Steam Engine Time 12 March 2010

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OOFFFF OONN AA TTRREEAASSUURREE HHUUNNTT:: Ditmar Bruce Gillespie Frank Weissenborn Ray Wood George Zebrowski Steam Engine Time

Steam Engine Time No 12, March 2009, was edited by but rarely achieved. All material in this publication was contributed for one-time Janine Stinson (tropicsf at earthlink.net), PO Box 248, Eastlake, MI 49626-0248 use only, and copyrights belong to the contributors. USA and Bruce Gillespie (gandc at pacific.net.au), 5 Howard St., Greensborough VIC Illustrations: Various book and CD covers; plus: Ditmar (Dick Jenssen) (front 3088, Australia, and published at cover: ‘Off on a Treasure Hunt’, composed six months before the release of a http://efanzines.com/SFC/SteamEngineTime/SET12. Members fwa. recent highly popular Pixar film!); John Foyster (probably) (p. 30); publicity Website: GillespieCochrane.com.au. photo copyright 20th Century Fox (p. 33); publicity photos copyright Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. (pp. 40, 43); stills from the collection of Ray Wood (pp. Print edition only available by negotiation with the editors; first edition and 41, 44); photo (George Turner collection) (p. 59). primary publication is electronic. A thrice-yearly publishing schedule is intended

Contents

2 EDITORIALS 2009 the year — 2000–09 the decade 57 EDITING AND WRITING Bruce Gillespie The writer-editor: Jonathan Strahan The rightful custodian of science fiction and fantasy Michael Tolley George Zebrowski

28 COVER STORY 67 A. BERTRAM CHANDLER AND JOHN GRIMES The treasure hunt: Books about SF A lovely dollop of trollop: Bruce Gillespie A. Bertram Chandler’s John Grimes from Rim Worlds burnout to space-lane larrikin 40 TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES Frank Weissenborn The dancing cyborg Ray Wood

If human thought is a growth, like all other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the adjusting constructiveness of all other growing things. A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine time.

— Charles Fort, Lo!, quoted in Westfahl, Science Fiction Quotations, Yale UP, 2005, p. 286

2 Editorial: 2009 the year — 2000–09 the decade

by Bruce Gillespie

2009 took its own direction, independent of any intentions of mine. The trating appreciation of various article ‘The Treasure Hunt’ (in this issue of SET) refused to write itself. novels (some minor) by H. G. The October deadline loomed for delivering the talk to the Nova Mob. I Wells, and the funniest article I finished reading some books about SF, half-finished others, and became read last year, ‘Remembering further and further behind in making notes. The books I was reading “The Best of Young Novelists, didn’t fit my argument, and others 1983”’, in which Priest tells how, that might have fitted the argument at the media presentation, the got left behind altogether. Mean- best and the brightest new while, I failed to produce the next novelists of 1983, including him, Steam Engine Time. were upstaged and slighted by Martin Amis and Ian McEwen My article does not include discus- (which might account for a sions of two of the best recent books grumpy review of McEwen’s about SF: Christopher Priest’s Atonement, also in this volume). ‘IT’ Came from Outer Space: Oc- casional Pieces 1973–2008 and The Magic is Christopher Priest’s The Magic: The Story of the Film discussion of the film that was (both published by GrimGrin based on his novel The Prestige. Studios). Memorable pieces from Relations were sometimes dis- the former book include ‘A Little tant between Priest and Christo- Place in the Suburbs’, Priest’s pher Logan, the director of the memories of living in Ortygia House film, but nothing dims Priest’s in Harrow (the enormous basement appreciation of the brilliance of flat where I stayed in 1974), two Jonathan Nolan’s screenplay for fond obituaries of John Middleton the film: Murry (Richard Cowper), a pene-

3 The opening pages, with the voiceover about the Pledge, the Turn and necessary to read The Prestige again (pp. 182–4). the Prestige, made a particularly strong impression on me. Nolan had taken a few hints from the novel, had presumably done some research So, you might say, that is where my article ‘The Treasure Hunt’ should of his own into the ways of magicians, had had a think about have started. However, once I hit on the idea of the treasure hunt itself, everything, and finally came up with this simple, memorable and the rest of the article had to take its own direction. I kept trying to discuss powerful narrative hook. I was witnessing the writer of Memento hard the books by Christopher Priest and David Langford, but they kept being at work, and he had done an expert job. I was impressed. left by the wayside. Articles, like life, follow their own direction while you’re making other plans. John Lennon said something like that. He How many other novelists have the grace to appreciate what a script didn’t plan to meet a fool with a revolver in the street, and I didn’t plan writer has done with his or her novel, although Nolan took very few lines to try pedalling an exercise bike. directly from the novel and changed many of the emphases?

Writing about the novel The Prestige became a kind of talisman for the difficulties I have in describing current writing about science fiction. In My plan during 2009 was to publish at least three issues, perhaps four, his book What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction, Paul of Steam Engine Time. The fortieth anniversary issue of SF Com- Kincaid delves deep into the guts of the novel and tells us how it does mentary was supposed to be released last January — on the fortieth what it does. However, he seems unable to convey why the novel gives anniversary of its first issue (January 1969). Will it become the 41st the reader that feeling of pure excitement, lovely brain fever, that I’ve Anniversary issue? I received more paying work than I expected during found in very few other SF or fantasy novels in the last thirty years. the year (that’s the good news), but failed to take advantage of the weeks Because I already knew the novel and felt the fever, I could appreciate between paying jobs to produce vast fanzines (that’s the bad news). what Kincaid was trying to say, but I wish he had been a bit more Steam Engine Time readers were short-changed by my interest in incandescent in saying it. (Kincaid is even more penetrating when keeping ANZAPA going. ANZAPA is the discussing Priest’s most recent novel The Separation.) Australia and New Zealand Amateur Pub- To find that excitement I was looking for, I had to reach back to a book lishing Association. (‘Apa’ is a concept that can hardly be called recent: David Langford’s Up Through an that is hard to explain to non-fans, so I Empty House of Stairs (2003). If SF has its Gore Vidal or Edmond suggest you Google it.) I became official Wilson of reviewing, it’s Langford. However, most of the books he is given editor of ANZAPA five years ago, built for review are second rate. He does his best to be amusing about bad membership numbers back to 30 (the books — but sometimes a publisher sends him a gem. Then Langford, in maximum), but recently have faced de- a few deft sentences, can convey something like this: clining numbers (currently 24). The mailings themselves have been becoming [In The Prestige] the particular brand if misdirection that lies at the larger and more interesting — and more heart of theatrical conjuring is also a favourite Priest literary ploy — expensive to post overseas (the October the art of not so much fooling the audience as encouraging them to mailing, the 250th, was 266 pages long). fool themselves. ... The heart of The Prestige consists of two auto- I love ANZAPA because it is the last biographical accounts, of the rival Victorian magicians Alfred Borden refuge in Australia of true fanzine pub- and Rupert Angier. ... Both Angier and Borden die, and yet do not die, lishing, apart from such fanzines as Ethel and end their tales with the same resonant words. ... The trick is done; the Aardvark, Mumblings of Munch- before and after, Priest has rolled up both sleeves; his hands are empty kinland and The Instrumentality. and he fixes you with an honest look. And yet ... you realize that it is

4 This year I decided to catch up on my mailing comments on a year and people that they have diabetes. I had to wait until my GP arrived home a half’s ANZAPA mailings. I enjoyed doing this so much that during the from holidays until I pick up the finger-pricking machine that tests my second half of 2009 I began publishing my ANZAPA magazine *brg* on blood sugar levels. a regular basis (it appears in PDF format as issues of Scratch Pad on efanzines.com). Regular production has inspired nice people to send me If I had not done something peculiar to my knee, I would have been articles. Without any intention of mine, it has become the successor to feeling a lot better by now. Because of the change of diet, I’ve lost 11 The Metaphysical Review (my magazine about everything but SF and kg (over 20 lb), my blood sugar levels range between 5 and 8 (metric), fantasy, which hasn’t appeared since 1998). If you want to see copies but there are now lots of things I can’t eat. Elaine is a great cook, so we (with the ANZAPA mailing comments deleted), look at issues of Scratch eat lots of vegetables , and we keep boxes of fruit on the table for snacks. Pad on http://efanzines.com, or ask to be put on the mailing list for the And how, might you ask, does this relate to Steam Engine Time? Because print version. hanging around in waiting rooms of various medical persons takes lots As I’ve written in recent issues of *brg*/Scratch Pad, my life was derailed of time. I did finish the textbook I was editing, but later than expected, in August and September. Enid Spry, the 89-year-old lady who lived next which meant that I was behind in writing ‘The Treasure Hunt’, which in door, died in July. After the funeral and family conferences, her daughter turn held up producing this issue of the magazine. Karina was going through the house and found there a relic from her own childhood, a stationary exercise bike. She offered it to us. I thought this would a great idea for getting some exercise without going on long hikes Did I accomplish anything during 2009? I saw 97 films, all but two of around Greensborough. Nobody told me that bike seats should be them on DVD or Blu-Ray, plus a few old TV shows on DVD. I read 56 adjusted to suit the rider, especially a 62-year-old rider like me. I whirled books, and skimmed lots of magazines (The Monthly, The Gramophone away on the exercise bike for a few minutes at a time for a week or so. and Uncut, among others) and even more fanzines, both in print format A friend gave us an even more impressive-looking exercise bike. I tried and onscreen from http://efanzines.com. I listened to lots of CDs. I exercising on that. I put my knee out somehow. I still don’t know how. listened to a lot of radio. I watched very little TV, although I did become My GP was away. My medical masseur was away. Justin Ackroyd one of the half million or so Australians who watch any incarnation of recommended his sports medicine GP, but he was away. It took more Midsomer Murders (old or new series) whenever they pop up on the box. than month to get an X-ray and scan of the knee, which at least showed that no cartilage was torn, no joints out of joint — but there remains a Much of my viewing and some of my reading owes much to the efforts mystery about the precise nature of the problem. My masseur found for of Dick Jenssen (also known as Ditmar when filling our your Hugo me a knee brace, which helped a lot. I can walk more comfortably than nomination form for Best Fan Artist). I’ve marked with an * films I would I could a month ago, but on a long walk I still need to think about every not have seen without his help. Thanks also to Murray MacLachlan, for step, rather than stride it out. sending me music I would not have heard otherwise.

At the time as my knee went bung, I found that I was bung. I felt so tired If I were pretentious and dishonest, I could call that my ‘life of the mind’. so consistently that in July I asked my GP to do the full battery of blood Really, it’s an attempt to find as many gems as possible (as the treasure tests. These revealed that my blood sugar levels are much too high, and hunt goes on) in the years left to me, while attempting to survey some therefore I am (yet another) one of SF fandom’s sufferers from diabetes of the books, films, music or magazines I ‘really should’ read, see or type 2. My Vitamin B12 levels are also low. I had to change my diet quickly hear. The pattern of my life is to allow obligation to defeat pleasure for and decisively. I was supposed to exercise regularly (walking on a bung long periods of time; then I become very cross with obligation, declare leg?) My eyes were tested. I have the beginnings of macular degenera- a pleasure season, surveying the pile of to-be-read or to-be-watched or tion, but I hope that lifestyle changes will arrest that problem. I have not to-be-listened-to items and plunging into them. The result is a mind lost any feeling in my feet, which is another symptom that often alerts mixture, a fuddle, with gleams of light.

5 Favourites lists 2009

Favourite books read for the first time during 2009 15 Barley Patch (Gerald Murnane, 2009; Giramondo) Fiction

1 Gormenghast (Mervyn Peake, 1950; Overlook Press, 1995) Novel; 16 Slights (Kaaron Warren, 2009; Angry Robot) Novel part 2 of the ‘Gormenghast’ trilogy 17 Outside a Dog: A Bibiomemoir (Rick Gekoski, 2009; Peribo) Auto- 2 Titus Groan (Mervyn Peake, 1950; Overlook Press, 1995) Novel; biography part 1 of the ‘Gormenghast’ trilogy 18 My Mother, My Writing and Me: A Memoir (Iola Mathews, 2009; 3 The Brontës (Juliet Barker, 1994: Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Biography Michelle Anderson) Autobiography and essay and history 19 The Magic: The Story of a 4 Bomb Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets Film (Christopher Priest, of China (Simon Winchester, 2008; Penguin) Biography and history 2008; GrimGrin Studio) Autobiography and film 5 Willie Nelson: An Epic Life (Joe Nick Patoski, 2008; Little, Brown) criticism Biography 20 The Life and Death of 6 Air (Geoff Ryman, 2004; St Martin’s Griffin) Novel Classical Music (Norman Lebrecht, 2007; Anchor) 7 Titus Alone (Mervyn Peake, 1959; Overlook Press, 1995) Novel; part Music criticism and history 3 of the ‘Gormenghast’ trilogy 21 Fragments from a Life: A 8 A Handful of Dust (Evelyn Waugh, 1934; Penguin) Novel Memoir (John Litchen, 2007; Yambu) Biography 9 Sunrise West (Jacob G. Rosenberg, 2007; Brandl & Schlesinger) Autobiography Take my ‘favourite books’ list, for instance. It’s dominated by 10 About the Size of It (Tom Disch, 2007; Anvil) Poetry the one-volume Overlook 11 Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas (John Baxter, 2008; Harper Press edition of Mervyn Perennial) Autobiography and essay Peake’s ‘Gormenghast’ trilogy. I’ve owned the 12 Autographs: 56 Poems in Prose (Alex Skovron, 2008; Hybrid) Poetry Penguin editions for many years. Only after Dick Jenssen 13 Let the Right One In (Lat den ratte komma in) (John Ajvide Lindquist, gave me the omnibus volume, 2004; Text) Novel with more than 1000 pages, that eventually I plunged into 14 Omega (Christopher Evans, 2008; PS Publishing) Novel Peake’s intimidating prose. I

6 wondered whether I would reach more than page 50, but I found that, columnist in an Australian newspaper, Iola delved for truths about the as the sentences rolled on, I was taking fewer pit stops for lighter books, labyrinthine dark doings of the Victorian Education Department, and and those vast sentences were becoming more and more readable, and reported favourably on the causes taken up by the various teacher mighty edifice of Gormenghast was springing into life. By the middle unions. I did not meet her until her husband Race, a founding member volume, Gormenghast, my favourite, the struggle between Titus and of the Melbourne SF Club when he was a teenager, and government Steerpike becomes titanic, the body count rises, the explorations through minister in the Cain Labor Government in Victoria until 1992, gathered the labyrinthine castle become more and more exciting, and the flood- around him in 1993 a group of film/SF fans to watch movies at home. waters fill the castle. The stars of the book are Mervyn Peake’s Elaine and I have always enjoyed talking to Iola at these gatherings, but astonishingly visual and sensual sentences. Even Titus Alone, the third I had no idea of the complete scope of her interests until I read her book volume that nobody else likes, is made vivid by the rich texture of Peake’s published in 2009. prose. My Mother, My Writing and Me: A Memoir is a rather awkward title for I enjoyed the ‘Gormenghast’ trilogy so much that I had to reflect on the an unawkward book. An elegant paperback, it appears from small press failure of most other English fiction during the twentieth century. I don’t publisher Michelle Anderson. A better one-word title for it, which has just like many English authors from the last hundred years. It’s not just that occurred to me, is Focusing. Early in the book, Iola tells of a writing they are upper middle class and up themselves, but I feel that they draw course she attended at Queenscliff. Called ‘Freefall: Writing without a severe limits around themselves and the works they write. You want to Parachute’, it is the most practi- yell at most of them: open the doors of your cells and step outside. Only cal writing course I’ve heard of. Tolkien, Powys and a few others have had the same commitment as Iola’s account of it almost got me Peake to building a whole world in a novel, as the great nineteenth- back to writing fiction, but not century novelists did. (If only I could stand reading Tolkien’s prose!) Only quite. Barbara Turner-Vesse- Stapledon was committed to exploring all Time and Space (and he could lago, the Canadian instructor, be a boring writer, too). Only a few English writers, such as Waugh and encouraged her students to write Greene, provide a guaranteed ‘good read’; most good books in English freely at the beginning, then fo- during the century have come from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, USA, cus more and more intensely on Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, India and South Africa. the areas of their accounts (and hence their lives) that resisted In English writing, ‘Gormenghast’ stands on its own peak of literary examination. The advice would achievement. Unless I go back to re-reading the Great Books, a project have added up to waffle if Iola I began a couple of years ago, I probably won’t read anything as good had not had the courage to follow as it again. In 2009, the books that interested me most came from lower the method suggested. The re- on the list. They are not as ‘well written’, in the formal sense, as the sult is this account of becoming ‘Gormenghast’ trilogy, but they are interesting because they tell clear fifty and dealing with doubts stories about the lives of the people writing them. They are books written about mid-life uselessness, espe- by people I’ve met, people I would have liked to have met, or people cially when faced with crises that whose experiences of life match mine in some way. arose from the declining years of her mother, disagreements with The most delightful surprise of the year was My Mother, My Writing some members of her own and Me, a book written by my friend Iola Mathews. She has been a family, and the unexpected arri- writer all her life. I first read her work when she was writing the val home of her daughter, part- ‘Education’ column for The Age in the early 1970s. Probably the first such

7 nerless, to have a baby. All this disparate material coalesces at the end early part of the century. Spiros spent seven years there, returned home of the book, as Iola becomes one of the first writers to set up and support to discover the extreme limitations of life on the farm, then found that ‘Glenfern’, an old house in St Kilda set up to provide working space for the USA had placed immigration restrictions that prevented him return- writers. ing. Spiros finally found his way to Australia, married and has a family, and established a dry-cleaning business in Williamstown. As the back John Litchen’s Fragments from a Life is not as well written or cover blurb says: ‘Though his story is no more remarkable than all of the organised as Iola Mathews’ book, but it also sticks in the memory. I’ve others who left their homelands at the beginning of the last century, it known John for nearly forty years, and all that time I’ve thought in is none the less unique’. John Litchen urges all Steam Engine Time appearance he looked rather Spanish. This impression was reinforced by readers to gather as much of their family history while they can, and that the fact that he spent some time in South America when he was a young everybody should write his or her unique story. man, and returned to Australia with his new wife Monica, a Chilean. But it turns out that John’s family name was Litsis, whose family came from For a book that tells the life of a rather well-off bloke who’s succeeded Epirus in northern Greece. John’s family always thought of themselves at most things he’s tried, Rick Gekoski’s Outside a Dog: A as Greek, but for many years they were cursed by a post-World War I Bibliomemoir has surprising parallels with some of the concerns that slip of a diplomatic pen that placed their village in Albania. have dominated my own life. In his 2004 book Tolkien’s Gown, Rick Gekoski described the roller-coaster world of buying and selling old John Litchen has adopted an ambitious method of organising his book, books. In making this esoteric subject seem like wizardry (as John Baxter but it doesn’t quite work. He wanted to write down a true record of the did in his A Pound of Paper), Gekoski life and adventures of his father Spi- made himself seem also rather a ros. However, Spiros wrote down lit- lightweight person. Becoming an tle. All John had to deal with were his antiquarian bookseller, however, was father’s many memories, told to the for Gekoski one step in a rather diffi- family over the years. John combines cult life’s paths. In his new book, he those memories, told first person, describes the steps of this path in with a more straightforward narra- terms of the books that have most tive of the family fortunes. I take it influenced him ... or perhaps the that John typeset the book himself; books he read at the right time, when a designer might have suggested he needed them. Gekoski wrestles setting the first-person accounts in a with the ambiguities implicit in the different type face from the third- notion that books can have a deciding person narrative. I felt a bit confused role in the life of a person. This dis- at times. quiet makes this memoir a book of unusual depth — especially for one The story told in Fragments of a Life written in a seemingly casual style. is enthralling: how members of the family kept farming despite their vil- I connect most strongly with lage being taken over by the Gekoski’s experience when he de- Albanian government, how they scribes the way books influenced his maintained some contact with way of thinking during his early Greece, and how Spiros and his career. First he was influenced by a brothers escaped to America in the tutor who espouses Arnold at Oxford;

8 then he was heavily influenced by Leavisite critics and the work of T. S. health as the average household in Britain in 1840. If you think you would Eliot; and later the pronouncements of the semioticians forced him to like to live in some pre-twentieth-century era, read this book. flee academia. The twists and turns of his thinking about literature in general, and about particular books as diverse as The Waste Land, I say almost in passing that The Brontës offers an admirable account of Culture and Anarchy and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, are intertwined the life of Charlotte in particular, and the lives of Emily, Ann and Branwell entertainingly with an account of his sexual, then marital adventures, in much less detail, concentrating on Gondal, the vast landscape of the and his attempts to come to terms with life itself. Can good books really mind that they created between them during their short lives. If only we help a person make something of life? Gekoski argues that they can, and had Emily’s second novel, which Charlotte almost certainly destroyed shows how, but finds himself unexpectedly relieved when he loses his after her sister’s death! If only Branwell had not been so self- destructive. whole library during a divorce settlement. He turned out to be a poor artist, but Barker shows convincingly that he might have been a fine writer if he had not become a self-destructive A memoir that has no connections with my life (except that I love food drunk instead. too much) is John Baxter’s Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas. Read this for the sheer exuberance of Baxter’s enjoyment of life in France, Two biographies that are epics of a more conventional type are Simon and for the clarity and beauty of his prose. I pay this the ultimate Winchester’s Bomb Book and Compass, his account of Joseph compliment: Immoveable Feast is the fannish essay that every great fan Needham’s adventures in search of truth about the history of China, and writer has striven to write since the genre was invented by Willis and Joe Nick Patoski’s Willie Tucker in the 1940s. Nelson: An Epic Life. Through their biographers, both Need- Apart from memoirs, including Christopher Priest’s The Magic (mentioned ham and Nelson radiate that at the beginning of this editorial), the other type of book to dominate my enormous sense of energy that reading in 2009 was the biography. At various times in my life I have I would like to have within me: avoided biographies, feeling that they offer more hagiography than truth, that sense that they could have or more about the biographer than the person biographed. However, a done anything they set their book like Juliet Barker’s The Brontës realises the full potential of the minds to. biography as a form, since its story of the whole Brontë clan — father Patrick and six children (including three novelists and a failed artist), all Needham fell in love with a of whom predeceased him — unfolds the process of vast social change Chinese lady, which led him to that transformed Britain from 1800 to 1861 more successfully than any travel the Silk Road and bring other historical book I’ve read. Juliet Barker began her ten-year quest in home the great secrets of China, an attempt to investigate the claims made by Elizabeth Gaskell’s Life of and write about them until he Charlotte Brontë. The Rev. Patrick Brontë is held up to ridicule and scorn was in his nineties. in Gaskell’s account; Barker finds a completely different figure, an Willie Nelson has devoted him- astonishingly courageous and complex clergyman who fought for better self to every aspect of American conditions in the village of Haworth even while resisting the changes that music — country, blues and were facing his beloved Church of England. The six Brontë children died jazz, and what are today called one after another, two early in life, three in early adulthood, and Charlotte ‘the standards’ — but nothing in before she was forty. Five of them are killed by tuberculosis. In the village his path to success has been of Haworth, there was one latrine for every 150 people. One out of every easy. His life shows the value of two children died before the age of five. Only the most ‘backward’ parts good humour, an easy-going of what is today called the Third World were as dangerous to personal

9 nature, and a refusal to yield to despair. For nearly twenty years he was 3 The Curious Case of Benjamin known only as the writer of four songs that were hit records for other Button (David Fincher) 2008 people. He had little money; he kept losing wives; but he stayed on the road. Then, when Nelson was in his early forties and he was nearly ready 4 Slumdog Millionaire (Danny to retire to farming, Columbia finally scored a hit LP with his Red Headed Boyle) 2008 Stranger. The rest is, I suppose, history, but the story never loses 5 Let the Right One In (Tomas interest. Musicians, more than any other artists, get better as they get Alfredson) 2008 older. The average age of Willie and the members of his band is over 60, and they sound better on every new CD. 6 Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies) 1988 I meant to read more poetry in 2009 than I did. When I get sick of the plod of narrative prose — even very good narrative prose — I know I can 7 Brideshead Revisited (Charles clarify and rinse out my mind by reading a volume of good poetry. In Sturridge and Michael 2009, thanks to Claire and Mark in Britain, I was able to track down Lindsay-Hogg) 1981 About the Size of It, the last book of poetry Tom Disch published during his lifetime. Poetry, like classical music, is not something you do 8 A Perfect Spy (Peter Smith and unless you are familiar with the technical aspects of form, but even so, Arthur Hopcraft) 1987 very few twentieth-century poets show self-confident ability to leap around with poetic forms, especially Augustan heroic couplets, that Disch 9* Appaloosa (Ed Harris) 2009 exhibits in this volume. Some of the world-weary bitterness of his later 10 The Barbarian Invasions years infects these poems, but the best of them are dazzling fountains (Denis Arcand) 2003 of words in praise of poetry itself.

In his Autographs, Melbourne poet (and supporter of this magazine) 11* Changeling (Clint Eastwood) 2008 Alex Skovron does his best to take the ‘prose poem’ form and make it his own. In his earlier books of poetry, to me Skovron seemed to stand 12 District 9 (Neill Blomkampf) 2009 back a little too far from his own experience, but working with the prose poem forms seems to have freed an element in him we haven’t seen 13* These are the Damned (Joseph Losey) 1962 (restored) before, allowing him to move in on his own experience with precise, 14* In the Electric Mist (Bertrand Tavernier) 2009 epigrammatic phrases and runs of wonderful word-play. 15 I’m Not There (Todd Haynes) 2007 (I realise I have not talked about many of the items on the list. I have in mind special reviews and essays of each of them. I don’t have time 16 The Duellists (Ridley Scott) 1979 here.) 17 Look Both Ways (Sarah Watt) 2006

Favourite films seen for the first time in 2009 18 Pierrepoint (Adrian Shergold) 2005

1* Dean Spanley (directed by Toa Fraser) 2008 19 The Visitor (Tom McCarthy) 2008

2* Of Time and the City (Terence Davies) 2008 20 The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes (Peter Rosen) 2009

10 21 Mary and Max (Adam Eliott) 2009 12 Zelig (Woody Allen)

22* Tideland (Terry Gilliam) 2007 13* The Fly (David Cronenberg) (Blu-Ray)

23 Juno (Jason Reitman) 2007 14 Odd Man Out (Carol Reed)

24* Moon (Duncan Jones) 2009 15 American Splendor (Robert Pulcini & Sheri Springer Berman)

25 Careful He Might Hear You (Carl Schulz) 1983 16 Inside Man (Spike Lee)

26* Up (Pete Docter) 2009 17 Solaris (Steven Soderbergh)

27 The Night They Raided Minsky’s (William Friedkin) 1968 18* The Illusionist (Peter Burger) (Blu-Ray)

28 Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood) 2009) 19 The Bed Sitting Room (Richard Lester)

29 Affinity (Tim Fywell) 2009 20 The Company (Robert Altman)

30 The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges) 1940 21 Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze)

22* Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz) (Blu-Ray, restored) Favourite films seen again during 2009 23 The Elephant Man (David Lynch) (Blu-Ray) 1* It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra) (Blu-Ray, restored) * = Films I could not have seen in this form, on either Blu-Ray or DVD, 2* A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) without the help of Dick Jenssen.

3* I Know Where I’m Going (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) Thanks to Dick Jenssen, I was able to see many movies in much- 4* A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) improved versions this year. Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes, now available on Blu-Ray, is quite miraculous, both for the 5 The Shining (Stanley Kubrick) (Blu-Ray) restoration of the original Technicolor and the increase in clarity of the image over any previous version. (This restoration is scheduled to be 6* The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) (Blu- Ray, shown at the Astor Cinema in Melbourne in March.) There are also now restored) much improved versions of other favourite Powell and Pressburger films, not to mention one of my top three films, Frank Capra’s It’s a 7* North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock) (Blu-Ray, restored) Wonderful Life. I find it very exciting to see the great black-and-white 8 You Can’t Take it With You (Frank Capra) films looking much as they must have done when they were first released.

