June/July 1994 The Critical Journal of the BSF A Vector 2 Contents 3 Front Line Dispatches Readers' Letters Contributions: Good articles are always wanted. All MSS should 5 Best Books of 1993 be typed double spaced on one side of the page . Reviewers' Poll Submissions may also be accepted as ASCII text 12 Horribly Real files on IBM, Alari ST or Mac 3,5" discs William Gibson interview Maximum preferred length is 6000 words; excep­ tions can and wilt be made. A preliminary letter is ad­ 18 Children's Fantasy visable but not essential. Unsolicited MSS cannot be A Roundup Review returned without an SAE. 23 Compass Points 10 Please note that there is no payment for publica­ The Memory of Whiteness tion. Members who wish to review books should first write to the appropriate editor 24 Compass Points 11 The Last Spaceship from Earth Artists: 26 Future Histories in SF Cover Art, Illustrations and fillers are always Stephen Baxter welcome 28 Twilight's Last Gleaming A Historical Survey of TV SF The British Science Fiction Association Ltd. - Company Limited by Guarantee - Company No 36 First Impressions 921500 - Registered Address - 60 Bournemouth Reviews edited by Catie Cary Rd, Folkestone, Kent , CT19 SAZ 45 Paperback Graffiti Reviews edited by Stephen Payne Nuts & Bolts Front Cover Artwork by Claire Willoughby Just room for a couple of notes: Editor & Hardback Reviews We have here the bumper issue promised to Catie Cary make up for last issues shortfall. You may notice that 224 Southway, Park Barn, Guildford , I've been redesigning again - this is because I have Surrey , GU2 60N finally abandoned my trusty Atari ST in favour of a Phone: 0483 502349 PC in the interests of better productivity. We shall see. Paperback Reviews Editor There is plenty of interest, in this issue, I look Stephen Payne forward to seeing your response to John Madracki' s 24 Malvern Rd , Stoneygate, Leicester, LE2 28H contentious and opinionated history of SF on TV .. Arthur C Clarke award winner Jeff Noon is Magazine Reviews Editor seen here wi)h his trophy at the award ceremony Maureen Speller Next issue will carry a detailed report on thi s year' s 60 Bournemouth Rd, Folkestone , Kent, CT19 SAz!Wafd . Editorial Assistants Alan Johnson , Camilla Pomeroy Printed by POC Copyprint, 11 Jefferies Passage, Guildford, Surrey , GU1 4 Vector is printed bimonthly by the BSFA © 199• Vector 3 while the use of the word ·coon' may now be taboo, other four-letter words which are equally offensive 10 many people can apparently be trotted out w ith impunity. But then, double standards and hypocrisy have always be part and parcel of ideological soundness. Debase ment of the English language by an unending flood of grotesque neologisms is something that we will always have to actively resist, but the Insidious depletion of our vocabulary must not be tolerated under any circumstances. Already, America's Anti-Defamation League has succeeded in having up to 100 potentially offensive words removed from The Official Scrabble Players Dictionaries, and one can only wonder how long ii will be before standard dictionaries bow to outside pressure and tentatively follows like all indoctrination it was suit. Oiatribal W arf:ue al its most effective when instilled In 1990, issue 5 of Shipya rd from Jol,n M adrack.i surreptitiously and both primary Blues (produced by sometimes education and mass entertainment Vector book reviewer, John 0 . were particularly suited to this Owen) sported on its cover the Catie C• ry , in her article backdoor approach. picture of a warrior princess who ' Cyberpunk is Dead' ( Vect or 177), The amended title of was quite clearly seen to possess referred 10 lhe " PC explosion· as a Christie's mystery thriller was now breasts. Very politically incorrect. "phenomenon of the Eighties·, but deemed offensive to aboriginal The cover of the following issue while it may be true that the term North Americans and replaced by featured a depiction of I. K. 