Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
OtherRealms Issue 13 Part 01
Electronic OtherRealms #13
March, 1987
Part 1
Table of Contents
Part 1
Beasts
Alan Wexelblat
The Hercules Text
Donn Seeley
The Ecologic Envoy
Dan'l Danehy Oakes
The Uncanny X-men
Alan Wexelblat
The Berserker Throne
Jim Day
Teckla
Jim Johnston
The Unconquered Country
Donn Seeley
Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach
Part 2
Books Received
Pico Reviews
Part 3
Much Rejoicing
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Words of Wizdom
Chuq Von Rospach
Letters to OtherRealms
Beasts
John Crowley
[***+]
Reviewed by
Alan Wexelblat
Copyright 1987 by Alan Wexelblat
When an author's first novel wins the World Fantasy Award, it is hard
not to compare his second novel to the first. This is one of those
cases; Crowley's Little, Big was a masterpiece of fantasy that richly
deserved the 1982 award.
Beasts is a more modest effort both in scope and in tone. Its language
is less complex and ornate than that of Little, Big, but it is still a
pleasure to read his fine wordsmithing. The story, however, is not so
pleasant.
Beasts is aptly titled. It is a story about beasts--animal and human,
individual and organizational. It is also a story about how these
beasts act and interact. The story is set in a not-too-distant future
in which the United States had been fragmented and badly decimated by
civil war. The population has been reduced, allowing the remainder to
survive, although at a lower standard of living.
In addition to the human population, there is a small population of
genetic constructs extant. They are artificial crossbreeds of human
and animal genes. Most of these mutants do not survive the laboratory.
Some do, but are forever sterile. However, one species, a cross between
man and lion called leo, survives and reproduces outside the lab.
Painter, the character around whom the story revolves, is a leo.
Beasts, though, is not "Painter's story" so much as it is "a story
about Painter." In particular, it is the story of the dying Federal
government to recapture its escaped "lab animals," prime among whom is
Painter. Their extermination is seen as the first step toward
purifying the land so that it can be reunified.
This is not a pretty story, nor a nice one. The leos are more lion
than man and have culture, society, morals, and behavior that reflects
this. Throughout the novel, they do what they must to survive and
achieve their goals, often without concern for the humans around them.
In this novel, Crowley has drawn a fascinating picture; his characters
are exceptionally well-developed. He shows a keen perception for the
bestial ways and his leos are more alien than most aliens found in SF.
He is particularly adept at showing how the differing bestial cultures
clash when they meet.
The action takes place against a fine mesh of detail; in this sense,
Beasts is a richer tapestry than most novels its size. On the other
hand, this richness works against the plot. There is material for a
larger work, but the story seems lost against that background. Painter's
story just isn't enough to totally capture and hold the reader.
Aside from this weakness, Beasts is a good book, finely written. Buy
Little, Big first, but don't pass up Beasts.
The Hercules Text
Jack McDevitt
Ace Books, 307 pages, $3.50
Reviewed by
Donn Seeley
Copyright 1987 by Donn Seeley
I've seen a lot of first contact stories. When a new one turns up, I
look first for solid entertainment and then for some original
speculation, something new about an old genre. I've read many novels
which succeed at one or the other but not both... Stanislaw Lem's
novel His Master's Voice, for example, is the heavily analytical tale
of a mathematician who was a member of a team of scientists who were
assigned to decipher an intelligent signal from the stars. While Lem
comes up with some very intriguing ideas about what we might see in
such a signal, the story itself is extremely dry, a style quite
befitting its arrogant and obnoxious narrator but very wearing on the
reader. I keep hoping to see a competent first contact story which is
as deep as Voice but less alien, more human. Terry Carr has a much
better than average record in picking first novels for his Ace Specials
line and thus I was ready to be pleasantly surprised by Jack McDevitt's
The Hercules Text.