9 Babette’s Feast (Gabriel Exel) Thanks also to Dick for arranging for us see Toa Fraser’s Dean Spanley long before the DVD was available in Australia. If people visit us and 10 Pinocchio (Ben Sharpsteen) suggest that we show a movie, I keep showing them Dean Spanley, since it has all the qualities conspicuously missing in most films today: civilised 11 Fahrenheit 451 (François Truffaut) wit, compassion, genuine fantasy and whimsy, and great photography. Alan Sharp’s script takes a rather slim novella by Lord Dunsany, about

11 Dean Spanley, a man who believes he is a reincarnated dog, and expands that might have been filmed by Ingmar Bergman (much better than the it into a moving parable about fathers and sons. Peter O’Toole, in his original novel, which itself is very enjoyable). Appaloosa’s widescreen, best role for many years, plays the tetchy old father, seemingly out of deep-focus colour photography of the Old West is sumptuous, but sympathy with his long-suffering son, played by Jeremy Northam. They basically it’s a perceptive study of four people stuck in a town nobody meet Dean Spanley, played in one of the great acting performances of would want to visit. The Barbarian Invasions is a perfect study of all time, by Sam Neill, and Dan Wrather, played by Bryan Brown, who is people who gather to farewell a dying man; its tone is celebratory and allowed to retain his Australian accent. This ensemble piece yields many funny rather than melancholy. Look Both Ways is one of the few recent delicious scenes, probably because Sharp’s is the best film script since Australian movies I’ve liked a lot; but it could be because I fell for Justine that for Kind Hearts and Coronets. Clarke as soon as she appeared on screen. The Visitor is about a man who arrives home to find that two illegal immigrants have taken over his Of Time and the City is a poetic photo-essay by Terence Davies (who apartment, and how it changes his life: again, perfect script and casting provides the voiceover) about the Liverpool he grew up in, a city that creates a memorable experience. now hardly exists. The combination of Davies’ sepulchral voice, an inspired music soundtrack (unavailable on CD) and the rhythm of the The one total surprise of the year, for most people as well as me, was images makes this into a film symphony. Neill Blomkampf’s South African SF movie District 9. The distributors offered tickets to the Australian SF Foundation, so a few of us went to Two favourites on the list are BBC TV serials from the 1980s: all 11 hours the preview. The combination of political and personal humour, combined of the monumental Brideshead Revisited, which I had never seen with outrageous action sequences, all shot as if by a mad documentary before, much richer in implication and emotional effect than Evelyn maker, kept me amused and entertained to the end. A pity that it’s Waugh’s novel (which I reread in 2009); and the recreation by three another movie with the sequel already set up in the last shot. actors of John Le Carre’s A Perfect Spy. Never has the British upper class seemed more alien to people like you and me than in these BBC serials, but their assumptions and antics are more fascinating than any Favourite CDs of 2009 of the aliens in SF films. I realise that the following lists do not belong in Steam Engine Time, but Clint Eastwood was the Film Maker of the Decade (both the nineties somebody is sure to complain if I leave them out. and the noughties). His reputation as a director grew again during 2009, In 2009, I changed my system of assembling these lists. In previous with the release in Australia of two major films: his intricate, finely years I had noted every CD I had bought during the year. I then waited photographed Changeling, and Gran Torino, a much broader combi- awhile before choosing the best of the that year, admitting that I would nation of comedy and pathos. It’s hard to think of any other working have to keep updating such a list. So, in 2009, for the first time I did director whose name today goes above the stars’ names when publicising note each CD as I listened to it. a film. Judd Apotow is the name to avoid at the moment; but Jason Reitman (Juno) could be the name to watch for the new decade after Clint Eastwood retires. Favourite popular CDs listened to for the first time in 2009: New releases I’ve tried to avoid blockbusters in recent years. The blocks bust inside my brain, and a few weeks later I forget what I saw. Even the new Star 1 Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters: Living in the Light Trek, excellent in many ways, is fading fast from the Gillespie mind screen. I look for small movies about interesting people, with modest 2 Tom Russell: Blood and Candle Smoke budgets and film styles, and good dialogue and photography, and I was 3Rodney Crowell: Sex and Gasoline awarded often during 2009. Let the Right One In is a vampire movie

12 4 Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs: Underneath the Covers, Vol. 2

5 Kimmie Rhodes: Love Me Like a Song

6 Jeff Beck: Performing This Week ... Live at Ronnie Scott’s

7 Loudon Wainwright III: High Wide and Lonesome: The Charlie Poole Project (2 CDs)

8Various: Real: The Tom T. Hall Project

9 Chris Smithers: Time Stands Still

10 Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood: Live from Madison Square Garden (2)

11 Various: Playing for Change: Songs Around the World (CD + DVD) 8Rod Stewart: Sessions 1971–1998 (4)

12 Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel: Willie and the Wheel I realise that my taste in music has little or nothing to do with the popular music played on the radio — any radio station — or bought by other people. Most of the CDs I buy these days fall into a category usually listed Favourite popular CDs bought during 2009: Boxed as ‘alt.country’, ‘roots music’, ‘Americana’, ‘singer-songwriter music’ or sets and collections even ‘American folk music’. (My folkie friends would probably admit only bluegrass music into the category of ‘American folk’.) I like such music 1Neil Young: Archives Vol. 1 (9 DVDs) because its songwriters are good poets and better storytellers, and its performers can sing and play their instruments. (By and large I do not 2Roy Orbison: The Soul of Rock and Roll (4 CDs) buy music that features synthesisers, loops or other signs of mechanical 3Jayhawks: Music from the North Country: The Jayhawks Anthology laziness.) I do like some blues: my favourite CD of the year, Living in (2) the Light, features Ronnie Earl, the best new Chicago-style blues guitarist to emerge for many years. Jeff Beck (Live at Ronnie Scott’s) 4Nick Lowe: Quiet Please: The New Best of (2) also remains one of the best electric guitarists in the world, as are Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood (Live from Madison Square Garden). 5Kinks: Picture Book (6) I still like a lot of traditional country music, especially Loudon Wain- wright III’s High Wide and Handsome, a two-CD booklet-boxed 6 Rolling Stones: Get Yer Ya Yas Out: The Rolling Stones in Concert tribute to Charlie Poole, a 1930s performer I’d never heard of. (3 + 1 DVD) The standout records of the year were the boxed sets. We’ve been waiting 7Graham Nash: Reflections (3) twenty years for Neil Young to release his Archives. In the end, he

13 waited until he could produce a box of Blu-Ray discs (which I couldn’t 2 Benjamin Britten: The Collectors’ Edition (37) afford), or a box of music DVDs (which I really couldn’t afford, but bought anyway), or a box of CDs (not released in Australia). Exploring this set 3 John Eliot Gardner cond. Orchestre Romantique et Révolutionaire: could take me the next twenty years until Neil gets around to Vol. 2. Brahms: Symphony No 2/Alto Rhapsody

The other boxed sets are ones I would want to play during a nostalgic, 4 Thomas Beecham cond. Royal Philharmonic: Sibelius: Symphony reflective moment: Roy Orbison’s The Soul of Rock and Roll, which No 2/The Tempest etc. includes a lot of material not on his early boxed set; a two-CD set from 5 Thomas Beecham cond. Royal Philharmonic: Haydn: The Seasons America’s best band, the Jayhawks; a Nick Lowe set that includes (2) much from his ‘quiet’ period of the last fifteen years; and, at last, a real retrospective from the Kinks, still Britain’s most underrated band. 6 Tono Kaljuste cond. Estonian National Symphony Orchestra/Tallinin Chamber Orchestra: Arvo Pärt: In Principio, etc. But why relegate the Rolling Stones’ fortieth anniversary boxed set of Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out! to position No 6? Because the Stones can’t get 7 Francesco d’Avalos cond. Philharmonia: Clementi: Complete the boxed set concept right. Their boxed set of Shine a Light from earlier Orchestral Works (3) in 2009 was an insult to those of us who shelled out good money for it. Now at the end of 2009 they sold us a four-disc set that could easily have 8 Bryden Thomson cond. English Chamber Orchestra/Stephen Hough fitted on two. They must have a huge stockpile of ‘bootleg’ material stored (piano): Hummel: Piano Concertos in B minor, A minor on tape, yet the new box stinks of meanness. The CD of Ya Ya’s itself is the same remastered version that was released a few years ago. The 9 Helmut Müller-Bruhl cond. Cologne Chamber Orchestra/Takako second CD, of outtakes from Ya Ya’s, has only five new tracks from the Nishizaki (violin): Vanhal: Three Violin Concertos 1969 tour. The DVD features only those new tracks. The only CD that 10 Essa-Pekka Salonen cond. Los Angeles Philharmonic: Kaija gives real new value is that of performances by the supporting acts on Saaraho: Du cristal ... a la fumée/Kronos Quartet: Saaraho: Nym- the 1969 tour: Ike and Tina Turner and B. B. King. phea Late in 2009, a group of Melbourne musicians put together what most You’ll notice a difference in heading commentators regarded as the Australian gig of the year in 2009: here. These are not the best classi- ‘Charlie’s Good Tonight’, a complete concert performance of Get Yer cal CDs that I played for the first Ya Ya’s Out!. Tim Rogers, interviewed on radio, admitted that he was time in 2009. Obviously I did not sit born three months before the original album was released, but he was down and play all nine recordings by given it as a first birthday present. I was up living in Ararat in 1969; I Pablo Casals in the boxed set remember buying Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out! at the little record store there Complete EMI Recordings, or all after Leigh Edmonds had played it for me at his flat. Is Ya Ya’s still the 37 CDs in the Britten boxed set. But ‘best live album ever’ (Brian Wise) by ‘the best rock and roll band in the I’ll get through them all during that world’? I’m not too sure, but I still play it more often than most other fabulous long life I seem to be albums released during the last forty years. promising myself. Both boxed sets have recordings not otherwise avail- Favourite classical CDS bought during 2009 able, or (in the case of Britten) recordings available only in other, 1 Pablo Casals: Complete EMI Recordings (9 CDs) more expensive sets, such as the

14 operas. version of Symphony No 2 is the best I’ve heard in many years. (His Brahms First, released at the same time, is appalling. But I already own Clementi, Hummel and Vanhal are just three of the ‘minor’ composers four different, brilliant Karajan versions of the First.) who were discovered by record companies during the great CD boom of the eighties. I really enjoy music by such composers, especially Clementi. The only new composer discovery is a CD of Saaraho’s music, first heard on 3MBS. The music on this CD is monumental and bracing rather than I’ve spent my life looking for conductors who are willing to play Brahms seductive, but I will keep an eye out for others by the same composer. with energy and spritzig — sounding as if they were inspired by Beethoven, which they were. Even Mackerras and Harnoncourt failed me I always buy Arvo Pärt’s new compositions, but they are beginning to in their recent boxed sets of the symphonies. John Eliot Gardner’s new sound a bit alike. In Principio is a very exciting recording, though.

Best of the decade 2000–09

Gillespie’s finally flipped: yes, I spent two weeks working out my best 6 Light, M. John Harrison thises and thats of the decade 2000–2009. Never before have I worked out a best of any decade. I wouldn’t have thought of doing so, except 7 Brasyl, Ian McDonald that (a) every newspaper and magazine critic and reviewer posted his 8 River of Gods, Ian McDonald or her ‘Best of the Decade’ for films and music; and (b) on the Fictionmags e-list, Western Australian anthologist and reviewer Jonathan Strahan 9 The Separation, Christopher Priest posted the following list. I reprint it, with his permission. 10 Pushing Ice, Alastair Reynolds

Jonathan Strahan’s list 11 Forty Signs of Rain, Kim Stanley Robinson

Jonathan writes: ‘I was just compiling a list of the best collections of the 12 The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson decade and thought I’d toss together a Top 20 SF Novels of the Decade list. This only lists novels, only lists SF, and is listed alphabetically by 13 Natural History, Justina Robson author:’ 14 Air, Geoff Ryman 1 The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi 15 Ilium, Dan Simmons 2 Look to Windward, Iain M. Banks 16 Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson 3 Manifold: Space, Stephen Baxter 17 Glasshouse, Charles Stross 4 Pattern Recognition, William Gibson 18 Accelerando, Charles Stross 5 Light Music, Kathleen Ann Goonan 19 Blindsight, Peter Watts

15 20 Spin, Robert Charles Wilson Thanks, Jonathan, for reminding me of Air, and prompting the following lists: Bruce Gillespie’s lists Result No 1: The best Christopher Priest’s The Separation was my favourite SF novel of the SF-related book of the decade, so Jonathan and I agree there. decade My initial reaction to Jonathan’s list was grief when I realised the number of interesting books I had not read. Some I had tried, and had found me is Shaun Tan’s The Arrival. It has no wanting: Ian McDonald’s Brasyl and River of Gods. I didn’t like words, so it can’t be a novel. It’s not Harrison’s Light much, although I did finish it, and I see why other just a graphic novel. It has all the people liked it. I was very pleased that the success of Light led to the strange feeling that I like in great SF. publication of a major collection of Harrison’s short stories and new I don’t know what it is, but it’s fabu- editions of some of his earlier novels. lous. Come to Aussiecon 4 to meet Shaun Tan, our Australian Pro Guest of But there is no excuse for me not having read the two Kim Stanley Honour. Robinson novels that Jonathan mentions. I will have to do so by September this year, when Best SF novels of the KSR arrives in Melbourne to decade be Pro Guest of Honour at this year’s Worldcon. that I’ve had time to read. The upgraded 2000–2009 list could be rather different when I return to it in a I have been going to read few years’ time: Geoff Ryman’s Air since I bought it. But it went on the 1 The Separation (Christopher Priest) (2002) (GB) shelf, and other books arrived, and most of them have 2 Air (Geoff Ryman) (2004) (Canada) not yet been read either. Jonathan’s mention of Air 3 Life (Gwyneth Jones) (2004) (GB) caused me to take the book 4 The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffeneger) (2004) (US) from the shelf and read it by 31 December 2009. At last! I 5 Passage (Connie Willis) (2001) (US) thought: a real novel that combines deft charac- 6 The Plot Against America (Philip Roth) (2004) (US) terisation, fine writing and a palpable vision of a probable 7 The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Michael Chabon) (2007) (US) future. It’s difficult to think of 8 Omega (Christopher Evans) (2008) (GB) an SF novel I’ve read as good as this since Thomas Disch’s 9 The Road (Cormac McCarthy) (2006) (US) On Wings of Song in 1980. 10 Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro) (2005) (GB)

16 Other contenders (in the order I read them) Other contenders (in the

G The Secret of Life (Paul McAuley) (2001) (GB) order I read them):

G The Wooden Sea (Jonathan G Dr Franklin’s Island (Ann Halam) (2001) (GB) Carroll) (2001) (US) G The Telling (Ursula K. Le Guin) (2001) (US) G The Stone Mage and the Sea G Transcension (Damien Broderick) (2002) (Aus) (Sean Williams) (2001) (Aus)

G Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) (2004) (GB) G St Patrick’s Bed (Terence M. Green) (2001) (Canada) G Provender Gleed (James Lovegrove) (2005) (GB)

G The Other Wind (Ursula K. Le G 9tail Fox (Jon Courtenay Grimwood) (2005) (GB) Guin) (2001) (US) G The Somnambulist (Jonathan Barnes) (2007) (GB) G The Sky Warden and the Sun G The Domino Men (Jonathan Barnes) (2008) (GB) (Sean Williams) (2002) (Aus)

G The Economy of Spirit (Jack Dann) (2008) (Aus) G The Facts of Life (Graham Joyce) (2002) (GB) G Black Man (Richard Morgan) (2007) (GB)

G Affairs At Hampden Ferrers (Brian Best fantasy/horror/slipstream Aldiss) (2004) (GB)

G The Etched City (K. J. Bishop) 1 The Amber Spyglass (Philip Pullman) (2000) (GB) (2003) (Aus) 2 Set This House In Order (Matt Ruff) (2003) (US) (if it’s not SF rather G The Book of Lost Things (John than fantasy) Connolly) (2006) (GB) 3 The World as a Clockface (Philomena Van Rijswijk) (2001) (Aus) Best crime/ 4 Let The Right One In (John Ajvide Lindquist) (2004) (Sweden) mystery/suspense/spy novels

5 The Mysteries (Lisa Tuttle) (GB) (2005) 1 Mystic River (Dennis Lehane) (2001) (US)

6 Winter on the Plain of Ghosts (Eileen Kerneghan) (Canada) (2004) 2 Shutter Island (Dennis Lehane) (2003) (US)

7 Gifts (Ursula K. Le Guin) (2004) (US) 3 Absolute Friends (John Le Carre) (2003) 8 Slights (Kaaron Warren) (2009) (Aus) (GB)

9 The Limits Of Enchantment (Graham Joyce) (2005) (GB) 4 Stalin’s Ghost (Martin Cruz Smith) (2007) (US) 10 The Cretan Teat (Brian Aldiss) (2002) (GB) 5 Thirteen Steps Down (Ruth Rendell) (2004) (GB)

17 6 Grasshopper (Barbara Vine) (2000) (GB) 14* Dean Spanley (Toa Fraser) 2008

7 The Blood Doctor (Barbara Vine) (2002) (GB) 15* Secretary (Steve Shambey) 2002

8 Kittyhawk Down (Garry Disher) (2003) (Aus) 16 Kenny (Shane Jacobson) 2006

9 Blood Moon (Garry Disher) (2009) (Aus) 17 O Brother Where Art Thou? (Joel Coen) 2000

10 Killing the Rabbit (Alison Goodman) (2007) (Aus) 18* The Road to Perdition (Sam Mendes) 2002

19 Minority Report (Steven Spielberg) 2001 Other contenders (in the order I read them) 20 Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair) 2001 G Small Town (Lawrence Block) (2003) (US)

G P is for Peril (Sue Grafton) (2001) (US) 21 The Dancer Upstairs (John Malkovich) 2002

G All The Flowers Are Dying (Lawrence Block) (2005) (US) 22* A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman) 2006

23* Breach (Billy Ray) 2007 Favourite Films of the Decade 2000–09 24 Gosford Park (Robert Altman) 2001 1* Northfork (directed by Michael Polish) 2003 25* The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro) 2002 2 Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly) 2001 26 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Chris Columbus) 2001 3 The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chonet) 3003 27* Galaxy Quest (Dean Parisot) 2000 4 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee) 2000 28 American Splendor (Robert Pulcini & Sheri Springer Berman) 2003 5 Spirited Away (Hayao Mizazaki) 2001 29 Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess) 2004 6 The Prestige (Christopher Nolan) 2006 30* Crash (Paul Haggis) 2005 7 Space Cowboys (Clint Eastwood) 2000 31 Lord of War (Andrew Niccol) 2005 8 A.I. (Steven Spielberg) 2001 32 Solaris (Steven Soderbergh) 2003 9* Monster’s Ball (Mark Forster) 2001 33* Of Time and the City (Terence Davies) 2008 10 Mystic River (Clint Eastwood) 2003 34 The Company (Robert Altman) 2003 11 State and Main (David Mamet) 2000 35 Catch Me If You Can (Steven Spielberg) 2003 12 Children of Men (Alfonso Guaron) 2006 36* The Cell (Tarsem Singh) 2000 13* Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy) 2007

18 37 Inside Man (Spike Lee) 2006 discovered it as well.

38 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson) 2004 The film of the decade was the Polish brothers’ Northfork, 39 21 Grams (Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu) 2003 which I would never have discovered without Dick reading 40* The Lives of Others (Florien Henckel) 2006 a review and ordering it from 41* Le chambre des officiers (The Officers’ Ward) (Francois Depeyron) overseas. It was never shown 2001 on a cinema screen in Austra- lia; however, the DVD was re- 42 Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro) 2006 leased here, and might still be available. Ostensibly it is 43* Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood) 2007 about a group of federal agents telling the citizens of a 44 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher) 2008 remote northern midwestern 45 O Thou Transcendent: The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams (Tony town that they must leave Palmer) 2008 their homes because they will be flooded when the new dam 46 Charlie Wilson’s War (Mike Nichols) 2007 begins operations. The few citizens who are left in the 47* The Walker (Paul Shrader) 2006 town are very opposed to the whole operation — but that’s 48* The Fountain (Daniel Aronofsky) 2006 not the point of the film. A 49 Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle) 2008 local priest stays in order to care for a dying boy, who can’t be moved. Strange and amusing fantastic events keep occurring in the town. Who 50 Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson) 2008 are the people who have taken over one of the abandoned houses? What is their mission? I can’t describe the air of breathless magic that 51* The Fall (Tamsen) 2006 independent filmmakers Michael and Daniel Polish give to their unlikely subject matter. In the DVD commentary (missing from the Australian * = Films I could not have seen in this form, on either Blu-Ray release), the two brothers tell how they brought their whole crew out to or DVD, without the help of Dick Jenssen. Montana on the promise of $2 million to make the film — only to have My decade of films was a lot more interesting than my decade of books, the financing withdrawn. With the help of their father building the sets as Dick Jenssen prompted me to great discoveries in both fields. He and everybody working for free, the film got made. The Polish brothers also gave Elaine and me the means to watch the new discoveries, when still have not ‘made it’ out of indie never-never land; their latest film, he offered us first a 42-inch plasma screen, and then a DVD player, then The Astronaut Farmer, is also whimsical, but not nearly as successful as a Blu-Ray player, as he upgraded to more advanced equipment. No Northfork and its 1998 predecessor Twin Falls Idaho. wonder I visit the cinema very seldom these days. The other films right at the top of my list are the ones that I (Donnie The best novel of the decade was Michael Chabon’s The Adventures Darko), and Elaine and I (The Triplets of Belleville) play most often of Kavalier and Clay, to which Dick alerted me before everybody else for unsuspecting visitors. I couldn’t account for why I can watch these two films over and over, except that both are so filled with unexpected

19 moments of magic (as also in Spirited Away) that each film seems like impression that eventually he will import every reissued British movie a new experience each time we watch it. Donnie Darko brought the acting and TV series remastered for DVD. Justin Ackroyd imported copies of talents of Jake and Maggie Gylenhaal to the notice of viewers; director Rimmer for a few of us; still no hint that it will be released in Australia.) Richard Kelly has had a bumpier later career than his main actors. The Triplets of Belleville is a totally weird French Canadian animated feature, The American studios have been taking their time to reissue the best of set in an alternate France and New York, about a luckless Tour de France their second-banana films: the B films and films noirs and the like. bike rider, his mother, and their dog. It’s way ahead of American However, packages of films noirs are coming onto the market, so that animated features, both for the inventiveness of its script and the recently (thanks to Dick Jenssen) I’ve been able to see Don Siegel’s boldness of its design. The Lineup for the first time in 25 years. I also bought Siegel’s Charley Varrick (1971), perhaps the best American film of the 1970s — and one As I’ve said already when looking at the films of the decade, I’m of those films hardly anybody remembers. increasingly bored by the big budget films that Hollywood wants us to look at. I’m dismayed that even quite intelligent friends seem to believe It’s not clear what the direction of film will be during the next ten years. the hype that Hollywood spits out of its vast publicity orifice and don’t Blu-Ray can be spectacular, but most of the big budget films released in bother to read reviews or see films at the Nova Cinema and the Australia are not worth buying in the superior format. When I see a independent chains. Why are people fooled by special effects, which are well-photographed film in Blu-Ray, such as Eastwood’s Changeling or supposed to take the place of high-quality scripts and acting? I’ve become Bertrand Tavernier’s new film In the Electric Mist, I wonder how we sick of physical action for its own sake, and I have little patience with could ever have done without it. badly scripted and acted films, even while being entertained by some of But will Avatar be worth watching in Blu-Ray? Dick tells me that the first them. 3D home screens are about to be demonstrated in America — but 3D is I don’t have space here to discuss all my favourite films. Most of them not going to succeed in homes unless people can watch the 3D effect are intelligent and funny — and if, like Space Cowboys, they need some without wearing dinky little glasses. We skiffy fans have waited for spectacular special effects, they depend on the talents of brilliant ‘holovision’ (holistic 3D film) for fifty years, but it’s not obvious that the directors and screen writers. Hence I repeat that Clint Eastwood was experience of watching it will be any more enjoyable than sitting down the Filmmaker of the Decade. to enjoy a well-restored Billy Wilder or Preston Sturges black-and-white film from the 1940s and 1950s. The real cinema event of the decade, not obvious in the above list, has been the release of most of my favourite films of the century on DVD Music of the decade (and now Blu-Ray), usually digitally remastered so that they look as good as when they were first released. Hollywood has been very successful at the remastering of its Technicolor treasures, such as The Wizard of Oz Best popular CDs of the decade: Albums and The Adventures of Robin Hood, but the British and European studios 1 Loudon Wainwright III: Last Man on Earth (2001) have also done a remarkable job of reintroducing cinema fans to the best works of Powell and Pressburger, David Lean, Claude Chabrol, François 2 Jimmie Dale Gilmore: One Endless Night (2000) Truffaut, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni and many others. 3 Tom Russell: Hotwalker (2005) British cinema was a bit behind, but during recent years I’ve been able to see again my favourite British films of the sixties and seventies, such 4Calexico: Feast of Wire (2003) as The Bed Sitting Room and The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer. (Being a friend of local film fan John Davies helps, as he gives the 5 Tom Russell: Modern Art (2003)

20 6Various: Beautiful 23 Linda Thompson: Versatile Heart (2007) Dreamer: Songs of Stephen Foster (2004) 24 Willie Nelson: Moment of Forever (2008)

7Various: Down from 25 Iris De Ment: Lifeline (2004) the Mountain (2000) 26 Ray Wylie Hubbard: Growl (2003) 8Soundtrack: O Brother 27 Jimmy Little: Resonate (2000) Where Art Thou (2000) 28 Linda Thompson: Fashionably Late (2002)

9 Billy Bob Thornton: 29 Martha Wainwright (2005) Private Radio (2001) 30 Mary Gauthier: Mercy Now (2007) 10 Robert Randolph & the Family Band: Live at 31 Gillian Welch: Time (The Revelator) (2000) the Wetlands (2002) 32 Eric Clapton: Sessions for Robert J. (2005) 11 Kimmie Rhodes & Wil- lie Nelson: Picture in a 33 Joe Chindano Trio: America: The Paul Simon Songbook (2002) Frame (2004) 34 Tony Bennett & kd lang: A Wonderful World (2002) 12 Chris Smither: Leave the Light On (2006) 35 John Hiatt: Master of Disaster (2005) 13 Paul Simon: You’re the One (2000) 36 Jerry Lee Lewis: Last Man Standing (2006)/Last Man Standing Live 14 Little Feat: Chinese Work Songs (2000) (2007)

15 Tom Russell: Indians Cowboys Horses Dogs (2004) 37 Monsieur Camembert: Famous Blue Cheese: The Leonard Cohen Show (2) (2007) 16 Warren Zevon: Life’ll Kill Ya (2000) 38 Various: Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man (2006) 17 Jayhawks: Smile (2000) 39 Richard Thompson: 100 Years of Popular Music (2) (2006) 18 Old Crow Medicine Show: Big Iron World (2006) 40 Ben Harper: Both Sides of the Gun (2) (2006) 19 Solomon Burke: Nashville (2006) 41 Gurf Morlix: Diamonds to Dust (2007) 20 Jimmie Dale Gilmore: Come On Back (2005) 42 Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters: Living in the Light (2009) 21 Jackson Browne: Live Acoustic, Vol. 1 (2005); Vol. 2 (2008) 43 Bruce Springsteen: Live from Dublin (2) (2007) 22 Neil Young: Prairie Wind (2005) 44 Nick Lowe: At My Age (2007)

21 45 Fred J. Eaglesmith: Milly’s Cafe (2007) 6Faces: Five Guys Walk into a Bar (5) (2004) 46 James Luther Dickinson: Killers from Space (2008) 7Sandy Denny: A Boxful of 47 Mark Olson: Salvation Blues (2007) Treasures (5) (2005)

48 Mudcrutch (2008) 8Little Feat: Hotcakes and Outtakes (4) (2000) 49 Deadstring Brothers: Silver Mountain (2008) 9Kinks: Picture Book (6) (2009) 50 The Felice Brothers (2008) 10 Broderick Smith: Journal: Best of 51 Various: I’m Not There (2) (2007) (2004) 52 C. W. Stoneking: Jungle Blues (2008) 11 Bob Dylan: No Direction Home: 53 C. W. Stoneking: King Hokum (2008) The Soundtrack (2) (2005)

54 Tom Russell: Blood and Candle Smoke (2009) 12 Richard Thompson: RT: The life and Music of Richard Thompson (5) 55 Rodney Crowell: Sex and Gasoline (2009)56 (2006)

56 Kimmie Rhodes: Love Me Like a Song (2009) 13 The Band: A Musical History (5) (2005) 57 Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs: Underneath the Covers, Vol. 2 (2009) 14 Jayhawks: Music from the North Country: The Jayhawks Anthology 58 Lucinda Williams: Little Honey (2008) (3) (2009)

