SCIENCE FICTION RICHARD GEIS DARRELL SCHWEITZER INTERVIEWS: F3E3E3IKPmF.?SULWILSJMV1£TMPM

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1986 It.PiVVV$2.50 ORSON SCOTTCARDJOHNBRUNNER

ROTSLER WILLIAM GILLILAND ALEXIS SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW (ISSN: 0036-8377)

P.O. BOX 11408 AUGUST, 1986 — Vol. 15, No. 3 WHOLE NUMBER 60 PORTLAND, OR 97211 RICHARD E. GEIS—editor & publisher PHONE: (503) 282-0381 PAULETTE MINARE', ASSOCIATE EDITOR

COVER BY MICHAL DUTKIEWICZ PUBLISHED QUARTERLY 48 LETTERS FEB., MAY, AUG., NOV. By Charles Platt 4 ALIEN THOUGHTS Mike Resnick ~ SINGLE COPY - $2.50 By Richard E. Geis Rick Norwood Andrew Weiner 7 SMALL PRESS NOTES Elton T. Elliott By Richard E. Geis John J. Pierce SUBSCRIPTIONS Mark Cotta SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW 8 YOU GOT NO FRIENDS IN THIS Darrell Schweitzer WORLD P.O. BOX 11408 Fernando Q. Gouvea PORTLAND, OR 97211 By Orson Scott Card Ian Coveil Neal Wilgus 22 A CONVERSATION WITH For final quarterly issue #61: $2.50 J. Neil Schulman in USA (1986). US$3.00 Foreign. FREDERIK POHL Joel Rosenberg Edited By Paul Ferguson J. Neil Schulman And Earl Ingersol Philip Jose' Farmer Jane YolefT 25 SOCIAL FANTASY DOCUMENT William Rotsler By L. Neil Smith John Shirley 26 THE CHANGES I'VE SEEN By Robert A. W. Lowndes

28 INTERVIEW WITH F. PAUL WILSON Conducted By Neal Wilgus NEXT ISSUE 31 NOISE LEVEL By John Brunner WHERE IS THE CUTTING EDGE OF US$ cheques or money orders, except SCIENCE FICTION? to subscription agencies. 33 ONCE OVER LIGHTLY By Orson Scott Card Book Reviews By Gene DeWeese BOOK REVIEWS, LETTERS, EDIT¬ ORIALS...and whatever else 36 AND THEN I READ... shows up in the mail. Reviews By Richard E. Geis IF YOU MOVE WE NEED YOUR FORMER ZIP- 38 OTHER VOICES CODE AND YOUR NEW COMPLETE ADDRESS, Book Reviews NO ADVERTISING WILL BE ACCEPTED By Larry Niven ALL SUBSCRIPTIONS, NEW AND OLD, Stuart Napier ARE HONORED AND FULFILLED ON AN James Anderson Second Class Postage Paid ISSUES NUMBER BASIS. Richard A. Cooper at Portland, OR 97208 Mark W. Antonoff Dean R. Lambe Andrew M. Andrews Ritchie Benedict Copyright (c) 1986 by Richard E. Neal Wilgus Geis. One-time rights only have been acquired from signed or cred¬ 45 TEN YEARS AGO IN SF - 1976 ited contributors, and all other By Robert Sabella rights are hereby assigned to the contributors. 46 THE VIVISECTOR By Darrell Schweitzer SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW is published 58 RAISING HACKLES at 1525 N.E. Ainsworth, Portland, By Elton T. Elliott OR 97211

60 INTERVIEW WITH VICTOR ROMAN POSTMASTER: Send address changes Conducted By Neal Wilgus to SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW POB 11408 63 ONE PAGE FOLIO Portland, OR 97211 BY STEVEN FOX READ THIS!! FAMOUS (ALMOST LAST) WORDS

I'm tempted to sub-title this entry, "This hurts me more than it will you." In truth, it does hurt, in more ways than one. THE SWAMP.7 Ripht now my neck is killing time to write novels as best I DEAD IN THE WEST.7 me and my left hip and lower back can, for as long as I can. LEIGH BRACKETT: American Writer.... 7 are serious rivals in the pain- I have to tell you that SFR SHI EL IN DIVERSE HANDS.7 giving contest. is dead. SFR #61 (November) ELLIOTT'S BOOKLINE #1.7 What I've got is increasingly will be the last and final issue. ONLY APPARENTLY REAL: THE WORLD severe arthritis. The bones in OF PHILIP K. DICK.33 my neck are 'very severe' and So, what to do about all vou MR. O'MALLEY GOES FOR THE GOLD....33 my back and hip are in hot pur¬ subscribers? I can offer you a THE HOUND OF HEAVEN.33 suit. long-term switch to my personal INTERSTELLAR PIG.33 Add minor league discomforts journal, THE NAKED ID. It's CRISIS.33 from my knees, shoulders and far less demanding of me. and CASCADE POINT.34 hands, and vou have a catalogue its schedule is "whenever 8 pag¬ es are completed". In it I com¬ SPINNERET.34 of my miseries. REDWORLD.34 [Incidentally, my doctor ment on what I read in the papers, GHOST.34 recently said, in passing, that what I see on TV, what I experi¬ ence and observe of life and MR. O'MALLEY, WIZARD OF WALL I have palsy. That was news to people. (Not a pretty sight.) STREET: BARNABY #5.34 me! But it explains the kind of Realistically, THE NAKED ID THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH.34 minor spastic paralysis I've had SHELTER.35 all my life. But no doctor ever can be expected to appear every LESS THAN HUMAN.36 bothered to tell me the facts of two months or so. If you decide IN SEARCH OF FOREVER.36 life.] to let me switch you to TNI, it MYTHOPOEIKON.36 This is leading up to An An¬ will be at the ID subscription price---$1.00 per issue. So if SPIDER PLAY.36 nouncement. Since this escalat¬ GOD GAME.37 ion of intensified discomforts you've sent in $15. for SFR in 1987, you'll receive IS issues TUF VOYAGING.37 and pain has occurred in the past INSIDE OUTER SPACE.37 six months, I've put off and put of THE NAKED ID, which is likely CONTACT.38 off some tough decisions. But INTERZONE:THE FIRST ANTHOLOGY.38 the arrival of serious hip/back THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS.... 39 pain has forced the issue. I suspect I'm running out of THE MAN WHO WANTED TO BE GUILTY...39 I can't sit at a typewriter room, and my neck is getting that THE RIVER WALL.39 very long, and I can't read very ice-pick-in-the-vertebre type of MAGIC KINGDON FOR SALE-SOLD.39 much, any more. This pain dis¬ pain, so I'll finish by saying SANTIAGO: A MYTH OF THE FAR FUTURE40 rupts and shortens my sleep, and that if you'd rather not have an CIRCUIT.40 leaves me chronically exhausted. ID subscription, drop me a line ENIGMA.40 I can only drink so much coffee and I'll refund your money. (Or BEYOND THE SAFE ZONE.40 or take other stimulants before maybe you'd like some far back VISIBLE LIGHT.40 my stomach rebels and I develop issues of SFR you missed?) MAROONED IN REAL TIME.41 stomach cramps and diarrhea. I I'm enclosing a form for I HOPE I SHALL ARRIVE SOON.41 am only able to work (write) a those of you whose SFR subs ex¬ THE HUGO WINNERS VOL. 5.42 couple hours a day, if I'm lucky, pire with #60 (this issue) so THE SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME and it has become agonizingly you can easily buy #61 if you VOL. IV.42 wish, and/or subscribe to THE THE YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION, NAKED ID. And there's an option THIRD ANNUAL COLLECTION.42 for the #61ers. ROBOTS, ANDROIDS AND MECHANICAL INTERIOR ART_ See you next issue. ODDITIES: THE SCIENCE FICTION TIM KIRK—2,32,36 Oh, this issue is late mostly be¬ OF PHILIP K. DICK.42 ALEXIS GILLILAND—3,26,27,35,37,49, cause of non-pain factors. (But THE LOOKING GLASS UNIVERSE.43 50,53,54,56 only a week late at most!) OZMA'S COMPLAINT.44 GRANT CANFIELD---6 GOOD NEWS.44 WILLIAM ROTSLER— 7,12,13,14,15,17,11 SONGS OF A DEAD DREAMER.44 23,38,39,46,47,48,51,59 THE YELLOW KNIGHT OF OZ.45 MICHAL DUTKIEWICZ—8,20 PIRATES IN OZ.45 DAVID TRANSUE—9,11,25,28,29,31,33, THE PURPLE PRINCE OF OZ.45 37,40,42,43,44,45,52,54,57,58 RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH.46 ALEXANDER--19 THE UNDYING LAND.46 C.E. BENNETT—21 LAUGHING KELLY AND OTHER VERSES...46 STEVEN FOX—22,63 IT'S DOWN THE SLIPPERY CELLAR BRAD FOSTER---25,55 STAIRS.47 MIKE GILBERT—34 CUTS.47 OLE PETTERSON—41 CUSTER'S LAST STAND/THE COSMIC VIK KOSTRIKIN—54 PERSPECTIVE.47 GEORGE KOCHELL—57 THE PSYCHOPATH PLAGUE.59 KEN HAHN—60 AFTER THE BEYOND.59 THE BABYLON GATE.59 ouew THOUGHTS

| RICHARD E. GEIS \

AND THEN ALTER-EGO PROVOKED "Well, if that was all you rock bottom interest rates, as ME INTO PREDICTING THE FUTURE could find, I guess we'll skip the no one could see any way to make "Alien Thoughts" this issue and money with borrowed money, and I'll go back to sleep. Have a nice creditors saw no way borrowers "C'mon, Geis, drop your cock day...." could repay proposed loans. and grab your socks! Time to get "Not so fast! There are pages "The collapse of the stock and your ass in gear. Time to do the and pages to fill and only a few futures markets detroyed trillions main editorial section of this days in which to do it. You'll of "paper asset" dollars and wiped doomed rag of yours." have to expose your foul Cynical out hundreds of insurance companies "Go away, Alter. I'm sleepy. Pessimism and apply it to the fu¬ and pension funds. I'm tired. I'm lazy." ture." "International trade shrank "I can fix that. A prick of "You mean, you want me to tell drastically, and protectionism and your thyroid, a kick into your all and sundry what I think the "begger-thy-neighbor" trade laws and pituitary..." future holds for the United States currency devaluations made the situ¬ "Uhh! Hey! Stop that!" and the world?" ation worse." "Duty calls, Geis. The magic "Disgusting, I know, but, yes. "Now you're going to mention lure of seeing your name in print Your thoughts will revolt most of the unemployment rate, right?" beckons---" your readers, destroy your reputa¬ "Riiiight. The official unem¬ "Oh, bullshit, Alter. I've tion, and ruin you in the field of ployment rate soared in 1987-88 to seen my name—and my words—in sf forever." over 151 in the United States, and print for thirty-three years. the federal deficit exploded to Longer, if you count my published "Okay, but what's the worst over $400 billion in spite of mas¬ letters in STARTLING STORIES and that could happen?" sive cuts in federal spending, esp¬ THRILLING WONDER STORIES. I was a "The worst is that you might ecially in the military budget. letterhack long before I published be right. In fact, I suspect... "This economic collapse destoy- a fanzine and still later became a But nevermind. I'm plugging you ed the Republican party. Totally professional writer. Don't pull into your memory, Geis. You have discredited, it failed to win an¬ that egoboo shit on me. I'm an full access. Now, write!" other presidential election. The old fan, and tired. Go away." "Now? Let's see... This will Democrats won in 1988 and held the "No. No, you've got to coop¬ be disjointed, of course, as things presidency for twenty-four years.' erate here, or face dire conse¬ occurr to me as I write. A good The only opposition was a faction- quences. A little altered (pun) title might be—" blood chemistry..." "I've got your title, Geis. "Ow! Oooo. Aaarggh. All FUTURESCHLOCK or DOWN AND OUT ON right! Stop with the arthritic THE PLANET EARTH or THE FUTURE? pain, the bursitis, the headache! DON'T ASK!" I'll do it!" "Thank you. Let me start with "I knew you'd be reasonable. the economic situation." Now, delve into that sewer of a "Groan." mind and pick out a topic." "The Second Great Depression "You do it. You're already in settled its clammy grip on the the sewer. I don't even want to economies of the world, fully re¬ think about what I think about." cognized for what it was, in late "Wait till I delve... Ugh. 1986. The steady erosion of buying Yuck. Ick. All I can find in power and production, masked by this muck is something repulsive. ever-increasing levels of debt ac¬ Something slithering away... Do cumulated to avoid lowered stand¬ you really think this way, Geis? ards of living, finally triggered I just touched a slimy beast called a credit collapse and a progressive Cynical Pessimism. You're worse crisis in the banking and savings than George Orwell!" industry. A general deflation re¬ "You knew him. Alter? You in¬ sulted in defaults and bankruptcies habited his brain?" which destroyed assets much faster "Only briefly. He drank too than deficit spending could over¬ much." come. Loans shrank in spite of ridden New Right religious coali¬ logical testing to truly determine "Of course. And not only cul¬ tion tainted with fanaticism and who and what each person was, and tural means will be used to control racism. A Libertarian-Business to 'slot' him or her into the best the masses. There will be careful¬ coalition consistently failed to possible job or position in society, ly managed wars between the super¬ grow in power and influence. It for their own good. powers to provide a killing ground could elect only a hand full of rep¬ "In addition, birth control for undesireables and the natural resentatives and senators." was administered by long-term in¬ warriors bom (and allowed to be "This is really getting grim, jections and implants, and by bom) in the populations. These Geis. Arc you sure this is going propaganda, while at the same time conflicts will be limited, in to come true?" gene alterations and matching fringe, third world areas, and will "You wanted pure Geisian Cyni¬ allowed the governments to 'create' become a kind of geo-political game cal Pessimism, didn't you? This new people of their choosing and between the three primary power is the future that happened in my needs. " groups of the world. All-out nuc¬ alternate Earth's timeline." "You're moving farther and lear war will never be initiated. "Alt, a copout." farther into the future, right?" There will be nuclear 'accidents' "Not necessarily, Alter. Ke "Yes, well into the 21st Cen- and once limited nuke war as a kind don't know1 which timeline we occu¬ of police action against a maverick py, do we? Only time will tell." "I see. Proceed." nation of one of the three world "Okay, okay. Is there more "As a result of government con¬ Forces. of this future?" trol of procreation and population, "Sabotage and outright limited "Of course. The computer-driv¬ a reaction was permitted and guided space war will prevent any super en tendency to greater and greater into compensatory bizarre cultural power group from dominating or con- control of every aspect of people's outlets. Computer simulations of troling near space. Moon colonies lives, begun in earnest during the humans in hologram entertainments will be attemped, but the costs Reagan administration, fueled by permitted extreme dramatic situa¬ will be prohibitive and they will a contrived terrorism hysteria in tions: incredible physical activi¬ be abandoned. Some robotic mining the United States, brought about ties, extraordinary' violence, im¬ will continue. sets of laws in the USA, Canada, possible sexual behavior. The "Alien contact will never oc- England, West Germany, France, It¬ action was increasingly set off- curr, although the governments will aly... which required everyone to world, in strange other dimensions use rumors and false reports to keep carry' a hologramcd, computer-link¬ or alien planets. The New Frontier 'the aliens' alive and well, for ed ID card which could not be became other worlds, other, alien social engineering purposes. counterfeited. People were ’slot¬ settings however rationalized. "Sexual diseases will be elimin¬ ted’ from birth by tests and be¬ The occult became powerful, and ated in order to undercut the surv¬ haviors to job classes and social new religions (always controled iving religious/rightist dogma a- levels. 'Know thyself and 'To by the government) flourished." gainst sexual freedom, thus weaken¬ thine own self be true' were used "You're saying Bread and Cir¬ ing their moral power base. 'Sex¬ by the all-powerful governments to cuses, aren't you? TV and relig¬ ual preference' will become a justify blood and intensive psycho¬ ion will be the opiate of the masses. 'right' and homosexuality will be legalized."

The cover proof below is for the latest collaborative effort of Richard E. Geis and Elton T. Elliott. THE MASTER FILE is scheduled to 5e distributed and on sale in September, more or less everywhere. "What about money and jobs, occurr, and it is doubtful if a the propect of huge empty pages to Geis? Can they be controlled suc- high-tech civilization will ever fill. And I'm not sure if Scott be attained again. Too many crit¬ Card will have the time to do a final "The state will be forced to ical natural resources will by then column...nor sure if Darrell Schweitz¬ guarantee even-one a job — and the have been exhausted." er will have time_or Elton... other side of that coin is that "Appalling. Are you finished, So let's hear it for the review¬ virtually ftWryone will be forced Geis?" ers, those unsung heroes, who have to work where ;md when the state "Yes. I've thrown everything carte blanche to overwhelm me with decides. fl#TS8Vill be tremendous into this world view, Alter. I'm reviews. social pressure generated to justi¬ exhausted." And is there anyone out there fy these laws. Most physical pro¬ "So I see. Very well, rest. who has an article available? Pref¬ duction of goods will be done in For an hour. After that you have erably an opinion piece with some computerized factories. Most work to paste these columns up into the strong opinion in it. I don't need will be in 'services'." issue." more artwork. (Except from Alexis!) "Money. Geis! What will happen Well, Ghod will provide. Some¬ to money?" "All right, readers. You have thing always comes in which saves "A limited amount of counter¬ had the full course of Geis's Cyn¬ my ass. feit-proof cash will be allowed to ical Pessimism. Could he be right? circulate, and some Universal Cred¬ Is his future the time track we're # I have a lot of empty spaces it Card transactions will be per¬ in? Keep this issue of SFR in a this issue, at the ends of columns mitted. But for most people, their safe place. Keep these predictions and such, and so I am Cleaning Out jobs will dictate which free housing in mind. A few years will tell The Shelves and liquidating some unit they will occupy, which free the tale." illiquid assets. FOR SALE signs food they will eat, which clothes will abound in this issue. BUY! they will wear, which transporta¬ tion they will use. Automated # Below is a cartoon by Grant Can- free public transportation will field he did for SFR years and be used by most citizens. Monitors years ago. Finally using it, even w:ill be everywhere to prevent abuse if there isn't a gas shortage. # It seems I seriously misjudged of the 'free1 privileges. The ID my material file for #61. I find my¬ card will be used to record every self with one four-page interview and 'free' draw on society's wealth, and an excessive number of draws by one individual will trigger a computer alert — and official in¬ vestigation."

got all this worked out!" "What I see now is trends. Alt¬ er, and what we'll get is the re¬ sulting development of those move- «®ts in social-cultural-political

