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OtherRealms Issue 20 Part 01
Electronic OtherRealms #20
Spring, 1988
Part 1
Table of Contents
Part 1
Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach
Dead in the West
Kevin Anderson
Never the Twain
Peter Rubenstein
Part 2
Waste of Trees Quarterly, Part 1
Alan Wexelblat
Part 3
Waste of Trees Quarterly, Part 2
Part 4
Scattered Gold
Charles de Lint
Part 5
Triplet
Danny Low
The Stars Like Islands
Steve Bellovin
Guardians of the Flame
David M. Shea
Stuff Received
Part 6
Northshore
Barbara Jernigan
African Adventure
Mike Resnick
Voice of the Whirlwind
Danny Low
Songmaster
Kevin Anderson
Soldiers of Paradise
Neal Wilgus
Part 7
Pico Reviews, Part 1
Part 8
Pico Reviews, Part 2
Part 9
Interview: Gardner Dozois
Toolmakers Koan
Steve Bellovin
Prisoners of Arionn
Neal Wilgus
Part 10
Much Rejoicing
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Part 11
Words of Wizdom
Chuq Von Rospach
Stallion Gate
Kevin Anderson
Part 12
No Prisoners!
Laurie Sefton
Letters to OtherRealms
Melissa Scott
Tom Galloway
Wayne A. Throop
Fred Bals
Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach
Rotten Reviews
I'm going to recommend to everyone involved in the publishing field,
including readers, that they take a look at Rotten Reviews, a Penguin
book by Bill Henderson. It's a short, mini-sized paperback collection
of some of the truly horrible reviews against major literary classics,
and it's hilarious. For example, New Yorker is quoted as saying about
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner: The final blowup of what was
once a remarkable, if minor, talent.
What this has to do with this magazine should be obvious. Reviews are,
in the end, one person's opinion of someone else's writing. Reviewers
sometime blow it. Then again, so do authors, which is why reviewers
exist. If authors never wrote bad books, you wouldn't need watchdogs,
you could pick up anything from the shelves and be satisfied.
Rotten Reviews is a great source of perspective for me, and anyone
considering reviewing books out to read it. Reviews are read once and
discarded; the books themselves can live on forever, no matter what the
critics say. And they often do. Reviewers should not overemphasize
their importance in life. We interpret art, we don't create it, and
reviewers that feel they need to step across the line will simply make
themselves look silly.
One thing I'm noticing as OtherRealms continues to grow is that I'm
rejecting more and more material. Not because I can't fit it in (I
will, in general, make room for everything I can that fits OtherRealms'
style) but because it isn't publishable. I'm getting fiction, I've
gotten con reports, and poetry, and movie reviews. This stuff is
expected, since people who smit without reading OtherRealms (it is
always a good idea to get a sample before trying to write for someone)
can make an honest mistake.
What bothers me, though, is the growing number of truly bad reviews I'm
seeing. Reviews that debate the author's politics. Reviews that argue
the author's religion. Reviews that second guess (and at times,
rewrite) books. Multi-page diatribes about how Big Name Author is a
senile hack, or is getting paid too much for the quality of the books
(in many cases, there is a subtext of "and I can't get MY book
published, even though it's MUCH better"). Hack jobs ("this author
should go slit his throat, and do humanity a favor"). Treatises on why
Fantasy is terrible.
The common threads in this stuff are hidden agendas and pain. Many of
these people have hidden agendas: My stuff is good, nobody will publish
it, there's a conspiracy; I don't like Fantasy, so it isn't good; I
don't like Big Name Author, so he shouldn't be published.
Needless, I return this stuff. I'm not here to promote hack jobs on
people and I firmly believe that you review the work. You don't use the
work as a stepping off point for your own crusade. If you want to
crusade about something, write your own book on it.
I've said this before, but it's a good time to say it again. On the
reviewer's side, you review the work, not the author. On the author's
side, a bad review is not an attack at you.
My job in all of this, of course, is to decide whether or not a review
is fair, without necessarily having read the book. That's fortunately
easier than you might think, but not foolproof. And when I (or someone
else in OtherRealms) makes a mistake, I hope someone will bring it to
my attention, so I can try to fix it.
My policy on mistakes is simple. An error of fact will be fixed, to the
greatest extent possible. If the factual error skews the review, we'll
either correct the review or I'll have the work reviewed again in a
later book. This is one reason I try to make sure that any author
reviewed in OtherRealms gets a copy -- I certainly don't believe in
saying things that I wouldn't say to the author directly, and the
author is in the best position to point out problems. But if you do
find a problem, tell me.