59 Jan Preston: The Piano Has the Blues (2006) 15 Nick Lowe: Quiet Please: The New Best of (2) (2009)

60 Tom Waits: Orphans (3) (2006) 16 Various: Theme Time Radio Hour with Your Host Bob Dylan, Vols. 1 & 2 (2008)

Best popular CDs of the decade: Collections and 17 Dave Brubeck: For All Time (5) (2004) boxed sets 18 Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run: 30th Anniversary Edition (3) 1Neil Young: Archives Vol. 1 (9 DVDs) (2009) (2005)

2 Emmylou Harris: Songbird (4 CDs) (2007)) 19 Rolling Stones: Get Yer Ya Yas Out: The Rolling Stones in Concert (3) (2009) 3Roy Orbison: The Soul of Rock and Roll (4) (2009) 20 Sheryl Crow: Very Best of (2004) 4Miles Davis: Complete Jack Johnson Sessions (5) (2004) For most of you, the above lists will be just that — merely lists of people 5Grateful Dead: The Golden Road (1965-1973) (14) (2001)

22 you’ve never heard of, or never heard. Nearly all of them fall into that For many commentators, the two Performers of the Decade were Bob ‘singer-songwriter’, ‘alt.country’, ‘roots music’ or ‘American folk music’ Dylan and Leonard Cohen, one in his late sixties and the other in his category I was talking about. Only a few from the ‘Best of Decade’ list mid seventies. (Musicians, like fanzine editors, just get better with age. are Australian. Australian country music is a different genre altogether: Remember that.) overseas readers might be interested to tune into ABC Country programs on the Internet to see what I mean. Only a few Australian country I can’t say I’ve liked Dylan’s Modern Times and Love and Theft as performers, such as Downhills Home, have that bluesy, cut-down, lean much as his great albums of the sixties and seventies, but during the quality of the country music I like. In the case of C. W. Stoneking, this last ten years he has restored his reputation as the Old Guy Who Must astonishing singer has recaptured completely the sound of American Be Listened To. He published Chronicles, Part 1, the brilliant beginning country blues of the 1930s. I hope he does well in America. of what we hope will be a complete autobiography. He began his own radio program (some bits of which have appeared on CD), in which he One of my favourites since the early seventies has been singer-song- digs out treasured recordings from all the people who have most writer Loudon Wainwright III. One of the ‘new Bob Dylans’ recruited influenced him during the last century. The four-hour DVD documentary by record companies in 1971 when it looked as if Bob Dylan had No Direction Home was magnificent, providing not only a history of disappeared from the scene, Loudon has concentrated mainly on comedy American folk music, but also a coherent explanation of why Dylan has lyrics over the years. However, his mother died in the late 1990s. His taken many of the changes of direction that so annoyed his fans over amazing set of ballads written while he lived alone for several years the years. Todd Haynes’ extraordinary film I’m Not There, featuring appeared on Last Man on Earth, not only Wainwright’s own best record, four actors as Bob Dylan, only added to the legend. (We could have done but also one of the few albums that can match Sinatra’s 1950s albums without Bob Dylan’s Christmas album, but friends tell me it’s worth of melancholy ballads or Roy Orbison at his best. (Loudon Wainwright listening to — once.) produced some fairly ordinary CDs during the decade, but returned to form recently with High Wide and Lonesome, a tribute to 1930s While Dylan’s voice has been becoming increasingly growly and Tom country singer Charlie Poole.) Waitsish, the man once considered his chief rival in the singer-songwriter race has been becoming a better singer, more smooth, very much more During the decade we mourned the loss of many singers, but few more in control of his work and his audience. To cap off a great career, Leonard than Warren Zevon, whose birth date is very close to mine. Life’ll Kill Cohen bounced out of retirement and toured the world for over a year, Ya is chilling because it appeared before Zevon developed the meso- giving in Melbourne what many consider its greatest concert. (Neil thelioma that killed him. Oddly, My Ride’s Here and The Wind, his last Young fans disagree; those who saw Neil’s concert a couple of days two albums made while he was dying, lack much of Zevon’s usual before Leonard’s in February 2009 say that it was the greatest concert defiance and ferocity. ever!) Leonard Cohen did not vary his performance much during his recent tour, so Live in London, issued as both a DVD and a CD set, My personal Performer of the Decade is storyteller and fine singer Tom gives a good impression of the 2008/2009 Leonard Cohen experience. Russell. His Hotwalker is a tribute to a vanished San Francisco scene of the 1950s and 1960s, the age of the true independents (according to Cohen’s world tour drew attention to the overall excellence of those great the viewpoint of many people I met there in 2005). Modern Art also songs written during the last 45 years. Recent tribute albums, from Judy contains some of Russell’s very best songs. On his recent Blood and Collins and many others, only clarified the importance of the songs Candle Smoke, Russell teams up with Calexico, the most interesting themselves. The best tribute album was by Sydney comedy/caberet/rock new band of the decade. Calexico’s combination of mariachi brass and band Monsieur Camembert, whose double live album Famous Blue guitar rock and blues can be heard at its best on Feast of Wire, but the Cheese was a highlight of the decade. more recent albums have also been excellent. The Phenomenon of the Decade was the 8 million sales for a bluegrass

23 album: the soundtrack of the Coen Brothers movie O Brother Where 11 Angela Hewitt Art Thou? and the success of Down from the Mountain, the sound- (piano): Bach: 6 track from a filmed concert that the same performers (including Gillian Partitas (2) Welch, David Rawlings, Emmylou Harris, Alison Kraus and the White Sisters) gave before the film was released. Unfortunately, this 12 Richard Tognetti phenomenon did not build into a huge new wave of popularity for (violin): Bach: So- American traditional music. natas and Partitas for Solo Violin (2) (Like all the other ‘decade’ lists, the above is far from complete. I’m still way behind in listening to my CDs.) 13 Peter Wispelway (cello): Bach: 6 Cello Suites (2) Favourite classical music CDs of the decade: New CDs 14 Angela Hewitt (piano): Bach: 1 Charles Mackerras cond. London Philharmonic: Mozart: The Magic Goldberg Vari- Flute (2 CDs) (in English) ations

2 Noel Mewton-Wood (piano): Legendary Recordings (2) 15 Concerto Rocco (organ and orchestra): Corrette: Six Organ Concertos 3 Katarina Andreasson (violin) cond. Swedish Chamber Orch/Mats Levin (cello)/: Peteris Vasks: Violin Concerto ‘Distant Light’/Musica 16 Gidon Kremer (violin) cond. Kermerata Baltica: Enescu: Octet/ Dolorosa/Viatore Quintet

4 Sumi Jo (soprano): Bel Canto 17 Benjamin Britten cond. English Chamber Orchestra/Britten and Sviatoslav Richter (pianos)/Norbert Brainin (violin)/Peter Schidlorf 5 Noriko Ogawa (piano)/Masaaki Suzuki cond. Bach Collegium Japan: (viola): Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante/Piano Concerto No 22/Adagio Beethoven/Wagner: Symphony No 9 (piano transcription) & Fugue K546

6 John Eliot Gardner cond. Orchestra Romantique et Révolutionaire: 18 Neville Marriner cond. Philharmonia/Güher and Süher Pekinel: Brahms: Symphony No 2/Alto Rhapsody Mozart/Bruch/Mendelssohn: Double Piano Concertos

7 Ton Koopman cond. Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir: 19 Hagen Quartet: Bartok: String Quartets (3) Biber: Missa Salisburgensis 20 Jansung Kakhidze cond. Royal Flanders Philharmonic/Mstislav 8 John Storgårds cond. Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra/Mako Ylönen Rostropovich (cello): Giya Kancheli: Simi/Magnum Ignotum (cello): Peterin Vasks: Symphony No 3/Cello Concerto 21 Ferenc Fricsay cond. Berlin Philharmonic/Berlin Radio Symphony 9 Lorin Maazel cond. New York Philharmonic: John Adams: On the Orchestra: Dvorak: Symphony No 9 (‘From the New Transmigration of Souls World’)/Smetana: Moldau/Liszt: Preludes

10 Angela Hewitt (piano): Bach: Fantasia & Fugue in A minor/Aria 22 Hagen Quartet: Mozart: String Quartets (7) Variata etc

24 23 Kronos Quartet: Peterin Vasks: String Quartet No 4 13 Hans Schmidt- Isserstedt cond. 24 Mischa Maisky (cello)/Sergio Tienpo (piano): Mendelssohn: Cello Vienna Philharmonic/ Sonatas/Variations/7 Songs Without Words Willem Backhaus (piano)/Henryk Szyryng 25 Andrew Manze (violin)/Richard Egarr (organ & harpsichord): Biber: (violin: Beethoven: Rosary Sonatas (2) Symphonies and Con- certos (8) Favourite classical music CDs of the decade: Collections and historical reissues 14 Emil Gilels (piano): Beethoven: Piano 1 Ralph Vaughan Williams: Collectors Edition (30 CDs) Sonatas (9)

2 Pablo Casals: Complete EMI Recordings (9) 15 Herbert Blomstedt cond. Danish Radio 3 Benjamin Britten: Collectors Edition (37) Symphony Orches- tra/Leif Ove Andsnes 4 Malcolm Sargent cond. London Philharmonic: Holst: The (piano)/Melos Ensem- Planets/Beni Mora/The Perfect Fool ble: Neilsen: Sympho- 5 Alfred Brendel (piano): Young Brendel (6) nies/ Overtures/Concertos/Wind Quintet/Piano Music (7)

6 Gerald Moore/Elisabeth Schwartzkopf/Victoria de los Angeles/Diet- 16 Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (piano): Mozart/Beethoven/ rich Fischer-Dieskau: A Tribute to Gerald Moore/Homage to Gerald Schubert/Schumann/Debussy (8) Moore (2) 17 Murray Perahia (piano): 25th Anniversary Edition (4)

7 Bruno Walter cond. Symphony of the Air: Beethoven: Symphony No 18 Mstislav Rostropovich (cello)/Sviatoslav Richter (piano): 3 (1957 recording) Beethoven: 5 Cello Concertos (2)

8 Fabio Biondi cond. Europa Galante: Boccherini: String Quintets/ 19 John Barbirolli cond. Halle Orchestra: Sibelius Edition (5) Geminiani: Concerti grossi op. 3/Locatelli: Concerti grossi/Tartini: Violin sonatas/etc(5) 20 Vladimir Ashkenazy cond. Cleveland Orchestra: Prokofiev: Sympho- nies 1, 5, 6, 7/Autumnal Op. 8/Overture on Hebrew Themes (2) 9 Scott Ross (harpsichord): d’Anglebert: Suites/Bach: Italian Con- certo/Goldberg Variations/Toccata etc./Handel: Suites/Scarlatti: 21 Malcolm Sargent cond. Royal Philharmonic/Philharmonia/Mstislav Sonatas/Soler: Fandango/Sonatas/Rameau etc. (7) Rostropovich (cello): Prokofiev: Sinfonia Concertante/Miaskovsky: Cello Concerto/Rachmaninov: Vocalise 10 The Lindsays: Beethoven: Complete String Quartets (8) 22 Ronald Smith (piano): Alkan: Piano Works (2) 11 Jacqueline du Pré (cello): Les Introuvables (6) 23 Andre Previn cond. London Symphony Orchestra/Charles Dutoit 12 John Adams: The John Adams Earbox (10) cond. Orchestre symphonique de Montréal/Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano)/cond. Royal Philharmonic/Joshua Bell (violin)/Lynn Harrell

25 (cello): Prokofiev: Complete Concertos (3) was very pleased to find the boxed set listed above. Later, Biondi moved to a major label, and became just another violinist. The most thought-provoking book I read during 2009 was Norman Lebrecht’s The Life and Death of Classical Music. At first I rejected Other sets, such as the Lindsays’ bright and frenetic versions of the out of hand his premise that recorded classical music has passed into the Beethoven quartets, I bought because I could not find a set of the past, at least as a way of providing a catalogue of the world’s music and versions by the Fitzwillian Quartet. In a chilling demonstration of the earning a living for the world’s major performers and orchestras. Doesn’t Lebrecht thesis, the ASV label (which recorded the Fitzwilliams and many The Gramophone still review nearly 200 new CDs a month? Can we still other great British performances) has gone broke, and their recordings not find CDs at such stores at Thomas’s, Discurio and Readings? have disappeared. To judge from hearing their records on 3MBS, I would say that the Fitzwilliam Quartet is the best in the world, but they will Lebrecht writes about million-dollar recording projects from the 1990s have to wait until their work is reissued by some other company before that sold as few as 500 copies worldwide (then how come I have a copy I can buy any more of their CDs. (The same thing happened to many of the items he mentions?). He pours scorn on the major companies’ esteemed conductors during the last ten years, including conductors like failure to see the direction of digital music distribution — although he Nicolaus Harnoncourt, who was sacked from DG, but is now again doing does give due credit to Naxos Records, which issued its CDs at the right well at another label.) price and took over one-quarter of the market. I bought The John Adams Earbox, 10 CDs of Adams’ best compositions, However, my own lists tend to support Lebrecht’s thesis rather than because Charlie Brown told me about it when I visited him in San undermine it. My only new discovery for the whole decade has been Francisco in 2005. Thanks, Charlie, even if you can’t see this issue of Peterin Vasks, the ebullient Estonian composer whose ecstatic music Steam Engine Time. shows none of the sterility of the music we usually expect from ‘contem- porary’ composers. I’ve tracked down only a few of his CDs so far. Non-Australian readers will not be familiar with the name Noel Mewton-Wood.. He was an Australian rising star of the piano when, in The really instructive list is my second, which features a few of the vast London in 1949, he killed himself. He made a few recordings in London, array of boxed sets of repackaged masterpieces from the fifties, sixties, including the very best version of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 4 I seventies and eighties that you find at any of the major record stores. have heard. Many I don’t need to buy — for instance, the boxed set of Rostropovich’s complete recordings for EMI — because I have already bought most of the contents during the last 25 years. But look at the value offered by Other people’s decades the Vaughan Williams and Britten boxed sets. Vaughan Williams is the Since the disappearance of No Depression magazine a few years ago, greatest symphonist of the twentieth century apart from Shostakovich, Rhythms: Australia’s Roots Music Monthly (www.rhythms.com.au) so it is wonderful to find new versions of pieces I know well, plus many has become the world’s best magazine covering CD releases in the blues, pieces I’ve never been able to find before. In the case of Britten boxed roots, Americana, alt.country field — all the stuff I like, as well as jazz, set, it is wonderful to be able to buy the operas, which were far too World Music and the like. expensive for me when they were first issued on CD. Now everything is sitting here, at $2 a CD! But Rhythms magazine nods: it did not ask me to send in my Top Tens of the Decade for the January 2010. Among the people it did ask were Other sets were more expensive, but no less welcome. For instance, Brian Wise (RRR broadcaster and former Rhythms editor), who named Fabio Biondi, as violinist and concert master of Europa Galante, Gillian Welch’s Time (The Revelator) as the Album of the Decade. produced the most original recent version of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. So did current Rhythms editor Martin Jones. Well, it was a very good His other recordings for the Opus 111 label are just as innovative, so I bluegrass–ballads album, but as you can see from my own list, there

26 were many better. I don’t know how Rhythms selected its commentators The best Australian novel of the year has to be Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy on the Album of the Decade: I hadn’t even heard of most of their choices, (Text Publishing pb) (2009). I also enjoyed the latest Peter Corris, which included Hazmat Bodine’s Bahamut, Jimmy Smith’s Dot Com Deep Water (Allen & Unwin pb) (2009), where his pet detective is Blues (I do own a copy of that one), The Strokes’ The Modern Age, enouraged by advanced medical treatment. :: I have a friend who is Tex, Don & Charlie’s All Is Forgiven (an Australian album I should very keen on Clive Cussler, and the Cussler novels are well worth have bought, but it’s probably long since disappeared from CD shops), reading (though he obviously got it wrong about that lost ship in the Ben Lee’s Awake is the New Sleep (an Australian pop album), Arctic, if we prefer the more exciting Dan Simmons version). :: I have Icecream Hands’ Broken UFO, and Eliza Gilkyson’s Land of Milk been catching up on the J. D. Robb novels, which are guaranteed to and Honey (I do own that one). The list of Best Albums and Gigs of 2009 give me a few laughs. :: I was lucky enough to see some John is just as diverse: I’ve heard of almost none of them, let alone heard Dunning novels in a secondhand shop, and took to those with pleasure. them. Some are good on alternative ways of thinking about American history. :: Ursula LeGuin’s Lavinia (Gollancz, 2009) is perhaps her best novel: The poll of Rhythms readers made a bit more sense: their choice of Album a great treat. :: China Mieville’s The City and the City (Macmillan, of 2009 (International) is Justin Townes Earle’s Midnight at the 2009) was a disappointment, clever but cumbrous. :: Dan Brown’s Movies, and Australian choice is the Wagons’ The Rise and Fall of The Lost Symbol (Bantam Press, 2009), which has received much Goodtown. Neither strikes great enthusiasm from me, but I can see scorn in fictionmags, deserved the jeers. However, Michael Byrnes’s why other people like them. Gig of the Year (International) was the The Sacred Bones and The Sacred Blood (Simon & Schuster, 2007, Leonard Cohen Tour, and Local Gig of the Year was Tim Roger’s 2009) are brilliant thrillers with insightful exposures of the Vatican, Charlie’s Good Tonight, which I talked about earlier. What’s plain from Jews and Arabs. :: The David Rotenberg series also makes some reading Rhythms is that there is an enormous amount of high-quality serious attacks on China (Nero), and do not encourage me to go there. musicmaking going on in Australia as well as overseas, and the CD isn’t :: I have enjoyed the mournful detective hero in the Arnaldur disappearing. Indridason series, but got a little shock recently when I re-read The Draining Lake and did not realise it was a second run — it was odd, The other major surveys I have seen were the 100 Best Singles of the because I have read the small paperback, then found a large one and Decade in the Herald Sun, only one of which (Johnny Cash’s ‘Hurt’) so assumed it was new. Hypothermia (Harvill Secker, 2009) brings out have I heard, let alone heard of ; and The Age’s EG Survey ‘Sounds of the tedium of life in Iceland (which I have visited) and the strange the Decade’ (31 December 2009, pp. 6–7). Again, I have heard of very pleasures of those who love the snow and the dark. I suppose we shall few of their choices of the Albums of the Decade, let alone heard them. soon find that the draining of Icelandic money will appear in Indrida- son’s work. Michael Tolley I have read SF and fantasy novels, usually by recommendation from has been a supporter of my magazines since the mid 1970s, when he the press, and was stunned by the scope of The Year’s Best Fantasy was head of English at Adelaide University. He suffered a stroke a few and Horror 2008 (St. Martin’s Griffin, NY, 2008). Congratulations to years ago, recovered and began sending letters again. At the end of 2009 Ellen Datlow and her team for their work. The actual stories did not he sent the following mini-article. Yvonne Rousseau has just emailed really encourage me to look out for the authors more at large, but that, in the second week of January 2010, Michael suffered another getting hold of American books here in Australia is not easy and stroke. Elaine and I and Michael’s friends trust that he can recover from certainly not cheap. I read F&SF and hope it continues in spite of the this setback as successfully as did the first time. difficulties around; I pass it to a young relative. (30 December 2009)

This is just an update of some of my good reading for 2009: — Bruce Gillespie, 12 January 2010

27 The treasure hunt: Books about SF by Bruce Gillespie

First presented as a paper to the Nova Mob, Melbourne’s SF discussion group, on Wednesday 7 October 2009.

I Island and Five Go to Kirrin Island are the books I remember best from that time. Life is a series of treasure hunts. For many people, treasure is financial treasure, mere accumulation of x number of dollars — but at least you What is treasure? Good sense dictates that treasured items should be can hand it on to somebody when you die. My kind of treasure you cannot those you recognise as the best in their field, only more so. However, hand on to anybody. It dies with you, although you can leave your heirs most of my best-remembered treasures are those I discovered when I the task of dealing with all those books, magazines, CDs and DVDs you’ve first discovered a particular field. They brought something entirely new accumulated in pursuit of your treasure. Perhaps you will be able to leave to my outlook, but I still had to discover the field itself. them all to Meteor Inc. — Bill Wright’s vision of an ultimate library of treasures — if it’s running by then. Many of my earliest treasures were found on the radio. Television was not introduced in Australia until 1956, and my parents did not buy a TV My treasure can only be made of memories and evaluated with the mind. set while my sisters and I were still living at home. We were allowed to Whatever glitters is gold, but only if it dazzles you upon first discovery. listen only to ABC stations, which featured a wide variety of BBC comedy For instance, the first Enid Blyton book I read: The Magic Faraway Tree. shows, as well as some of the great children’s radio serials, both The year was probably 1954, when I was in Grade 2. About the same Australian and British (never American!). Early in the 1950s, perhaps time, I discovered a bookshop filled with children’s books, including an even before I went to school, I heard a serial on the radio called The entire wall of Enid Blyton books. Called Peter Piper Books, it was in Regent Moon Flower. Written by G. K. Saunders, it told of the first trip to the Place, the Melbourne lane that disappeared when one side was pulled moon, and the discovery, at the bottom of the deepest cave there, of down to make the City Square. My mother and father could afford to buy one tiny flower. Listening to that serial, I hatched the ambition that only a few of those books, but it was enough to know they existed. Soon maybe one day I might leave the Earth, leave behind everything that after, my Auntie Bet told us about a lending library in Malvern, the was boring and unimaginative in ordinary existence, and travel some- Claremont Library. Its children’s section was filled with Enid Blyton books, where entirely new. That discovery experience remains at the heart of which I and my sisters read, each of them two or three times. The Secret the treasure experience: the feeling that somewhere there is still

28 something completely new, something that one could never have imag- hear and evaluate the treasure first, then try to collect the physical object ined before finding it. that contains the treasure. Since I received little pocket money and felt endless desires, often I had to be content with listing a new pop song Only years later did I discover that The Moon Flower was an example of and hoping I could track it down in later years. One day in 1962, I heard something called ‘science fiction’. I had no idea how to find science fiction the most beautiful song and performance I had ever heard. I still don’t books. There were hints, such as the comic strip Brick Bradford in The think a better pop record has ever been released. Perhaps I am still 15 Sun once a week. The closest I came to repeating that science fiction years old inside my cranium. The song was ‘The Crowd’ by Roy Orbison. treasure experience was, during the 1950s, listening to further radio It limped onto the 3DB Top 40 for four weeks, then disappeared from serials by G. K. Saunders on the ABC Children’s Hour, and reading comic everybody’s memory except mine. Not even hearing for the first time books, especially Uncle Scrooge and Gyro Gearloose comics, written and the Righteous Brothers’ ‘You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling’ in 1965 or Ike drawn by Carl Barks (although his name did not appear on his creations and Tina Turner’s ‘River Deep Mountain High’ in 1966 has improved on during the 1950s). that experience.

1959, the year I turned twelve, was a treasure year. You’ve all heard the My discovery of classical music also came in a burst of early discoveries. saying that the golden age of science fiction is twelve. It’s true. In the My parents played nothing but classical music during my childhood, but Claremont Library I stepped over the central aisle that separated the those pieces meant nothing to me. My father was not able to explain to children’s library from the regular library. I walked into the Science me what he found so wonderful in the records he played. A vague air of Fiction section and pulled out a book that looked interesting. It was World reverence hung over classical music; music was next to godliness, and of Chance, the severely abbreviated British hardback edition of Solar I was rapidly losing interest in God. From the age of twelve until the age Lottery, Philip K. Dick’s first novel. This contained many treasures, of twenty-one I listened to almost nothing but pop music. including ideas about society and government that were quite new to me, and many notions that were incomprehensible. More mindblowing, In 1963, I met a bloke named Rick Brewster, who began to collect LPs promising an endless vista of possibilities, was the next book I read from of country blues music that he bought at Discurio Records in Melbourne. the Claremont Library, Jack Williamson’s The Humanoids, with its tele- He lent many of them to me. Not only were these records a glimpse down pathically communicating and time-hopping social rebels, and the de- the funnel of deep time (the 1940s Deep South cottonfields and the 1950s scription of a society run by robots so benevolent that they had become in Chicago) but they revealed the kind of music that English groups such malevolent. as the Rolling Stones and the Animals were trying to imitate. The essence of blues music, both country and Chicago styles, was counterpoint: the 1959 is also the year I was given my own radio. Our family had been singer sang a different tune from that played by the guitar, and both took firm ABC listeners, almost never turning the dial to commercial radio a slightly different beat from that of the drums or the bass guitar. At stations. But the year I turned 12 seemed to be a year of putting away about the same time I began to listen to Ralph Collins’ program of childish things. I gave away my comics collection, and started to listen classical music on Sunday morning on what is now ABC Radio National. to 3AW, which played items from the Top 60 chart on Saturday. I He was the first ABC broadcaster to specialise in playing baroque music, discovered pop music, which yielded most of my treasures for the next especially that by Vivaldi. And what did I find in Vivaldi and Bach and ten years. I began to write down each week the numbers on the chart, Telemann? Counterpoint! In a Vivaldi violin concerto, the violin plays a and a bit later, my own Top 10 favourites. At the beginning of 1961 I different tune from that of the orchestra, and both play against the began to compile all the pop charts I could find into one chart. I thought continuo, the harpsichord bass line. The music itself lies between the I was unique in doing this, but it turned out that other people were doing strands. this all over the world. I had made all the connections I needed to enter the world of classical Music has a great advantage over all other treasure sources: you can music, but still did not know how to listen to nineteenth- and twentieth-

29 century music. This did not happen until in 1967 I met some of the most the job in the mid interesting people in Melbourne fandom, who listened to almost nothing sixties. Budrys was a but classical music. Lee Harding is still the most avid enthusiast I know lively writer, but still about any field in which he is interested. Not only did he reveal to me not a useful guide to what I should listen to in the music he loved, but he gave me the inside SF that I might info on all the best record stores in town. In a moment of abject penury, enjoy. Analog’s he sold me his last ten classical albums for $20. His taste was and is reviewer was impeccable: they are still among my most treasured versions of great P. Schuyler Miller, pieces, although I’ve long since replaced most of those LPs with CDs. In who tried to avoid 1968, the film 2001: A Space Odyssey opened in Melbourne. By now I delivering any kind was a member of Melbourne fandom. It seemed that whenever we met of judgment about a we talked about nothing but that film, especially its music soundtrack. new book. However, The first classical LP I bought was Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach he wrote with suffi- Zarathustra, the beginning of which is the now-famous title track from cient clarity that one 2001: A Space Odyssey. My second purchase was the boxed set of could tell whether a Karajan’s 1962 versions of Beethoven’s symphonies. Listening to each book might or might of them for the first time, one each day, in order, became my greatest not be worth buying. treasure experience since entering that children’s bookshop many years To read such review- before. ers was to gain the Mervyn R. Binns, outside Space Age Books, early impression that 1980s. Merv left McGill’s in 1970 to found Space Age. II Robert Heinlein and Space Age Books closed in 1985. McGill’s Poul Anderson were Newsagency closed in 2009. (Photographer: I’m not sure when an activity turns from a source of treasures to a source the masters of their unknown, probably John Foyster.) of addiction. Most of my lightning-bolt moments in discovering science field, an impression I fiction came in the early sixties, soon after I was given just enough pocket knew to be false from reading their later works in If, Galaxy and the other money to buy a selection of the SF magazines. In the sixties and magazines. seventies you could buy the magazines in any newsagent around the suburbs, whereas today the few remaining are available only on sub- A much better guide was to keep an eye on the front counter of McGill’s scription. I soon discovered a paradox: some pieces of science fiction Newsagency in the city, the one place that offered Ace Books on the front were more wonderful than anything I could have anticipated. Early counter, alongside the British hardbacks and paperbacks. If I had a bit favourites included Cordwainer Smith’s short story ‘A Planet Named of extra money after buying the month’s SF magazines, I could occa- Shayol’ and Philip K. Dick’s All We Marsmen (Martian Time-slip in the sionally chance spending 5 shillings on one of these exotic items. One paperback edition). The horrible truth, as I quickly discovered, is that memorable day, the McGill’s front counter had a hardback copy of the most science fiction stories repeat a small number of obvious ideas, and American edition of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle for a dollar. are badly written. It became more and more difficult to find stories that Although I didn’t know it at the time, Mervyn R. Binns, who wrought this gave me that early buzz. I became a scan reader, dredging through every miracle of book importation, was the floor manager of McGill’s and also magazine every year searching for the occasional treasures. president, secretary and bottle-washer for the Melbourne SF Club, which lurked in the lane behind McGill’s. I also became aware that the book review columns of SF magazines were fairly useless for discovering new treasures. Galaxy magazine featured I had already discovered from reading his stories and occasional serials a boring book reviewer named Floyd C. Gale until Algis Budrys took over in the magazines that Philip K. Dick was the author most likely to yield

