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OtherRealms Issue 24 Part 10
Electronic OtherRealms #24
Spring, 1989
Part 10 of 10
Copyright 1989 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved
OtherRealms may not be reproduced without permission from Chuq Von Rospach.
Permission is given to electronically distribute this
issue only if all copyrights, author credits and return
addresses remain intact. No article may be reprinted or re-used
without permission of the author.
Charles C. Ryan
Editor, Aboriginal SF
Welcome to the real world of publishing. Your cost anxieties are the
same ones we face every day... keeping the price in line while keeping
up the quality of the product. You probably made the right decision.
I'm glad you think Darrell Schweitzer and Janice Eisen are both good
solid reviewers for us, but I see you are still referring to us as a
"semi- prozine."
We've been a prozine since March of 1988 and passed the circulation of
Amazing sometime last summer. Our circulation now is about 20,000. We
tripled our circulation last year and hope to triple it again this
year.
Er ... again while I appreciate our listing under magazines received,
the sub rates you cited were incorrect. It's $3 per copy, or $14 for 6
issues/1 yr., or $24 for 12 issues/2 yrs. I'd appreciate it if you
could clarify this as we'd never get any subscriptions at the higher
rate you cited. Thanks.
Gary Farber
10 Fairview Ave., #4F
New York, NY 10040
I've had some post office trouble. Could you print my current address
and tell people that if they've had mail to me returned, please resend it.
[[Consider it done. -- chuq]]
Brad W. Foster
POB 165246
Irving, TX 75016
First of all, some very important bookkeeping here - please note my New
Address up top there. Toss out the old street address, I've long moved
from there, and please use this new PO Box from now on. Thanks.
Sorry to hear about the financial doings of last few months. You bring
up a point that I still haven't quite worked out -- that is, the idea
that "taking advertising means that OtherRealms becomes responsible to
its advertisers instead of its readers" and that since you'd be
reviewing books advertisers publish, it would create "a potential
conflict of interest". How so? I've seen this line before in other
magazines, and it didn't make much sense. If they don't like what
you're doing, they are certainly free not to advertise, but then that
would put you no worse off than you are now, with no advertising
anyway. Right?
[[The key phrase is "free to not advertise" -- when you start taking
advertising, it starts paying the printing bills. Generally speaking,
the cost of a page of advertising should pay for four pages of magazine
(more or less). When the advertising disappears, you have 40 pages of
magazine and 18 pages of money. Suddenly the magazine's in deep
trouble. If the advertising leaves, you can't publish, because the
advertising was paying for it. On a normal magazine, subscription money
is essentially the overhead and profit -- advertising pays for the
printing and postage. It doesn't even *have* to happen. All you really
need to do is start worrying about the advertising leaving. "Gee, if I
say *this* they may get mad, and if they pull their advertising I lose
12 pages of material. So I'll say it *this* way instead, just to be
safe". The reality is, when you take advertising, your loyalty *has* to
be to keeping the advertising there, because if the advertising leaves,
the publication goes away.
The way OtherRealms is structured now, I may get kicked off a review
copy list, but I don't depend on those anyway [OtherRealms has been
kicked off of one publisher's list three times. It always seems to show
up again a few months later, for some reason. It comes down to this: I
never want to be in a position where I have to worry about killing or
toning down a review to keep a publisher happy. I want my loyalty to be
with the reader. I never want people to think I'm pushing a book
because there's an ad in the magazine, or avoiding a publisher because
there isn't. All that matters is the book, and that's the way I want to
keep it. -- chuq]]
Jeremy Crampton
On David Hartwell. The inevitable problem for someone who takes his
position is that he is bound to be accused of elitism or
ghettoization. Don't you think that what he is trying to do
(separating that from what he is doing) is worthy? If his message is
"less crap, more good stuff" who can disagree? Of course, the obvious
objection then becomes "well, my good stuff is your crap" or, "why is
my opinion inferior to yours?" It is a long-standing problem; on the
one hand you don't like such people to denigrate your reading as
trivial, and on the other he doesn't like the proliferation of
throwaway books.
[[[What Hartwell is trying to do *is* worthy. And I support it. Pushing
for higher standards and requiring more out of the field and its
authors is the only way we'll continue to improve the craft.
At the same time, however, there's no way I can support an attitude of
"you don't know what's good for you. Here, let me tell you." That was
the primary opinion I was arguing with. Let him show me the way towards
greatness. Don't, however, remove the alternatives -- there are many of
us who *love* reading purely for entertainment, and Hartwell would get
rid of most of the fiction that is set up primarily for that. He's
forgotten that fiction can be fun. Me, personally, I get headaches when
people start shoving Meaning and Messages into my head.
If he wanted to show me what was good for me and enlighten me as to why
it was good, I'd be up there pushing with him. What he wants to do,
though, is force me to only read what he defines as "good" and not give
me alternatives. That's called censorship. Even for the best of
intents, I can't support that.]]]
