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OtherRealms Issue 22 Part 13
Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 13
Copyright 1988
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 or reproduced
only in its entirety and only if all copyrights, author credits and
this notice, including the return addresses remain intact.
No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way
without the express permission of the author.
Your Turn
Letters to OtherRealms
Thomas Maddox
About the interview with Bruce Sterling conducted by Alan Wexelblat,
and I would be most appreciative if you would convey the following,
expressing my anger and disgust at being misquoted and misrepresented.
The passages in question (both on page 15):
AW:Reading through the first issue of SF Eye, it's amazing some of the
things people say about you. Maddox just goes on and on during
this interview with Gibson.
BS:I'm a 'treacherous, crazed Rastafarian'? I 'emit ectoplasm?'
AW:Listening to Maddox, the way he says Chairman it's like he means
Chairman Mao. I sort of expect him to get up and start waving
'Bruce's Little Red Book' or something.
Ah, where to start? To begin with, I do not go "on and on" in either of
the Gibson interviews, the one I conducted or the one Takayuki Tatsumi
conducted in which I participated.
My Sterling contributions to Takayuki's interview are as follows:
In response to an extended Gibson paragraph about Sterling,
that concludes, "It's like watching somebody eat live
chickens," I say, "Bruce is a monster. He is, he's a sport."
In response to Gibson's claiming to have a "hypertrophied plot muscle,"
I say, "Bruce is the same."
Finally, in response to a claim by Steve Brown that Bruce is whipping
up a movement in Austin, I say:
"He's like a mad treacherous Rastafarian down there in Texas.
This has nothing to do with science fiction. It has to do with
Bruce's charismatic leader qualities. Bruce the messiah." Thus,
in an interview that takes up eleven pages and talks about
influences on Gibson, I mention Sterling three times, twice in
response to others' comments. My final comment, in the
ironic/Hunter Thompson mode, reflects the mixed feelings I have
about Bruce in his Chairman Bruce mode (very complex issues
involved here, that I've discussed with Bruce publicly and
privately). Also, please note that the "emit ectoplasm" comment
was Gibson's not mine.
In the interview I conducted with Gibson (which, by the way, was done
publicly and edited from a tape transcript by Steve Brown), my
contributions in re: Sterling are as follows:
On the last of eight pages of interview, in response to a question to
Gibson from the audience, "What sort of scientific and technical background
do you have?" I said, "I can answer that. He asked Bruce Sterling."
In short, what is Wexelblat going on about? I suspect strongly that he
has conflated my responses with the rhetorical excesses indulged in by
John Shirley at a SFRA panel, a transcript of which is also in SF Eye.
Shirley refers to "Chairman Bruce." I don't. Shirley appears to want to
function as ideological front man for cyberpunk. I don't.
In fact, concerning cyberpunk I say (page 15), "There is no there
there. The whole thing is a media ghost... There is a movement
forming. It's not this, and it has nothing to do with this..."
Thus I conclude that with regard to both letter and spirit, Wexelblat
has fucked up -- quoted me wrongly and portrayed me as some sort of
CyberAcolyte spouting the Chairman's words when absolutely nothing that
I said (or have said, or thought) would lead to that conclusion.
Bad journalism, bad reading, glib bullshit.
[Alan responds: I'm glad to see Mr. Maddox putting forth such a
carefully-reasoned position. I'm sorry I said Tom Maddox went
"...on and on." I'm also really sorry if, contrary to his
desires, I've included Mr. Maddox in anything I consider
interesting; I hereby retract my sense of amazed respect. Far
be it from me to imply that Tom Maddox is not his own person.]
Dean R. Lambe
On your comments on Forge of God, it's not the "SETI Lament" -- officially,
it's the "Fermi Paradox" after physicist Enrico Fermi's question to
Norbert Weiner and others, "Well, then, where are they?" And Bear
certainly isn't the first to tackle this theme, although he's one of
the first to deal with the possibility that one Berserker species in
the galaxy could and would wipe out all other competition.
Also, to your comments to the Harvey letter, it's been a misnomer to
call much of psychology and most of biology "soft" sciences for some
time now. Certainly, where the two fields overlap, the ground is pretty
solid, and no one without a firm understanding of hard science can be
much of a biologist these days unless they plan to restrict their
activities to counting bugs and branches. but then, the American public
is biologically ignorant, in no small part due to the legacy of the
1926 Scopes "Monkey Trial," as I've written for a number of years.
Fred Bals
On Graphic Novels and the Hugos:
1) Create a category called "Special." Not "Special <anything>." Just
"Special."
