S F COMMENTARY the independent magazine about science fiction No. 60/61 October 1980 32 pages Australia/World: $A2 this issue/Sub: $A10 for 10 Registered for posting as a publication-Category ‘B’ USA/Canada: $US3 this issue/Sub: $US12 for 10 60/61 * DOUBLE ISSUE- Letters from --------------------— ALDISS LEGUIN LEM Chauvin Day Disch Edwards Harding Kaufman Maddern Priest Rottensteiner A Taylor C Taylor Wallace Weiner and reviews from------------------- ANGOVE ASHBY COCHRANE CURTIS GILLESPIE GREEN GUNEW NEDELKOVICH STEELE TURNER WEDDALL CONTENTS: I Must Be Talking to My Friends (Editor; Ursula K Le Guin, Stanislaw Lem, Andrew Wiener, Malcolm Edwards, Robert Day, Charles Taylor Pip Maddern, Alexander D Wallace, Cy Chauvin, Tom Disch, Lee Harding, Brian Aldiss, Angus Taylor, Jerry Kaufman, Franz Rottensteiner,"Christopher Priest) 2; Sins of My Old Age (2) (Elaine Cochrane) 19, Criticanto (George Turner, Sneja Gunew, Christine Ashby Colin Steele, Alexander Nedelkovich, Terence M Green, Elaine Cochrane, Roger Weddall, Neville Angove, Keith Curtis) 20; 8 Point Universe (Bruce Gillespie) 28; S F Commentary Checklist 32. Printed by Print Mint, Bank Place, Melbourne 3000. Editor and Publisher: Bruce Gillespie, GPO Box 5195AA, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia. Phone (03) 419 4797. Proof-reading, cups of coffee, and sage advice: Elaine Cochrane. Agent for USA/Canada: Hank Luttrell, 2501 University Ave, Madison, Wl 53703. I must be talking to my friends In which the Editor der’. I always figured life was like mangy beast (with all due deference to in this type face, steak—tender is better than tough. But horrible and mangy beasts) which car­ talks with his Friends, the decades toughen you whether you ries some interesting fleas along for the in this type face. like it or not; and you develop self­ ride. Well, maybe I didn't say that. defensive deafness, and innumerable I said that science fiction, as a genre, tactics of evasion. I have to evade a was dispiriting in the early 1960s, One of the odd results of receiving let­ lot, if I want/hope to get any work when I began reading it, got worst ters about recent issues of SFC is that done at all. Or is my work answering during the mid-60s, got somewhat bet­ I have found myself defending science letters? For weeks at a time that’s all it ter from 1970-74 because of the fiction. Not all that much, of course, is. But it never seems quite right. impact of that phenomenon loosely but along the lines of: 'Well, it can't all Anyhow, I am very glad I came to described as the 'New Wave', and since be that bad' and 'What about — and I Australia, and met you, and John and has retreated back to ghastliness. But Sally, and the workshop, and so many (and here is where I began my un­ Distinguished and ancient readers people I think of fondly, before I be­ accustomed defence of sf) any field of this magazine, or people who buy gan to get old and tough and feeble which can produce, even every four SFC: Reprint Edition: First Year 1969 and swamped and incompetent, and years or so, something like Tom when I get around to publishing it, will before this goddamned Rapidograph Disch’s On Wings of Song has some­ realise that such protestations do not pen began to act funny; please excuse thing going for it. spring easily from me. SFC started scratches as if by a hen addicted to with the proposition that 'sf can't get maddening drugs; the cat currently sit­ I enjoyed your reply a great deal, and any worse; it'd better get better or ting on my lap chewing my left thumb today SFC came and I enjoyed that; so we'll go away and read something bet­ isn’t a big help either. the spark of sf can’t be wholly dead in ter.' These days, some people are going Anyway, does it strike you that sf me. But it sure is small and sad lately. away and reading or doing something is presently stuck? 