SSFF CCoommmmeennttaarryy 8833 October 2012 GUY SALVIDGE ON THE NOVELS OF PHILIP K. DICK ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Brian ALDISS Eric MAYER John BAXTER Cath ORTLIEB Greg BENFORD Rog PEYTON Helena BINNS Mark PLUMMER Damien BRODERICK Franz ROTTENSTEINER Ned BROOKS Yvonne ROUSSEAU Ian COVELL David RUSSELL Bruce GILLESPIE Darrell SCHWEITZER Fenna HOGG Steve SNEYD John-Henri HOLMBERG Ian WATSON Carol KEWLEY Taral WAYNE Robert LICHTMAN Frank WEISSENBORN Patrick MCGUIRE Ray WOOD Murray MACLACHLAN Martin Morse WOOSTER Tim MARION Cover: Fenna Hogg S F Commentary 83 SF Commentary No 83, October 2012, 107 pages, is edited and published by Bruce Gillespie ([email protected]), 5 Howard St., Greensborough VIC 3088, Australia, and http://efanzines.com/SFC/SFC83.pdf. All correspondence: [email protected]. Member fwa. First edition and primary publication is electronic. All material in this publication was contributed for one-time use only, and copyrights belong to the contributors. Alternate editions: * A very limited number of print copies are available. Enquiries to the editor. * The alternate PDF version is portrait-shaped, i.e. it looks the same as the print edition, but with colour graphics. Front cover: Melbourne graphic artist Fenna Hogg’s cover does not in fact portray Philip K. Dick wearing a scramble suit. That’s what it looks like to me. It is actually based on a photograph of Melbourne writer and teacher Steve Cameron, who arranged with Fenna for its use as a cover. Graphic: Carol Kewley (p. 105). Photographs: Damien Broderick (p. 5); Guy Salvidge (p. 10); Jim Sakland/Dick Eney (p. 67); Jerry Bauer (p. 68); Helena Binns (pp. 79, 107); Mark Atkins/John Baxter (p. 94); Yvonne Rousseau (pp. 77, 82); Ray Wood (p. 102); Frank Weissenborn (p. 106); Cath Ortlieb (p. 107). 2 Contents 4 I MUST BE TALKING MY FRIENDS, PART 1 Mark Plummer The Editor 85 Feature list: Top 100 SF novels Brian Aldiss Taral Wayne Rog Peyton Eric Mayer 88 I MUST BE TALKING TO MY FRIENDS, PART 3 10 DISCOVERING PHILIP K. DICK Robert Lichtman Guy Salvidge Helena (and Merv) Binns Ian Covell 54 A GLIMMUNG OF AN IDEA: Damien Broderick A REVIEW OF NICK AND THE GLIMMUNG BY PHILIP K. DICK Ian Watson Steve Sneyd Tim Marion Steve Jeffery John Baxter 58 I MUST BE TALKING TO MY FRIENDS, PART 2 David Russell 58 The Tucker Issue ... and that Tolkien movie Ned Brooks Tim Marion Mark Plummer Mark Plummer Darrell Schweitzer 61 Feature letters Greg Benford Martin Morse Wooster Patrick McGuire Ray Wood Mark Plummer John-Henri Holmberg 68 Behind the Stanislaw Lem mask 104 We also heard from ... Franz Rottensteiner 23 other correspondents 71 Connie Willis’s Blackout/All Clear: The debate continues 107 PEOPLE SEEN AT CONTINUUM 8, 2012 Patrick McGuire Helena Binns Yvonne Rousseau Cath Ortlieb Murray MacLachlan 3 I must be talking to my friends The state of the fanzine In February this year I produced the final issue of Steam Engine Time, No 13. SET had its own style and place in the world of fanzines, but co-editor Jan Stinson could no longer participate in producing it. I placed the .PDF version on Bill Burns’s efanzine.com site — then waited four months before I could afford to send out copies of the print version. I decided that if I had to part out $1200 again to produce a fanzine, I would have to give up publishing altogether. The alternative? All-online publishing. Chris Garcia does it, and they gave him a Hugo Award for his trouble. Not only does he produce lively fanzines, but he can produce them prodigiously (once a week). I too could be prodigious, even profligate, in production if only I didn’t have to pay for the printing and postage bills, especially the horrendous cost of overseas postage. Can I quit printing copies altogether? You’ll receive a notice asking you to download my magazines from http://efanzines. com. More importantly, email Bill Burns at [email protected]. Ask him to place you on his email notification list. I still have some print copy obligations, especially a few substantial subscriptions and some trades for magazines that are not posted online. But I am hoping most people will stay with the online version. I like freelance book editing, but I would prefer fanzine editing, which pays me nothing and costs me everything. If I could publish my fanzines solely on efanzines.com, I could settle down to a life of quiet ease, publishing each issue regularly (perhaps every week), reading all the books that are on the shelf, listening to the vast number of CDs I’ve never heard, and watching the DVD and Blu- ray movies that have piled up. Instead, life will remain the same for me ... unless, of course, the publishing industry changes as radically as I suspect it will in the next few years and I will be left with no paying work. Oh well. Elaine and I don’t have a car, a mortgage, or kids, so between us I suppose we can survive. 