30 treasures. His books poured out in the early sixties from a variety of to show the best prints of the best films for their fellow students. Film paperback imprints. A few other authors also impressed me, such as new was an almost unknown field to me when I arrived at Melbourne writer Thomas M. Disch. The short version of ‘White Fang Goes Dingo’ University. When I was a child, my mother had taken me to see the had appeared first in If magazine. Other discoveries were mad, wonderful occasional British comedy or war film, such as Genevieve or The Dam R. A. Lafferty, and veteran Fritz Leiber, who actually exhibited a mastery Busters, at the Paramount or Plaza in Oakleigh. While I was at high of the English language. As I later discovered, he and his father had been school, I saw one or two films every school holidays. But during Shakespearean actors, which showed in the stories. Orientation Week 1965, before I had attended a lecture or tutorial, I saw five films, including An American in Paris, my first experience of a classic But where could I find other treasure-hunters, people who had gone off American musical, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which was dazzling, and Otto into unknown territories and brought back news of the gold in them thar Preminger’s Advise and Consent, which I didn’t like at all. A few weeks hills? In only one place: the pages of Australian Science Fiction Review, later I saw my first Ingmar Bergman film, and soon I was haunting the the thin duplicated magazine I began buying from the front counter of Australia and other cinemas devoted to European films. If it didn’t have McGill’s in 1966. Its reviewers, such as John Foyster, Lee Harding, John subtitles I usually avoided it. During 1965 I saw many of my greatest Bangsund and John Baxter — and squads of others who proved to be film treasures, the memories of which remain bright even now, probably pseudonyms of the others — showed a passion, a glint in the critical eye, because I’ve never had another chance to see them. that I could not find elsewhere. When they discovered a wonderful book among the review copies, they could show you what was valuable in it. The members of MUFS were prophets of the European New Wave, whose When they were annoyed by a book, they told you why with acid ideas had been propounded in the French magazine Cahiers du Cinema. precision. I couldn’t believe that I was finally reading intelligent reviewers I had no way of seeing Cahiers itself, but MUFS would produce pamphlets in science fiction! The arrival of George Turner in ASFR 10 in July 1967, translating bits of its pronouncements about famous films. For those and John Foyster’s special issue about Cordwainer Smith in No 11, made people, every film imported from France, Sweden, Italy or Poland was a me realise that ASFR represented something unique; it was a pure treasure. Cahiers had established a new canon, called auteur theory, of treasure in itself — a great fanzine. film directors, which included many European and Japanese directors whose names were unfamiliar to me, plus a few American directors, such If you are looking for seams of gold, you need somebody to warn you as Hitchcock and Raoul Walsh. about the valleys of mud and the mountains of fool’s gold. During my years studying English literature at university between 1965 and 1967 I How does auteur theory connect with science fiction? I found that writers discovered some great critics, such as E. M. Forster, T. S. Eliot and Arnold about film were much more capable of showing me why they loved their Kettle, who wrote brilliantly about great novels, poetry and plays. The treasures than writers about science fiction were in showing me what trouble with the Leavisite critics favoured by the academics of the English was good in their field. A film is, after all, a series of pictures, 24 frames Department at Melbourne University is that they also propounded the a second. Describing the plots of films often makes them sound silly. A doctrine of The Canon. They seemed to believe that there were only film writer can describe the arrangement and content of the pictures in certain piles of treasure one should explore, and other competing piles a film to show how and why it works. of treasure should be scorned. Because of my experience of discovering science fiction, I already knew they were mistaken. Two American critics whose writing I like very much are Peter Bog- danovich, who became a film director, and Pauline Kael, who wrote film While I was at university from 1965 to 1968 I completed what has proved crits for the New Yorker from 1967 until she died a few years ago. In his to be in the long term the most valuable part of my university education: book Pieces of Time, Bogdanovich writes about Sullivan’s Travels, written attending the Melbourne University Film Society showings every Wednes- and directed by Preston Sturges. It tells of an idealistic young film director day and Friday at 1.30 in the afternoon. There were no film courses at (Joel McCrea) who sets out on the road to research a movie he proposes universities in those days. MUFS was run by fanatics who did their best to make, called O Brother Where Art Thou. The Coen Brothers got around

31 to making the latter when the prisoners watch movie a few years ago. the Disney cartoon: we remain outside the ac- After a series of incred- tion, watching the prison- ible comic adventures, ers and Sullivan laugh [Sullivan] finds himself themselves silly, while we in serious trouble on a are almost crying at the Southern chain gang pathos of their total situ- where the only recrea- ation. tion for the miserable prisoners is the Sun- Pauline Kael, America’s day movies they are most famous and contro- allowed to see at the versial film critic for three nearby Negro church. decades, was even better There he sees a silly at presenting her view of Disney cartoon that a film purely in terms of gives him and his fel- its visual power. One of low convicts the only my top four films, laugh, the only pleas- Luchino Visconti’s The ure they’ve had the Leopard, was finally re- whole week. After he is stored to its original saved, through a bit of length and re-released in ... contrivance that al- the early 1980s. It tells of ways manages to re- Don Fabrizio, the Prince prieve [Sturges’] of Salinas in mid-nine- heroes at the last teenth-century Sicily moment ... he is sur- during the unification of rounded again by his Italy. The ‘leopard’ of the happy producers and film’s title, he is played by his overjoyed girl Burt Lancaster. Only he friend (they all thought he was dead) flying back to Hollywood. The and his ambitious moguls tell him they are now really ready to back him in his serious nephew Tancredi (played by Alain Delon) realise that the old aristocracy film (they were reluctant before but now think of all the great must change in order to retain any power in the new constitutional publicity!), and he tells them, a little embarrassed, that all he wants monarchy. Tancredi picks for his bride Angelica, the daughter of Don to do is make comedies. Consternation. McCrea explains, with not a Calogero, the ambitious middle-class mayor of the town, the one bloke little humility, what was, finally, Sturges’ own testament: a good laugh who stands to make a profit from the new regime. Angelica is played by may not be much, he says, ‘but it’s all some people have in this crazy Claudia Cardinale at her breathtaking best: caravan. Boy!’ (pp. 217–18) Lit by the justly celebrated cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, the In this way Bogdanovich conveys some of the zany, surprising energy of movie is full of marvellous, fluid set-piece sequences. In the concluding Sullivan’s Travels. He still doesn’t quite convey the full effect of the scene hour, at the Ponteleone Ball — certainly the finest hour of film that

32 Visconti ever shot ... — it all comes together. At this ball, the Salinas introduce Angelica to society — to all the many Sicilian princes and aristocrats. ... The Prince, alone by choice, wanders from one mam- moth ballroom to the next, observing all these people he knows. Tancredi and Angelica have their first dance, and the Nino Rota score gives way to a lilting waltz by Verdi, which had been discovered just before the film was shot ... The Prince strolls away from these overcrowded rooms ... Tancredi and Angelica find him. She wants the Prince to dance with her, and as she pleads with him their bodies are very close, and for a few seconds the emotions he has been feeling change into something close to lust. He envies Tancredi for marrying for reasons others than his own; he envies Tancredi for Angelica’s full-blown beauty, her heartiness, her coarseness. He escorts her to the big ballroom, and they waltz together. It is Angelica’s moment of triumph: he is publicly welcoming her into his family. He is straight- backed and formal while they dance, but his thoughts are chaotic ... Eventually the ball draws to a close, and people begin to leave, but a batch of young diehard dancers are still going strong: they’re hopping and whirling about to livelier music now that the older people have left the floor. The Prince arranges for his family to be taken home, explaining that he will walk. When he passes down the narrow streets, he’s an old man. The compromises he has had to make have more than sickened him — they’ve aged him. His vision of the jackals and sheep who are replacing the leopards and lions ages him even more. He is emotionally isolated from his wife and children; he no longer feels any affection for the sly-faced Tancredi. He’s alone.

Pauline Kael could also have added that, as we see Don Fabrizio disappear into the distance down a lonely street at the end of the film, dawn is breaking.

III

Do we have any Peter Bogdanoviches, Pauline Kaels or Roger Eberts among science fiction critics? That’s the question I was asking myself when I began thinking about this paper. For the last year or so I have been looking for the sort of criticism that puts you in the picture. Or, in Burt Lancaster, director Luchino Visconti and Claudia Cardinale on the set of the case of science fiction, drops you right inside a book so that you can The Leopard (1962) (photo copyright 20th Century Fox). see whether you want to read it or not.

During the last year or so, thanks mainly to Mark Plummer and Claire

33 Brialey in London, I’ve been able to buy several books about SF that after the other, I found that most writers about science fiction are otherwise I would not have heard of. I had meant to read all of them by incapable of showing me the treasures they believe they are revealing. tonight, and talk about the strengths and weaknesses of each. Are they Not that some of these books are not more entertaining than others, but treasure catalogues? I still haven’t had time to read them all. I’ve read I found that writers about science fiction are more inclined to make all of some of them, and bits of others. Most books of essays about general statements about the science fiction field rather than reading science fiction have to be read in bits; only a few critics can be read particular texts carefully. Yes, John Clute is an exception, but I found through at a sitting. that even Thomas Disch, an author whose own fiction is notable mainly for its aesthetic qualities, worries over and over about the strange swamp The books I accumulated on my desk include Paul Kincaid’s book of — the science fiction genre — that he finds himself in. His most successful essays What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction (Beccon book, as far as Hugo voters go, is The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, Publications; 2008; 365 pp.) You would have thought that Paul Kincaid, which catalogues a rather alarming world of science fiction writers, fans having been a co-editor of Steam Engine Time and having featured in and fellow travellers, this collection three articles first published in this magazine, and having such as the followers of thanked me in the book’s Acknowledgements, would make sure I Dianetics and the propo- received a copy. Not only did I not receive a review copy, but Paul did nents of the Strategic not even email me to say the book was out! But that’s Paul Kincaid, who Defensive Initiative rarely even replies to emails. Despite such a discouraging beginning, (Ronald Reagan’s Star Mark and Claire found a copy of the book for me. Wars missile shield).

Other enticing books released in the last few years have included Joanna Disch’s most famous es- Russ’s book of essays and reviews The Country You Have Never Seen. say, ‘The Embarrass- This is published by Liverpool University Press, an organisation that for ments of Science Fiction’ some years seemed determined to keep its titles locked away in a appears in On SF, a hefty warehouse in Liverpool. Again, Mark Plummer nailed this one for me, as book of essays. Disch he did John Clute’s latest collection of reviews Canary Fever (also Beccon became famous for his Publications) and Michael Bishop’s A Reverie for Mister Ray. Edited by assertion that ‘science Michael H. Hutchins for PS Publishing in Britain, this book is subtitled fiction is a branch of chil- Reflections on Life, Death, and Speculative Fiction. Mark also sent me dren’s literature’. This the four books that Christopher Priest published recently under his own statement makes me imprint GrimGrin Studio. They include ‘IT’ Came from Outer Space, a annoyed not merely be- collection of Chris Priest’s essays from the last thirty years, and The cause it seems insulting Magic: The Story of a Film, his account of how his novel The Prestige was to children’s literature turned into a film directed by Christopher Logan. but because it is simply wrong. Science fiction is Thomas Bull found for me a copy of In Other Words (Subterranean Press), a branch of adolescent John Crowley’s collection of essays, and Slow Glass Books imported for literature, not children’s me Thomas M. Disch’s On SF (Michigan University Press), a sequel to literature. Not, I should The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made, a book about science fiction for which add, a branch of Young Disch won his only Hugo Award in 1999. Adults literature, a mor- Can I recommend these books? Yes, up to the point. As I read them, one ally improving genre

34 that many adolescents skip altogether, but the kind of fiction that reflects Michael Bishop was another author I felt I had discovered personally ordinary adolescents’ fantasies about individual power. I keep being when I first read him, although other people must have noticed his first haunted by that nostrum that the golden age of science fiction is twelve, published short story, ‘Pinon Fall’, in 1971. Here was a real word-poet, because I find that many stories, even when written by seventy-year- someone with gifts far above those of mere wordsmiths, a writer of grace olds, reflect the hopes and dreams of twelve-year-olds. Nobody could and power. Hence I was a bit disappointed in his essays in his recent put it better than a recent contributor to one of my fanzines, former collection A Reverie for Mister Ray. The ‘Mister Ray’ of the title is Ray Melbourne fan John Litchen: Bradbury, not Ray Charles. In a clever essay Bishop tells why Ray Bradbury’s stories were his personal treasures when he first discovered It’s hard to believe that today, but back in 1954 it was certainly possible the SF field. Bishop’s cleverness is in gently letting down the reader, [to read everything in the field], and I reckon I made a good effort to slowly introducing his doubts about Bradbury that occurred to him as he do just that. What I loved about these books was the sense of wonder, got older. ‘Like all writers for whom we develop a proprietary affection, the adventure, the weirdness of other worlds, the technicalities of Bradbury, to some extent, has become a prisoner of our memories and space travel, the delusions of hyperspace and faster than light travel, of our memory-dictated suppositions.’ So how do we find new treasures? matter transmission, telepathy, telekineses, longevity extending over centuries, and all those other almost impossible ideas. I loved every Most of the books I’ve mentioned so far are collections of essays gathered one of those books, and continued to buy and stack them up in my from a wide variety of sources by authors who are best known for their makeshift box-bookshelves (John Litchen, ‘My Life and Science fiction. I sought out these books because it seems to me that a good Fiction’, *brg* 57). writer is a good writer, and that a good writer of fiction is more likely than most academics and professional critics to be a good writer of Merv Binns was our book supplier for nearly four decades. He influenced non-fiction. Joanna Russ, Michael Bishop, Thomas Disch and Christopher the lives of SF fans in Melbourne more than any other person. As you Priest are indeed entertaining and engaging writers, but there is a will find by talking to him, Merv Binns still loves the kind of science fiction difficulty. Let’s assume that these writers have read as widely and deeply he discovered in his teens. In the late 1960s, I got sick of that sort of SF in the field as the best of the academic and professional critics. What we fairly quickly, and welcomed the advent of New Wave SF, which was expect of a true critic is to make a pattern of the whole field. We could interested in the minds of human beings as well as possible adventures see this as a constellation-like pattern of stars in the sky. Which stars in outer space. But I would not have been able to buy copies of New shine most brightly? Which are dimmer? Judgments about the brightest Worlds, the banner magazine for the New Wave, without Merv Binns stars should be based, in my mind, purely on the written work that these importing them for me at McGill’s. writers produce, not on what one knows about the person who is doing the writing. A writer, after all, is only interesting when he or she is writing. John Litchen or Merv Binns were not reading their favourite SF books However, when one looks at books by people whose main profession is looking for passages of fine prose. By the end of the sixties, I was looking the writing of fiction, I find that they tend to swap the stars around. They for good writers, and occasionally found them. As I said above, I set as the brightest stars in the centre of the firmament the writer’s own discovered Tom Disch in the sixties in If magazine. Here was somebody works. The next brightest stars are the writers who are seen as attempt- who could turn a sentence; a real writer by any standards. When he ing the same kind of work, or the writers he or she most admires. In turned up again, in New Worlds, he contributed one of the masterpieces other words, these writers are implying: ‘I’m a great writer; what I’m of the field, Camp Concentration. Yet nowhere in the books I’m discussing trying to do is what everybody should be doing; so why are all those tonight will you find an analytical discussion, based on the quality of the second-rate writers picking up the Hugos and Nebulas and big bucks and prose, of Camp Concentration or Disch’s two other great novels, 334 and we are not?’ On Wings of Song. And in Disch’s books you won’t find aesthetic analyses of his own favourite books; instead you find a polemic about the failures An exception is Michael Bishop, who is, if anything, too generous to his of the field. fellow writers. He emerges as a bit of a back-slapper, only occasionally

35 36 writing a long essay about the general awfulness in SF. I realise that this Russ’s theory is that genre materials wear out in three stages: ‘Inno- is because many of the articles in his collection were commissioned as cence, Plausibility, and Decadence’. She traces this through several SF introductions to SF works, or emerged from guest of honour speeches motifs, such as the Revolt of the Robots. Her three examples, from a at various conventions. The effect, though, is as if he were saying to us, Damon Knight collection, are: ‘Moxon’s Master’ by Ambrose Bierce ‘I’m not a nasty person, but sometimes I do have these doubts about (1893), a story from the stage of Innocence, ‘Reason’ by Isaac Asimov SF’. This makes it difficult to accept his judgments about individual works, (1941), from the stage of Plausibility, and ‘But Who Can Replace a Man’ although a few of his essays hit the mark. He is a treasure-seeker, by Brian Aldiss (1958), from the stage of Decadence. though, and occasionally he digs up a bit of gold. The finest essay in A Reverie for Mr Ray is his essay on Gardner Dozois’s 1973 novella ‘The Innocence is the simple and naïve stage in the evolution of a genre Last Day of July’, a long-overdue tribute to a story that has been ignored construct ... a brief glimpse of the marvel, rather like pulling a rabbit over the years. He’s also very good on Jack McDevitt, James Tiptree Jr. out of the hat. ... Once the idea stops enrapturing you, the next step and James Morrow, but surprisingly, not very good on Philip K. Dick, an is to make it plausible... What we think of now as typically science- author who became the subject matter of his novel Philip K. Dick Is Dead, fictional questions are being asked: ... At what level would technology Alas. have to be to make such a machine possible? ... What would such machines be like? The question that’s being asked in this second stage Joanna Russ’s attitude is refreshingly different from Bishop’s. She wields is ‘What, if really?’ ... [what is] realistic in the sense of making a sharp scalpel, and loves to use it. After you’ve read her The Country concessions to sense, actuality and logic. You Have Never Seen, you might wonder how anybody can keep reading science fiction at all. Yet, like the ASFR critics whose reviews most Russ then explains how science fiction went to the stage of Decadence. resemble hers, you feel that she kicks hard because she believes the best I don’t have time to outline anything like her complete argument. Here works in the field can kick back. In reading Russ, you find many funny are a few highlights: and pithy sentences about the art and craft of fiction writing. Stories may become petrified into collections of rituals, with all Russ’s book is essential reading for its general essays, especially ‘The freshness and conviction gone ... Stories may become part of a stylized Wearing Out of Genre Materials’, the most brilliant essay about science convention ... What once were the big scenes or frissons of the whole fiction I’ve read: story may be shrunk, elided, compressed or added to, that is, until only the original wish/scene is left as a metaphoric element among When writers work in the same genre, i.e. use the same big scenes or other metaphoric elements. ‘gimmicks’ or ‘elements’ or ‘ideas’ or ‘worlds’ ..., they are using the same fantasy. Once used in art, once brought to light, as it were, the Russ’s example is Brian Aldiss’s ‘But Who Can Replace a Man?’, which effect of the fantasy begins to wane, and the scene embodying it begins was written before the New Wave era, but could well have been published to wear out. The question immediately arises: Which wears out? Does by Mike Moorcock in New Worlds. As Russ says: the underlying wish wear out or does the literary construct lose its The story is not about robots rebelling, or why robots rebel, or what power of embodying the wish...? robots are; it uses these common science fiction elements for another What really happens is that the wish persists but the artistic construct purpose: showing us what we are. ... [It] shows us a science-fictional loses its connection with the wish — Auden has said that readers go element on the verge of death — i.e. on the way to continued existence from bad to good literature looking for the same thing. That is, in one only as a metaphor ... person’s lifetime the desire for a certain kind of fantasy persists, but The three stages of Innocence, Plausibility, and Decadence may the person is driven to a higher and higher quality of literary work. present a paradigm of the history of every aesthetic element in art ... The bad work wears out. And I wonder if metaphor is not the ultimate destination of every

37 narrative element ... of SF in a truly critical way, can you be bothered about the fact Joanna Russ’s article goes on for several more pages, riffing on the ways that it is science fiction, since in which it can be applied to any art, not just science fiction. As far as I the assumptions of the field, so know the essay appeared only in a magazine called College English in forensically exposed by Disch, 1971, then in the BSFA’s fanzine Vector in 1972, and appeared nowhere Priest and Russ, remain those else until Joanna Russ’s recent collection. Yet it makes sense of many of bright twelve-year-olds? aspects of the treasure search, showing clearly why the search for new treasure is probably in vain, but has to be undertaken anyway. Her theory I remain a treasure hunter. I applies to most popular fields. In film, the Innocent stage was the early don’t earn my income from years of the silent era before 1928, when most of the plots and techniques science fiction. I don’t have to still used were invented. The Golden Age of film, as in any genre, was say nice things about other the equivalent of Russ’s Realistic era. From the late 1930s to early 1950s writers because I hope they’ll film was at its most self-confident and brash. In 1946, as many people say nice things about me. All went to the cinema each week in Britain as they did each year by the I’m looking for is a really satis- 1970s. In pop music the innocent era was a very short period from 1954 fying book or story. I can afford to 1957, the rock and roll era whose happy self-confidence the musicians to look sideways for un- of many later eras tried to revive. expected glints of gold, as Paul Kincaid does in What It Is We In short, each new genre starts at its top, then gradually deteriorates. Do When We Read Science Fiction. Kincaid’s book is prob- Since this has happened in science fiction, it’s little wonder that the main ably the most useful of the tone of the writers I’ve been discussing is resignation or disappointment. books I’ve mentioned for find- They can barely remember why they became enthusiastic about science ing new treasures. His fiction. All that sense of excitement has gone. They know why they do approach is a bit dull; he tells what they do, for they see themselves as highly skilled metaphorical us what is good and worthy in artists, a product of what Russ would call the Decadent era of science his favourite authors, such as fiction. Their work is entirely personal, yet they are trying to write for Christopher Priest, Keith Roberts, Christopher Evans, Steven Millhauser people who don’t care about the personal. As Disch says, the audience or Jorge Luis Borges, rather than what is thrilling or glorious. But he, like for science fiction is always young, but most of its writers are now John Clute, David Langford, and a few others, keeps picking up the pick middle-aged or old. Today’s young writers don’t write science fiction; and shovel and taking the path into the mountains to bring out the gold. they tend to write in other genres, such as horror or epic fantasy. How do I continue with the treasure hunt? The books I’ve been discussing don’t fully take into account this paradox in science fiction. They still get worried about science fiction itself, instead I offer a last revelation. One day about twenty-five years ago I was of getting to grips with individual works and authors. No wonder they standing in the old Readings Books in Lygon Street with the writers Gerald don’t write the kind of reviews I was looking for when I began reading Murnane and John Tittensor. As we were all slightly tiddly after a long for this essay. To do so you have to assume that your fellow writer is lunch, they challenged me to name a science fiction book I could first and foremost a self-conscious artist, representing a unique view- recommend. Gerald picked a book by that author from the shelf, opened point, and treat the work as such, not as a work designed to maintain it at random, and picked out the most fatuous sentence he could find. the clunky genre machinery of science fiction. But if you look at a work Cackles of laughter. Since then, when faced with a wall of books in a

38 bookshop, if I have the time I take from the shelf the most enticing- (Free Press ISBN 0- 684-82405-1; 1998; 256 pp.; $US39.95) looking books by unknown authors and read the first page. Ninety-nine G Thomas M. Disch: On SF per cent of books, whether general fiction, science fiction, fantasy, (University of Michigan Press ISBN 0-472-06896-2; 2005; 271 pp.; mysteries, horror or children’s/young adult fiction, fail the test. Most $US24.95) authors offer nothing but vistas of long plods through endless events. Their prose does not live. However, every now and again I take a book G Paul Kincaid, with Andrew M. Butler: The Arthur C. Clarke from the shelf, fall under the spell of the first page, and buy it. A few Award: A Critical Anthology years ago, a book I bought in this way was The Time of Our Singing by (Intro: Neil Gaiman) (Serendip Foundation ISBN 0-9552416-0-X; Richard Powers (not science fiction’s Richard Powers). This mighty novel, 2006; 243 pp.; 19 pounds) which proved to be my favourite novel of recent years other than Michael G Paul Kincaid: What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction Chabon’s The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, seemed to be a historical (Beccon ISBN 978-1-870824-54-5; 2008; 365 pp; 15 pounds) novel about the complexities of the late 1960s in the USA — until I reached the last page, where I found that it contains a wonderful fantasy G David Langford: Up Through an Empty House of Stairs: Reviews premise at its heart. No wonder I keep looking for new treasures. and Essays 1980–2002 (Cosmos Books ISBN 1-59224- 055-0; 2003; 310 pp.; $US21.95) — Bruce Gillespie, 29 September 2009/21 December 2009 G Ursula K. Le Guin, ed. Carl Freedman: Conversations with Ursula K. Le Guin Recent books about SF (University Press of Mississippi ISBN 978-1-60473-094-4; 2008; 182 I admit that many of the books below are not discussed in my article pp.; $US23) because they did not fit way the argument went. Mention here does not G Christopher Priest: ‘IT’ Came from Outer Space: Occasional preclude a later review. Additions to the list welcome: please send them Pieces 1973–2008 to [email protected] : (GrimGrin Studio ISBN 978-0- 9559735-6-7; 2008; 246 pp.; 18 pounds 99) G Michael Bishop: A Reverie for Mister Ray (ed. Michael H. Hutchins; intro. Jeff VanderMeer) (PS Publishing ISBN G Christopher Priest: The Magic: The Story of a Film 1-902880-88-9; 2005; 611 pp.; 39 pounds) (GrimGrin Studio ISBN 978-0-9559735-0-5; 2008; 143 pp.; 16 pounds 99) G Damien Broderick: x, y, z, t: Dimensions of Science Fiction (Borgo Press/Wildside Press ISBN 0-8095-0927-X; 2004; 264 pp.; G Joanna Russ: The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays and $US17.95) Reviews (Liverpool University Press ISBN 978-0-85323-869-0; 2007; 305 pp.; G John Clute: Canary Fever: Reviews (Beccon ISBN 978-1-870824-57-6; 2009; 415 pp.; 16 pounds) 14 pounds) G Darrell Schweitzer: The Fantastic Horizon: Essays and Reviews G John Crowley: In Other Words (Subterranean Press ISBN 978-1-59606-062-3; 2006; 206 pp.; (Borgo Press ISBN 978-1-4344-0320-9; 2009; 238 pp.) $US35) G Darrell Schweitzer: Windows of the Imagination: Essays on Fantastic Literature G Thomas M. Disch: The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World (Wildside Press ISBN 1-880448-60-2; 1998; 208 pp.; $US16)

39 The Dancing Cyborg by Ray Wood

I RECENTLY WATCHED the first season of the 2008 TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, on DVD.1 And at the end of Episode 7: ‘The Demon Hand’ is a hugely powerful image. Until then, the series seemed just the watchable side of being so-so. But this image lifted it so far out of itself, that as soon as I reached the end I felt compelled to go all the way through it again. I wanted to re-experience the power of little more than that one image, but also to see how it enhanced the overall story. (I’m still waiting for the DVDs to watch the second season.)

It’s where at the end of the episode the cyborg Cameron, without being prompted by any instruction programmed into her brain chip, or by the demand of any mission that she’s been given, gracefully and beautifully dances ballet in her room.

It immediately reminded me of Léo Delibes’ 1870 ballet Coppélia, or the Girl with the Enamel Eyes. There’s a dancing automaton in that too.

DELIBES’ HEROINE is Swanilda, a village girl. Coppélia is the automaton, constructed by an alchemist, Dr Coppelius. And he passes it off as his daughter. The young villagers are fascinated by Coppélia when she appears on the balcony of the Doctor’s house, but she ignores them all.

So when he’s out, the village girls sneak into his laboratory to look for her. And they discover that Coppélia isn’t even human, but is a life-sized mechanised doll. When the Doctor suddenly returns they all manage to flee except Swanilda, who hides in the booth where the automaton is stored. And she disguises herself in its clothes.

The Doctor has just captured Franz, a village lad who’s also Swanilda’s

40 lover. Now he opens the booth, and tries to bring Coppélia to life by transferring Franz’s life-force to her. And Swanilda, whom he’s taken to be his doll, afraid for Franz as well as for herself, pretends to come alive. The Doc- tor’s thrilled, and urges her to dance for him, which she does. Then at last he finds his real but unclothed doll at the back of the booth, lifeless after all. So her trick is revealed to him, and he hugs his automaton wretchedly as she and Franz escape.