"One thing I'm curious about: what are the three super-power groups which will rule the planet?” "The USA, Western Europe-England for one, Japan-China-Korea for the second, and the USSR in alliance with Central and possibly South America and most African states for the third. The USSR and its client states will be the weakest of the three super-power groups. It will be sustained by elites in the USA group who arc interested in main¬ taining a long-term balance-of-pow- er on the planet and who realize that a three-way balance is easier to maintain than a two-way 'single enemy' dynamic. "At some point, several hundred years from now, the costs of keeping the socialist super power group credible will be too heavy, and the USSR empire will disintegrate. A war will ensue between the USA group and the China group over who shall possess various parts of the former USSR empire, and that war will result in a series of confrontations and exhausting mili¬ tary- expeditions which will collapse one or the other remaining super power. A planetwide decline into medieval-level civilization will THE SWAMP LEIGH BRACKETT: American Writer 73 and 74 is a quotation from a dis¬ By David Starkey By John Carr $3.00 patch from a young foreign corres- Infinitum Publishing Chris Drumm, POB 445, pndent in Afghanistan in the year 5737 Louetta Road, Polk City, IA 50226 1897. He describes an atrocity by Spring, TX 77379 $1.75 + 5Of I can see the fascination some Afghan fanatics and advises that This chapbook has a good cover biography reading can create. This in his view: and one full-page ullustration by booklet (68 pages) sketches the life 'I find it impossible to come Allen Koszowski, whose illos have and more important the character and to any other conclusion than that, enhanced SPR many, many times. personality of Leigh Brackett, an in proportion as these valleys are He's very good at these dark, om- early and prolific sf and fantasy purged from the pernicious vermin minous b/w drawings. writer (in a man's world) as well that infest them ((the Afghanis)), The story is short and decep¬ as a mystery writer and a screenplay so will the happiness of humanity tive-at first appearing to be be increased, and the progress of a kind of Juvenile as three boys She comes alive--the basic mankind accelerated.' take off in a boat into the myst¬ conflicts and struggles--and becom¬ The young correspondent was erious nearby swamp. Strange es all too human. And it doesn't Winston Churchill. creatures are said to inhabit its matter that she's dead (1978) because deepest reaches. But not to worry. she lives well here. What the reader is not prepar¬ Carr writes well, with a fine ed for (because of the deceptively sense of timing: when and how to re¬ ELLIOTT'S BOOKLINE #1 simple, wholesome writing) is the veal an aspect of her life and her Elton writes this on his new sudden, deadly violence and terror inner turmoils. I hope he does man¬ computer, and thus his new review which the boys encounter. age to write the full scale biography and opinion zine is el neato, with David Starkey has a fine sense Leigh Brackett deserves. justified rightside margins, two of drama and tension. He may, as And let me compliment Chris columns. He runs a pica typeface the saying goes, go far. Drumm on the great progress he's at 12 pitch, thus getting a lot of made in format and graphics for his large print in a page. No illos. booklets: they are truly profession¬ What this is, folk, is essen¬ al now, attractive and impressive. tially his "Raising Hackles" SFR (Though I still don't like the small DEAD IN THE WEST column run to about 8000 words: booklet size, nor the small type.) By Joe Lansdale more scandal, more lashing opinion, Space 8 Time, $6.95, 1986. more musings, and far more reviews 138 W. 70th St., #4-B of sf and fantasy novels. He has New York, NY 10023 each publisher's output for the per¬ SHIEL IN DIVERSE HANDS iod listed, and a review of one of A western horror novel, involv¬ A collection of Essays each publisher's books. Sometimes ing a vampiric thing and other hor¬ JDS Books significant mentions of others. A rors. An itinerant gunslinging ev¬ POB 67, MCS, handy reference for the hardcore sf angelist comes to the frontier town Dayton, OH 45402 reader. of Mud Creek... This stapled corrected draft, This issue also contains a mini¬ I didn't like the spare, pulpy photocopied from mss., by 29 students interview with Steven Barnes. style used in this short novel. And of the writing of M.P. Shiel (1865- Elton is not a stylist; his the supernatural events and aspects 1947) is a puzzlement to me: I'm reviews are plain and solid (also seem too off-stage, at least in the damned if I can understand the inter¬ a bit awkward in spots, but he lets opening half of the book. The story est in his writings. But I'll admit nothing get in the way of making and the people seem routine, empty, there must be something there. his points). He has many, many con¬ unremarkable... I didn't finish it. Of special interest, on pages tacts in the writing, editing, pub¬ lishing worlds, and he brings to his zine a special, inside knowledge which few others possess. Okay, Elton, I did it! Now will you please tell me where in this house you hid the time bomb? RICHARD E. GEIS I'm really getting worri Friends

perpetual

Science fiction thrives on t myth of the Competent Man. Br. jeVving GEIS NOTE: Scott forgot to give his Strickland's THE WINDS OF OBBRCH [Am gazines address and phone number to be used Jul] pits a stranded pilot against t o review stories now and then. I by those of you interested in his perils of a wind-stripped world in ould still lead off my column with proposed/tentative reviewzine. Al¬ textbook demonstration of the problc ome sort of essay, the way I always ways helpful, I provide: story at its best. In Robert Silvei ave. And there'd be (I hope) letters berg's AGAINST BABYLON [Omni May], tl nd commentary and differing opinions ORSON SOOTT CARD man is competent enough when he 546 Lindley Road fighting fires, but he can't do any¬ thing to stop his wife from going with Greensboro, NC 27410 the aliens out to the stars. The story down $10 919-852-8716 of the man whose wife dreams of star- so, send flight works very well—but not even and I'll Silverberg is a good enough writer to mailing overcome the fact that the whole fire¬ i to pub- fighting business is a needless dis¬ ified in traction. THE INSCRUTABLE ALIQi Tfks F/MziAlE 15 Q£7Afc- . toftmkrD,' jtfuut m.

ZtACMtfe.

Jtamorphos John Varley's TANGO CHARLIE AND FOXTROT ROMEO, in his new collection Blue Champagne [Dark Harvest), is a sequel to the title story; but the main thrust of the tale is the struq- HORDS ABOUT ffli E ® H OP dtr @®f36El(5i [pffd^dB-SCa (FoGaB Edited hy Paul FErgusin aed Earl IngersDl

Somewhere in the far reaches of Ne¬ pal, there may be an old recluse who has never heard of Frederik Pohl. But any¬ one with a passing familiarity with sci¬ ence fiction has surely heard his name. Pohl is one of a generation of SF writ¬ ers (Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury are others) who brought science fiction out of the "pulps" and into the hearts and minds of renegade English professors. He is one of many writers who rescued science fiction from bug-eyed monsters, invaders from other worlds and things that go zap in outer space, and made it say things that really mattered. Pohl's brand of SF is comic in tone and satiric in intent, with a clear (dare we say it?) social consciousness. From as early as his 1952 novel THE SPACE MERCHANTS (a satire, on the adver¬ tising world co-authored with the late Cyril M. Kombluth) to the recent Hee- chee trilogy (completed with HEEOIEE REN¬ DEZVOUS in 1984), his subject matter has been and remains human greed in all its permutations -- present and, particular-

For the further edification of that recluse in Nepal, Pohl has been just about everything it is possible to be in the world of science fiction. From the day he picked up a copy of SCIENCE WOND¬ ER STORIES QUARTERLY in 1930, SF has short stories in OMNI, THE MAGAZINE OF KRtSS: You've said that morality fol¬ flowed in his veins. He was the driv¬ FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION and ISAAC lows technology. How is that true? ing force behind the world's first sci¬ ASIMIV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE: and ence fiction convention in 1936, and a FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, and ISAAC RJHL: Morality does, because you can't foinder of the Futurians. He has been ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE; and have morality unless you have enough of a literary agent, an anthologist and an with Paul Ferguson, long-time associate a technological base to allow people some historian, currently the ENCYCLOPEDIA of the Brockport Writers Forum, special¬ leisure time to be moral in. If the BRITTANICA's authority on the Roman Em¬ ist in medieval literature, and writer of priirary need of every human being is to peror Tiberius. During the 1950s he ed¬ short fiction, who has taught at the fight off nearby tribes and push other ited GALAXY, one of the most innovative, State University of New York Colleges people out of the way to get food, it's popular, and prestigious science fiction at Brockport and Geneseo. very hard to be moral. Technology does magazines of all time. As GALAXY editor give us the opportunity to transcend he won three of many Hugos he has been the animal necessities that have plagued awarded as editor and writer. the human race for so many millenia. We still have a way to go. But most important, Pohl was and is 6RLSS; Your recent novels JEM and BE¬ a prolific writer. Among other things YOND THE BLUE EVENT HORIZON reflect a he has written are DRUNKARD'S WALK, THE view of humanity in which the dominant FERGUSQH: Is it your view that we are AGE OF THE PUSSYFOOT, MAN PLUS, A PLAGUE motive is self-interest, the kind of presently misusing technology? OF PYTHONS, SLAVE SHIP, JEM, THE IDOL self-interest that ranks one's own de¬ POhiL: Yes, but then we've misused ev¬ WAR, GATEWAY, BEYOND THE BLUE EVENT HOR¬ sires even above the lives of associates. erything else we've ever had, from the IZON, HEECHEE RENDEZVOUS, MIDAS WORLD, The NEW YORK TIMES called it a "dark vis¬ Sahara Desert on. The human race has re¬ THE MERCHANT WAR and THE WAY THE FUTURE ion." Do you think you have a "dark shaped the world by taking advantage of WAS (a memoir). This is, of course, not vision” of humanity and its future? what opportunities were there without to mention hundreds of short stories, as POHL: I have a great view of humanity’s considering that they were going to be well as collaborations with such writers detrimental to the world in the long run. as C. M. Kombluth, Jack Williamson and future; it's the present that worries me. I think that we live in what may sometime Technology is a tool; we use it for what Lester Del Ray. be called a moral dark age in which the we want. It's value free in itself. A Tne following conversation took place primary morality is based upon property. lot of people worry about things like while Pohl was writer-in-residence for That's not altogether a bad thing, but computers keeping track of everybody and the Brockport Writer's Forum Sumner Writ¬ I would hope that there will be a better remorselessly tracking us down if we do ers' Workshop in June ofr1983. He wpoke way of organizing the creative efforts not pay our income taxes, or if we say with Nancy Kress, Nebula Award nominee of mankind in the future -- although I something we shouldn’t; but the French and author of THE PRINCE OF MORNING BELLS don't know what that way is. Surete' found no difficulty in tracking (1981), THE GOLDEN GROVE (1984) and THE down criminals without conputers, as wit¬ WHITE PIPES (1985) as well as numerous 22 ness the work of Victor Hugo. protean. There are so many things that which was rejected by every publishing something, very often to be thrown away, it can talk about and so many forms it company in America that had a science but certainly to be rewritten several can take. As an English academic Tom fiction line because it contained no ray times before, it's in print. What those Shippey said, you can't define science guns or space battles. They didn't four pages are depends on any number of fiction because it changes, because it's think it was. science ficticm. It's factors: what contracts are now overdue a literature of change, and therefore it done well enough since then, but it was or what inspirations come to me when I changes while you're defining it. It is not understood to be science fiction by wake up in the morning or what I am so a literature of change. It is a liter¬ the people in charge of the publishing bored with that I cannot look at again ature about change. companies, just as now there is nuch so I put it aside and tum to something FERGUSON: is there a difference between science fiction that's not understood else. The basic rule of my life is to science fictic generally to be so by movie producers. deface four virgin sheets of paper every consider main: KRESS: You mentioned the changes in science fiction. What changes do you think there have been in your own work FERGUSON: D° y°u use a w°td processor? during the time you've been writing? POHL: No, I've considered one, but I POHL: I think I've got better at it. have not been willing to make that KRESS: You mentioned that science fic¬ I'm beginning to catch the notion of how change in my habits. There's no doubt tion takes many forms. Which one do to do it. It takes a while. I'm not that word processors make writing easi¬ you think is dominant now, and which cue self-critical or self-analytical enough er; I'm not convinced that they make it will be dominant? In other words, where to be able to answer questions like that better. There's something to be gained do you think the field is going? in any trustworthy fashion. through the mechanical task of retyping KRESS: Then you won't like the next a page that you don’t get by looking at PJrIL: It's going wherever any individ¬ it and moving a cursor around on a ual writer with a new idea and a new way question either, but I want to ask it. (iie change I've noticed in your work is screen. If you look at a paragraph on of telling a story takes it. Science a screen, you may say, "That's ok" and fiction is not an organic or a monolith¬ that in your early stories your women characters merely existed as love objects not bother to make a change in it be¬ ic whole; it rests on somebody, some¬ cause it's 994 ok. But if you're retyp¬ where, sitting at a typewriter or a word for the men in your stories. In your recent novels that hasn't been true at ing it and have to hit the keys again processor, or with a pencil in his hand, anyhow, you're very likely to make that saying something that nobody has said all. People like Essie in BEYOND WE BLUE EVENT HORIZON and especially Marjor¬ change that will make it 14 better, or before, and therefore suggesting to fif¬ so I would like to think. It's a relig¬ ty other writers new kinds of stories to ie Menninger in JEM are fully fleshed, conplex human beings. Do you think you ious question with me; it's a matter of write. Of course, there are mechanical faith. changes that are happening in the pub¬ hare been consciously influenced by the lishing business and in coimunications growth of feminism and the Women's Move¬ KRtSS: Tell us when you got the "reli¬ generally so that now more and more sci¬ ment to create these kinds of characters? gion." How did you first get involved ence fiction is appearing as film or Or, was it just that your craft matured? with science fiction? television instead of as books. Maybe POHL: I would like to say that it's my POHL: I began reading science fiction in the future we'll be using computers craft maturing, but actually it's my when I was about ten. Somebody had left or video games to get our science fic- consciousness being elevated by people a magazine in the house that had a pic¬ hitting me over the head from time to ture of a big, green, scaly monster KRESio: A number of SF critics have tak¬ time. Some of my feminist friends have knocking the tops off skyscrapers, and en a very dim view of science fiction pointed this out to me. It's not unus¬ I thought, "Wow, that’s for me." I read films. Do you see very much difference ual in science fiction writers that have it, and I thought it was pretty good, between science fiction in film and in been around as long as I have, because and I was too young and unsophisticated print forms? when I began writing, science fiction to know that the presence of one maga¬ appeared almost exclusively in "pulp" zine indicated there were others. I RjHL: Yes, the science fiction in print magazines and followed the "pulp” crit¬ thought I'd read the only one there'd form is much better. In film there are eria for a good story which involved ever been. As I got to be a sophistic¬ certain things you can't do. You can't some hero to do heroic things and some ated eleven-year-old, I found other mag¬ stop the camera to allow the audience to damsel in distress for him to rescue -- azines and began reading them; when I reflect, so whatever is said in a film that's all she was meant to be. was twelve, I began to write, and as a has to be so easy to understand that it KRESS; Tell us a little about your work young teenager I discovered science fic¬ is immediately accessible. In film you tion fandom, which is the universe of can only see what the camera shows you; habits. What keeps you going and how do you construct a story? people who read science fiction and seek you don't have time to stop and imagine each other's company at conventions. for yourself the rest of the setting. POHL: My physical work habits are pret¬ Then I discovered that after you've writ¬ Also there are techniques of prose that ty simple: I sit down every day and I ten a story you mail it to somebody who you can't do in film. Generally, there write. That's how you can tell a writer may publish it. That's the second se¬ is a lot that can be done in a book that from a non-writer -- there's no other cret of writing -- how to get published: can't be done in film. There is, on the You mail it to somebody who might pub¬ other hand, the marvelous saturation of lish it. After a while I began to get the senses you get from STAR WARS or E.T. some of them accepted. or THE RETURN OF THE JEDI when you get that marvelous color and loud sound hit- FERGUS^: since you started writing, science fiction has became somewhat re¬ spectable. You mentioned that it start¬ KRtSS; Have you ever written for film? ed out associated with the "pulps," and POHL: Very unsuccessfully. I suppose that was a very long associa¬ tion. But it hadn't been respectable FERGUSON: Isn't the problem really that until ten or fifteen years ago. How film makers don't understand what sci¬ do you account for its sudden respect- ence fiction is about? They think of abilty? gimmicks and special effects. RJHL: If you had asked me that question POHL; They think that science fiction a few years ago, I'm not sure that I has to involve space ships and light could have answered it. Now, I'm sure I swords. There have been a few science know what makes science fiction academic¬ fiction films that have not been so con¬ ally respectable. Ten, twenty, thirty stricted, but by and large, the ones you years ago, there was a bunch of fresh, have heard of, the ones that have brought ignorant kids who discovered science fiction and began reading it and loved is a question of conscience; a science science fiction also does not. French it. Those kids are now chairs of Eng¬ fiction writer who's capable of thinking science fiction strikes me as being more lish departments, and therefore it's of something brand new that will illum¬ interested in word play than in content. now respectable. inate the world in no matter how small a These are all snap judgments that may not be worth anything, but there surely KRESS: The critic Joanna Russ has said way has an obligation to try to do it, science fiction shouldn't be judged by to carry his imagination as far as he are differences. I'm not sure that I've diagnosed the right ones. the usual mainstream literary criteria. possibly can. There are writers -- Cordwainer Smith, for example -- who Her reason is that it is primarily a FERGUSON: In your own writing, what is write about individuals and societies your primary concern as a science fiction didactic literature, like medieval lit¬ that are very far from our ovm, but erature, and that no one unequipped with writer -- character, theme; invention of a knowledge of science is equipped to they make them plausible. They are so a world that might exist? strange that you know if you went one judge science fiction. Do you see that The primary concern in each case big a gap between science fiction and step further the whole thing would col¬ RJHL: lapse and you wouldn't believe a word of is the element that is worst at that mainstream literature? it. He's just walking that tightrope, time; I don’t have a hierarchical scheme RJHL: No, it depends on how narrowly and it's that tightrope that everyone in which I say, "If I get the characters you construe science fiction. There is should try to walk every once in a while. right, I don't care about the rest." some science fiction that neets those They are all important, and I try -- cer¬ strictures, but there's a lot of science MtSS; Which of your own works do you tainly never succeeding fully because I like best? In which have you most suc¬ don't know how -- to make all the char¬ fiction that does not. Ray Bradbury's cessfully walked that "tightrope?" stories, by her definition, would not be acters real and all the settings convinc¬ science fiction, but his stories are FOhL: The short story "Day Million" is ing, plausible, accurate to the extent what most people discover to be science one I'm willing to have carved on my they can be. If I feel I’m doing badly fiction when they are in grade school. tombstone; I don't write any better than in any of those, that's my worry at that Science fiction does not have to be that. If you don't like that, I'm just about science; the term is a misnomer. not your cup of tea. It isn't fiction that's about science; FERjUSUH: I've very rarely tried writ¬ it's a name. My name is Fred. That KRtSS: 1 like "The Meeting" and "The ing science fiction -- writing straight Gold at the Starbow's End" better. I fiction is difficult enough -- but I'm doesn't describe me; it's just a name thought those were both superb pieces. I'm known by. Science fiction is the wondering what happens when you're try¬ label put up on the shelves of books so KjRL: Better, I'll accept, as long as ing to get inside a character such as you knew where to go for that kind of you don't tell me you don't like "Day the Krinpit in JEM. book. There have been a lot of attempts Million." HOHL: Simply, I just imagine how I'd be to give it a different name and a lot if I were a Krinpit. (laughter) Real¬ of people I know wish they would suc¬ KRESS: I do like "Day Million." One of ly that's how it is. I can't describe ceed. But I can't change my name very the things you've written that isn't a character ... well either. science fiction is a study of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, about whom you learned FERGUSUN: That's a foolish question. KRESS: You've met several thousand sci¬ enough so that you are now the authority ence fiction writers and readers in your for the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITTANICA. FGHL: No> it's a foolish answer. The life. Do you think that people who fall question is valid, and the answer is in love with science fiction are differ¬ RJHL: A fact that I drop into every con¬ true, even though they don't say much. ent from those who can't stand the stuff? versation I can. The only way anyone can write about any character is to imagine himself as that Is there some quality of mind that's at¬ IRtSb: Otherwise, I wouldn't have known. tracted to science fiction? character. It's no more difficult for How did he become an interest of yours? me to write about a Martian or a Krin¬ RjhL: Because I was interested in his¬ pit than it is to write about a woman or RjHL: It's very hard for me to describe a child. I have to imagine how I would why some people don't read science fic¬ tory. In my abbreviated school career, be in all those cases. And I'm not sure tion. I run into people all the time 1 took no history courses at all so that the fact that there was a world before I'm right in any of those cases. who sit next to each other at the desk the twentieth century was a big surprise of an observatory or space center or FERGUSON: Maybe what I'm really asking to me when I began reading books about is where did the Krinpit come from? computer laboratory; they look indisting¬ history. Over the decades since then, uishable, and yet one has never picked I have been trying to fill in the gaps FOHL: It came from trying to think what up a science fiction book and the other in my knowledge of what the human race sort of life forms there might be. The is a big fan. In general, science fic¬ was like. The Imperial Roman period is book in which the Krinpit appeared I had tion readers are a little more curious one that interests me a great deal and already decided was to have three domin¬ and, I would like to think, a little when I looked for a book on Tiberius, I ant intelligent life forms, and I wanted more intelligent, or certainly a little couldn't find one. When that happens, I them as unlike anything I knew as possi¬ more open minded. often think, "Well, if there isn't any ble. A lot of science fiction writers,- FERGUSUN: Nan and I have a mutal friend book, why don't I write one?" Once in when they invent alien beings, tend to who writes science fiction but who bris¬ a while, I do. That was one of the few describe them as having Spock ears or tles at being called a "science fiction of those books that I actually finished possibly green blood, and that's as far writer." She would prefer to be consid¬ and published. as they go. That’s nonsense. It's pret¬ ty obvious that if there's intelligent ered merely a writer. Are you bothered KRtSS: You travel a great deal, lectur¬ by the label "science fiction writer?" life elsewhere it isn't mich like us. ing about science fiction arouid the So, I tried to imagine life forms more KJhL: N°> 1 write science fiction; I do world. Do you see any large difference or less analogous to those on Earth but it by choice. I don't have to; I have between the kind of science fiction that not quite the same. I can tell you what written other things. I enjoy writing is written in other countries and what's I did, but not how. science fiction and I enjoy the finished written here? product. Most of all, I like the audi¬ KRtSS: You've collaborated with sever¬ RjEL: There are large differences. I'm al different writers -- Cyril Kombluth, ence for science fiction; it's far more not too sure that I'm qualified to say perceptive and responsive than any other. Jack Williamson and others. What are what they are because I don't really read the mechanics of collaboration? FERGUSON: You’ve mentioned that you any language other than English. I know feel one of the obligations of the sci¬ that when I see them in translation or KJHL: It varies. Cyril Kombluth and ence fiction writer is to invent some¬ discuss them with local writers who are I began working together as teenagers thing that no one has ever thought of able to appreciate them in their own and grew up in the habit of collabora¬ before. language, there are significant differ¬ ting, so it was swift and easy to do it. ences between American or British science I think we wrote better together at HOHL: 1 think that's one of the things ficticn and Japanese science fiction, that time than either of us did independ¬ a science fiction writer ought to strive which is mich more lyrical and evocative ently. He'd come out to my house in Red for. You can't do it all the time. A than explicit. American science fiction Bank and we'd sit around and talk for a lot of things that have never been said usually gives you a cold, hard Kodachrome few hours and flip a coin; whoever lost haven't been for the very good reason picture of what you're looking at; Jap¬ would go up to the third floor where we that they're not worth saying. Origin¬ anese science fiction does not. Chinese kept Cyril's typewriter and write the ality or newness doesn't necessarily first four pages and come dovn. Then, make a story good. But I do think there 24 the other would go up and write the next

