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Astral Avenue 07
If you weren't reading this, chances are you'd be reading something else.
************** ASTRAL AVENUE ************** May 1987 No. 7
THE PUBLISHER'S DESK a personal chat with our readers by mr munsey
"If I couldn't write worth a damn, I think I'd like to own a hardware store.
I've long been fascinated by the enormous varieties of tools used to maintain
our society, as well as the clips, hinges, pins, brads, screws, pulleys,
wires, chains, clamps and pipes that hold it together. Not to mention the
putty, plaster, cement and paint that keep it looking well in places. Even
more than a book store, where I probably wouldn't get to read much anyway, I
believe that I could have been fairly happy in a good general hardware shop."
This humble and honest paragraph is from the introduction to Roger
Zelazny's THE LAST DEFENDER OF CAMELOT. We solicit contributions from
readers in the same vein. What would you do if you weren't involved in SF?
What is your dream occupation, the one where no niggling questions of
esthetics and royalties intrude? Look deep inside, and confess to a longing
to perform some honest work of benefit to society, instead of being the
artistic parasite you are today. Please resist the temptation to nominate
yourself for the job of photographing Pet-of-the-Month, or purchasing shoes
for Imelda Marcos. We're looking for salt-of-the-earth type jobs, or at least
the plausible.
To get everyone in the spirit, we will confess that our secret alternate
life is.... to be the owner of a record store. Spinning discs over the shop
system, turning people on to good new music, playing host to interesting
folks from the local music scene. No rejections, or struggles to produce
fiction of sempiternal worth.... Hold on a minute, if we go on in this vein,
we might not even finish this issue of AA!
***FRIDAY EVENING PROGRAMS up to and including all the latest post-modern
statements... Prescribed and approved by all the medical authorities, for
CONSTIPATION, DYSPEPSIA, TORPIDITY OF THE LIVER, HEMORRHOIDS, as well as all
kindred ailments resulting from indiscretion in diet
ANNOUNCER: And now, your host of Love Connection, Chuck Woolery!
AUDIENCE: (Applause, hoots, catcalls, whistles)
CW: Thank you, thank you, people. Let's get down to the business of making
a Love Connection. Our first guest tonight is Joe Schmertz. (Enter Joe
Schmertz, crosses stage and sits next to CW)
CW: Nice to have you on the show, Joe. Why don't you tell us a little about
yourself?
JS: Well, I'm an editor for a science fiction magazine, and I'm looking for
a writer who can meet the demands of my readers for hard, technical SF.
CW: Sounds reasonable, Joe. Let's take a look at the writers you had to
choose from. First, there was Cathy.
CATHY (on videotape): Well, I've just sold my first novel, entitled THE
UNICORN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE....
CW: Next was Bill.
BILL (on videotape): My latest novel, TREMENDOUS CATACLYSM THAT NEARLY WIPES
OUT HUMANITY, has just gone back for a third printing before its publication
date...
CW: And finally, there was Helen.
HELEN (on videotape): I've only sold three stories so far, but one's been
anthologized in every best-of-the-year collection whose editor I've
personally met.
CW: Well, audience, you've seen who Joe had to pick from. Lock in your
votes, and when we return, we'll see who he actually chose for his "Literary
Love Connection."
<Break for commercial for Franklin Mint SF Classics>
CW: We're back. All right, Joe, tell us who you picked.
JS: Needless to say, I chose Bill.
AUDIENCE: Yaaaaayyy!
CW: Let's bring Bill in on this, as we hear about his submission. (Window
opens up, featuring Bill, live.)
CW: Hi, Bill. Make yourself comfortable, and jump in if there's anything
you want to "contribute," ha-ha.
BILL: Sure.
JS: Well, I was very eager to meet Bill. I had read his novel, and it was
just the kind of thing I was looking for. I was a little disappointed when he
actually showed up at my office.
CW: Why is that, Joe?