Harry Carmichael is a NASA bureaucrat who supervises a group of
scientists at Goddard Space Center who are studying X-ray pulsars. On
the night Carmichael's wife tells him she's leaving him, he gets a
phone call from the office about a peculiar change that has been
observed in the signal from an X-ray source in Hercules. Something is
modulating the pulsar's pulses to produce a little table of powers...
Well, of course, what the Goddard scientists have detected is a
transmission from an alien civilization, and as the signal monitoring
progresses it becomes apparent that a huge amount of data is going to
arrive on a variety of subjects. Carmichael has to fight to keep the
project from being taken away from his people, and as he gradually
discovers the importance of the information in the Hercules Text, he
must struggle to prevent the new technology from being misused. What
happens when a new, cheap source of electrical power is made available?
What about a simple and inexpensive way to turn an object of Earth's
mass into a black hole? By the end of the novel, I was on the edge of
my seat wondering whether even some sizable fraction of the planet
could be saved...
What's good about The Hercules Text? McDevitt writes some very nice
suspense; once the action gets moving, it stays moving very smoothly.
He does an excellent job of describing the effects of the Text on our
culture--we hear the reactions of the Catholic and fundamentalist
Protestant clergy, we find out how the Text turns into a political
football and observe how it affects domestic politics and international
relations, and we see how the dusty towers of academia are tumbled by a
tidal wave of alien thought. The chapters of the novel are interleaved
with 'monitor' sections presenting headlines, excerpts from interviews
and papers, and so on; I found this to be a perspicacious means of
keeping attention on the way popular culture adapts to the alien
influence. McDevitt hasn't quite hit his stride with his
characterizations, but overall he does a more than adequate job. He
makes his bureaucrats seem like real people rather than caricatures (I
do take issue with one incident, in which Carmichael goes over the head
of his creepy superior to the White House, and this superior does not
subsequently find an opportunity to decorate his office with
Carmichael's guts...). McDevitt's casting suffers from tokenism -- the
Eminent Scientist, the Beautiful Female Psychologist, the Catholic
Priest Who Must Struggle With His Conscience -- but it's not offensive.
Unfortunately The Hercules Text has its weaknesses too. There are some
quite glaring mistakes in the science, mistakes which an editor really
ought to have picked up, mistakes which were so blatant that even a
non-scientist like me could spot them. At one point in the story, the
Goddard scientists have encountered a dead end in analyzing the signal:
they've run it through their best search programs on their biggest and
fastest computer and can't make the least sense of it. Someone
suggests that small is beautiful, and perhaps their office PC could
decode the signal more easily than their vast number cruncher. On a
lark they feed the disk into the PC, load up Star Trek, and guess
what--the Enterprise encounters a mysteriously spinning cube beyond the
edge of the galaxy. Ouch. McDevitt doesn't seem to know the
difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist, he apparently
thinks that optical disks can be erased by electromagnets, and he has a
biologist state that myopia could be cured in adults using DNA repair
techniques. A lot of other 'science' looked fishy to me but I don't
have the right background to catch it all. I also felt that the plot
had some gaping holes in it. I won't spoil the ending for you, but I
thought that it suffered from what Arthur Clarke calls a 'failure of
nerve.' (I think Bear's Blood Music and Wilhelm's Welcome, Chaos are
examples of how to conquer this.) There are a few practical problems,
too--for example, when the characters are worrying about the possible
destruction of the Text, they never seem to consider the possibility
that the Alien Broadcasting Company might show reruns...
I hope I don't sound too hard on this book, because it really was fun
to read and showed some good thinking. But I'm still waiting for the
definitive first contact novel.
The Ecologic Envoy
L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
[***]
Tor Books, $2.95
Reviewed by
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Copyright 1987 by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
In an era of jaded, cynical cyberpunqs, this book is refreshing -- the
author has created what I'm fairly sure is the first "technoyuppie"
novel. It follows a fairly standard cyberpunq plot: High-tech
protagonist uses superior technology and underhanded methods, including
murder, to achieve his ends. But it's full of reversals on the
cyberpunq feel: The hero is a "Professor of Trade" (Read: MBA in
international economics) and "Ecolitan" (Read: agent provocateur
working for his planet's Establishment) who acts from idealistic,
rather than cynical, ends. The book is filled with loving descriptions
of gourmet meals. One chapter is basically an argument about the
economics of protective tariffs (which suspiciously reminds one of the
current US-Japan situation). Yuppie.