THE CHANGES I'VE SEEN

Science fiction has come a long way "charming" story -- not a scientific lec¬ the Gemsback and the Sloane titles since 1926, and the first thing to remem¬ ture -- which would entertain even while charged 25 cents for their monthly is¬ ber is that, in January 1926, science it subliminally instructed the reader in sues. The price put them into the cate¬ fiction did not exist as a genre. some basic element of science and opened gory of the "respectable" magazines, and his or her eyes to seemingly fantastic they were usually displayed along with That means two things: First of all, possibilities. He would accept a story them, while the pulps were gathered else¬ while books and magazine stories which we that fit his scientific requirements, where on the racks. now call science fiction certainly exist- but had a minimim of writing or story- ASTOUNDING STORIES OF SUPER SCIENCE ed, there was no over-all label for them. construction virtue -- but there was They were called such things as "differ¬ never any limit upon how well a story was the first science fiction pulp maga¬ ent," "impossible," "fantastic stories," might be written. (Editors who deliber¬ zine, and the stories it ran were all "scientific romances," etc. If your lo¬ ately restricted stories to a juvenile or fast-action, tightly-plotted adventure cal newsstand was run by someone who read lower level would come nuch later.) As stories poured into the mold of themes that type of story, he or she might be to just what constitutes a "charming" and ideas that had already appeared in able to steer you to a current magazine story, we could argue indefinitely with¬ the Gemsback and Sloane magazines, or in containing such an exaaple. The same ap¬ out reaching any conclusion; Gemsback the older "classics." The aim was not ed¬ plied to your local library. himself never attempted a tight defini¬ ucation, but excitement, although Bates Such stories had appeared in the "re¬ tion of the word, but rather pointed to did, at times, run a story that either spectable" general magazines from the 80s authors who, to his taste, had accomplish¬ Gemsback or Sloane might have accepted. or earlier of the last century, and they ed it. Most of the pulp science fiction maga¬ also appeared in various "pulp” all-fic¬ zines to crane in the first science fic¬ As 1929 opened, AMAZING STORIES, now tion boom were rooted in the Bates/Clay¬ tion magazines, particularly the Mmsey joined by AMAZING STORIES QUARTERLY, was group. But by 1926, they had disappear¬ ton mold, although a number of them were mostly filled with new fiction, and a done better. ed from the "respectable" magazines and fair percentage of it was more tightly could be found only in the pulps. written and carefully plotted than the The change that occurred in 1929, Thus, we see that Hugo Gemsback did when Gemsback inaugurated his "wonder" not drag science fiction into the so-cal¬ led pulp ghetto; it was already there. His aim was to take it out of the pulps and to make a respectable genre of it. His first name for the genre was "scien- tifiction," a coined word that didn't really take on. It wasn't until 1929, after his return to publishing upon los¬ ing control of Experimenter Publications, that he used the term "science fiction” -- and that name has stuck. The second thing about "science fic¬ tion" before (and for some years after) 1926 is that there were no general con¬ ventions about writing it. On all lev¬ els, from serious novelists like H.G. Wells to the amateurs who wrote science- application stories for RADIO NEWS and SCIENCE AND INVENTION, an author had an idea for what he or she considered a good "different" story and wrote it the same way he or she would write an ordinary story, to the best of his or her ability. Most of the novels, and many of the older material. But older ccnventions group was that a large percentage of the short stories that were run in AWVZING were more often followed than flouted. stories presented were written by ama¬ STORIES' first incarnation (1926-29) had By June 1929, we now had four science teurs who had grown up with the original a leisurely pace; ‘they were not pulp-type fiction titles, SCIENCE WONDER STORIES AMAZING STORIES -- and sone of them had fast-action stories -- the author was in and AIR WONDER STORIES being the newcom¬ had letters published in the "Discussions' no hurry. There were long descriptions ers. (SWS appeared in May, dated June; department. They also read the MUnsey of places; characters were described at AWS appeared in June, dated July.) Then pulps, and their stories were toward the length by the author, generally, so that in the autism, SCIENCE WCNDER QUARTERLY tighter construction, and away from the before the reader read about them doing was added (dated Fall, on sale in Septem¬ leisurely style. There was less descrip¬ or saying anything, he knew whether they ber). But something else was going on, tion of background at the beginning of a were good guys or bad guys. Everyone which no one outside suspected. story, less description of characters, who was supposed to be an educated pers¬ and more of a tendency to start wath a on in such stories spoke a peculiar type The presence of four going science strong narrative hook, that captured the of book English; the non-educated ones fiction titles persuaded William F. Clay¬ reader from the start. (What can compare spoke in various dialects -- brogue, Scot¬ ton, and his editor, Harry Bates (although with the first sentence of "The Green tish, Italian, Cockney, Negro, etc. Of¬ perhaps that order should be reversed) Girl," by Jack Williamson, which started ten such characters were there for comic that there was money to be made in pub¬ in the March 1930 issue of AMAZING STOR¬ relief -- but not always. You could find lishing a science fiction magazine -- but IES? "At high noon on May 4, 1999 the Gunga-Din type characters among the low¬ not the Gemsback type. sun went out!" I'm not sure that the it¬ ly, too. While both the Gemsback and the alics were really necessary, or that we Sloane AMAZING STORIES, etc., were print¬ really needed an exclamation point at the In making those "different" stories ed on pulp paper, neither were really end -- but you must admit that it's an into a genre, Hugo Gemsback also defin¬ pulp magazines. Sloane agreed with Gems¬ attention-grabber.) ed "scientifiction" so that it could be back that this type of fiction should be By now, as Donald A. Wollheim noted distinguished from other fantastic tales. educational, as well as entertaining. as a generality in his book, THE UNIVERSE To qualify, a story mist be rooted in Moreover, their magazines sold at a high MAKERS, science fiction had clearly begun plausible extrapolations upon what (at price, relative to what pulp readers had to feed on science fiction. the time of writing) was regarded as cor¬ to pay for their magazines. Hie pulps rect science. Gemsback also wanted a charged 10 to 20 cents generally; both For a few years longer both Gemsback and Sloane continued to dominate the kind of stories one could find in the maga¬ zines. The Bates/Clayton ASTOUNDING STO¬ RIES OF SUPER SCIENCE (the last three Robert A.W. Lowndes words in the title had been dropped at restored

centage of them) set out to improve the seen all kinds of it. Examples in every . . was overscrup- standards of science fiction* both in ulous in examining the scientific sound¬ kind range from excellent to awful, but the magazines and the books. Their suc¬ the varieties all exist now -- with one ness of the truly astounding stories they cess was sporadic but it comted. published. Occultism and metaphysics exception. No one today, to my knowledge were acceptable. The time was approaching when it was writes science fiction with the primary purpose of instructing the readers in the The Street § Smith title was suc¬ possible for an expert (or lucky) writer to make a living from science fiction elements of science. The nearest thing to cessful from the very start, and Tremaine it is what some call "hard" science fic¬ and Hall labored to make it a first-class and fantasy alone. Up to then, there was no such thing as a full-time science fic¬ tion, which is rooted in the type of sci¬ magazine of its type. And Tremaine show¬ entific integrity that Hugo Gemsback hop¬ ed now and then that he was not afraid of tion writer; all either wrote in their spare time, or eked out their incomes ed to achieve for his readers in every¬ a good story with literary quality well thing that would be labeled science fic- above the general pulp level. (On the from science fiction by writing other other hand, he wasn't revolted by the types of pulp fiction. And most of them most juvenile level either.) Early in had backgrounds as science fiction read¬ Science fiction is now a success, 1934, ASTOUNDING STORIES added pages, a ers and fans. and like everything else that is succes¬ few months later switched to a type face The conventions that were generally sful needs knowledgable critics who do that alloyed more words per page: at observed in 1926 had passed, but one not hesitate to argue with success. Some 160 pages for 204, it was now the biggest still remained: what is known in England Of the best-selling examples have solid of the three magazines, at the lowest and the USA as the "genteel" convention, merit, but many more amount to rewards price -- and the highest (and fastest) which was respected even in the most for profitable mediocrity. paying to its authors. The Gemsback carelessly written pulp stories. Not on¬ To conclude with a note on my own and Sloane titles could not compete; and ly was there no sex or eroticism, there personal feelings: I still enjoy reading Gemsback was distressed to see the in¬ were parts of the human body, and func¬ those examples of science fiction, old creasing popularity of a magazine which, tions of those parts which were never and new, that are rooted firmly enough to his viewpoint, had very little scien¬ mentioned or alluded to. That convention in science so that, if the science were tific integrity. was maintained in the magazines (and cer¬ taken out, we wouldn't have a story at tainly in most of the books) until the He struck his flag early in 1936, all. And I demand characters interesting so-called New Wave explosion in the 60s. enough so that I want to finish a story when an attempt to change WINDER STORIES Then it cracked and began to fall to into a subscripticn-only magazine failed to see what happens to them. That's pieces; characters not only felt lust vague; let me specify what type of char¬ to draw enough interest. Sloane's AMAZ¬ and fulfilled it but readers were made ING STORIES struggled on (as a bimonthly acters I dcn't want to read about: bom aware of execratory functions, both in losers, anti heros, present-day counter¬ like the final Gemsback issue of WINDER action and language. What was formerly STORIES) for two more years. culture types -- as protagonists, that considered vulgar or non-printable be¬ is. Nor do I want slices of life from There is no need to elaborate on the came conmonplace. And the "science" in coimon people's lives. I want to read Campbell ASTOUNDING STORIES, which com¬ science fiction was not only taken out; about uncommon men and women when I read bined the scientific integrity of Gems- — —laced by anti-science. That fiction! The other kind I read about TNTERVIBW WITH Conducted by Neal Wilgus f. fAOLi ‘WILjSOM

