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OtherRealms Issue 26 Part 08
Electronic OtherRealms #26
Winter, 1990
Part 8 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.
Your Turn: Letters to OtherRealms
Dean R. Lambe
While I sense no danger that OtherRealms will become a fractious
letterzine, My Turn in issue #25 is welcome. Especially so, since I
heard the thud of my name dropped no less than three times therein.
Feedback, even critical feedback tells me that I actually reached out
and goosed someone between the neurons.
Two of the gentlemen raised questions that merit reply: Actually, Martin
Morse Wooster, I believe it was Mr. Heinlein who first noted that
writers compete for their potential readers' beer money, as do many
other sources of entertainment. And yes, I do have very expensive tastes
in beer, but a visit to any airport bar these days will demonstrate that
even stainless-steel-suds-factory swill may be as overpriced as a
hardcover pot boiler. Real beer, say an freshly imported Czech Pilsner,
could easily run through an $18.95 cover price.
Gary Farber, yes, you are correct. I did overreact in my reviews of the
Circuit trilogy by Melinda M. Snodgrass. By the third volume, I was so
disappointed with the technical, scientific, and logical errors that
could have been avoided easily, and the blatant sexual stereotyping of
the female characters, that I lapsed into gratuitous sexism myself. I
didn't mean to suggest that women who graduate from law school shouldn't
write science fiction. I must remember not to explode the next time
characters hold laser weapon battles through smoke screens and have
instantaneous radio conversations between Ceres and Earth. I owe an
apology to Ms. Snodgrass and her editors. I am pleased to note that in
reviews of her first fantasy novel, Ms. Snodgrass is credited with
accurate historical research, and that she has found joy in writing for
television.
Fortunately, I'm only writing reviews, not SF criticism, so these lapses
don't happen often.
Joel Rosenberg
Tom Maddox's letter is a fine demonstration of the value of Occam's
Razor, the principle that one ought prefer simple explanations to
multiplying complexities beyond credibility.
It should be relatively easy to decide that Bruce Bethke hasn't changed
the name of his novel, Cyberpunk[1], for the reasons that Bethke has
stated with an enviable, if tired, patience: because Bethke invented the
term; because Bethke's use of his term was original; and because
Bethke's published use of it[2] predates any expropriation of it by,
for, and about Gibson and the other members of the New! Improved!
Wave[3]--rather than as an attempt to ride on the putative coattails of
"writers such as Gibson and Sterling", the New! Improved! Wavers, or as
they'd prefer it, The Movement[4].
The complexities of Maddox's position--that Bethke has kept his own title
out of a desire to capitalize on the success the cyberpunkies[5]--are
fairly steep.
One would have to concede that "writers such as Gibson and Sterling" are
successful[6], and that Bethke would either have anticipated such
success back in 1980, when he wrote Cyberpunk, the story that became
part of the novel of the same name, or lucked into the connection, and
then decided to hitch a ride on Neuromancer's coattails--which again
seems unlikely.
After all, if Tom Maddox can't, why would Bruce Bethke be able to?
Notes:
1. I've read it, by the way--it's one fine coming-of-age story. I'm
certainly going to give a quote for the book, and am hoping that Jim
Baen will let me do an introduction.
2. In Amazing SF, at the time the oldest continually published SF
magazine.
3. That term is mine. Use it if you'd like, but credit it; I'm less
patient than Bruce is.
4. Since Maddox is fond of cheap shots, I'm sure he won't mind me
pointing out the Freudian implications of writers going around the
country talking about how firm their movements are.
5. See footnote 3.
6. Gibson is successful, and Sterling perhaps marginally so, but not the
rest. By my casual count, the New!Improved!Wavers have published a
couple dozen novels among them. Out of the lot, there's been one very
successful novel, Neuromancer, now in something like its 15th printing.
Of the rest...well, a couple of Sterling's books have gone back for a
second printing, but that's about it. Of the cyberminorpunkies--some of
whom are really quite promising writers--as far as I'm aware, none of
their books have achieved even the minimal success that would have
resulted in a reprinting.
This is a Movement?
