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OtherRealms Issue 20 Part 09
Electronic OtherRealms #20
Spring, 1988
Part 9
Interview with Gardner Dozois
Gardner Dozois is the author or editor of 23 books. Currently
editor of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and of the
Isaac Asimov Presents novel series published by Congdon & Weed.
Also editor of the annual anthology series The Year's Best
Science Fiction, as well as the Magic Tales series of
anthologies, edited in collaboration with Jack Dann: Unicorns!,
Magicats! Bestiary!, Mermaids!, Sorcerers!, & Demons!, and so
on. He has won two Nebula Awards for his own short fiction. He
has been a World Fantasy Award Judge, and several times
chairman of the Nebula Award Jury.
If you are interested in joining the Science Fiction group on
Delphi, the local access number can be located by calling
800-544-4005. Log onto Delphi with account JOINFICTION and
password URANUS. This will qualify you for a special discount
when the account is validated.
Chip Delany> Where are you planning to take Asimov's in the coming year?
Gardner Dozois> I had planned on taking it on a long leisurely drive
down by the seashore, but... Actually, to wax serious, (if you
can find one to wax), I don't really have any Grand Master
Aesthetic Plan for Asimov's.
Pat Cadigan> Did you have anything in mind when you first became editor?
Gardner> Mostly to survive for the first few months. My major concern
has always been to try to get a fairly wide range of stuff into
the magazine while still keeping the quality level up. So that
you have a chance of finding something you'll like in the
magazine no matter what your tastes are, whether you're after
literature or just fun, or both.
Chip> Do you find the association between Asimov's and cyberpunk has
turned into a liability?
Gardner> No, it doesn't seem particularly like a liability to me
There's some bad imitation cyberpunk stuff in the slush pile,
but there's always bad imitation something in the slush pile,
so it doesn't make that much difference. Better than bad
imitation Jerry Pournelle, anyway. One reason why I've
published some stuff that people can call cyberpunk if they
like, is that it's just about the only hard science stuff that
I can find that I actually like, that rings some kind of button
aesthetically with me. I'd publish more good, new, interesting
hard science stuff, if I could find it. But don't see much.
Janet> Are you seeing a lot of fantasy? Do you think it's taking over?
Gardner> We've always seen a lot of fantasy. I don't think we're seeing
any more now, necessarily, than we did. 80% or more of it is
just not right for our magazine. We do use some of it if it's
something out of the ordinary. What you see more than fantasy,
other than hard science, is soft sociological SF.
Pat> Do you think that a lot of hard science stuff will be called
cyberpunk reflexively?
Gardner> I think bits and pieces of the cyberpunk milieu will be
showing up for years...
Pat> But it seems like you can't write a hard science story lately
without someone calling it cyberpunk.
Gardner> I think, that people react to things as cyberpunk or not
because of the aesthetics of a story. Poul Anderson can talk
about computers and so forth all through a story, and its still
not going to feel like a cyberpunk story, because his universe
doesn't have the same feel to it, the kinds of things that
happen to people, and how they fell about them.
Arlan Andrews> How does the slush pile look for Asimov's Presents?
Gardner> We don't see a tremendous amount of slush for the novel line,
compared with the amount of slush for the magazine, anyway. For
the first six books, we read maybe 50-60 books to find them.
Arlan> Gardner, is cyberpunk necessarily always depressing? Can't it be
fun, too?
Gardner> I don't think that cyberpunk is necessarily always depressing,
or even always mostly depressing. Several of Pat's stories are
not downbeat at the end. "Pretty Boy Crossover," for instance,
ends on an upbeat note, with the character turning down an
offer which is pretty clearly the equivalent of Temptation.
Even some of Sterling's stuff is not ultimately downbeat.
Schismatrix, for instance, is long-term optimistic. And
Sterling himself makes a big deal recently about how
"transcendental mutation" or somesuch is an essential part of
the mix. Of course, if you follow Sterling's latest definition
closely, you see that it clearly omits most of Gibson's work,
including Neuromancer.
Mike Resnick> Gardner, does your mail indicate your readers prefer
cyberpunk, or don't they care?
Gardner> Most of our mail seems to ignore the question altogether, as I
suspect is true every time one of these teapot tempests comes
along. As a subjective judgement though, I'd have to say that
it seems to me that more people are in favor than not.