SFR: Before anything else, I nust ask "Jew's reaction to cross's power over how it came about that comedian Lou Cos¬ vanpire." That clicked with the "good" tello was "an early F. Paul Wilson read¬ vanpire idea, and the presence of a Jew er." So saith the caption on the picture almost cried out for the presence of Naz¬ that accompanies your "TZ Terror" colunri is. Then I started my what-ifs. What in the December 1985 TWILICHT ZONE. But if he's not a good vampire butanly pre¬ there is no further explanation, so I'll tends to be? What if he's something take this opportunity to ask what that worse than a vampire? What if he's not strange caption was all about. afraid of the cross but of something that them there. Plus, there was a chance resembles a cross? I was stuck there for for a little bit of business with one of F.P. WILSON: You've got me. Only Mich¬ a while until I realized that a sword ael Blaine knows. He wants to lighten the German officers as he glances through hilt could look like a cross. And then UNAUSSPRECHLICHEN KULTEN which is in up the magazine, looking for black humor everything came together with a crash. and such. That article arose out of TZ's German. THE TOMB, by the way, is chock I linked THE KEEP to a story called "De- full of Insider bits. award ceremonies in May. Unable to come monsong" I'd written for a Q\W anthology up with a bigger name to present the best edited by Gerald Page, HEROIC FANTASY. SFR: Like what? novel Dimension Award, the TZ staff set¬ All sorts of moral convolutions arose: tled for ne and asked if I’d make a few like tp^ing to use evil toward a good WILSON: Like having Kusum speak my fav¬ remarks on the current state of horror end; like evil doing good in order to orite of Karloff's lines from "The Mum¬ fiction. I tried a tongue-in-cheek ap¬ disarm good and further an evil end. It my," two famous exclamations from EC Com¬ proach --a string of one-liners, really became my kitchen-sink horror novel. ics ... so many, I've lost track. Got a -- and it went over well. Michael asked Everything I wanted in a horror novel but nifty one upcoming in THE TOUCH. me to write it up for the magazine. It's might have hesitated to add, I added. I hard to translate that kind of hunor to SFR: Were Lovecraft and the other Mythos paper, but it came off all right, I think, even designed those weird little crosses writers a big influence on you? and convinced the publisher to insert them until the TWILItHT ZONE typesetters, Len¬ in all the narrative breaks. I had a WILSON: No. Their style was too plod¬ ny and Squiggy, got ahold of it. There's ball writing it. ding with no immediacy to the situations. a paragraph in the next-to-last-colunn They always seem to use the voice of a where they chopped the back end off one SFR: You've already expressed your dis¬ victim, a guy who just lets things happen sentence and the front end off the next, appointment and resentment about the mov¬ to him instead of making things happen. and stuck the two remnants together. The ie version of THE KEEP in "Look What That's okay for an occasional short story result is nonsense. You can't win. They've Done to My Song, Ma" in SCIENCE but not as a steady diet in a novel. If FICTION REVIEW #51, and in a follow-up SFR: Your first three books -- HEALER anybody influenced THE KEEP, it was Rob¬ (1976), KHEELS WITHIN KHEELS (1978) and letter. Any final thoughts on the sub- ert Ludlum. He's become almost unread¬ AN ENEMY OF THE STATE (1980), and your able lately, but I loved his early stuff short novel "The Tery” (BINARY STAR #2, ilLSON: I'd rather not. Me talking a-* with its reverses and double reverses and 1979) -- are all science fiction, yet bout Michael Mann and what he did to my characters who are not what they seem. your best known book, THE KEEP (1981) and book is like Ralph Kramden on the subject You can plainly see his imprint on THE your latest, THE TCMB (1984) are in the of his mother-in-law. I get crazy mad. KEEP. So I'll leave that one alone, if you do horror genre. How and why, did you make SFR: What writers have influenced you? the change from SF to horror writing? not mind ... except to say that the lat¬ est statement I got shows that Paramount WILSUN: Isn't this where I say Proust, F.P. WILSUN: I think it happened at the is now out 22 million dollars on that Joyce, Gide, Balzac? 1979 Lunacon.. I was on the final polish film by Michael Mann which happens to of AN ENB1Y OF THE STATE and was talking share a title with my novel. Serves them SFR; If you wish. to a fan at the Friday night Meet-the-Pros right for letting him rape the story, the WILSON: I don't. I write commercial party when his girl friend walks up and fiction and that's where my roots are. he introduces me as "F. Paul Wilson -- Next question, please. About the nearest I can get to influences he writes Libertarian SF." I could feel with any literary cachat are Aeschylus a straightjacket tighten around me. So I SFR: When I read THE KEEP I was first and Euripides. I was exposed to them by decided to change my tune for a while. delighted and then puzzled to see the the purest chance. You see, when I show¬ I had completed my intended cycle of stor¬ Cthulhu Mythos trappings, the use of DE ed up at Georgetown as a pre-med biology ies in the LaNague Federation milieu any¬ VERMIS MYSTERIIS, AL AZIF and so on. As major, they assigned me to this honors way, so I turned to my other reading love: a long time Lovecraft fan I'm pleased to English course because my verbal SATs see yet another first-rate Ntythos entry, were so high. The first semester was but in the end I felt the Mythos material SFR: How did THE KEEP develop? Greek drama. I figured, "Great! As if was not really important to the story -- calculus, general chemistry and general F.P. WILSUN: I had been intrigued by it worked just fine without it. Did you biology aren't enough, I've got a bunch Quinn Yarbro's HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA with have some compelling reason to include of old Greek dramatists to contend with, its "good" vampire. An excellent novel -- I reviewed it for SCIENCE FICTION RE¬ WILSON: The "Forbidden Books" from the But they left me with something VIEW -- but somehow the idea of a "good" Mythos were in THE KEEP merely as props. vanpire struck me as blasphemous and I and it's stayed with me ever since: the I needed some ancient texts as a means of wanted to play with the idea. I thumbed concept of catharsis. You build up your prolonging Professor Cuza's value to the dramatic steam, and then you release it. through my notebook and there was this Nazis. I could have fabricated some Old entry I’d made while reading SALEM'S LOT. But you don't bleed it off like a radia¬ Slavonic documents but decided on the tor -- you blow it the hell off! I've I'd read that one when it first came out Forbidden Books as a tip of the hat to and had for some reason assumed that Ste¬ seen a lot of otherwise good novels fail phen King was Jewish -- maybe because Insiders. THE KEEP was to be published due to lack of catharsis. that comedian, Alan King, is Jewish. out of category and so the AL AZIF and the other titles would be meaningless to But writers who've influenced me Anyway, I wondered at the time what had ... that's tough. Their names are leg¬ gone through this Jewish guy King’s head most of its readers, but I fugured Insid¬ ers would get a chuckle out of seeing ion. If you want to go way back, I'd while writing about vampires cringing guess comic books were an early influence. fraa the cross. So I had scribbled dom, 28 The EC line was very instructive. Those comics contain every SF and horror cliche STATE, which is the story of LaNague him¬ SR: How did the anarchists fail you? that ever was -- an excellent source for self. My feeling was that the LaNague a new writer as to what not to write. Federation charter and the "libertarian WILSON: Well, I had these Splinter And certainly the Uncle Scrooge comics utopia" of Tolive were not very convinc¬ Worlds, akin to the results of Russell's by Carl Barks helped develop my sense of ing and were mostly just plot devices. "Great Explosion," where technologies wonder. They were wonderful -- light, had retrogressed in many cases to a pre- Yet you are identified with the SF lib- industrial stage. Such worlds were just funny, and yet intelligent and instruct¬ ertarian "comnunity” -- so why was there ive. I still remember a take-off on ripe for a bunch of bully-boys to come in not more libertarian content in those and start slave labor camps to rape the SHANGRI-LA called "Tra-La-La Meets the early books? Bottle Caps." You could use it as a pri¬ planets of whatever resources they had. mer for supply-side economics. WiLSON: I think you're right about HEAL¬ I couldn't see any "private" police forc¬ ER -- I wrote the first section as a nov¬ es coming to the aid of the Splinter SR: Do you still read comics? elette ("Pard") for .ANALOG while in med Worlds -- and neither could Peter LaNague. school; it was sitting on Campbell's desk The result was a Big-Stick government WILSUN: Yes. After staying away for when he died in his sleep in '71. I that said, "Do anything you want except about 20 years -- I can't stand costumed placed it in the LaNague Federation mil¬ initiate force. Do that, and I'll squash superheroes -- I came back. 1 buy Dave ieu just to maintain some continuity with you like a bug." Sim's "Cerebrus the Aardvark" which is my other stories. I had no intentions SR: Repairman Jack, the main character absolutely brilliant. Howie Chaykin's at that time of expanding it to novel in THE TOMB, is certainly "libertarian" "American Flagg" is excellent SF -- I length. However, the response to Dalt in the sense of being completely free reconmend the early issues for a Nebula. and Pard was so enthusiastic, and so many fran and opposed to the State -- yet I buy anything that Dave Stevens touches. people said to me, "You can't stop now!" THE TOMB is not a particularly libertar¬ His "Rocketeer" would be the capstone of that I decided to continue the story. ian story. Is this indicative of your any illustrator's career and he's just a After all, I had made Dalt imnortal so I present view of libertarianism? kid. "Judge Dredd," "Mage,” stuff by had plenty of time to work with. Chris Claremont or Alan Moore --as long WILSuH: THE TOMB -- which was original¬ WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS, contrary to ly titled RAKOSHI but which I allowed as they don't concern guys and gals who your opinion is a very libertarian book. fly around in funny suits. Berkley to change due to "retailer resis¬ You seem to be one ofthe few who hasn't tance" and bitterly regret to this day -- SR: Let's get back to novelists who recognized that. I set out to illustrate was bom from a genuine nightmare I had. influenced you. a libertarian theme with a science fic¬ A big something was chasing me around tion story, and I believe it succeeded. tolLSUOl: I'd have to say that anyone this rooftop for hours. I kept killing Free market methods are used as a solu¬ it and it kept coming back. If you read whose work I've read and enjoyed with tion to social and economic problems; I any consistency has influenced me. Be¬ the book, you'll know the scene. That demonstrated those methods in a tiny rur¬ was the nidus of the book. I worked cause I write what I like to read. That al setting and on an interstellar scale; is my final criterion for anything I backwards from there. The biggest prob¬ I also showed how the success of free lem was to come up with a character tough write: I ask myself, "Would I want to market methodology is perceived as a read this?" And if the answer is not a enough and resourceful enough to survive threat by statists and collectivists and such an encounter. I'd done all right in definite yes, then it gets zapped on the tends to draw the true nature of their word-processor. my dream, but in real life I'd have last¬ own nEthodology -- brute force -- out ed about 12 seconds. Eventually, I came But let's see. On my SF books, I into the open. All that and an intrigu¬ up with Repairman Jack, a guy who "fixes have to say Heinlein, Anderson and Niven ing nurder mystery too. A wonderful things” -- for a price -- when the world were definite influences. I can't say book. A mahvelous book. Too bad it's or the bureaucracy or anyone is doing precisely where, but I know I tried to not a novel. you dirty. I didn't want a cop or some¬ incorporate aspects of their style that SR; I'm glad you said that. one from the straight world. I needed a appealed to me. And John Campbell, of guy who was used to living completely by course -- my first editor. As I said be¬ WILSON: Neither was HEALER. Both were his wits, and who couldn’t holler for the fore, Ludlum was a major influence on THE cobbled together. HEALER is really three cops because he didn’t have an official KEEP. On THE TOMB I was influenced by my novelettes and a short story in a linear existence; a guy who followed his own favorite detective/p-i novelists -- John sequence with a comnon pair of characters code of ethics. What really excited me D. MacDonald, Robert Parker and Gregory in all segments. The central story of was setting up the villain of the piece McDonald, as well as the pulp weird-men¬ WHEELS is a novella concerning Josephine -- Kusum. I depicted him as another hon¬ ace authors, with a dash of Kipling and Finch; the flashbacks to her father's ex¬ orable man living by a different code of Haggard thrown in. periences on Jebinose form a second nov¬ ethics which he followed faithfully. ella; and then there's an associated I'm not sure who influenced the short story cm a planet whose name es- SR: So you didn't set Jack up as a lib¬ next one, THE TOUCH. It's a medical ertarian character. thriller, but I don't read Robin Cook. I mean, I read COMA many years ago, and You see, I had only written short thought it was a good thriller but could stories up to 197S. The thought of a WILSON: Yes and no. Let me put this lib¬ not buy the Nancy-Drew-as-doctor heroine. 50,000 word narrative following a single ertarian thing in perspective. Libertar¬ Believe me, during your first weeks as plotline and a single set of characters ianism is a Weltanschauung -- a world an intern you don't go sniffing out con¬ terrified me. I was sure I couldn't ac¬ view, a mind set. You don't turn it off spiracies in your training hospital. All complish such a thing until I decided to and on. Repairman Jack became a little you want to do is not look stupid in sit down and write about the birth of wish-fulfillment fantasy of mine. I have front of the nurses and not kill anybody. the LaNague Federation. The result was a libertarian Weltanschauung. He conse¬ Not necessarily in that order. Harold AN ENEMY OF THE STATE, my first true nov¬ quently has libertarian aspects, but they Gray is the only outside influence on el. originated in his gut; he was anything THE TOUCH I can think of. SR; Why devlop the LaNague Federation but an ideologue. He knew how he had to at all? live; how everybody else lived was their SR: How about short fiction? business. WILSON: I broke into SF with short fic¬ tion and still make myself do at least WILSON: I had come to learn through col¬ one short story a year. They're harder lege that free market economics was an than hell after you get used to the elbow alien philosophy in the latter half of room of a novel, but the discipline is this century, so I decided to take advan¬ good for me. This year’s story is "Dyd- tage of that alienness and base an inter¬ eetown Girl" and will appear in FAR FRON¬ stellar society on it. The credo of the TIERS IV in early '86. It takes place on LaNague Federation was to allow as much Earth in the LaNague future history. I diversity as possible among hunans while think it's the best thing I've ever done. forbidding the initiation of force in any relationships, whether personal or poli¬ SR: I want to get back to THE TOUCH, tical. Hie anarchist model fell apart but let me take this opportunity to ask here and so I resorted to a minarchist you about the LaNague series. As you know, I've written some negative things about HhALER and WHEELS, which are LaNag¬ ue stories, and have praised ENEMY OF THE 29 day. Wha Noise Level By John Brunner

go on doing so, though I can't manage it THE MIND AS A HOLOGRAM, OR MAYEE NOT alone: I've set up "Marjorie's Lunch This will certainly be the last That was five weeks ago yesterday. Club" which will meet here every Sunday "Noise Level" for some time, and could She has been transferred from Yeovil Dis¬ until further notice -- and at home, at well be the last of all. I'd dedicate trict Hospital, which is for short-term least, she is often able to pose a ques¬ it to the once and future Marjorie, but acute cases, operations and urgent ther¬ tion, or convey a statement about her there may not be a future version of her, apy, to one called Summerlands, where she condition, although it's largely a mat¬ and the present one, although she might is surrounded by chronic geriatrics -- ter of guesswork that leads one to the attempt to read it, would not -- so test¬ which depresses the hell out of her -- eventual meaning. However, much of her ifies her speech therapist -- be able to but where the facilities and staff for speech is garbled. She knows perfectly physiotherapy and speech therapy are, I well (and this is among the saddest as¬ Technically, during the night of 13th- am assured, as good as any in the area. pects of her condition) that her words 14th April, 1986, my beloved wife sustain¬ Certainly, the physiotherapist whom I aren't coming out right; she demonstrat¬ ed a cerebral embolism leading to right- saw working with her today is obviously ed this the other day, by taking a get- side hemiplegia and acute dysphasia. In competent and marvelously patient. well card and trying to read aloud the other words, she had a violent stroke. But... message on it. The words emerged with virtually no resemblance to the original. There is no way of being certain, Well, yesterday, along with Marjorie's but it seems probable that the trouble best friend from the village, and two Well, I've picked up a speech thera¬ originated in a partly-sclerosed artery tftd and dear friends from London who had py data pack from the hospital, and from in her right leg, which for some years come to visit her on the way back from a now on every time she’s at home we shall past had given her pain due to intermit¬ holiday in Devon, I watched the speech drill her through some of the exercises tent claudication. Very likely, a frag¬ therapist running a battery of tests on in it, to reinforce the more intensive ment of the atheroma or other obstruction her, at the end of which she said con¬ sessions at the hospital. But there is broke away and drifted round her circul¬ clusively, "She can’t understand what is very little hope of success. ation until it reached a vessel that it being said to her. She may give the ap¬ blocked. Whereupon... pearance of doing so, but in fact she's I have been advised to make no ar¬ only taking clues as to the response she rangements for her return. Even if she Ironically, during the previous week ought to make from tone of voice, or ges¬ does come back one day, it won't be as I'd been laid low with some unpleasant tures, or facial expression." Marjorie, my partner and helpmeet, the bug that chiefly made me want to doze. co-director of our company and the pers¬ I spent three days on our sitting room I find this incredibly hard to accept. on I have so often called if not my right couch wrapped in a sleeping bag and pay¬ With the help of friends, and Marjorie's arm, then my right leg, on the grounds ing negligible attention to the world; son who came from California to spend a that whenever I try to do anything with¬ one day, I worked out later, I slept few days here, I've been able to get her out her I'm likely to fall flat on my eighteen hours. So when Marjorie said home half a dozen times -- and intend to face... No, it will be as a total de- on Sunday evening she was feeling out of sorts and turned in early, about nine- fifteen, I took it for granted she was in for a dose of the same thing that had bothered me. When I retired to bed after watching a late film I was pleased to find her fast asleep, and crept around with minimum noise because she has always hated to be woken up just after dropping off. Then, in the morning, when I tried to ask whether she wanted her usual coffee or -- as often when she was unwell -- a glass of lemon tea instead, I wasn't sur¬ prised that she brushed me aside with un¬ clear grunting noises. So many times in the past she, like me, had wanted nothing more than to be left to sleep off a cold or bout of 'flu. It was not until lunch¬ time that I caught on: this was no ord¬ inary sleep, but stupor... I called our neighbor, who's a phys¬ iotherapist taking time off to raise her youngest kid, and she told me to ring the doctor right away.

Waiting for him to arrive, I realiz¬ ed with sudden horror that I knew what must have happened. I remember saying to myself, "It looks like a stroke." I re¬ member out GP examining her and confirm¬ ing my guess. Nonetheless, it wasn't real. Not for a long time. When the ambulance came to take her to hospital -- when I went to see the doctor in charge of the ward where she had been admitted -- I still had this subconscious conviction that in a few days she'd sit up in bed and start to complain about being stuck there when she had so much to do at home... 31 crutch, more likely confined to a wheel¬ somewhere completely unfamiliar... and chair, and capable of only incoherent figure out (even the speech therapist TIME FOR ONE MORE 1969 (2) says her intellect is unimpaired) that ♦Peggy Swenson I'd had to sell up because of her. So I've got to hang on somehow. YOUNG TIGER 1965 (5) Those people who have met Marjorie will, I think, recall her as active, live¬ Which means, of necessity, no more THE PUNISHMENT 1967 (2) ly-minded, argumentative, and above all unpaid writing for the foreseeable fut¬ furious about the way we are mismanaging ure. I'd like to express my gratitude THE SATURDAY NIGHT PARTY 1963 (1) to REG for giving me a soapbox for so the world. At a blow -- at a stroke -- SEX TURNED ON 1967 (7) all this has been taken from her! She many years; apologize to those with whom is locked inside the prison of her skull I hoped to have a long-running and per¬ haps even constructive debate following DISCOTHEQUE DOLL 1966 (2) and any message that gets out she has to ♦Ann Radway smuggle, and in code. on from my last two polemical columns; and last but not least say how pleased As for myself, I'm managing, after a I've always been by Tim Kirk's charming THE THREE WAY APARTMENT 1964 (3) fashion. Kind friends have rallied round ♦Peggy Swenson to help, and I've had visitors whose pre¬ sence dragged me back to life by imposing Thanks, each and all of you. So QUEER BEACH 1964 (1) the need to cook meals, make beds, do long. ♦Peggy Swenson laundry, clean the house. But the book that I'd been working on these past two AMATEUR NIGHT 1965 (2) years has gone -- phfft! I've often com¬ ♦Peggy Swenson pared the process of writing to trying to recapture a dream; that one has faded SUZY AND VERA 1964 (2) past recall. So I must try something ♦Peggy Swenson else. I owe a large advance for a novel that now I know I'll never finish. MALE MISTRESS 1964 (1) Years ago I sweated my way out of a THE THREE WAY SET 1965 (3) similar predicament, albeit less severe. ♦Frederic Colson In 1970, while we were nursing Marjorie's mother through terminal abdominal cancer, THE GAY PARTNERS 1964 (4) my father had a stroke (a different kind, ♦Peggy Swenson an aneurysm) and died in six days. When it came to him funeral, I could not even PAMELA'S SWEET AGONY 1965 (2) feel sad. My entire emotional capital ♦Peggy Swenson had been exhausted. LESBIAN GYM 1964 (6) At the time I was working on THE SHEEP LOOK UP. I found I just could not ♦Peggy Swenson go on with it. FOR SALE IN BED WE LIE 1967 (1) There followed a dismal period of EYE AT THE WINDOW 1967 (2) some three months when I put black marks This is a major sale, folk. We're on white paper, looked at them, and threw them away. At last I found a way out of talking heavy duty, once-in-a-life- ROLLER DERBY GIRL 1967 (3) the mental maze by forcing myself to put time opportunity. ♦Frederic Colson an ending on a book I'd previously aban¬ doned -- that was THE WRONG END OF TIME. Below are listed spare copies, mint BEDROOM BLACKLIST 1966 (2) copies, of my sex novels from 1963 Then I wrote a complete new novel, one of MAN FOR HIRE 1965 (2) the Max Curfew series; and then at last onward. The price is $5. each, I was able to return to SHEEP and rewrite postage paid. I'll even autograph ♦Robert N. Owen it from the start and bring it to an ov¬ them if you like. THE PASSION THING 1966 (3) erdue completion. But in those days I was fifteen years younger and far more ♦Frederic Colson The number of copies available is resilient. Besides, neither of the peo¬ RITA & MARIAN 1967 (1) ple that I'd lost meant half as much to in brackets. First come, first me as Marjorie. served. When only a couple of ♦Peggy Swenson At Easter last we'd been together copies are for sale, you might THE LOVE TRIBE 1968 (1) twenty-nine years. want to list alternate titles. ♦Peggy Swenson * Denotes a Geis pseudonym ORALITY '69 1969 (6) When 1 started on this piece, I in¬ ORALITY '70 1970 (8) tended to explain why I don't believe the currently fashionable image of the THREE WAY SWAP 1970 (3) mind as a hologram, distributed around the brain in such wise that ninety-plus SLUM VIRGIN, 1963 (2) DEVIL ON HER TAIL 1969 (5) per cent of the information in it can be * Peggy Swenson retrieved from a mere fragment. I was go¬ SENSUAL FAMILY, 1964 (3) ing to make learned references to the hy¬ draulic theory of consciousness devised TEEN HIPPIE 1968 (2) THE MOUTH GIRL 1970 (2) by, if I recall, Descartes after a tour ♦Peggy Swenson ♦Peggy Swenson of the fountains of Versailles, the Evans and Newman theory that the brain is like ODD COUPLE 1968 (3) THE HOT KIDS AND THEIR OLDER LOVERS a computer which needs dreams to clear *Peggy Swenson ♦Peggy Swenson 1971 (1) irrelevant bits of obsolete programs, and EASY 1962 (3) the manifest bias of Marjorie's speech THE MOUTH LOVER 1970 (1) therapist towards Skinnerian behaviorism. *Peggy Swenson ♦Peggy Swenson (Marjorie is not a black box! She's not! She’s NOT!) OFF-BROADWAY- CASANOVA 1966 (2) A GIRL POSSESSED 1973 (1) ♦Robert N. Owen ♦Peggy Swenson But never mind that. The most cons¬ tructive thing I can do is make sure that DRIFTER IN TOWN 1966 (3) BLOW HOT, BLOW COLD 1972 (3) I don't go irremediably broke and have ♦Robert N. Owen ♦Peggy Swenson to sell the house. Hiring the early part of our marriage we had to move on average SAILOR ON THE TOWN 1966 (1) ANAL HUSBANDS AND THEIR DEVIANT every four years. But we've been in our ♦Robert N. Owen WIVES 1971 (1) Case histories. present place for over twelve; in conse¬ quence, it's more of a home than any of RUNNING WILD 1969 (4) Listing continued on p. 59 the previous residences"! Ft would add ♦Peggy Swenson indescribably to Marjorie's suffering were she to be brought out from the hos- STELLAR PIG was originally published as a juvenile, but like Heinlein's early "juveniles," these can be thoroughly en¬ joyed regardless of the reader's age. BOOK REVIEWS BY GENE DEWEESE

