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OtherRealms Issue 26 Part 01
Electronic OtherRealms #26
Winter, 1990
Part 1 of 8
Copyright 1990 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.
OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original
form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.
OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.
No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.
All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.
Table of Contents
Part 1
Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach
Part 2
Behind the Scenes: Redshift Rendezvous
John E. Stith
Part 3
Much Rejoicing
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Old Friends
Alan Wexelblat
Part 4
From Beyond the Edge: Reviews by our Readers
Part 5
Past Imagining: These are a few of my favorite things
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Scattered Gold
Charles de Lint
Part 6
The Agony Column
Rick Kleffel
Books and Magazines Received
Part 7
Words of Wizdom
Chuq Von Rospach
No Prisoners!
Laurie Sefton
OtherRealms Back Issues
Convention Notice: Volga-Con
Part 8
Your Turn:Letters to OtherRealms
Masthead: Important Information
Since last we spoke...
It has been an interesting few months. While I was in the final
preparation of OtherRealms #25, the Bay Area had a little inconvenience,
also known as The Quake. I thought then of doing a "Stop the Presses!"
set of changes, but as I dug my office out from under the bookcases
(books were two feet deep by the time the shaking was done and bookshelf
fell over against the office door forcing me to go in through a window
to get to the room [since re-arranged to keep it from happening again])
I realized that I wasn't ready to talk about it, so I moved forward with
the last issue and decided I'd talk about it now.
It's now. Frankly, I'm still not able to talk about it. Being born and
raised in California, you'd think I was used to earthquakes right now,
but having the land on which you live do a good imitation of a dropped
bowl of Jell-o can do things to your sense of security. We weren't hurt,
nothing serious was damaged (the worst loss: my Tower of London mug I
got during the trip to Conspiracy a few years ago. A great excuse to go
back to England, if you ask me). We were without electricity for a
while, but that's nothing.
So we got lucky and came out of it in fine shape. We tried to help
others where we could, including multiple trips of material (including
almost all of my teddy bear collection, which went to the Red Cross for
the kids at the shelters) to the various agencies. It's amazing how
much Stuff you can collect that you don't need without really knowing
it (we found and donated nine different blankets, not including the
ones we use and a couple we kept for visitors. Why did we have that
many blankets? I've got no idea -- but they now belong to folks who
can use them. And we have closet space again. But I find I really don't
appreciate earthquakes that are large enough to throw things at me. It
could be worse: it doesn't snow here (although this winter has been
very cold! Brrr! But not like it's been elsewhere), we don't normally
get tornadoes, hurricanes, thunderstorms and lightning or other major
reminders that Mother Nature isn't one to fool with. You can prepare
for quakes, and you can (mostly) protect yourself from quakes, and most
of the time they won't happen. It's just that one time when your luck
runs out....
The cover ties in with this. The top three seismograph readings are of
the main quake from Oroville (near Sacramento), Pyramid lake (north of
Los Angeles), and Lake Perris, near Riverside. The fourth is an
aftershock picked up at a station in Los Banos. They were sent to Water
Resources Department in Sacramento, where they were converted into
Postscript by David Ackerman.
I don't like earthquakes. Not at all.
OtherRealms in the 90s
As I write, it's mid-January. I'm just finishing the editing and
starting the layout of OtherRealms, so it looks like this issue will be
somewhat late. Most of the problem is scheduling -- Between January 1 and
February 15 the SFWA Nebula awards (which I administer) is in high gear
and takes up much of my free time. I hope to have this issue done by the
first week of February (as I speak, it's January 12). If not, it won't
be done until the end of February, which will screw up the schedules for
the next issue.
The other problem is more philosophical. There are some things that I
just haven't liked about the last couple of issues, but I'm not entirely
sure how to fix them. The layout has been dark and crowded (not in the
least because there's been far too much material for the pages I could
print, and I've been wedging it in) and the magazine just doesn't look
'right' (rhetorical question: define 'right'. I can't...). So I've been
sitting and working on some alternative layouts that will make this a
little easier to read and a little less static and boring -- and not
really coming up with anything I like. So I'm wasting time puttering.
I'll continue to do some more puttering during the layout, just to see
if I can fix some of the major layout gripes I have, but it looks like
OtherRealms is in transition (again) to some new layout.
