University of South Florida Scholar Commons Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy Publications 8-1-1996 SFRA ewN sletter 224 Science Fiction Research Association Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/scifistud_pub Part of the Fiction Commons Scholar Commons Citation Science Fiction Research Association, "SFRA eN wsletter 224 " (1996). Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy Publications. Paper 163. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/scifistud_pub/163 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Digital Collection - Science Fiction & Fantasy Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. &1;'1 Review Issue #224, July/August 1996 IN THIS ISSUE: SFRA INTERNAL AFFAIRS: President's Message (Sanders) ............................................. 5 Editorial (Sisson) ................................................................... 6 NEWS AND INFORMATION ............................................ 8 FEATURES Feature Review: "Cosmic Engineering" Westfahl, Gary. Cosmic Engineers: a study of hard science fiction. (Orth) .......................................... 15 REVIEWS: Nonfiction: Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. (Gordon) ... 21 Beaulieu, Trace, et al. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide. (Hellekson) ....................................................................... 22 de Camp, L. Sprague. H.P. Lovecraft: a Biography. (Wells) .............................................................................. 24 Disch, Thomas M. The Castle of Indolence: On Poetry, Poets and Poetasters. (Lindow) ........................ 27 Everman, Welch. Cult Science Fiction Films: From the "Amazing Colossal Man" to "Yog-Monster from Space". (Blackwood) Jointly reviewed with McGee volume ................................................................. 30 Gillett, Stephen L. World-Building: A Writer's Guide to Construction Star Systems and Life-Supporting Planets. (Bengels) ........................................................... 31 Krulik, Theodore. The Complete Amber Sourcebook. (Stevens) .......................................................................... 32 McGee, Mark Thomas. Faster and Furiouser: The Revised and Fattened Fable of American International Pictures. (Blackwood) Jointly reviewed with Everman volume ............................................................................. 30 SFRA Review #224, page 1 Ransom, Amy]. The Feminine as Fantastic in the Conte Fantastique: Visions of the Other. (Kaveny) .............. 33 Rotsler, William. Science Fictionisms. (Sisson) ............... 35 Schmidt, Stanley. Aliens and Alien Societies: A Writer's Guide to Creating Extraterrestrial Life-forms. (Cain) ............................................................................... 36 Sneyd, Steve. Flights from the Iron Moon: Genre Poetry in UK Fanzines & Little Magazines, 1980-1989. (Levy) ............................................................................... 38 Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their Tellers. (Lindow) ........................ 39 Fiction: Card, Orson Scott. Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus. (Collings) ................................ 43 Dreyfuss, Richard and Harry Turtledove. The Two Georges. (McKnight) ...................................................... 45 Garfinkle, Richard. Celestial Matters: A Novel of Alternate Science. (Hellekson) ...................................... 47 Kessler, Joan c. (Editor). Demons of the Night: Tales of the Fantastic, Madness, and the Supernatural from Nineteenth-Century France. (Coulont-Henderson) ...................................................... 49 Marlow, Gordon Robert. Vincent's Revenge: "A Flurry of Rage" and "Crows and Laizzez-Faire: Next Ten l\Jiles". (Bousfield) .......................................................... 52 Noon, Jeff. Pollen. (Wright) .............................................. 54 O'Leary, Patrick. Door Number Three. (Davis) .............. 57 Saunders, George. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella. (Barron) .................................... 59 Thomson, Amy. The Color of Distance. (Monk) ............. 59 Weis, Margaret (Editor). Fantastic Alice: New Stories from Wonderland. (Sullivan) ........................................ 61 PUBLISHERS' ADDRESSES/ORDERING INFORMATION ............................................................. 62 SFRA MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION & APPLICATION ............................................................... 