2) Put everything which doesn't fit into the other categories into
"Special."
3) Define "Special" with a statement such as:
"The Special category is for those works of science fiction
which are not appropriate for the other categories, but have
been nominated as deserving of recognition by the science
fiction community. Entries in the Special category do not
compete against each other. Rather, if any entry garners a
<pick a percentage> percentage of eligible members' votes, then
it will receive a Special Hugo Award. Members can obviously
vote for as many entries as they wish and more than one entry
can receive a Special award."
I'm still a child of the sixties as much as anything else, and think
the idea of "Best" whether it happens to be for Oscars, Hugos, or the
Westminster Kennel Club is ridiculous competitiveness. To my mind,
awards have one purpose: To bring superior things to general
attention. For every argument I've heard for or against Watchmen, I've
heard very few people argue that it was not a superior work. It also
fits the best definition of science fiction I know: If you eliminate
the scientific or fantastic element from it you no longer have a story.
The bottom line is that it deserves to be given a fair chance to be
recognized by the science fiction community, as much -- if not more --
for our "community's" credibility as for the work's sake itself (one
finds it difficult to believe that Alan Moore is sitting somewhere in
nail-biting nervousness about all this). But it doesn't deserve to be
squeezed into the "Novel" category where it would obviously lose
whatever its competition because of Talmudic arguments about whether it
was kosher or not. It also doesn't deserve weird catch-all categories
such as "Other Forms." Neither, for that matter, do the other
unfortunate entries in that category.
Laurie brought up the point that after Watchmen, there are presently
few -- if any -- other graphic novels which can seriously be promoted
to the science fiction community (I would have made an argument for
Elektra:Assassin, but I'm weird). There probably won't be until V for
Vendetta completes its run next year and is collected. That, in my
opinion, is another argument for "Special." You award works as they
come along without levering them into unsuitable, existing categories
or creating a slew of new categories at every turn. You don't compare
apples against oranges. And you get out of this competitive nonsense.
Unlike you, I'm a two- rather than three-column fan. I like the two-
column look much better. Boring or not, it's easier to read, plus it
leaves nice wide white space gutters. But together with the other
reasons you cited, I imagine three-column also makes better economic
sense. And yes, I think the less typefaces and styles the better, too.
The offset and layout make the issue look real good, but what makes the
issue from a design standpoint are the Brad Foster pieces. You're right
that offset reproduces b&w so much better. Foster's pieces are
alternately beautiful and funny (and sometimes beautifully funny). I
realize that every issue can't be a Brad Foster issue, as much as I
might want it to be, but I hope to see a lot more of his stuff in
OtherRealms -- as well as other art equally as good.
I was going to say I'm no horror fan, but that's untrue. I like good
horror, as I like all good writing, genres notwithstanding. Rick
Kleffel looks like an excellent addition to the crew, especially since
he also doesn't seem to feel restricted by any genre boundaries.
Excellent first column. I now want to read many of the books he
reviewed. What more could you ask of any reviewer?
On the down side, I wasn't very impressed with Alan's interview with
Sterling. I've no firm feelings why. Interviews are tough to do well. I
think Alan realized it too. Good interviews depend on some sort of
central focus. Sterling flails around from subject to subject, not
staying long enough on any one to provide any insights about it, or any
insights about him either.
On the other hand, Sterling might just not be very interesting to me.
I think he's a competent enough writer, but he seems more a weird
cyberpunk Fan-boy mutation than writer at times, if you know what I
mean. He's like what Tom Galloway might evolve into if Galloway went
punk. Sterling's main concern seems to be thinking a lot about The
State of the Art of Science Fiction rather than writing.
Steve Chapin
I'm glad to see somebody did a review of Barbara Hambly's The Silicon
Mage. While I agree wholeheartedly with Charles de Lint's assessment of
the plot similarity in Barbara Hambly's The Silicon Mage and The Silent
Tower, I feel he misses the mark slightly, and gives Hambly better
marks than she deserves. Her presentation of computers is, in a word,
insulting. She obviously does not understand the smallest part of
computer science, and it shows through in her writing. In the first
book, she refers to such inane terms as "CP/M pixels." I really would
like to know what a CP/M pixel is...as a friend of mine remarked, it
seems that she has discovered a new hobby, and is trying to incorporate
it into her latest works without really understanding that about which
she writes.
I would subtract at least 1/2 star from the book rating; despite all
her technical flaws, she does write well. I'd give the book a **+, with
a ***- on the outside.
