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OtherRealms Issue 23 Part 02
Electronic OtherRealms #23
Winter, 1989
Part 2
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.
Reviewing The Reviewers
A Survey of Science Fiction Critics
Chuq Von Rospach
Copyright 1989 by Chuq Von Rospach
Why review the reviewers? It is impossible for any reviewer or
publication to completely cover the field. I want to help readers find
reviews that can help them make their purchasing decisions. Different
reviewers have different preferences and I feel it is important that
people find reviewers they are comfortable and compatible with.
Finally, I think it important that the people who are doing a good job
get some recognition and the people who aren't get constructive criticism.
I differentiate between a reviewer and a critic. A reviewer is a
consumer advocate--they help people make purchasing decisions.
OtherRealms is a reviewzine--it gets information to the buying public
to help them find the books that are right for them.
Critics try to put a book into context, to look at the deeper meanings
and help us get a better understanding of the work and how it relates
to us and to the field. This requires a good literary background and a
deep knowledge of the genre and its history. A.J. Budrys of Fantasy and
Science Fiction and the New York Review of Science Fiction are two examples.
Reviews should be considered "pre-sales" writing. They're written to
help a reader make a purchasing decision. Criticism, on the other hand,
is best studied after you have finished the work, when you can consider
the writing and the criticism together to gain a better understanding.
I've broken the publications discussed into three categories: the major
magazines, semi-professional magazines and everyone else. Remember that
size isn't an indicator that the reviewer is better.
The major magazines are Analog, Amazing, Fantasy & Science Fiction,
Twilight Zone and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Amazing
doesn't publish reviews, but it has been running a series of essays
that I've found fascinating. In the January, 1988 issue, they published
a piece by Greg Benford that basically said that fantasy wasn't as good
as real science fiction, and that people who wrote fantasy did so
because they weren't able to write good SF. Any reader of fantasy knows
these arguments are (1) patently false, and (2) guaranteed to create a
Controversy. It did--in the January, 1989 issue a group of fantasy
writers (Judith Tarr, Susan Shwartz, Lillian Stewart Carl and Katharine
Kerr) wrote a strong, well- reasoned rebuttal. In the same issue, Poul
Anderson used the same article as a starting point in his essay
"Science Fiction and History," where he discussed the societal
structures used in science fiction and their analogs in Earth history.
Analog is the largest magazine and Tom Easton, its reviewer, is the
best in the field. He has a strong bias towards hard SF, which isn't
surprising considering the magazine he writes for. He has the ability
to put a book into perspective without wasting words, although
occasionally, like his review of Full Spectrum, he gets so succinct he
never says much of anything. If he has a weakness, it is fantasy, and
when he does cover fantasy books he sometimes seems to be rating them
down because they're fantasy rather than their having any specific flaw.
Hot on Easton's heels is Baird Searles at Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine.
I'd call it a dead heat except for a couple of structural problems in
Searles' column. His reviews are started with column headlines that
tend to fall somewhere between cute and irritating, and I've talked to
a couple of authors who have found the titles demeaning--even if it's a
positive review. Another thing Searles does is mention books being
published by people associated with IASFM. I think the column would be
better served by either reviewing them, or ignoring them. Currently,
they get an implicit nod of the head without ever really being discussed.
Beyond that, Searles is witty and lots of fun to read. He has a strong
knowledge of the field and he covers both SF and fantasy with
enthusiasm. While Easton is slightly better technically, Searles
covers a wider range of material.
Also writing for IASFM on a quarterly basis in a critical mode is
Norman Spinrad. I'm not a big fan of Spinrad's writing, and the first
few columns he wrote for IASFM were nasty, mean-spirited attacks in the
guise of criticism. In the last few columns he's dropped the Harlanesque
angry-young-man pose and started doing some serious criticism. I don't
always agree with him but he's makes me think. He might yet turn into a
powerful voice in the field of criticism. I don't recommend him as a
reason to get IASFM, but he makes a good addition to Searles' work.
Fantasy & Science Fiction is the home of A,J. Budrys,who is considered
by many to be the premier active critic in the field. In the last year
and a half, they have also added Orson Scott Card as a reviewer to free
Budrys to do more criticism in his column. I think, in retrospect, that
this was a mistake. Card's column is interesting and he is determined
to review good but obscure books you're likely to miss. He does a
competent column, although it's somewhat lifeless and dry at times.
