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OtherRealms Issue 08 Part 01
OtherRealms
A Fanzine for the Non-Fan
Where FIJAGH Becomes a Way of Life
Issue #8
September, 1986
Table of Contents
Part 1
Time and Again
by Barbara Jernigan
The Riftwar Saga
by Chuq Von Rospach
Visions of Techno-Disaster
by Evelyn C. Leeper
Part 2
Pico Reviews
Readers Survey
Gateway
by Dave Taylor
David Lindsay, the Arcturan Voyager
by Gary A. Allen, Jr.
Part 3
Godbody and Radio Free Albemuth
by Chuq Von Rospach
Letters to OtherRealms
OtherRealms Notes
Chuq Von Rospach
Time and Again
An illustrated novel
Jack Finney
A Fireside Book by Simon and Schuster
$9.95US,
ISBN 0-671-24295-4, 1970
[****-]
Reviewed by
Barbara Jernigan
barb@olivej.UUCP
Copyright 1986 by Barbara Jernigan
"We think the past is gone, the future hasn't yet happened, and
that only the present exists. Because the Present is all we
can see."
Imagine, just imagine, if you only believed enough, you could will
yourself back in time. This would take preparation. All the threads
that tell you when you are would have to be unwoven, replaced by the
knowing of When you want to be. Then, when the knowing is complete,
you step out one January morning into an alien world, from New York
City 1972 to New York City 1882. Simon Morley, as part of a
ultra-secret Government project, does exactly that in Jack Finney's
TIME AND AGAIN.
TIME AND AGAIN is a fascinating read. It is engagingly written so that
it seems Si Morley is in the same room with you relating his strange story.
The book opens with a disgruntled Si doing hack work for a large
advertising agency in New York City, "on an ordinary day, a Friday,
twenty minutes until lunch, five hours till quitting time and the
weekend, ten months till vacation, 37 years till retirement. Then the
phone rang."
Si little suspected that phone call would drastically change his life.
Enter Rube Prien, an Army Major who missed his calling as a used car
salesman. He sells Siand the reader solely on his own enthusiasm. Only
after Si commits to participation are the details made plain.
The Mystery Project involves time travel -- stepping across the
intervening years like the spit of sand in Danziger's metaphor. No
flashy equipment out of H.G. Wells, the only tool is the human mind.
Si's destination is New York City, January, 1882. Within the framework
of the project it is a personal mission -- to watch a man mail a letter.
This letter would result, years later, in the suicide of Andrew
Carmody, a well-known financier and political figure of 19th century
New York, later fallen on hard times.
Little is Si to know the mystery -- and danger -- he'll stumble upon in
his quest to uncover more of the circumstances around that letter.
After two months of training he is ready to make his January attempt.
His first success is almost an accident, but, with practice, he is able
to step back at will. He describes in detail the vistas of 1880
Manhattan Island, and Finney has furthered the illusion by including
tintypes and sketches by Simon Morley, bringing the panorama into
focus. Even photographs of his new 1882 friends are included.
It is an exercise, a research project, only Si is drawn deeper and
deeper into the events until they become real. The consequences of the
1882 actions become as personally important as the events of 1972,
tempting Si to interfere. One can hardly blame him, as he falls in love.
Does Si change history? Can he? Or is he merely the tiniest of twigs
dropped in the torrential river of time? Finney answers this, in
rushing plot twists and a surprise conclusion.
Admittedly, the mystery in TIME AND AGAIN wasn't very convoluted; an
attentive reader should solve it before Morley does. This is not a mark
against the book, as the mystery merely serves as the thread the events
of the book follow. The bulk of TIME AND AGAIN is description in
exquisite detail, pointing out, through Si Morley's 20th century eyes,
how much we've changed in a scant 100 years.
The book's early pace is leisurely, like a stroll through the park; but
as Si's involvement increases, so does the converging crisis with an
answer to Andrew Carmody's cryptic suicide note. The reader is thrown
in the midst of the cataclysmic events -- given a chance to breathe,
and then.... If you like a read with characters that live and breathe,
if you like the idea of stepping out of your favorite 20th Century
reading nook into a detailed portrait of Life in 1882 New York City, if
you like a fully Human protagonist who just might make a mistake, TIME
AND AGAIN is a book well worth searching out.
