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OtherRealms Issue 23 Part 03
Electronic OtherRealms #23
Winter, 1989
Part 3
Copyright 1989 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.
OtherRealms may not be reproduced without written
permission from Chuq Von Rospach. The electronic
edition may be distributed only if the return address,
copyrights and author credits remain intact.
No article may be reprinted or re-used in any way
without the permission of the author.
All rights to material published in OtherRealms
hereby revert to the original author.
Behind the Mountains with:
Spirits of Cavern and Hearth
M. Coleman Easton
Copyright 1989 by M. Coleman Easton
Spirits of Cavern and Hearth (St. Martin's Press) started with a
documentary about Mt. Kilimanjaro. The camera began near the snowy peak
and showed how the landscape changed gradually during the long descent
to the plains. Suddenly, I imagined a much larger mountain--one that
spanned a continent, with civilizations thriving at many different
levels along its flanks. The concept of WorldMount was born.
As I explored the idea, it changed Instead of a single mountain, I
ended up with a series of ranges, each higher than the next but with
deep valleys in between. In the center stood the ultimate mountain, the
Peak-of-the-World. And I settled for depicting, in this one book, only
a small portion of the continent. I have plenty of territory to explore
if I choose to write a sequel.
I wondered what sort of people inhabit this portion of the world. At
first I imagined two distinct races--one based in the north and more
primitive, the other based in the south. Later I decided that the two
groups were of common ancestry, but had separated some hundreds of
years earlier, one group continuing a nomadic existence in the north
while the other settled down to farming. The split had left a
long-lasting enmity, for the southerners had driven the nomads up into
the highlands, then built a huge wall to keep them there.
In my earliest notes I find the notion of a "call," a sudden emotional
and physical change that can drive a person to leave his family and pursue
a somewhat mystical goal. This was a rare occurrence, and in the south
was viewed as an affliction. In the north, however, the called person
was considered godstricken. I chose a southern physician, a man of a
prominent family, to discover for himself what such a call might mean.
I have long been interested in folklore and mythology of Northern
Europe and Asia, and my yurt-dwelling nomads are the result. My
characters names are based on Mongolian patterns, in which certain
vowels are feminine, others masculine, others neutral. The nomads
follow a shamanistic religion, and believe in spirits of all
sorts--hearth-sprites, water-sprites and imps. The spirits serve as
intermediaries between humans and their gods, but also have lives of
their own.
The nomads of my book depend on horses for their survival. To learn
more about horse behavior and care, I consulted several books and also
talked to an experienced horsewoman, Avis Minger. Finally, convinced
that some practical experience would be useful, I rented a sturdy
beast. It was only my fourth time in the saddle, and I felt
apprehensive from the start. All went well, however, until we reached a
fork in the trail. I had no idea which way I wanted to turn. Apparently
the horse realized this and decided to take charge, for it turned
around and headed for home. Nothing I did could convince it otherwise,
so shortly we were back at the stable. With a bit of help, I finally
managed to get my oat-burner on the trail again. In memory of the
event, I added a few stubborn horses to my story.
The book was about half written when my agent, Russ Galen, called with
the news that it would be published in hardcover. I had not expected to
jump out of the paperback ranks that quickly!
At last, after many revisions, the manuscript was done. My editor,
Stuart Moore, mentioned that he wanted Tom Canty to do the cover, and I
innocently asked if I could talk to Tom about it. To my surprise,
Stuart agreed, and I had several fascinating conversations with the
artist. What particularly impressed me was that Tom was doing not just
a painting but a whole cover design.
Did I have any influence on the cover? You may notice the curved knife
in the skeletal hand. I suggested that, but you'll have to read the
book to understand its significance.
Will I do a sequel? That depends. For now I am off to a different
realm--Iceland at the end of the tenth century. I suspect I'll be there
awhile.
Creme de la Creme
Alan Wexelblat
Copyright 1989 by Alan Wexelblat
Always save the best for last. We start out the new year with a
selection of six of the best works I could find. This is no Christmas
generosity, though. All of them earned the high marks they got.