It is also a finely plotted book. The story of Nathaniel Whaler's
attempts to negotiate a simple(?) trade agreement in the face of
mysterious intrigue and repeated assassination attempts is
fascinating. It kept me turning pages -- in fact, I wanted to give it
four stars.
But there are two problems. (1) Character. A number of the supporting
characters are fascinating, but the personality of Whaler himself is
about as thin as a crepe. (2) Style. The writing is mostly
inoffensive, if pedestrian, but in a few places the author drops
syntactical glitches that made me want to scream. In all, a somewhat
flawed book, but too good for two stars.
The Uncanny X-Men
Chris Claremont and John Byrne
[***+]
Marvel Comics Group
Reviewed by
Alan Wexelblat
Copright 1987 by Alan Wexelblat
I can hear it now: a chorus of groans. "A comic book?" "That's kiddie
stuff." Well, if you'll bear with me a minute, I'll explain myself. If
you have any interest in the illustrated/comic art form, I think it'll
be worth your while.
It's true that the majority of American comic books aren't worth the
paper they're printed on. In animation and sophistication, American
products almost invariably trail their Japanese counterparts. U.S.
products are usually aimed at a younger audience and most submit to the
censorship of the comics code. Sometimes a story rises above the
muck. Sometimes idea men like Claremont and Byrne team up with good
artists and put together a nice graphic novel.
This book, the story of Dark Phoenix, is such a novel. It is a
reprinting of the nine issues of the X-Men comic book series that made
up that story. Phoenix is the name given to an alien being. An
extremely powerful creature, it normally exists as disembodied energy.
However, the mutant Jean Grey has managed to tap into this energy, and
the Phoenix manifests itself through her. The Phoenix has no concept
of human morality; it has only hungers and desires. The story centers
around Jean's struggle to control those hungers and to use the power of
the Phoenix for good ends.
I liked the story, although the ending was not as good as it could have
been. (As noted in the introduction to the book, that ending was and
is one of the most hotly debated happenings in the Marvel comics world.)
The characters of the X-Men are well-drawn. Jean is a strong female lead;
her character is equal to or better than the males around her. One of
Claremont's triumphs is his ability to write good female characters.
The universe of the X-Men is populated with things we normally
associate with SF and with fantasy: FTL travel, mutants with strange
powers, space warps, psionics and magic. One of the best things about
this novel is that these elements do not tell the story. Rather, they
serve as the canvas on which the stories of the people involved are told.
This is not, however, deep or sophisticated writing. In the condensed,
action-oriented world of comics, some things are outright explained
that would have only been hinted at in a textual novel. On the whole,
I recommend it as a good afternoon (or airplane ride) read.
The Berserker Throne
Fred Saberhagen
[***]
Tor Books, $3.50
Reviewed by Jim Day
Copyright 1987 by Jim Day
Programmed to kill, that's what the berserkers are, deadly doomsday
machines created long ago as ultimate weapons in an interstellar war
between the Builders and the Red Race. Repairing and replicating
themselves, the berserkers search the galaxy to fulfill their goal of
total extermination of all life. This is the premise of Saberhagen's
popular Berserker series.
I've enjoyed all of the Berserker stories and found Berserker Throne to
be a well-written tale of action, suspense, human conflict and the
continuing struggle against the implacable berserkers. The book held
my interest from cover to cover, although the first half proceeds at a
rather leisurely pace compared to the second half.
Most of the action takes place in the Templar Fortress, a hollow sphere
of stone and metal surrounding a very small, starlike object. The
main character, Prince Harivarman, has been exiled to the fortress by
the Council of the Eight Thrones. Base Commander Anne Blenheim,
responsible for Harivarman's welfare during his exile, agrees with him
that the galaxy must unite to combat the berserkers but otherwise
remains neutral.