0N_Y APPRENTLY REAL: 1>£ WORLD OF JI£ HOUND OF HEAVEN By Glover Wright CRISIS By James Gunn PHILIP K, DICK By Paul Williams Arbor House, $15.95 TOR, $2.95 Arbor House, $7.95 An obscure but charismatic priest, A man called Bill Johnson, apparent- Not being a fan of Dick, except per- brutally crucified by the North “Vietnam- ly sent back in time from some unspecif- haps for THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELD- ese 311(1 rescued by a normally cynical led future in order to avert an unspec- RITCH and MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, I wasn’t U.S. covert operations agent/soldier/kil- ified crisis, is now trapped in a never- expecting to do more than skim a few pag- remains in a coma for years and then ending series of alternate worlds. He es in this "biography.” Chce I read ev- dies when his life support systems are exists "outside of time," and each time en one page, however. I was hooked, pri- sllut <*)wn* Nine hours later, however, he averts a crisis, he finds himself in CASCADE POINT $16.95 REDWORLD By Charles L. Harness And to make matters worse, the SPINNERET $15.95 DAW Books, $2.95 characters are generally unpleasant, By Timothy Zahn Bluejay Books although that may've been intention¬ Though REEWORLD at first looks al, since part of the object of Shet¬ A novel that grabs you on the like just another magical alien world land's analysis seemed to be to fig¬ first page and won't let go until story, it isn't. Instead, as we find ure out just which of the crew mem¬ out near the end, it takes place on a you finish it is generally called a bers embody which of the Seven Sins. "page turner," but what would you planet circling Barnard's Star some¬ GHOST is one of the few books that I call a collection of short stories in time in the next few hundred years, actually ended up resenting because which one story sucks you in so com¬ and it's much closer to science fic¬ of the time lost reading it. pletely that you not only read virt¬ tion than to fantasy, particularly ually every other story in the col¬ in these days of the new and mysti¬ lection but also pick up an equally cal physics. It's just that it's long novel by the same author and told strictly from the first person plow through that in short order? viewpoint of a young native of the world, and to him and the other na¬ MR. O'MALLEY, WIZARD OF WALL STREET: I don't know what the generic tives, everything associated with BARNABY #5 By Crockett Johnson term for such a collection is, but the not-quite-human earth people and Ballantine/DelRey, $2.95 an example is CASCADE POINT. The their strange mission are the same story that first caught me was "The I keep waiting for this series to as magic. Final Report on the Lifeline Experi¬ deteriorate, but it seems only to ment," which manages to mix the abor¬ For me anyway, it would've been get better. This time Mr. O'Malley, tion controversy with quantum mech¬ better had the setting been reveal¬ Bamaby's fairy godfather, creates a anics in its recounting of a tele¬ ed early on, but to Harness's credit huge conglomerate, O'Malley Enter¬ pathic experiment intended to deter¬ the intriguingly medieval background prises, even though he's never able mine the point at which a fetus be¬ and the interesting narrator and the to get into the corporate offices or comes human. Other equally intrigu¬ occasional hints about the true na¬ even to speak more than occasional ing items were "The Cassandra" and ture of the world kept me going un¬ misunderstood words over the phone "Dreamsender," both of which also til the truth finally began to come to the executives he has somehow hir¬ deal with, among other things, pecul¬ out. Perhaps not a Nebula or Hugo ed. Things start unraveling, how¬ iar forms of telepathy and the start¬ contender, but highly enjoyable and ever, when his friend Gus The Ghost ling discoveries made through their more than a little nostalgic. (who still hasn't learned how to use. The title story, which won a walk through walls properly) takes Hugo for best novella, deals with a all the company books home for Jake particularly odd form of space trav¬ (another ghost, this one an ex-bus- el, apparently linked with alternate inessman) to check over. realities. GHOST By Piers Anthony For those who like comparisons, And so on, over a wide range of TOR, $14.95 this episode reminded me very much subjects. What almost all have in of a comic-strip version of Jerzy Not having like anything by An¬ conmon are fascinating ideas, better Kozinski's BEING THERE, what with thony since MACROSCOPE, I suppose than average characters, and plotting the way Mr. O'Malley blunders along it's my own fault for sticking with and writing that flesh out those i- innocently while everyone around him GHOST all the way to the end, but deas into truly gripping stories. manufactures grand misinterpreta¬ even so it's irritating. The basic tions of everything he says and does The novel, SPINNERET, tells of idea --a ship traveling trillions and even grander misinterpretations an Eric Frank Russell universe, of years through time but remaining of everything he doesn't say or do. crowded with alien and human bureau¬ fixed in space while the universe Great fun and, in its own quiet crats, all of whom appear to be in moves around it -- had so much po¬ way, often as good as DOONESBURY or conflict with the hero over control tential that I kept hoping that some BLOOME COUNTY. of the ancient alien manchine he of it would be realized. And every finds when he and his men are dump¬ now and then, it seemed that it would ed by the government on what every¬ be, such as when the ship reaches one thought was a useless and total¬ the point at which the universe ly metal-free planet. Through luck should -- but does not -- stop ex¬ THE SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH and brains though, he eventually panding and begin contracting. And By Arthur C. Clarke. turns the tables on them all and when, beyond "our" universe, the Ballantine/DelRey, $17.95 even learns something of what hap¬ crew find themselves among "ghost pened to the aliens who built the galaxies," where matter appears to The Magellan, one of the last machine. be massless and can be controlled by star ships to leave Earth before the sun went nova in 3620, stops at While perhaps not up to the level mental power alone. of the best of the short stories, Unfortunately, all such develop¬ SPINNERET is still one of the more ments turned out to be false alarms enjoyable books of the year. And at providing just enough hope to keep least for me„ it and CASCADE POINT me reading. In the end, without ev¬ were something very special in that en an attempt at an explanation, the they both elicited the same kinds of story degenerates into pretentious feelings that I got from the first ruminations by the nominal hero. Cap¬ SF I read longer ago than I like to tain Shetland, who launches into a think about, which doubtless means seemingly endless Gosseyn-like anal¬ that they are much superior to those ysis of the Nature of Humanity, its earlier stories. The only other Seven Deadly Sins, etc. He and the books that imnediately come to mind other crew members even mentally as having had that same effect recent¬- create handy little illustrative ly are Asimov's continuations of hit scenes using the ghost galaxy mat¬ classic series, "Foundation's Edge" erial. and "Robots and Empire," and that's pretty good company to be in. 34 PuiAo/tPKurrme Thalassa, an ocean world colonized Anyone who can read that or any by a seedship centuries before. of dozens of other passages without FOR SALE The Magellan's crew has to rebuild getting a shiver down the spine or a its ice shield (protection against lump in the throat -- well, they Some of you will remember the short¬ dust in space, necessary at inter¬ probably wouldn't like CHILDHOOD'S lived CONSPIRACY NEWSLETTER which I stellar speeds) before they can con¬ END, either, and are therefore simp¬ and an unnamed co-conspirator wrote tinue to Sagan Two, their ultimate ly beyond reach. SONGS OF DISTANT and published from May to November, destination seventy-five light years EARTH isn't nearly the book that CE beyond Thalassa. is, but it definitely has it moments 1981. and I wouldn't have missed it for These seven issues were concern¬ SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH is a the world. ed with macro-conspiracy: who really chronicle of their months on Thal¬ controls the world, and how? What assa and their interactions with the is being planned for the United Stat¬ natives as the ice shield is rebuilt es and the world? piece by piece on one of the world's We spotted some trends and pre¬ two inhabited islands. Earth's de¬ sented some evidence. struction, known to be inevitable If you'd like to pick up on for centuries, is covered only by those writings, I have copies of memories and flashbacks, as are all CONSPIRACY NEWSLETTER #1, 2, 3, 6, other non-Thalassan matters. and 7. The cost is $1. each, postpaid. Like IMPERIAL EARTH and other Clarke novels, SONGS is largely a Send money or checks to: combination of essay, future history Richard E. Geis and travelogue, this time with a love P.0. Box 11408 story and a smidgin of mutiny thrown Portland, OR 97211 in for good measure. It moves some¬ what slowly, and only occasionally is there much "conventional" suspense. Often, it seems almost as pastoral as Thalassa itself. SfELTER By Martin Asher But none of that really matters. Arbor House, $12.95 What matters is Clarke's style and The publicity that came with SHELTER vision, which once again manage to compares it to early Vonnegut and calls make that combination pleasantly it a fantasy novel about the rock con¬ cert that saved the world. With less spine-tingling. And of course, than 150 pages, many of which have less I have been a hopeless writer and there are his usual casually-tossed- than half a dozen lines on them, it's publisher of a personal journal off ideas, each of which could be closer to a 50 page novelette than a for many, many years. The only prob¬ the basis for another novel or ser¬ novel. Also, the fantasy rock concert lem is, I tend to write a pj in ies of novels. apparently happens only in the drugged mind of the protagonist, "a man named spurts, then kill it, start again a Billy,” who sets out to find the true few years later, kill it... For instance, there are his message in the Beatles' songs and thereby Such was the case with RICHARD thoughts on the Quantum Drive, dis¬ save the world from nuclear disaster. E. GEIS, a personal journal which covered only a century or so before On the other hand, it is_ reminiscent ran from 1978 to 1981. I have copies the sun was due to go nova. It op¬ of Vonnegut, not only because of Billy's of some of those issues. They are: erates by tapping the virtually lim¬ name but because of the style of its #4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 16, 17, 100+ brief episodes and the plentiful itless energy of superspace, a con¬ 18, 19, 20, 22, 23. cept discussed by "real" scientists one-liners. There is, for example, Bil¬ ly's final realization, which he jots The cost is $1. each, postpaid. since at least 1969. The drive's down, presumably for future use in his Send money or check to: leakage alone would be enough to de¬ bumper sticker business: "Sometimes the Richard E. Geis stroy a planet, and at one point, only solution is to find a new problem." P.0. Box 11408 one of the characters says: "Some¬ Unlike Vonnegut's works, however, Portland, OR 97211 one once said that the Quantum Dr¬ SHELTER is a very slim volume, but per¬ ive's real purpose is nothing as haps the solution to the potential read¬ trivial as exploration of the uni¬ er's problem is also contained in the verse. We'll need its energies one publicity. Book club rights have been sold to the Quality Paperback Book Club, day to stop the cosmos' collapsing where the price per effective page will back into the primordial black hole doubtless be more reasonable. -- and to start the next cycle of existence."

BACK ISSUES OF MY CURRENT PERSONAL JOURNAL, THE NAKED ID (whose first issue was titled Richard E. Geis), are available, from #1 through #12. They, also are $1. each, postpaid. Uhh, overseas buyers must send US$1.60 per issue. I don't think I'll sell many overseas. As above, send money and checks to: Richard E. Geis P.0. Box 11408 Portland, OR 97211

35 minding me of some of Bosch's third AND THEN I READ.... panel in The Garden of Delights. But all through Mathews' adult work {iis children's material is rounded CHILDHOOD'S TROOPERS, was lost in and funny and gentle, mostly) I'm the mail when he submitted it to a struck by the pervasiveness of sharp publisher in 1963. His second work, towers, spurs, dagger-like points, THE TIME MERCHANTS, disappeared lances, thorns... Subtle deadly when Lancer Books went bankrupt images everywhere.... A painting shortly after purchasing it in 1972. of his on the wall would be sub¬ Undaunted, Clarke embarked on his consciously disturbing to most magnum opus, the LORD OF DAMNATION people. trilogy. Unfortunately, he modeled Even so, even so, this element his protagonist on his brother- of danger inherent in his images who, upon reading the manuscript, is exciting. And it makes you look burned it. at it! There's no swift glance and Weary and embittered, Clarke shrug when viewing these masterpiec¬ wrote LESS THAN HUMAN in 1975, im¬ es ! LESS THAN HUMAN mediately before his untimely death By Robert Clarke in a choking episode at a fried Avon, April 1986, $2.95 chicken restaurant...' Kind of science fiction of the There's more. Funny. Satire. MYTHOPOEIKON absurd. Kind of mockery, kind of You have to turn to the copyright By Patrick Woodroffe good, kind of junky. When will page to learn who really wrote Dragon's World Ltd. 1984 (England) this author ever write straight, this novel. Are you ready? It Salem House Publishers $14.95 serious science fiction? He seems was Charles Platt. 462 Boston Street embarrassed...perhaps afraid to do It may be that only in the Topsfield, MA 01983 it for fear of failing? Or fear family of sf publishing that jokes This volume is subtitled 'The of reviews after having really done like this can be perpetrated. And Paintings, Etchings, Book-Jackets his best? In tongue-in-cheek there a good thing, too. I love it. is safety. 5 Record-Sleeve Illustrations of Oh, the story? An android (not Patrick Woodroffe.' With notes and a damn robot!) is grown on the moon commentary by the artist. by Earth scientists following in¬ Woodroffe is a marvelous tech- structions from aliens, while be¬ IN SEARCH OF FOREVER nition with a glorious imagination. low a despotic government strives By Rodney Mathews His paintings often virtually ex¬ to rule a decayed, rubbled, chaot¬ Dragon's World Ltd., 1985 (England) plode off the pages at you, riots ic world. In New York, in the Salem House Publishers $14.95 of color and image. Chrysler Building, the aging rem¬ 462 Boston Street, There is surrealism here, and nants of the Hippies live in a drug- Topsfield, MA 01983 a strong reminder of Bosch and fogged flawed nirvana, living in There are amazing, and superb Dali. But this man is so individ¬ sin and sour desperation. Their artists alive and well in England. ual, so powerful, that he is unique. leader's daughter is a rebel--who Rodney Mathews is one of them (as is Children, nymphets, death and dang¬ loves rock-n-roll, neatness and Patrick Woodroffe, reviewed below). er, mad symbolism, weird creatur¬ virtue. I'm always struck sick with es, compelling assemblages of im¬ envy and admiration when I see a possible images inhabit his works. The android escapes, but has a collection, in full color, of the He is hypnotising. Here are indeed tiny gap in its programming... It work of such men. How marvelous Fantasies, Monsters, Nightmares and reaches New York, meets the girl, is the detail, the color, the imag¬ Daydreams. The unconscious spewing the hippies... It invents defences ination! And how astonishing the its freight. In madness there is against the racist, reactionary, skill levels and techniques! sanity. ruthless police and... Mathews seems to work best in I have here the fourth edition Well, there are a lot of side- inks and Gouache; the lines are so of this work. Superb printing, bars and bits of plot business-- clear and precise, and the colors incredible color. This collection, funny and savage, along the way. pure and subtle all at once. and the one reviewed above, are But by far the funniest part His posters are marvels and well worth the money. of the novel is the final page-- his book covers incredbly fine! About the Author. Superlatives hardly exist to Robert Clarke... Aw, let me describe the quality of this work. quote. It's pure...pure.... Mathews' work is almost all 'Robert Clarke, a slot-machine fantasy and fantasy science fiction. SPIDER PLAY coil-evaluation system designer All simply stunningly superb. By Lee Kil lough from Des Moines, Iowa wrote science There seems to me lo be a thread Popular Library, $3.50, July, 1986 fiction In his spare time for twelve of Bosch in his work: some of his A purist would consider this fu¬ years with a pitiful lack of success. creatures and aliens and humans are ture detective/murder story a rip- The manuscript of his first book. vicious and cruel and deadly—re¬ off in two ways: it's a translation (a present-day murder mystery with names/places changed to give it the illusion of being science fiction) and it sloughs off the murder (the whole accumulating point of the book, for Christ's sake!) at the end, shrugs, and walks away. RICHARD E. GEIS I felt cheated and felt the writer had done violence to my (and 36 other readers') reader expectations. Killough does have a talent for To me, at least. Tuf contrives new plants, ani¬ future detail, for good main charac¬ Maybe I'm just mad at him for mals, schemes to extend their margin terizations (though a lot of the doing the juvenile, egotistic auth¬ but the government wants his massive time the writing is too dense--too or schtick (LOOK AT ME!) and not con¬ ship... much detail crammed in, too much centrating on his other-world char¬ These stories are almost all business going on inside and out¬ acters. They are real, hurting, from ANALOG, and thus were written side the minds affected). joyous, utterly believable people to fit that magazine's story needs. The novel starts fast and in- and their world is in crisis...yet Tuf is virtually immutable---an hon¬ triguingly as a hearse-with-corpse they and theirs are kept in-their- est man, clever, lucky. He survives is stolen one dark, cold night, and place, distanced, at the intellectual all the plots and schemes against the team of Sgt. Janna Brill and mercy of Greeley, who turns them off him. And he loves cats. It seems "Mama" Maxwell are obligated to intermitently to be himself and to he will do anything to save one of track it down and catch the tribal muse on their plights. his cats. gang who apparently took it. GOD GAME is a device for Greeley There are harsh things said Ah, but all is not as it seems to indulge himself, and he does it about lack of birth control, lack and the plot thickens... well and smugly. Along the way he of responsibility, lack of ethics As soon as the team are sent up moralizes a lot, calls God a Her, and morality. You might think these to a corporate satellite in the sky and tricks up the narrative with ref¬ stories are extended morality tales. the story slows, changes content, erences to the Other---the player of You'd be correct. direction and loses interest. New a game in other world in which we I was disappointed in the priorities appear; the murder of a are characters? Or is Greeley talk¬ shallow characterizations (having space worker is trivial, now, and ing about God? There is ambiguity been spoiled rotten by Martin in his must be shrugged off. galore in this novel. The author extraordinary ARMAGEDDON RAG), but As I shrug off this novel for asks questions, poses questions, even as stereotypes these characters not keeping to its moral and genre pokes and prods at eternal human do have credibility. track. puzzlements, and mostly shrugs and Tuf and his seedship also in¬ I don't really mind all that walks away. He says he is secure spired thoughts in me about might- much that this murder mystery isn't in his belief in God, but in his makes-right, as Tuf uses his power "true" sf, but I do mind that it heart of egotistic hearts, I wonder. to play God...and in one story to didn't punish the killer. There's a bright strain of solipsism murder. Well, Doing Good is a tough in this novel; Greeley is having a job, but somebody has to do it! hard time keeping humble. Right? Finally, if fiction is supposed to be an emotional experience, this is essentially an intellectual ex¬ well, no, the afghanis wsren't perience; Greeley sets up emotional AC-71/AU-T BROADCASTING ISLAMIC involvement, and jerks it away. Be FI/NDamENTALISM at us. BUT THEV warned.