The problem at F&SF is Budrys. Freed of the need to structure his
criticism around books, there are times when he seems to be groping for
Something Important To Say, he sometimes overemphasizes something
trivial or unimportant in an attempt to be Critic At Large. Another
problem is tone. Budrys used to write about important things in the
field. Now he writes about things that Budrys feels should be
important. Sometimes they are, but not always. Budrys' column no
longer revolves around science fiction. In the column, SF revolves
around Budrys.
A major problem I have is that Budrys has shilled, on more than one occasion,
the Writers of the Future Contest (he is chief administrator) or a book
by one of its winners. Notwithstanding that I agreed with him on it. He
is using the column to push something that he has a financial commitment
with. This creates a conflict of interest and kills his credibility.
I have a lot of respect for Budrys. In obscure ways, he was one of the
catalysts to the founding of OtherRealms. I now find myself doing
little more than skimming his column--I don't trust his judgment
anymore, and he isn't saying much I find interesting to read. James
Blish, in The Issue at Hand by William Atheling Jr. (A pseudonym for
Blish; Advent Press) talks about some of the problems he had with his
criticism because of his decision to choose a pseudonym to write under,
and the problems of conflicts of interest in criticism. I see
parallels to that here. Budrys has, for what I believe he sees are the
best of intentions, dug himself a credibility hole and jumped into it
head first. Unless he can extricate himself, he's going to put himself
in a position where he'll be useless as a critic.
The last of the large magazines is Twilight Zone, which runs a review
column by Ed Bryant. Bryant is the only reviewer covering Horror.
Bryant's good, and he does a good job of looking at a book in-depth
without wasting precious column space. If you read horror and aren't
reading Twilight Zone, you're missing an important resource.
The next category is the semi-professional magazine. These are smaller,
generally under 10,000 circulation. Two of the magazines, Locus and SF
Chronicle are trade journals. The third, Aboriginal SF is a large semi-pro
or small professional fiction magazine, depending on how you define it.
Aboriginal uses two reviewers: Darrell Schweitzer and Janice Eisen.
Schweitzer has been around the field for a while and knows his stuff.
Eisen is the former editor of the fanzine Twilight Zine and looks at
more fantasy. Both are good, solid reviewers who are assets to the
magazine.
Locus is the major trade publication for the science fiction field.
While officially considered a semi-pro for Hugo purposes, it is a
large, professional magazine. Editor Charlie Brown has four different
review columns, dedicating more space to reviews than any non-fanzine.
The reviewers are Faren Miller, Tom Whitmore, Carolyn Cushman and Dan
Chow. It's hard to choose a favorite. I read both Miller and Whitmore
closely each issue, Cushman has a strong background in fantasy that she
uses to good effect, and Chow has turned himself into an good columnist
(in a previous version of this article, I ripped Chow to little pieces.
I now happily recant that position). Cushman and Miller both do a
mixture of reviewing and criticism, while Chow and Whitmore stick
primarily with reviews. There are some voids in their coverage (no
horror, and there are some authors who don't seem to get as much
coverage as their stature in the industry would imply), but they also
make a good attempt to read and report on first novels and the lesser
publicized, smaller works. I read Locus' reviews carefully every month,
and usually find an interesting booksI would have otherwise missed.
Science Fiction Chronicle is the smaller competitor to Locus. While in
many areas Locus and SF Chronicle cover the same material, SF Chronicle
is weaker as a review resource. There is a single reviewer, Don D'Ammassa,
who is limited in what he can do by the format--SF Chronicle publishes
as many reviews as it can fit in (typically 40 or more per monthly
issue) with a paragraph or so for each book. This means D'Ammassa
can't talk about anything in detail--there's little more than a quick
overview or plot summary and a few simple comments. I find the reviews
to be of very limited value. There simply isn't enough information in
them for me. Fans of OtherRealms' Pico Review section may well prefer
SF Chronicle's reviews to other sources, but I can't recommend it.