The Riftwar Saga
Magician [*****]
Silverthorn [****]
A Darkness at Sethanon [***+]
Raymond E. Feist
Reviewed by
Chuq Von Rospach
Copyright 1986 by Chuq Von Rospach
The Riftwar Saga is a trilogy of Fantasy by Ray Feist. These books are
classic High Fantasy works, with many of the standard archetypes. Pug
is the Orphan Boy, apprenticed to the master Mage Kulgan. His best
friend, Tomas, is the Warrior Child. This is a world populated by
Elves, Trolls, Goblins, Dwarves and Humans.
Feist, though, has not rewritten Arthurian Fantasy or ripped off
Tolkien. Rather, he has skillfully picked and chosen from the basic
familiar elements of Fantasy to build a complex tapestry that is
familiar, but at the same time unique.
The books are set on two worlds: Midkemia and Kelewan. The first half
of MAGICIAN (MAGICIAN: APPRENTICE in paperback) is set on Midkemia.
Pug is trying, with little success, to learn the ways of magic.
Strange beings are found in the forest, and evil elements are on the
loose. Battles ensue, and it turns out that a society from another
planet has opened a rift (literally, a hole in space) from their world
to Midkemia. In one raiding party, Pug is lost and feared dead (from
the title of the second paperback, it is obvious he isn't). The
remainder of MAGICIAN: APPRENTICE follows the people of Midkemia as the
fight the invaders for their homeland.
MAGICIAN: MASTER switches back to Pug, taken prisoner and made a slave
of the Tsurani, the people of Kelewan. We follow him as he survives
and is finally discovered by the Black Robes, the magic users of the
Tsurani. His slavery rescinded, he is initiated into the powers of
Kelewan and eventually becomes one of the most powerful magicians on
the planet. Pug eventually finds he way back to Midkemia and finally
closes the rift between the worlds, saving the planet from the invaders.
SILVERTHORN is a change of pace. Evil forces on Midkemia, the Dark
Elves, Goblins and others, are massing against the Kingdom. There is a
prophecy that when the protector of the west, Prince Arutha, is slain,
the forces of darkness will rule. An assassin's bolt is deflected,
though, and Arutha's love Anita is injured. The bolt is poisoned, and
she will die unless Arutha can locate the Silverthorn plant needed for
the antidote.
SILVERTHORN is a quest novel, as Arutha rides into the very clutches of
the enemy who wishes his death for the secrets of the cure. As
MAGICIAN was written to a global scale, this is a small and personal
book, focusing on one man and his loyal followers and their search for
the answers they seek.
A DARKNESS AT SETHANON is the conclusion of the series. There are a
large number of parallel plot lines developing, and to some degree the
book suffers from trying to tie up all the loose ends before the last
page is turned. Pug and Tomas are questing for information that will
help them defeat the ultimate Enemy, attracted to Midkemia by the
Rift. Arutha, still hounded by assassin, heads off on another quest
for Murmandamus, leader of the enemy forces again massing against the
Kingdom. The book interchanges between the different quests.
Everything starts coming together at Sethanon as the forces of good and
the forces of evil prepare for the final battle. The final battle is
truly climactic, with the forces of good finally succeeding in staving
off the aggressors.
This is a gross over-simplification of the series. It is a rich
tapestry of people and places, all of them real and vibrant. The world
is richly detailed throughout, and there are a large number of subplots
to keep things hopping. The series is not really a trilogy: MAGICIAN
stands alone from the other two, sharing but a common timeline and the
characters. SILVERTHORN takes up where MAGICIAN left off but doesn't
depend upon it, while A DARKNESS AT SETHANON is the logical ending for
the storyline begun in the SILVERTHORN.
MAGICIAN is, simply put, one of the best pieces of Fantasy I've read
since I discovered Tolkien. I can't recommend it highly enough. Be
aware that the split of the paperbacks is a publishing necessity, and
the books do not stand alone. Be prepared to buy and read both.
SILVERTHORN is a good quest novel. It doesn't quite match up to the
quality of MAGICIAN but is still better than a lot of the Fantasy
I've read in the last year. A DARKNESS AT SETHANON is the only book in
the series with any serious flaws, problems brought on by the
complexity of the series and the number of items Feist had to resolve.
The biggest problem with A DARKNESS AT SETHANON is that it is really
two half novels. The first half describes a quest, the second a
battle. The transition is rather abrupt, leaving the book with a
schizophrenic feel. Feist trots out the unresolved subplots and
characters and takes care of them, sometimes making it read choppy and
hurried. The final climax sputters a bit, for all the power that is
written into it, leaving the ending somewhat weak.