GOD GAME By Andrew M. Greeley Warner, $16.95 June, 1986 The novel is more about the au¬ TUF VOYAGING thor, Andrew Greeley, an intellectual By George R.R. Martin Catholic priest-writer than it is a- BAEN BOOKS, $15.95, 1986 bout his characters. This isn't really a novel. It In GOD GAME a very thinly dis¬ is a progressing series of stories guised Greeley is given a highly ad¬ about a central character, Haviland vanced computerized interactive ad¬ Tuf who acquires a huge, ancient. venture game to play; he is himself Old Earth Ecological Corps seedship able to play God to a set of charac¬ INSIDE OUTER SPACE ters in the computer-game world. and singlehandedly, capitalistically, SCIENCE FICTION PROFESSIONALS LOOK sells his services to planetary gov¬ But somehow, the medievel-like AT THEIR CRAFT world he becomes involved with, and ernments throughout the human galaxy. Edited by Sharon Jarvis The resources of the ship allow him plays God in, is actually an altern¬ Ungar, $7.95, 1985 to create plants, animals, fish to ate world which the computer has pen¬ This trade paperback includes order, to solve critical ecological etrated , and the people are as real ten essays by Parke Godwin, C.J. problems. and complicated as we are, in this Cherryh, Ron Goulart, Stuart David His initial problem is surviv¬ world. In fact, as the "game" pro¬ Schiff, Carter Scholz, Marion Zijim- ing the schemes and murder attempts gresses, there is some interpenetra¬ er Bradley, Marshall B. Tymm, Sharon of a group who have employed him to tion of Them into our world, in Jarvis, Lloyd Biggie, Jr., and Geo¬ take them to a discovered 1000-year- dreams, in "coincidences"... rge Alec Effinger. old derelict spaceship. Only he Greeley is a hell of a good wri¬ Really inside stuff is hard to survives their greedy double-crosses ter. His naturalness and right-on find because authors are usually and takes ownership of the ancient, characterization makes his fiction afraid to offend editors and publish still 'alive' seedship. very real. True-to-life is the ex¬ ers, and editors are afraid of los¬ His greatest danger comes from act description. ing their jobs and being blackball¬ the planet S'uthlam whose peoples But he is a compulsive egotist, ed. (It has happened.) and religion insist it is their des¬ it seems, and uses this GOD GAME So, aside from the honesty of tiny to procreate at maximum speed framework to wallow in speculations Sharon Jarvis (a rather bitter tale no matter what. They are forever about God and Man, Free Will, Fate, of male chauvinism and sexism), The Nature of Man... He does it pressing against the limits of their these essays are safe and routine, planet to feed them. adroitly, interestingly, skillfully, while also being interesting, esp¬ but his natural need to Question and ecially to the outsider. Wonder is intrusive, and irritating. 37 OTHER VOICES OTHER VOICES

CONTACT By Carl Sagan vices for a TV set that will mute the Simon 5 Schuster, 432 pp. hardcver, $18.95 coranercials, or change the channel if you hit a religious show. (He's S. R. REVIEWED BY LARRY NIVEN Hadden, and he will build the Machine de¬ You've seen his face on "Cosmos" or scribed in the message.) Nuclear war the "Tonight Show." He's a man in love has not happened; civilization has not with the universe. His "Cosmos" series collapsed. on television and his several best-sel¬ The point is, this isn't a novel a- ling nonfiction books were all attenpts bout aliens. It's about comnunication. to explain the most abstruse and startl¬ We watch governments negotiating to keep ing aspects of the universe to anyone the world stable, and to share a message bright enough to read. He talks good from space that falls all across the English for a scientist. globe as it turns, and finally to build First contact between mankind and history's most expensive machine (with- extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) is out knowing what it's supposed to major topic in science fiction. The un Spokespersons for industry and fo ized and freestyle religion get i This anthology contains 13 stories verse is big; inhabited worlds should from the first nine issues of a British be innumerable. Where are the ETIs? act. Ellie herself has trouble c eating with her own species. magazine that began publishing in 1982. What are they like? Why haven't they If this first collection is any indica-

Shirley's description of Cindy's discov¬ ery and the "Dalliesque" universe beyond accepted reality is science fantasy at ago, although he freely scalps lesser mand of the male authors? criminals for the greater glory of God. A**************************************** And journalist Virtue MacKenzie, with loyalty as fickle as her nickname, Vir¬ gin Queen, follows them all in search of an interview with the elusive killer -- BEYOND THE SAFE ZONE By Robert Silverberg Santiago. Donald I. Fine, 1986, 472 pp., $18.95 Just as the "dime novels" created REVIEWED BY ANDREW M. ANDREWS the mythos of the American West, Resnick ENIGMA By Michael P. Kube-McDowell fills out a segment of the future his¬ Berkely, 1986, 355 pp., $3.50 As Silverberg writes in the introduc¬ tory he previously sketched in his BIRTH- REVIEWED BY DEAN R. LAMBE tion to BEYOND THE SAFE ZONE: "Things RIQfT: THE BOOK OF MAN. Both western are quieter now, though no less perilous. and mystery conventions are combined, as The middle volume of a trilogy car¬ The disturbing, fragmented SF of the last the bounty hunters follow clues from ries a heavy burden: often to the des¬ decade has given way to the bland, com¬ planet to planet, from colorful charac¬ pair of writer and reader alike, it must forting, predictable fantasies of today ter to shady criminal. All the players start in the middle and remain there. ... the stories in this book are, by and are intertwined, linked through the At first ENICMA seems to presage the large, not like that. The world that stanzas of traveling minstrel, Black Or¬ disappointment of many middle books, for they sprang frcrni was the troubled, be¬ pheus, whose "Ballad of Santiago" pro¬ the action begins some 200 years after wildering, dangerous, and very exciting vides the novel with its own folk song. the time of EMPRISE, Kube-McDowell's im¬ world of those strange years when the By the time the hunters converge on pressive debut tale of first contact barriers were down and the future was the real Santiago, the reader has been rushing into the present with the force led far beyond simple myth to the heart 40 of a river unleashed." represents a new level of imagina- novel as a high point in hard SF creativity. Highly recommended. A direct sequel to his THE PEACE WAR, MAROONED IN REAL TIME is more successful in many ways. Where else could one follow the lives of I HOPE I SHALL ARRIVE SOON continuing characters over half a By Philip K. Dick billion years later? Vinge presents Doubleday, 1985, 180 pp., $12.95 us with mystery on a grand scale: Not only has the majority of humanity REVIEWED BY ANDREW ANDREWS disappeared sometime in the 23rd It's a marvel to be able to find Century, but those few hundred re¬ that one previously uncollected maining encounter the ultimate twist short story, which brings one writ¬ in locked-room murders, with all of er's gift more intensely to heart, mankind closed within the hobbled and when you find many stories that "room," while the victim dies out¬ do as much (especially 0f sustained side. quality), for any collector and abid¬ In the distant future, when ing fan, it is great joy. lovers Marta and Yelen Korolev emerge Some jewels are found. from their one-way time travel via bobble, they discover that Earth is vacant and in ruins. Within a few decades of their entry to bobble time stasis in 2201, something hap¬ pened --an extinction perhaps due to alien attack, or maybe an evolu¬ tion of Man and his machines to a higher plane. Marta conceives a plan to rekindle the human race, however, from those few who are al¬ so hobbled for various lengths of time. From misfit loners to organ¬ ized criminals, the hobbled remnants of mankind are brought together by the Korolevs as eons pass on Earth. The final rescue involves a large group of Peacers, escapees from the collapse of the 21st Cen¬ tury Peace Authority dictatorship. Not a few of the low-techs, those who were hobbled before the incred¬ ible 23rd Century survival technolo¬ gy was available, have reason to wish that the Peacers never rejoin the race. Even though 50 million years have passed on Earth, many -- including Earth's last private cop, Wil Brierson -- have fears of stat¬ ist government that are mere days old. As the Korolevs bobble up ev¬ eryone to await the final reunifica¬ tion when the Peacers' bobble col¬ lapses, someone sabotages Yelen's software, and Marta is left outside, There are moments in this new in real time. Without equipment or Philip K. Dick collection of short prolongevity treatments, Marta strug¬ stories, I HOPE I SHALL ARRIVE SOON, gles to survive alone for 40 years, where the presence, the personage of but the extensive diary she leaves the author has been transferred keen¬ for Yelen fails to name her murderer. ly -- Dick's voice, if only for a Despite her contempt for the low- little while, is with us. tech detective, Yelen asks Brierson to team with the high-tech space ex¬ An unpublished essay called plorer, Della Lu, to solve the mys¬ "How to Build a Universe That Does¬ MAROONED IN REAL TIME n't Fall Apart Two Days Later" peels By Vemor Vinge tery. But Brierson's task is away any persiflage to arrive at the Bluejay, 320 pp., $17.95 plagued by another investigation -- who, perhaps among those still alive, core of Dick's latest schizophrenia, REVIEWED BY DEAN R. LAMBE shanghaied him into this crazy twi¬ his muddling, laming paranoia about the disenchanted, indifferent, cata¬ For 20 years I have argued light of Mankind? tonic, mechanized world about him. that the last truly unique SF inven¬ Vinge has better control of his tion was Bob Shaw's "slow glass." characters in the sequel, and while "Strange Memories of Death" While Vinge's "bobbles" may not be the ending may seem contrived to fit rides the fence of autobiography quite as original, for such impene¬ the "locked-room" mold, the scope and details a horror Dick faced the trable force shields wherein time and grandeur of the plot mark this last years of his life. The title stops have appeared in earlier fic¬ story brings home another Dick test¬ tion, Vinge's use of this concept 41 ament -- the consuming question be- fore him: What is Real? What is lectible, perhaps several times ov¬ But -- Reality? -- leaves us, too, wonder- er. The fiction is sure-fire, an From a marketing standpoint, a col¬ easy job for any editor. lection such as this is also a brave und¬ ertaking. My respect goes to a publisher ************************************ This series is Special. The who wants to journey into the elusive Nebulas and Hugos are coveted awards. short story market so willingly. Blue- These stories are deserving -- for jay's presents the best there is. those with sense enough to know, of This massive, let's admit, hefty vol¬ THE HUGO WINNERS Vol. S the entire series, this one is rel¬ ume, bears the following fruit: "The Edited by Isaac Asimov iable. Jaguar Hunter" by Lucius Shepard, anoth¬ 372 pp., $18.95, Doubleday er in his marvels of Central America, The fiction includes "Ill Met and the mysteries of that stranger-still REVIEWED BY ANDREW ANDREWS in Lankhmar" by Fritz Leiber; "Slow world; "The Only Neat Thing to Do" by Sculpture" by Theodore Sturgeon; James Tiptree, Jr.; "Green Mars," by Kim This volume spans the years Stanley Robinson; (many Hugo and Nebula "The Missing Man" by Katherine Mac- 1980-82, an overwhelmingly minuscule Award nominees are here, ladies and gent¬ Lean; "The Queen of Air and Dark¬ length of time for many'award-winning lemen), and many more, from sources in ness” and "Goat Song" by Pohl Ander¬ and out of the SF/Fantasy field, includ¬ stories to be wrought, and three son; "Good News from the Vatican" ing OMJI magazine, PLAYBOY and collec¬ world conventions to be staged (the and "Bom with the Dead" by Robert tions such as IMAGINARY LANDS. WorldCon being the sole event at Silverberg; "A Meeting with Medusa" If you have no time or patience with which the coveted Hugo Awards are by Arthur C. Clarke; "When it Chang¬ the deluge of SF and Fantasy magazines bestowed, held mostly on American ed" by Joanna Russ; "The Death of out there, and you want only those fin¬ ground). est distilled, the best of the crop, you Doctor Island" by Gene Wolfe; "Of should enter at these gates. The work At times there seems a method, Mist, and Grass, and Sand" by Vonda is fresh and promising. however, to the editor's madness. N. McIntyre; "Love is the Plan the Why such a short span of time? Plan is Death" by James Tiptree, Jr; (Possibly because of the length of "If the Stars are Gods" by Gordon the stories, mostly in novelette Eklund and Gregory Benford; and "The form.) Why the thinness of the tome? Day Before the Revolution" by Ursula (In the past, these Hugo Award col¬ K. LeGuin. THE SCIENCE FICTION OF PHILIP K lections were awesome things, cover¬ Ed. by Patricia S. Warrick and Martin H. Greenberg. Southern Illinois Univers¬ ing several hundred pages. I sup¬ ity Press, 1986, 261 pp., $9.95 pose this length takes advantage of a rather large market over several REVIEWED BY AfOREW AfOREWS upcoming volumes.) TIC YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION, Third At work here is a creative and sens¬ Annual Collection, Ed by Gardner Dozois itive mind, troubled by increasing tech¬ Included here is Barry B. Long¬ Bluejay Books, 1986, 624 pp., $10.95 nological complexity, a world drawn fur¬ year's "Enemy Mine" (upon which the ther away from the people who have to movie is based), works by Gordon R. REVIEWED BY AfOREW AWJREWS live in it, leaving the individual (the Dickson, ("Lost Dorsai" and "The The attempt is admirable: What Do¬ creative, spontaneous soul) isolated and alienated. Cloak and the Staff"), Clifford D. zois intends with a collection as massive as Year's Best, with an Overview that Simak ("Grotto of the Dancing Deer"), The writer was drawn to the ques¬ may staisfy most scholars, and with an tion: What is reality? And he searched George R. R. Martin ("The Way of for the answer to: What is the absolute Cross and Dragon" and "Sandkings") ed, is astonishing. Bluejay has hired truth? Some answers are contained at and this reviewer's favorite, John the field's short story mastermind to do every stepping stone in the author's Varley's "The Pusher." what the less intent find impossible. Something like this makes walking on eggs As his wont, Asimov, the editor, appear time-consuming and dull. Such were the themes and movement of most of Philip K. Dick's fiction. Ris¬ chum-dummies his way through brief Many readers can find different anth¬ ing from the ashes of some of the earli¬ anecdotes, memorabilia of the auth¬ ologies covering a definitive year -- but er SF short story writers and novels, in ors and/or conventions and inter¬ how reliable are they? Do theme anthol¬ which authors sewed a future from the jects Asmiov Ego where fit -- it is ogies cover as many bases? Are all as¬ fabric of technological optimism and pects of any given year covered as thor¬ welcome everywhere. Asimov's intro¬ faith, Dick brought some of the traged¬ oughly, with as much brave oversight? ies and horror of growing technological ductions are the welcome puff between (Oversight meant as "taking in the whole sophistication down under our noses, and the text. Some stories are demand¬ period," no negative connotations intend¬ made us stare at technology-gone-wild as ing; others are forgetful; most will ed. ) Does any other anthologist take the it really, for some people, turned out be coveted over lifetimes. time to do the research, or show as much concern and love for the short story as ************************************ Dozois? No. Probably not. Dozois is Here are stories collected through¬ singularly preoccupied with investigating out his career, drilling for some ans¬ and nurturing the short story market, wers: What real difference exists be¬ given his editorial status with ISAAC AS¬ tween man and machine? Are we coming to IMOV’S SF MAGAZINE. a point where there soon will be no dif- THE SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME VOL IV, Edited by Terry Carr Avon, 1986, 434 pp., $4.95 REVIEWED'BY ANDREW ANDREWS Here we go again. With unfet¬ tered finesse, with a wisdom borne of twilight sleep, nights spent shuffling through stacked ANALOGS, GALAXIES, WORLDS OF IF, days re¬ searching old award-winning stories in the back of convention catalogs --No, wait. This is the SF Hall of Fame series. The fiction is garnered from the Nebula and Hugo Awards lists. These prestigious awards make nearly any story col¬ will demonstrate. In fact, the im¬ in order to sustain matter. It is plications of quantum physics point very edifying to realize that one the way towards proof of the para¬ scientist suggests that brain holo¬ normal and we all know where that grams may be stored in "phase space" leads -- pure magic! which may be something entirely non¬ physical! Sort of makes you believe Of course, the authors of this in ghosts, doesn't it? new book, being scientifically train¬ ed, might be reluctant to admit that There is a clever fish tank ana¬ but I don't think so, as many of logy to explain the possible exis¬ their examples and illustrations tence of higher dimensions of reali¬ are based upon Lewis Carrol and AL¬ ty --. a mind-boggling sixth dimen¬ ICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. This sion and speculation that time it¬ is a book that is not difficult to self is a projection from a higher read, but must be digested slowly in dimension, part of a system that order to grasp some very odd concepts may very well be infinite. All of We start in the early 20th Century this is so new, the authors remind where Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck us, that we are still thinking of and others are trying to grasp what names and labels to paste on all is going on in the subatomic realm, this phenomena. Science fiction and whether light is composed of writers can be a bit smug in that waves or particles (or both). This some of them like Jack Williamson leads inevitably to the famous "doub¬ (THE LEGION OF TIME) considered le-slit" experiment, where paradox such questions in a fictional con¬ reigns supreme, and electrons appear text decades before science ever to have a mind of their own. The got around to them. next step is Schroedinger and his half-dead, half-alive cat trapped in Parts of this book are a little a box with a vial of poison, the hard to absorb if science is not condition of which seems to be dic¬ one of your interests, but the auth¬ tated by the result the observer ors have done a remarkable job in .As is his wont as a writer, through wishes to happen! (With multiple explaining difficult questions. It the eyes of machines (a small toy soldier observers things get a big complica¬ is a gold mine of ideas for science ted. For a recent SF novel see fiction stories and full of inter¬ that sells itself) Dick shows us another view of the world -- a world and universe Pohl's CCMING OF THE QUANTUM CATS esting speculation in the field of in which the distinction between man and by Bantam.) pure science. I only wish the sub¬ ject had been this entertaining when machine blurs. We have here "The Little After that, all hell breaks Movement" from 1952; "Imposter" from 195^ I was at school. This book is a re¬ loose and nothing quite makes per¬ "The Last of the Masters" from 1954; minder of how weird "ordinary" real¬ fect sense thereafter. We must deal "Autofac" from 1956; "Electric Ant" from ity is. 1969; "The Exit Door Leads In" from 1979; with the concept of non-locality and the last story in the collection, where here is there, the holographic ************************************ "Frozen Journey" from 1980: They are universe principle that says every¬ all a testament to Dick’s fears, as he trembled in writing them down, because of thing mirrors everything else, and his need to reach others who were just Bohm's implicate order where there as frightened of the things he saw as he is nothing but flowing movement. was himself. It is a journey that is not-taken alone, and not easily forgot- Then, bringing things right up to date, there is the ever-popular science fiction idea of bifurcating branches of time developed by Everett and Wheeler and the highly controv¬ ersial theory of British biologist Rupert Sheldrake, of "morphogenesis," THE LOOKING GLASS UNIVERSE wherein the mind is not in the brain, By John P. Briggs, Ph.D. and and individual consciousness is con¬ F. David Peat, Ph.D. nected to some sort of field lying Simon S Schuster, 1984, 290 pp. , beyond normal space-time. The hard¬ $14.95 est part of the Sheldrake idea for REVIEWED BY RITCHIE BENEDICT conventional science to swallow is that a newly acquired ability can I used to hate books about sci¬ be passed from generation to genera¬ ence. An overdose of high school textbooks will do that to a person. tion (i.e. a dandelion learns a way On the other hand, I was very fond of resisting weed killer and once the initial break-through is made of reading science fiction. Science was too stodgy and didn't have that the knowledge spreads like ink through blotting paper to all other necessary’ degree of weirdness to at¬ tract my attention. However, some¬ dandelions). The fields are pecul¬ thing unusual has happened in the iar in themselves in that they are last 20 years, certain aspects of themselves formed by the very things they are forming. Of particular in¬ science have become weirder than terest are the chapters on the lat¬ science fiction (more towards fan¬ est brain research where a new theo¬ tasy) and it seems that you must ry by Californian Frank Barr, pro¬ know about the new elements in sci¬ poses we have, in effect, "mini-black ence if you are to successfully write holes" in our brains that eat light science fiction, as the new breed of writers such as Gregory Benford, James P. Hogan and Jerry Poumelle 43

Ten Tears Ago In Science Fiction - 1976 By Robert Sabella The true identity of the reclusive Wilson Tucker's 1970 novel, THE YEAR OF Important publications: FANTASY AND James Tiptree, Jr. was revealed as Alice THE QUIET SUN, which they felt never re¬ SCIENCE FICTION had a special Damon Knight Sheldon, shocking some prominent science ceived the recognition it deserved. issue, featuring his short story, "I See fiction people who had proclaimed public¬ Edmond Hamilton died at the age of You." It was a good quarter for prozine ly that Tiptree's writing style was def¬ 72. He achieved his greatest fame writ¬ serializations. GALAXY overlapped ser¬ initely that of a man (see Robert Silver- ing space operas of the E.E. Smith type ializations of Frederik Pohl's GATEWAY berg's introduction to Tiptree's anthol¬ in the 1920s and 1930s. and Larry Niven's CHILDREN OF THE STATE ogy WARM WORLDS AND OTHERWISE) . simultaneously with the hardcover public¬ Laser Books ceased publication, end¬ ations of both novels (the latter as part The judges of the John W. Campbell ing their attempt to mass-market a series Memorial Award decided that no 1975 nov¬ of A WORLD OUT OF TIME). ANALOG publish¬ of similar science fiction novels, nuch ed Robert Silverberg's SHADRACH IN THE el met the award's standards. Instead like their successful Harlequin Romances. they awarded a retrospective award to FURNACE. 45 THE UMSECTOR BY DARRELL SCHWEITZER

LIFE IS LIKE THAT, MORE CFTEN THAN NOT: wrong. RADIO FREE ALBEMJIH is not the greatest of Dick's novels, but it is a ma¬ jor one, showing him at the height of his powers. And it is much more accessible Philip K. Dick's death was as untime¬ than VALIS. Anyone puzzled by that book ly as any that ever happened in our should read this one first, as a means of field, and there is no doubt that he is much more famous now than when he was It's written as a mock autobiography. alive, but I suppose there is some con¬ Philip K. Dick, the science fiction writ¬ solation in the fact that he wasn't the er, narrates two out of the three sec¬ complete tragic figure, whose success is tions. It seems that Phil has a friend, entirely posthumous, like Richard Middle- Nicholas Brady, who may be going mad. He ton or H.P. Lovecraft. He was able to is hearing voices from outer space. This

