started" and the latter will be comforted by Holmes' discussion "Are Religiosity and/or robots have They All Crazy?" appeared in several Simak tales, such as WHY CALL THEM BACK FROM HEAV¬ But this monograph is weakened EN, RING AROUND THE SUN, CITY, among by the author's D8D bias. The game other works. The basic theme re- may be the biggest on the market, emerges in Del Rey's resurrection but his bland assertion that it’s of A CHOICE OF GODS, the story of "the best" is highly debatable. His Earth's lingering, robot-centered descriptions of DSD's virtues should spiritual longing -- in a future be taken with a grain of salt the where many have left for the stars. size of a 20-sided die. Reviews of the other games are mainly pretty A by-now familiar Simak ingred¬ shallow beyond the most basic list¬ ient, the rich, pastoral setting HONEYMOON IN HELL ing of their parameters. The same comprises the navel's central charac¬ bias shows in the chapter on maga¬ By Fredric Brown ter, amidst a quiet backdrop of lone¬ zines. About the miniatures I must Bantam, 1982 (reprint collection) liness, wistfulness and the search plead ignorance, though the chapter 150 pp., $2.25 for meaning. certainly seems a good introduction REVIEWED BY JOHN DIPRETE It's a good book for the regular for those with a lead fetish. The Simak reader. For the few still not "Chapter" (five pages) on computers Well-known since the 50s for his exposed, it's a fine introduction is basically a waste. novel-length satires (notably, WHAT to the writer's style. MAD UNIVERSE and MARTIANS, GO HOME), The book's other big weakness ************************************ Brown was also adept at shorter is hardly Holmes' fault: The field lengths -- perhaps the maddest tech¬ is currently expanding too fast for nician of short shorts ever known. any book to attempt to cover all ma¬ This collection contains a number of jor systems. This volume has a 1981 one/two page quickies, the vast maj¬ FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING GAMES copyright and in some respects it's ority ingeniously funny. A few brief already badly dated. Several impor¬ By J. Eric Holmes, M.D. clinkers, of course, can't be helped Hippocrene Books, Inc., 1981 tant RPGs (The Fantasy Trip, Dragon- (Sentry" is a cliche' so horribly quest, Space Opera, Aftermath, Champ¬ Hardcover, 224 pp., $14.95 stilted it's a wonder even a 50s ed¬ ions) have emerged since it was writ¬ itor would touch it; here's the end¬ REVIEWED BY ALLEN VARNEY ten. Any book on this- subject is ing: The "cruel, hideous aliens" almost perforce behind the times -- Fandom as a whole apparently has turn out to be -- you guessed it -- at least until the field settles the human race). not decided about Dungeons 5 Dragons. down. Players often come from outside the The rest, though, are classics. subculture, but they keep out of the FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING GAMES is a In "Naturally", a devil-conjurer who way at conventions and are on the respectable effort. But almost any is a geometry nerd, calls forth the whole less obnoxious than, say. Trek- later book of comparable scope is Devil ... but botches the pentagram. kies. And now D8D is bigger than bound to be an improvement in impor¬ In "Blood" a pair of time-fleeing Monopoly and hordes of imitators tant ways. The SMOFs are better off vampires seek safety -- and a good crowd the gaming market. If you're waiting awhile. drink --in the future, only to find a Secret Master of Fandom and think This RPG I'm working on now al¬ the world populated by intelligent it's about time to rule on the in¬ lows the players to assume the roles turnips. It's easy to go on, but truders, FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING GAMES of famous science fiction writers, the stories should be read -- not re¬ may help you set policy. fighting heroically for ever-larger capped. John Eric Holmes may already be advances, movie deals and awards, Brown was, of course, proficient known to you for his novels MORDRED all the while struggling against at longer, more serious and disturb¬ (Ace) and MAHARS OF PELLUCIDAR (DAW). greedy