4 What you might think of, pretentiously, as my ‘greatest work’ is something no one has seen or thought about. I mention it now because I realise my future years are limited. My Journal is something I have written for over 40 years. It is manuscript and goes into hardbound A5 uniform volumes. More and more frequently, the later volumes are illustrated. I am now writing volume 72, to be stored away with previous volumes in a massive German safe, here in my house. It’s easy to work out that 72 volumes of this sort will occupy about 2 yards of shelf space. The Bodleian Library, which is as it were the Buckingham Palace of old literatures is eager to have this work, where it will be looked after. Virginia Woolf says that if you want to be read two centuries from now, keep a diary. Only recently have I had this in mind. No money is involved, but at the end of the day there’s pleasure to write a page or two of reflection. A life not reflected upon is rather an impoverished life. This is meant to be a reflection and not a sermon. Science fiction would never Damien Broderick, Rudy Rucker, and Brian Aldiss, ICFA Conference, Florida, have survived had it not been for this intense money-free support from fans 2005. (Photo supplied by Damien Broderick.) and writers, so thanks again for your magazines. The celebration of John Clute in SF Commentary is particularly apt. You just BRIAN ALDISS have to look at the electronic version of his SF Encyclopedia to see the 39 St. Andrews Road, Old Headington, extraordinary amount of work and knowledge involved in that great Oxford OX3 9DL, England achievement. (20 March 2012) It’s very good of you to keep sending me SF Commentary, not to mention *brg* Dear Brian: Steam Engine Time, when I failed to make any response until now. Thanks very much for your letter. It cheered me up greatly. The democracy in which we are fortunate to live always depends on a lack of corruption in high places and a circulation of money. The former factor is one I However, even while I’ve been trying to arrange for the government to give readily subscribe to, but on the question of money I am more uncertain. I me a pension that I might live on (having reached the age of 65 on 17 never wrote for money, but rather for what was on my mind. One of the great February) I received the largest editing job I’ve been offered since the mid virtues of the SF community — never sufficiently extolled — is it often has 1990s. This took up most of my waking hours until I finished the job last scant regard for money or profit. I guess your SF Commentary is hardly likely to Wednesday. The author of the previous two editions of the book asked that make a large profit. One has to eat, of course ... I edit the third edition. It is the encyclopedia of its academic discipline, and eventually turned in at 460,000 words, 930 single-spaced pages. When the 5 cheque comes in, it will be the exact amount that I might possibly expect for Also interesting that you have followed the same path in later years as my a whole year of an old age pension. If I could depend on continuing freelance friend Gerald Murnane. He has spent the last five years writing and collating work, I would not bother going through the infinite hoops that I’ve had to all his personal recollections into a set of large filing cupboards. Even while jump through (without success, since the status that Elaine and I have as a publishers have been slow to publish his last two books (despite winning a small company seems too difficult for them) and would simply keep working. recent prize for his life’s work, and even being listed by Ladbroke’s as a Nobel But I’ve had long periods of ‘resting’ during the last five years, so let’s hope Prize possibility), he feels that his collected journals will be as interesting to I can satisfy the requirements of the bureaucrats. future literary historians as many of his books. I don’t know whether he already has plans to place these filing cabinets with a particular library. All this is to explain why I might no longer be able to send paper copies of my magazines to anybody overseas in future, not even people such as you A huge amount of the work on the new SF Encyclopedia has also been done who’ve always received them.