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OtherRealms Issue 10 Part 01
OtherRealms
A Reviewzine for the Non-Fan
Where FIJAGH Becomes a Way of Life
Issue #10
November, 1986
Part 1
Why Judge a Book by its Cover? The Art of Paperbacks
Jim Vadeboncoer, Jr.
ABORIGINAL SF MAGAZINE #1
Fred Bals
What I Did on My Summer Vacation - or - WorldCon 1986
Jeff Copeland
IT
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Dimensions of Science Fiction
R. E. Webber
Part 2
Pico Reviews
Books Received
OtherRealms Notes
Words of Wizdom
Reviews by Chuq Von Rospach
Part 3
The Ozzie and Harriet
Fiction by Fred Bals
Why Judge a Book by its Cover?
The Art of Paperbacks
Jim Vadeboncoer, Jr.
Copyright 1986 by Jim Vadeboncoer, Jr.
I collect the work of artists who display their art on the covers of
paperback books. It's not a very glamorous gallery. Few bookstores
display all of their paperbacks cover out; fewer still organize their
books by cover artist. Many fine paintings end up facing their own
back cover or get lost in a sea of color; looking, from a distance, no
different than the next one. It is into this haphazard display that a
new artist sends his work, and from which the collector must seek it out.
Why should anyone spend time (or money) finding books with 'pretty'
covers? That's easy. I like pretty pictures (or good art, to be more
sophisticated) and paperback covers are one source of supply. I also
like illustrated books, illustrated paperbacks, comic books, calendars,
portfolios, magazines -- anything that has pretty pictures. I like
them and I collect them. Paperbacks are just another medium as far as
the artists are concerned, so why should I make distinctions where they
do not?
[Ok, time out here! I do read! I read a lot. Mostly I read books. I
prefer good writing to good stories, will settle for either in a pinch,
but generally keep searching for the combination of both. It's often a
long, empty task. It's a lot easier to find good art.]
As in any hobby or collecting effort, there is a great deal of personal
taste involved in deciding what to collect. I won't apologize for mine
if you don't apologize for yours. I like what I collect and generally
collect what I like. If our tastes differ, I hope we can still discuss
the concept without the specifics getting in the way. Should I neglect
to mention one of your favorites, please refer back to this paragraph.
Many fine fantasy artists today are graduates of the paperback cover
school. Frank Frazetta, Jeff Jones and George Barr come to mind as
having done numerous covers in the past but who now seem to have left
the field to the horde of new talent that proliferates the SF and
Fantasy racks of the book stores.
Jim Gurney is such a newcomer (30 covers in three years), and one to
watch. He's recently done covers for the latest reprints of the Jane
Gaskell ATLAN series (following in the footsteps of both Frazetta and
Jones), as well as such dramatic covers as ZANZIBAR CAT (Russ) and
PHAID THE GAMBLER (Farren). You can also find his work in the National
Geographic Magazine where he illustrates articles such as the recent
re-creation of the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts.
Some of the other new talent I've been following include Richard Berry
(GODMAKERS -- Herbert), Richard Bober (MUSTAPHA AND HIS WISE DOG,
SPELLS OF MORTAL WEAVIN -- Freisner), Thomas Canty (COPPER CROWN,
Kennealy), Paul Chadwick (FORWARD - Dickson), Alan Gutierrez
(SATURNALIA -- Callin), Phil Hale (BORDERLAND -- Windling), Alan Lee
(BROKEDOWN PALACE -- Brust), John Pound (The WITCHWORLD Series --
Norton) and Gary Ruddell (THIEVES' WORLD reissues -- Asprin). None of
them was painting covers in the Seventies, and several have only
appeared this year. It's an exciting time for cover watchers.