Tom Galloway
According to Locus, The Falling Woman wasn't eligible for this year's
Hugo, although it was eligible for the Nebula. This is because of a new
wrinkle in the Nebula rules which allow an author to withdraw one
edition of a work in favor of another. In this case, Murphy withdrew
the hardcover in favor of the paperback, which came out last year. The
hardcover apparently came out in '86, and so TFW would have been
eligible for the Hugos awarded at Conspiracy rather than this year.
[Very true. I knew that, but I wasn't thinking about the
differences in the rules when I made my comments. There's been
a fair amount of controversy about the Nebula hold-back rule,
because it can give a book a much longer word-of-mouth time
than it would otherwise get. Personally, I think the more
complicated you make the qualification procedure, the less
realistic the award is. This is true in the Hugos as well as
the Nebula. Would Murphy has won for Falling Woman a year ago?
Good question. Probably not, frankly. So the change in rules
helped her here -- but who did it hurt? -- chuq]
Rick Genter
Since you've recently been talking about fonts and layouts and such,
I'll start there. I found the use of fonts quite comfortable with the
exception of the font used for the cover (Canaith?). It strikes me
as...well...wimpy.
I really empathized with your Editor's Notebook. I also found it
interesting, a good explanation of what goes into an issue of
OtherRealms. On the other hand, it read a little bit like "oh, I'm so
busy, and everything's going wrong, and I'm sacrificing body and soul
to get this magazine out, and..." and, to quote Bette Midler, the
thought "why bother?" crossed my mind. Mind you, I understand exactly
how crazy things get.
Overall, I found the technical quality of the editing uneven. For the
most part it was good, but there were spots (Neal Wilgus' review of
Adulthood Rites) where there were so many typos that I felt like I was
stumbling rather than reading. I'm assuming this is the type of thing
you are targeting by shifting your deadlines and making Electronic
OtherRealms a second priority.
Then there's the interview. I have mixed reactions to it; I think it's
great that OtherRealms was able to print an exclusive interview with a
relatively big name like Bruce Sterling. I think it's also great that
Alan was able to interview him.
On the other hand, the style of the interview had me pulling (what
remains of) my hair out. A lot of it can be blamed on Sterling himself,
and the preface to the interview did state that it would jump around,
but I found it almost too rambling to remain interested in it. Alan has
to take some of the responsibility; part of being a good journalist is
being able to manage the interviewee.
Alan's reviews were fine. Also, he seemed to be the only one who
actually recommended that people should not buy a book (Starfire).
Maybe that is a result of the reviewers choosing not to review books
they don't like; I personally think that does a disservice to the
reading public.
I liked Brad Foster's artwork. Overall, I give the magazine [****-] :-).
[Getting the typos under control is the primary purpose for
changing the deadlines. I hope that this issue shows that it's
working. It's funny how all those little glitches show up on
the way to the printer....
The other reason for the change in schedule was to try to make
sure I don't get myself into a situation where I feel compelled
to write whiny editorials about how rotten life is. One fanzine
reviewer claimed I was going through Editor Burnout and that
OtherRealms was likely to go away soon -- nothing is further
from the truth. It was all those other things that kept me away
from OtherRealms I was bitching about. With Macintosh Horizons
(where I was a contributing editor) folding and the end of a
few other commitments ending, there isn't much of a scheduling
problem anymore. Unless I get really stupid someday and create one.
The final responsibility for the interview doesn't lay with
Alan, but with me. He did the interview, the transcription and
the first editing. I did the final edit and most of the major
cleanup. Anything that didn't get cleaned up was something I
didn't catch, however there's only so much you can do to make
an interview readable without taking the words out of the
interviewee's mouth or changing his meaning. When it came to a
choice between clarity and context, I stuck with context. -- chuq]
Charles de Lint
Thanks for the latest OtherRealms. Looks great! I enjoyed your new
columnist, Rick Kleffel. He's done a good job on this first column.
Speaking of columns, one thing I'm noticing -- and enjoying a lot -- is
that different columnists are reviewing some of the same books. It
makes for fascinating reading as to how much a book can affect people
in different ways. What a complete bummer (I'm dating myself with
that) about both Simak and Heinlein. Unlike most folks, I didn't start
off SF with Heinlein -- though I have enjoyed going back and reading
his stuff once I got into the field -- but I was weaned on Simak. A
great humanitarian writer. It's so depressing how all these fabulous
writers are getting to the age now where we're going to be losing more
and more of them. There are lots of new writers around, but there was
something very special about these trailblazers that many people seem
to forget these days. Sigh.
----
End of Part 13