agents, fans and (of course) ing works, also represented here. He also wrote the revised "Basic other writers. It's called HUGOES "Arena" is included -- having been Set" booklet for DSD and so it's no AND HARLANS, see, and .... reprinted at one time in THE SCIENCE surprise that this survey of the ma¬ ************************************ FICTION HALL OF FAME (Vol. 1). STAR jor role-playing games (or RPGs) TREK fans may recall that "Arena" leans heavily in favor of the "orig¬ served as the basis for the Gom ep¬ inal". Holmes also discusses other isode, although the original story games of adventure, including Travel¬ is quite different. ler (SF), Runequest, Timnels and Trolls, and Empire of the Petal Throne The rest of the tales (preceded (all fantasy), Boot Hill, Gangster!, by the title story, "Honeymoon in Superhero 2044 and others. There Hell") are packed full of cleverness, are introductory chapters which ad¬ wit and style. This is an SF clas¬ dress the complete novice, doing a sic of "light reading". good job of describing these unortho¬ ************************************ MURDERCON By Richard Purtill Doubleday, $10.95 REVIEWED BY TERRY CARR

The sub-genre of mystery novels set in the world of science fiction and its fandom dates back forty years to Anthony Boucher's ROCKET TO THE MORGUE and, a few years later, Wil¬ son Tucker's THE CHINESE DOLL, each a delightful roman a clef in which well-known science fiction writers and fans appeared under recognizable variations of their own names. Mack Reynolds, in his 1951 novel, THE CASE OF THE LITTLE GREEN MEN, was the first writer to set a murder mystery in a science fiction convention (the murdered fan was "Bob Carr" and Rey¬ nolds told me at the time that that Athena Pierce is that hero; she this fact is mentioned in the jacket was an oblique reference to me). is a middle-aged professor of phil¬ copy, thus removing its "in" joke More recently, Gene DeWeese and Rob¬ osophy who's recently sold her first appeal. And Purtill himself, like ert Coulson revived the murder-at-a- science fiction novel to DAW Books. Athena Pierce, is a middle-aged phil¬ science-fiction-convention novel in She's one of a roomful of people who osophy professor whose first science NOW YOU SEE IT/HIM/THEM..., followed witness the murder of a fan panelist fiction novel based on Greek myths, by _* with SCI-FI. by a figure hidden in a Darth Vader was published by DAW Books. But This minor preoccupation with costume who apparently manages the since writers so often base charac¬ science fiction settings on the part killing with nothing more than a toy ters on themselves ("write about of mystery writers isn't surprising. zapgun. Pierce becomes involved in what you know"), this qualifies as Many people who write mysteries also the police investigation and natural¬ a bland joke at best. write science fiction and vice versa: ly she soon finds herself in peril. The blurb writer has done Purtill The two genres are similar in their The outline of the plot presents appeal to intellectual puzzles. Be¬ a greater disservice than merely pro¬ no surprises; what keeps us reading mising more than the novel gives us: sides, traditional mystery novels is the convention setting combined tend to such a sameness of plot out¬ Because the blurb caused me to read with the mysteries of whodunnit and with a careful eye to science fic¬ line that writers often rely on col¬ how. When the answers come, they're orful backgrounds and unusual charac¬ tional knowledge, I couldn't help believable and just ingenious enough noticing a glaring error conmitted ters to make their books different to fit the tinkertoy imaginations ... and the world of science fiction by Purtill himself. The "lost" Wein¬ of most adolescent fans of all ages. baum story was supposedly published is certainly colorful, its characters The novel is an enjoyable light read. unusual indeed. in a virtually unknown magazine cal¬ led KOSMOS TALES because Weinbaum With MURDERCON, a comparatively Its disappointments for me, are was a friend of the editor at the new science fiction writer enters mostly not the fault of the author, time. Pierce