I'm definitely making some changes in material, and I have been for some
time, adding more feature material to help leaven the reviews.
Eventually, I hope to have OtherRealms to be about 40% feature and 60%
reviews, or maybe 50-50, because reviews are, when you get down to it,
dry reading. A few people have noticed the shift towards more things
like the Behind the Scenes section and essays and so far the feedback
has been positive. I plan on continuing that trend in the next few
issues -- I've got my first interview in a while scheduled and I'm trying
to get permission to run a couple of others down the road. I'm also
actively looking for authors who want to do Behind the Scenes pieces. I
would even consider running (oh, no!) critical essays. Don't expect
OtherRealms to become a bastion of literary criticism, but well-written
criticism has a lot to teach and can be enjoyable to read as well.
The experiment last issue using a scanner to place art electronically
generally worked very well, except for the cover, which washed out for
some reason. I still don't know why Peggy's cover didn't reproduce well.
It did during early draft prints, but I did something along the way that
almost made it seem to go slightly out of focus. The wonders of
electronics and desktop publishing. I'll keep working on it and
eventually get it right.
I is a writur!
One of the things that has happened since last issue that I find most
encouraging is that my writing, long on hiatus, has actually started
again. I went through a dry spell thanks to a writer's block that
settled in a few years ago for various reasons.
Writer's blocks are completely internal, psychosomatic events.
Something in your head goes ping and you can't write. This one settled
in about the time I got divorced in 1984 and just wouldn't go away.
Why? I've got no clue, but it came in during the final death throes of
my first marriage when my self-image was at an all-time low (which
isn't a surprising state of mind for something like that). To a good
degree, most of my positive/creative outlets (my needlepoint, for
instance) also dried up.
Anyone who's been through this knows the frustration. Ideas float right
on the edge of consciousness and disappear as soon as the keyboard comes
into sight. Stories get started and trail off into nothingness. A nasty
feedback cycle starts up. Being unable to write frustrates you, so you
try harder, which increases the frustration. In my case, it got so bad
that at times I was getting headaches, cramps in my hands and arms, all
sorts of hassles whenever I tried to write.
Under that kind of attack (even if it's self-generated. Knowing that
it's all in your head doesn't help; in fact, knowing that you're doing
it to yourself just makes it worse) you eventually just give up. At
least, mostly. I finally decided to stop brute force attempts to fight
the block, and instead started looking for ways of convincing the block
to go away. One step was encourage the forms of writing I could do
(non-fiction and expository writing, like this), and I took steps to
get myself writing on a schedule, which is one reason why OtherRealms
exists -- I put myself in a position of either being able to produce
readable material or publishing blank pages.
It worked. Thanks, in part to OtherRealms, in part to cooperative and
encouraging friends, with a lot of help from Laurie (my second and
final wife) and time, things slowly started breaking down. My fiction
output from 1984 to 1988 was zero. In early 1989 I got one story
finished and to the point where I wasn't embarrassed at the results.
One morning in November I woke up and realized that the block was gone
-- just like that. As far as I can tell, it died of neglect and
boredom. At least, I hope so.
So, after all this time, my long on-hold novel is finally off the
ground. With various commitments, I find I have time to work on it about
two evenings a week (the rest of the time being used on OtherRealms,
SFWA's Nebula Awards, real work and even occasionally reading a book or
doing absolutely nothing (Gasp. What a concept). Which is about right --
at the rate it's coming together, it'll be done in about nine months,
and that's not unreasonable.
Writing for fun and profit
The working title is Marowan, and it's a Fantasy. I'm no Gene Wolfe, but
I also hope that I don't become a Piers Anthony, either. People who know
me know I'm not the kind of person interested in 'literary' fiction. I
grew up reading mind candy (a term I don't in the least consider
pejorative) and that's the kind of material I'm writing -- I'm primarily
interested in writing something that's entertaining and fun to read.
So it is with Marowan. I'm trying to take a slightly different look at
the God/Human interaction. I started by asking the question "What if the
gods did exist and what if they did come down and answer prayers and
pleas and generally walk the earth. While I'm not specifically basing
the world on Greek Mythology, there are a number of obvious
similarities. The primary form of worship is asking the gods (very
nicely, of course) to please go and help someone else. If you think
about it, having gods come in and meddle with your life is more likely
to create more problems than they solve (remember the ex-leper in Life
of Brian?), and in many cases, the gods don't always give what you want,
but what you ask for. Interesting times indeed (at least, they are to
me. I hope my version is interesting to others when it's done).