By way of comparison, just in Minneapolis, there are half a dozen SF
writers who have been around about as long as the New! Improved! Wavers
and have been more successful than any of the cyberminorpunkies.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Has Thomas Maddox ever read any of Bruce Bethke's fiction?
I ask because the snide comments about Bethke's "affinity for the
anti-literary right wing of sf" sure don't fit anything I've read under
Bethke's byline. Cyberpunk itself, the original story, is hardly right-wing
or militaristic, nor are any of the other Bethke stories I've read.
I think Maddox has missed Bethke's whole point, which is that he created
the word "cyberpunk" -- not by accident, but quite deliberately -- and
he's understandably resentful that a group he is not associated with has
appropriated it without so much as a by-your-leave, by way of Gardner
Dozois, and altered its meaning, excluding him. Dozois read the story in
manuscript and acknowledges it was Bethke's coinage.
It's his word, dammit!
Hell, from what I've read and heard, several of the "cyberpunk" writers
don't even like the word, so why not let Bethke have it back?
Maddox accuses Bethke of trying to cash in on the success of the mirrorshades
writers, but has it occurred to him that part of that success is stolen
from Bethke? The name "cyberpunk" is catchy, it's attention-getting --
and it's Bethke's. Why shouldn't he get some of the benefits? Why is he
expected to sit back and quietly watch while his invention is used as a
selling point for a lot of stuff he doesn't even like?
And what's really funny is Maddox's last line -- "I'm absolutely certain
that no one will have any difficulty at all distinguishing (Bethke's)
writing from Bill Gibson's or Bruce Sterling's or, for that matter, from
that of anyone who has been known as a cyberpunk writer, myself included."
Why is it funny?
Because if I had to name one writer whose style most resembles Bethke's,
out of all the hundreds I've ever read, I'd have named Tom Maddox.
Harry Warner, Jr.
Writing a loc for a publication which is mostly reviews is always
difficult but I think I found enough comment hooks to manage it. In
general, I was pleased with the near-perfect typography and the fact
that you didn't waste lots of space while utilizing the smallish
typeface. My eyes aren't too capable nowadays but I don't mind
struggling with small type when it's needed for financial reasons and
when the editor doesn't waste more space than the typeface saves in huge
margins, 24-point quotations of pertinent messages on each page, and
other forest-decimating extravagances.
Your readership survey demonstrated graphically the biggest change in
fannish behavior since I first became active. When I was a neofan, the
prozines were all-supreme as reading matter for us. In my teens, I could
have believed that spaceships still wouldn't be exceeding the speed of
light by the time I was an old man, but I could never have imagined that
only four per cent of a sampling of fans would be readers of Amazing by
1989. Of course, the showing of the prozines would be even worse if such
a survey were taken elsewhere in fandom, at a Worldcon for instance. I
suspect that half of the individuals who attend the biggest conventions
are not even aware that prozines exist. Material in fanzines about
prozines today probably doesn't total more than three or four dozen
pages a year, excluding nostalgia pieces about the past and news notes
in the semi-prozines.
I'm glad to find you using an occasional review of older, out-of-print
books. Probably not more than five percent of all the good science
fiction ever written is currently available in bookstores or newsstands
and there's no reason why the great majority of it should go unmentioned
in fanzines and semi-prozines just because it's out of print.
I share your skepticism about the ability of a fellow to get along so
readily in a past age or an alternate universe or whatever. You
mentioned several of the major problems, like the language and garments.
But there are many others. Health, for instance: I suspect that a modern
individual wouldn't have enough vaccination or built-in immunity to
survive very long a few centuries in the past because of diseases and
viruses that aren't in existence or are very rare today, not to mention
the question of whether the time traveler could survive the types of
medicine that were used in the past. Foot problems: hardly anyone today
outside Third World nations does the amount of walking that the typical
person did before mechanical propulsion of transportation, and the shoes
in use a few generations back were much harder on the feet than today's
footwear. Childbirth, reading by candlelight, jobs that required 14 or
16 hours of hard manual labor daily, and many other problems are usually
ignored in stories about magical switches to another time or reality.