James Harris
My biggest disagreement is your passing statements on the fanzine
Thrust. I do not find it boring. The material in Thrust appeals to me.
Things like George Alec Effinger writing about his book When Gravity
Fails or Kim Stanley Robinson writing about Philip K. Dick, add to my
sense of history about SF.
Your conflict is between your personal finances and producing the
magazine you envision. My conflict: I've only got so much money to
spend on magazines, with only so much time to read, and it's time to
send you eleven dollars and renew my subscription. You said in the past
that $2.85 would cover your cost of sending out one issue. Now that you
are half that size, are we paying extra?
By the way, what would happen if you only mailed OtherRealms to those
people who paid for an issue, or had something published in that
particular issue? (I'm just being curious about the business of
publishing a fanzine.) I can understand trading with selective fanzines
that might interest you - but don't you get a lot of stuff you don't
want to read? And is a LOC really that important?
[[See my comments in the Notebook on Thrust. The reality was, up until
last issue, people were paying $2.85 for a copy of a magazine that cost
about $5.00. When OtherRealms was small, I happily ate the difference.
Unfortunately, there comes a point where you start choking on your
success -- 'donating' a couple of hundred dollars an issue is a lot
different than 'donating' a couple of thousand. In reality, I found
what seems to be a good compromise. I was able to get OR down to the
size it needed to be (costs last issue ran about $2.80 each, but paper
prices have continued to spiral. sigh) by reducing page count by about
50% while only removing about 15% of the actual material -- a small
chunk from each column, a little more judicious editing and the
interviews. In all, that's not as bad as I expected it to be. I've
also done a number of other things to get costs down, including drop
many of the "quiet" readers from the list.
Why trade fanzines? It's a form of contact that I enjoy. The total
number of trades I have is reasonably small, especially now after the
purge. And yes, occasionally I get a fanzine that I don't care for. And
occasionally I get something like Renaissance Fan (which is beautiful
and enjoyable to look at even if I don't care about the writing), or
YHOS which is guaranteed to make me think. I get fanzines from Australia
and England and Sweden and Norway -- which gives me a perspective on
the world I wouldn't have, otherwise. Fanzines aren't everyone's cup of
tea, but I find them fascinating. That's why I trade fanzines.
And are LOCs important? Definitely, for three reasons: LOCs are the
things that tell me how I'm doing -- when I screw up, I hear about it;
when I do good, people tell me. it's how I decide what material I want
to put in OtherRealms and what I don't, because LOCs tell me what the
readers want.
LOCs are also egoboo. LOCs make me feel good -- even negative LOCs tell
me I affected you enough to want to write. They tell me that
OtherRealms is being read and appreciated -- and that makes me feel
good. Finally, LOCs are an alternate form of subscriptions. If you
can't/won't send me the money, I'm giving you an alternative. Spend a
chunk of your life and fifty cents, and tell me you care enough about
OtherRealms to want to see it again. If you can't afford the $11, buy
the stamps and envelopes and paper and take the time to say hi.
Subscriptions pay part of the bill. LOCs tell me it's all worthwhile.
That's why LOCs are important. Besides, they're fannish! -- chuq]]
Elizabeth Moon
Thanks for sending me the copies in which Laurie Sefton's reviews of my
books appeared. I've been impressed by the overall approach of
OtherRealms -- both the quality of individual reviews, and the generally
helpful tone. Of course I'm glad that Laurie enjoyed my books -- any
writer loves a good review -- but that's more valuable when I can see
how selective all your reviewers are. Your concentration on the
positive is a definite plus (pun intended.)
Your new format is quite readable, although it's too bad you've had to
give up some of the columns you'd planned -- I was looking forward to
Laurie's comments in biology & other areas of often-mangled science.
This has been one of my pet peeves for years -- basic ignorance of
fairly low-level biology, medicine, agriculture, etc. It seems
incredible that we still find writers who don't know where the lungs in
humans are, or what a bruise is (as in one book I read recently: the
doctor assured someone that the patient had no bleeding in the brain,
just bruising.)
[[We hope to revive the science column -- it's more been lack of time
than anything else that's kept it from happening (job changes will do
that). If we find we can't squeeze it in here, it's also possible it
can end up in Dan'l's Optimistic Sturgeon. -- Chuq]]
One point to consider in comparing reviewers is their consistency (or,
more commonly, lack of it) in dealing with subgenres and different
writers. This shows up not only in ignoring or putting down a type of
work or a writer, but also in glossing over major problems in books of
a "favorite" sort. I am thinking, at the moment, of a reviewer who
prefers hard SF, and who recently praised a book which was full of
errors of basic science -- the very kind of thing he fulminates against
in soft SF or fantasy. If it's bad to mess up on the speed of light,
it's just as bad (if not worse) to do it in hard SF.
