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OtherRealms Issue 17 Part 01
Electronic OtherRealms #17
July, 1987
Part 1
Table of Contents
Part 1
Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach
Why Times are Hard for Hard Science Fiction
James Brunet
The Shattered World/Players at the Game of People
Rich Jervis
Part 2
Much Rejoicing
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Part 3
Bimbos of the Death Sun
Danny Low
The Biofab War
Danny Low
Dark Seeker
K.W. Jeter
Star of Gypsies
Jim Johnston
Pico Reviews
Part 4
Stuff Received
Letters to OtherRealms
Part 5
Words of Wizdom
Chuq Von Rospach
Alice Sheldon, An Appreciation
Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach
They're at it again. When last we left the Moral Majority (which is
neither, in my eyes) at the Scopes II trial, a few fundamentalist
Christians were trying to tell the world, with a straight face, that
The Wizard of Oz was unChristian and therefore unacceptable in their
schools. After all, it has witches and things in it.
The latest censorship case I'm aware of happened in Bay County,
Florida. Among the books that have been banned from classroom use at
the High School and Junior High levels are: Dante's Inferno (going to
Heck just isn't the same, somehow), Hamlet, King Lear, Animal Farm,
Great Expectations, Watership Down (fuzzy bunny rabbits?), The Call of
the Wild (no bathrooms in the great outdoors, I guess), and my personal
favorite, Fahrenheit 451. After all, you don't want folks reading
about what you're doing to them.
Reports show that letters to the local newspaper are running 100-1
against the ban, that when the local library put the banned books on
display, there was a steady stream of folks checking them out to read
them, and that a bunch of people are putting together a class action
suit against the action.
The latest report is that the School Board overruled the Superintendent
and removed the ban. A class action suit by the teachers and students
is continuing, however. The board stated that this was done not only
without the backing of the board, but after the board attorney told him
it was legally unsupportable. He did it anyway, because he felt that
the word "goddam" was inappropriate to teach children, according to the
board public affairs person.
I've personally never heard of a curriculum that teaches cussing to
students, but somehow they seem to learn them anyway.
It sounds to me like this man shouldn't be in education -- he should be
a minister if he wants to deal with peoples morals. The end result of
all of this is that many people are upset, the school system is saddled
with a potentially expensive legal suit, and many people have gone out
and read the books he was trying to keep them from reading -- which, I
guess, is a positive outcome in some ways, since most wouldn't have if
he hadn't decided he knew better.
Now, I'll be the first to agree that some material isn't appropriate
reading in the classroom, but many of the items being banned these days
are being banned not because they're too mature for many children, but
for religious or philosophical reasons -- not because they are
inappropriate for a person to read, but because the ideas they have
disagree with what you want folks to think.
What I find very depressing is that in almost every case, the people
involved in the ban have never read most of the works in question.
They know it is inappropriate -- don't bother them with facts. These
folks are trying to force the schools to do what parents should be
doing -- building the moral basis for a child. When I was in school
(not that long ago, I like to think) if someone felt a book was
inappropriate, the student was given a pass to the library and an
alternate assignment. There is no reason (or excuse) to try to ban a
book from the entire curriculum -- if you don't like it, don't read it,
but don't force your beliefs on others.
So, do yourself a favor, and read a banned book today. And if someone
tries to pull this in your area, get involved and get it stopped. If
you know of new censorship actions, pass them by me, and I'll get the
word out. If you're interested in getting involved in the censorship
controversy, you should contact People for the American Way at 1424
Sixteenth Street NW, Suite 601, Washington D.C. 20036. We have nothing
to lose but knowledge, and nothing to win but what the Constitution
gave us in the first place.
Judy-Lynn Del Rey
The loss of another of the important editors of the field, Terry Carr,
has started me thinking of Judy-Lynn again. It looks to me like she's
being forgotten already, which is inexcusable, so I'm going to
resurrect my call for a Judy-Lynn Del Rey memorial award. See my
thoughts in the letter column this issue for my latest view. I really
believe that we can't let this person fall from view -- without her,
Science Fiction would not be an accepted part of the publishing world,
and would not be the quality field it is. So, I'm willing to do
whatever needs to be done to get this award off the ground --Jincluding
sponsor it, although I'd rather see a major convention take control,
since that would lend it more legitimacy than I could. Anyone
interested in working with me in founding this award, drop me a line.
Hugo Nominees
I'm sure that many people are going to find things to scream about with
this years Hugo Award nominees. At the top of the list has to be Black
Genesis by L. Ron Hubbard and the accusations of block voting.
While I will agree with most folks that Black Genesis doesn't match up
with a Count Zero or a Speaker for the Dead, I'm going to have to take
the (probably unpopular) position that it is just as legitimate an
entry as any other. This nomination points out quite clearly what I've
felt for a long time -- that the Hugo is primarily a marketing and
publicity award, not an award for quality. Marketing and publicity are
two things Bridge, the publisher of Black Genesis, is quite good at.