JS: Well, he was two hours late for our appointment, and drunk to boot. His
publisher had been feeding him booze at Elaine's while I sweated in my
windowless office. On top of that, I had been expecting Bill to look and act
like one of Heinlein's "competent men," so we could tout him to our readers
in our monthly biographical feature. Instead, he was timid and built like a
schmoo. Now I know why he never lets any publicity pictures appear on his
books.
AUDIENCE: Whoooooaaaa!
BILL: Chuck, I don't think that's a fair comment. A writer's appearance has
nothing to do with his or her work.
CW: Boy, is that a naive comment! Haven't you seen John Irving in wrestling
duds lately?
JS: Anyway, I was prepared to overlook all that. But the manuscript Bill
brought me was just the final straw. It was dog-eared and coffee-stained,
and must have been in a drawer since before Bill was first published. These
novelists all think they're too good to write short stories. Let me tell
them all now, it's not easy to cram ten pages of technical exposition into a
twenty-page novella. In any case, Bill's story was a total loser. I had to
bounce it right then and there. It was downright embarrassing for both of
us.
BILL: I've been busy on a publicity tour lately....
CW: No excuses, Bill. So, Joe, I take it we didn't make a "Literary Love
Connection?"
JS: No, I'm afraid not.
CW: Let's see who the audience picked for you.... Why, it was Helen, at 60
percent! Well, Joe, if you want to see a story from Helen, we'll pay for a
donut and endless cup of coffee for the both of you, at the local coffee-shop
near your office.
JS: What have I got to lose? She may not have a Ph.D. in physics, but she's
young and malleable --
CW: Great. And Bill, you can console yourself with your top spot on the
best-seller lists. Well, I'm afraid we're out of time for tonight, folks.
Tune in tomorrow, when we try to make and agent-author "Literary Love
Connection!"
AUDIENCE: (Applause, hoots, catcalls, whistles.)
**********
ANOTHER REASON NOT TO ATTEND THE NEBULAS
"March 8, 1914: After ingesting a toothpick along with an hors d'oeuvre
at a cocktail party, Sherwood Anderson, 64, died in Colon, Panama, of the
complications of peritonitis." -- A LITERARY BOOK OF DAYS.
THIS MONTH'S MAXIM: You can't spell "literary" without "lite."
HOT TIP!!!! Every reader of discernment should rush out and lay hands on a
copy of LOVING LITTLE EGYPT, by Thomas McMahon. Of particular interest is
how the author -- intentionally or inadvertently -- creates an analogue to
cyberspace and its cowboys in the phone network of the early twentieth
century.
THE PLAYBOY STAPLE
by Donn Webb
JHVH was angered by man. He removed the curse of Babel so everybody
knew exactly was everybody else was saying. World War III began fifteen
minutes later.
******
ACCESS TO TOOLS by Rudy Rucker
Why write a column in a... uh... Mr. Wizard vein? NET BLOWAGE. That's
the word I woke up with in my head yesterday or was it Belgium. Once my
college friend, and later Viet Vet, Don Marritz, wrote me a letter that
starts... uh.... "Dear Rudy and Sylvia, Of all possible ways to start a
letter, THIS is probably the worst..."
When I was at Seacon in Brighton, etc., some guys -- I mean real Brit
punks -- are yelling at me, sitting on the hotel porch and... now right in
this period I was reading A SCANNER DARKLY... uh, yesterday my dog winked at
me // my piles just dies // trucked in from Toledo // gosh you're a lovely
audience.
Broadway Danny Rose. What a great movie. Woody, he gives... uh...
short weight, you dig, B&W and you get out 20 mins. earlier than the kids who
are... uh... seeing FOOTLOOSE.
Recently I did some library research -- and that's really what I'd like
this column to be, viz., a sharing of the facts that I glean in my diffuse,
but wide-ranging investigations. What's in it for me? Hopefully (and I do
mean "hopefully," which is as much an authentic U.S. word as... uh... NET
BLOWAGE), hopefully this totally lame sentence will end. Yes!