Chen Shizuoka, a shy university student from the planet Salutai, is a
minor character who serves to connect several important elements of the
plot. Unjustly accused of treason and regicide, he joins the Templars
to elude the Salutai secret police. Harivarman's political enemies
hope to use Shizouka, dead or alive, in their plot to dominate the
Eight Worlds.
The Templar Fortress is twelve kilometers in diameter, enclosing a
hollow sphere eight kilometers across, in the center of which is the
tiny Templar Radiant. One of nine known to exist, the radiant produces
an exponentially decreasing field of inverse gravity, providing the
inner surface of the fortress with earth-normal gravity. The
two-kilometer thick shell of the fortress contains about six hundred
cubic kilometers of stone and is honeycombed with a maze of chambers
and corridors.
The fortress is also the locale of an earlier Berserker story, "Some
Events at the Templar Radiant," which first appeared in the May-Aug
1979 issue of Destinies magazine and was reprinted a month later in The
Ultimate Enemy, an Ace paperback collection of Berserker stories. In
this earlier story, an inert but potentially functional berserker is
discovered in a remote area of the fortress by Georgicus Sabel, Doctor
of Cosmography. Sabel tries to extract scientific data from the
berserker's computer-like brain, with tragic consequences.
Like the unfortunate Dr. Sabel, Prince Harivarman discovers a damaged
berserker in a remote area and tries to probe its brain. While doing
so he discovers in the berserker's memory banks a code sequence that he
believes might allow him to control not only that particular berserker
but all berserkers, giving humanity a way of putting an end to the
berserker menace for all time. To reveal more of the plot would spoil
the story for prospective readers, so I'll just add that the ending
takes a dramatic and unexpected turn that some readers may find lacking
in plausibility.
Teckla
Steven Brust
[***+]
Ace Fantasy, $2.95, 214 pages
Reviewed by
Jim Johnston
Copyright 1987 by Jim Johnston
Teckla is the third in Brust's tales of Vlad Taltos, not-quite
small-time mobster, part-time assassin, and all-around good guy. Vlad
and his wife, Cawti, who killed him once, (just in the line of
business, mind you, nothing personal) were introduced to us in Jhereg,
the first and perhaps most original tale of Brust's Cycle series, which
was perhaps not intended to be a series.
In the second, Yendi, we are introduced to the younger Vlad and learn
something about how Vlad got to be a not-quite small-time mobster,
part-time assassin, and all-around good guy. In Teckla, we meed Vlad
and Cawti at some time after they're established in their mutual career.
Teckla, we're told, are lazy and stupid, only smart enough to realize
that they should be cowardly. Of course, the Teckla are also
revolting, which certainly represents at the very least a change in
their behavior.
Vlad, we're also told, is in very good shape, and is wondering what to
do with all of his money. He's debating if he should buy a small
castle somewhere, perhaps a better title than Baronet, or perhaps
expand his operations, and naturally he's not terribly interested in a
small, ill-fated revolt, even if he might sympathize.
Of course, life just isn't quite that simple. While I could spoil the
story, I'll let Brust explain it all because he's so good at it.
Teckla seems to represent somewhat of a change for this series. While
Jhereg and Yendi were both self-contained, and not necessarily part of
a series, Teckla has unanswered questions, some unclear motivation,
and, one suspects, at least one sequel forthcoming in order to clear
things up. I found this a bit annoying, as one of the enjoyable
things in all of Brust's other books was the neat trimming and
crocheting together of the loose ends. Teckla didn't do that, and I
docked it a quarter-star as a result.
Vlad grows a bit as a character here, seemingly at the expense of
Cawti, who has a lot to do, but whose motivation seems lacking. Of
course, I'm hoping to have that explained later.