Actually, it's always been fun for the cover collector. At some point
the first Kelly Freas cover hit the stands (circa 1955). At that time
you could also find cover art by Everett Raymond Kinstler and Norman
Saunders, Rudolf Belarski and Earle Bergey, not to mention the numerous
cover artists for the pulps that were also competing with the
paperbacks of the day. Virgil Finlay, Ed Emsh and Valigursky, Freas
(here, too) and numerous others were available to the cover collector
of the Fifties.
In the Sixties it was another apparent Golden Age. Frazetta did his
best work in this decade. Jeff Jones, Roy G. Krenkel, Virgil Finlay,
Robert Foster, Leo and Diane Dillon, Kelly Freas (still), James Bama,
Gray Morrow, Ed Emsh (again), and dozens of others were plying their
trade for the collectors of that decade.
The early Seventies saw the beginning of the European invasion that had
begun in Jim Warren's CREEPY and EERIE comic magazines. Two of
Warren's top cover artists, both from Spain, found their way to Dell
books and began careers that are still going strong today. San Julian
and Enric (or Enrich) were the first in a wave that was to contain
Jordi Penalva, Segrelles, and Maroto. San Julian did several of the
trade paperback CONAN covers (Ace -- Howard) while Enric is probably
best known for his DORSAI covers (Ace -- Dickson).
Also in the 1970 to 1975 period Jim Steranko and George Barr
proliferated. Frazetta and Jones were still going strong, as were
James Bama (DOC SAVAGE) and Kelly Freas (Laser Books).
The last decade has introduced most of the artists I've listed (and
dozens of others sacrificed to space). The quality of paperback cover
art is at a stage where even the lesser talents are doing good work.
There isn't much in the way of junk on the stands, although several
very slick stylists are covering up a lack of talent and imagination
with superficial rendering techniques. Still, the overall
professionalism of the genre has seldom been higher, nor has the
variety of styles being employed.
There are as many genres or stylistic 'schools' of cover art as there
are of art in general.
o There's realism -- most SF artists fall into this category -- where
people look like people. Whelan, Maitz, Corben, San Julian, Alexander,
Gutenberg, Freas, De Fate, Hildebrandt: all fall within this category
to some extent.
o A sub-category is hyper-realism where Boris and Rowena hold sway. I
do enjoy Boris, but more for his backgrounds and creatures than for his
self-portraits and flesh tones. It's there that he does his best
work. In the same school, Rowena leaves me cold.
o The romantic school often encompasses many aspects of the realists.
In fact, certain artists move easily between the genres, like Don
Maitz. The distinguishing aspect of the Romantic artist is the
stylization of the scene; the intent to capture mood more than precise
form and shape. Leo and Diane Dillon are the definitive romantics,
while the most stylized are Robert Gould and Thomas Canty, both of whom
draw heavily on the English Romanticists of the last century; most
obviously Sir Edward Burne Jones and Dante Gabriel Rosetti. Kinuko Y.
Craft is another multi-styled Romantic who tends towards the Oriental
for her inspiration.
o The surrealists of the cover artists are few. One would think that SF
covers would be the ideal outlet for covers ala Dali -- with
transdimensional space and time warping the images into unfamiliar
shapes. Somehow we don't seem to respond well to such scenes, although
a few artists have managed to make it palatable to us. I classify John
Berkey here. Some may argue that he belongs to the realist school. I
disagree. Another artist, who hasn't done much work lately, but whom I
have always thought an under-rated surrealist, is Robert Foster. He
did the covers for Pangborn's DAVY (Ballantine's 1964 edition) and
Moorcock's BEHOLD THE MAN (Avon, 1970).
o The heroic fantasy school have all studied under Frazetta and, while I
find it difficult to classify Frazetta himself, he does provide a
category for his followers. Ken Kelly heads the list and actually did
take lessons from the master. The early works of Jeff Jones, Boris,
and San Julian were all of this school, but all have graduated to more
personal styles.
o The catchall category of stylist is my cop-out. I don't really know
where to place such artists as Richard Courtney (Varley's TITAN series)
Gino D' Achille (the GOR series), Howard Chaykin (Saberhagen's SWORDS
trilogy), Steve Hickman (Stasheff's WARLOCK series), and dozens of
others I enjoy because of their distinctive and personal styles.