Despite these problems, I recommend the entire serious without
reservation. The problems, in comparison with the scope of the
universe and the skill that Feist has in pulling it all together, are
quite minor. The first book(s) is truly a classic and should be on the
must read list of anyone. Fantasy lovers will also enjoy the second
and third books.
Magician is Feist's first novel. All three books are available in
hardcover through Doubleday and through the Science Fiction Book Club.
MAGICIAN is available in paperback through Bantam books in two
volumes: MAGICIAN: APPRENTICE and MAGICIAN: MASTER. SILVERTHORN is
due out in paperback in September.
Visions of Techno-Disaster
or The Chernobyl Syndrome
Evelyn C. Leeper
ecl@mtgzy.UUCP
Copyright 1986 by Evelyn C. Leeper
[Spoiler Warning]
This has been the year of the techno-disaster (or the "year of the
jackpot," to use Pohl's phrase). We began with the Challenger explosion
on January 28, proceeded to the Titan explosion on April 18, the
Nike-Orion misfire on April 25, the Chernobyl melt-down on April 26,
and the destruction of the Delta on May 3. Science Fiction supposedly
prepares us for "future shock" and the implications of technology. How
well has it done? And, since media now dominates literature in the
eyes of most people, how has media in particular done?
The Challenger explosion was by no means the first accident in the
space program, or even the first fatal accident: the Apollo I fire
(1/27/67) killed astronauts Chaffee, Grissom, and White; the SoyuzI
parachute failure (4/24/67) killed cosmonaut Komarov; and the SoyuzXI
explosive decompression (6/29/71) killed cosmonauts Dobrovolski,
Volkov, and Patsayev. Cosmonaut Konstantin Bondarenko also apparently
died in space on 2/2/61, in what was described by the Soviets at the
time as a Sputnik.
Perhaps because of the 15 year safety record since the last deaths this
accident was a shock to many people. Space technology isn't perfect.
Did SF in general, and the media in particular, prepare us for this?
No. SF films set in space generally assume the perfection of
technology and concentrate on the failings of human beings. Now it's
true that most of them are set far enough in the future that one may
assume the basic problems inherent in space travel have been solved.
An analogy would be that films set in the present do not concentrate on
airplane crashes, but rather use airplanes as a reliable means of
transporting the characters.
The exceptions to all this matter-of-fact acceptance are mostly older
films, made before space travel, or in the early years of space
exploration. THINGS TO COME (London Films, 1936) carries the same
message: "Although we may fail this time, we will keep on trying until
we succeed." You are led to believe that they will succeed. ROCKETSHIP
X-M has a "successful" Mars exploration (it started out for the moon and
missed!) run out of fuel on the way back and crash into the Sun. THE
QUARTERMASS XPERIMENT (a.k.a. CREEPING UNKNOWN, Hammer, 1957) also ends
with a rocket crash, but to its credit, the message is not one of
despair, but rather one of the realization that failures will occur but
that we will not give up because of it.
The mission in CONQUEST OF SPACE (Paramount, 1955) is a good example of
the attitude of films toward technological problems; though there are
some uncontrollable problems (meteors), the major difficulty
encountered is the Captain, who suddenly develops an anti-technological
religious stance and sabotages the mission, first by wasting fuel in
the landing and then by draining most of the water storage tanks before
he can be stopped. There are no mechanical failures, not even those
which could be traced to human error. Films simply did not yet
recognize that people in real life might cut corners.
MAROONED (Columbia, 1969) is perhaps the best known "techno-disaster in
space" film, since it came out right before the Apollo 13 accident
(4/13/70). Although it sugar-coated its ending to some extent (the
only death is the astronaut who sacrifices himself for his crew
members), it did have one salutatory effect -- it spurred the United
States and the Soviet Union to standardize their equipment so that the
Soviet rescue shown in the film could actually happen.
The fact that MAROONED did not have an entirely happy ending is
indication that there is at least some realization of the costs of
technology; earlier films such as DESTINATION MOON has the characters
in a position similar to that in MAROONED: one must give up his life to
save the others. But just in the nick of time, they find a way out of
the dilemma.
How does this compare with recent literary treatments? A book along
similar techno-disaster lines is Lee Correy's SHUTTLE DOWN (Del Rey,
1986), which postulates a problem at launch which necessitates the
emergency landing of a shuttle on Easter Island. There are two
interesting side-notes to this book. The book was written in 1981. In
1985, NASA announced that it was negotiating with Chile the possibility
of emergency landing support in the event that a shuttle launched from
Vandenburg was forced to make an emergency landing there. Del Rey just
happened to re-issue it a month before the Challenger disaster. The
constant references to the problems of having one-quarter of our space
fleet out of commission are downright bizarre in light of subsequent
events.