For Brust, Teckla seems to be somewhat off his usual, although he's
given himself a lot to live up to. If I had to rate his books, I'd
put Teckla next to last, well above To Reign in Hell, and a bit below
Yendi. Of course, that's a pretty good recommendation, given that all
five of his books are in the top 5% of the fantasy books that I've
read, and Brokedown Palace threatens to take first place.
Would I recommend it? Yes. Without hesitation. While I've
complained quite a bit in the last few paragraphs, the book is
satisfying, well written, interesting, and hard to put down. It's fun
to read, fun to second-guess, and likely to contain a few surprises.
The Unconquered Country
Geoff Ryman
Allen & Unwin (UK)
Reviewed by
Donn Seeley
Copyright 1987 by Donn Seeley
Sometimes you hear things in the news that you know just couldn't have
happened. I felt that way when I first heard about the massacre of
Cambodia, when I saw the pictures of blood-stained torture chambers and
their manufactured products, the neatly stacked piles of human skulls,
decorating the museum at Tuol Sleng. Intellectually I know that human
beings are capable of boundless cruelty, but I still manage to be
surprised every time I see another example of it. To me it seems to
take place in another universe... When I find a story that drags me
into that other universe, it can prove to be a shockingly alien
experience. Geoff Ryman's The Unconquered Country took me on a tour
I'm not likely to forget.
The Unconquered Country is a little Buddhist nation which has never
before been occupied by foreigners. Third Child lives in the capital
city, a refugee from the perilous hinterland where the Neighbours are
conducting an extermination campaign against the villagers in preparation
for the final attack which will wipe out all resistance. Third supports
herself by selling her body, but not in the way you'd expect:
Third rented her womb for industrial use. She was cheaper than the
glass tanks. She grew parts of living machinery inside
her -- differentials for trucks, small household appliances. She gave
birth to advertisements, small caricature figures that sang songs.
There was no other work for her in the city.
Third's world has living houses, living trucks, living aircraft -- a
burgeoning life which is unprepared for the approaching massacre. A
culture which is built upon respect for life lies in critical danger
before the murderous forces of the Neighbours, the Big People and...
the Country's own army of resistance?
Fantasy isn't supposed to work this way...
I found Ryman's Country to be superbly strange. It's not quite the
same as any real country: not in culture (it's perhaps more like
Thailand than the real Cambodia, which has been conquered many times),
not in recent history (the Neighbours, an analogue for the Vietnamese,
are shown as invading before the massacre rather than after), and
certainly not in technology (houses with feet and elephantine trunks).
But Ryman manages to capture the gritty feel of the war and immerse the
reader in its alienness. The many fantastic elements of the story
combine to enhance the tale rather than to distract from it, and lead
to a quite moving conclusion.
In its original form as a novella in Interzone #7, this story won the
World Fantasy Award. The novel adds detail to the original story, but
I still rather like the novella because I think it has more punch, an
uncut dose of weirdness. I'm not unhappy with the novel form, which is
illustrated with some very nice drawings by Sacha Ackerman and has an
afterword by Ryman which relates how he came to write the story, but if
the novel sounds intriguing to you, you might want to track down the
novella and try it first.
Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach
Polly Freas dies
I'm very sad to have to announce the death of Polly Freas at 12:45AM,
January 24th of cancer. Polly was a long time East Coast fan and the
wife of artist Kelly Freas. A fund has been set up to help Kelly
offset medical costs. Your donations should be sent to Butch Allen,
C/O HAROSFA, P.O. Box 9434, Hampton, Va. 23670. According to
CompuServe, the news broke at Confusion, and an impromptu auction
raised over $2000.
Kelly has requested that donations be sent in her name to the
Children's Welfare Fund, Stabur Graphics Inc., 23301 Meadow Park,
Detroit, MI 48239 in lieu of flowers. This is an organization that she
helped found, and it is appropriate that we support it in her memory.
Cards and letters to Kelly should be sent to him in care of OtherRealms
and I'll make sure they get forwarded. There are other comments on
Polly in this months lettercol. My sympathy goes out to Kelly and all
of their friends. We've lost another of the wonderful people that
makes Fandom a wonderful place to be.