Yeah... uh... I found this book in the library, the Lynchburg (called
L'burg for short)... uh... library and I looked up Ike's memoirs. AT EASE:
STORIES I TELL TO MY FRIENDS. Yeah. I had this rap... a running joke, like,
that I'd been telling my stories to... uh... friends. OK, now the idea was
that I'm writing the story of my life -- I was working on it, a novel that
I'm now working on (SHOP TALK! YES!) it's called THE SECRET OF LIFE. It's
basically a UFO novel. I feel, by the way, that it's high time for a lot of
UFO novels. The virtue of this form is that one has as many aliens as one
needs (rival races of saucer-aliens fight it out on Earth) without having to
HAUL ALL THAT SHIT THROUGH ALL THEM LIGHT-YEARS.
"Where's the UFOlogy section?" was the question that one of those fabled
Brit punks axed me back a page or piece (hyuck-hyuck)/cut/RESET yeah really
I mean someone did once say the word UFOlogy to me and I understood him, so
instead of killing me, he went in and got evicted by the dicks. Hotel.
OK, now Ike's memoirs. I was telling my friend Greg Gibson (who runs a
wonderful book-store called The Ten Pound Island Book Shop in Gloucester,
Mass., tell "Gib" you know me and he's liable to treat you to a real "Down
East" hoedown. Or is it clambake? Actually, he might kill you. No, really,
it's a nice shop.) Greg and I roomed together in college, and we were great
admirers of Jack and the Beats. I'd always wanted to write a book like ON
THE ROAD. And the way Jack actually did it was to get a teletype roll
(photographs exist!) and.. uh... put it in his typewriter and go on and on
and not have to be subject to the tyranny of the PAGE. (Of course, now a
scrolling word-processor is just such a piece of "paper." It seems likely to
change the texture of commercial prose. Or lead to a great artistic advance.
Whatever.)
Right. Now I want to finish this story. The one thing, I mean, I think
the FAIR thing to the readers of this column is that whenever I begin a story
I will eventually finish it within the body of the piece -- modulo, of
course, considerations of artistic polish and natural reticence. AT EASE:
STORIES I TELL TO MY FRIENDS, by Dwight David Eisenhower. We're talking
actual fucking library research here. I get the book, and it's wonderfully
greasy. The cover crinkling in the light and all covered with SEBUM (which
is the scientific name for the skin grease that humans ooze, q.v. T. Pynchon,
"...covering everything with an offensive coat of sebum.") sebum... yeah.
Ike. In... uh.... DESOLATION ANGELS, I guess, Jack is down in Mexico City
and living downstairs from some guy called "Old Ike the Pusher." In college,
Greg was a big jogger. He ran before any of the others. He had a rap: how,
when he was running and it hurt first so his lungs were falling out, then the
legs and the liver, the thing to cheer himself up was to think of "Old Ike
the Pusher."
I like Ike, but does Ike like me?
RIGHT! OK. Now what I was telling Greg when I was working up my psych
to write another book, was this idea that Ike's AT EASE should be a cult
classic, a book that any "true communicant" must have at least a nodding
acquaintance with... a book of the stature of Jean-Paul Sartre's NAUSEA,
perhaps (which I'll get back to next issue). OK, now it's a FUNNY idea that
AT EASE should be a good book. I mean it's an interesting idea, and one
wants it to be true. For years I laughed about the title. I remember once
saying, blown away at Don Marritz's wedding in Gettysburg, "AT EASE: STORIES
I TELL TO MY FRIENDS, what an incredibly feeble title, I mean, it's like a
LIMP DICK, at ease, yet...."
But yet. So the running joke I had with Greg was that... uh... my rap
about my book when I'm trying to up the... uh... net blowage or some shit...
uh... "If I have only begun to approach the transcendant clarity of 'Ike' in
his immortal..." Yeah. Right. So I'm at the Lynchburg Public Sebum and I
do find Ike's book. This is like one day I'm too burnt-out to write... but
I've still got my JOB to do, a type of behavior to exhibit -- as opposed to
watching..uh.. basketball games. And I'm thinking, "Well, maybe today I'm
not going to write much, but hell, it's only Monday or Tuesday. I like Ike!"