'pfroct OF ain have a history of attempting to im¬ com lOt pose relatively democratic regimes on success, and Brunner's "holier than thou" P)H£ p^rexJT7M6- stance is bogus in the extreme. RAMBO (which Brunner uses in his argument even though he didn't see it) may be sympto- John also manage to^iss seeing WHO DARES WINS, the British paen of praise to its own Special Forces? Personally, having LETTERS spent half of my life in each country, I see little moral difference in national¬ ist behavior between Britain and the GEIS NOTE: John Brunner's last U.S.; but considerable difference between them and the U.S.S.R., which seeks to two "Noise Level" columns were de¬ impose something much less benign, for voted to U.S./U.S.S.R. relation¬ all of Brunner's weaselly question-beg¬ ships, and to his experiences and ging re Afghanistan. opinions concerning the world, 'On another topic: Greg Benford, in peace, disarmament, leadership, cultural influences... ed" for evaluating science fictional or His writings produced an enor¬ fantasy utopias. Actually, I was the one who first drew Greg's attention to some mous reaction—mostly negative— of these criteria, in a letter I wrote among the readers of SFR. to him, which led to our collaborative I have from the beginning, many piece on LeGuin in THE PATCHIN REVIEW, a years ago, given John carte blanche subsequent collaborative paper, and ul¬ in writing for SFR, in his column. timately his own piece on reactionary ut- I preferred him to write about writing, editing, publishing, sf, # LETTER FROM ANDREW WEIbER fantasy...but whatever he sent, I 124 Winchester Street, Toronto, published. I didn't always like 'Re George Scithers' departure from Ont., Canada, M4X 1B4 05/28/86 it, but I published it. AMAZING: contrary to Darrell Schweitz¬ 'I have no wish to defend the Soviet I disagree with most of what he er's suggestion, I have no hot gossip on Union, and John Brunner can defend him¬ wrote last issue. And had not a this topic. I do have an unanswered ques¬ self, but all this raking over of old So¬ reader or two covered the same tion, though. Originally, Scithers pro¬ viet atrocities doesn't really address mised he would double AMAZING's subscrip¬ points, I would have written an the key issue, which is whether the U.S. tion list within a year. Was the break¬ is the greater threat to world peace now. editorial, or allowed Alter Ego a ing of this promise irrelevant to his be¬ go at it. ing asked to step down? If so, I do hope 'There is good evidence to suggest for George's sake that his new employers that the U.S. is preparing itself, psy¬ But the readers have covered chologically and materially for war. The the rebuttal potential from stem will be as magically tolerant of his em¬ barrassing lapses. This amiable man, Centre for Defence Information, hardly to stern, and have said it better once described by Isaac Asimov as poten¬ a radical organization -- mostly made up than I could have. tially "The new John W. Campbell, Jr." of ex-military types -- recently warned So I'm going to get out of the (prior to his unexpected departure from of the "militarization of our domestic political economy" (see enclosed clip¬ way and let this section of LETTERS IASFM), continues to demonstrate that antigravity exists not only in science ping). It's the psychological prepara¬ speak for itself. tions, the vast flood of war toys and I consider this reaction and Rambo-style movies, that I find most response totally separate from John's I have found little to interest me in the chilling. The only real question is work he has published over the years, whether these militaristic passions can column this issue, and have not cut be sated by beating up on the Nicaraguas any letters or in any way lessened but his own behavior has been constantly entertaining, so really I'm happy that he of this world, or whether it's going to their impact. I could not publish lead to more dangerous adventures. all the letters received in reaction look forward to more Scithers anecdotes to his column last issue, due to ex¬ to enliven those boring editorial lunch- tributing to this mood, through the boom cessive duplication and space limi¬ in militaristic fiction, and through the tations. support of a sizable segment of the SF John is welcome to respond in community for SDI -- which, if it works at all (a dubious proposition) is going turn, if he desires. to be an offensive weapons system of the most destabilizing nature. The space shuttle program, too, is clearly of pri¬ mary interest to the military, as Freder- ik Pohl has been virtually alone in point¬ # LETTER FROM CHARLES PLATT # LETTER FROM MIKE RESNICK ing out. Some SF people are so keen to 9 Patchin Place, New York, NY 10011 May 9, 1986 May 5, 1986 get off the planet that they don't seem 'Bravo for John Brunner! He articul¬ to care whether any kind of planet is 'John Brunner is always happiest ates his position with courage and dig- when sanctimoniously admonishing others

section of Letters is Alexis Gilli¬ land's form of loc. of women in SF publishing circles seems ((The major problem SF has to deal theologies, to have created an increasingly unbalanc¬ with (if it can be dealt with at all) quite strict ed output of $F. A lot of mediocre stuff seems to be getting the push strictly on is the burn-out problem: kids and its political and social elements, spec¬ young adults read and read sf and ifically its portrayal of women. It has finally discover they've read all ((But I thought SF was basically rightly been said that if books were as the plots, all the themes, all the rooted to ideas about what could slanted as, say, Russ, Chamas, Varley, stereotypes dozens of times, and be true scientifically! I'm some¬ McIntyre, etc. on the male side, the de- nunciating screams would still be ringing grow tired of it all. There are times a purist. Once you take out science in science fiction you are in the publishers' ears. As in all always a few hardcore readers who spheres, tolerance is going through the never get enough, who are emotion¬ left with a form of fantasy...spec¬ window streaming with blood on its back ally wed to sf for deep character ulative fiction, perhaps...or spec¬ from stab wounds; you must tread the right reasons. But most new young read¬ ulative religion fiction...spec- line because the enclaved authorities soc.-fic (social fiction of the don't trust freedom of expression --to ers are attracted to the glitter be free is to be enemy. of advanced science, deep space, future.) All valid, all fine areas of speculation, but not real sci¬ •I attempted to read RAINBOW CADENZA. the future, change, altered real¬ The interview explained why I couldn't. ities, altered bodies... SF is ence fiction. But who cares a- bout such nitpickery? SF has be¬ It's a polemic, a manufactured hybrid. anti-establishment and naturally It's also boring. attracts youth. How to keep them come a truck carrying all kinds of after they've become bored? I'd future-fiction freight. And these vote for better, more suspenseful sub-sub-genres screw like crazy writing, and better, more honest and produce all kinds of cross¬ tence: "...would rather read an unsatis¬ characterizations. In my exper¬ breeds! Literary incest is in¬ fying Heinlein than no Heinlein at all." teresting, to say the least.)) Well, actually, we don't need to make or ience, characterization is the most accept any such choice. First of all, difficult part of writing fiction, there are a fair number of good RAH books and keeping the tension-level high to reread (Don’t anyone tell RAH he wrote is pure work and orientation when BEYOND THIS HORIZON, I couldn’t stand # LETTER' FROM IAN COVELL what his new personna would do to it!); plotting. SF may have to change 2 Copgrove Close, Berwick Hills and the fact is we are supposed to have in these directions in order to Middlesbrough, Cleveland, TS3 7BP something called "editors" and others cal¬ keep people reading. Science fic¬ England April 19, 1986 led "agents'* the majority of whom should tion ideas, themes, and sf furniture have said to RAH, "Look* this is a good like robots, androids, ftl drives, it perfectly. Never before have I under¬ exciting novel with intriguing undertones; stood what a "political lesbian" is. I neglecting this rather silly importation time travel, etc., etc. may have of "socialist" as a swear word, it could become widely known and accepted, become a very good novel, if you will and may permeate all media, but run so deep you run your life by exclus¬ ion. It explains those feminist-types just tear out the Lazarus Long menage, print sf still is of limited size, (I'm told, by feminists, that "feminism" consign it to your personal files for an¬ and unless it changes its mix will other novel, and rewrite everything from be simply that which youth reads tively anti-heterosexual, and demand that about halfway." We don't, and Heinlein women follow them...who see all hetero¬ doesn't, need to keep repeating himself for a few years and reads occasion¬ in such a thoroughly redundant manner. ally thereafter.)) sexual activity as inherently oppressive 'There are various books, reviewed pictures and photographs because they in this issue, which I detested when I turn men on, and excited men are danger¬ attempted them, and see no excues for in ous men. Everything else he says also any review, but I've learned something from a loved one. It's a lesson I will mote is humanism, the belief that every- # LETTER FROM FERNAFDO a. GOUVEA remember, possibly for more than a week. 18 Robinson St., #12 It's this: in everything, no matter what Cambridge, MA 02138 May 12, 1986 it appears, there is some spark of wit or humor or intelligence or magic or 'My reaction to HEART OF THE COM¬ people are human, it doesn't bear any beauty or some other worthwhile (if meag¬ ET was the opposite of Alter's: it re¬ stigma at least. re) aspect of interest. To me, it has minded me of Brin's work rather than Ben- 'The bit about STANLEY AND THE WOMEN always seemed that the majority of books ford's. In fact, the whole conflict be- doesn't surprise me; there was some com¬ have been good but could be corrected by ment a while back in our publishing trade changing that bit, say, and my reviews modified people is similar to the con¬ mag that the book was having difficulty have read accordingly; I have started flict between the two kinds of dolphins from the proposition a book was worth in STARTIDE RISING, and as tedious. I in getting a U.S. print. It was one of agree that it's a rather disappointing looking through, and pointed out its teresting, skip it. But the alternative Fame, and I've been compaigning for sev¬ faults. The reverse is equally valid. is to open up that closed mind, Joel, and eral years to include Jack London's THE make it a practice to rethink your "well- IRON HEEL. This year I'm pushing for THE considered" position on anarcho-libertar¬ MONREY WRENCH GANG by Edward Abbey -- 'Neal Wilgus's interview with None ianism, Jimmy Swaggart tongue-twisters about as far from your Randianism as it's of The Above is excellent, and does give possible to get within the anarchist a couple of insights into books whose pol¬ pike -- at least to the point of listen¬ itical content had never, to my recall, ing for something new or unusual. That crossed my mind (FUZZIES AND OTHER PEOPLE is not anarchism, that's just good prac¬ 'And you, Dick Geis! How could you as a libertarian tract?). Do you have to tical agnosticism -- or openminded skep¬ be suckered into agreeing with Berges that be consciously libertarian to be nominat¬ ticism, if you prefer. libertarian fiction is hard to come by and ed, or will someone's interpretation of that None of the Above will probably win your motives be sufficient? (By the way, 'And I must take exception to your repeatedly? The problem with the Prome¬ THE CARNADYNE HORDE was not by Roman; Of- assumption that anarcho-1ibertarianism theus Award is that there are so many dif¬ futt tells me that contrary to LOCUS's doesn't understand citizenship or that it ferent ideas of what might qualify and remarks, h£ wrote all of the novels with avoids "the obligations of the social con¬ so many books nominated that it's really tract." On the contrary, what we of the difficult to give fair consideration to collaborate...)' anarchist tradition want is voluntary cit¬ all the potential contenders. The Neand¬ izenship and social contracting, not forc- erthals and the Flat Earth futurists might well have a problem. The Libertar¬ ((Humanism...meritocracy...these "citizenship" means voting for Tweedledee ian Futurists, in the footsteps of Wells, are ideals and goals, perhaps, vs. Tweedledum, count us out -- we're and not possible of achieving. so that we won't have any more Tweedles Humans are instinctively them/us at all. Nobody sez it's gonna be easy. oriented, and almost always are group loyal (it all depends on the ((As you will note in this issue, group, right?) and when economic SHfl I consider the ararcho-1ibertarian factors reinforce the 'loyalty' position on the "social contract" we lose all perspective. If you to be a form of fantasy. Wishful can get a better job or keep your thinking which ignores the hard, advantage...you tend to be exclus¬ cruel reality of human nature. ive and prejudiced. Given these Libertarianism of the pure kind is facts of life, why be depressed or fun to write about and talk about, disappointed when time after time, but it's like the second coming of year after year, generation after Christ---always in the future. generation, people behave as they There are a few (relatively) people who need to believe in Libertar¬ have always behaved? Some societ¬ 'Incidentally, I did read somewhere ies are more rigid (you are born in that Schulman was acting as Victor Roman's ianism and total freedom and the your 'place' and you accept it) or agent for THE JEHOVAH CONTRACT, but I withering away of the State. And you are born into a more socially really didn't think it was all that impor¬ they will pay a few bucks to have tant. Nits to youl And yes -- I have fluid society and the social power that emotional need tickled and done a Roman interview, which should be stroked. But it's a small move¬ struggles are awesome and constant. in the next SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW. But It makes for a great spectacle as ment, and a small market, and will each group claims right and god I'm unfamiliar with at present. never be a significant force in is on its side... 'Next -- a few words in response to this country or any country. Al¬ Bruce Berges' letter about my "Interview most everyone wants lower taxes ((Good editing requires a lot of with None of the Above." Alas, you've and less government, but damn few time, and editors rarely have the got it all backward, Bruce. Anarcho-lib- want a tent city and open sewers time to work with promising authors, ertarianism is a recent historical devel¬ in the vacant lot next door, or and rarely have the clout to tell opment, not a throwback to primitive days -- which is why it has had zero impact on drug peddlers on the sidewalk, or established, millionaire authors the world scene to date. That "socialis¬ everyone in the city carrying a to make radical improvements in tic" trend you champion is not synonymous gun. There is always government, their automatic-best-seller novels. with "civilizational" as you imply, only and its power and pervasiveness And I have myself a jaundiced loosely related. Personally, I'm an evo¬ runs in long cycles. We are in an view of an editor who cannot write lutionist rather than a revolutionist and I think we're going to evolve into expanding government cycle, now, a novel telling a proven professiom- anarchism -- not chaos, but free people and the only way to cope with it al to make changes. The public al¬ cooperating voluntarily. is to learn its rules and use it ways wants more-of-the-same from an 'As for your suggested Prometheus Aw¬ to your advantage, or find a way author or an actor or a director; ard announcement -- egomaniacs we may be to live in its cracks. As is ob¬ they enjoyed the last work and want (who isn't) but I strongly deny being viously the case with tax rebels, to enjoy it again (with a few minor more than the ordinary in the selfish de¬ opposing the State only gets you changes, perhaps, to make it seem partment or the antisocial section. You must have us mixed up with those damnable thrown in jail, because the courts different). Randian Objectivists who actually praise are not going to admit obvious selfishness (horrorsl) and urge people to facts, misstatements, lies, fraud ((How a book is reviewed—seeing be self sufficient. Admittedly, many by government and overthrow the the good, or seeing the bad— people who call themselves "libertarian" existing tax structure. Period. are strongly influenced by Ayn Rand, but is a matter of basic character in not everyone in the Libertarian Futurist The government we have-—the idiot the reviewer. Some reviewers put Society is, since the LFS is a mixture presidents we have had and now in a 1ittle of each.)) (as any social group is) of many differ¬ have---is what the people want! ent views. Personally, I never much car¬ Most of them are mostly satisfied ed for Rand, though I do recognize her as with it/them. Until a really ser¬ one valid (if extreme) position in the ious crisis shows most people a anarcho-spectrum. radical change in State structure 'Nor are the Prometheus Award and the is required, the system will con¬ # LETTER FROM NEAL WILGUS LFS Hall of Fame so narrow and dogmatic tinue. And a radical change will Box 25771, Albuquerque, 8712S as you imply -- there is a strong and June 6, 1986 healthy tradition of freedom raging, in most probably not be toward less SF and out, which constantly chums up government, but toward more! And 'In the interest of brevity, I won't new anarcho-material. I think it's a say more than a minimum in reply to Joel if politicians fail, the military shame that Ursula LeGuin's THE DISPOSSES- will be the next step. That's the Rosenberg's comments on the Neil Schul- ED hasn't yet been voted into the Hall of man interview. The shortest reply, of cycle. Advanced electronics and course is: if you don't find a piece in¬ 53 computers make people-control easier and easier. The net of THE JEHOVAH CONTRACT under submission. the State is closing tighter and My "fulsome praise" of it in my inter¬ view, along with works by a dozen other tighter over individual freedoms, authors, was solely as an admirer of the and regulation Q, subsection 22 book, not as its agent. is our future. I wish it were *If Rosenberg wonders, in a footnote, bout the "silence of the libertarian •In December 1985, I gave THE JEHOVAH otherwise.)) ommunity on the deprivation of the most CONTRACT to my editor at Avon, John Doug¬ asic of rights in the USSR: the right las, who liked THE JEHOVAH CONTRACT but 0 I ® £ v e" -- then this is a perfect felt it needed hardcover publication to xample of Rosenberg tuning out then com- do it justice. (Avon is strictly paper¬ laining about the silence. Not only back.) John passed the novel along to ially the "Rand- Charles Platt at Franklin Watts, who has ously ignor just bought it. THE JEHOVAH CONTRACT e in b will be published hardcover by Franklin zmes. He might start with Ayn Rand's Watts in Spring, 1987. first novel, WE THE LIVING, then proceed through the writings of Eastern Bloc es¬ •I endorsed THE JEHOVAH CONTRACT, capees such as Tibor Machan, in REASON long before I agented it, because it's a brilliant book, and I worked hard to find an American publisher for the same reas¬ on. If Joel Rosenberg thinks that I said that THE JEHOVAH CONTRACT is simply one of the best books I've ever read for any other reason than it's the truth, then icans are aware of Soviet slavery, they Rosenberg can, as they say in French: are ignorant of the domestic brand. TTiat Va tu faire encule! the Sherman Anti-Trust Law was used to 'Rosenberg manages to be correct on suppress the free market in ideas is rea- only one point: Victor is_ being inter¬ viewed by Neal Wilgus for an upcoming effec SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW. defende 'Regarding Rosenberg's footnoted "easy factual error" that it "ain't so" felons who serve a year and a day lose 'Rosenberg accuses libertarians of their citizenship. He isn't catching an ^occupation of how and why to avoid error but disputing a label. Felons who obligations of the social contract." serve a year-and-a-day in jail might re¬ For one, am a signatory to, and fully main de jure citizens, but de facto they 5 up to the obligations of, the only may not vote in elections, may not bear Lai contract I have ever been given to arms, may not hold public office, and i. I enclose a copy of the Covenant are barred from professions. If on par¬ # LFTTER FROM J. NEIL SCHULMAN 'leil Smith authored, to which I am ole or probation, they are further re- ((Your fight with Rosenberg is in¬ teresting and a delight to watch, but I find that last tidbit--- that CBS will censor any script, even a fantasy script,which ques¬ tions the Warren Report's conclus¬ ion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who assassinated John F. Kennedy—of even greater interest. I wonder if the other networks also have this taboo? It would be very interesting to know who made this policy, and when.}) ©txad w flower > I9B\

'If Schulman had The first three books of my Guardians of # LETTER FROM JOEL ROSENBERG the Flame series -- THE SLEEPING DRAGON. ((Obviously I don't condemn all free verse out of hand, since I've pub¬ lished a string of unrhymed poems by Blake Southfork over the years. His stuff is so strong, loaded, power¬ ful of image and acidic satire—-a kind of poetic surrealism slaved to current event—that it would lose impact, I suspect, if disci¬ plined to traditional rhyme require¬ ments. ((I think that most poets to¬ day shrink from the work and disci¬ pline required in using meter and rhyme and resort to free verse,

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NURSES WHO SEDUCE THE YOUNG 1970 (3) Case histories. YOUNG GIRLS WHO SEDUCE OLDER MEN 1971 (1) Case histories. WOMEN AND BESTIALITY 1971 (1) SWAP ORGIES 1971 (1) Case his. NURSES AND YOUNG MEN 1972? (1) Case histories THE TWINS HAVE MOTHER 1972 (3) *Peggy Swenson THE HOT KIDS AND THEIR OLDER LOVERS ♦Peggy Swenson 1971 (1) CAPTIVE OF THE LUST MASTER 1971 (2) *Peggy Swenson PLEASE—FORCE ME! 1971 (2) ♦Peggy Swenson NAKED PRISONER 1972 (2) ♦Peggy Swenson DADDY'S HARLOT 1976 (3) ♦Sheela Kunzer HONOR THY PARENT 1976 (4) ♦Sheela Kunzer DAISY CHAIN NEIGHBORS 1981 (1) ♦Randy Guy HOT WIFE FOR HIRE 1981 (1) ♦Randy Guy THE*LIBRARIAN'S HOT LIPS 1983 (2) ♦Randy Guy THE TWINS NEXT DOOR 1982 (2) ♦Randy Guy l¥oH^yj|fW WITH I VICTOR ROMAN |