Many of the same people I've heard screaming about the nomination are
people who don't bother to nominate or vote for the award. These folks
got exactly what they deserved. If you don't like the way the
nominations went, and you didn't nominate something, you have only
yourself to blame.
My personal gripe with the nominations this year is that the committee,
for lack of a better place to put it, shoved The Dark Knight into the
non- fiction category as an art book. This makes no sense, but it is
as logical as any other place on the ballot, since the Hugo currently
doesn't handle graphic material well at all. The Dark Knight is, in my
eyes, one of the most important publications of the year, and well
deserves its rightful place on the ballot, wherever that it. It also
has single-handedly legitimized the graphic novel as an art form, so I
expect to see more of these problems until the Hugo is tweaked to
handle it. The only positive thing about it being placed in the
non-fiction category is that it will likely win the award, if it had
been placed in the novel category (the other place I think it could
have been squeezed into) it would have lost handily to both Speaker for
the Dead and Count Zero. So maybe this is for the best, if we learn
from it.
Next Issue
Next issue will be out the end of August, in time for Worldcon. It will
include an article on Historical Realism by Harry (An Emperor for the
Legion) Turtledove, an interview of author Mike (Stalking the
Nightmare) Resnick, an Alexis Gilliland cover, and lots of the normal
stuff. I'm also planning a new, improved format for the Pico Review
section, and with any luck the long awaited review index will finally
surface. Submissions need to be in by July 15, Letters by August 1.
See you in Brighton!
Corrections
There was a glitch in the electronic version of Books Received that
made John Crowley's book AEgypt come out as gypt in issue #14. In issue
#16, I claimed that The Stars My Destination won the 1956 Hugo. Not
true; Heinlein won the 1956 Hugo for Double Star. Alfred Bester won his
Hugo for The Demolished Man in 1953 -- serves me right for not paying
closer attention to somewhat misleading cover copy...
Why Times are Hard for Hard Science Fiction
James Brunet
ism780b!jimb
Copyright 1987 by James Brunet
(A version of this article was originally published in Pyrotechnics)
Like many SF readers, I grew up with an affinity for hard Science
Fiction; it was the natural bent of any young science-oriented student
in those days before Tolkien became a household word and shelf after
shelf of Fantasy innundated your local bookstore. Today, I find very
little hard SF that is really good, Sturgeon's Law not withstanding.
The demand for hard SF is strong; yet editors and publishers complain
that not enough saleable hard SF is being presented to them. And as the
quantity of hard SF has fallen, so has the quality. The Bears, Brins,
Benfords, Nivens and Vinges are rare. Why, then, the hard times for hard SF?
I suggest three reasons for the dwindling of hard SF: the expansion of
the frontiers of science, the literary coming of age of SF, and
ultimately, the excess demands placed upon hard SF by its admirers.
**The expanding frontier of science.** Twenty years ago, Scientific
American was for the most part accessible to the knowledgeable lay
reader; today, most articles are written by specialists for
specialists. In a nutshell, this is symptomatic of all science in the
past quarter-century.
In 1960, it was possible for the educated layman to have a moderately
decent comprehension of what was happening at the boundaries of physics,
astronomy, and bio-chemistry. In the interval since, fields of knowledge
have converged, merged, and diverged again to form an array of specialties
such that it is all but impossible for, say a physicist, to be aware of
the the facts, nuances, and implications of more than two or three
specialties other than his own, if she bothers to keep up at all.
What are the implications for the would-be writer of hard SF? It is
simply impossible to keep up with the new theories of constructs of all
science. One can read Science News, Discover (alas, Science 8x being
now defunct), and one or two professional journals -- assuming that one
has the requisite background -- and still not have more than a
superficial understanding of the current view in most scientific
disciplines. Assume that additional research will be done on the most
salient scientific disciplines of a given story, and there will still
be large gaps where the writer will be left to rely on out-dated
popular views or dated memories of high school or college lectures.
Hence, it is not at all surprising if we read a story where a writer
has gotten the astrophysics and artificial intelligence aspects correct
only to bungle the biology or the psycho-chemistry. The writer has ways
around this, of course, such as reducing the scope of the story or
finessing some questions by stating a technological result with no
indication of how it was achieved -- hyperspace travel being a typical
example of the latter. And yet there are times that the finessing and
hand-waving simply will not do, where the story will wither without a
fuller explanation. In such cases, we read out-dated science or science
with holes and improbabilities.