phones Don Wollheim to the fray by setting loose a murderer but rather of Doubleday's packaging ask about the magazine and he says, at an unnamed science fiction conven¬ and blurb copy. The jacket labels "It wasn't a Futurian magazine, but tion in San Diego, California. Rich¬ it as science fiction but it isn't it was about the same period that ard Purtill's novel introduces read¬ that; it's a straight mystery novel some of us were trying to persuade ers to a hotel full of people dres¬ packaged as science fiction to draw pulp magazine publishers to let us sed up as Darth Vader and Princess the attention of science fiction start science fiction magazines". Leia, hucksters selling ancient pulps fans, to whom the convention setting at outrageous prices, panels discus¬ The first Futurian-edited maga¬ will presumably be of interest. No zine was ASTONISHING STORIES, whose sing the role of academia in science doubt Doubleday is correct in this fiction and fans playing LOGAN'S RUN first issue was dated February, 1940. marketing approach; still, it's a Stanley G. Weinbaum died in 1935. games to the consternation of police bit of a cheat. officers searching for a real killer. The dates simply won't wash. (And The science fiction convention set¬ More disappointing is the blurb Purtill himself has done a disserv¬ ting rings true, and if there's lit¬ writer's promise that the book con¬ ice to Wollheim, who would have known this.) tle in the book about nighttime room tains "some great science fiction parties, the heart of any convention "in jokes" -- if there are such de¬ There are a few other question¬ for most seasoned attenders, that lightful subtleties in the story, able details in the book, but never omission is believable because the they went over my head; and since I mind. If Purtill's scholarship protagonist is someone who's never have been a science fiction fan and about science fiction history isn't gone to a science fiction convention professional for more than thirty perfect, his knowledge and descrip¬ before. years, I have to doubt that I missed tions of science fiction conventions anything like this. today are convincing enough. He's *Terry asked me to fill in the True, one of the novel's pivots written a worthwhile if minor mystery author's name as he had forgotten is the discovery of a "lost" Stanley novel about our world and if you find it. Alas, so have I. —REG G. Weinbaum story whose description it on your library's shelves you perfectly fits one by Purtill him¬ won't regret the few hours it will self ("Others' Eyes" in FANTASY AND take you to read it. SCIENCE FICTION, May 1980) -- but ************************************ 62 SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #35 Inter¬ I ALIEN views with Fred Saberhagen and Don Wollheim; "The Way It Is" by Barry I CONCLUSIONS Malzberg; "Noise Level" by John Brunner; "Coming Apart at the Themes" by Bob Shaw. # Before I forget, below is a list of reviews-in-hand or spoken-for which will appear in the next issue. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #36 Inter¬ Reviewers, be so guided. view with Roger Zelazny; A Profile of Philip K. Dick by Charles Platt; THE INDIANS WON "Outside the Whale" by Christopher ANNOTATED TALES OF POE Priest; "Science Fiction and Polit¬ A VISION OF DOOM ical Economy" by Mack Reynolds; In¬ THE MYSTERIOUS WORLD: AN ATLAS OF terview with Robert A. Heinlein; THE UNEXPLAINED "You Got No Friends in This World" ARTHUR C. CLARKE S MYSTERIOUS WORLD by Orson Scott Card. THE BORRIBLES GO FOR BROKE DREAM PARK WHERE TIME WINDS BLOW THE CROSS OF FIRE THE AMAZING STORY CONTINUES.... $1.50 per copy from #37 onward THE SWORDBEARER 'We are well on our way to WATER WITCH bringing AMAZING out of the minor SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #37 Inter¬ SECOND NATURE leagues. The November issue has view with Robert Anton Wilson; THE GARDENS OF DELIGHT novelets by Silverberg and William¬ "We're Coming Through the Window!" THE GOBLIN RESERVATION son, short fiction by Wolfe, Webb, by Barry N. Malzbdrg; "Inside the BRIGADIER GERARD 6 I forget who else. Cover by- Whale" by Jack Williamson, Jerry THE