Chaos: Making a New Science [****+]
James Gleick
Viking paperback, 1987, 0-670-81178-5
The world we live in is not the neat, orderly, linear, solvable world
we learned about in physics. In fact, Euclidean-geometric-type physics
describes a vanishingly small portion of the real problems of the real
world. In most cases it's not even a good estimate.
The world is fundamentally chaotic; disorder and unpredictability
reign. In everything from the formation of clouds to the rise and fall
of animal populations to the occurrence of line noise on a
modem-to-modem data line, chaotic models are better predictors than
conventional models. The dimensionality of the coastline of England is
2.7; the coastline is infinitely long, but bounds a finite area. Is it
weird enough for you yet?
This strangeness of the universe encompasses Lorenz attractors and
Mandelbrot's fractal sets--patterns that repeat themselves at different
levels of detail and can be worked out on the simplest computer. Out of
it is emerging a new science, a way of seeing new things in the
swinging of pendulums, and the boiling of water. Gleick gives us
glimpses over the shoulders of these new pioneers.
The book is a fascinating look into an emerging revolution in the way
scientists, economists, meteorologists and others are looking at the
world. For my taste, Gleick spends too much time on the people and too
little on the science they are doing. But this book is a must-read if
you want to know what the next scientific revolution is going to be.
A Splendid Chaos [****]
John Shirley
Franklin Watts, 1988, 0-531-15065-8
In a chaotic system, two points that begin next to each other can end
up arbitrarily far apart. John Shirley starts off next to the standard
"kidnapped hero wakes up on strange world as plaything of superior
beings" story and ends up with a solid Movement novel. Along the way,
Shirley reworks the "quest across the world" cliche, the "good versus
evil" cliche and a host of others.
Zero is kidnapped from the streets of New York. He wakes up on Fool's
Hope, a world populated with dozens of alien intelligences, deadly
carnivorous flora and fauna, and with a human settlement reduced to
early Medieval technology. The whole mess is run by aliens called the
Meta who have brought the humans and other inhabitants here to fight it
out for survival. Each species tries to reach stations where the Meta
have placed some item of technology which can give the holder advantage.
To spice things up, there are the Currents: tornado-like bursts of
IAMtons, the basic particles of chaos. (I think, therefore IAM--get
it?) These Currents cause wild mutations in the creatures they touch,
turning them into Twists. Twists reveal their innermost natures by the
powers they acquire from the Currents: some become vampires, some
become brainless muscle-bound hulks, and so on.
The villain is Harmon Fiskle, an advocate of violent social darwinism,
of selective eugenics and breeding. He is a tight-assed, prissy
university professor who didn't like Zero before and certainly doesn't
like him now. When Fiskle is Twisted and begins a campaign forcing the
humans to Twist and join him or die, Zero and friends set out for the
greatest Technology Station of them all, hoping to find something that
will help the humans. As fantasy readers know, no quest is complete
without elves and dwarves (in some guise). Some strange aliens
accompany Zero and his friends.
Shirley sets up the idols of fantasy to smash them with a hammer of
eighties' sensibility: the leader of the human encampment is a lesbian
woman, the Meta are not benevolent providers or evil slave-masters, the
Twists are a running commentary on the venality of people. Fiskle is a
Reaganaut carried to its right- wing extreme, and Zero is an eighties
version of a young Everyman. Despite carrying the load of this
double-level message (or perhaps because of it), Splendid Chaos manages
to be entertaining and engrossing.
Deserted Cities of the Heart [****+]
Lewis Shiner
Doubleday, 0-385-24637-4, 1988
The time is today, the place is Mexico. It's a bad year for the PRI,
the party that has ruled Mexico since 1946--they have brushfire
rebellions springing up all over, the peasants are as unhappy as ever,
and the gringo soldiers from the north are trampling about doing as
they please. In the ruins of Na Chan three Americans, a handful of
descendants of the Mayans, and a ragtag band of Mexican revolutionaries
are coming to grips with experiences that will change them, will change
Mexico, and may change the world.