What I find fascinating about all this is the actual process of writing.
I find fiction writing to be very different from the technical writing
and non-fiction I've written (which shouldn't be surprising, if you
think about it. There's as much difference between soup and pastry
chefs, even though both are cooking). I've experienced that special time
when the characters actually come to life and start rewriting things and
helping me figure how it's supposed to go. When I started, the working
title was Castle Tarot. As I worked on the outline, I realized that the
ideas I had about integrating the Tarot into the story just didn't
click, so they went back into the idea file. A little while later, I
realized there wasn't a castle any more, either, so I suddenly had a
plot that had nothing to do with with my title, and essentially nothing
to do with my original story idea.
About that time one of my bit players spoke up. I had a character named
Marowan who was essentially nothing more than a convenient stomping
ground for the gods -- back in the ancient days, he had so pissed off
the gods that they made him immortal, for the express purpose of making
sure that when the gods want someone to annoy, they'll have him. Which
they do. As I worked on the story, though, Marowan pointed out that as
he was written, he was a piece of cardboard that didn't fit the story,
but only the whims of a sadistic author. It became obvious that he
either needed to be cut or to be made more than a one-dimensional
Wandering Jew type character. I did some more research, he made some
more suggestions, and I ended up with one of the main characters that
(even though I frankly don't know how the conflict will ultimately
resolve itself) will be the key to everything.
Now, obviously Marowan isn't doing any real work here. I'm not hearing
voices. But as I got into things, Marowan started coming to life to me
and the character and story started going in ways other than what I
expected--you're not so much writing the story as transcribing what is
coming bubbling up from wherever these things bubble up from -- the
feeling is one of synergy between author and story, where the story in
some ways almost writers itself.
Synergy or not, however, I'll tell you this. Writing's hard work. After
an evening working on Marowan, even if it's outline or background
material, I'm exhausted. But it's a real kick, too. I hope it holds up
to what I think its potential is.
Gene Wolfe? Delany? No. It's not going to set the literary world on its
ear. But I do hope it brings a few evenings enjoyment when I'm done.
The Name Gremlin strikes again
Last issue, as I was talking about how I was going to squelch out the
typos that have been hitting contributors names in the last few issues,
the Name Gremlin reminded me it wasn't that simple. I got Peggy Ranson's
name wrong again (in only one place this time). Worse, and much more
embarrassing, I typoed Laurie's name, and she's my wife. That one will
come back to haunt me.
The serious screwup, though, was that I somehow renamed one of my
artists. The artwork attributed to Chris Priest in #25 really was drawn
by Chris Friend, who was nice enough to point it out politely. He's been
drawing for OtherRealms for a good while now, and I don't know why I
suddenly changed his name. That sort of mistake is inexcusable.
This problem isn't unique to OtherRealms. Each issue of Locus has its
corrections and apologies (in fact, the first time I made it into Locus,
they got my name wrong. Perhaps I'm just taking it out on others?
Nahh....) This doesn't make it right, and it doesn't mean it's something
that shouldn't be fixed, but when you're dealing with 60,000+ words (as
in issue #25) in a limited timeframe, things slip through the cracks.
Every time I patch a crack, another seems to appear. It's frustrating to
everyone involved. Typos in names is something only I can fix -- no
proofreader in the world is going to know the names of the people who
are writing and drawing for me. I'll keep trying.
And, for what it's worth, there is no truth to the rumor that a
typo-free OtherRealms is a precursor to the coming of the
Antichrist.....
Vacationing in Vegas
As I write this (thanks in no small part to a Macintosh Portable,
Apple's new battery powered machine) I'm sitting in the Tropicana hotel,
Las Vegas. Why would any sane person visit a place dedicated to making
lots of money off of greed, sex and other human weaknesses? Sometimes I
wonder, but the rooms are cheap, you can find some pretty good food and
as long as you avoid giving away your money in the casinos, a good time
can be had for little money. Cheap rooms or no, Las Vegas gets it in the
end -- Big Spenders that we are, Laurie and I lost somewhere between $10
and $15 gambling while we were there. Gasp. (Interesting thing: in the
last couple of years, both nickel and dime slots have become almost
completely obsolete. A quarter is the minimum these days, which makes it
hard to give away your pocket change....)