Generally, I tend towards realism and romanticism in the art I like and
collect. I classify Michael Whelan as tops in both as he manages to
blend the two into a coherent whole. Whelan's easy to collect as he's
done so much (over 120 covers) and many of the books for which he's
done covers are still in print. he's now, it appears, the official
Asimov cover artist for Del Rey, having just completed the covers for a
reissue of the FOUNDATION series. He's also the cover artist for the
H. Beam Piper reprints from Ace and the YEAR'S BEST HORROR series from
DAW. As his fame increased, he began to do hard cover dustjackets
which have eventually made their way to the paperback versions: Anne
McCaffrey's WHITE DRAGON in 1978 was the first of over 30 hardbacks for
which he's done dustjackets and occasional interior illustrations.
The other aspect of Whelan's art that really intrigues me is that he
obviously reads the stories before doing the painting, and seems (to
me, anyway) to do his best work on the best stories. I find that I can
generally decide whether or not I'm going to like a book with a Whelan
cover simply by looking at his cover 'synopsis.' For instance: I
found Heinlein's THE CAT WHO WALKS THROUGH WALLS to be a good yarn at
first, but one that dissipated into meaningless drivel towards the
end. If you own a copy of the book, look at Whelan's cover portrayal
of the characters and tell me if you can find the torso of Richard
Ames. He, like the story, fades away into nothingness. The painting
itself is quite fetching, but ends up quite unsatisfying. It's
incomplete -- just like the story. Whelan doesn't lie with his
covers. They are very accurate reflections of the books they cover.
Donald Maitz is another favorite, though he leans more towards the
romantic than the real. Maitz has been associated with several writers
including Anthony, Carter, Cowper, Fisher, Flint, Lee, Lustbader,
Taylor, and Gene Wolfe. Though his people and settings seem real
enough at first glance, the romance of his work continues to thrill me
even after several viewings. Take, for instance, the cover to THE
WORTHING CHRONICLE by Orson Scott Card (Ace, July 1983). The main
design involves a golden figure encased in an underwater device
obviously meant to keep him alive. We know it's underwater because
bubbles are rising toward an unseen surface. They rise past the
horizontal figure and pass in front of a circle of intelligent origin
that also points back towards the source of the bubbles: a space
helmet trailing a torn air hose. Once we're convince of the watery
nature of these surroundings, we notice that there is a fantastic
looking fish chasing a smaller fish towards the left edge of the
cover. Then we notice that the smaller fish is chasing a small school
of yet tinier fish. This prompts us back to the right of the drawing
to see the curved snout of yet an even bigger fish that is about to
catch the first one. And there we are drawn by the curves of this fish
to inevitable notice the bracket that supports the cast of the human is
actually the artist's signature. You can see that there is fantasy,
design and humor to work, even to working his signature into the design
of each painting. But the real laugh came the second time I looked at
this cover and realized that all of the fish, predators and prey, are
swimming into the maw of a gigantic fish at the very left edge of the
cover. We only see the smallest portion of both upper and lower jaws,
and they aren't immediately recognizable as such, but it's a subtle
punchline with which few artists would have bothered. Someday I'll find
another copy and read the story - simply because of the intrigue of
Maitz's cover.
All of the artists I've mentioned display individual talents that
intrigue me, some obviously more than others. Their styles appeal to
my love of the unusual and the beautiful. Some of the images these
artists have created will remain with me forever -- having struck a
chord deep within my subconscious. What more could one ask for in a
hobby? Well, the greatest bonus I've gotten is that I've bought and
read dozens of books I would never have, simply because I dared to
judge them by their covers.