I can always nod approvingly whenever anyone says nice things about the
reissue of a Fredric Brown book, of course, which happened near the
start of #25. The review of The Singing reawakened a mental struggle
that has happened several times, my effort to remember if there was a
Theron Raines in fandom who was quite prominent back in the late 1940s
or 1950s. I know the first name was Theron, but for the life of me I
can't find any source of information to confirm or dissipate my
semi-memory that the last name was Raines. The fan I'm thinking about
lived in Arkansas, was more sensible and wiser than most fans of that
period, and I've been wondering if he could have become a mainstream
writer after gafiating from fandom. I hope the reprint of The Thief of
Bagdad will convince people who think novelizations of movies are a
recent invention that Hollywood was inspiring them during the silent era.
I also liked Elizabeth Moon's plain words about the way the literary
establishment does its thing nowadays. She doesn't mention one aspect of
the situation that particularly annoys me, the way that learned analyses
of current fantasy and science fiction discuss at length the possible
significance of this or that matter, when it would be so easy to pick up
the telephone and ask the author what he or she meant in that paragraph.
I think I prefer to find reviews by an individual like you or Charles
de Lint grouped together. It's a little easier to read successive
reviews without abrupt changes in writing style and it's possible to
judge the individual's particular preferences and ideas better when a
whole group of reviews can be gulped down in succession. In Charles'
section, I was happy to learn about the resumption of the Robert E.
Howard books by Donald M. Grant, even though I'm not an all-out
enthusiast of Howard's writings.
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes also gladdens my heart by his plain talk about the
sanitizing and glamorizing of whores that is so popular with writers of
books and scripts just now. If only some reviewers would do the same
thing for all these books that purport to describe the fine old time
the characters have in bars where they relate stories to one another,
with never anyone going out and raping a woman from the effects of
liquor or getting into a fight while drunk and shooting a companion
dead or failing to show up one evening because of having dropped dead
from liver cancer.
Martin Morse Wooster
Thanks for OtherRealms #25. I thought the best part of the issue was
Gary Farber's letter and Chuq's response to it. Criticism is not that
hard. You don't need a Ph.D. or decades of book reading to write it. I
suspect there are many readers of OtherRealms who have read as much sf
as Damon Knight and James Blish read when they were active as critics,
and who have been interested in fanzines as long as Knight and Blish
were. (Remember, most of The Issue at Hand and In Search of Wonder were
published in fanzines.) I suspect the problem you have with writing
"criticism" is that you (and others) feel that criticism is something
you have to strain and sweat over; for me, at any rate, this is not
true. Good criticism is like all writing -- if you set your goals high
enough, you will eventually produce useful and important work.
One general suggestion for your reviewers is to avoid what I call
"bag-of-Cheetos" comments, as in "I've read 5,271,009 books of (favorite
junk form of reading) and X's book is just as tasty as all those other
junk books I've read." Granted, some authors produce enjoyable work of
no literary merit; David Eddings, for example, produces well-crafted,
enjoyable entertainments of no lasting consequence. But reviewers should
encourage authors to aim as high as they can; if you praise an author
for turning out undistinguished assembly-line product, that's the
literary equivalent of praising a bag of Cheetos or a Big Mac for being
just as good as other hamburgers or snack foods. Writers shouldn't be
just as good as their competitors; they should be better.
Another critical pitfall is introduced by M. Elayn Harvey in her
article. Her initial premise is sound; the great works of the 1940's and
1950's should be reinterpreted and critiqued as often as possible. But
by arguing that Fury, The Demolished Man, and The Green Hills of Earth
are failures solely because the characters do not fit the sexual
stereotypes she deems acceptable is the worst sort of reductionism. If
the characters in these books seem unreal, that's a perfectly valid
critique provided that Harvey gave examples of these characters' alleged
misbehavior. And by ignoring the ideas and issues raised in these books,
Harvey pretends that the authors were less serious--and less
important--than they are. (And how does Harvey know that characters in
the 21st century will not act in a manner similar to 1940s? Does she
have access to a time machine?)