This year, we went and explored Red Rock Canyon, a protected area with
some fascinating geology where limestone and sandstone met in a thrust
zone many years ago and have been slowly eroding in the wind. There are
some truly beautiful structures to view.
Not by accident, though, the options of things to do in Vegas are
somewhat limited and oriented primarily at separating your money from
you. Vegas hotels bring in the tourists with cheap rooms and travel
packages, knowing full well they'll make it back (and much more)
elsewhere -- in the casinos. There are few non-gambling attractions --
lots of cheap (and mostly average to mediocre) food to get you in the
door, lots of shows (ranging from the Follies Bergere here at the
Tropicana to Wayne Newton (Newton is himself a fascinating example of
the artificiality of Las Vegas: A singer who hasn't cut an album or had
a hit in years, yet plays to sell-out crowds here on The Strip, a
self-generated phenomenon of success -- but only here).
Wandering around the casinos can be fun -- for a while. The primary color
is red, which has been shown to raise blood pressure and increase
aggressiveness. Red is good for business, gambling-wise. Different
casinos work to attract different crowds, and after a while you can
begin to tell what they're looking for. The only casino that doesn't
drive us crazy is Caesar's Palace, which is quieter (better
soundproofing and less background music) and more muted. They also have
a larger security staff (at least, visible security) and are less
tolerant of things like drunks and twits. Caesar's primarily attracts
the high-rollers, so they aren't as interested in bringing in the street
traffic.
Next door, however, is the new kid on the block, the Mirage. A new
hotel/casino that recently opened, bringing the number of hotel rooms in
the city to 67,000 (with another 8,000 due to open by the end of 1990,
including another hotel/casino complex called Excalibur [with a motif
that should thrill the SCAers in the audience -- the hotel is still being
built, but looking at what they've finished already, only two words come
to mind: ostentatious and kitsch]).
The Mirage is the new home of super-magicians Sigfried and Roy, another
one of those only-in-Vegas style superstar acts. They're primarily known
for doing magic with animals and are the keepers of a group of rare
white tigers. The Mirage (owners of a tropical rainforest in the lobby
with a carbon dioxide volcano erupting periodically -- the only place in
Vegas with any humidity to speak of) knows a good thing when it sees it,
so a special tiger compound has been constructed so that the wandering
masses can come in and watch them (the first time we walked by, they
were all sleeping, as any famous attraction will do; on the return trip,
however, they'd awakened and two of them were busily creating new little
white tigers, as a huge crowd stood by and watched. Some folks were
complaining about the 'disgusting' display (although they didn't leave).
Others were lifting up their kids to give them a better view. The tigers
didn't care either way. It is nice to know that Sigfried, Roy and the
Mirage management are helping to expand the population of an endangered
species, but do they have to advertise it quite this way? On the other
hand, would you want to go out and ask them to please stop offending the
guests?)
The Mirage might be new, but I wasn't impressed. Noisy, crowded and,
volcano notwithstanding, interchangeable with almost every other casino
on the Strip. Disappointing, but it isn't every day you get to watch two
tigers hump each other's brains out.
Only in Las Vegas....
While in Las Vegas, Laurie and I coined a new term -- the Dusty Movie. A
Dusty Movie is one of those 'adult' flicks they show over the in-hotel
entertainment network with all the 'good' stuff cut out. The end result
are a bunch of out of phase scenes of two people who look exceptionally
uncomfortable (if sex is so much fun, why do these people always look
like they're in pain?) and a realization that there's absolutely no
plot. Some of them are truly hilarious, but not intentionally so.
A few blatant plugs
I get a lot of press releases, review copies, letters, and other things
all aimed at getting mentioned in OtherRealms. Sometimes it works --
review copies get read, for instance. Sometimes it doesn't. Occasionally
I get something that I think ought to be mentioned but doesn't quite fit
anywhere and I have to fake it.
I've got two of them this issue, and, surprisingly they're all blatant
plugs for one thing or another.