ABORIGINAL SF MAGAZINE #1
Editor, Charles C. Ryan
$2.50/issue bimonthly
Reviewed by
Fred Bals
Copyright 1986 by Fred Bals
E-mail: bals%nutmeg.DEC@decwrl.DEC.COM
ABORIGINAL SF is a new, bimonthly sf prozine published out of Woburn,
Massachusetts in a newspaper-sized format. Issue #1 (October, 1986), 24
pages in length, contains articles, book and media reviews, and four
pieces of fiction. The magazine has a mix of color and black-and-white
illustrations, plus photography.
My first inclination after finishing ABORIGINAL SF (ASF) was to be
tougher on the magazine than it deserves. ASF is professionally done --
the copy, printing, lay-out and color reproductions show a commitment
to produce a carefully thought-out, well-done magazine. Yet, ASF's
editorial staff shoot themselves in their collective foot by the second
page. In a near-terminal act of cuteness, the editor, Charles C. Ryan,
proclaims that ASF is published by an alien who is studying Earth and
has developed a fondness for SF. Hence the magazine's name, as the
alien considers us all to be aborigines. Ryan goes on to earnestly
claim that the alien has tapped into various writers' word processors
and is sending the material to his/her/its home planet. Ryan,
naturally, has tapped the alien's transmissions in turn and is
publishing the results.
Linked with the editorial is a "Report From Our Alien Publisher," which
is as stupid as you'd expect it to be. And of course, boys and girls,
there's also a NAME THAT ALIEN contest that gives us the opportunity to
win a lifetime (ours or the magazines) subscription to ASF! My hope is
that Ryan will come to his senses within the next few issues of ASF and
discard the whole alien publisher idea. Otherwise, the contest winner
may very well outlive their subscription.
Although this silliness effectively sabotages ASF's intent to be taken
as a serious prozine, the magazine is still worth your time to locate
and read. The book review column by Darrell Schweitzer is excellent,
and Schweitzer's opening remarks on the role of the reviewer have
interesting parallels to Chuq Von Rospach's article in OtherRealms #9.
Schweitzer, in my opinion, has always been one of the best of the
independent reviewers, offering good, strong criticism on SF works. ASF
will also be useful to many readers (especially those without
speciality book stores in their area) with its offering of a mail order
service that will provide copies of books reviewed or advertised in
each issue of the magazine.
Equally as good as Schweitzer's piece is Jessie Horsting's media review
column, "The Reel Stuff." Horsting offers facts, rumors, and gossip
from the Hollywood scene as it pertains to SF. She writes well, and her
column makes interesting reading. An overlong article by Hal Clement
called "The Home System," unfortunately deals with the home system of
the ubiquitous alien publisher of ASF. Excusing that, it's a
well-written hard-science piece for those interested in seeing how
Clement creates the backdrops for his stories. And those readers who
like information about authors and artists should be pleased with
Laurel Lucas' "Aborigines" column, which details the doings of many of
the contributors, as well as other notable SF figures. With the
exception of Orson Scott Card's "Prior Restraint," the fiction in ASF
#1 is pedestrian. Card's story is an interesting tale that is both
about, and for, writers. Couched in the plot lies an actual paradox
that all writers must sooner or later confront in their careers. Lou
Fisher contributes a rote story about a man and his robot, "Fixing
Larx," and John Moore puts a SF twist on a standard revenge plot in
"Sight Unseen." John A. Taylor's "The Phoenix Riddle" pulls a MEDEA:
HARLAN'S WORLD by having its setting placed in the "alien publisher's"
home system. I found the story unreadable -- in all fairness, mostly
because I was already prejudiced against anything else that even dealt
slightly with the alien publisher. Editor Ryan promises more stories
set in the "Home System." I can only wonder whether he already has
planned an anthology.