Brash
Obvious Plugs
I'm happy to point out that Avon has released Brian Aldiss' Trillion
Year Spree in paperback ($9.95, 511 pages of tiny, tiny type, ISBN
0-380-70461). If you didn't pick it up as a hardback (Atheneum, 1987)
then you don't have any excuses remaining. This was the book that won
the 1987 Non-Fiction Hugo, and is a serious literary look at the genre
by someone who knows and understands it. This is a book that deserves a
place in your reference library if you're at all serious about SF.
Now if only someone would put out the new edition of Peter Nicholls'
Science Fiction Encyclopedia (Doubleday/Dolphin, 1979). Mine's getting
tired and dogeared, and this is one that cries for updating.
Toeing the Line
In case anyone out there is wondering how closely I monitor the reviews
in OtherRealms, you need look no further than Alan's column this issue.
My editors are chosen because they have strong, interesting voices.
Mimicking the party line isn't very high on my list; in fact, I've
tried to put together a group of regular contributors that has as wide
ranging a set of interests in the field as possible. I think
OtherRealms has the best overall coverage of any magazine I've seen
because of this.
I strive to avoid hidden agendas in OtherRealms. I'm not pushing a
movement, I try to avoid pushing Science Fiction over Fantasy, Hard SF
over People SF, or Elves over Dwarves and Hobbits.
OtherRealms has two goals in life. First, to help people find good
books to read, books that might otherwise have been missed (as a
corollary, OtherRealms also tries to help people avoid the dogs, but as
a matter of policy I'd rather point towards something good than away
from something bad, so if I have room for one of two reviews, the
better book will get the notice).
Also, I feel strongly that OtherRealms should be a place where the
newer authors get noticed. I keep a close eye out for first and second
novels, and do what I can to get them read. Sometimes this works great
(as in the case of Emma Bull's wonderful War for the Oaks) and
sometimes it doesn't (see Alan's column). The only special guidance I
give on first novels is that the reviewers look not only at the work as
it stands, but at the potentials of the author as well. First novels
generally aren't as polished as later works (although, of course, there
are exceptions) and I'll let a new author get away with a some minor
glitches that I might rate a seasoned author down on a lot stronger.
But bad books are bad books.
Publishing
Notes
Leigh Ann Hussey has "The White Wolf" appearing in Jane Yolen's
Werewolves anthology and "The Door" in another untitled Yolen anthology
of "creepy" stories.
Tim Powers will be the Guest of Honor at Boskone XXVI, to be held
January 27-29, 1989. Official Artist is James Gurney.
L.E. Modesitt, Jr. has delivered the prequel to The Ecologic Envoy,
tentatively titled The Ecolitan Operation, to Tor. He's currently
working on a prequel to his first book, The Fires of Paratime.
The Sterling/Gibson collaboration went to auction on February 25. It's
an alternate universe based on the premise the Babbage got the analytic
engine working.
William Gibson's third Sprawl novel is written and in the editing stages.
Sterling has three books in the queue for 1988. In April, Involution
Oceans (rated three stars in OR #13), his first book, will be
re-released. In June, Islands in the Net, his new novel, comes out in
hardback. And in July, Mirrorshades, the Cyperpunk anthology, comes out
in paperback.
The publication of the paperback edition of L. Ron Hubbard's Mission
Earth series will begin in May, 1988. The first four of the ten volume
series will be published by the end of 1988. There will also be a book-tape
edition of each volume published by the Random House Tape Division.
Upcoming titles from Franklin,Watts include Norman Spinrad's Agent of
Chaos (April Hardcover) , The Mercenary by Jerry Pournelle (March
Hardcover) and John Shirley's A Splendid Chaos (March Hardcover).
The 1987 winners of the Writer's of the Future contest have been
announced. For the first quarter, the winner was Jane Mailander, second
was Mary A. Turzillo, and third was Pat MacEwen.
Second quarter winners were first, Nancy Farmer, second, R. Rayson
Deike and third, Mark D. Haw. Third quarter first was Paul Edwards,
second R. Garcia y Robertson and third Rick Urdiales. Fourth quarter
first was Michael Green, second was Flonet Biltgen, and third was Larry
England. The Grand prize winner will be announced later this year in
Los Angeles.
Vaporware....
I'm starting to sympathize with Ann Arbor Softworks (now part of
Ashton-Tate and publishers of the most publicized piece of vaporware,
the long delayed FullWrite Professional word processor for the Mac). My
long delayed OtherRealms book index is now on hold, this time for at
least the next four to six months.
