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SF COMMENTARY 76 30TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION October 2000 THE UNRELENTING GAZE GEORGE TURNER’S NON-FICTION: A SELECTION SF COMMENTARY No. 76 THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OCTOBER 2000 THE UNRELENTING GAZE GEORGE TURNER’S NON-FICTION: A SELECTION COVER GRAPHICS Ditmar (Dick Jenssen) Introductions 3 GEORGE TURNER: THE UNRELENTING GAZE Bruce Gillespie 4 GEORGE TURNER: CRITIC AND NOVELIST John Foyster 6 NOT TAKING IT ALL TOO SERIOUSLY: THE PROFESSION OF SCIENCE FICTION No. 27 12 SOME UNRECEIVED WISDOM Famous First Words 16 THE DOUBLE STANDARD: THE SHORT LOOK, AND THE LONG HARD LOOK 20 ON WRITING ABOUT SCIENCE FICTION 25 The Reviews 31 GOLDEN AGE, PAPER AGE or, WHERE DID ALL THE CLASSICS GO? 34 JOHN W. CAMPBELL: WRITER, EDITOR, LEGEND 38 BACK TO THE CACTUS: THE CURRENT SCENE, 1970 George and Australian Science Fiction 45 SCIENCE FICTION IN AUSTRALIA: A SURVEY 1892–1980 George’s Favourite SF Writers URSULA K. LE GUIN: 56 PARADIGM AND PATTERN: FORM AND MEANING IN ‘THE DISPOSSESSED’ 64 FROM PARIS TO ANARRES: ‘The Wind’s Twelve Quarters’ THOMAS M. DISCH: 67 TOMORROW IS STILL WITH US: ‘334’ 70 THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF THOMAS M. DISCH GENE WOLFE: 71 TRAPS: ‘The Fifth Head of Cerberus’ 73 THE REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PRESENT: ‘Peace’ George Disagrees . 76 FREDERIK POHL AS A CREATOR OF FUTURE SOCIETIES 85 PHILIP K. DICK: BRILLIANCE, SLAPDASH AND SLIPSHOD: ‘Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said’ 89 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: ‘New Dimensions I’ 93 PLUMBERS OF THE COSMOS: THE AUSSIECON DEBATE Peter Nicholls and George Turner George and the Community of Writers 100 A MURMURATION OF STARLING OR AN EXALTATION OF LARK?: 1977 Monash Writers’ Workshop Illustrations by Chris Johnston 107 GLIMPSES OF THE GREAT: SEACON (WORLD CONVENTION, BRIGHTON) AND GLASGOW, 1979 George Tells A Bit About Himself 111 HOME SWEET HOME: HOW I MET MELBA 114 JUDITH BUCKRICH IN CONVERSATION WITH GEORGE TURNER: The Last Interview 2 SF COMMENTARY, No. 76, October 2000 (30th Anniversary Edition) THE UNRELENTING GAZE: GEORGE TURNER’S NON-FICTION: A SELECTION SF Commentary is edited and published irregularly by Bruce Gillespie, 59 Keele Street, Collingwood, Victoria 3066, Australia. Phone: 61-3-9419 4797. Email: [email protected]. Printed by Copy Place, 136 Queen Street, Melbourne. Also available on PDF file. Single copies: $A15 (overseas airmail: $US15, £8 or equivalent). Also available for subscription ($A35; overseas airmail: $US35, £15 or equivalent), letters of comment, written or art contributions, traded publications, review copies or donations. Within Australia: pay cheques to ‘Bruce Gillespie’. From overseas: send cash only. Photos and illustrations: Ditmar (Dick Jenssen), Chris Johnston, the George Turner Estate photograph collection, Elaine Cochrane, Roger Weddall, Cathy Ackerman, Brian M. Fraser, and the publishers of the book covers shown. INTRODUCTION I George Turner: The Unrelenting Gaze by Bruce Gillespie George Turner did not quite claim to have an ‘unrelent- In her biography George Turner: A Life (Melbourne ing gaze’. He wrote, during the 1977 Monash Writers’ University Press, 1999), Judith Raphael Buckrich con- Workshop, when he was a Writer in Residence, that in centrates on George Turner’s fiction as the main guide dealing with apprentice authors he put on his ‘“unre- to his inner life and literary aspirations. Thanks to Judy lenting” look — which children and small puppies tend for her great help in preparing this volume, which I’ve to see through at once’. ‘Unrelenting gaze’ sounds published in the belief that George tells us at least as much better for summing up George’s work. much about himself in his non-fiction as he does in his Many people did not see through the unrelenting fiction. gaze. Some hated George Turner forever because of his I wish I had time, room and money to publish a great judgments on their work. Others, usually his women deal more than these 120,000 words. I had hoped to friends, saw past the steely Turner gaze immediately. republish the contents of Off Cuts, George’s autobio- Many of us, me included, were intimidated by George graphical chapbook, but I have been unable to contact Turner the person, but savoured the joys of watching its most recent publisher. I haven’t reprinted any of his George Turner the critic get stuck into works that more than fifteen years of Age reviews. George kept everybody else had always praised. Nobody could be copies of them all — but undated. I’m grateful to complacent around George Turner. Sooner or later you Yvonne Rousseau for taking the trouble to gather into had to look him in the eye . and blink. one folder her collected correspondence with and My favourite George Turner was the person with articles about George Turner — but I would need whom I