ABORIGINAL SF promises stories by Frederick Pohl, Harlan Ellison,
Connie Willis, and Charles L. Grant in later issues. If you're able to
ignore Ryan's alien publisher conceit and are looking for a
well-crafted magazine that appears to be trying to bridge the fan and
prozine markets, I recommend ABORIGINAL SF to your attention. The
editor notes ASF will only be available in bookstores specializing in
science fiction or through subscription from:
ABORIGINAL SF
Dept. 101
PO Box 2449
Woburn, MA 01888-9989
Six issues for $12, 12 issues for $22, 18 issues for $30. You can
obtain a sample copy of #1 by writing to the same address and enclosing
a check for $2.50 plus .50 cents postage.
What I Did on My Summer Vacation
- or -
WorldCon 1986
Jeff Copeland
Copyright 1986 by Jeff Copeland
E-mail: decvax!mcnc!jeff
My real summer vacation was spent in Atlanta, Georgia, starting at 5am
on Sunday August 31st, and ended a little more than three days later.
But the trip there took nearly a year and was an entertainment all its own...
My wife, Liz Schwarzin, and I counted this year's Hugo ballots and
administered the voting for the 1988 and 1989 WorldCon sites. It was
an interesting challenge, caused me to read about three-quarters of a
million words of science fiction, made us persona non grata in some
circles, was more work than I want to undertake again real soon, and
overall was the most fun I've had with my clothes on since I first read
THE HITCHHIKERS' GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. The point here is to talk mostly
about what happens behind the scenes at a World Science Fiction
Convention, and a little about what I did there.
The work on a WorldCon starts in earnest about a year before the actual
convention. By then, the basic plans have been laid, the guests of
honor chosen, the hotel contracts signed. But once last year's
convention is over, all eyes are turned toward the one coming up. So
Labor Day last year is when we started thinking about the details of
the 1986 Hugos.
This year, the convention organization was divided into five
divisions: administration (finance, volunteers, registration and Hugo
balloting), operations (communications, purchasing), publications
(press relations, program book, progress reports), events (the Hugo
cermony and masquerade), and programming.
So what happens before the convention? The program gets planned.
Panelists are contacted ("Dear Dr Sagan, We would be delighted if you
could be on a panel at WorldCon on large numbers..."). Big events are
blocked out in time and space (for a 6000 person convention, the
masquerade has to be in a room that holds at least 4000; the panel on
sex-and-fandom will probably be large and should be in a room that will
hold 500 people). Progress reports -- the news of how the convention
planning is proceeding -- are prepared and mailed to the membership,
and always, people write in to get memberships. The film program is
planned ("Mutant Tomatoes from Mars is a Hugo nominee, so I suppose
we'd better show it; how 'bout Wednesday morning at 2:30am?")
In July, it all goes into high gear: Memberships by mail close because
lists have to be prepared for use at convention registration. The
program is finalized, more-or-less --- there will be a myriad of
changes at the convention because people didn't show up, for example.
Hugo balloting ends, so they can be counted and the plaques engraved
with the winners' names before the convention. The program book goes
to press, with biographies of the guests, lists of past WorldCons, the
governing documents for the World Science Fiction Society, and so on.
Labor Day weekend, though, it all hits the fan, if you'll pardon the
pun. People arrive from all over the world, and all that planning goes
into play. The program works (or doesn't), there are major events and
presentations, an art show, exhibits, and a lot of parties. With luck,
the convention ends Monday afternoon, and everyone goes home having
enjoyed themselves.
How did this translate to one real department?
The nominating ballot for the Hugos went out in February. By the time
nominating was over on April Fools' Day, 570 of them had been
returned. Then the nominees were verified before they could appear on
the final ballot --- were the fiction nominees all in the right
categories?, had the fanzines published an issue in the last year?, and
so on --- there is nearly a page of these details in the rules that
govern the Hugos. [An aside here, to show you what sort of decisions
have to be made: It was the decision of the Hugo subcommittee this year
that SF-Lovers isn't a fanzine, despite the nominations it received.