1 mean—it hasn’t I wonder if you aren’t quite right, better. These people are often science got anywhere, hasn’t changed at all, or actually: sf is no worse and probably fiction writers. And some sound even perhaps even has regressed, the last somewhat better than when I first read gloomier about the field than I have what? three, five? years? So that (ex­ it as an adult—in the early 60s. (Having ever been: cept for a few idiosyncrats such as skipped the 50s.) Masses of com­ Gene Wolfe or D G Compton) every­ mercial hackwork, some interesting URSULA K LE GUIN thing seems like you’d read it in oddballs and wild talents, and a few Portland, Oregon 1969? Is this impression mere tough­ considerable artists. Only then it was ening of the arteries (=senile amentia), all new to me. O brave new world! I feel guilty about never responding to or has it some relation to reality? And now I have lived in it for near­ SFC despite the fact that I enjoy it as (28 January 1980) ly twenty years and none of it is new much as ever—nearly as much as ever. any longer. But why is that? I have If there’s a lessening of enjoyment, it’s I wrote back to Ursula. Quite a long lived in the larger world for fifty years not your fault it’s mine. Age makes letter, too, and I've forgotten most of and it all remains appallingly, terrify­ one unresponsive. Age makes one what I said. I seem to remember that I ingly, endlessly new—I shall never get tough. I never did like the tough side said that science fiction has always used to it—perhaps when I am ninety- of William James’s dipole ‘tough/ten­ been some particularly horrible and two. And I do not find myself bored 2 with the rest of literature; I never did read many contemporary novelists, 'YOU KNOW WHAT? I THINK I OD'D ON but I do keep up a bit with poetry, Le Guin: and other sorts of writing, and am as SCIENCE FICTION.... IT'S TOO BAD. I ENJOYED READING impatient as ever when 1 hear there’s a SF A GREAT DEAL. IT'S A LOSS.' new Patrick White or Drabble or Ted Hughes or Lewis Thomas or what have fashion too far from the borders of where was I supposed to stop? 1 ask you—oh, why must it cost $12.50, sf, because if I really don’t read it any you? Was I supposed to say O, well, must I wait for the paperback?—you longer I’ll have no right to teach the I’ll read Pip’s story tomorrow, and know! writing of it—and I do love workshops, Petrina on Friday, and Ted in But not with sf; not with fantasy. when they work! It’s lovely to hear August.. ? Pah. Tfui. I read it You know what? I think I OD’d. All about so many people from the Week straight through. When I reread it, I’ll of a sudden I found I just did not be­ of the Wombat going on with writing, start with Flynn and end with lieve and could not believe in such and publishing—I long to see Rob’s Gillespie. basic sf ‘givens’ as the colonisation of anthology, what a gathering of friends! All Portland turned pale grey on planets of remote stars: the idea I’ve had some grand workshops since Sunday. Grey roses are very odd seemed phony. Why now? Why this Australia, and never two alike of looking. The cats are (as in the pro­ kind of ‘anti-conversion’? I don’t course; but for a constellation of verb) now all grey, although one know; I don’t like it; but I can’t seem talent, for a chance poker hand con­ started out black and white and the to do anything about it. Perhaps it’s a sisting entirely of aces, I doubt I’ll ever other three tabby; and they leave little mood; or maybe it’s a kind of mental see anything like that lot. ash-flower-footprints all over the indigestion, and will go away if I con­ As you may know, we have a vol­ house. Volcanic cats. They totally tinue to fast a while longer. It’s too cano erupting more or less in the back ignored the earthquakes that accom­ bad. I enjoyed reading sf a great deal. yard. She’s straight out my study panied the big eruption on the 18th. It’s a loss. window fifty miles north, a lovely Chthonic cats. I thought animals were What I don’t miss is SFWA. That serene white volcanic cone, just under supposed to give you warning—not lie loss came some while ago: when I had 10,000 feet. The first couple of days there being jolted about and not even to realise, because of the ‘Lem Affair’, she was carrying on it was (as usual in waking up! and aftermaths, that I simply did not spring here) rainy; but it cleared on (29 May 1980) belong to that outfit any more. That Sunday afternoon, and there she was— was a loss because, although I had pure white on the West side, ash-black The main thing that life teaches me is never taken on the hard work of being on the East side, like some sort of that cats do what they like when they an officer, I took a good deal of Mystic Symbol; and then after some like, and humans merely tag along.