exchanged letters for nearly thirty years (the another giant issue to reprint her treasure trove. I’ll Haydn listener as well as the Le Guin reader), the probably do it, but not this year. already famous writer who sent a sheaf of reviews to SF Thank you to the following people for their help in Commentary before the first issue had appeared, the preparing this book: Elaine Cochrane, David Lake and hard-working reviewer who contributed more to this the Aussiecon 3 Committee, for financial help; the magazine than anybody else, the voracious reader who contributors of graphics, cartoons and photographs, after reading all the latest novels sent them to me and especially Dick Jenssen, Chris Johnston, Elaine other people because he had no room to store them in Cochrane and George himself; and people such as Judy his flat, the impressive speaker at science fiction conven- Buckrich, Dick Jenssen, Jim and Andy Dunwoodie, John tions, the enthusiastic teacher and encourager of new Foyster, Yvonne Rousseau, John Bangsund, Sally Yeo- writers at writers’ workshops, and the author of a num- land, Peter Nicholls, Jenny Blackford and Russell Black- ber of my favourite SF novels and articles. He was a ford (whose special issue of Foundation magazine person who always helped other people, often seeing includes my own article about George’s non-fiction), talents in them they did not see in themselves. and many others who have encouraged this project Despite all that, nothing could have prepared me for since 1997. Thanks also to the following editors who first the surprise of finding, when George died in June 1997, published articles reprinted here: John Bangsund, that he had made me his Literary Executor. (No expla- Mervyn Binns, Jeremy Byrne, John Foyster, Stephen nation from George; just a provision in his will!) He had Murray-Smith, David Pringle, Kirpal Singh, Jonathan kept all his literary papers and notes scrupulously since Strahan and Michael Tolley. 1970, so he made it very easy for me to extract all my This collection is dedicated to John Bangsund, with- favourite pieces of non-fiction in order to prepare this out whom none of us would have met George Turner. issue of SF Commentary. I did not expect the job to take three years (see page 75). — Bruce Gillespie, 24 September 2000 3 INTRODUCTION II George Turner, critic and novelist by John Foyster George Turner began his career as a ‘practising critic’ and ultimate values’. with an article in the First Anniversary Issue of Australian The work to be dealt with was Alfred Bester’s The Science Fiction Review, June 1967. For this edition, John Demolished Man (though Turner argues that more or less Bangsund had persuaded many of his regular contri- the same remarks could be made about The Stars My butors to provide pieces of fiction, with the result that Destination), and ranged against this work was to be ASFR 10 is not at all typical of what the magazine had George Turner — an SF reader for 39 years, a student previously been. George Turner’s contribution is the of literature for 30 and a practising novelist for ten years only long piece of criticism in this issue. In time, John (not science fiction). Bangsund did exert his persuasive powers upon George George Turner’s mainstream novels are Young Man Turner also, with greater success. of Talent (1959), A Stranger and Afraid (1961), The Cup- George Turner’s concerns in this first article, ‘The board Under the Stairs (1962), A Waste of Shame (1965), Double Standard’, have remained with him; in 1984, The Lame Dog Man (1967) and Transit of Cassidy (1978). some seventeen years later, he felt a strong urge to lead He received the Miles Franklin Award for The Cupboard a Nova Mob meeting on the subject of the nature of the Under the Stairs, and his own feelings about his novels are criticism of science fiction. In 1967, he was concerned summarised in these remarks (Contemporary Novelists, to distinguish reviewing from criticism: he draws the 1976): line, as the subtitle of his article reveals, between ‘the short look and the long, hard look’. I am sufficiently old fashioned to prefer a story with This article had its origins, according to Turner, in a beginning, a development and a resolution exchanges of ideas with John Bangsund. In introducing (though not to the point of tying up every loose end himself to his readers George Turner uses the same in sight) but sufficiently of my time to avoid moral stylistic touches he is to retain throughout his SF writing and ethical attitudes. Those of my characters who career; he writes as he speaks, colloquially if this is display them are apt to come to grief as the theme appropriate, and without pretension or strain. Here, as tests and retests them. elsewhere, his style assists the reader to follow comfort- For this reason, I have been termed ‘existential- ably (and at times it may appear all too comfortably) his ist’, which is probably true, and I have also been said flow of ideas.