Even though some of the Hugo subcommittee reads it, we couldn't justify
to ourselves that it either had a central editor or was generally
available, both of those in our view being necessary to be on the ballot.]
Once we had a list of valid nominees, we called most of them up to make
sure they accepted. Then the final ballot was typeset, then it was
printed and sent out with the site selection ballots. The Hugo ballots
started arriving almost immediately, at the rate of 15 or so a day,
until the last week before the July 15th deadline. That week, we got
260. We tried to enter the ballots into the computer as they arrived.
Time to get the ballots into the computer? About 100 hours altogther.
Total elapsed time for our IBM PC to count them? Seven minutes. Then
off to the engraver to get the plaques made.
Once we were in Atlanta, it got even more hectic. While Liz handled
all the work of managing the site selections (a full-time job by
itself), I took care of the details with the events people, attached
plaques to Hugo trophies, and got press releases written. (If you've
never seen a Hugo trophy before, they are a chrome statue of a rocket,
on a base that varies from year to year. Ben Jason and Jack McKnight
machined the first Hugos in the early 50's based on -- if I've got the
story right -- a Buick hood ornament. This years' bases were white
Georgia marble, and look damned good, if I do say so myself. I'm sure
there will be pictures in the October issues of Locus and Science
Fiction Chronicle, if you're interested.)
After the Hugo ceremony Saturday night, we skipped the parties, and sat
down with 12 folks from the five bidders for the '88 and '89
conventions and started counting the ballots to see whose turn would be
next after Brighton in 1987. That took until about 4:30 Sunday
morning. Which is how my REAL vacation started at 5am. (It would have
been much later, or in a straight-jacket though, if it hadn't been for
a lot of good help. Charlie Martin (crm@duke) and Chris Kostanick
(mongor!chris), for example, deserve heaps of praise for trailing
around after Liz and me and helping keep track of details.)
So why go to all this obvious effort? I once made the observation that
the folks who run conventions are a lot like the folks who do amateur
theatrical productions: they put in a lot of work for no money, under
a lot of stress, mostly for the ego gratification of having done it and
the thrill of watching it happen from the other side of the stage. The
crucial difference is that on a convention, almost nobody does the same
thing two years in a row, and almost never knows what to do until
they're into it -- which is why it's even more of a miracle that
WorldCons work at all. This year didn't prove me wrong. I had a lot
of fun watching the convention from the wings, even though I got to see
a lot of the wings and little of the convention.
The moral of this long story, for those of you who attend conventions,
is that there's a lot going on behind the scenes and in rehearsal (to
keep the theater analogy) that you don't see. And some people do this
almost full time avocational job, in addition to their regular
"mundane" job, as their rather odd idea of what constitutes "fun". Do
I find this paradoxical? No, I don't. But then, this is written by a
man who drafted the program to tally the Hugo ballots with an antique
fountain pen.
IT
Stephen King
[****]
Reviewed by
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Copyright 1986 by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
E-Mail: djo@ptsfd.UUCP
This is gonna sound strange, friends and neighbors, but I swear, it all
happened JUST THIS WAY:
I took a ride to the local drive-in bookstore last Friday, and asked
for the novelization of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE II. "Not yet," they
told me, "but you might like this one," and handed me a big ol' book --
and people, I mean but BIG!!! How big was it? It was so big I
damn near got a hernia just writing the check to pay for it, that's
how big it was.
So I took this literary anatosaur back to my humble abode, and sat down
to sample the first few pages.
See, this little kid goes out to play with his toy boat. Only it goes
down a sewer drain, and when he looks down to see where it went there's
this clown down there, and the clown rips the kids arm off.
Then it started getting weird...
Next thing I knew, it was Sunday, my fingers were bleeding from turning
pages, my eyes were bloodshot from insufficient sleep, and I was STILL
500 pages from the end.