You're certainly right that the reason for reading is pleasure. What
the present literati don't understand is that reading for pleasure
includes reading complex, intellectual works as well as froth. Thinking
is fun, too. That's heresy, of course, but a foundation of science
fiction: thinking is fun, and you don't need anyone to explain it to
you. An excellent essay on the origins of this whole row is C.S. Lewis'
"High and Low Brows", printed in a book called Rehabilitations. He saw
this coming decades ago, and described it brilliantly. Basically,
what's happened is that "difficult" has become a literary virtue in the
eyes of the literary establishment. This justifies their existence as
interpreters -- if any intelligent reader can understand it by himself,
English faculties are reduced to explaining work old enough to be
obscure for that reason alone. They'd rather read the new stuff. So
they insist that good writers write for the few who can understand, and
then teach the rest (or at least those docile enough to listen.) They
insist that good writing demands more from a reader, rather than giving
more to him.
But I'm with you: good work is not hard, although it may be complex and
richly textured. A young or inexperienced reader can follow it well
enough -- and as the reader grows in experience, in wisdom, the good
work still offers satisfaction. It can be re-read, year after year,
without seeming stale. Science fiction and fantasy both offer such
reading experiences -- experiences that depend not on a reader's
erudition, but on experience and human growth. Some excellent work is
nearly inaccessible in adolescence -- one reason schools err in pushing
the less narrative classics to young -- but it should not require a
college degree for a reader of the right age to appreciate.
The challenge for a writer is to create something that entertains at
more than one level ... the 15 year old who wants a good adventure
story, the other 15 year old who wants a good character to idolize, the
college student who is just making the connection between the fantasy
he reads and the reality he lives, the middle manager who wants to
escape the corporate jungle, the historian who loves created histories
and societies (but is critical of them), the elderly lady who has never
read a fantasy but will spot a character flaw in a flash, and so on. No
one can do it all; no book ever satisfies all readers. But we can try
... and the way to more depth is not by trying to be difficult and
obscure, but by digging deeper with the same simple tools.
We also heard from: Baird Searles, Susan Shwartz, Donald Franson, David
Dunham, Peggy Ransom, Sheryl Birkhead (not Sheila! *blush*) and Ken Meltsner.
OtherRealms
Science Fiction
and
Fantasy
in Review
Issue #24 -- Spring, 1989
Copyright 1989 by
Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved
Editor
Chuq Von Rospach
Science Editor
Laurie Sefton
Contributing Editors
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Charles de Lint
Rick Kleffel
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Alan Wexelblat
Contributors
Dean R. Lambe
OtherRealms may not be reproduced without permission from Chuq Von Rospach.
Permission is given to electronically distribute this issue only if all
copyrights, author credits and return addresses remain intact.
No article may be reprinted or re-used without permission of the author.
All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.
OtherRealms is published in January, April, July and October by:
Chuq Von Rospach
35111-F Newark Blvd.
Suite 255
Newark, CA 94560
Usenet: chuq@apple.com
AppleLink: CHUQ
Delphi: CHUQ
CIS: 73317,635
Deadlines
Deadlines for all material is the 15th of the month prior to publication.
Publication date is the 30th of the month. Next deadline: June 15.
Subscriptions
A single copy of OtherRealms is $2.85. A one year (4 issue) subscription
is $11. OtherRealms is available on a returnable basis to bookstores.
Please contact me for details.
Complimentary subscriptions are available for arranged trades, at the
whim of the editor or "the usual."
Submissions
OtherRealms is looking for reviews on Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror
and related non-fiction. We cover book-length material only.
Authors are solicited to discuss their books in the Behind the Scenes
section. This series allows you to describe the background and research
that went into your book and the things that make it special to you.
OtherRealms is also interested in a variety of feature material about
the field and its authors. Please query all material except reviews.
Submissions can be made in either Macintosh or MS-DOS disks, via
electronic mail, or the old-fashioned ink-on-paper format. Please
include a SASE.
Unless otherwise agreed upon, OtherRealms uses first serial rights.
Art
I'm always looking for good genre-related artwork, from small clip-art
pieces to covers. Art will be returned after use if you request it. I
request non-exclusive one-time rights to the artwork.
Letters
OtherRealms solicits your feedback. We want to know what you think
about the magazine and about the SF field. Letters will be considered
for publications unless otherwise requested. Letters may be edited for
space or content (but not context!) as necessary. Addresses will not be
published unless you permit it.
Is this your last issue?
The number on your mailing list is the issue your OtherRealms
subscription dies. Negative numbers indicate a complimentatry
subscription. If the number is zero, this is the only time you'll see
OtherRealms unless you Do Something About It.
Book Ratings
[*****] One of the best books of the year
[****] An above average book
[***] A good book. Recommended
[**] Flawed. Has its moments
[*] Not recommended
[] To be avoided
------ End ------