And plan to gut it for good quotes, right.
And go in there... past the... uh... sebum, and, uh...
..uh...
Well, there's not much of what you might call fine writing. I did find
two or three interesting things. He calls the intro by the line, "A Man
Talking To Himself." And is here, a voice in yer ear, via DICTAPHONE. Poor
guy couldn't type, I guess...
Anyway, he had a big dick. That's the one heretofore subtextual
transrealist fact that I ferreted out. I mean... MAYBE. Larry Flynt has
been an example to us all. I used to have a rap that Larry Flynt was the
Martin Luther King of the Seventies. I'm glad the Seventies are over.
Disco, Jerry F., it all fades. "Only real people survive," Henry was telling
me the other night. Henry and his wife Diana own 2 ladies' clothing stores.
Henry and I got into this rap about "net blowage." It's a phrase that came
to me a few days ago, out of nowhere, you know, the Muse sits on your face.
Ups the net blowage. They're about to start a City Council election here and
we were grooving off making 'the net amount of on-line blowage' a like major
issue.
The wrap-up. UFOlogy. It's heavy and worth thinking about. I don't
know if I would have ever fully gotten into SF if I hadn't read Ian Watson's
MIRACLE VISITORS. Which, in turn, draws a lot of energy from C.G. Jung's
FLYING SAUCERS, subtitle: "A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies."
Oh yeah, and why Ike had a big dick. Well, he was a real scapegrace at
West Point, always in trouble. Sometimes he even reported himself if nobody
else would bother. Genial. So the officer says, "Come down to my room in
dress-coats for punishment-duty-tour." It was Ike and his roommate, supposed
to report. And the PRANK is that they only wear the special dress-coats and
not the (expected) rest of the uniform, no not anything else, "not another
stitch." So all I'm saying is, if Ike had the (dick and) balls to do the
prank he must have been pretty well-adjusted or had a humongo dong.... one!
Well that's it. Next ish: NAUSEA by Jean-Paul Sartre, and THE BOOK OF
THE SUBGENIUS.
********
CURRENT NEWS AND VIEWS
Science Isn't Supposed To Be Entertaining
From BORIS ZAVGORODNY: I received your two envelopes with your zine, ASTRAL
AVENUE. Thank you very much!
From ROB MILLER: I suspect editors of prozines publish bad stories because
a) they think they are good; b) take big and/or known names to increase
sales; c) are similar to other popular stories, themes and authors; d) are
trendy.
I think Carr's statement is as bad as his collections of stories are
good.
From DON WEBB: Allusion to R-n-R is a tricky business. According to Gardner
Dozois, publishers of rock lyrics are the most likely to sue.
I would rather watch Red Foxx have sex with Nancy Reagan.
From LEWIS SHINER: Terry Carr's letter in AA#6 was not only fatuous,
self-serving crap, it also managed to contradict itself. His statement that
"professional editors... will always buy any sf or fantasy story that's even
reasonably good" is pure bullshit. I have read many good stories that were
rejected by every editor in the field. Why? Because the author was not yet a
Recognized Name. If any editor tells me they read a story out of the slush
pile the same way they read a story from a Big Name Pro, I would have to
politely suggest that they are lying through their teeth.
Furthermore, Terry does not seem to have read any of the UNEARTH stories
which he proceeds, nonetheless, to condemn as unfit for publication. I
myself have read at least two of them, "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" by
William Gibson and "The Red Planet" by James Blaylock, that I would rate
somewhere between first-rate and brilliant. By any standards.
Terry may feel that Clarke, Benford, and Brunner, for example, are
"better" writers than Gibson and Blaylock and Rucker -- but I don't.
Finally, after tellins us that every decent story written in SF is
immediately snapped up by himself or one of his fellow all-knowing,
all-seeing editors, he says maybe we should have "one or two more (markets),
just to add to the variety of published SF and fantasy." But Terry -- you've
already told us that they would only be adding worthless crap!