Heads, arms, and other assorted body parts roll (and some of 'em keep
on rolling long after any self-respecting dead, dismembered body part
would've stopped). There's knife-fu, belly-fu, tentacle-fu, claw-fu,
and too many other fu's to name 'em all. Even THINK-fu! Dan'l says,
check it out.
* * *
Sorry about that; King always affects me that way, a little. But now
that it's out of my system, let's take a look at IT.
To begin with, IT is easily the most complex novel King has given us
to date, written in the third person with six principal viewpoint
characters, numerous characters (including ITself) with brief passages
told from their viewpoints, long interludes told by one character in
the first person, and a passage in a journalistically neutral style.
Furthermore, it follows two separate actions, involving the same
characters but separated by 27 years, in a parallel structure so tight
that the transitions between the adult scenes and the childhood scenes
frequently take place in mid-sentence without feeling forced.
Laid out this way, it sounds a complete stylistic hodge-podge; and
that it does NOT come out a shambles when you read it is a good
indication of just how strong a writer King has become.
As a plain ol' story, this one's hard to beat. For four nights
running, it kept me turning pages, almost obsessively, until I fell
asleep from sheer exhaustion; I would get up in the morning, go to
work, and hurry home to find out WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.
King is at his very best when dealing with child protagonists. This
frequently leads to "clever" remarks about "arrested development," but
it is interesting to notice that the adult forms of the characters in
IT are his best-conceived (adult) characters to date, an honor
formerly held by John Smith of THE DEAD ZONE -- whom we also see as a
child, if only for one scene. Perhaps King needs to think through his
characters' childhoods in detail in order to make them "real" as adults?
There are weaknesses. I will mention only the biggest: the ending.
After the final defeat of the monster and the escape from ITs lair,
the characters are left with one major problem. To go into detail
would be a major spoiler, but suffice it to say that the solution
seems too easy, and too much of a deus-ex-machina for my tastes: this
is what cost the book its fifth star.
Recommended, highly, but with reservations -- primarily that you should
have a lot of free time, and NOT have a weak stomach.
Dimensions of Science Fiction
William Sims Bainbridge
Harvard University Press, 1986, Hardback,
278 pages
Reviewed by
R. E. Webber
Copyright 1986 by R. E. Webber
ihnp4!topaz!webber
The author investigates the science fiction subculture via a survey
completed by 595 participants at the Iguanacon World Science Fiction
Convention held in Phoenix, Arizona in 1978. One might well wonder why
it took 8 years for this information of congeal into a book. The
answer probably lies with the fact that although the author claims to
be closer to the truth because he crunched some numbers, the bulk of
the text is a rather classical history of science fiction done in the
scholarly mode (including 20 pages of bibliographic notes).
The survey consisted of a number of general questions about science
fiction and a section on rating authors. The participants ranked 140
science fiction and fantasy authors (including all Hugo and Nebula
winners) on a range from 0 to 6. The survey instructions requested
that unfamiliar authors be left unranked. 409 respondents managed to
rate more than fifty authors without ranking the two fake names
included in the survey. Of these, 276 managed to rate 75 or more
authors. In descending order, the highest ranking authors (in the
sense of having highest average ratings when ranked): Isacc Asimov,
Larry Niven, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson,
Fritz Leiber, Anne McCaffrey, Ursula K. LeGuin, J. R. R. Tolkein,
Roger Zelazny, Theodore Sturgeon, Gordon R. Dickson, Zenna Henderson,
Raccoona Sheldon, Frederik Pohl, Clifford D. Simak, Robert Silverberg,
and Alfred Bester. Each of these had an average ranking over 4.5.
Isaac Asimov had the highest average ranking with 5.08. Raccoona
Sheldon scored 4.56 under that name and 4.52 under the name James
Tiptree, Jr.