First is Collier Books. There's been ongoing discussion in OtherRealms
and in the circles I run around in about the problems we have finding
the older classic and near-classic works of the field -- things go out of
print very quickly these days and they tend to stay that way. Carroll &
Graf has had a program in place for years to bring the deserving books
back, and both Dan'l and I have reviews and raved over many of their
offerings. Collier Books is now joining them with a new line called
Collier Nucleus. They will be publishing four books a quarter and
bringing back out of print books that don't deserve to be missing.
Their first set included Philip K Dick's Eye in the Sky, John Brunner's
The Compleat Traveller in Black (a work I've been looking for for a
couple of years, bless them) -- the first time the compleat work's been
available in mass market form, Jack Williamson's Darker Than You Think
and his collaboration with James Gunn, Star Bridge. This is an
auspicious beginning, and it's a line I want to support as strongly as I
can. SF's past is important to understanding it's present and future,
and if you can't find the books, you can't learn about the field. There
are many books that can stand up (and are decidedly better) than much of
what's being published today, the only problem being that they aren't
new. In this age of disposable, forgettable fiction, what Collier is
doing (and what Carroll & Graf has been doing for a while) is something
we need to support and encourage.
Second, a semi-book review. Being an book-person who enjoys reading
about writing as much as writing itself, I was browsing through the
hucksters room at Noreascon looking for various editions of Advent
Press books (Advent Press publishes volumes of SF Criticism from the
likes of Atheling/Blish, Damon Knight and the Panshins. If you can find
their stuff, it's worth grabbing. But I digress) when I found a copy of
Science Fiction Writer's Workshop-I by Barry Longyear. It's a book
aimed specifically at beginning SF writers. Unlike many writers books
it's written by someone in the field and written specifically for a
workshop/seminar format -- Barry takes a first draft of one of his
stories, rips it to little pieces and puts it back together in its
final, published story, helping the reader figure out why the first
version didn't sell and the second one did. There's more really hot
technique instruction in this volume than in any writing book I've ever
seen.
I've been running a Workshop on CompuServe for the last year, and since
I found this book, I've been recommending it to everyone as an optional
text book. It gets the ultimate compliment from me -- it's one of the few
books (along with Strunk & White) that gets pulled down and browsed once
in a while just to get a new perspective on it.
You won't find Science Fiction Writer's Workshop-I in bookstores, but
you can get it from Owlswick Press, Box 8243, Philadelphia, PA 19101. It
just went into its third printing and it's $9.50. If you are thinking of
being a writer, you want this one.
Science Fiction in the 90s: Things I want to see happen
As we move into the 90s, a few questions and comments I'd like to see
addressed in the 1990s.
o Paperback Returns: when will the industry realize that a distribution
system that depends on giving full refunds on product that is destroyed
instead of returned is stupid? It wastes a lot of trees, encourages
sloppy buying and puts the burden of that sloppiness on the publisher,
not on the buyer. It also creates horrendous accounting systems that
confuse everyone, including the accountants.
On the other hand, the entire burden of risk shouldn't be shifted to the
buyer from the publisher -- you can't do away with returns completely. A
compromise, then, would be to make paperbacks 80% returnable instead of
100% to encourage people to not blindly over-order knowing they can't go
wrong. And encourage buyers to buy non-returnable paperbacks by giving
non-returnable purchases a better discount. The accountants will thank
you, the authors will thank you, and the forests will definitely thank
you. Waldenbooks might not thank you, but do you care?
o 15% agent fees: A trend in the 80s was agents going to a 15%
commission. I have mixed feelings here. If an agent doubles my income, I
shouldn't sweat the extra 5%. On the other hand, is the reason for the
increase in commission because it's more expensive to do business? Or
because agents have been unable to keep advances increasing along with
inflation? Advances to beginning and mid-list authors have been flat for
the last decade, so authors are getting the same number of dollars, but
they're worth less -- and now the agent wants a bigger chunk of it. It
seems to me that if the agent wants more income out of an author, he
ought to be able to get the author more income, too, not take more away
from him. (I'm oversimplifying, but an agent who wants more money
shouldn't be taking it away from the author: he should be taking it away
from the publisher and sharing it with the author).