Look at how many levels this image has. You start with a human woman, who takes on the artificial role of a ballet dancer, who pretends to be the human Swanilda, who pretends to be the automaton Coppélia, who pretends to be Coppélia become human, who becomes the lifeless doll again, and who turns back into the human Swanilda. So you go back and forth between the real and the unreal all of six times.

I think of this as a switch image.

It’s even more complex because the laboratory is full of other life-sized mechanised dolls. And while dancing for the Doctor, Swanilda–Cop- pélia sets them all in motion. So on stage there’s an audience of nodding, gyrating and laughing automata. You, a human, in the arti- ficiality of an audience, watch humans, who are ballet dancers, who pretend to be an audience of automata, who watch Swanilda–Coppélia dance. It’s a dazzling series of switches in the form of a dancing doll being watched by a dazzling series of switches in the form of an audience.2

As the Doctor works to make his automaton human, Swanilda pretends to come alive, but The automaton Coppélia and Doctor Coppelius. Ann Jenner and Ray Powell in the Australian Ballet’s 1979 to collapse into being an automaton again. She production.

41 comes alive several times, each longer than before. making them has permeated our arts for a long time too. Coppélia and Chronicles are examples of a myriad such stories.3 This prolonged dance, shifting between automaton and human, prompts you in the audience to think about the nature of reality and art. And you But so often in these stories the attempt to create life is accompanied by wonder if anything at all in the universe is real. You think about the act a fear of the consequences. And in many of them their automata do turn of creation, and might therefore contemplate the doctrine of the First on their makers, and even on all of humankind. Yet this fear doesn’t stop Cause of the universe itself: what being, if any, created it, and all of us their fictional creators from constructing them. in it; and what created the creator itself. Thinking of the relationship between creator and created, you might wonder whether the created will One of the most famous stories about making an automaton is Mary some day surpass its creator. And you might wonder if humans them- Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. And selves will eventually become as powerful as gods. Victor Frankenstein is terrified of what he’s in the process of creating, but goes ahead anyway. His creation — you might say inevitably — kills It’s thoughts something like those that might occur to you during the him in the end.4 Swanilda–Coppélia dance. Well, they’re the kind that occur to me. Sarah Connor starts and finishes each episode of her Chronicles with a At the end the Doctor sinks wretchedly to the floor, holding his lifeless voiceover. Her opening voiceover to Episode 4: ‘Heavy Metal’ is about a daughter. And Swanilda hesitates in her flight, and reaches out to touch famous, centuries-old automaton: him in a moment’s compassion. What a poignant gesture this is, coming as it does at the end of such an extraordinary series of switches! Suddenly When John [her son] was little, before bed I used to read him fairy you make an enormous leap back from the vast and the universal to tales. One night I read him a folk tale called The Golem of Prague, the something very tiny, very particular, and very human. story of a clay monster made by a rabbi to protect the Jews of the city.

II What I failed to remember was at the end of the story the Golem turns on its maker, and kills him, as well as the rest of the town.5 He didn’t COPPÉLIA AND THE OTHER mechanised dolls in the Doctor’s laboratory are sleep for months. automata. An automaton is ‘a mechanical figure or contrivance constructed to act as if spontaneously through concealed motive power’ I went to him and tried to tell him it wasn’t real, that I’d made it all (Macquarie). It’s ‘a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used up. Somehow that made it all worse. to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot’ (Wikipedia). As well as John’s childish fear, in such stories of creating life there’s often I don’t think that there’s an omnibus word for robots, cyborgs and a greater fear of committing blasphemy by usurping a god’s creative androids. It seems to me that ‘automata’ might be a useful one if you power. And those who do set out to create life are often accused of hubris: enlarge its meaning to include androids and gynoids. ‘Artificial Intelli- an overweening and insolent pride. If they’re killed by the creatures that gence’ is clumsy, and also more restrictive in excluding automata without they construct, it may be poetic justice, but more likely a ‘well-deserved intelligence such as Coppélia. Chronicles’ humans loosely use ‘robot’, and punishment’ for attempting to emulate a god. especially ‘machine’, for the series’ cyborgs. But Cameron does carefully Sarah’s voiceover at the end of the episode is about such a hubris: use the term ‘cybernetic organism’ for herself. The pride of men, of parents as well, makes us believe that anything Constructing automata goes back a long way in history, and there was we create we can control. Whether from clay or from metal, it is in the especially a mania for it in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For nature of us to make our own monsters. Our children are alloys all, millennia we humans have been fascinated by the idea of creating copies built from our own imperfect flesh. We animate them with magic, and of ourselves. As well as actually constructing automata, the idea of

42 never truly know what they will do.

In addition, notice how she immediately sees a parallel between those clay and metal automata, and humans? It’s a connection between automaton and human that’s almost de rigueur in this kind of story.

THE TERMINATOR feature films and the TV series Chronicles constitute one such cautionary tale about the dangers of constructing automata, and more specifically an artificial intelligence (an AI) that might set out to destroy humankind. In it there are always humans eager to create AIs. There was the obsessed Miles Dyson in the second Terminator film, James Cameron’s 1991 Terminator 2: Judgment Day. And in Chronicles there’s the equally obsessed Andrew Goode, who says to Sarah: ‘God, I love robots!’ And humans like Miles and Andy do eventually create an AI called SkyNet.

Set against these AI builders are other humans, especially Sarah and John Connor, fighting to stop them, and also fighting the cyborgs that SkyNet constructs to help it wipe out all of humanity. Yet at the same time the anti-AI humans capture and reprogram some of these cyborgs so that they become their allies in the war against SkyNet.

The story’s complicated by time travel.6 In the future, SkyNet sends cyborgs back through time to kill those who are trying to prevent its creation. And the humans fighting SkyNet in the future send human soldiers, and subverted cyborgs like Cameron, back through time to help and protect those struggling to keep SkyNet from being built.

SkyNet is apparently ramped up later from a chess-playing AI made by Andy Goode that he calls ‘The Turk’. (Although once, early in Chronicles, a psychological report on Sarah calls the cyborgs ‘Artificially Intelligent machines’, from then on the term ‘AI’ seems to be used in the series mostly for non-bodied intelligent machines like The Turk.)

Andy took the name that he uses, ‘The Turk’, from a famous chess- playing automaton first displayed in 1769 or 1770 by the Hungarian inventor, Wolfgang von Kempelen. His automaton was a life-sized Turk in a turban, smoking a pipe, and sitting behind a desk and chess board. Von Kempelen took it to many countries, and it won all of its games, even defeating Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin.7

In Episode 3: ‘The Turk’, Andy does tell Sarah about von Kempelen’s

43 SkyNet, or perhaps something more general about the nature of a cyborg: about the human lurking within the machine.

So on a deeper level Chronicles is concerned with automata getting closer and closer to being human, and with how threatening that might be to us. Therefore the series is a larger version of Swanilda–Coppélia’s coming-to-life dance for Coppelius. That is, it’s a kind of greater ‘dance’ of humans and automata around one another. These automata are both dangerous enemy, and even more dangerous ally of us humans who are all ultimately and collectively responsible for constructing them. We’re all responsible because we created, and have embedded our lives in the very technology itself at whose apex we’ve now erected SkyNet.

In a poetic way, humankind has wrapped itself up in its technology similarly to how one of Chronicles’ cyborg endoskeletons is wrapped up in human flesh and blood.

And so in Chronicles human and cyborg, and more generally humankind and SkyNet, are engaged with one another in what may be the last ’The Turk’: Van Kemplen’s chess-player from Letters on Natural Magic by Sir David Brewster (London: ‘dance’ humanity ever takes part in. Which also Tegg, 1832). Reprinted in John Cohen, Human Robots in Myths and Science (London: Allen & Unwin, suggests how in real life we humans are engaged 1966, opp. p. 97). in a similar ‘dance’ with our own most advanced machines. And perhaps this, our real-life dance, original Turk. However, he does not tell her that it was a fake, and that is just as dangerous as the fictional one. The there was a very small man inside it, even though von Kempelen first result may be deadly for us all. showed audiences that there wasn’t. So you might ask yourself why Andy named his AI ‘The Turk’: what does this suggest about the human nature The automaton dancing for the Doctor in Coppélia, and the cyborg of his AI, and therefore of any AI, when you consider that the original Cameron dancing ballet at the end of ‘The Demon Hand’, encapsulate Turk was human after all? both this larger ‘dance’ of their whole stories, and the even larger ‘dance’ still of all of us humans with our techno-logy itself. The cyborgs in Chronicles are automata hidden inside human flesh and blood. But the original Turk was a flesh-and-blood human hidden inside III an automaton. It’s as if Chronicles is saying something about the future THE CYBORGS IN Chronicles are mechanical and electronic robots disguised

44 by flesh and blood on the outside so that they can pass as human. flaws, our weaknesses that make us human. However, again and again the humans emphasise that the cyborgs can’t possibly be human, and are only machines. They seem desperate to Science now performs miracles like the gods of old, creating life from reassure themselves about this. Derek Reese, one of the human soldiers blood cells, or bacteria, or a spark of metal. But they’re [the cyborgs] sent back from the future, is especially obsessed by it. perfect creatures, and in that way they couldn’t be less human.

In ‘The Demon Hand’ he says to John about Cameron: ‘Yeah, Cameron. There are things that machines will never do. They cannot possess What a joke! Walking around with a name like it’s a person. It’s not a fear. They cannot commune with God. They cannot appreciate beauty. person.’ And in the following episode, ‘Vick’s Chip’, John says of her: ‘She They can not create art. If they ever learn these things, they won’t doesn’t have a soul, and never will.’ have to destroy us. They’ll be us.

Cameron’s inhumanity is particularly evident during ‘The Demon Hand’. It’s hugely ironical that, while she’s saying this, Cameron takes off her At its start we see her in violent action using her enormous strength. Her boots so that she can dance in her naked, unguarded feet. Like Nazi inhumanity is emphasised even more by her parodying the T-1000 when jack-boots, hers might be said to represent her inhuman powers. So she’s it was the motor bike cop in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. We cut back put both her boots and her powers aside for the moment. And she starts and forth between this, and Sarah meditating on the human soul at Andy dancing, beautifully, and gracefully, straight after Sarah says: ‘They can Goode’s tomb. She’s saying: ‘The soul: the thing that separates us from not commune with God. They can not appreciate beauty. They can not the machines.’ create art.’ And her dance contradicts every one of those three asser- tions. Shortly after, Sarah sends Cameron to find out who now has The Turk: ‘Find Dmitri — Derek says he has a sister, teaches ballet.’ And she adds: Derek, who’s the most fanatical proponent of her being merely a machine ‘Low profile. No guns’ — in other words, no violence. It was Dmitri who that can never be human, comes to her door, and stands there watching originally stole Andy’s AI. her dance. He’s more and still more astounded, as if he can’t even understand how it’s possible for a cyborg to dance at all. The episode’s His sister is Maria, and Cameron joins her Beginners’ class to get close last shot is of his face, and he looks as if he’s about to weep. to her. (Cameron is acted by Summer Glau,8 a ballet dancer in real life.) She dances in the class, though only because her mission requires it. But What we have here is the real human Summer Glau, who’s in the role of at the class’s end she shows that she’s become interested in ballet as an actress, who’s pretending to be a human called Cameron, but who ballet by asking Maria questions about it. Last of all before she leaves, turns out to be a cyborg, who becomes a human dancing ballet for a Maria tells her: ‘Remember: dance is the hidden language of the soul.’ mission, who returns to being a cyborg, and who finally dances ballet solely because she wants to, both her dance and desire being very, very Afterwards, Sarah asks Cameron what she found out from Maria. The human. And the first time that I saw Glau dancing her little ballet in first thing that Cameron says is exactly that: ‘Dance is the hidden Chronicles, this complex switch image immediately reminded me of language of the soul.’ It’s as if it’s preying on her cyborg brain-chip, or Swanilda–Coppélia’s coming-to-life dance in Coppélia. as if for her it’s the most important thing to come out of her mission. Maria anticipated this image for us earlier by saying when Cameron Here’s Sarah’s voiceover that ends ‘The Demon Hand’: danced the Pas de Chat: ‘But your upper body is little mechanical.’ Her dramatic pause emphasised that last, deliciously appropriate word. There was a time I was a hero to my son. He thought I walked on Despite this, Cameron’s final ballet is in no way mechanical at all. water. He knows better now. Of all our European arts, is there a more stylised, more rigidly formal We all have weak moments, moments where we lose faith. But it’s our one than classical ballet? It’s ironically appropriate for a cyborg to dance

45 this kind of ballet with its meticulously choreographed, strictly defined, Turk from him. When she walks away from his room, and you hear the and basically mechanical movements. You could say that the aim of gunshots and cries as they’re killed, she doesn’t even look back, nor even classical ballet is to convert formally mechanical movement into graceful flinch. And when she reports that they’re now dead, Sarah, perturbed, and fluid art. Therefore Came-ron’s dancing it is most fitting for a asks her if she killed them. She answers without any emotion whatsoever machine that’s disguised as a human. that she didn’t, because it wasn’t her mission.

In addition, when she dances we’re watching what to the series’ humans You remember this when she’s dancing at the end, and that Maria, whom is a purely rational machine incapable of emotion, showing that on the she let die so callously, was the one who gifted her with the classical contrary she’s capable of being fascinated by our irrational and emotional ballet that now fascinates her so much. human arts. Despite this, her dance at the close of the episode is spiritually exalting, Her dancing in no way results from any mission that she’s been given, as well as beautiful, and artistic. It contradicts not only what Sarah is nor has her brain chip been programmed for it. It arises from an impulse saying about God, beauty, and art, but also the inhumanity and savagery that’s solely hers. James Middleton, the series’ Consulting Producer, that she, the machine, displayed earlier. says: ‘“The Demon Hand” elevates the stakes for the season by showing that Cameron has an agenda of her own.’9 A BALLET DANCER revolves in her dance, for ever turning in her mandalic circle. ‘Dancer’ and ‘dance’ are often used as very large symbols. Walter THERE’S MORE ABOUT the Dancing Cyborg image. Charley Dixon is Sarah’s James Turner in his 1921 poem ‘The Dancer’, says of ‘[t]he young girl former lover, and the paramedic who saves Derek’s life. Near the end of dancing’ and ‘[t]he men in black [who] conduct her round’: ‘Thus Saturn’s the previous episode, ‘Dungeons and Dragons’, he watches Cameron moons revolve embraced/And through the cosmos wind’. Anthony Powell preparing to destroy the deactivated cyborg, Vick. She’s just cut away named his 1951–75 twelve-volume novel, A Dance to the Music of Time. and bagged all the flesh from around Vick’s endoskeleton. And Judith Wright’s 1955 poem, ‘Song’, is:

And he says to her: ‘Little girl, you freak me the hell out. On the outside O where does the dancer dance — you’re just as pretty as a picture, but on the inside you’re a —.’ Only he’s the invisible centre spin — lost for words. However, she finds them for him, and tells him bluntly: whose bright periphery holds ‘Hyper-alloy combat chassis ... Cybernetic organism. Living tissue over the world we wander in? a metal endoskeleton.’ He then says about Vick’s de-fleshed skeleton: ‘He’s a scary robot? You? You’re a very scary robot!’ For it is he we seek — the source and death of desire; What horrifies Charley most about her is that she’s a ‘little girl’ who’s ‘as we blind as blundering moths pretty as a picture’, but hidden behind that is an inhuman robot as around that core of fire. terrifying and deadly as Vick’s exposed endoskeleton that’s right there in front of his eyes. And this makes the image of the Dancing Cyborg Caught between birth and death even more potent: the contrast between a little girl as pretty as a picture we stand alone in the dark dancing ballet, and the immensely powerful, dangerous, murderous and to watch the blazing wheel unpredictable machine that’s hidden inside. on which the earth is a spark, This contrast between her human exterior and inhuman interior is illustrated in ‘The Demon Hand’ by the callous way in which she abandons crying, Where does the dancer dance — Dmitri and Maria to their killers. Though she’d promised Maria to help the terrible centre spin, them both, she deserts them as soon as Dmitri tells her who bought The whose flower will open at last

46 to let the wanderer in? THE EPISODE CONTRASTS Sarah and Cameron in two separate ways. But 10 these two pairs of contrasts contradict one another, and therefore force Juan Cirlot in his A Dictionary of Symbols describes the symbolism of you to question how valid they are. So again, sharp boundaries blur. dance thus (my italics): Cameron and Sarah are both present, and contrasted with one another There is a universal belief that, in so far as it is a rhythmic art-form, during Sarah’s first and last voiceovers. it is a symbol of the act of creation. This is why the dance is one of the most ancient forms of magic. Every dance is a pantomime of meta- During the first voiceover Cameron creates an immense blackout of Los morphosis (and so calls for a mask to facilitate and conceal the Angeles. She does it simply to cause chaos so that she can break into transformation), which seeks to change the dancer into a god, a demon the Evidence Store at the Los Angeles Police Department. The blackout or some other chosen form of existence. Its function is, in conse- symbolises the lights of civilisation going out. And the chaos that she quence, cosmogonic. creates symbolises the breakdown of civilised law and order. That these are symbols is indicated by the lights going out being reflected in the A ‘cosmogony’ is a theory or story of how the universe was created. lenses of her T-1000 sunglasses, and by the police abandoning their HQ in confusion as she moves into it. It’s a preview of the Judgment The dancer and the dance (‘How can we know the dancer from the dance?’ Day/Apocalypse that’s due in four years’ time. says Yeats) are symbols that are often used throughout the arts to do with the creator and the created, with the temporal and the spiritual, and The two symbols suggest that after all Cameron may be no more than a with life and the universe; and as well you might add, in this particular SkyNet infiltrator into the Connor camp, programmed to bring on image of the Dancing Cyborg with artist and art, with beauty and 11 Judgment Day. And she may therefore be nothing else but what she’s so functionality, and with human and machine. often accused of being: a soulless representative of evil. This is pointed up by Sarah saying only moments later: ‘The soul: the thing that IV separates us from the machines.’ ‘THE DEMON HAND’ is concerned with breaking down boundaries. Previous During her last voiceover Sarah is involved in two fires: she destroys sharp distinctions become blurred. And everyone changes. Vick’s Demon Hand with one, and she saves Ellison from the other. Her When John watches the video of Sarah giving him up for adoption, he being involved in both fires symbolises her fighting for the human and and she change from worshipful son and omnipotent mother to more against the machine, for good and against evil, and therefore her imperfect equals. FBI Special Agent James Ellison’s view of Sarah as a involvement in the looming Judgment Day/Apocalypse. Between these criminal changes when he discovers that her paranoid delusions about two actual fires, Ellison quotes from the Bible about a God- ordained fire, the future are not delusions at all. The psychiatrist, Doctor Silberman, and that makes these larger significances clear. The editing also makes changes by going insane. Derek’s rabid belief in the cyborgs being them clear because the shot of her saving Ellison has been held over nothing but evil and soulless machines changes, even if only a little, when from earlier in the episode. he sees Cameron dance. And Cameron changes more and more towards So during the first voiceover we see Cameron as an agent of destruction. being human. But the biggest change of all is that the boundary between And during the last we see Sarah as an agent of redemption, even of human and cyborg is breaking down. resurrection. You might say that the word ‘resurrection’ is farfetched. And at the end, Cameron’s ballet unites and reconciles everything in the But in his Arrowhead encounter with Silberman, Ellison says about Sarah: episode, even though it does so without a single word. As the Argentinean ‘She’s dead’, and Silberman answers him most significantly: ‘So was ballerina, Paloma Herrera says: ‘That’s the great thing about dance; at Jesus once’. The implication is obvious. that artistic level you can speak with your body’. The pairing of Cameron as an agent of destruction and Sarah as an agent

47 of redemption is reversed in the second pairing. You’d be right to say But the most certain clue to what Cameron really is, is that her ballet is that this second pairing is more amorphous than the first. But it is there, as far from being about destruction as it can be. and I do feel that the episode points to it. The first of these pairs shows cyborg as destructive and human as Of course the cyborgs are murderous: murder was built into them: they redemptive, and the second shows cyborg as redemptive and human as were designed to be Exterminators. However, within this episode what destructive. By contradicting one another they help to blur any overly murders do actually take place, and who are the actual murderers? The simplistic ‘human good, cyborg evil’. They’re a kind of larger episode-long murders of Dmitri and Maria are committed by humans. The attempt to switch image that enhances the more localised though more multi-lev- murder Ellison is made by Silberman, a human. And Cameron’s callous- elled switch image of the Dancing Cyborg. ness in leaving Dmitri and Maria to be murdered is due to a human not defining her mission clearly: Sarah’s instructions for it, ‘Low profile. No This greater switch image is pointed up during Sarah’s final voiceover by guns’, weren’t precise enough. So in the entire episode no cyborg Ellison quoting to his Bible class from a little further in that same Biblical murders or tries to murder anyone, or is responsible for anyone’s murder. passage, but with unintended irony: ‘Every tree that bringeth not forth Instead, it’s the humans who murder, and who are responsible for good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.’ What ‘The Demon Hand’ murder. shows us is that nothing is as clearcut as that.

What this does is lead us to reconsider the Biblical passage from Matthew AN IMAGE OF HANDEDNESS runs all the way through the episode, and also 7: 13–20,12 whose first words Ellison quotes to Silberman: ‘Beware of contributes to the blurring of previously sharp boundaries. This image is false prophets.’ Silberman completes the sentence: ‘Beware of false like an endoskeleton of the episode, a structure that it’s built around, an prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are echo of the cyborg’s own bodily construction. It begins with Cameron ravening wolves.’ We then recollect that though on an obvious level the plunging Los Angeles into darkness by spectacularly ramming her open cyborgs are ‘ravening wolves’ hidden inside ‘sheep’s clothing’, in fact we hand, palm down, into a primary turbine. And it ends with both her hands humans are ourselves a hugely murderous species. We might aptly add held submissively, palms up, in a plea to heaven. to that quote the ancient saying: ‘Man is a wolf to man.’ Until recently left-handedness was considered evil. The Latin word for And we remember that it’s we humans who created the nuclear bombs, the left hand is ‘sinister’, and one of the present meanings of ‘sinister’ is and the missiles to deliver them, and SkyNet to launch them, that will ‘evil’, which indicates its ages-old connection with the left hand. bring about Judgment Day. SkyNet is no more than our latest weapon The key to the image is where Silberman relates to Ellison how in the coming at the end of a long line of weapons that we started creating far Pescadero State Hospital he saw a Terminator stretch out his hand to back in our prehistory. In fact, SkyNet may be no more than our first-ever Sarah. And he adds that the Terminator said to her: ‘Come with me if one-hundred-per-cent successful weapon. you want to live.’ This happened in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. And we also remember that Cameron has the ability not only to destroy Silberman says that it was like God’s hand in Michelangelo’s painting on but to save humankind. John in 2027 specifically chose to send her back the Sistine Chapel ceiling. In it God extends his hand to give Adam a through time to protect the Connors, and help them against SkyNet. So soul, and life. But it’s God’s right hand, because it would have been she’s most likely the future John’s ultimate agent not so much of blasphemous for Michelangelo to have made it his left hand. However, destruction, but rather of redemption. It’s also indicative of the future he did paint Adam holding out his left hand to God to prefigure his later John’s trust in Cameron in 2027, that the present 15-year-old John in on giving in to evil, leading to humankind’s expulsion from Eden. 2007 is growing gradually more attracted to her in a very human way, despite her being a cyborg. Silberman holds out his own hand to illustrate this. But it’s his right hand. This is correct as to the painting, but wrong as to the Terminator he’s

48 describing, who extended his left hand to Sarah. The episode’s title is gently lowers her arms, still crossed, into her lap. It’s a supremely ‘The Demon Hand’. The hand that this refers to is specifically the left spiritual gesture of reaching for, and submitting to, heaven. hand of the cyborg Vick that was torn off in his fight with Cameron. Yet to both Ellison and Silberman these two left hands, these supposedly evil Remember as well that Maria did tell Cameron: ‘Dance is the hidden cyborg hands, are ‘The Hand of God’, as they both call them. This casts language of the soul.’ And Cameron repeated exactly that to Sarah and a very different light upon the cyborgs indeed. And it tells us that the Derek. And now we see Cameron dancing ballet beautifully, and grace- episode’s title applies to much more than Vick’s hand, and is intended to fully, expressing this very same ‘language of the soul’. Obviously the soul be ironical as well. is no longer what Sarah started the episode saying that it is: ‘The thing that separates us from the machines,’ Right-handedness is also shown more simply as life-saving. Near the end of ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ John extends his right hand to save Derek’s Yet there’s one final delicate touch in Cameron’s dance, a moment’s life. It foreshadows the image of god-like right-handedness in the next reminder of the blackout that she caused at the episode’s start. A quibble, episode.13 And at the end of ‘The Demon Hand’, Sarah extends her right you might say. As her crossed arms and extended hands stretch up to hand to save Ellison’s life. (In fact that’s ridiculous, since Ellison’s hands heaven, shadows leap out for a moment from the fingers of both her and feet are roped immovably to a chair.) hands, and they too reach up to heaven. A shadow in paradise, perhaps? (It’s an image that’s almost too forced, like the one of Sarah reaching Silberman emphasises these life-saving and life-giving powers to Ellison out to save Ellison.) with the Terminator’s words to Sarah: ‘Come with me if you want to live.’ And Cameron uses exactly the same words to John in Episode 1: ‘Pilot’, But in the end the Demon Hand and the Hand of God are united by being when she offers to save him from being killed by the Terminator crossed at the wrists in her final gesture, though significantly with the Cromarty. This repeated invitation14 shows what to the humans are Hand of God on top. They become one and the same. For a moment nothing but soulless machines offering life to them, to humans. Perhaps there, the gap between human and cyborg is closed. it’s going too far to say that they’re offering them souls in the way that One of the chief elements of Cameron’s dance is the arrangement of her God offers Adam a soul in Michelangelo’s painting. But the implication is arms. It’s made more than usually significant by the recurring handed- certainly there. ness image. As her arms move around, and droop from and then reach So the handedness image, and its questioning which is the Demon Hand for heaven, again and again they curve into a circle with her fingers and which the Hand of God, together with this invitation to be saved, almost touching. In fact, it’s a standard balletic figure. add to blurring the distinction between ‘good’ human and ‘evil’ cyborg, Her dance begins with it, making it an opening statement. In the context between ‘soulless’ cyborg and human with a ‘soul’. it signifies unity, harmony and reconciliation. It represents the all-inclu- Now, where do these carefully set up, almost too schematic images of siveness of the mandala. Then her arms continually move towards right- and left-handedness lead? When Cameron dances at the end, she recreating it, but not quite firming it up again. So she’s saying with her extends her right hand to its utmost, reaching up to heaven. She, the arms and hands that this wholeness, this universality is what she wants, machine, strains for heaven unlike Adam, the human, reaching out to and all cyborgs and humans should want; and that she will never, and God only limply and negligently in Michelangelo’s painting. everyone else should never, stop striving to achieve it.