Factor analysis on the rankings of the 276 who ranked more than 75
authors generated 4 orthogonal factors. Factor 1 was most strongly
associated with Isaac Asimov, Murray Leinster, Gordon R. Dickson, Jack
Williamson, Harry Harrison, and A. E. van Vogt. Factor 2 was most
strongly associated with Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, Damon
Knight, Joanna Russ, Philp K. Dick, and Kate Wilhelm. Factor 3 was
most strongly associated with J. R. R. Tolkien, Anne McCaffrey, C. L.
Moore, Fritz Leiber, and Andre Norton. Factor 4 was most strongly
associated with H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P.
Lovecraft, George Orwell, and Arthur Conan Doyle. The problem with the
notion that this study is scientific starts with the naming of these
factors as, respectively: hard science fiction, new wave, fantasy, and
classics. The next hundred pages of the text revolve around the claim
that these names are a reasonable interpretation of whatever lies
behind the factors. This is done by presenting the same kind of
material as a traditional presentation of science fiction would (with
occasional cross references to the survey). The less the author is
trying to be "scientific", the more he becomes "interesting".
The author presents science fiction in terms of the history of those
aspects of science fiction that group among the first three factors.
The discussion of each group is a mixture of determining what authors
are favoured by that group and what other opinions are held
specifically by members of that group. Additional authors of the "Hard
Science tradition" are: Clement, Reynolds, Pournelle, del Rey, Smith,
Laumer, Anderson, Niven, Clarke, Simak, Campbell, Bova, Hoyle,
Wollheim, Heinlein, Carter, Pohl, Robinson, Haldeman, Blish, and de
Camp. For our respondents, Space Opera is as strongly tied to
Sword-and-Sorcery as it is to hard science. Of course this observation
is just part of a running discussion of how much science is there in
science fiction. Additional authors of "the New Wave" are: Sturgeon,
Malzberg, Aldiss, Lafferty, Burdys, Tiptree, Vonnegut, Spinrad, Delany,
Huxley, Merril, Orwell, Brunner, LeGuin, Pohl, Davidson, Bloch, Bester,
Bradbury, and Haldeman. The New Wave is presented as emphasizing
"literary and aesthetic values, seeking to create the art of the future
rather than the science of the future". Additional authors of "the
Fantasy cluster" are: Merritt, Haggard, Howard, Moorcock, Lewis,
Bradley, de Camp, Burroughs, Lovecraft, and Zelazny. While the Hard
Science tradition and the New Wave are presented has having activistic
overtones, the Fantasy cluster seems to support the status quo.
The remaining 75 pages of the main text turn to the more general
questions of the survey. The author finds that both science fiction
and fantasy readers have a substantially higher regard for the space
program than the general public. However, while science fiction has
always encouraged thoughts about space flight, the author claims, as
stated in his earlier book (The Spaceflight Revolution, 1976) that it
is doubtful that science fiction has had much pro-space impact on the
general public. Mostly science fiction is viewed as a place where
free-thinkers congregate and are exposed to a variety of ideas. The
educational value of science fiction appears to be in broadening the
reader's horizons rather than in the presentation of science. Indeed,
it is noted that science fiction seldom presents people involved in
scientific research (as opposed to presenting "scientists" performing
various social functions). There is also a discussion of the growing
role of women in fandom (and the possible relevance of Star Trek to
this phenomenon).
Above, I have presented the main themes of this book. Let me stress
that the survey plays a larger role in the above summary than it does
in the actual text. The text is filled with interesting quotes and
citations, for example, Sturgeon's Law was first presented in a book
review for Venture Science Fiction (March 1958) and Heinlein's Space
Cadet became a popular 50's television show: Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.
Thus the text yields to light skimming as well as concentrated study.
OtherRealms is Copyright 1986
by Chuq Von Rospach
All rights reserved
One time rights have been acquired from the contributors. All rights
are hereby assigned to the contributors.
Reproduction rights: OtherRealms may be reproduced only for
non-commercial uses. Re-use, reproduction or reprinting of an
individual article in any way on any media, is forbidden without
permission.