The last category are fanzines and small magazines. They're defined as
having very small print-runs (under most circumstances, less than
1,000) and are usually hobbies or personal publications rather than
commercial publications. In some cases, all they discuss is criticism
or reviews. In other's that's only part of their material.
Fosfax is a fun fanzine, and is the fanzine I feel is closest to
OtherRealms. It's almost exclusively reviews and has an letter column
that covers a wide range of subjects. It reminds me of OtherRealms when
it was monthly. It's monthly, and unlike most fanzines keeps to its
schedule, and is a magazine I look forward to every month.
Lan's Lantern is a Hugo winner. It's a large (typically more than 100
pages) fanzine that is published about three times a year. While a good
portion of is dedicated to reviews, it has a very strong letter column
and publishes a range of articles about many different topics. Lan's is
always fun to read and has a wide range of opinions.
One of the newer kids on the block is SF Eye. Four issues have been
published so far. SF Eye is a review/criticism semi-pro, but doesn't seem
to have decided what it wants to be when it grows up--issue #3 was fiction.
SF Eye is marginal right now. If they get their act together, it can
turn into a fascinating publication. Unfortunately, the administrative
end seems to be somewhat chaotic--they had a major hassle with their
Post Office Box a while back, their publication schedule is erratic,
and their subscription system has some glitches--I was notified that my
subscription, which started with issue #3, was expiring with issue #4.
When I contacted them, they promptly fixed it.
There's some good stuff here: an interview of Clive Barker by Dick
Lupoff; an interview of Ellen Datlow (of Omni magazine) by Ed Bryant.
Much of the rest is pedestrian material, although there's nothing
really bad. The range is from about average to pretty good. The design
of the magazine needs work. Many of the photos they publish (especially
in the Datlow interview and the covers in the review section) are so badly
reproduced they would have been better off with white space.
SF Eye did a couple of things that pushed my buttons While they claim
to have a no-pseudonym policy, they broke the policy to allow various
people to attack Bridge publications and the Hubbard people. For
whatever reason, they've allowed people to publicly attack another
organization from a privileged, private bunker. If they made the
exception here, where are they going to make the next exception? When
someone wants to write an 'objective' review of something they were
involved in? When someone wants to make sure their own book gets
reviewed? Credibility is the only thing a magazine of reviews and
criticism has to offer its readers. James Blish discusses it in The
Issue At Hand. SF Eye has severely damaged their credibility with me.
For the best of intentions, they've followed Budrys into the
credibility swamp.
Another thing they did was an attack against fantasy in their
editorial: "...with your letters we can become invincible, we can
banish all levels and unicorns forever, why we can even... Well, maybe
we won't get that serious." (emphasis theirs) Yes, they're being
flippant, but the attitude is obvious--fantasy is not real fiction.
This kind of holier-than-thou attitude from within the SF community
bothers me, especially when you realize it's nothing more than the same
kind of bullshit that frosts us when the mainstream does it to science
fiction. Fantasy is a legitimate fiction form, and the folks who insist
on thinking of it as bastardized SF are playing the same kind of
power-games that the mainstream tries to play on SF to "keep us in our
place." It's time we all realize there's room enough for all of us out
there. If we can't keep from building our own Ghetto within a Ghetto,
do we have any hope at all that we'll get the walls around science
fiction broken down?
New York Review of Science Fiction is the newest magazine on the block,
having published (as I write this) two issues. It has a strong, well
qualified group working with it--Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden,
David Hartwell, Samuel R. Delany, Susan Palwick and Debbie Notkin.
They're attempting a 24 page monthly magazine that does primarily
criticism. The first two issues have been interesting, and once it
settles in and finds its direction, this could be a top-flight
magazine. Right now, it's uneven, but worth looking at.
Thrust is one of the older criticism semi-pro magazines. I have sincere
doubts about its survival. It has skipped issues completely and when it
does publish the material is boring. It has been abandoned by much of
its staff and advertising. It's marking time before it dies. I can't
recommend it--there isn't anything to it any more.
Weird Tales has brought on John Betancourt to do book reviews. He reviewed
for Amazing in the past and it's good to see him with a column again.
My recommendations? Locus is the best resource for a person interested
in science fiction reviews. I also recommend Tom Easton and Baird
Searles. People interested in criticism should locate a copy of the
New York Review of Science Fiction.