Mike> If no cyberpunk except Gibson makes it onto the SF bestseller
lists, how much effect can cyberpunk have in the book field?
It's effect in short fiction is noticeable, but it seems to me
that it's a bit self-limiting to comprise a hefty portion of
our book production other than Gibson, it's too early to tell
who's going to eventually make it.
Gardner> I suspect that Sterling will eventually make it on to at least
the SF bestseller lists, though it may take him a while to
build an audience.. Others may make it too. As far as it not
having a big effect on SF because it's not on the bestseller
lists I think you're dead wrong about that. Evolutionarily
speaking, the new stuff usually has its biggest effect at the
bottom of the ladder, and I think that the field has been
affected more by short stories by then-unknown writers than by
the stuff they're doing later when they've made it onto the
nationwide lists.
Chip> It tickles me that the quintessential cyberpunk story is "All My
Darling Daughters" by Connie Willis.
Mike> I'm not making myself clear, I guess. How do you tell a publisher
to dump Chalker and/or Foster in favor of cyberpunk and failing
that how do you convince him to spend enough on cyberpunk so
that the practitioners can afford to keep writing it
Gardner> Do we really have to dump Chalker and Resnick to make room for
newer authors?
Godzilla> It is all dependant on whether enough people read it no?
Gardner> I'd like to think that there's room for all of them. Naive, perhaps.
Arlan> Hope we don't have to dump the good writers. Just want more room
for us new ones.
Mike> The dynamics of the marketplace say that not everyone can get big
advances; small advances sooner or later have discourage
serious writers.
Janet> Small advances haven't discouraged us so far, Mike.
Mike> It's early yet. But during the last Wave they sure as hell
discouraged Silverberg and Malzberg. It's simple economics.
Chip> Small advances have encouraged a lot of new writers too. They're
better than nothing.
Gardner> If all of us were discouraged from serious work by small
advances, I myself would have given up years ago! In
Silverberg's case, however, it just took him a while to build
up a new audience for what he was doing. He complained at the
late middle of the '70s that all of his books were out of
print, no one liked them, etc., but they are all back in print
now, including the most depressing ones, and they all seem to
be doing pretty well.
Mike> Yeah, but he was doing Dying Inside then, and he did Lord
Valentine trilogies when he came back.
Chip> Most of Silverberg's income came from non-fiction up until the
last ten years. Sometimes it just takes a while.
Mike> It's a problem we all have to face. I just have a feeling that
cyberpunk's audience is smaller than most, at least in the book
marketplace. I would be happy to find out I'm wrong.
Gardner> This is, of course, incredibly naive, and may well be the sour
grapes of someone who doesn't have the stuff to make it on to
the bestseller lists, but I like to think that I'm not just in
it (writing) for the money. I could have made a lot more as a
PR man, if I'd stuck to it.
Pat> The hell with the bestseller lists. You're the best writer here.
Mike> No one is just in it for the money, Gardner. (Well, almost no
one.) But one still has to pay the bills, and one still has to
live with the knowledge that 10-part trilogies outsell the good
stuff. It can get discouraging from time to time
Gardner> One thing you may, or may not, be overlooking is that Gibson
seems to appeal to a large audience outside the traditional
genre audience even more than he appeals to the inside
audience. You'll notice that it was places like The Village
Voice, Rolling Stone, Washington Post, and so on who were
really hotly impressed by Gibson. Locus wasn't calling up to
do stories about him, it was mainstream journals that were
interested in him. The same thing may be happening right now
with Lucius Shepard.
Mike> And since no cyberpunk but Gibson seems to have hit it big in
book form, I can't help thinking it must be harder on them than
on most of us (As I say, I'd be delighted to have to apologize
for being wrong)
Pat> I don't think hitting it that big is really so important.
Mike> I think it is important to the leadership of a revolutionary
literary movement; how else can they tell that they're being
accepted? Editors and critics didn't kill the new wave;
readers did, by not buying it.
Gardner> I've heard that one about how the readers killed the New Wave
before, but I don't really believe it. You'll notice that all
the writers who were supposed to be pushed off the newsstands
because of lack of reader support are not only still on them,
but doing better than ever saleswise in most cases. For
instance, Delany, Spinrad, Moorcock, Silverberg, etc. And most
of the classic stuff from the time is still in print, or back
in print, so obviously there is an audience for it.