Publishing News
St. Martin's Press will be publishing a mass market paperback line to
supplement their hardcover offerings. Horror is edited by Lincoln
Child and Science Fiction is edited by Stuart Moore.
Baen Books is also starting a Fantasy paperback line. It will be
edited by Betsy Mitchell.
Murphy Strikes Again Dept.
A couple of issues ago, Locus converted to a laser printer, and Charles
Brown discussed some of the startup problems they had. So it was with
some glee that I put last month's issue (my first on the Laserwriter)
to bed ahead of schedule and with no pain whatsoever. I'd done a lot
of planning on it, and having worked with the technology for a while,
felt I had all the angles covered. When nobody was looking, I even
chortled a little bit for outsmarting my arch-nemesis, Lord Murphy.
Well, just to make sure everyone knows that the proud will do
themselves in, it wasn't until the last issue of OtherRealms was
printed, stuffed and stamped that I found out that the database with my
subscription lists in it wouldn't print mailing labels on a Laserwriter.
A couple of days of frantic scrabbling and patching and I finally got a
set of usable mailing labels. This little episode shows a couple of
things: that when you know nothing can go wrong somewhere, it will go
wrong somewhere else, and even someone who knows technology can get
tripped up by assuming the obvious. When a computer salesman tells you
that what he is selling you is a complete solution, you better make
sure that your definitions match. Murphy will out.
By the way, since last issue I've got new and wonderful software that
does mailing labels just fine, as well as a few things the old program
couldn't do. The new functionality is useful enough that I'm finally
getting around to indexing OtherRealms reviews, a compilation of which
will be out as soon as I'm done.
The New Address
Astute readers will notice a new address in the masthead. OtherRealms
has moved, so please make sure your mailing lists, publicity
departments, address books and whatever else might be interested in the
new address get the information. If I get mail from you, you'll
probably get a private note as a reminder as well, just to make sure
everything gets where it belongs.
Actually, OtherRealms hasn't moved, but since we're planning on finding
bigger quarters in the next few months, I finally got around to renting
a drop box. Both U.S. Mail and UPS are acceptable, and with any luck,
this will mean the suicide notes from my postman will stop.
Grade Inflation?
A couple of people have written in complaining of grade inflation,
suggesting that in the last couple of issues the reviews grades have
been trending upward. Well, thanks to my new database and the
OtherRealms review index (see next item) I've been able to crunch some
numbers and see what's been happening.
The numbers are really aren't changing. The average for all reviews in
a given issue has been solidly around 3.2 or 3.3 since issue five. The
low point was a 3.1 in issue 5, and the hight point was issue 9 with a
3.5. The last three issues were 3.2, 3.3, and 3.3 respectively. So
there isn't any real grade inflation in the magazine, the averages are
staying pretty steady.
That's the good news. The bad news is that looking back over the last
couple of Words of Wizdom columns, there has been a tendency for me to
get into "best book of the year this month" mode. Part of this is on
purpose -- I firmly believe that the good books should be featured, so
I select my reviews to emphasize the positive works I've read. Average
or lesser works, in general, go into the Pico Review section. At the
same time, though, I've seen situations where a given book might
deserve the rating I've given it, but in comparison with other books,
things get out of skew. I'm going to work on consistency in the next
few issues, to make sure this doesn't get completely out of hand.
OtherRealms Review Index
Thanks to the wonders of computers, I've compiled an index to all of
the reviews in OtherRealms. Over the previous 12 issues, there have
been 433 reviews. Issue one had 13, issue 12 had 71; I feel like we
covered a lot of territory in the last year.
I'm still working out the report parts of the database, so the index
isn't quite ready to distribute. What I'll probably do is key in this
issue, and then make it available next month.