Some might say, "Well, do more research." For the novel, this is
sometimes a possibility. Greg Bear is one of the best hard SF writers
today. As a non-scientist, Greg compensates by doing a copious amount
of research; it doesn't hurt that he is also generously endowed with
intellectual faculties. Yet Greg has an advantage that most SF writers
don't have the luxury of having: his writing career is a full-time
pursuit. The great, great majority of SF writers find it necessary to
hold part-time or full-time jobs to buy groceries, keep a roof over
their head, contribute to the support of a family, etc. In this situation,
research time is a direct trade-off with writing time. What profit
gaineth the writer if he learns his subjects but hath not the time to
produce? After all, the business of a writer is writing, and for most
there must be some hope of reasonable economic return for time invested.
If intense research is a difficult proposition for the writer of the SF
novel, it is all but impossible for the short story writers. Ugly
economic reality again comes into play. To keep the lupine beastie from
the portal, short story writers must, in general, turn out their
stories quickly. The established pro who writes shorter work needs to
produce quickly to justify the income; the aspiring amateur must turn
stories out quickly to gain experience and to maximize the possibility
of sales. Extensive research is a luxury and time is the excise tax
that most short story writers simply can't afford to pay. And because
most beginning writers begin with short stories, an entire generation
of SF writers is learning its craft without the regular exposure to
intense research. These writers face hard choices when they graduate to
novel-length work: acquire the inclination to do the research hard SF,
or foreswear hard SF for less demanding endeavors.
**SF comes of age.** To some extent, all science fiction is a victim of its
own success. Its popularity has meant ever wider audiences, to the
point where SF regularly makes the best seller list. With the wider
audiences, and with its coming of age as a literary form, the literary
standards have risen. No longer is a great plot alone be sufficient to
garner praise, justify publication, and -- most important to an editor
or publisher -- make money; SF must have the same standards of
depth-of-character and deftness of execution as other literary forms.
What does this mean for hard SF? The scientifically and technically
inclined still constitute a small minority in our society. Those who
have the literary skills to be good writers, possessing the balance of
intellection and intuition, a command of language, and a sensitivity to
human character, constitute an even smaller minority. The intersection
set of these two groups is smaller still. Raise the literary standards
and the set of good writers diminishes even further, making the
intersection set even smaller. This is what has happened to hard SF.
Just as expanding frontiers of science have made it more difficult for
the writer to stay scientifically cognizant, rising literary standards
have short-circuited a number of writing careers.
This is not to say that only superior work is being published. There is
still a lot of "crud" on the market; as it is, so it ever was. But it
does mean that writers who have the hard science handled correctly do
not necessarily receive the great recognition, sales, and popularity
that they might have in an earlier time. Robert Forward and James Hogan
come to mind in this regard. Hogan in particular I desperately want to
like. I like his ideas, but his writing has left a lot to be desired.
(I haven't read his latest and I'm told that the writing has improved
dramatically, so here's hoping.)
Faced with the lukewarm popularity of scientifically correct but
literarily weak work, publishers are going to be cautious in publishing
same, feeding enough to supply the core demand and no more. The
public's tolerance for "weak" Fantasy seems much higher, perhaps
because it's more broadly accessible. Hence, the shelf after shelf of
Tolkien magic- sword-and-quest knock-offs.
**Excess demands upon hard SF by its readers.** If part of the hard
times for hard sf rests with the writer, part with economic realities,
and part with changing literary standards, then a final part of the
responsibility rests squarely with readers of hard SF who expect to
much of their genre. Hard Science Fiction is, first and foremost,
fiction. Fiction is an artform, and as such is much more closely akin
to painting than, say, photography. The purpose of fiction is not to
capture precisely "what is" or "what might be," but to suggest an
external reality and through that, develop a psychic landscape in the
mind of the reader that includes not only the physical elements of the
story, but emotional, moral, and tonal elements. Using the metaphor of
impressionistic painting, what matters is not the precise rendering of
line and color, but whether or not that aggregate impression conveys
not only a reality, but Truth. A cleverly rendered implausibility will
be much more satisfying than a clumsily handled certainty, even if the
latter is presented accurately to within five decimal places.
Some readers complain about inaccuracies encountered in SF stories.
The question that should always be asked is, "Does it matter?" Roger
Zelazny wrote "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" in 1965,
knowing that the space probe data was going to render his view of Venus
obsolete. He wrote the story quickly, wanting to get one good story set
on Venus before his view became untenable. The story was an
award-winner; was it suddenly transformed from a good story to a bad
one when fact and theory changed? No; the story is as fine a read today
as it was when it was written.
Readers should remind themselves that SF is fiction. Even David Brin
and Greg Benford -- two of the best among contemporary hard SF writers
- - have scientific "mistakes" in their work. Brin, for instance, has
acknowldged that he overstated the current intelligence of dolphins as
imputed in Startide Rising. Does this weaken a wonderful tour de force
of a novel? No. The more ambitious and broadly based a story, the more
difficult -- both technically and artistically -- it is to have
everything technically correct.