She finishes her ballet by sinking slowly, and gracefully to the floor, her THE EPISODE HAS SHOWN US the reconciliation of previously sharply defined legs folding under her. And both her arms are extended upwards as her opposites. Classical ballet is itself an art form of reconciliation. It restricts body droops, both arms held together and crossed at her wrists, and you to only a limited number of fundamentally mechanical, strictly both palms turned up to ask for benison from on high. Last of all, she delineated movements, and out of them you have to achieve a fluid, graceful and completely human art. No other significant European art

49 form involves such an extreme reconciliation. And of all the forms of The third kind of tool is one that’s self-sustaining, independent of a dance that might have been chosen by Chronicles’ makers, classical human acting directly upon it. Fire was probably the first of this kind. It ballet couldn’t be more appropriate to show the cyborg, the machine continues burning without being touched, at least as long as it’s fed with Cameron, closing in on being human. fuel now and then. Snares and pits to catch animals for food are others. Windmills and watermills are further examples. And engines that burn So boundaries are blurred, and cyborg and human are portrayed as being various fuels such as coal or oil come later on. What an imaginative leap more and more identical until they seem about to merge. And the cyborg it was to dream up tools that would do their work when you weren’t even invitatio n ‘Co me with me if you want to live’ is in a larger way as if cyborgs present! are saying to humans that any hope of humankind continuing to exist will be possible from now on only with their help, only by cyborg and You could divide this kind of tool into two. One utilises external natural human becoming a team. forces such as wind, or water, or fire; a hot-air balloon uses fire, and a sailing ship uses wind. The other utilises artificially created forces, such In a larger way still, the invitation can be taken as a statement that the as a clockwork spring in a clock, that eliminate the vagaries of nature, fates of human and machine are now inevitably and inextricably inter- and more reliably regulate the forces being used. twined. And that both are gradually merging into a superbeing that’s both human and machine, in one. You might say that we humans have been gradually inventing tools with the power to work more and still more remotely from us. Think of the V robotic tools that we now place on Mars. And of Voyager speeding away from the Solar System itself, carrying a message from us. WHEN THE HUMAN ANIMAL first poked a stick at a predator to force it to back away, or picked up a lump of wood to use as a club to batter its skull in, The fourth I see as the ultimate kind of tool that we’re only just beginning that human was suddenly a creature with the potential to become in the to construct. Finally we’re moving the tool all the way back from the end almost infinitely powerful. At that moment it was reaching out to remote to where it first began; but even further than that, even more enfold the entire universe within its tool-making hands — and to enfold intimately, we’re moving it inside our own bodies themselves. Before it imaginatively within its brain too. It was the start of a journey that 15 today we added tools to our bodies externally, such as walking sticks, even today seems to have no end. spectacles and hearing aids. But now we’re internalising tools such as bionic ears, pacemakers and artificial knees. I see these tools that we humans have constructed — these extensions of our bodies, and enhancements of our lives — as being of four kinds. Remember the three TV series: the 1974–78 The Six-Million Dollar Man, the 1976–78 The Bionic Woman, and its truncated remake the 2007 The first are truly no more than extensions of our physical bodies, such Bionic Woman? The bionic people that we see in them are examples of as that long stick to poke at a dangerous predator. Today our lives are this internalisation of the tool. full of similar tools that turn the hand into an infinitely more complex organ: spanners, screwdrivers, drills, saws, hammers, knives, spoons, Until now we’ve used our tools to reshape our external environment. But cups, needles, scissors, pens, rulers, brushes, combs and so forth. All now we’re starting to reshape our internal environment as well. In a way, day long we modify our hands with tools. we’re finally seeing our bodies themselves as tools that we can also reshape to suit our dreams and desires. In the 2007 Bionic Woman the The second are tools that can be separated from the body, such as the first bionic woman, Sarah Corvus, says to the second, Jaime Sommers: long stick now given a point and thrown, or a stone picked up and hurled. ‘I’m cutting away all the parts of me that are weak.’ She’s replacing them The arrow is the spear made small, flighted with feathers, and shot with with bionics. a bow through the air from a greater and safer distance. It’s as if we’re melding human and machine into a single enhanced being,

50 a combined person and tool. As if we’re setting out to perfect our all too any or all of those be programmed into an automaton? imperfect bodies. And as if we’ve finally decided to take charge of the act of creation itself, because for us the original job was botched. Is that You might also talk about the ‘life force’ that Dr Coppelius tries to transfer too farfetched to say? I don’t think so. The very first time that the human to his automaton. And you might talk about ‘self-awareness’. Would animal created and used a tool marked its rebellion against the way either or both of those, whatever they are, simply appear without any things are: against the design of its own body, and against the design of specific attempt to create them, when any artificial intelligence simply the environment that it found itself living in. The human animal is more reaches the same complexity as the intelligence of a human? than anything else, The Toolmaker. And its body itself has become its It does seem in Chronicles that the cyborgs possess what we call ‘life’. ultimate, perhaps infinitely malleable Tool. And it seems that they’re also ‘self-aware’, particularly Cameron, who IN CREATING THE CYBORGS of Chronicles, you begin on the inside from the admits to John in the first episode that she’s an advanced model. purely machine end of a spectrum, and finish on the outside at its other There’s a lot of talk about the ‘soul’ in ‘The Demon Hand’. People who end with human flesh and blood. In creating the bionic person as in those believe that there is such a thing might insist on throwing a soul into the three TV series you begin on the outside from the purely human end of mix, some element not entirely of this universe, maybe even immortal. the same spectrum, and finish at its other end on the inside with Perhaps only if given such a ‘soul’ could the android or cyborg that mechanical, electronic and biological parts. You might say that the one becomes more and more identical to the human be indistinguishable from is merely the reverse of the other. the bionic human — or so a religious believer might insist. Such a believer But would they both end up the same? Is there anything present when might also insist that only a god can give you a soul, as in Michelangelo’s you begin with the human, that can’t possibly be there when you begin painting. with the machine, and end with something identical in all other respects In her voiceover about the soul that begins this episode Sarah says: to the human? And if there is, what would it be? They say when a person dies, the soul lives on. The soul: the thing In the episode ‘The Turk’, John says to Sarah after she’s been to see that separates us from the machines ... Andy’s AI, but can’t answer his questions about its powers: Part of me died years ago with Kyle Reese, but a part of him lives on Have you ever heard of the singularity?16 It’s a point in time when in John. If that’s not a soul, I don’t know what is. machines become so smart that they’re capable of making even smarter versions of themselves, without our help. Her words show that hers isn’t the usual religious idea of a ‘soul’. It’s merely something that ‘They say’, but she presumably doesn’t. It’s a While he’s saying that Cameron is on guard, watching out of the window. ‘thing’ to her. To her it’s only what John inherited from Kyle. But when he speaks of machines becoming ‘capable of making even smarter versions of themselves’ she turns towards him, clearly So perhaps her kind of nonreligious soul might be something that a interested, though neither he nor Sarah observes her sudden interest. cyborg like Cameron could acquire. However, a cyborg passing it on to its ‘children’ through sexual inheritance, as Sarah infers it’s passed on, You might conclude from Cameron turning towards John that an automa- might require a large technological leap indeed. ton’s first step towards making an even smarter version of itself would be realising that it can, and then wanting to. You might especially But all of this is fiction. Whether we actually can in the future create an conclude from her dancing ballet that she has an impulse to improve automaton with such properties as ‘ambition’, ‘curiosity’, ‘life force’, herself in the same way that humans have. Is that ‘wanting to’, that ‘self-awareness’, ‘sexual inheritance’ and ‘soul’ is a question that we can’t ‘impulse’, derived from curiosity? Or from conscious ambition? Or is it yet answer. However, we’re certainly prompted to ask such a question similar to the evolutionary drive in all forms of biological life? And can

51 when we watch Cameron dance, because it leads us to wonder just how the very distant future. So won’t the best way of arranging such a far towards being completely human an automaton can go. meeting, and benefiting from how hugely it might revivify our species, come from creating our own aliens here on Earth? And when we ask ourselves: ‘Can we imbue a tool with whatever it is that makes us human?’ we’re also inevitably led to ask: ‘What exactly is Therefore, perhaps an alien as strange as Cameron is exactly what we it that constitutes being human anyway?’ And that’s nothing else but need. And perhaps the melding of such an alien automaton with our perhaps our most ancient question of all: ‘What am I?’ human selves would be even better for us still.

WHY EVEN BOTHER to make an automaton as human as possible in the first WHATEVER HAPPENS in our creating human–machine hybrids, for me place? Why as in Chronicles belittle a cyborg that may be as intelligent the Dancing Cyborg is one of the most powerful images that I’ve come in its own way as a human, simply because it’s not identical to a human? across in any of our arts. Artistically it’s breathtaking in its complexity Why not instead strive after the alien elements in an automaton rather and beauty. And speculatively it encapsulates the drive of our tool- than only the human? making species towards a destiny that I think we can still scarcely formulate, even today, despite how hard SF has tried to do just that. Instead of travelling to the stars to meet aliens as intelligent as us, why not create our own intelligent aliens right here, on Earth? That may be And Derek watching the Dancing Cyborg in amazement and fear, in pain far more interesting, informative and valuable than merely setting out and rage, reduced almost to tears by it, is a big part of this image too. to duplicate humankind. His powerful, complex and conflicting emotions represent the emotions that surround our efforts to give life to inanimate matter — or indeed, However, such stories as Chronicles assume that an automaton different that attend most of our attempts to experiment with the fundamentals in any way from the human is inevitably a threat to us, and is bound to of life itself. be a monster. But is that any different than a boy imagining night after night that there’s a monster lurking under his bed, despite his parents As well, his being the audience for the cyborg’s dance adds to it a very turning on the light and showing him that there isn’t? human touch. It brings it back to earth from the vast and the universal. It has a similar personalising and humanising impact as Swanilda’s William K. Hartmann says: ‘It’s not unrealistic to say that there is a fork turning back from fleeing, and reaching down to touch Coppelius in in the road leading to the future: either civilization will collapse, or 17 compassion. And it adds a similar complexity to Cameron’s ballet, as the humans will reach Mars!’ He means that we humans must constantly audience of automata on the stage in Coppélia adds to Swanilda– face the challenge of the new, or otherwise we’re going to stagnate, and Coppélia’s coming-to-life dance. even become extinct. I heard Buzz Aldrin in a TV interview put this more neatly: ‘I believe mankind must explore or expire.’ John Wirth, an Executive Producer of the series, says that it was ‘conceptually a fantastic idea’ to have Derek watch this cyborg do Here on Earth, those who ventured out into unknown lands and met something so beautiful, when you understand how he feels about peoples whose cultures were different from theirs, were often jolted out cyborgs, and what he knows about the future. It’s even more powerful, of their complacency by them, had their own cultures revitalised as a because Cameron herself is the very same cyborg who apparently result, and therefore avoided stagnating. But we’ve now on Earth run tortured him in the future before she was captured by the humans, and out of the new peoples and their cultures that we need for this purpose. reprogrammed by John to fight for them instead of for SkyNet. And so we dream of going to the stars to meet aliens as intelligent as us, hoping that they’ll provide us with such a ‘Shock of the New’ instead. Brian Austin Green, who plays Derek, says:

But we humans may find getting to the stars and meeting truly alien People watching think Derek was just crying over the beauty of the species of intelligent life either improbably difficult, or achievable only in moment [Cameron dancing], or how far the Terminators have come,

52 but there’s just so much more than that to him. He knows Cameron. where humans live, and is alone in the middle of an endless wilderness, He’s experienced her before. Her. or desert. It’s the kind of town that you get in those great Western films, Fred Zinnemann’s 1952 High Noon and George Stevens’s 1953 Shane. Josh Friedman, who created the series, and is another of its Executive And this solitary town represents all of civilisation. Producers, says about the Dancing Cyborg image: The two facing each other stand the one for law and the other for The idea that these Terminators are getting closer and closer to being lawlessness, the one for community and the other for the individual run human was something that I really liked, and I thought can that ever amok, the one for reason and the other for unreason, the one for so build to a point where ... you’re watching her dance and thinking, civilisation and the other for barbarism, the one for good and the other ‘Oh my god that’s beautiful, I’m so creeped out by it.’ ... for evil, the one for order and the other for chaos. They can stand for any dichotomies such as those. It has that wonderful balance of the beauty of things and the horror of things. But it’s a more complex image than that makes it seem, at least in fiction. This is because, despite one of the combatants being evil, both of them However, I don’t see a balance between beauty and horror in the dance: are expected to fight according to the code duello: rules of engagement for me its beauty exceeds its horror by far. But I suppose that’s because that they’re expected to adhere to. I’m one of those who look forward to a future where human and machine become a single united being. I COULD NEVER FIND a similar gigantic image for any of the other fiction genres. Perhaps in the early 1950s if I’d tried to think of one for SF, it’d So the Dancing Cyborg represents for me what may some day be the have been of a man about to take off into space in his rocket ship. In human and the tool merged into one. And in the cyborg body of Cameron much of the early SF devoted to space flight — and so much of it was — it’s especially her dancing ballet of all the kinds of dance that there are, it was little more than a matter of blasting off from your own backyard and from nothing but her own impulse to do so, that brings human and on Earth and, when you got above the atmosphere, turning your rocket machine so much closer together. ship’s nose until it pointed at Mars, and then firing your engine. VI But that image was destroyed for ever in the 1960s by the reality of I’VE SOMETIMES WONDERED if you can come up with single gigantic images putting humans on the Moon. Every part of the first lunar expedition was that could stand for each of the fiction genres as a whole. I always thought planned with care; everything that might go wrong was taken into that this was possible for only the Western, though with some fudging. consideration; every step of the way was plotted in advance. And an I fudge it by discarding the Cowboys and Indians kind of Western, and enormous number of scientists, technicians and other people was also the Pioneering kind about people journeying into unknown parts of involved, apparently more than 400,000. Of course, things did go wrong, the American Wild West, and settling in them. but it was all calculated beforehand as much as was possible.

The image for me is the obvious one of two men standing a little apart No longer did a tinkerer on his own simply whip up a rocket ship in his in the main street of a small Western town, preparing to settle their backyard workshop. Nor any longer did an intrepid explorer simply pick differences by drawing their revolvers, and each trying to kill the other. up a huge backpack and a rifle, and walk off into the wilderness to see Of course, in more recent Western films they may be women, such as in what he could see. Burt Kennedy’s 1971 Hannie Caulder, Jim Wynorski’s 1995 Hard Bounty In the 1960s I might have come up with an overall image for the SF and Sam Raimi’s 1995 The Quick and the Dead. genre of a human greeting an alien. As has so often been said, one of In my imagination the town of this image is the only place in the world the most fascinating questions that we can ask ourselves about the universe is the Traveller’s in Walter De La Mare’s poem: ‘Is there anybody

53 there?’18 Or more opti- Greek words that are usually translated as: ‘Know thyself’. mistically: ‘Where is everybody?’ Sarah’s voiceover at the end of this episode begins:

But now at last I have an ‘Know thyself’. John once told me it was inscribed on the front of the overall image that I Temple of Apollo. The entire quote is: ‘Know thyself — and thou shall [sic] know all the mysteries of the gods and the universe.’ That’s quite reckon can stand for all 19 of SF: the Dancing Cy- a mouthful. borg. This is apart from ‘Know yourself — and you shall know all the mysteries of the universe, her being more specifi- and of the gods.’ In that quote, setting out to answer the second SF cally the meeting-place question: ‘What is a human?’, therefore also sets out to answer the first: of such pairings as: ani- ‘What is the universe?’ And maybe even: ‘What are the gods?’ mal and tool, human and machine; and further, The universe and the human are inextricably part of one another, just such as the mechanical as ‘The Demon Hand’ in Chronicles ends by suggesting that human and and the lyrical, the pro- machine are becoming merged into one. saic and the poetic, reason and emotion, science Anyway, I finally have my very large image for science fiction, an even and art. And also apart more all-embracing one than I have for the Western: this immense and from her being the tem- complex image of the Dancing Cyborg. poral in search of the spiritual, the created in — Ray Wood, October 2009 search of the creator. And, too, apart from her Notes being an image of reconciliation, harmony, 1 Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Warner Brothers, & C2 wholeness and univer- Pictures, 2008–09), created by Josh Friedman. The first season’s sality. A pretentious list, episodes in order are: perhaps? But her dance 1 ‘Pilot’ does contain all of those. 2 ‘Gnothi Seauton’ 3 ‘The Turk’ 4 ‘Heavy Metal’ My favourite of all Astounding Science I think that you might Fiction/Analog covers. A great illustration of human 5 ‘Queen’s Gambit’ say that SF has two great and machine united (April 1952 British edition with 6 ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ speculative concerns: Australian price). George Harry Stine is better 7 ‘The Demon Hand’ known by his pseudonym, Lee Correy. ‘What is the universe?’ 8 ‘Vick’s Chip’ and ‘What is a human?’ 9 ‘What He Beheld’. If so, you might therefore protest that this image of the Dancing Cyborg Chronicles picks up the Terminator story from after the second relates only to the second question, and does not stand for all of SF. feature film, James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day However, the same TV series that the Dancing Cyborg is in, answers such (Carolco, Pacific Western, etc, 1991), and doesn’t take the third an objection in Episode 2: ‘Gnothi Seauton’. Those are the two ancient (2003) and fourth (2009) Terminator feature films into account.

54 The series has been axed after its second season of 22 episodes. Leviant (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2007); or The Region 1 DVDs have many extra features: an extended Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Golem (New York: Farrar, Straus & version of ‘The Demon Hand’ (though I didn’t make use of its extra Giroux, 1983). But in most the Golem doesn’t kill either his maker material); a discussion of the making of this episode; the recaps to or anyone else; he doesn’t in Maresova’s, Rosenberg’s or Singer’s. all but episode 1; Summer Glau rehearsing her ballet; etc. But none of these are on the Region 4 DVDs except a few deleted scenes. 6 Time travel is full of illogicalities, as here. Sarah and John battle to stop SkyNet from ever being created, and she says in the opening 2 It’s parodied in Ridley Scott’s feature film Blade Runner (Ladd Co, credits that this is to change the future, especially John’s. But if & Shaw Bros, 1982), by the Deckard–Pris encounter in J. F. they’re successful John would never have existed at all, and she’d Sebastian’s apartment. The replicant Pris is Swanilda– Coppélia, and be back to being a ditzy waitress perhaps for the rest of her life, they’re surrounded by Sebastian’s audience of automata. Pris because Kyle Reese could never have been sent back through time. mimics an automaton just as Swanilda does, and her acrobatics However, Andy Goode is murdered in 2007 in Episode 5: ‘Queen’s when she comes to life mimic Swanilda–Coppélia’s coming-to-life Gambit’, yet reappears calling himself Billy Wisher in 2027 in Episode dance. And at the end of her dance Pris becomes a lifeless replicant, 6: ‘Dungeons and Dragons’. This does suggest that the series may just as Coppélia becomes a lifeless doll. And Roy Batty cradles Pris’s play with alternate time lines in later seasons. body sadly just as Coppelius cradles Coppélia’s. 7 John Cohen, Human Robots in Myth and Science (London: Allen & 3 Coppélia is based on one of the most seminal automaton stories of Unwin, 1966), 90–91. There’s an 1832 series of pictures of The Turk all, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann’s 1816 ‘Der Sandmann’ (‘The opposite page 97. Von Kempelen (1734–1804) wasn’t merely a con Sand Man’). The influence of his Tales (1814–25) runs so constantly man: he also constructed ‘a remarkable working model of the through nineteenth- and twentieth-century arts, that they make him human vocal organs’, 84; there’s a photo of it opposite page 65. as much ‘the first science fiction writer’ as Mary Shelley, Brian There’re entries in Wikipedia for ‘Von Kempelen’, and also ‘The Aldiss’s choice in his Billion Year Spree (London: Weidenfeld & Turk’; the former has a photograph of a modern reconstruction of Nicolson, 1975), and in his revision of this, Trillion Year Spree the eighteenth-century Turk; the latter a 1784 engraving of it. (London: Victor Gollancz, 1986); chapter 1 in both. There’s a worthwhile Wikipedia entry for ‘Automaton’ too. For titles of stories about automata, check ‘Androids’, ‘Cyborgs’ and ‘Robots’ in John Clute & Peter Nicholls (eds), The Encyclopedia 8 You might remember Summer Glau in Angel, Season 3, Episode 13: of Science Fiction (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993; updated ‘Waiting in the Wings’ (Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar TV, & 20th 1995). There’s no headword for ‘Automata’. Century Fox, 1999–2003), directed by Joss Whedon. She plays the prima ballerina, who dances the main role of Giselle in Adolphe 4 The passage showing his terror of what he’s creating is at the start Adam’s 1841 ballet, Giselle, ou Les Wilis, a role that she’s danced of chapter 5. It was the wonderful narrative hook to her original identically for 110 years. story that she read to Lord Byron, Byron’s physician Polidori and her The name ‘Cameron’ for her character in Chronicles was chosen husband Percy Shelley for their 1816 ghost story contest. But she as a tribute to James Cameron, who originated the ‘Terminator’ itself unfortunately demoted it when she published the story in 1818. in a dream.

5 Stories of golems date especially from the Middle Ages. For 9Quotes from Chronicles’ makers and actors are from the third part examples, see Sona Maresova’s translations in The Prague Golem: of a feature on the Region 1 DVDs, Creating the Chronicles, about Jewish Stories of the Ghetto (Praha: Vitalis, 2004); or Yudl Rosen- the making of ‘The Demon Hand’. berg, The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague (Piotrkow, Poland: Yudl Rosenberg, 1909), translated by Curt 10 Juan Eduardo Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols (London: Routledge &

55 Kegan Paul, 1962), translated by Jack Sage from the Spanish & Stanley Kubrick Productions, 1968). It’s where the ape-like Diccionario de Simbolos Traditionales (Barcelona, 1958), 73. ancestor of the human triumphantly throws its very first tool, a bone, up into the air, and it turns into a satellite or spacecraft above Earth. 11 Walter James Turner, In Time Like Glass (London: Sidgwick & And notice too that Kubrick uses the Blue Danube waltz for the Jackson, 1921); Judith Wright, The Two Fires (Sydney: Angus & ‘dance’ of the spaceships travelling from Earth to the Moon—another Robertson, 1955); William Butler Yeats, the final line of ‘Among example of a larger ‘dance’. School Children’, in The Tower (London: Macmillan, 1928). 16 See ‘Technological Singularity’ on Wikipedia. The makers of Chron- 12 Matthew 7: 13–20 in the Authorised (King James) Version is in full: icles say that it’s where they got their information from about this ‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, particular form of singularity. but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so 17 William K. Hartmann, A Traveller’s Guide to Mars: The Mysterious every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth Landscapes of the Red Planet (New York: Workman Publishing, forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can 2003), 434. a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by 18 Walter De La Mare, the opening words of his best-known poem, ‘The their fruits ye shall know them’. I’ve italicised the parts that are Listeners’, in his collection, The Listeners and Other Poems (London: quoted in ‘The Demon Hand’. Constable, 1912): ‘“Is there anybody there?” said the Travel- ler,/Knocking on the moonlit door’. 13 ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ was filmed after ‘The Demon Hand’, and the team clearly took the opportunity to provide this foreshadowing 19 Pausanias, Hellados Periegesis (2nd century AD); the world’s first in it. As well, at its end when Derek and his fellow escapees run traveller’s guide book: ‘In the front of the temple at Delphi aids to through the ruins, at the bottom of the screen you see a cyborg’s human life have been inscribed, composed by the [Seven] Wise Men, torn-off left hand lying among the rubbish. Now that is overkill! as the Greeks call them ... The Wise Men visited Delphi and dedicated to Apollo the Know thyself and the Nothing too much 14 It’s not relevant to my point here, but the first to issue this invitation [Nothing to Excess] which have become proverbs’ (Peter Levi, trans, in the Terminator story was a human, Kyle Reese. They were his Guide to Greece (2 volumes; Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1971), very first words to Sarah in James Cameron’s feature film, The volume 1, 466 (Book X, 24)). The Temple of Apollo that Sarah refers Terminator (Hemdale Film, Cinema 84, etc, 1984). to is at Delphi, and is the one that Pausanias describes. But the other words of what Sarah calls ‘the entire quote’ are from elsewhere, and 15 One of the finest images of this journey that I know of is Stanley not from this Temple. Kubrick’s in his feature film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (MGM, Polaris,

56 George Zebrowski is the award winning author of Brute Orbits and Macrolife, both of which are included in the Masterpieces of Science Fiction series from Easton Press.

The writer-editor: the rightful custodian of science fiction and fantasy

Guest of Honor speech: Science Fiction Research Association Conference, 20 June 1996

by George Zebrowski

The beginning was not promising, even though, in a sense, everything started what is now recognised as the ‘first New Wave’, by asking for a that needed to be done was done. Hugo Gernsback was a writer of sorts; higher quality of both fiction and thinking from his writers, and for feeding he did start Amazing Stories; but he paid badly and only at gunpoint. them a multitude of ideas for stories and novels. He once said that after Still, the ground was ploughed and ready. Possibilities stirred in the he had written his own best work, he was given the chance to become hearts and minds of writers to be, but the writer-editor was not yet in a dozen or more writers at once by giving out the ideas he could never position to shepherd the work of his comrades. write. One can see this process in Campbell’s novella ‘All,’ which Robert Heinlein wrote as his novel Sixth Column, and which Fritz Leiber also did Harry Bates was a harbinger. He is best known today for his 1940 story, as Gather, Darkness! Campbell saw the serious possibilities of SF and ‘Farewell to the Master’, from which the famous 1951 movie The Day the set out to realise them, modestly accepting the fact that he could not do Earth Stood Still was made; but he is also credited with creating it all by himself and would need help. Astounding Stories as a better paying competitor to Amazing, and for demanding more writerly virtues in the kind of story he bought: well- The help he got were Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, A. E. van Vogt, constructed action stories and elegant brevity for slipping in the ideas. L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, among the newcomers; and Clifford D. Simak, Jack Williamson, Edward E. Smith, among the writers who John W. Campbell got his start in Amazing and Astounding as a writer. were already established. When he came to the editorship of Astounding in 1937, he promptly

57 What Campbell had in him besides the Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction were Campbell’s double vision of the writer-editor was a children; both were edited by notable writer-editors whom Campbell had love and enthusiasm for science fiction, published, and both magazines were developments of his ideas. and a force of personality that could be described as megalomania. But perhaps it only seems that way to people of lesser All through the 1940s, other writer-editors had also been at work. It conviction. The recently celebrated seemed natural that aspiring writers should edit when they could; and screenwriter and film director/actor Campbell’s example went before them. Frederik Pohl, Donald A. Woll- Quentin Tarantino, in a recent interview, heim and Robert A. W. Lowndes edited magazines and anthologies. recalled his perception of other writers Wollheim did some startling things: he published the first paperback SF and film directors in Hollywood when he collection, The Pocket Book of Science Fiction (1943), and The Viking was coming up. He said that they just Portable Novels of Science (1945), thus opening the way for Raymond didn’t seem to care, not even half as J. Healy and J. Francis McComas to edit Adventures In Time and Space much, as he did. They cared, but not as (1946), and for Groff Conklin, not a writer-editor, to do The Best of intensely, not as catastrophically, not as Science Fiction, as his first mining of the magazines for the hardcover completely. Only those who have felt audience. Frederik Pohl invented the original SF anthology with his Star about anything in this way can completely Science Fiction series. Original collections are much harder to do than a understand. It seems to me that if one is reprint anthology of pre-picked stories. The exception to this was Judith going to do anything worthwhile, and do John W. Campbell Jr in the Merril, a writer-editor who brought witty perspectives to her reprint it better than most, one should care in this 1960s. collections and an overwhelmingly pointed approach to her best-of-the- way. year collections from 1956 to 1968.