Thomas is an idealistic anthropologist trying to complete his studies
of Mayan culture and figure out why an apparently-thriving civilization
vanished almost overnight. His brother Eddie, a burned out rock
guitarist, signed himself out of the psychiatric hospital one night and
vanished into the Mexican jungle apparently in search of himself.
Lindsay is Eddie's wife and the object of Thomas' unrequited love. She
is looking for Eddie and will use any means and anyone, including
Thomas, to find him.
Eddie's trail leads them to Na Chan, where Thomas had led a previous
excavation of the ruins. The Lacondes, descendants of the Mayans, have
brought Eddie here. For them, Na Chan is a mystical city and
civilization is ending another of the cycles recorded in the Mayan
calendar. Their last living shaman will perform a ritual here to usher
out the old cycle and bring in the new.
For Carla, revolutionary hero, Na Chan is a place to make a last stand
with her peasant brigade against the guardia and the Americans.
Outmanned, outgunned, and wounded, it doesn't look good.
And then there are the mushrooms. Hallucinogenic, extremely toxic, native
only to this region. To the Lacondes, they are sacred; to Eddie they are
a siren call, a last escape. It is claimed that one who takes them
spiritually travels into the past and experiences what went on in history.
Throughout all of this, Shiner's writing is top notch. He carefully
avoids explanation or interruption of the flow. As a result, the levels
of real reality (the Mexico city earthquake, the Iran-Contra scandal)
blend with the levels of unreal reality (time travel that reveals
details no one should have known) until the reader isn't at all sure
what's going on. I was strongly reminded of the best parts of Robert
Anton Wilson's Illuminatus trilogies. There are no guideposts; you are
left to figure out what's real and what's the author playing with you.
Neon Lotus [****]
Marc Laidlaw
Bantam, 0-553-27165-2, 1988
Laidlaw has a talent for making the most outlandish ideas work by sheer
force of writing talent. His Mirrorshades story, "400 Boys," about
post-nuclear mutant gangs made an interesting read of a
ludicrous-seeming plot. Neon Lotus strains the reader's credulity again
and Laidlaw succeeds again.
The plot revolves around Tibetan lore. A brilliant Tibetan scientist
has developed a device to track souls as they journey from death to
reincarnation. When he is assassinated, his soul is tracked to the
body of Marianne Strauss. Grown to young adulthood, she goes to Tibet
to try and deal with the half-felt memories and urgings she feels in a
classic journey in search of herself.
Tibet is occupied by the Chinese, who have suppressed Tibetan religion
and culture. When Marianne is deemed by the State Oracle to be the
Gyayum Chenmo--the Great Mother--who will free the land from the
Chinese and bear the child that will be the next Dalai Lama she becomes
an instant target.
Marianne is given a mission by Chenrezi, the patron god of the
Tibetans, to retrieve five magical relics. The book is the story of her
search for the artifacts and her journeys across Tibet.
The novel is rich with the feel of Tibet. It's blended with equal
helpings of science fiction (night-flying radar-absorbing CIA jets) and
fantasy (bodhisattvas that live in Marianne's mind). This is no easy
task--given our unfamiliarity with the legends and culture involved it
would be easy to stoop to condescension or triviality. Similarly, it
would be easy to portray the occupying Chinese as monolithic brutes and
the natives as noble savages. Laidlaw avoids these pitfalls and others.
My only gripe with the book is the ending. Somehow it all seems too
easy in the end. The story just stops. Not with a bang, not with a
whimper--just ends. Still, it's a worthwhile read.
Mindplayers [*****-]
Pat Cadigan
Bantam, 0-553-26585-7, 1987
I can't say enough good things about this book. Simply put, Cadigan's
writing is the most mindblowingly brilliant stuff I've seen since I
first read William Gibson. Every few pages I found myself shaking my
head in amazement as Cadigan wove in new idea after new idea.