Why? I'm now writing regularly for Macintosh Horizons, a magazine put
out by the Call-A.P.P.L.E people. I'm actually getting paid for it, but
it takes up a lot of time I'd planned for this project, and I just
committed to doing a multi-part in-depth case study of Acius' 4th
Dimension database. As a practical example, I'm going to be
implementing a full featured subscription fufillment database (another
long delayed project for OtherRealms -- my current system, based on
FileMaker+, is creaking at the hinges) and that's going to take up all
my time for a while.
The good news is that I've now got some unplanned income coming in,
which I hope to use part of to let me take OtherRealms to offset. More
good news is that once I get this database done, I'll be making it
available in some form or another to interested parties, either as
freeware or shareware (folks who want customized versions for their own
use can drop me a note). The bad news, of course, is that the book
index, a project I really am looking forward to, has to take a back seat.
Sleep? What's that?
Back Issues
on USENET
For folks who live on USENET or one of the connected networks, I've
installed an archive server on my computer that makes all of the OtherRealms
back issues available. For information on using the archive server, send
mail to "archive-server@plaid.sun.com" with a subject line of "help".
I'm looking for....
The person who wrote the article on Mind in Motion: The Fiction of Philip K.
Dick. I've got the article, but the information on who wrote it has
disappeared. Please contact me so I can print this thing, it's wonderful!
This Issue
There are a few layout changes in this issue. The one that really
affects contents is in the Pico Review section, where I am now printing
reviews that are larger than one paragraph but shorter than a page. The
one paragraph limitation never sat well with me and came across as
rather arbitrary; at the same time, the shorter reviews were difficult
to get laid out cleanly. I plan, probably next issue, to start
splitting up the Pico Review section and using it to help fill out the
dead areas in the layout, which I think will give me better flexibility.
This initial change, though, should make the magazine look cleaner.
This issue is huge, I'm currently looking at something like 72 pages.
This is because I'm making a serious attempt to clear out some of the
material that has been hanging around waiting for room, and I'm trying
to set things up so that, except for the specialty articles like
interviews and Behind the Scenes, reviews don't sit more than one
issue. Once this issue is done, my review inventory should be down to
about zero, so things won't wait as long. This assumes, of course, that
people will continue to send in material for the next issue -- or next
issue will be rather short.
Anyway, if you've held up material because of the delays in getting it
into OtherRealms, the wait should be more or less over. As long as I
can afford to publish the pages, I plan on getting things out as
quickly as I can.
Speaking of affording to publish, as we speak the Post Office is trying
to raise postal rates. Assuming it goes through (and everyone seems to
be resigned to that fact) it looks like the cost of mailing OtherRealms
is going to go up somewhere about a quarter a copy. Since I'm committed
to keeping OtherRealms as first class mail, there's not a whole lot I
can do. This issue will (hopefully) be mailed before it goes into
effect. Once it does, I'm probably going to have to raise cover and
subscription prices to cover at least some of the cost. I may be able
to take reduce some of it by going to mailing without an envelope
(which will save the cost of the envelope and about an ounce of
postage) but only if I decide it'll get there in one piece. Perhaps
I'll have to put a paper wrapper around it to protect the art.
Anyway, you can expect some kind of price increase announcement next issue.
So now is a great time to subscribe if you want to save some money.
Upcoming
Issues
Next issue will have an interview with author Bruce Sterling by
contributing editor Alan Wexelblat. The Behind the Scenes article is by
new author Kevin Anderson on his book Resurrection, Inc.
Future issues will include an interview with Joel Rosenberg, an article
by M. Elayn Harvey, a look at Brian Aldiss, and lots of the normal
stuff. Stay tuned!
Dead in the West
Joe R. Lansdale
Space & Time books, 1986, 126pp, $6.95
Reviewed by Kevin Anderson
kanders@lll-ncis.ARPA
Copyright 1988 by Kevin Anderson
For the past twenty years, Gordon Linzner has been publishing one of
the best and most diverse small press fiction magazines, Space & Time.
In 1984, Linzner's wife, Jani Anderson, branched out to publish
limited-edition books under the Space & Time imprint; Dead in the West
by Joe R. Lansdale is the fourth such publication.
In the dedication, Lansdale states that "This is not a book of 'Big
Thinks.' It's a lot like the late night horror films you used to watch
on television." And it succeeds marvelously in what it sets out to do.
The people in the small East Texas town of Mud Creek are trying to
forget that they got carried away one night, formed a mob, and lynched
a traveling Indian medicine man and his woman for some imagined crime.