Unfortunately, as soon as the shuttle lands it becomes mostly a can we
build a launch pad on Easter Island before the Russians invade sort of
story. Lee Correy is the pseudonym for G. Harry Stine, a noted
technophile, and the book is chock full of pro-space speeches, some
even more applicable today:
It's always been worth it, something told him in the back of
his mind. Did anybody ever tell you that a frontier never
claimed any lives? Did anybody ever tell you that being a
pioneer means discovering new and more horrible ways to die?
You want to sail a new ocean? How can you if you won't risk
losing sight of the shore?
Occasionally he is off the mark; a reporter asks the shuttle pilot if
he knows what caused the accident and the pilot replies: "But it
couldn't be a major glitch, not after years of development and
operations and lots of successful Shuttle flights to date."
Another area of techno-disaster is the nuclear melt-down. Again
Columbia Pictures managed to scoop reality with THE CHINA SYNDROME,
released shortly before the Three-Mile Island incident on March 28,
1979. What made THE CHINA SYNDROME particularly close was the
description of a possible disaster area "the size of the state of
Pennsylvania." Again, tragedy is averted in the film and there is reason
to believe that the problems will all be fixed before a real disaster
can occur. At least here the filmmaker deals with the "corner-cutting"
of real life which was missing from so many of the earlier movies. But
think about it. In space films and other "hard technology" films (such
as the various AIRPORT movies) there is rarely, if ever, the suggestion
of cheating on the part of the contractors or other people involved.
The problems that will be encountered will be due to unavoidable
circumstance such as a storm springing up suddenly or human weakness
(such as the pilot having a heart attack), but not to human cupidity.
Everyone involved was too noble and patriotic for that sort of thing.
On the other hand, in nuclear and biological films (those dealing with
chemicals, biological warfare, or nuclear reactors) it is almost
accepted as a given that someone will cause problems because they are
greedy and so skimp on the materials used or the time spent to check
things. "Nuclear" films seem to go with the "soft technology" of the
biological sciences here, perhaps because the aspects dwelt upon by
these films is not an explosion, but the biological after-effects of
the radiation -- not surprising, since in the techno-disaster scenarios
there must be an emphasis on the slow-acting characteristics of
radiation or there would be no characters to show. As someone once said
of THE DAY AFTER, to show an accurate nuclear war scenario takes four
steps: Introduce the characters, drop the bomb, pan the crater, roll
the credits.
Again, we should see what literature has been doing with this theme.
Although there had been previous nuclear incidents (Windscale, England
10/7/57 and Kyshtym, USSR, winter 1957 are the two largest ones), many
authors latched onto Three-Mile-Island as the archetypal nuclear
accident. In ROBOTS AND EMPIRE (Doubleday, 1985) Asimov makes it a
place that everyone avoids as being evil, even though the reason for
this is almost lost in antiquity. Of course, now that the toll at
Chernobyl has exceeded that of Three-Mile Island it is highly probable
that future generations will remember Chernobyl more than Three-Mile
Island. Asimov was being optimistic in thinking that Three-Mile Island
would be "the big one".
Michael Swanwick raised Three-Mile Island to mythical proportions, but
he does it by supposing there was a real melt-down there. In IN THE
DRIFT (Ace, 1985), the melt-down has made a swath from Three-Mile
Island northeast into New York uninhabitable. Residual fallout caused
various strange mutations, including vampires of a sort. The United
States has fallen apart because of the incident and the Mummers now run
Philadelphia. "The Drift" serves as a sort of no-man's-land between the
two states formed from the remainder of the old United States.
I haven't discussed film treatments of chemical dumping problems (FOOD
OF THE GODS), germ warfare testing (CODE NAME TRIXIE), all-out nuclear
war (TESTAMENT), or the many other problems that flesh is heir to. As
far as literary treatment of all these, Philip Wylie's END OF THE DREAM
and John Brunner's SHEEP LOOK UP are the recent definitive works in the
first two areas and everyone seems to have written a post-nuclear-holocaust
novel.
This issue is Copyright 1986, by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights reserved
One time rights only have been acquired from the signed or credited
contributors. All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors.
Reproduction rights: Permission is given to reproduce or duplicate
OtherRealms in its entirety for non-commercial uses. Re-use,
reproduction, reprinting or republication of an individual article in
any way or on any media, printed or electronic, is forbidden without
permission of the author.