Pat> I don't feel the New Wave was killed myself. Just assimilated.
Gardner> Pat is right. A lot assimilated. You wouldn't have half the
new writers you have now, if not for the New Wave, both
cyberpunks and not.
Mike> Part of it -- the best part -- was of course assimilated. But a
lot of new wave writers, especially English, couldn't sell
here, or couldn't sell for enough here. Ballard comes to mind,
or Chris Priest, who has a couple of fine books that still
haven't seen print in the USA.
Pat> Ballard just hit the movies with his autobiographical novel --
Spielberg's doing it.
Mike> But there was never enough of an audience to change the shape of
the field. The dinosaurs and the series-writers still dominate
the lists.
Chip> Ballard's Empire of the Sun just spent half a year on the
bestseller list, Mike!
Mike> Not as science fiction, Chip -- and only after a rave in Newsweek.
Gardner> The fact is, no one ever knows what's going to survive.
Melville would probably be horrified to know that he was
remembered for Moby Dick alone.
Pat> Anyway, it seems like we're trying to have an instant movement
here. And I don't think it works that way.
Janet> What ever happened to that novel you were doing for Timescape?
Gardner> Janet, the novel was unwritten, is unwritten, and probably
will remain unwritten for the foreseeable future. I have much
less time now than I used to, and didn't finish it then! Maybe
if I live long enough, I'll get back to it.
Dave> Was Lucius Shepard so burned by the publication of Green Eyes or
is short story writing being that good to him?
Gardner> Lucius's new novel Life During Wartime, just came out from
Bantam, and he has at least two more novels in the works. He's
not only a good short story writer, he's a fast one, so I don't
discourage him from writing them.
Scott> I was rereading your 1977 anthology, in which you said '77
established SF as a moneymaker and voiced the fear that the
bean counters would "force a junk food mentality on SF.". Has
this happened?
Gardner> It hasn't happened nearly as much as it could have happened,
which should be something of a relief to us. Good work, and
unusual work, has continued to be [published, although there
were a couple of years there where things were looking chancy.
Chip> Do big names on the covers substantially affect the monthly sales
of Asimov's?
Gardner> There's not enough data to be really sure (what other factors
afffected sales, for instance -- color of cover, artwork,
etc.), but my own opinion is yes, Big Names on the cover do
have some effect. I try to put them there when I can get them,
although I like to think that I won't buy indifferent work from
Big Names just to get them on the cover.
Pat> Resnick said that SF seems to be a book field rather than a
magazine field and it seemed to him that one thing stalling the
cyberpunk movement was that they don't have a book editor
committed to them whereas New Wave had 3 or 4.
Gardner> Not entirely true that there are no book editors committed to
cyberpunk. Shawna is buying some at Bantam, so is David
Hartwell, so is Beth Meacham at Tor. Nobody's buying nothing
but cyberpunk, but nobody bought nothing but New Wave either.
Gardner> Certainly most of the major authors are having no real trouble
getting their books into print. Although I still say that most
of the important changes, the evolutionary ones, take place in
the short story field, and always have. So is SF really
dominated by books, or is that just what most people have
easy-enough access to to buy?
Toolmaker Koan
John McLoughlin
Baen Books, $16.95, 1987, 0-671-65354-7
[*****]
Reviewed by
Steve Bellovin
ulysses!smb
Copyright 1988 by Steve Bellovin
Reviewing a book like Toolmaker Koan is somewhat difficult; it's hard
to discuss the wondrous turns of plot without giving too much away. On
the other hand, there are some things that are easy to say about it.
For example, it should be a very strong contender for the Hugo next
year. I'll go a step further: it's one of the best SF books I've read
in several years.
Oh, it's not without its quirks and a few weaknesses; few books are
perfect. But the theme, the plot, and the author's knowledge of his
subject matter are quite overwhelming.
The koan is quite simple to state: intelligent species evolve (in a
cultural sense) too quickly for their own good, and hence destroy
themselves. The book opens with Earth about to prove it true again. The
planet is partitioned into two hostile camps (U.S. and Soviet), and is
teetering on the brink of what Niven has called "the Last War." A
deep-space probe detects an anomalous mass under apparent intelligent
control. Each nation launches a piloted spacecraft to investigate; they
attack each other and are all but destroyed. The Third Party rescues
the few survivors and brings them aboard a giant (i.e., 400 km long)
space habitat.