Along his line of development, Campbell also began modern fantasy, The writer-editors controlled SF in the 50s through magazines and by through his magazine Unknown Worlds, in which he also emphasised the influencing the book publishers. There was not anything like the money qualities of better writing, concern for logic and fact and modern settings. that is available today, but that meant it was no big deal to get started, Campbell saw no reason why fantasy should not be written as if the magic and no one would go broke publishing a new writer. Careers begun in and supernatural were the science and technologies of their worlds, and the 30s and 40s were consolidated in the 50s through hardcovers, original hence subject to logical consistency and extrapolation. paperbacks and paperback reprints. There was a boom in new magazines, a few of them edited by writer-editors like Damon Knight and There’s a lot of fabulous history in all this, especially when one considers Lester Del Rey, but none of them reached the level of influence and how fresh Campbell’s ideas and attitudes seemed at the time. But the direction attained by Astounding, Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy important line to follow out of this creative cauldron is that Campbell was & Science Fiction. setting in motion various talented people, writer-editors like himself. Two of them, Anthony Boucher and H. L. Gold, went on to found two What this meant was that science fiction was at least being edited from competitors to Astounding in the 1950s. The Magazine of Fantasy & the inside, even when the packages did not always reflect this. The 60s Science Fiction was in some ways a fusion of Astounding and Unknown saw the rise of Damon Knight as the editor of the Orbit anthologies; Worlds; and Galaxy emphasised sociological ideas, but also published Frederik Pohl took over Galaxy and If, and created Worlds of Tomorrow. many stories that Campbell would certainly have accepted, especially Campbell was still going strong, having changed Astounding to Analog, those by Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. in whose pages he serialised Dune before any book publisher was willing to risk doing the book. Michael Moorcock had done the impossible, and

58 changed the British magazine New Worlds into the first significant Campbell’s ability to instil trust in the authors who wrote for him. As one alternative to Campbell’s influence (one that did not seem to be a of them, I can say that he always knew what you were about, what you development of Campbell’s ideas), mostly through the heavy influx of meant even if he didn’t like it or thought it failed; and when he accepted ‘writerly’ and ‘literary’ techniques. But Campbell, when I talked with him work from you, you knew it was good, without question. And when he in 1970, lamented the fact that ‘most of the writers who could write well praised you in public or in print, you felt that King Arthur himself had rarely thought well; and most who thought well didn’t write well’. He just knighted you. You did your best for him when he commissioned a pointed to volumes of Orbit and The Best From The Magazine of Fantasy story, because you would not dare disappoint him; and you could trust & Science Fiction and to runs of his own Analog series of anthologies, him to know it was your best, so you wrote without fear — and lo and and grimaced. Oddly enough, New Worlds took up Charles L. Harness, behold, your best came into you with surprising strength! I wish I had an Astounding/Analog writer since the late 40s, and published some of known this sooner about Terry, and had been given more time to show his work; and several Analog writers appeared in New Worlds. Damon him work; but happily, he also set an example to me for my own editing Knight’s Orbit series dominated awards ballots. Wollheim left Ace Books of my fellow writers, and it works. I can get work from talent that only and founded DAW, was replaced at Ace by Frederik Pohl, who left after a writer-editor can get. a short time and went on to build an exceptional program at Bantam Books, where he published Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany against all prophecies of disaster. But the overall influence of the writer-editor had begun to decline by In 1967 and in 1972, Harlan Ellison published two Dangerous Visions 1980, at the same time as the literary gains made by SF in the 70s were collections of original fiction, which were very influential, not only being eroded by SF’s own success — as it permeated the visual media because they opened a New Wave beachhead in the United States, but through television and motion pictures, and publishers began to see that because they celebrated every kind of science fiction: this is not often certain kinds of SF and Fan- pointed out about these two anthologies. As a writer-editor, Ellison was tasy were moneymakers. This able to get the kinds of stories that non-writer editors fail to get. is not strange; the visual potential of SF and fantasy was always there; and as the technology for visual SF and By the mid 70s a new group of writer-editors was coming up. Pamela fantasy progressed, the Sargent followed in the footsteps of Judith Merril by beginning her Women temptations to exploit the of Wonder series, which made their point effectively and continue to this possibilities became over- day in new incarnations; Jack Dann edited major anthologies throughout whelming. Thoughtful, liter- the 70s and 80s, as did I and Gardner Dozois, both original and reprint. ary SF must be grown up to by developing readers; any- But the overarching writer-editor of the period 1964 to 1987 was one can see Star Wars and undoubtedly Terry Carr, who if he had done nothing more than edit the Star Trek. Ace Science Fiction Specials, would have insured his reputation; but he also edited the Universe series of original anthologies, and with Wollheim Oddly enough, the relation- a best-of-the-year series, which later became a solo editorship, a best ship between entertainment of fantasy annual, as well as many reprint collections. A second Ace SF and serious SF was also Specials series was perhaps even more influential. I’ll mention The Left preserved in films and televi- Hand of Darkness from the first series, and Neuromancer from the sion: Star Trek is to serious SF Terry Carr in 1979 second. Carr was not as flamboyant an editor as Campbell, but he had as Star Wars is to pulp enter- (photo: George Turner).

59 tainment. Roughly. dumbed down though it is.

With all qualities except the visual diminished, of course. No one would deny beginning readers and viewers simpler fare; but what is denied too often today is the chance for readers and viewers to grow The writer-editors lost their influence for other reasons: people aged and — to go on to more demanding fare, in their SF and other media. Today died; writer-editors are also writers, and had to concentrate on their own the future of the best SF is being constricted, and its past is being work; internal politics at publishing houses changed; and, the reason abolished, by publishers and money men who, with circular fallacy, call I’ve already alluded to: money began to outweigh quality, and most of upon debased taste as their justification while at the same time continue the writer-editors of SF, however flexible they might have been to get to make that taste. along with publishers and sales forces, were friends of quality first, however buried that might have seemed from time to time. I hope to be wrong about this, and would like to believe instead that new readers do develop and grow, and find SF’s past in the used bookstores, It is clear that the writer-editors created modern science fiction and and learn to see the difference between SF’s various empires: the fantasy, and it got away from them. (SF is now a literary school of several popular, the crude, and the ambitious. People smile at me when I voice generations, coming up on the century mark.) They did this because they this hope; yet I still seem to be here, along with the ambitious class of were writers and editors, and thus afflicted with a creative productive 1970: Michael Bishop, Howard Waldrop, Jack Dann, George Alec Effinger, double vision. An economic climate — people with money to invest — Pamela Sargent, Ian Watson and others. permitted publication; but the money people have never understood what they were doing besides making money.

SF is at once literary and philosophical: writers think about things; that’s Before discussing in more detail the role of the writer-editor (who is why we now have something called future studies, which is unconcerned inevitably a critic of SF whether he likes it or not), I should say a few with literary quality but sees the importance of SF’s thinking about human words about the major non-writer editors of the field. The three most possibilities. We can thank H. G. Wells for the essay ‘The Discovery of prominent in my estimation have been Groff Conklin, Cele Goldsmith and the Future’, in which he saw that there was more to SF than entertain- Judy-Lynn Benjamin Del Rey, and what their example teaches us. ment and aesthetics, then proceeded to think better about the future in his fiction than in his non-fiction. Conklin was a reprint editor; as such he selected from the work of the magazine editors of the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. He preserved the past for The point to keep in mind is that the entertainment economy has new readers. consistently underestimated the major literary movement of the century. It has been intimidated by the cultural authorities to publish serious Cele Goldsmith’s Amazing and Fantastic of the late 50s and early 60s fiction, much of it worthy, in a way that is denied most SF of high were a remarkable pair of magazines: they were literary, entertaining, achievement. Nevertheless, a dozen novels get through every year that and the editorial notes sparkled. She published the early stories of have the packaging of serious work and sometimes the content. Ballard, Le Guin, Zelazny and Disch, and should have continued in her SF work. You would think it couldn’t happen at all. Judy-Lynn Benjamin Del Rey did a few remarkable things in the 70s and An editor I know outside the field listened to the above words the other 80s. Having come up through SF as a knowledgeable fan, she was able day and said, ‘It’s not enough that good work get through, despite. It to make bestselling authors out of Clarke and Asimov, because she knew has to be nurtured.’ Of course, it has been nurtured, to the degree the weight of accomplishment that stood behind them: she consolidated possible, by writer-editors. Otherwise the accomplishment of SF would that achievement by putting the money behind authors whose readers not exist; and the vast spillover into the visual media would not exist, were there and waiting along with new ones. She was able to translate

60 the relative standing of these authors in their field of accomplishment isolation. Perhaps a failed writer might make a good editor, if he could into authentic book packages that attracted book buyers. If you knew overcome his buried bitterness and envy. Terry Carr once said that the the work of these authors, and Judy-Lynn knew you were there, there money a publisher pays has little to do with the quality of the work that was no question that you would buy the books she published. She was is attracted; that depends on the editor’s relationship with writers. a successful marketer of SF and Fantasy in numbers that had never been seen before, because she knew that she was consolidating the past as To emphasise how unique the SF writer-editor has been, consider the well as providing simpler fare to entry level readers. following: in commercial origins, there arose, somehow, serious SF and Fantasy, edited by people who cared about the money only as a means Just a few weeks before her death I spoke with her, and she seemed to continue doing what they love. If publishers fully understood that there about to undertake a major reissue of SF classics. By comparison, today’s are SF authors — the best of them — who care little for wealth except marketing of SF emphasises marketing over quality, but they can’t be as a means to fulfill their talents, the publishers might wonder what they good at it because they don’t have authentic packages to sell; and they are doing publishing these authors. They would have to face what don’t have authentic packages to sell because they are ignorant of SF’s publishers of American letters have had to face: that state of the art, past and of the relative standing of authors; all the knowledge resides ambitious, literate and intellectually challenging SF may be, like most elsewhere, in today’s writer-editors, in a few scholars and critics, in serious fiction, an elite interest, but room must be made for it or risk people like Samuel R. Delany, the most notable writer-critic who has cultural embarrassment. edited a little. Today’s SF is trapped between money and ignorance, and only the writer-editor might have a chance of giving the money people What confuses the issue with SF is that, even in its entertainment a better return. Nevertheless, past examples suggest that a lot can be aspects, SF is filled with serious implications: futures may be very done by non-writer editors. One might imagine a non-writer editor who different from the past; reality may not be anything that we think it is; is so committed to his work, so empathically joined to writers and a love cultures are plastic before a variety of forces, knowledge and technology of writing, that wonders might be his to perform; but as Quentin being the most powerful; in the Star Trek writer’s guidelines authors are Tarantino might say, such a one would have to care obsessively, more told not to set stories on the Federation Earth, because that would open than anyone around him could bear; and I cannot help but believe that up a can of worms — the matter replicator clearly suggests that this is he would sooner or later cross the line and write a book of some kind a socialist future; stories like Heinlein’s ‘Universe,’ or Star Trek’s episode himself. It’s happened. about a generation ship, clearly suggest that religions arise to serve social needs, as forms of social engineering, and use supernatural authority The reasons that the writer-editor is needed are various, and penetrate and truth merely as a convincer to stimulate obedience. SF is a dangerous to the heart of SF’s publishing difficulties. Consider that even the least literature; and completely serious SF plants revolutionary ideas. As with of the writer-editors knows how to talk to talent better than a non-writer the moral mythologies of past literatures, true SF buys into the critical editor, because the writer-editor knows what it’s like to be a writer and nature of science, into its ethics of honesty before the experience of an editor from the inside, while an editor knows only being an editor from nature and experiment, and no one knows where that kind of creativity the inside. This has to be an advantage in stimulating talent to better may lead. The showy, pictorial aspect of SF’s ideas, that seems more work, to happier day-to-day dealings, and to getting a better result. One benign and unthreatening, only help to misdirect our attention from can see this in the shoestring editorships of the past, where a Robert A. serious issues. almost as if we’re trying to tell ourselves things about W. Lowndes or a Ted White might get remarkable results for little money, human possibility in the only way we’ll listen, with one ear. And with that because of his labour-intensive efforts, born of caring. It is possible to function SF finds kinship with the great literatures of the past, which also have a notable non-writer editor who would stay on his side of the fence, conceal serious issues with storytelling and style. SF did this most notably but even the best of these must still be an outsider to talent: it is not his with the satirical and sociological SF of the 50s, and continues now and or her life; she cannot speak to talent as another writer, with sympathy then to slip it past the suits. born of self-knowledge, of the years of hope and disappointment, of

61 The legacy of publishing as a business is that it exists purely to make snake pits in which they have to work. One must blame publishers for money and merit gets through by accident or stealth. By continuing the hiring people they can control (preferred editors are not overly author wrongs of the past, today’s publishers make compact with past wrongs: orientated and don’t cost too much), and who can’t help but fail at the abuse of writers by perfectly legal means, and the inability to deal producing authentic packages. One must blame the publishers for not with or do justice to merit. Today, the effort of salespeople to dictate to hiring people who can get inside what they are selling, and then abiding editors risks irreparable damage to cultural treasures. by their decisions.

SF is a cultural treasure. But the decline of its vulnerable chief custodian, the writer-editor, may mean its demise, or debasement into trivial media productions. Must we accept that merit is uncommercial? Must we believe I’ve mentioned ‘authentic packages’, and I’ve suggested that writer- that our educational base is so poor that only the junkiest, predigested editors are best qualified to produce them; so now I will attempt to show SF can make authors and publishers money? Or should we say instead what an ‘authentic package’ is, and why a writer-editor can be in the best that publishers don’t sell books very well, that they play favourites with position to make it so. their budgets, and that in the end they don’t know, and shouldn’t try to An ‘authentic package’ is the most effective way of presenting an SF guess, what will sell well? novel, or any kind of book for that matter, to its potential readers. It The publishing marketplace is its own worst enemy, because it interferes grows from a knowledge of the author’s place in SF, his or her previous not only with the sale but also with the creation of its own principal accomplishments, which should find expression in the physical book. As product (no milk company could long stay in business if it made milking Michael Moorcock said to me recently, ‘The finished book should be as cows and selling milk so difficult). Rarely does the marketplace ask the much a reflection of the author as is his manuscript.’ The spirit of the cost of being a marketplace. To the degree that good books are published, author should be visible, so that the buyer senses it. It’s a way of building the marketplace is in revolt against itself — unconsciously, of course. Its on the strengths of the author and his work. An inauthentic package past reveals a record of what was good and possibly profitable crushed subtracts all the strengths of an author and his work, and denies him a by a market that could not guess its coming. In every aspect of culture victory at the crucial moment of purchase. — from the popular to the sublime — books, plays, films and musical The telling example of this moment has come my way many times in the works have made their case against all commercial wisdom, but often at last two decades. I often observe and listen to readers in bookstores. ruinous cost to their creators. Not only do they complain about a book’s type size (in hardcover and Creative work should be left to the creators. Commerce should learn how soft!), about the fact that a paperback’s pages will yellow in three to present, lead with merit, and only then follow with bread and circuses. months, or bemoan the sameness of the cover paintings and silliness of It should learn how to build on the past, as Judy-Lynn Del Rey did with the hype, and then fail to buy the book; but they also complain about Clarke and Asimov. Only then might it raise the general popular levels, the fact that rarely does a book look like a book by the author. This and not have to call upon the lowest levels to justify junk publication. recently happened to a paperback series of reprints by Arthur C. Clarke, And it should be guided by people who live at the centre of their field, which did not look like Clarke books at all. I was a witness as two readers whose level of commitment can be clearly seen in every field, but who turned away from the rack and went off to buy an old Gnome Press one are nearly always reduced, as one writer put it, to being the ‘parlour hundred dollar edition because ‘it looked like a book by Clarke should’. guests of the rich’, whose legacy of shame as publishers is always being How, exactly, is an authentic package attempted, and then subverted? justified afresh by cries of necessity, but which seems more like venge- The editor puts the writer in touch with the artist, or they already know ance against talent by the untalented. each other; the artist actually reads the book and listens to what the I should point out that we can’t always blame editors entirely for the writer says; the writer gets to see the jacket copy, which when written

62 by a writer-editor or someone who has actually read the book, is at least remarkable degree. A science fiction editor should know the history of accurate; jacket and bibliographical copy reflects the writer’s standing the field, if only to avoid reinventing the wheel; yet there are editors who and uses the most recent comments of reviewers and critics. And then openly scorn this need for history, who admit they don’t know any, then the painting is done but the art director doesn’t like it. Usually he has fail to draw any significant conclusion from this admission. Additionally, not read the book. Something poster-like and wrong is put on the book, a good science fiction editor should know his science and understand the thus destroying the ‘chain of authenticity’, like breaking the chain of nature of science-orientated SF. Few if any editors know, understand or evidence in a legal case. And up goes the wall between the author and like science-orientated SF; which explains why so much recent SF is built his or her readers. on slighter and slighter conceptions, in which the level of ingenuity and thought is minimal, even as the level of writing rises. Most people in publishing would agree to the idea of ‘genuine packages’. They would even tell you that’s what they do. But they fail to carry out For a number of years now, I have developed a set of ten questions which all the steps needed religiously, and thus hit the wall. can be used to devastating effect on people who profess to be SF editors. To my mind, an inability to answer each question, even partially, is a That wall is a subtle thing; most readers don’t think about it explicitly; sign of a bluffer-editor, whose level of commitment is low, who cares but they do turn away. The ‘chain of authenticity’ is sensed, and must only about getting along with his boss, and has little or no interest in be relied on, on faith, even though in-house people may not like the learning anything. Why should they know the answers to these ten package. The bottom line, attested to in my own work and that of questions? So they will know where a novel comes from, or if it comes countless others, is that whenever I have been part of the ‘authentic from anywhere; whether it is imitative or original. In other words to chain’, the books did much better than those I left to the publisher. The gauge the writer’s accomplishment in more than purely verbal-fictional more input I shouted through the pipeline at the beginning, the more of terms, as a science fiction writer. my work was in the visible result; and that made all the difference. More often it has been like the childhood game of telephone. What are the ten questions?

Genuine packages are an open secret, seldom achieved; more hit upon 10 Which writer has been called SF’s Shakespeare, and why? by luck than by design. The opportunity is too often lost to communicate across the always fragile bridges to new readers and old. 9 Who was S. Fowler Wright, and was he an important SF writer?

Publishers want to build bridges, but they don’t want to hire the necessary 8 Which SF novel has been called SF’s great holy book? engineers, thus ensuring the frequent collapse of bridges. 7 Who was Hugo Gernsback?

6 What did John W. Campbell accomplish as a writer-editor? We should ask the next question: how do you tell who is an authentic 5 What was the New Wave? writer-editor? We can point to who they were in the past, but can we see who they are today? And why should they do any better than their 4 What is the difference between SF and fantasy? non-writer-editor brothers and sisters? Can a publisher tell who they are? 3 Who were the most influential non-writer editors of this century? Let’s try for a few moments. I’ve already mentioned the writer-editor’s first advantage over the editor: the ability to converse with talent from 2 Who were the most important writer-editors? the inside. This does not absolve the writer-editor from being a good judge of fiction, from being an unhyphenated editor. But the level of 1 Which scientific theory is central to SF’s development? commitment in both editors and writer-editors can be measured to a

63 What does knowing the answers to any set of questions mean? One or of paper to sixteen or more; and the clauses all add up to one point: two of mine are perhaps trick questions, and the answers may seem we’re responsible for nothing even when we are. relatively unimportant; but if an editor can answer all of them in detail, say a hundred words for each, then we know whether that editor is committed to a significant degree. I want to mention some doubts as to the stature of today’s writer- The editor who can answer these questions has a shot at fighting the editors — problem with SF publishing, with all publishing in fact — that it’s done — before someone else does. from ‘outside’, rather than from ‘inside’, by people who have only vague, word-of-mouth notions of the relative standing of authors. This denies Their deficiencies may be due to a simple lack of development, a lack of an author not only credit for his accomplishments, but makes it more access to editorial situations in which to grow. We simply cannot see difficult in presenting new work as a genuine package. Editors rationalise today’s writer-editors. Mostly they hold the line at magazines and their failure by claiming that all they have to know is a work’s quality to through anthologies. But a time may come when there may be no judge its importance, but how can ignorance not affect how one reads a writer-editors of any kind, and the wall between money and talent will particular author? Trying to read a work in isolation tears it from its be manned by faceless figures who will be unmovable by agents or human context and traditions. Editors are merely rationalising their lawyers. We may even have writer-editors in name, but lacking all the overwork and lack of time. The mind boggles that writers can be denied virtues of past writer-editors. their standing, their vita, their previous accomplishments, except the monetary. If this happens, and many feel that it is already here in large measure, and has been here in smaller measure since the word was born, then the Many of today’s underpaid and underqualified editors will simply deny very heart of SF will die — a heart that needs to beat and nurture without this kind of charge; they’ve been bluffing for years. And it is true that reference to profit, with quality as its lifeblood; and if this heart fails, they may know a thing or two, and buy good work. The worst editor and then what we have called SF, especially the kind that has at its centre publisher in the world can claim to have bought some good work. But ‘the experience of science’, as Gregory Benford has described it, will what is important is to have an overall understanding, a sense of the become a mere reflection of past glories. New writers may be working fitness of things that is not merely received wisdom, in order to truly just as hard, imitating that glory, imagining that they are writing nurture and succeed with talent. masterpieces, but they might just as well be filling out pages from fiction writing program shells. And this is the only way to have a good shot at gaining a good author a good profit and loss statement: the hard way. The junky authors I don’t The profits in today’s SF were made possible by the past quality work of pretend to fully understand. Some of them may even be good, but we both serious and entertainment SF; but where is the support for today’s can’t see it yet. But as Isaac Asimov said to me many times, ‘No book quality SF that will be the wellspring of commerce to come? There will sells by itself. It must be seen or known about. The more money is put be nothing left to steal from. behind it, the better it will sell, regardless of its quality, for a while, but long enough. And the big secret is that publishers don’t put the same Will a reinstatement of the writer-editor at the book level of publishing amount of push behind all books. Many get way too little, or nothing at solve the problem, given an enlightened publisher willing to give such all. Publishers lay bets; and they try to fix horse races.’ If this is not bad support on faith? faith and the betrayal of talent, then all concepts of contract may be discarded. Perhaps not.

In twenty-five years, I have seen book contracts go from a single sheet Today’s writer-editors have not had a chance at real influence yet. But

64 they and those to come will have their chance only if publishers can be ‘What’s he like, huh? I mean to be in the same room with?’ convinced that it is in their economic interest to draw from the well again. Certainly there is some chance for non-writer-editors to educate them- Well, I told myself, this is an audience of scholars and academics, so I selves to the point of becoming the next best alternative. Perhaps given don’t have to worry too much about ‘ethos’. Watch out for the pathos how badly things are going, publishers may even undertake to hire more, and the self-centeredness that is the trap of writers. writer-editors as a simple reaction. At that point one may hope that But my wordsmith’s vain soul groaned a bit at this, and said you can writer-editors may be able to consolidate their influence before the next have it all: end your speech as follows: received wisdom takes a seat at the helm.

It is not just that in-house editors lack unalloyed motives — that a book must sell well first and be good second. They have to face the possibility We live in an open, creative universe (not a clockwork universe), which that a good book may not sell at all, or not well enough, despite being makes emergent, novel qualities possible. Kurt Gödel, the mathemati- profitable, through no fault of theirs or the author. This last is the terrible cian, proved this in the early decades of this century, in a landmark feat truth that we must repeat to power: so-called unsalable good books must of pure thought that ranks with Relativity as this century’s achievement. be made available by improving the way in which books are presented But the historical movement of human history has been to attempt to and sold. mechanise the enterprise of civilisation, beginning with that first enemy of creative action, the bureaucracy, followed by its firstborn, totalitari- No worthy book should ever be out of print, and no profit too small. But anism. Both are alive and unwell in all businesses that attempt to conduct this waits on Bill Gates. business from the ‘outside’, in purely behavioural terms, to rule talent Today’s publishing proceeds according to its convenience, without any- of all kinds rather than oversee and nurture its inner life, and be its thing but the most grudging efforts to meet the contractual, moral and custodian, not its master. Talent has enough hard work just being talent; psychological needs of talent. It operates with profound misconceptions it sometimes needs custodians; mostly it needs to be left alone to do its about how to treat talent and creative work. A contract, for example, has work. The outsider approach has all the out of touch deluded optimism been described by great jurists as the minimum needed to observe the of a computer program I recently heard about: a program that will predict letter of the law, and that is not the same as what is morally right. the results of surveys, and avoid the hard work. Contractual clauses are contradictorily applied by publishers to different Publishers try to guess which books will have legs. They then cut the legs authors, when it suits the publisher, and the publisher is usually the sole off the others. judge of when to do so or not; the author usually cannot pay to get an independent judge, and just in case he wants to try that, he knows that The perniciousness of rigid approaches is that the plastic nature of his other work and his reputation in publishing will be held hostage in humanity is being turned to stone, that the new is being harnessed to cosmetically innocent ways. serve the banal, that what should be only necessary means seek to be ends in themselves. Thinking about this audience, which represents a continuing effort at insights into what writers do, I wondered at how much ground to cover And all this happens because of a profound ignorance of what we are and in my talk, how much to suggest and how much to say outright. When I the kind of nature that we live in. first studied public speaking in college, I learned about speeches ‘to inform’ and speeches ‘to inspire’. Later I learned about speeches that are Imagine, by way of suggesting the depths of this ignorance, that a writer ‘performances’ and speeches that carry the ‘ethos’ of the speaker, his walks into a publisher’s office and says, ‘Here, look at this. It will show character, which according to Kurt Vonnegut is what most audiences seek you what kind of universe we live in. It’ll help you be more effective. Oh, to get from listening to a writer. on page five there’s a great intellectual tool — the distinction between

65 necessary and sufficient means. It works wonders on even practical considerations. The extremes are: an author needs no editing, only an conundrums.’ editor who recognises the fact; an author who is forced to collaborate with an editor who is a frustrated writer and seeks to impose his views, The publisher might look puzzled, shrug, perhaps laugh in his darkness. especially on a young and insecure author. We have had good editors, Depends on his education, I suppose. both writers and non-writers — Terry Carr and Norbert Slepyan, to mention two. Nowadays, the good editors are fleeing to the smaller And yet, if we could but liberate the creative impulses of our natures, presses, where SF began. and forsake systemisation for a kind of expectant foresight, we might be rewarded with a richer world, and the unwanted killing of all good things The terrifying fact is that most editors are not good at it, and never will would cease. be, but they have a job. Money, as Asimov said before his death, ‘turns everything to shit’. The logic is clear: a work must come to exist for its The hope is that there are some who already know this, and are willing own merits, not for some other purpose. It can sometimes exist for art to repeat it from the top whenever asked. Whether education will do any and money, but that’s s slippery slope, and that’s why most fiction is so good remains to be seen. Thank you. bad — what Lucius Shepard has recently described as the work of ‘craft morons’. This is often skilful work, but it exists only for the money and Epilogue 2009: Ulterior motives careerist vanity of the author, and so turns out to be ... nothing at all.

Although much has changed in publishing since I gave this talk, the need As Gore Vidal once aptly put it, ‘literature has sharp teeth and a capacious for good editing, or even self-editing as part of a writer’s job description, stomach’, and the only way we can have a chance, as writers, of has not changed and is not likely to change. I do not mean editing of belonging to genuine accomplishment, is to worry about it. The craft mechanics — clarity, spelling, grammar, repetition removals, etc. What morons are not troubled by the idea. I mean, and specifically for SF, is an orientation on the editor’s part, a recognition of SF’s character and a knowledge of its past achievements, Today, the writer-editors are even rarer than in 1995, existing on the and a dedication to its serious ambitions aside from commercial enter- fringes, in the anthology market, where they are tolerated and feared tainment. Provocative thought, to name a quality other than entertain- by in-house editors, lest they take their jobs. Not to worry; the writer- ment. editors are much too critical to be tolerated in corporations, which have no idea of SF’s contribution, and hire young editors to oversee the Also, an editor should have some critical awareness of him- or herself as playpen. These eventually throw in with the writers and are fired, or join a mediator between the house and the writer, between the editor’s the corporate survival plan. career/job preservation, the ulterior motive of profit and the writer’s merits. George Effinger once described the relationship of the writer to But the history stands. Writer-editors (Campbell, Pohl, Wollheim, Knight, his or her editor–publisher as that of the cobra and the mongoose, with Lowndes, Boucher, Gold and others) created the field of SF and fantasy, the cobra trying to swallow the mongoose and so often failing — the stood by its ideals in varied ways, rescued the magazine work of the past, publisher being the cobra, and the mongoose’s success in being able to were variously pushed out, and whose successors do not wield the same resist and outlast the cobra. Often the writer outlasts editors, imprints, influence, but still set an example for the better of the non-writer reviewers and sales figures, and dies with an intact accomplishment custodians, whose occasional, guilty championing of worthy financial beyond sales, reviews or availability outside the collector’s catalogues. losses (losses because the bar is set too high) can only lose them their jobs. Thus a culture is hollowed out from the inside. I came to believe that the entire relationship of editor to author has to be rethought, and that still remains an open question, based on the above — Copyright © 1996, 2009 George Zebrowski

66 A lovely dollop of trollop: A. Bertram Chandler’s John Grimes from Rim Worlds burnout to space-lane larrikin

by Frank Weissenborn

First presented as a paper to the Nova Mob, Melbourne’s SF discussion group, September 2009.

Introduction (Part 1) Today, we have the audio book and the iPhone. We can sit these machines beside us and they will happily chat to us. As a narrator, Dust jacket blurb for the John Grimes adventure The Far Traveller: Chandler might have been perfect for this medium. But considering that his career spanned fifty or more years, encompassing 46 novels and Take one thoroughly spoiled, fabulously wealthy El Doradan baroness, more than 200 works of short fiction, would we ever have wanted to hit one solid gold space yacht complete with almost human pilot- the Off button, or throw the machine against a wall? computer, one piratical space tramp captain, add the accident-prone John Grimes, late of the Federation Survey Service, stir and mix Much of Chandler’s work reads as boys-only science-fiction adventure, thoroughly — and the things that happen, shouldn’t happen to a complete with space-age gizmos, bug-eyed monsters and naked, or near Morrovian dog. naked woman, to be rescued. And in this respect, Chandler seems never to have forgotten the science fiction of his youth, the same pulps of the Introduction (Part 2) twenties, thirties and forties that inspired Gene Roddenberry with mani- Unlike the mind that produced the Iliad, or any of the works attributed fest conquest and that was later to launch his wagon train to the stars, to Shakespeare, A. Bertram Chandler’s mind does not scale the human piloted by the first ever intergalactic superstars to manage a post- condition in all its glory and failure. It works on a more singular level, television career, be it in the same wagon train, in the forms of Shattner the importance being placed on the everyman, those of us with no and Nimoy. particular destiny in mind, other than our next meal, or our next bed But unlike the science fiction of 1950s Hollywood, its flying saucers partner. Thus, he takes the time-honoured approach of the fireside wobbling to earth on fishing line, and the science fiction of 1970s George yarn-spinner. As such, he fits a tradition. Lucas, which pioneered giant starliners which took three days to fly A merchant seaman for most of his working life, he was very much the across the screen, by which the time we’d all gone home, taking our salty old sailor, a clay pipe to his mouth, a yellow stain to his whiskers, popcorn with us, Chandler was to stick to toy-boy rockets with sleek, and full of stories of grand adventure and derring-do. gleaming tail fins, driven by such engines as the Ehrenhaft drive, which

67 could be termed with such esoteric vernacular as gaussjammer.