I'm in a position now where I can sell pretty much everything I write.
But I remember all too well what it was like when I couldn't. It's bad
enough that writers who are just starting out are so subject to the whims of
a few editors. What really chaps my ass is when somebody like Terry Carr
thinks his personal taste is more than just that -- that he has some cosmic
handle on the good and bad, and can consign a writer's work (in some cases,
work he hasn't even read) into obscurity with a casual sneer.
Signed, Hot under the collar....
From BRIAN ALDISS: You were talking about Lester del Rey and his prickish
judgements on SF. It's old history now, but some years back he tried his
hand at a history of SF, in the Garland series. It was so fatuous that even
his sycophants let it vanish without a trace. (Like he got the date of
publication of FRANKENSTEIN wrong, having cribbed it from James Gunn's
history where, by a freak of chance, it was also misprinted.)
His book is an attempt to promote his own role in pulp SF to something
like importance -- a concept, as Moskowitz once put it in a lapidary phrase,
the mind cannot stomach. Here as a sample for toilet-side reading is just one
paragraph from del Rey's history. Try and stay awake. It's from a chapter
called "The Age of Wonder"; it certainly made me wonder what del Rey's life
can have been about:
"In September 1932, SCIENCE FICTION DIGEST appeared, with Maurice Z.
Ingher as editor. Weisinger and Schwartz were now joined by Raymond A.
Palmer as associate or managing editors. This publication had a set of
departments somewhat similar to those of THE TIME TRAVELLER. But one of the
more interesting bits was a column speculating on just who Anthony Gilmore
might be..."
Personally, I'm still wondering.
From MICHAEL SWANWICK: I read with interest your article in AA#5 on the use
of allusion. You should be aware, however, that many editors will reject any
story that includes a direct quote of rock song lyrics. This is because the
corporate entities responsible for collecting song royalties are notoriously
litiginous, and most science fiction publishers are afraid of lawsuits.
<AA> -- Two people raising this point requires me to answer. I don't see
Ace being sued for the aforementioned Steely Dan reference in PALIMPSESTS,
and I refuse to believe that there is some corporate hireling sitting in an
office somewhere, who has all the lyrics of all his company's artists
memorized and is reading every piece of fiction published, his vibrissae
quivering for quotes, especially not if they are embedded as found objects
right in the text, without citation.
From JANET FOX: I've heard (Carr) saying the same thing, long and loud,
before.... Money does not confer literary perspicacity.
From DAVID D'AMMASSA: Many white Democrats would love the opportunity to
have sex with Ronald Reagan. Who could pass up the invitation to do to the
President what he's been doing to the country for years?
From LUKE McGUFF: Terry's argument as he states it is circular and
irrefutable. Good stories get published in pro magazines, bad stories don't.
QED. But to invalidate this argument, all you have to do is point to a good
story in a semipro market, or a bad story in a pro market. As he states it,
it's impossible to have a bad story in a pro market, and impossible to have a
good story in a semipro market.
The SF market is shifting from adventurousness to wish-fulfillment. If
you look at the Christmas catalog for B. Dalton's, the only SF books they
list come in boxed sets, as serials or novels by Heinlein....
From MISHA CHOCHOLAK: I thought your allusion article was good. It's real
dull for a writer to use a nice literary allusion and have everybody miss
it....
As far as Terry Carr is concerned, well the quality short story stuff is
pure bunko. Very few main house publishers look for quality any more, they
just publish for bucks.
From BRETT RUTHERFORD: I, for one, as both reader and writer, would like to
cast a vote against the incorporation of rock and popular song lyrics in
fiction. This may seem to establish an easy, "fuzzy" feeling of camaraderie
between writer and some readers, but in the long run, this is a lazy and
hazardous way to enrich one's writing.
First of all, there is the pop-culture bias shown by the author who
blithely assumes that all his readers -- or the only ones who matter -- know
exactly what he's talking about when he quotes or alludes to his favorite
music. And, since all of us dream and hope that we'll be read twenty or
fifty years from now, we're also making the assumptions about the future....