MYRMIDDON PROJECT Whelan. Other things bought in¬ Poumelle, and Jack Chalker; "Uni¬ SOFTWARE clude a Poul Anderson story, two ties in Digression” by Orson Scott AN F, MARION CRAWFORD COMPANION by Tanith Lee, 4 short-shorts by Card. THE ANNOTATED FRANKENSTEIN Wolfe, a Benford novel, etc.' MR. MONSTERS MOVIE GOLD SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #38 Inter¬ THE BEST OF OMNI SF #3 — Darrell Schweitzer view with Jack Williamson; "The THREE TOMORROWS letter, 6-27-82 Engines of the Night" by Barry N. THE PRIDE OF CHANUR Malzberg; "A String of Days" by THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT Gregory Benford; "The Alien Inva¬ CRUISER DREAMS sion" by Larry Niven; "Noise Level' HORN CROWN by John Brunner; SF News by Elton THE PARASITE Elliott. TO SAIL THE CENTURY SEA This publication THE WOUNDED LAND is available SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #39 Inter¬ THE STOLEN GODDESS view with Gene Wolfe; "The Engines LOST WORLDS in microform. of the Night"-Part Two by Barry N. TO CONQUER CHAOS Malzberg; "The Nuke Standard" by LEGIONS OF ANTARES Ian Watson; "The Vivisector" by ALLIES OF ANTARES Darrell Schweitzer; SF News by THF. LOST AND THE LURKING Elton Elliott. FRIDAY

SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #40 Inter¬ # I know I was supposed to be view with Robert Sheckley; 4-way thrilled at the once-in-a-hundred- conversation: Arthur C. Clarke, years eclipse of the Moon by Earth's Harlan Ellison, Fritz Leiber 5 shadow...but...except for a fuzzy University Microfilms Mark Wells; "The Engines of the edge to the shadow, it just looked International Night"-Part Three by Barry N. like a progression of the Moon's Malzberg; Darrell Schweitzer; monthly phases in one hour. We SF News by Elton T. Elliott 300 North Zeeb Road were lucky, here in Portland, in Dept. PR having a clear night. Ann Arbor. Mi. 48106 It's funny how the media can USA. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #41 Space make you feel guilty for not going Shuttle Report by Clifford R. Mc- 30-32 Mortimer Street into a frenzy of gosh-wow over such Murray; "Chuck's Latest Bucket" by essentially boring, ho-hum phenom¬ London WIN 7RA David Gerrold; Interview with Mi¬ ena. And it could be that all the chael Whelan; "The Bloodshot Eye" special effects of sf and fantasy by Gene DeWeese; "The Vivisector" movies the past few years have by Darrell Schweitzer; SF News by made me--and probably millions of Elton T. Elliott. others--terribly blase and sophisti¬ SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #43 Inter¬ cated. Why, even when Mt. St. Hel¬ view with James White; "The Porno ens went up, and I had a grandstand Novel Biz" by Anonymous; "How To SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #42 Inter¬ seat from our second floor window, Be A Science Fiction Critic" by view with Ian Watson; "One Writer I didn't watch it too long. Orson Scott Card; "The Vivisector" and the Next War" by John Brunner; It's hard to say what would by Darrell Schweitzer; "Once Over "The Vivisector" by Darrell Schweit¬ rivet my interest for hours on end. Lightly" by Gene DeWeese; SF News zer; "The Human Hotline" by Elton Maybe the end of the world---if it by Elton T. Elliott. T. Elliott. was on TV. 63 THE ALIEN CRITIC #9 "Reading SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #23 Inter¬ BACK ISSUES Heinlein Subjectively" by Alexei views: A.E. van Vogt, and Jack and Cory Panshin; "Written to a Vance, and Piers Anthony; "The Pulp!" by Sam Merwin, Jr.; "Noise Silverberg That Was" by Robert Level" by John Brunner; "The Shav¬ Silverberg. THE ALIEN CRITIC er Papers" by Richard S. Shaver. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #24 Inter¬ NO OTHER BACK ISSUES ARE THE ALIEN CRITIC #10 Interview views: Bob Shaw, David G. Hartwell AVAILABLE with Stanislaw Lem; "A Nest of and Algis Budrys; "On Being a Bit $1.25 per copy Strange and Wonderful Birds" by of a Legend" by Algis Budrys. Sam Merwin, Jr.; Robert Bloch's EACH ISSUE CONTAINS MANY REVIEWS. Guest of Honor speech; The Hein¬ SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #25 Inter¬ EACH ISSUE CONTAINS LETTERS FROM lein Reaction. views with George Scithers, Poul WELL-KNOWN SF & FANTASY WRITERS, Anderson and Ursula K. Le Guin; EDITORS, PUBLISHERS AND FANS. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #14 Inter¬ "Flying Saucers and the Stymie view with Philip Jose Farmer; Factor" by Ray Palmer; ONE INMORTAL THE FOLLOWING LISTINGS ARE OF "Thoughts on Logan's Run” by Will¬ MAN--Part One. FEATURED CONTRIBUTIONS iam F. Nolan; "The Gimlet Eye" by John Gustafson. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #26 Inter¬ views with Gordon R. Dickson and SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #15 Inter¬ Larry Niven; "Noise Level" by THE ALIEN CRITIC #5 Interview view with L. Sprague de Camp; John Brunner; "Fee-dom Road" by with Fritz Leiber; "The Literap^ "Spec-Fic and the Perry Rhodan Richard Henry Klump; ONE INMORTAL Dreamers" by James Blish; "Irvin Ghetto" by Donald C. Thompson; MAN--Part Two. Binkin Meets H.P. Lovecraft” by "Uffish Thots" by Ted White. Jack Chalker. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #27 Inter¬ SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #16 Inter¬ views with Ben Bova and Stephen THE ALIEN CRITIC #6 Interview view with Jerry Poumelle; "The Fabian; "Should Writers be Serfs with R.A. Lafferty; "The Tren¬ True and Terrible History of Sci¬ ...or Slaves?"; SF News; SF Film chant Bludgeon" by Ted White; ence Fiction" by Barry Malzberg; News; The Ackerman Interview; ONE "Translations From the Editorial' "Noise Level” by John Brunner; INMORTAL MAN--Part Three. by Marion Z. Bradley. "The Literary Masochist" by Rich¬ ard Lupoff. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #28 Inter¬ view with C.J. Cherryh; "Beyond SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #17 Inter¬ Genocide" by Damon Knight; ONE IM¬ view with George R.R. Martin; In¬ MORTAL MAN--Conclusion; SF News; terview with Robert Anton Wilson; SF Film News S Reviews. "Philip K. Dick: A parallax View" by Terrence M. Green; "Microcos¬ mos" by R. Faraday Nelson. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #29 Inter¬ views with John Brunner, Michael SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #18 Inter¬ Moorcock, and Hank Stine; "Noise view with Lester del Rey; Inter¬ Level" by John Brunner; SF News; view with Alan Burt Akers; "Noise SF Film News 5 Reviews. Level" by John Brubber; "A Short One for the Boys in the Back Room” SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #30 Inter¬ by Barry Malzberg. views with Joan D. Vinge, Stephen R. Donaldson, and Norman Spinrad; "The Awards Are Coming" by Orson SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #19 Inter¬ Scott Card; SF News; SF Film News view with Philip K. Dick; Interview C Reviews. with Frank Kelly Freas; "The Note¬ books of Mack Sikes" by Larry Niven; SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #31 Inter¬ "Angel Fear" by Freff; "The Vivi- view with Andrew J. Offutt; "Noise sector" by Darrell Schweitzer. Level" by John Brunner; "On the Edge of Futuria" by Ray Nelson. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #20 Inter¬ views: Theodore Sturgeon, and Joe SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #32 Inter¬ Haldeman;"Noise Level" by John view with Andrew J. Offutt--Part Brunner; "The Vivisector" by Dar¬ Two; Interview with Orson Scott rell Schweitzer; "The Gimlet Eye" Card; "You Got No Friends in This by John Gustafson. World" by Orson Scott Card; "The Human Hotline" by Elton T. Elliott. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #21 Inter¬ view with Leigh Brackett 5 Edmond SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #33 Inter¬ Hamilton; Interview with Tim Kirk; view with Charles Sheffield; "A "The Dream Quarter" by Barry Malz¬ Writer's Natural Enemy---Editors" berg; "Noise Level" by John Brunner. by George R. R. Martin; "Noise Level" by John Brunner. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #22 Inter¬ view with John Varley;"S-F and S-E-X" by Sam Merwin, Jr.; "After¬ thoughts on Logan's Run" by William BACK ISSUES LISTING CONTINUED ON F. Nolan; "An Evolution of Cons¬ INSIDE BACK COVER ciousness" by Marion Zimmer Bradley.