SFR: Victor who? That may be a cojimon fes of ray life by asking Ray Bradbury's titles? Who is John Cleve? question when readers begin this inter¬ agent if he knew of markets for such nov¬ ROMAN: I will tell you who is John Cle¬ view because your name is not yet veil els, and started sending out copies of ve. He is the man who stopped the motor known. Let me begin, then, by noting the manuscript. of the -- Oops -- wrong guy. In reality, that you are the author of two titles in Except ... he is the man vho started the motor of my the SPACEWAYS series from Berkely -- *13, still-toddling career. It's fairly com¬ JONUTA RISING! (1983) and *17, TOE CAR- Except the porno publishers either mon knowledge that "John Cleve" was the NADYNE HORDE (1984), both of which were rejected the book, said they bought in- pen-name that Andrew J. Offutt utilized Prometheus Award nominees. Both were house only, or had vanished without a for the SPACEWAYS series. He had used credited to "John Cleve," as are all the forwarding address. So (blithely) I de¬ it before for his Grove Press CRUSADER SPACEWAYS titles, so your name is not cided to hit the big-time. I sent the novels. And he is not "Jarrod Comstock," directly associated with your books. ms. out with a cover letter extolling the despite what the LAREESS WORLDS book You've also published a serial called book as a trendy, "trashy," ROCKY HORRQR- jackets imply. SAUCER SLUTS in the bi-weekly Los Angeles type SF/pomo spoof. pomsheet IMPULSE in 1977. And your most I am a fan of serial writing, having important work to date, TOE JEHOVAH CON¬ You can imagine the reception it re¬ read 27 Doc Savage novels during one high TRACT, has been published in Germany but ceived. And the lasting reputation I in¬ school year and the Lensman and Skylark not yet in this country. I'll also note voked. When I introduced myself to Jim series during Sumner school. Not to men¬ that you are well known in that tiny com¬ Frenkel at a WorldCon, he immediately tion Heinlein, Raymond Chandler, Asimov, munity of Discordians who hang around pointed a finger of rage at me, saying, Cherryh and others. However -- during New Libertarian and other anarcho-SF "You wrote SAUCER SLUTS!" He proceeded one of Neil's and my frequent outings to neighborhoods. to inform me that I had no ability to bookstores, where we'd grab novels, read write a novel nor even any comprehension their opening lines aloud and groan in With that introduction, let me start of what a novel was and that I should at the beginning and ask about SAUCER pain or cheer with surprise -- I pulled stick to short stories until I got it out a copy of SPACEWAYS *3 and showed its SLUTS. How did you come to write it and right. I smarted for some time from that place it in IMPULSE? garish, lurid cover to Neil. "Look at blistering, but ray lesson in attesting that title," I hollered. "ESCAPE FRCF ROMAN: In January of 1976, I was vaca¬ to enulate the Great Chutzpah himself MACHO! Who the hell writes these things, tioning at my parents' in northern Cali¬ (J. Neil) was well taken. I didn't take anyway?!” fornia. They'd decided to take off for it as a personal assault and, in fact, I soon found out. the week and I was left alone with my 01- Mr. Frenkel has since had kind words to ynpic portable and no women. I had just say about THE JEHOVAH CONTRACT. Hearing In August of 1982, I spoke to anoth¬ read an enormously amusing article in those words felt good. er friend of mine (who had sacked out on PENTHOUSE entitled "Confessions of a La¬ How SAUCER SLUTS got to IMPULSE, a my couch a few nights sane years before), dy Pomographer" by Florence King. She singles-ad tabloid that sells on street Nick Yermakov. He had received a post¬ revealed -- with an engaging wit and racks in LA, is proof that it's not who card from Offutt (as had several other style -- the ins and outs of writing pom you know, it's whom you know. Another SFWA members) asking whether he'd be in¬ on a ironthly schedule. I recoimend the AnarchoVillager (who shall remain count- terested in writing a book under a house article as being almost as important as er-economically nameless) contracted as name. Playboy Books, it seems, had been that new book from Loorapanics. a typesetter to the publisher (who, it enormously enthusiastic about the SPACE- turns out, had once been responsible for WAYS series, and wanted a novel a month. Though I had never read a true "por¬ Andy knew he would be hard-pressed to no" novel in my life (my sister's copy of the Essex House publications of Phil Farm¬ er's classic erotica--small world, eh?). turn out good work in that time, so he MYRA BRECKENRIDGE had been my only foray asked for help. into the genre of printed sex), I thought Since IMPULSE ran "reader-written" fic¬ I had enough raw information from the tion, he managed to get the book serial¬ Nick couldn't participate for the article to take a few fantasies of mine ized into thirteen installments. I even happy reason that he was under contract and stitch them together into a novel. got paid by installment -- just like for several books and had no time. He Charles Dickens. Unlike Chuck, though, suggested I drop Offutt a line of in¬ The first day -- a Saturday -- I I wasn't in a position to hold out for quiry. wrote 30 pages. The next day I wrote 25. enormous sums for the denouement. My folks returned and I headed back to I did. Andy wrote back to say, Los Angeles. Back to the reconverted SFR: Does SAUCER SLUTS have a future? . "Sure -- why not, send me an outline." women's restroom I was renting on Soror¬ Will it be reprinted or expanded to book So I went out and bought the six existing ity Row across from UCLA. There -- amid¬ novels in the series and read them all,, st the pink carpeting and walls -- I fin¬ ROMAN: Actually, it has been reprinted. taking copious notes and getting a feel ished SAUCER SLUTS in three weeks. The It's the only work of mine that has been for the style. As with most adventure original impetus for the book sprang (as printed in two different media. Hustler novels, the heroes had little time for a lot of my ideas seem to) from an off¬ Paperbacks bought it and published it in bureaucrats, which pleased me. However, hand conment by Saauel Edward Konkin III. 1980. However, the publisher thought as with a good deal of SF, it assumed He had come up with several book titles the title SAUCER SLUTS was "too coarse" that there is some sort State that can that he declared would sell no matter and asked for an alternate. I had pick¬ control all these worlds (although Of- what the content was. SAUCER SLUTS was ed Hustler as a possible publisher be¬ futt's Ultimate Secret turned the vhole one of them. STAR VIRGIN was another, cause their first book was entitled SPACE notion on it’s head -- but I didn't know which subsequently became the title of a WIORES. That wasn't coarse? *Snort*. it at the time). jiggle film that was neither little noted So I sent a list of about twenty altern¬ nor long remembered. They probably came ates including STARSHIP TROLLOPS, SEX up with the title independently -- that KITTENS FRCM BEYOND TOE STARS and other is how the Zeitgeist works. less impressive choices. Hustler final¬ ly merged two of my choices and came up I hadn't thought I'd really finished with the title STARSHIP WCMEN. Now, SAUCER SLUTS at that time (Feb, 1976). that's class ... I'd written about 40,000 words and had Incidentally, SAUCER SLUTS has been come down with a raging flu (sOBething my most beneficial work in that it gained I do quite often while writing -- I tend me an LASFS Fanquet as my first profes¬ to overwork when I do work). The book sional sale and also gained me entry in¬ sat fallow until I'T"moved into the An- to SFWA (that was m£ test of them). (It archoVillage in October of 1976 and my also earned me my most scathing review to neighbor J. Neil Schulman asked to read date by none other than (*yipes!*) Rich¬ it. He told me that it was finished and ard E. Geis!) that I should retype it and send it out. I went to various bookstores writing down SFR: Ch to SPACEWAYSI How did you get the addresses of porno publishers, prob¬ into writing for a multiple-author series ably made one of the bigger social gaf¬ like this? Who else has written SPACEWAYS I figured that it was time to intro¬ tique crockery or tarnished religious I am extremely grateful to Andy for duce an anarchist into the SPACEWAYS un¬ icon for a working stardrive and I'd rob giving me the chance to work on something iverse to see what would happen. graves to do it. I want to leave Earth that -- as far as I can tell -- is the and I'm not going to be wimpy about it. closest anyone my age could come to ex¬ As a STAR TREK fan from the very be¬ periencing what it was like to be writing ginning, one thing always bothered me -- SFR: By the time you came to write JON- for the pulps half a century ago. He even before I'd ever heard the word "lib¬ UTA RISING! there were already twelve called SPACEWAYS "a PLANET STORIES for ertarian." I have always considered the books in the series. Was it difficult to adults," and I think that he was more Prime Directive to be an odious concept. fit your story and your style into the than right. For the readers it was an As someone who has spent his life from already formulated "John Cleve" mold? adventure series with its own vast back¬ the age of five or so waiting for aliens ground and color. For the authors (at to visit Earth, I think that any law, KOMAN: No. When Andy gave me the go- ahead to do an outline, I bought the six least for me), it was a taste of being rule or custom forbidding "interference" part of a stable of writers overseen by with a race's development is the result existing novels at the time and read them all to pick up the feel of the narrative, an experienced professional, turning out of the most brutal and ignoble motives. work that was fun under incredible dead- It's "White Man's Burden" sneaking into the pacing and all that stuff they teach SF. If the Earth is under a similar you to look for in writing classes but quarantine, I want to go on record as re¬ that a writer or just about any reader It was pure pulp. senting it to the max! The SPACEWAYS ser¬ can pick up naturally, by osmosis, if she lets herself. By the time I was done, SFR: Jonuta was killed in SPACEWAYS #9 ies had the same sort of rule (though I but he Rises Again in #13 as a clone with didn't know at the tine that Offutt had I had a pretty firm idea about what Andy wanted, what he was intending, and what a memory transplant via conputer. Inter¬ secretly postulated the rule to be moti¬ esting situation, but to my mind Jonuta vated precisely by foul and plundering I could ccntribute that might be a new angle. I started with the first chapt¬ is dead, dead, dead, and the clone is a motives]"! I wanted to probe its valid¬ totally separate person, even if he does ity. er, which he requested as a sample along with the outline. It struck me from his inherit Jonuta's mind. But the story The alleged purpose of both the STAR descriptions that the alien Jarps had seems to imply that Jonuta is Jonuta, TREK and SPACEWAYS "Prime Directives" was such graceful, long fingers and narrow even if he was killed and remade. Which to preserve the cultural richness of hands that one of them would just natur¬ way do you look at it? Does it matter? "backward" planetary cultures. The reas¬ ally have to be a pickpocket. That's KOMAN: I think this, may be the fundamen¬ oning is usually that such races "aren't how Scarcheek came about; the opening tal question of "what is a person?" Is ready" for Galactic culture and science. line of the book appeared on the phosphor, Neal Wilgus the sum total of his body, This, I suspect, is the same reasoning and I was off. The rest of the chapter memories, ordered thoughts, and other used by some people to allege that blacks flowed -- poverty, despair, the theft of components? Or is he a creature of light weren't "ready" for freedom from slavery Something Important and from that rather -- spirit, not matter? How the hell or that the Third World isn't "ready" Hitchcockian Mcguffin cascaded the rest should I know? for high technology. Sentients are sent¬ of the novel. ient and there’s no such thing as a race In one mood, I suspect that all that not ready for the benefits of space trav¬ A lot of what passes for good, enjoy¬ vre are is contained in the electrochemic¬ el, technology, life extension, intel¬ able writing is merely taking an idea, al ordering built up over time in our ligence increase or freedom. Thus was situation, or emotion and looking at it brains, imich as a pocket calculater ac¬ bom Marekallian Eks, the Mindrunner. from different angles. I observed the cumulates strings of ones and zeroes while condition of the Jarp slaves, noted that switched on and operating. When you die, I'd had the idea for some years, but a very few were allowed to become free¬ it's as if someone has turned off that when Andy gave me the opportunity to men, and postulated that one would wind calculator. Hie physical components are write a novel and the series had a Prime up being so aggressive and vengeful that still there -- brain cells, chemicals Directive, I decided to strike. What, I it would become a top-notch pirate. Thus and so forth -- but the ordering has dis¬ postulated, is the absolute most import¬ was begat Captain Darkblood. I might appeared. Hie electrical forces holding ant commodity of all? It ain't a yellow have done a whole book about it if the the chemicals in their precise alignments metal. It ain't organic. It ain't real- series had lasted. are gone. All those little ones and zer- yet ATH' y I

SFR: Between DEATH'S DIMENSIONS and a space shuttle)" though -- I've always SPACEWAYS, however, there’s THE JEHOVAH liked the idea of merging science and CONTRACT -- which we should now turn to. Having read the manuscript, I know it has a hardboiled-but-aging private-eye/assas¬ Let me add a comment on how a writ¬ sin as the narrator and that it takes er's mind works. All of the elements of place in 1999 in an AnErica that’s def¬ the story -- an assassin of God, a Chand- initely on the skids. Let’s start with leresque hero, a pagan denouement -- did Dell Ammo, that hardcore private assas¬ not come into sharp personal focus until sin. What was your "inspiration" for I could envision the Goddess Herself. That moment came when I heard a pop tune Or was it that my page count simply by Bob Segar entitled "Still the Sarnie." fit the niche they had to fill in their KCMAN: I've always enjoyed the films' To me, that song communicated an essen¬ publishing schedule that month? versions of Raymond Chandler novels, and tial aspect of the Goddess -- Her elus¬ SFR: Are you optimistic that you’ll find Robert Mitchum has always been the quin¬ ive nature. Her allure. Her governance of an American publisher for JEHOVAH by the tessential Marlow. Around that time I the laws of chance. From that scmg, the time this interview sees print? was working in a bookstore and was given personality and image of Ann Perrine was a set of the Phillip Marlow novels by a absolutely fixed in my head and the novel KOMAN: I dunno -- has it, readers? friend and fellow AnarchoVillager. The exploded out of me, page by page. Pos¬ Wouldn’t that invalidate your previous character sort of assembled himself out session, perhaps? questicn? I am currently waiting to hear of a desire to write a Chandler tribute from a publisher concerning a hard-soft with a stfnal twist (dozens of writers SFR: JEHOVAH has been translated into deal. Though I seriously do believe that had already done so) yet with a few de¬ German and published by Heyne as DER JE- there are what C.S. Lewis called "watch¬ viations of my own. I think that the as- HOVA-VERTRAG: DIE VERSCHWORUNG GEGEN ful dragons" guarding the tastes and op¬ assin has always gotten short shrift in GOTT. How did that happen -- and what inions of many editors, I also believe literature, even though the tides of his¬ does that subtitletranslate into? that there is somewhere an editor daring tory can quite often flow around the act KOMAN: Luckily, I took classes in Ger¬ enough to give the book a try. If there that I and my friends label "recall with man in college, so I could actually (with is not (or if I fail to uncover her or one ballot." What would happen, I some difficulty) figure out what they'd him), then I plan to publish the book thought, if I made an assassin the hero done to my book (not much, thankfully -- myself on microfiche. As you know, Neal, of a novel? it's a pretty accurate translation). The I've been toying with the idea of micro- SFR: As the title implies, Dell Ammo is subtitle means "The Conspiracy Against publishing for some time. The technology hired to assassinate God -- how did you God," which makes the book sound like a is there for anyone to publish her own come up with that unlikely (or inspired) Brad Steiger/John Keel cult expose! I book for less than fifty bucks! An Aus¬ scenario? like it. tralian named John Zube has published (or brought back into print) hundreds up¬ KOMAN: Have you ever been awakened on a SFR: JEHOVAH is unique in being publish¬ on hundreds of titles. All on micro¬ Saturday by Jehovah's Witnesses pounding ed in German while not being able to find fiche, each of which he sells for a dol¬ on your door? I had been becoming grow- an American publisher so far. Are pub¬ lar. He did this in his spare time on a ingly repelled by Judeo-Christianity over lishers in this country that worried by very limited budget! Each one of us the years, much more beyond atheism into the Moral Majority and the S-s-s-ven could do that. I even self-published a a positive anti-’theism. I chose not mere¬ Hundred Club? book entitled (with great originality) ly to ignore God, but to take an active KOMAN: As with all human affairs, I'd PUBLISH YOUR OWN BOOK FOR UNDER SO! that interest in his removal from human af¬ have to say that some were and some contains a microfiche copy of the book fairs. For Dell Ammo to be anything weren't. The book has been looked at by laid into the paper copy. That's so peo¬ more than one of a number of "assassin many major publishers and has been explic- ple can be gently introduced to the con- protagonists" -- let alone for him to be itely turned down for anti-theological the Good Guy -- he'd have to stand out content by only a few. One editor liked The first American edition of THE from the crowd. He'd have to take on it, but his company had just been bought someone Big. And since he was implicitly JEHOVAH CONTRACT may very well be on mi¬ by the largest Bible publisher in the na¬ crofiche. I wonder how the Hugo and Neb¬ a libertarian assassin, he'd have to take tion. He had little hope of its being on the biggest authoritarian bastard on ula Awards committees would view the eli¬ approved in editorial review. One of the gibility of something so stfnally "futur¬ the block. bigger SF publishers told me that if they published the book, "we'd have our istic?" Would they consider it a legi¬ SFR: THE JEHOVAH CONTRACT is aptly sub¬ timate small-press book? Maybe I'll do titled "A Theological Suspense Novel," heads taken off in the Bible Belt." that just to test them -- the way I test¬ and a variety of theological positions Meaning they'd lose their distribution. ed SFWA with SAUCER SLUTS. Time will are considered during Dell Amino's search In a country where Dungeons and Dragons have told when this, sees print. I learn¬ -- with the so-called "pagan” religion is considered a tool of the Devil, a ed some years ago that a great magical coming out the winner. Does this re¬ book that advocates committing the Inmor¬ amulet is "Who The Fuck Cares?" Once flect your personal theology -- or is it tal Sin would seem to have a hard go of you can take the actions you want to take just a convenient fictional ploy? without regard to how others view them, KOMAN: A little bit of both, I suppose. Most of the rejections though, were life gets a lot easier. The only determ¬ Though I am an atheist, I have a fond¬ based on the editors' inability to cate¬ inate is whether the action is right or ness for the pagan roots of humanity. gorize the book. The usual letter I re¬ wrong, not how many people it will annoy I was already hanging around with witches ceived ran along the lines of "This is or discomfit, please or impress. and the like before I started the novel, a fresh, original novel that breaks new I try to live my life by that. And and had been getting fed up with Cross¬ ground with an intriguing approach - - we I still manage to get invited to social eyed Christianity over the years. The regret that it does not fit in with our gatherings.... Datemalistic. anti-woman nature of Jud- current publishing needs ..." Makes me mr 63 SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #27: Ben Bova, SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #51: David Stephen Fabian, Forrest J. Ackerman, Kingsbury, Charles Platt, Barry BACK ISSUES ONE IMMORTAL MAN-Part Three. Malzberg, Bob Shaw. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #28: C. J. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #53: Algis Cherryh, Damon Knight, ONE IMMORTAL Budrys, Avram Davisdon, Bob Shaw, THE ALIEN CRITIC MAN-Conclusion. Barry Malzberg. SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW NO OTHER BACK ISSUES ARE SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #29: John SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #54: L. Neil AVAILABLE Brunner, Michael Moorcock, Hank Smith, John Brunner, Hannah M. G. Stine. Shapero, Damon Knight, Gene DeWeese. $1.50 per copy SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW #30: Joan D. 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