It is easy to assume that the stuff that fills the airwaves and crams
the shelves of the record stores represents the zeitgeist of contemporary
culture. Such assumptions can be disastrously wrong.... Mackay, in his
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS, has an
illuminating chapter about how songs and phrases come and go. They are foam
on the waves of culture. How many popular tunes of the 1880's can you hum or
quote words from?....
Writers must also recognize that there are millions of readers out there
of all ages -- even members of the Sixties and Seventies generations -- who
loathe popular music, never listen to it, and find quotations of its badly
crafted lyrics to be annoying, cryptic, and meaningless....
Finally, rock and song lyrics, by their very nature and because of the
limited IQs of most performers, are generally inept as poems and regressive
if not Neanderthal in content... Quoting rock lyrics in fiction is like
putting vinyl siding on the Taj Mahal.
******** AND THEY SAY SCIENTISTS HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOR
A counter-theory to the recent speculations about a Fifth Force is
called the "Chu-Dicke hypothesis."
********** LIFE IMITATES PROPAGANDA
Phillip Knightley, in his book THE SECOND OLDEST PROFESSION, maintains
that the first modern intelligence service, the British SIS (and consequently
all subsequent ones) was founded in 1909 in direct response to a William
LeQueux novel! Anyone care to take long-term bets now over what hare-brained
SF novel of the Eighties will have similar long-reaching effects?
*********
!!! PROPOSAL FOR AN ASTRAL CONVENTION !!!
The Association for Ontological Anarchy, along with the West-Coast Magus
Ipsissima, YAEL DRAGWYLA, has decided to host a big Convention of all
interested Mutants, Zine-oids, SubG's, Type 3's & Chaos Magicians. The
kicker is: the meeting will be held on the ASTRAL PLANE.
We will choose some very famous natural landmark, & invite everyone to
project their AETHERIAL DOUBLES thence simultaneously at some appropriate
moment. Say for example Niagara Falls at noon on the Summer Solstice 1987:
take a photo or postcard of the Falls, concentrate on it, imagine yourself
transported there in a flash. Create an archetypal visionary appearance for
yourself; perform some magical or artistic act or make a speech; then
concentrate on the OTHER people present in their astral bodies.
Stay as long as you can (up to, say, an hour). Yael D., as our most
accomplished magician, will remain on-site for the full hour to help
neophytes, pass out spiritual refreshments & emcee the Convention
proceedings. Early in the hour we'll present our set-pieces; towards the
end, things will degenerate toward pure partying. (Bring astral
intoxicants.)
Then, by one PM at the latest, return to your bodies (by the way, be
sure you can leave them safely, apparently asleep & undisturbed, for the full
period). At once, upon yr return, write (or record graphically) an account
of your experiences. Send them to Yael or me. We will prepare a PROCEEDINGS
(or "Akashic Record") of the Convention, which will be published & sent to
all participants.
Before we announce a definite time & place, we'd like to hear from AT
LEAST a dozen or so friends who WILL attend. Please offer suggestions about
ideal location and time. An important point: how do we synchronize our
appearances so as to arrive (possibly from all over the world) within the
appointed hour? Sample invocations & techniques for easy astral travel would
be welcome. When all details have been ironed out, we will publish an Open
Invitation, maybe in POPULAR REALITY &/or elsewhere; & also send out specific
invitations. We'll provide, if possible, photos & maps needed for
vizualization of the Convention site.
We MAY be able to erect, on the site, some sort of astral beacon,
perhaps even an aedefice of appropriate appearance... in the form of a shabby
vacation hotel which hosts firemens' conventions & dreary little Chamber of
Commerce events...? Maybe a Holiday Inn? Or would you prefer a real
Hollywood/Baghdad/Opium-Dream pavilion in the clouds? Suggestions please!
If you definitely want to attend, let us know at A.O.A, Box 586,
Brooklyn NY 11211. Wa salaam.
ASTRAL AVENUE 7 Paul Di Filippo 2 Poplar Street Providence RI
02906
**********
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