In the not-too-distant future, the drug of choice will be the mind. We
will enter the artificial realities inside our skulls. Here simple
things like the laws of physics have no sway; reality is what we
imagine it to be and it changes with our whims. We will have whole
classes of professional mindplayers: neurosis peddlers, reality
affixers, pathosfinders, and more. You can buy madcaps--helmets that
will induce a small insanity for a little while. Why not; it's a trip
like any other, right?
Yes, you read that right--the word is "madcap." One of the brilliant
strokes of the book is the weaving in of obvious puns and humor.
Cadigan manages to walk the tightrope between funny-haha and
funny-crazy and use the best of both worlds. Who else could have a
sardonic heroine called Deadpan Allie?
When Alexandria Victoria Haas gets stuck with a madcap's paranoia that
doesn't go away when it should, she is left at a mental drycleaners and
picked up by the police. Faced with the alternatives of jail and
psychological service she opts for the latter, entering training to
become a pathosfinder. So she goes to J. Walter Tech, the country's
premiere school for mindplayers. The book tells the story of her
training there, the people she meets, and her graduation and move to
the Nelson Nelson agency. N.N., head of his self-named business, hires
out mindplayers to help clients. Deadpan Allie meets some pretty
strange folk while working for Nelson Nelson.
The book's only real weakness is its structure. Told as a series of
episode- chapters, the format works well until Allie is established at
the agency. After that, one chapter begins to look like any other and
the recurring characters--though interesting--don't do much to help. In
a way this is less a novel than a novella and a couple of short stories.
Nevertheless, this is still the most devastatingly original writing
I've seen in a long time and I highly recommend it to one and all.
Mona Lisa Overdrive [*****]
William Gibson
Gollancz hardcover (British edition), 0-575-04020-3, 1988
This is where it all began. The Sprawl. Home to cyberspace, to the
cowboys and their decks. Home of gomi--the detritus of the upper
classes--and the hustlers and hackers who make use of it. William
Gibson has brought us home one last time.
If you haven't read Neuromancer or Count Zero recently, go back and
reread them. They and their characters figure prominently in Mona Lisa
Overdrive and Gibson doesn't stop to let you figure it out. If you
can't pick up on the hints and whispers, you're out of luck.
There is also a cast of newcomers mixed in with the old favorites.
Kumiko-- daughter of a Yakuza warlord, she is sent to England to be
safe from her father's enemies. But her English guardian may or may not
have sold her out. Slick Henry-- small-time ex-con and hustler in the
Sprawl. In payment of a favor, he takes in the comatose body of The
Count, jacked permanently into an advanced cyberspace rig. Angie
Mitchell--now the world's favorite simstim star, drying out from a
designer-drug habit, still haunted by memories of Bobby and still
running with the loas of cyberspace. Unable to escape them and the
biochips in her head, she has changed, they have changed, and cyberspace
has changed. Mona--hooker, drug addict, attached to a useless dreamer,
dying for a ticket out of the Sprawl. Of no interest to anyone, until
one day someone important notices that she looks like Angie.
Gibson uses the spiraling plot technique of Count Zero to great effect
in this book. You know that these people will, somehow, get
together--that their destinies are intertwined. Yet Gibson skips among
them with such ease and fluidity that it's still a surprise.
There's been a lot of talk about whether or not this will be the last
Sprawl novel. Gibson is reputed to have said so, but people doubt that
he can walk away from such a huge money-maker. After reading this book,
I have no doubt. Gibson has, in Mona Lisa Overdrive, pushed the envelope
of mirrorshades writing. He either has to move on or crash and burn.
The style was thought to have been worked for all it's worth--certainly
cheap imitators are moving in in droves. But Gibson proves once again
that he's the master, the one whom the others are trying to imitate. If
you don't like William Gibson's writing, you're not going to like this
any better. But if you have any respect for a writing genius, don't
pass this one by.