Ultimately, fictional reality is not the same as reality. Better anyday
to read a well conceived, plausible sounding tale involving
realistically complex human beings than any of the flock of sf stories
featuring cardboard characters where Noble Engineer (or Scientist, or
Brilliant Layman) devises solution to every problem from alien invasion
to the heartbreak of psoriasis.
If a reader must have 100% accurate science instead of general accuracy
to two significant figures, he is better advised to read a textbook.
Better, considering how textbooks become obsolete by the time they
appear in print, read the scientific journals instead, taking care to
spot the errors appearing there.
Specialists will always nitpick. There is an anecdote about two
scientists, an astronomer and an anthropologist, discussing
Velikovskian theories. The astronomer says, "Well, his astronomy is
crackpot but the anthropology is damned interesting." The
anthropologist looks blank for a moment and says, "No, it's the other
way around." Chances are, that if a nit picker is pleased with an SF
work, either the holes are outside his area of knowledge or the work
has a very limited scope. Science Fiction is fiction, not science, and
it will remain that way.
**Prognosis.** Despite the fact that hard SF is under siege, I have a
sense of optimism about its future. Traditional hard SF survived the
New Wave, becoming stronger and more resilient as a result from the
encounter. Now, the Cyberpunk Wave is simultaneously challenging
traditional hard SF while infusing a new vitality into the field.
Thesis-antithesis-synthesis; I feel that hard SF will endure the
problems that I've outlined. It may take longer for writers to become
competent in the hard SF field, but the impulse will remain and the
rewards, both economic and artistic, will guarantee that good hard SF
will continue to be written, if not in the quantity that we might
like.
The Shattered World
Michael Reeves
Baen Books
Players at the Game of People
John Brunner
Del Rey
Reviewed by
Rich Jervis
c78kck@irishmvs.bitnet
Copyright 1987 by Rich Jervis
A bit of a hit and a miss, if you will, I'm reviewing something old and
something... well, not so old. The something not so old is Michael
Reaves' The Shattered World and the old is John Brunner's Players at
the Game of People.
The first is a Fantasy where some very serious events are taking place,
and the second is a real world story that deals with people's Fantasy.
I'm happy with both books for the most part, but Brunner's novel lacks
something that Reaves' has.
The Shattered World is set in an alternate-earth future where the earth
is shattered into fragments by a necromancer. Each fragment is held in
orbit around all the others by the combined magic of all the other
living practitioners of the time. Now, however, things are falling
apart; fragments are starting to collide and the runestones which hold
them in orbit and provide independent gravity are disappearing.
The book focuses on Beorn, a thief who has been hired to steal the
runestone from Darkhaven fragment, virtually from under the nose of a
Sorcerer Supreme. Beorn isn't just a simple thief, there's more to him
than meets the eye, and I would bet that Tolkien fans out there have
already guessed 70% of the truth. There's a lot going on in this book.
In a rare moment of reflection Beorn muses:
No doubt about it, he told himself; if he managed to live through this
adventure, he would be assured of free drinks for the telling as long
as he lived. Already he had robbed a magician, fought a brace of
monsters, survived the Abyss, dodged a falling fragment, leapt from
land to land like a man crossing a stream by stepstones, and now,
unless his wits served him, it seemed he might pay a call on the
Demogorgon himself. Truly his life was anything but dull.
Beorn isn't the only embraceable character in the story, all the
principles are clearly motivated and anticipated confrontations are
well worth the the wait. Now I turn to the near miss. Perhaps it's not
fair of me to place Fantasy and Science Fiction back to back, but they
aren't entirely the strange bedfellows they might seem. As an avid
reader of authors like Ray Bradbury and M. John Harrison, I can safely
say that they not only mix, but blend into an amazing cinnabar-like
alloy. So that is my justification. Players at the Game of People
grabbed my attention early, had me guessing about the whole picture and
I anticipated a strong confrontation when the climax came. I was let
down. The confrontation came but was skipped around. I can only allude
to what happens, to say more would render the book unworthy of reading.
Perhaps I can say that whatever you think a character by the name of
Godwin Harpinshield would be like isn't even close to the reality.
The other characters, while from as vast a background as those in The
Shattered World, didn't seem to matter to me as much. I have to admit
that perhaps only Heinlein could have brought together a more bizarre
collection of characters and made them work in real time. The
difference is in the final summation, both books had intriguing
premises, both have conflicts in which the characters are faced with
self doubt and the repercussions of their actions. But when the last
page of The Shattered World was turned I was left wanting to know what
would happen next, in Players at the Game of People, it was simply
wondering what happened?
OtherRealms #17
July, 1987
Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach.
All Rights Reserved.
One time rights have been acquired from the contributors.
All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors.
OtherRealms may be reproduced in its entirety only for
non-commercial purposes. No article may be reprinted without
the express permission of the author.