63 SFRA Review #224, page 2 EPir" Review Editor - Amy Sisson Assistant Editor - Paul Abell Assistant Nonfiction Editor - B. Diane Miller SFRA Review (ISSN 1068-395X) is published 6 times per year by the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) and dis­ tributed to SFRA members. Individual issues are not for sale. For information about the SFRA, see the description and appli­ cation at the back of this issue. Please submit reviews, news items, letters, etc. to Amy Sisson, SFRA Review, 304 Fairfax Row, Waterford NY 12188; telephone (518) 237-4669; e-mail "sfraamy@aol. com". Sub­ missions are acceptable in any format: hardcopy, e-mail, Macintosh disk, or IBM disk (saved as text-only or ASCII). Please note the SFRA Review has an agreement with the Sci­ ence Fiction & Fantasy Book Review Annual (Robert Collins & Michael M. Levy, Eds.) under which reviews are exchanged between publications. If you do not wish your review to be submitted to the Annual, please indicate the same. Typeset by Amy Sisson on a Macintosh Performa 6205CD. Cover design by David Garcia. Printed by Century Creations, Grand Forks, North Dakota. SFRA Executive Committee PRESIDENT VICE PRESIDENT Joe Sanders Milton T. Wolf 6354 Brooks Blvd. University Library/322 Mentor OH 44060 Univ. of Nevada - Reno Reno NV 89557-0044 SECRETARY TREASURER Joan Gordon Robert J. Ewald 1 Tulip Lane 552 W. Lincoln St. Commack NY 11725 Findlay OH 45840 IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT David G. Mead 6021 Grassmere Corpus Christi TX 78415 SFRA Review #224, page 3 SFRA Review #224, page 4 ("jiM Internal Affairs PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE Sure enough, as I predicted last time, I've got a draft of my essay for the Eau Claire conference sitting in a file, waiting for revision. At present, it's 25 pages long, roughly twice the length that can fit into a conference session. The one option I've ruled out so far is trying to read the whole thing aloud very, very fast. I've been thinking, though, about the whole process by which writing is presented to the public. Last issue, I talked about the excitement of participating in a conference - how, besides individual presentations, the combination of papers, panels, and informal conversation forms a culture medium in which ideas combine and/or branch out. Everything is fluid, full of possibilities. Later, trying to turn some of those ideas into new essays, a writer makes choices. Not all the possibilities are equally interesting, and discovering some new insights means that some of the original points must be dis­ carded... We've all done this. It's different, however, when someone else tries to do it for us. Writing is a very personal act, amI teachers know how difficult it can be to nudge some­ one into truly looking again at a piece of writing, as "revi­ sion" literally means. When I edited a collection of papers from ICFA (Functions of the Fantastic; earlier, in keeping with other titles in the series, I'd thought of calling it Abstract Nouns of the Fantas­ tic but thought better of that), I first asked the writers if they'd like to make any changes before their essays were consid­ ered for publication, then sorted out the essays that looked publishable with a minimum of revision, then made sugges­ tions and negotiated with the writers, then proofread des­ perately as the manuscript went through several stages on the way to camera-ready copy. This melange of general musing and personal experience is relevant because of the hopeful but threatening times in which we find ourselves. On the one hand, we have exciting opportunities to do new things; on the other, some funda­ mentally important things aren't being done very well. The St. james Guide to Science Fiction Writers is one example of SFRA Revie\\' #22-1-, page 5 what should at last have become a major reference book but that appears barely to have been edited and almost certainly never proofread. Look, for instance, at the garbled essay on Theodore Sturgeon, in which whole paragraphs are repeated. It appears that the ease of transmitting essays on disk, pro­ ducing copy via printer, etc., sometimes encourages people to eliminate the attention to detail required in all activities involving us fallible humans. Just this morning, I was looking through the glossy, multi-colored text before a Netscape work­ shop and spotted a typo in the first paragraph of the preface. So I'm very hopeful but somewhat wary of the idea of SOL (Speculation On-Line), an electronic journal in our field. The people involved are knowledgeable and serious, and I'll be trying to help too. The important thing, though, will be what we put in the journal, not how it's circulated, and the most important aspects of that are how skillfully we can negotiate revisions and how carefully we can produce something that transmits our own