Having all those numbers in the database gives you a good chance to
play around and see what happens. According to the database, the most
popular publishers (based on number of works reviewed in OtherRealms, a
definitely biased sample) are Ace (46), Tor (42), Del Rey (37) and
Bantam (30). Not surprising, since they are the largest paperback
houses and have the widest distribution. What was more surprising,
though, was that two hardcover houses (Doubleday at 19 and Arbor House
at 16) had more reviews than major paperback houses such as Daw (18),
Questar (6), and Signet(12). OtherRealms readers seem to read more
hardback books than I'd expected. The number of different publishers
reviewed were 73, which means the readership of OtherRealms gets around.
Another thing I took a quick look at was the popularity of a given
author. If you base popularity on the number of works reviewed, the
Frederik Pohl, with 12, was the most read author. Orson Scott Card was
runner up with 10, and Larry Niven and R.A. MacAvoy both had 9.
If you look at the average rating, you get different names. If you
throw out people with three or fewer reviews in the last 12 issues (to
make sure a single 5 star review doesn't skew things too far), the
favorite authors is Steven Brust, with a 4.4 rating. Runners up
include: Raymond Feist (4.2), William Gibson (3.9), Orson Scott Card
(3.75), David Brin (3.75), Ben Bova (3.4), and Anne Rice (3.8).
What does all this mean? Damned if I know. Statistics are wonderful
for proving whatever it is you want to prove, but beyond that the
utility of things like this are left up to the reader. Regardless, the
index should be out by next issue.
OtherRealms Recommends
The other night, a friend that I haven't seen for a couple of months
asked me the fatal question "So what do you recommend reading?"
Twenty minutes of rooting through the bookshelves later, I had a stack
of books that will keep him busy for most of 1987, and a chance to give
a second mention to some works I feel define the good side of Science
Fiction in 1986. So, in no particular order, OtherRealms recommends:
Death is a Lonely Business by Ray Bradbury; The Falling Woman by Pat
Murphy; A Malady of Magicks and A Multitude of Monsters by Craig Shaw
Gardner; Sword-Dancer by Jennifer Roberson; Mythago Wood by Robert
Holdstock; The Sorceror's Lady by Paula Volsky (which seems to be her
second novel, not a first novel as Locus claimed); Teckla by Steven
Brust; Bridge of Birds by Barry Hugart; A Baroque Fable by Chelsea
Quinn Yarbro; Wild Cards edited by George R.R. Martin; Tailchaser's
Song by Tad Williams; Silence in Solitude by Melissa Scott;
Windmaster's Bane by Tom Deitz; Artificial Things by Karen Joy Fowler;
and Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe.
Which means I don't have to write a 1986: the year in review column.
Thank Ghod...
And Now a Word From Our Sponsor
This month has been an interesting month, working out glitches in the
layout and the software, playing with the new database, keying in the
index data (ouch, my poor fingers...) and trying to catch up on all of
the administration of publishing a magazine. The one thing this didn't
leave a lot of time for was reading, which is why Wizdom is very short
this month -- most of the books I read simply didn't deserve more than
a Pico, so I'm filling space here rather than pushing books that I
don't feel should get that much push. Besides, after reading the new
Bradbury, everything else is anti-climactic.
There are a few formatting changes since last issue. The typeface for
the headlines has changed because the original face, while quite
pretty, simply disappeared into the page. Also, I've put a little
more white space between lines (from 9/10 to 9/11 points for you
publishing types) because the text looked cramped. Thanks to everyone
who sent me mail discussing the new layout and making suggestions--your
feedback is making a good start even better.
Finally, if you sent me an article or review prior to January first,
and it hasn't been published yet, it won't be. As far as I know, all
my old inventory is gone, so if I haven't printed it or contacted you,
either the December disk crash (see last issue) ate it, or some other
random factor has come into play. If something is missing, please let
me know.
See you next month...
Electronic OtherRealms #13
March, 1987
Copyright 1987
by Chuq Von Rospach.
All Rights Reserved.
OtherRealms may be reproduced only for non-commercial purposes. With
the exception of excerpts used for promotional purposes, no part of
OtherRealms may be re-published without permission.