But the Indian manages to curse the town before the people can string
him up and...you guessed it -- the old Indian comes back from the dead
to get his revenge, and before you know it the whole town is infested
with ghoulish vampires. But, there's a gun-slinging Reverend who just
pulled into town, wrestling with his own doubts and guilt, and feels
called by God to some final showdown in Mud Creek. "And you,
Reverend -- there is something about you," says one character,
"You're a man of God, but you're also a realist."
Many readers will be familiar with Lansdale through his award-winning
non-fiction column in The Horror Show, or from the earlier version of
"Dead in the West" that was partially serialized in Eldritch Tales, or
from his chilling psychopathic murder novel Act of Love. But if you've
never read anything by Joe Lansdale, you couldn't pick a better
starting place -- Dead in the West is almost impossible to put down,
and it's one of the most enjoyable books I've read in a long time. The
story is an unabashed tribute to the pulps and to schlock movies like
Curse of the Undead and borrows very heavily from George Romero's Day
of the Dead. But, surprisingly, the prose is elegantly and vividly
written, not what you'd expect from a "tribute to pulp horror." "He
stuck his face out into the rain and the wind, as if inviting lightning
to reach down from the sky and shatter his head like a pumpkin."
Some of the suspense is really incredible, and comparable to anything
the 'Masters' of horror have produced. In particular, look for the
scene where the dissected corpse laboriously reassembles itself in a
darkened morgue while the horrified doctor watches on. Occasionally,
though, Lansdale goes overboard with the blood and guts and gore and
graphic dismemberments, which cheapens the genuine suspense and, when
repeated so often, becomes boring in the long run. The ending is
somewhat of a letdown, and I'm a little puzzled as to where these
hundreds and hundreds of walking corpses came from in a tiny East Texas
town which shouldn't have had a population of more than 40. But the
book flies by so fast that the reader doesn't have time to think about
such things until after the book is put safely on a shelf.
Dead in the West is terrific. If you like old monster movies, and good
exciting suspense, and enough walking corpses to satisfy an entire
chain of undertaker stores, this novel could be your best buy all year.
Never the Twain
Kirk Mitchell
Reviewed by
Peter Rubenstein
Peter_Rubenstein@wally.ceo.dg.com
Copyright 1988 by Peter Rubenstein
I like time travel/alternate history stories. In fact, you could say
that I'm an unabashed fan. I liked Lest Darkness Fall and The Cross-Time
Engineer. I also enjoyed "Procurator" by Mitchell. So when I saw Never
the Twain by the same author, I jumped at the opportunity to read it.
One of my favorite genres, and by an author I knew could handle it!
It took very little time for the disappointment to set in. For those
readers interested in recommendations of books to read, go no farther!
Leave this one in the bookstore. In fact, don't bother picking it up
from a freebie heap.
This book is filled with inadequately developed characters. Sadly,
there are no other kinds to be found here. The protagonist oscillates
between anti-social stupidity and aimless stupidity. I couldn't find
anything about him to identify with, or to sympathize with at all.
Should the reader manage to overcome this obstacle, he/she will merely
be frustrated by the character's inane behavior.
The reader hoping to read about Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), will be
disappointed too. Clemens appears only in the periphery. While several
interesting facts about his early career are mentioned, his activities
take place almost entirely off screen.
Distressingly, a situation that is laboriously, if incomprehensibly,
developed at the beginning of the book is totally abandoned. (Since I didn't
really understand the situation, I must admit the possibility that it
was resolved without my knowledge, but I don't believe it for a minute.)
If this were Mitchell's first effort, I would advise a career change.
What makes this book so inexplicable is that Mitchell has done fine
work before. If I see another novel by Mitchell, I will do my best to
put Never the Twain out of mind and decide whether to read the new work
based on its cover description. Other readers can accomplish this more
simply and cheaply than I by following my advice and not reading Never
the Twain at all.
OtherRealms #20
Spring, 1988
Copyright 1988 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 not be reproduced in any form without written
permission of Chuq Von Rospach.
The electronic edition may be distributed or reproduced in its entirety
as long as all copyrights, author and publication information remain
intact. No individual article may be reprinted, reproduced or
republished in any way without the express permission of the author.
OtherRealms is published quarterly (March, June, September and December) by:
Chuq Von Rospach
35111-F Newark Blvd.
Suite 255
Newark, CA 94560.
Usenet: chuq@sun.COM
Delphi: CHUQ
CompuServe: 73317,635
GENie: C.VONROSPAC