Thus Chandler was what we expected of him. In writing science fiction, he sold to a market that knew what it liked, and expected it, and this didn’t necessarily mean the same parametric quality that earned you a reputation in the New York Review of Books. Thus Chandler gave us Grimes, and not Othello.

Work and life

Prelude

The castle was closer now and the vehicles were climbing the hill on which it stood. The castle was closer and, drifting down against the wind came the thin high note of trumpets, the rattle of kettle drums. The castle was closer, towering black and seemingly impregnable against the dark sky ...

And so Chandler goes on, obviously wanting us to get up close and personal with the action. The story is The Rim of Space, first of the ‘Rim Worlds’ novels, where the protagonist Derek Calver is charged with the responsibility of rescuing fellow crew member Jane Arlen from a leading landowner’s son who has kidnapped her.

The repetition in the sentencing is a clever approach. It saves the struggle of coming up with the start of the next sentence. And it works. Chandler’s protagonist gets into the castle.

Bravely armed with a gun and his own view of women as trouble makers to be slapped about and yelled at, Calver is handled with the time- honoured approach: anything is possible if you have to rescue the girl, be it good in bed or not. He swings in by balloon to rescue Jane, and his holler never seems to become lost in the jungle.

This is A. Bertram Chandler writing in 1958. How did he arrive?

The merchant seaman

Arthur Bertram Chandler was born in the Hampshire county town of Aldershot, in England in 1912. But he did not grow up there. This privilege was reserved for the small market town of Beccles, in Suffolk, where he also attended the Sir John Leman School. As a student, he became reasonably proficient in English, chemistry, physics and mathematics,

68 but dreamed of being elsewhere. For this, we have science fiction to then master. blame. It made sense to settle in Australia, and Chandler did so in 1956, no Chandler was bitten by the bug, having discovered H. G. Wells’ The Time doubt inspired by the alien landscape and the sight of his first kangaroo. Machine in the school library. He was eleven. It fired his imagination, He became a citizen, but not landlocked. The sea still held its attraction, and he moved on to Burroughs, and then the magazines Science and and he was to resume his merchant career aboard Australian and New Invention and Amazing Stories. As it does for all of us, science fiction Zealand vessels until retirement age in 1974. took him to exotic lands and introduced him to alien cultures. For a boy trapped in Beccles, Suffolk, home of something perhaps no more exotic Sadly he was to die only ten years later, found at the age of 72 by Susan than David Frost, Chandler would have wanted to find his Martians — away from the home at the time, and Chandler already a day dead — anywhere he could. This could only have meant the world’s oceans, and in their Sydney home. the mysteries of their uncharted depths. First words For any adolescent — especially those like Chandler, reared on the lurid To the best of knowledge, Chandler’s first published words appeared in covers of early science-fiction pulps where distressed maidens clad in a letter to the British publication Amazing Stories. Chandler was fifteen: gossamer were to be found in every issue awaiting the rescue from the boy with the biggest ray gun — the fact that available maidens might I think your magazine beats any magazine publisher here in England. now be found at every port with the frequency of ripe fruit falling from It seems you have a rather nasty habit, however, of resurrecting a tree would seem incentive enough to take to the waters. But Chandler stories from Science and Invention. Most of your readers are old had another reason. readers of that periodical, and it is irritating to see these stories published. Too much daydreaming about efforts to rescue Rapunzel in space led to him failing matriculation. There was nothing left for him now but Barnacle This is a typical Chandler letter: serious, and considered. He was to write Bill’s treasure chest, and at the age of 16, he was to gain his sea legs many such throughout his career. It says a lot about the man, and he aboard a tramp steamer for the Sun Shipping Company. followed this approach through to his fiction. He first published in Campbell’s Astounding. The Sun’s ships were to ply the coasts of India, Java, China, Burma and Fremantle, Western Australia — before it was officially put on the map As the story goes, Chandler delivered his first manuscript to John W. by the America’s Cup — in search of Chandler’s maidens. Finding none, Campbell by berthing his ship directly in Campbell’s office — presumably Chandler was to return to England to attend the King Edward VII Nautical to get his attention. Despite the damage to fixture and furnishings, School in London to sit for the Second Mate’s Certificate of Competency, Chandler got published. The story was ‘This Means War’, which appeared thinking that a uniform might improve his chances. It may have. in the May 1944 edition of Astounding. He was to follow with plenty more, and the October 1945 publication of Astounding saw the publication of He was to marry twice. The women were Joan and Susan. Susan was ‘Giant Killer’, his own personal favourite. the second. From short stories to novels: Chandler on the Rim The marriage to Susan was to last till his death — something in the sea air perhaps, the courtship taking place in 1955, she travelling to Sydney Like many writers, Chandler first learned his craft through the writing of on board his ship, and he then in the employ of the Shaw Savill & Albion short fiction. Progressing to novels, he found himself very much at an Company as chief officer. The union was enough for him to settle for the advantage. It was a simple matter of stringing his sea adventures southern waters. He resigned from Shaw Savill to enter the employ of together in the time-honoured tradition of the traveller’s tales. Science the Union Steam Company of New Zealand, becoming chief officer and

69 fiction easily allowed this. Board a starship; experience a series of interplanetary escapades; join the dots.

But an obvious question follows: destination? Of all places, Chandler was to find himself out on the Rim. In an essay published in the Australian Science Fiction Review No 3, September 1966, he explains:

Once upon a time I was the official chronicler of the Rim Worlds ... when my state of mind was such that I just naturally gravitated to the bleak cold edge of the Galaxy and, masochistically derived a perverse pleasure, from living there.

This view of Chandler as a misfit, burnout, a man on the edge, is interesting in itself. In his own career as a merchant seaman, Chandler chose the less-travelled routes, and the rust buckets that were left to ply them. However, it could be that Chandler just felt the way many science fiction writers and readers felt at the time: that science fiction addicts were peculiar creatures living in slanshacks, or in not finding slanshacks, hiding themselves behind lurid book and magazine covers in trains and buses as if this somehow would not identify them. Whatever the case, Chandler obviously identified with those feeling cast out from the mainstream, and like many exiles was to write of his experiences in a series of postcards from the edge.

He initially identified four primary Rim planets: Lorn, Faraway, Ultimo and Thule. And from these travelled the Rim Runners. One such, identified in New Worlds 81 (1959/03), was Rim Runner Chief Superin- tendent Capt. John Grimes. The story was ‘Close Encounter’, and thus we first hear of Chandler’s most enduring and popular Rim misfit.

False Fatherland (1968)

Grimes was to have a long evolution, so long in fact that he often got stretched thin at points, leaving Chandler to fill in the blanks. One such stretch, though no blank, was Chandler’s 1968 account of Grimes, titled False Fatherland.

In this tale, we learn that John Grimes has broken free from the Rim to pilot the Interstellar Federation ship Seeker III. With him is Dr Margaret Lazenby, one of his earliest love interests. That she is present is a good thing, because in False Fatherland, Chandler asks one of the biggest questions of all time: what would a world be like without women?

70 For the answer, Chandler has done his homework. theless reinforces the view that life consists of only one kind, and one sex. But what of themselves? He names the planet of first expansion human colonists Sparta. A good choice. The ancient Greek city-state of Sparta was famous in its time for On the planet exists a secretive, elite class of doctors. They control the its military prowess and its men-only approach to the wearing of sandals birth machines. From these machines, babies spring forth en masse, and and tunics. It left no room for women. all of one sex. All the Spartan men have to do is donate their sperm — clearly a miraculous substance that weeps from ones dangling bits and Chandler is at home here. A woman on board ship is clearly the quickest promotes fission. route to Davey Jones’ locker. And so it is on Sparta. But the doctors have perpetuated a conspiracy of silence promoted by Women, if they existed, would be as welcome as harpies. Real men could the colonial founders. These men were clearly all sailors at sea, holding do without out, being able to see each others’ legs below their tunics. firm to the belief that women should not only be left back in port, but better still, be forgotten all together. But failing this, they were at least However, when Margeret Lazenby, together with other female crew, step suited to the harvesting of ova. Thus the birth machines. forward from the Seeker, like sperm-bottled adolescents the Spartans find themselves jostling elbows to get a look. This was the secret kept from the Spartan men. Women existed, but they lived off world, and were all a part of a secret trade in ova. As for the The women are clearly human, but unlike themselves, they sprout chest birth machines, supplied with ova and sperm, males and females were turrets. These are quickly taken for secret weapons, the Spartan men produced, but the females, without the appropriate dangling bits, were experiencing a peculiar rise in blood pressure when the turrets are simply thrown to the wolves. brought close, causing then to thrust forward with their shooting guns. It’s quite a shock. The creatures seem to exert some kind of hypnotic The belief that only one sex existed was perpetuated, and the babies power. The men can’t seem to keep away. Chandler writes: from the birth machine left to be reared by Spartan male wet nurses — those of the Spartan male gender with a limp wrist, more happy to take ‘There was a fight, sir?’ on a feminine role instead of fighting. ‘Brilliant, Brasidus, brilliant. There was a fight ... and the Arcadian was Sparta, then, is clearly a world where men are encouraged to be men, beaten up a little, and then stripped. There was, you will understand, and milksops in want of wearing skirts thought second-class citizens. This some curiosity as to what her body was like under her uniform ... At is a situation that might have gone on indefinitely but for John Grimes least four hoplites had sexual intercourse with her by force ...’ and Margaret (Peggy) Lazenby. ‘So it is possible, sir, in spite of the malformation.’ In the course of their investigations, it is learned that the doctors are ‘It’s all possible, all right. Everyone in the tavern would have had her secretly smuggling in women for their private pleasure. It is not so much ... Then the police condescended to intervene.’ doctors and nurses, but doctors and find the ova. Grimes and Peggy are onto it, with Peggy leading the charge for women’s rights. There is a At this point it would be fair to ask how the men of Sparta believed happy ending: the Spartan men discover women and the joys of the reproduction takes place. breast, and the wet nurses, a greater empathy for their cross dressing.

They have observed that many of the planet’s animals reproduce by The evolution of Grimes fission — the multiple division of cells within an animal until a similar offspring sloughs off from its parent. Disgusted by this, seeing it as a In the Rim World tales, Chandler gives us snapshots of many lives. Nearly primitive display of egotism run amok, for the men of Sparta it never- all are dysfunctional to some degree, but John Grimes, however, was to

71 prove somewhat different. How did he evolve? G The Road To The Rim

Chandler says: G To Prime The Pump

G The Hard Way Up Grimes, somehow he just happened — a minor character at first, and then taking charge. And always one jump ahead in rank. When I was G The Broken Cycle still chief officer, he was Captain Grimes, When I was master he was G Spartan Planet Commodore Grimes, When I sort of honorary commodore he was made an honorary admiral. When my wife wants to annoy me, she G The Inheritors refers to him as Hornblower. G The Big Black Mark. Believing Chandler, that Grimes just happened, and evolved over a Middle Grimes period of time, one can perhaps simply guess that Chandler stumbled upon Grimes as a character whose shoes fit his own feet, and that he Middle Grimes deals with Grimes’s life and hard times after his resignation then evolved Grimes to realise his own dreams of travelling in space. from the Federation Survey Service and before his becoming a citizen of the Rim Worlds Confederacy. In his own biographical notes on Grimes, Chandler relates that Grimes was born in the city of Alice Springs on Primus 28259. His father was G The Far Traveller George Whitley Grimes, a moderately successful author of historical G Star Courier romances, and his mother, retaining her family name, was Matilda Hornblower, a domestic solar heating engineer. G To Keep The Ship

This gives us some obvious Australian links. Others would be that both G Matilda’s Stepchildren

men smoked a foul-smelling pipe, both had long careers in their chosen G Star Loot vessels, and both travelled far and wide. G The Anarch Lords It appears, then, that Chandler simply got cloned into Grimes’ boots, a G Find The Lady (Eventually published as The Last Amazon). technology that Woody Allen gave us in Sleepers. This is a fair list of titles. There is no doubt that it represents an author And the cloning seems to have worked. not only prolific, but with enough talent in reserve to select the type of Grimes comes across as the happy-go-lucky sort: the type that takes titles that would best headline pulp fiction romances. One would think things as they come, doesn’t weigh in too heavily with moral judgments, any country would be only too be happy to keep such a man on their and if he thinks about the ways of the universe, it is not in the abstract, payroll. Australia, though, is no such country. and not too deeply. As such, he is basically the everyman type. We can Australia’s chief occupation is with sport. Its chief sport involves the all identify with him. We, in our own way, are all like him. But as he aged, kicking of a ball around a field, but it seems to have extended this to the and as Chandler aged, Grimes kept evolving. kicking of its best talent, in whatever medium, out of the country. Early Grimes Chandler did sell in Australia, but if you wanted to eat more than Vegemite on toast, you had to sell overseas. Apart from his sales to Early Grimes covers Grimes’ Survey Service career, from Ensign to Europe and the United States, one such country was Japan. Commander. It is probably only a mere accident of fate that Japan didn’t become the

72 science fiction capital of the world instead of the United States.

Sooner, rather than later, the Americans managed to turn every good science fiction idea into a tale of franchise acquisition by an ideological military junta in pajamas. This is to be bemoaned, and it could have suggested to Japan to attack Pearl Harbor sooner.

But nevertheless, Japan took to science fiction in its own time, and more importantly, in its own way. This is only what could have been expected from a country celebrated as a children’s electrical toy land, where if it’s cute, mechanical and lends itself well to anime, it comes out of a vending machine.

Japan turned science fiction into the future-present by the very will of its ever-adolescent bobbysoxers in pleated skirts and pigtails, and boys with a gun. Chandler was at home. His reward? Some of the best paperback cover art in his career, including Japan’s unique take on what must be considered your basic pleasure model: platinum-haired, red pouting lips, and her best attributes on show.

To Keep the Ship (1978)

Chandler was then, by all accounts a success. And he had his own teenage Japanese girl fan club, each girl complete with merchant seaman cap and duffel coat cut of the knees. They came out of the vending machine. But it must be remembered that Chandler had a stable career as a seaman until his retirement in 1974. He did not have to sell. What kept him going?

At a guess, it was the adolescent boy never wanting to give up his dreams of intergalactic adventure and the gossamer-clad women to be rescued. Chandler, even in the age when science fiction seemed to be turning on its own founders with the introduction of the New Wave, and the ability to write fantasy novels of ever increasing length, Chandler kept to his ship and to his typewriter, and to writing in his own unique way.

In 1978, only six years from his death, he gave us the John Grimes novel To Keep the Ship. By this time, despite his everyman characteristics, Grimes has evolved to become somewhat of a sexual dynamo, with all the added ingredients of a type of intergalactic, bungling James Bond.

To Keep the Ship begins:

73 There is a tide in the affairs of men that, taken at the flood, leads to sexually when other animals are in heat. He is sued for their loss, and fortune. But tides have a habit of ebbing — and Grimes’ personal tide when he is unable to pay his defence case, his ship is held for security. had ebbed. While waiting for the dust to settle, and his libido to return back to normal, he takes a job ship-keeping the obsolete merchant liner the Bronson At this point in his career, Grimes has decided to set up shop as ship Star, her captain having taken shore leave. owner and strike out on his own, rather than in the employ by such agencies as the Interstellar Federation’s Survey Service. For a ship, he It is from this point that the theme of To Keep the Ship becomes very has chosen one made entirely from an isotope of gold. The ship is called much that of the title. Grimes must earn back his ship. The title may well Little Sister, and the business, Far Traveller Couriers. suit, but given Chandler’s penchant for British-style bawdiness, it is a wonder that the story wasn’t optioned for one of the ‘Carry On’ series of To Keep the Ship begins with Grimes being charged with the responsibility films, and renamed. One can imagine Sid James as Grimes and Kenneth of transporting a couple of valuable Lerrigans from Pangst, their native Williams as his bed interest, and a title such as Carry On Blast Off. world, to the zoo in New Syrtis. But Grimes, acting out the three stooges Possibly, Chandler was aware of this himself, though he goes somewhat in his own mênage à trois, bungles the job. overboard.

The Lerrigans are a type of Terran Pekinese dog, but bigger. Not knowing Much of To Keep the Ship reads like Errol Flynn had the day off to be much about these animals, but thinking them harmless enough, Grimes replaced by the Marquis de Sade. As the story evolves, Chandler gives them the run of the ship while he sleeps, despite being warned swashbuckles his way into every bedroom situation including, ‘Walk the strongly against letting them out of the cage. Chandler writes: plank, but keep the stilettos on.’

He [Grimes] had not thought of Maggie Lazenby for some quite The stilettos come in the form of Fat Suzie, one of a group of counter- considerable time, but he was dreaming about her now. In the dream revolutionaries seeking to restore the monarchy to the planet of Dun- she was naked, just as he was in reality, and her body was pressed to levin, by overthrowing the current First Peoples’ Minister. his and she was kissing him ... He felt himself stiffening, knew in some remote corner of his mind that this was only a dream and that very Fat Suzie is described by Chandler as possessing average height, soon he would be achieving a lonely climax. But it was a long time reddish-tinted golden hair, and a chubby face, distinguished by an since he had had a woman and the dream was a good one. What if his up-tilted nose and generous, scarlet-lipped mouth — ‘a lovely dollop of bed sheet were stained with semen? The ship’s laundry facilities were trollop’. better than merely adequate. The counter-revolutionaries take over the Bronson Star, kidnapping Chandler, clearly, has never forgotten his adolescent dreams, or the Grimes in order to help with their plot. As conspirators, however, the morning consequences. No adolescent, however, could possibly have members of the group are a failure, and soon find themselves on the dreamed up the consequence of this particular try at buttered scones run, seeking to hide their identity via body sculpture. between the bed sheets. On the point of climax, Grimes is set upon by the best fluffers in the business. The Lerrigans spring into action for the Fat Suzie, who has become Grimes’ lover during their adventures, resorts money shot. But Grimes has his shooter ready — hidden in a locker under to remodelling herself in the image of Grimes’ longlasting love interest his bed, wakes in time, and manages to unload even before he gets has Margaret Lazenby, in the hope of continuing the affair. But the plan fails. hand on the gun. What is left if the Lerrigans, not even the ship’s laundry Piqued, Suzie separates from Grimes, but upon parting, gives him a facilities could clean up. present. The present turns out to be a miniature Fat Suzie, made from the leftover cells of the old Suzie, and suspended within a glass bottle of This is the wet dream of our nightmares. Grimes has clearly overslept. life-preserving fluid. Hauled before the judiciary, he learns that the Lerrigans are stimulated

74 In a fit of nostalgia, Grimes keeps the present on his desk. However, Paul Collins was the publisher, and one wonders what he would have when the Mannschenn drive fails and breaks from its faster- than-light thought of Chandler. Certainly it is worth a smile to think that he imagined travel, the Bronson Star jolts back to normal speed. Little Suzie topples, him as a type of shameless Benny Hill. A skit would have imagined the jar breaking, and the fluid leaking out. Chandler in ship’s master’s cap and greatcoat, him smoking a foul-smelling pipe while waiting in hiding in the local park for the schoolgirls in their Grimes mistakes this as the end of Suzie. He flushes the remains down miniskirts, blouses and Mary Janes, ready to give hyper-animated the ship’s sewage system, she ends up in the ship’s food vats, grows into pursuit. And this about sums up The Wild Ones. hundreds of mini Suzies, which, resorting to competitive cannibalism, become one large Fat Suzie all over again. But there is a difference. Enter The story begins with Grimes returning home before his next assignment the Marquis de Sade. in Little Sister. Home proves to be Woomera, known to us for the launching of long-range missiles and rockets, and now, of course, John She growled ... sprang for him, clawed hands outstretched ... with her Grimes, thanks to Chandler. In returning home, Grimes only has good already bloodstained teeth, went for his throat. intentions in mind, planning no more than a simple visit to his parents, and a bit of rest and relaxation. However, he makes the mistake of taking It was not the first time Grimes had been in intimate contact with a with him two new shipmates, Shirley and Darlene, and the visit degen- naked woman, but it was the first time that he had been on the erates into an exercise of musical chairs in bed and in the cool, green defensive ... He brought his fists up to try and pummel her sensitive waters of the local swimming hole, where, naturally, it is necessary to breasts ... managed to get his right hand open, found a taut nipple, bath naked. squeezed. Quick to catch onto these antics is Grimes’ mother Matilda. Needless to She screamed ... say, she doesn’t approve, but she has more than her hands full with her He squeezed harder ... husband. There has been another addition to the household, and for naughtiness, Grimes senior appears to be outdoing his infamous son. He ... brought his left knee up between her thighs, felt the warm moistness that, in other circumstances, would have been sexually George has bought a robot. Her name is Seiko. She’s as pretty as stimulating — that was, he realized with a mixture of shame and clockwork, and its only by miracle that the old man manages to keep his horror, sexually stimulating. Again he brought his knee up harder ... hands off her dials and not take her to bed. Needless to say, her life is shortlived in the household. The next time we hear of Seiko, she is aboard She recovered fast and hit him again, a thunderbolt of feminine flesh Little Sister, ordered away by Matilda, but secretly crated aboard the ship that should have been desirable ... by the wily old George. In flight, and in the depths of space, her attributes aren’t wasted. There is more than enough room in Grimes’ bed. This Would [she] double in size if [she] ate him? becomes part two of the aptly named The Wild Ones.

Perhaps it was really Chandler that gave birth to Hannibal Lector, though The continuing story involves the rescue of seal-like sentient beings from in female form. But as wild as this sounds, Chandler obviously thought the hands of murderous Quakers on a foreign planet, bestiality at sea there might still be some room for added spice. In 1984, shortly before with Shirl and Darlene, witch trials, and the saving of the seals by Seiko, his death, he published The Wild Ones. she taking on the role of a robotic mother Gia. If asked how Grimes fits into this picture, he really becomes no more than a passive observer. The Wild Ones (1984) Like Peter Sellers in the film Being There, his main comment is ‘I like to This novel could easily have passed for another ‘Carry On’ film, though watch’. it would be hard to think of a title. A lot happens. Mostly involving sex.

75 The Wild Ones is indeed out there on the fringe of permissible. And it is perhaps no wonder that Chandler sits back to do no more than watch. But we cannot accuse him of being unique in his taste for voyeurism. We are all guilty. And one of our other guilty pleasures is our lust for horror.

Frontier of the Dark (1984)

In 1984, the same year that Chandler published The Wild Ones, and sadly, the same year of his death, he published Frontier of the Dark. His gaze is firmly on horror. But the year of publication is about it for similarities. Neither Paul Collins as publisher, nor John Grimes as protagonist, is involved.

It could perhaps be speculated that both were losing sleep over the publication of The Wild Ones, imagining as Henry Miller might have in publishing the Tropic of Cancer, the possible impact on their careers in the wake of obscenity trials. But we must also remember that Chandler’s work featured all manner of protagonists, not just Grimes, and surely this had to be. A writer shows us many masks. All themselves. In Frontier of the Dark, the mask Chandler chose was Lon Chaney Jr, or rather, Chaney’s The Wolf Man.

In this work, Chandler imagines the conceit that going faster than light turns back the biological clock, that in awaking the ancient genes within us, we time-travel backwards to become Lycons, but not apes, as we would have otherwise expected.

At a guess, it could be that Chandler was misreading Darwin’s Origin of Species. Everybody but the fundamentalist in America’s Midwest knows that we descended from apes. But more likely, it is probably only Chandler’s proclivity for a species of woman that exhibits the best qualities of a Persian cat, that they are slinky, thus aiding their easier passage beneath the sheets of a bed. Consequently, this allows Chandler his plot, and its chief perversions. His Lycons are left trapped in the enclosed environs of a rocket ship manned by an all-female feline crew. He writes:

Then he saw what it was she had. A cat ... Claws drew angry furrows down her face as she lifted the cat to her mouth. There was a semi-articulate cry — then a silence followed by a horrid dripping sound. Blood ran down Linda’s chin ... a few smears out of reach of her tongue, other smears on her small breasts. She looked ... sated.

76 The horror is obvious enough, but with a fetish twist. It’s cat against dog with all the erotic implications of a night out at the Hellfire Club with a cat-o’-nine-tails. And as an exercise in fetishism, it might well explain something of Chandler’s psychological makeup, or pathological bent. In another instance, when Chandler’s chief male and female Lycon protagonists find a single male cat stowaway on board the all-female rocket ship, we have this to ponder:

‘I’d like to know,’ said Linda, ‘Just who brought their boyfriend along for the trip ... Did I tell you, that Carlin gave me the [cat] version of a vibrator?’

Falsen thought it over. Carlin? She exuded sexuality, and she would not be fussy where she took her pleasure. Any member of whatever species would do for her, as long as he was male.

To better understand this, we must understand that Chandler grew up in an age before condoms were sold off the shelf in supermarkets, and vibrators of any length or type could be purchased at the corner sex shop along with your own porn-look-a-like blowup doll as bed companion.

All considered then, Chandler would certainly have known how cats like to take their pleasure, but more interestingly, Chandler was 72 when the work was published. This certainly makes him no spring chicken, but he still managed to stand at attention with the best of them. A good innings all up.

Conclusion

We owe Chandler many debts.

In life we are often asked what we think of such and such. In these moments of quick assessment and judgment, it is worth asking whether we are indeed capable of calling the tune, and also, whether what is really required here is an assessment of value.

So to be fair, could it be that Chandler’s fiction is made of the same gold as John Grimes’ space yacht Little Sister? It’s precious stuff, not to be scoffed at. In Chandler’s own words, we read him contemplating the death of an officer to the depth of space:

This was not the first Deep Space funeral in his experience — but the

77 others had all been it towards the Center, with the bright stars above far cry from the way it is now, where we don’t want to know each other, and below and to all sides, where it was easy to regard those same and we can’t read everything, the average book being the size of a brick, stars as the veritable Hosts of Heaven. Here, on the rim, the final good for building houses, if you don’t mind a plot stretched to the negation was too close to the living. It must be closer still to the dead breaking point and themes so diluted they run out from between the ... Would he, wondered Calver, plunge into some blazing sun years or pages. Thankfully, of these last two sins, Chandler is neither guilty nor centuries or millennia from now? Or would his frozen body circle the responsible. rim forever? Chandler gave us tales in the old tradition of science fiction. He did so To me, Chandler’s tune is clear, and his value only a matter of currency. by taking the rocket ship into outer space long before outer space became I’m happy to have Rodgers and Hammerstein for a libretto and the confused with inner space, leaving everyone lost in the convolutions of currency to be the souvenir program at the exit. Chandler gives us each other’s cerebral cortex. Chandler, returning from his adventures, entertainment and the message in a sugared placebo — the message we and sprinkled in star dust, wanted nothing more than to tell us of the wanted to have when we didn’t want a message. wonders that he found. And he did so, choosing as his method the ripping yarn. We should be grateful. Listening to him, he was very much our shipmate and friend. And A. Bertram Chandler is part of science fiction’s history. He is so because throughout, he stayed true to the sea. It was a matter of respect. And he was there at the beginning, entering the field as an author because of honour. And keeping the shine on the klaxon. And at playing the host, he himself was a fan. In so doing, he enjoyed the company of such he was very much the captain at the dinner table. We had the pleasure notaries as John W. Campbell, George O. Smith, Murray Leinster (Will F. of an enjoyable evening in his company — only the men in the lounge Jenkins), Theodore Sturgeon and Lester del Rey, and came to write and the women in the bed, please. We only have to remember how he science fiction of the type that gave both voice and definition to the era would welcome us on board, ‘Come in, this is liberty hall; you can piss we now call the Golden Age. on the mat and call the cat a bastard.’

The Golden Age was a one-off, special period in history, never to be — Frank Weissenborn, 2009 repeated. The group was small. Everybody knew each other: writers and readers. And it was possible to read everything the field had to offer. A