o Real Estate: Does it really make sense for the book industry to
continue to pay real estate prices for downtown Manhattan skyscrapers
when they can't afford to pay decent wages to employees and authors? The
janitors make more than the editors, and the editors make more than the
authors (but barely). When I asked one editor how they survive in
Manhattan on their salaries, I was told "roommates". Is this any way to
attract the kind of people we need in the industry to make it thrive? Is
there any inherent reason why a publisher can't move across the river to
New Jersey and put the money currently going into floorspace overhead
into paying people decent advances and salaries? New York Is Book
Country, true, but isn't it possible to distribute more of the work into
lower rent areas? Or telecommute? (I will admit a hidden agenda here -- I
much prefer editing to writing, something I've found from working on
OtherRealms, but not enough to be willing to move east. I want to
freelance in some form for a publisher (copyediting, proofreading,
whatever) but I'd really like to edit and acquire books. I can't do that
here and I want that to change).
o Automation: Speaking of telecommuting, one hope I have for the 90s is
that publishing will start to decentralize. It'll never lose its focus
on New York (nor do I think is should) but a lot of tasks don't require
you to live there -- many folks in various parts of the field (like
copyediting and proofreading) already live elsewhere on a freelance
basis, and some editors, like Beth Meacham at Tor, have relocated
themselves, but this is a trend I think should be encouraged as much as
possible. There are lots of good people who could benefit the industry
that simply aren't in (or won't go to) New York.
Better use of technology can help keep costs down and improve quality.
Electronic submission of manuscripts is one trend, reducing the time
needed to typeset the text while at the same time saving money.
Technology can help make books cheaper and faster.
o Sharecropping, proprietary universes and other bookish fads: The
latest "imminent death of the publishing industry" according to some
pundits is the shared world (like Thieves' World) or sharecropper
universe (like Star Trek or Robot City). They have their advantages and
disadvantages, allowing a newer writer to make a living while polishing
his craft being one -- but also becoming a trap for someone who doesn't
know when to break out on their own. Some worry they'll take away
publishing slots from 'real' books. I believe, and I think the results
of sharecropping to date shows this, that the good series will survive
and the bad ones will die, just like good books will survive and bad
books won't. There's a place for both, and a balance will be reached
(probably about the time the next literary fad shows up). Same with the
dreaded Generic Celtic Fantasy Trilogy (and trilogies in general). A fad
on the fade, fortunately. Fewer people are writing three-book novels
with a one-book story. There's still a place for a series, but only when
there's enough story to warrant them. Too much padding turned off too
many readers.
o Too many books: the 80s were the fight for shelf space. Going into the
90s, that continues. There's too many books, too much product going into
too few spaces on the bookshelves. Result: books come and go before they
have a chance to find their audience. By the time you know to look for
it, it's gone.
The answer sounds simple, but it's not: I'd like to see the SF field
shrink 10% -- 1200, 1500 books a year is too many. The author left in the
cold is hurt, but fewer authors making better livings is, for the field
in general, a good thing for everyone. It won't be without pain, but the
current situation simply spreads the pain out further.
o Fantasy and SF are separate genres. So is Horror: SF and Fantasy are
considered one genre because of an artifact of history. It's time to
recognize that fact and do with Fantasy what is starting to be done with
horror: recognize it as a separate genre and set it up as a separate
shelving section, distribution and marketing genre. There's no practical
reason to continue lumping Science Fiction and Fantasy together when the
number of people who read both is really no more than the number that
read SF and Mysteries, or Fantasy and Detective novels.
o Trade paperbacks: very few books warrant the trade paperback format
(Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon comes to mind, as an example of
a book that would have trouble becoming a mass market). Most readers I
know don't see any advantage in buying a trade over a mass market:
instead, they see it as a way that publishers try to convince someone
who didn't want to pay $18 for the hardcover to pay $10 for a $5
paperback. There seems to be yet another attempt to convince people to
buy trade paperbacks coming, and I think it'll succeed about as well as
the last couple of attempts to convince people to buy them. Everyone can
tell the difference between a hardcover and a paperback. A trade
paperback is just a big paperback, and I just can't convince myself
they're worth paying the extra money for. Most of the people I've talked
to aren't convinced, either. Selling trade paperbacks is an uphill
fight, and I'm not sure it's really worth it.
These are my hopes for the 90s. Some are possible, some maybe likely,
and some are wishful thinking. The 1980s were, for the most part, good
times for the SF field. Let's hope that continues into the next decade.
What would you want to see happen to the field in the next ten years?
------ End ------