'political correctness' has come to And Then There Were None. Brunel, complete with stovepipe attention of the media only within PC had arrived. hat and a large cigar. This could the last ten years or so, the roots By the Sixties, a whole new have only angered the Friends of of this canker go back much generation of word-police had lsambard who are trying to further (Erm, I was talkinQ about been spawned and were culling re-write history and eliminate all Personal Computers. but hey, their teeth on everything from references to the famous don't let a little thing like that get nursery rhymes to pop songs. engineer's s moking habits, and in your way/ - Catie) " Here comes SuperSpade, he would have compounded the When the title of Agatha really gets it on." was a line felony. That Shipyard Blues now Christie's classic novel, Ten Little contained within the innocuous appears to be defunct may well be Nigger s, was changed to Ten lillle ditty, 'The Greta Garbo Home just a coincidence, but we ignore Little Indians the reason for doing for Wayward Boys and Girts', the power of PC intimidation only so was born simply out of respect when it was first recorded. Bui at our peril. for the feelings of others and was even this harmless colloquialism regarded as being no more than had to be neutralised, and A Sc:!n.sc Of W ondc:!r an act of common courtesy. In ' Superman' substituted for the those days, good sense and, dare offending word, before ii could be From Richard Carrington I say it , good manners were ·covered ' by the chart-topping considered adequate safeguards Manfred Mann. An inconsequential About 1976, I started against indelicate language and action one may of thought at the collecting Sf paperbacks and other deliberate offensiveness. It was 11me - but 11 was the thin end of like books. I used to go to a only when we had the technology the wedge. second-hand bookshops in the to become a ' global village' that Television comedy and town where I live, sometimes with the manipulative power of mass drama have long been a target for my brother and sometimes on my communications was fully the verbal-sanitization squad, and own. 11 was the ideal place 10 go appreciated; words came to be when ITV recently decided to on a Saturday afternoon. You went seen not as tools for personal re-show the first episode of the downstairs and waded through expression but as weapons in popular series Minder, the piles of books which were to be diatribal warfare and semantics company found itself forced to found lying about in ctumps on the was reduced to a political Issue. excise certain scenes, including a basement floor. There was a shelf Pressure groups, motivated only couple which featured !he 1erm about seven feet long, packed be self-interest, sprang up like 'coon' , before the show could be with Fi rst Lensman , Rocketship toadstools and their orchestrated transmitted. Galileo and dozens of American propaganda impinged upon not Which may not sound too ACE pocket books, all at only on the academic world but unreasonable until one notes that also popular culture. reasonable prices for the lime. I Vector 4 bought the entire shelf-load over lhe course of the nexl 18 months. They were an eye-opener. No chance of Lord of The Rings for me. I spent hours down there until the smelt of 5000 books at close hand got too much and I beat a quick relreat to the till to haggle with the owner over how much he'd sell the books I'd found for. In retrospect it was an education as in most cases l hadn't a clue if a book by, say, Robert Heinlein was any good. (Incidentally this was the shop I bought Stranger In A Strange Land from). The curious thing was that all of the books were at least ten to fifteen or more David Wingrove Kim Stania)' years old . So I found I could pick Hunter S. Robinson Thompson Ted Mooney up a garish covered book for fifty Paul McAuley The Sham,m pence published in 1957 and know Ian McDonald Fergus Bannon it would be worth reading Mike Cobley Russell Hooan Nowadays I am more careful Ganymedean Eric Bfown Slime Mould Roky Eriks >n Nowadays there d oesn't Jayne Ann Radio Bin::lman seem to be much difference PhUUps between SF and Fantasy, e.g. "Encounters• prints both sorts usually at stiff prices which was Nud wt say mort ? why I left the book club. Maybe as you get older you get more choosy Corrc-ctio n Territories nas as its central locus over what you spend your money the genre of science fiction but on. I don't buy contemporary SF nevertheless goes beyond the Mat Coward's review of Marion that often as I cannot afford it self-imposed limitations of the genre The Firebrand for its sul>ject matters. Terrllorlea The last book t bought was by Zimmer Bradley's should have read fealtlres criticism, reviews, interviews. Patrick Moore on Fiction and in Vector 178 fiction and writing from the udga. Science Fiction and it cost me "most other contemporary thirty-five pence in my local anglophones" rather than "anglophiles" as printed. Our library. It had been withdrawn. I •. ..it's contents.affJ light-yaars a,1aad in would like to see a mainstream apologies. giving satisfaction.· - Yector publisher sta rt printing SF from "T6rritoriss is the critical magaz,ne that before 1960 and then sell ii for British SF has n9ede<J for a lorg tlm6, two quid or less.