Once aboard, the real fun begins. It seems that there is not just a
Third Party, but a Fourth, the Whileelin. They in turn are survivors of
another group of cultural toolmakers who destroyed their own planet;
only the one space habitat survived. The interactions between the
humans and the Whileelin occupy the latter half of the book, about
which I shall remain silent.
One of the more fascinating aspects of the book is the explanation of
the biology of the Whileelin. It sounds totally alien but quite
believable. I wasn't at all surprised to turn to the back jacket flap
and read that McLouglin is a professional evolutionist (whatever that
is) with strong interests in biology and paleontology. One nit that I
don't think affects the plot much: I do not believe that their language
abilities could evolve naturally; it is quite clear that they are an
artificially-constructed species.
McLoughlin's writing style is strongly reminiscent of Larry Niven.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the theme also reminded me of Niven; in
particular, there are very strong resemblances to The Mote in God's
Eye, by Niven and Pournelle. The Whileelin talk like some of Poul
Anderson's aliens, though.
There are some annoying points; the characters are constantly chanting
Toolmaker Koan whenever they feel frustrated, whether it makes literal
sense or not. And more attention should have been paid to character
development; while we are told something of their backgrounds, we never
really feel it.
Enough! Go read Toolmaker Koan, especially if you like hard science
fiction by an author who has done his homework.
Prisoners of Arionn
Brian Herbert
Arbor House, 1987, 356pp, $17.95, 0-87795-886-6
Reviewed by
Neal Wilgus
Copyright 1988 by Neal Wilgus
This is Brian Herbert's fifth novel, but it's the first book of his
I've read and I'm impressed. The basic premise -- that a group of
highly advanced aliens "steal" the San Francisco Bay Area -- is rather
bizarre and would be pretty hard to swallow, except that the gimmick is
mostly kept in the background and the meat of the book is in its
characters. More specifically, in the Fouquet family, whose daily
problems are engrossing enough -- and amusing enough -- that the
wayward aliens are largely forgotten.
Not completely, of course, since the entire Bay Area (with ocean) is
contained inside a huge bubble which is zooming through space towards
the alien's home planet and all contact with anything outside the
bubble is cut off. But the Foquets have other troubles -- Granmere
Liliane, the head of the family, is now the acting mayor of San
Francisco and must deal with her human subject's waywardness as well as
the aliens. her son Henry must deal with his even waywarder wife
Rachel, his three legitimate children and his unacknowledged fourth
child who has come seeking his father just as the bubble is lifted from
Earth. Henry, a powerhouse of a man who must hold down three jobs in
order to hold his family together, is a study in grinding endurance,
while Rachel, who drinks heavily and ignores the daily needs of life,
liberty and sanitation, is a study in -- well, let's say maddening
independence. Like his father, Dune-master Frank Herbert, young Brian
likes to throw in a few mystical superscience wildcards -- but with
much more restraint than his old man. There is, for instance, the
"button pack," a doomsday device capable of destroying the entire San
Francisco bubble, which is presented to Granmere Liliane by the
mysterious General Oso when she becomes acting mayor. There is also
Granpere Gilbert, her shadowy husband who dies halfway through the
book, but who just might be a more powerful and important figure than
Granmere Liliane herself. And, of course, there's Beauregard, who is
either the ghost of a Civil War General, a gigantic flea, of some kind
of extra-dimensional creature whose life happens to impinge on the
Foquets, for better or for worse.
All of which adds up to a fascinating novel of superscience and
commonplace drudgery which would be highly recommendable except for one
thing -- the climax. Alas, the ending of this book is completely
inconclusive, leading to the belief that this is only the first volume
of a trilogy or series -- although the publisher nowhere hints this is
so. Personally, I'm looking forward to reading a sequel -- one that
tells us what happens when the San Francisco bubble finally arrives at
Arionn -- and what happens to Rachel and several of her children, who
have escaped from the aliens at the last minute.
Meanwhile, I do recommend this book -- with reservations -- to anyone
who enjoys a combination of the totally fantastic and the completely
mundane. Whatever else it is -- it's unique!
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
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