The best reviewer of the issue, by the way, was Jeremy Crampton. I've
never read Crampton before, but I like his style and technique. I look
forward to reading more of his writing in the future.
Brian Lumley
I don't know if I agree with all OtherRealms' reviews, or even that I
agree with everything Rick Kleffel says in his reviews of my books
specifically; but that's not a complaint and it shouldn't be reckoned
that Rick's thoughts displease me. On the contrary, they do in the main
please me, for they make it clear that I achieved my objective: which
was to entertain!
Actually, what with Rick's and the reviews of other Necroscope
readers--plus the feedback I got in America -- I feel pretty sure I'm on
the right track in re "entertaining". Certainly I did some serious book
signing this time around, and my positions in the horror bestseller list
in the latest Mystery Scene look pretty good to me: out of the Top Ten,
2nd, 6th and 7th places respectively for The Source, Wamphyri, and Necroscope!
Over here in UK, the 1st British (Grafton) edition of The Source came
out about the same time as TOR's edition and went out of print in six to
seven weeks! Necroscope is due for its 4th printing, and Wamphyri its
3rd. But if I'm pleased with all of this, maybe you guys should be too;
for it would seem to prove that someone on your team knows how to pick
winners, right?
Except...see, I'm not complaining...but if only Rick hadn't made me:
"England's King of B Movie Terror!" I mean, can't I just be a
half-decent writer, who every now and then likes to let his readers know
it isn't real, it's not happening, they can start to breathe again?
But on the other hand ... aw, what the hell! If I can't stand the smell,
what am I doing with my head up this corpse, right? I guess you guys
will just have to carry on writing your reviews your way, and I'll
continue to write my books my way.
But don't expect me to apologize if, every now and then as you turn the
pages, suddenly you smile...
David Thayer
The Hugo controversy is not a situation we can simply forget and move
on. To do that is to invite a recurrence. Amid all the regrettable
fingerpointing is a sincere effort to change the loopholes in the rules.
Even if the culprits this year were to confess, the conditions which
lead to the controversy would remain unchanged. It would catch others in
the middle like it did to you this year.
What did you do to Peggy Ranson's cover art? It looks like you scanned
it into a computer with faded memory. The cover is washed out compared
to a good copy of the original.
Inside, I really liked your extensive use of filler art. I particularly
admired some of the title art.
[[The Hugo problem is not something to be forgotten, but I want to get
beyond mindless rehashings and factless finger-pointing. There are only
a few people who know what really happened. The people who did it,
obviously, and perhaps some people involved in Noreascon. Neither are
talking, and everything else is speculation. We may never know for sure
who did what, and I'm not sure at this point it matters.
I agree that things need to be done to fix the situation. I supported
the proposal to the Business Meeting to restrict nominations to members
of record on December 31. This keeps people from sending in ballots and
checks at the same time, and will help guarantee that ballots can't be
placed in the names of others or mailed from non-existant addresses.
That won't solve the problem, but it makes it harder to stuff a ballot
box without being caught. I don't know what else to do that wouldn't
significantly screw up the nominating and voting in the process, and we
want to avoid cures that are worse than the disease. We have enough
problem with low voter turnouts on the awards that I don't want to make
it harder for people to vote.
The real answer for the Hugos is to figure out a way to get enough
people nominating and voting that stuffing the box is simply too
expensive. When 20 or 30 nominations can get you on the ballot, I don't
think you can come up with a way to protect the ballot from the
motivated entrepreneur.
As to what happened to the cover, I don't know. It definitely did wash
out, although everything else in the issue reproduced quite nicely in my
opinion. It also wasn't washed out in the draft copies I did, so it
wasn't the scanner itself, but some tweak I made late in the layout
process. Why it only seems to happen to the cover, I don't know, but
this is the second time a cover has reproduced poorly for no good reason
when the rest of the issue was normal. It really is a wonderful cover,
and while the reproduction was okay, it didn't begin to do it justice.
sigh. Just when you think you have things under control.... -- chuq]]
B.Ware
I liked OtherRealms 25. Although you claim to be well stocked with art
work, I thought 25 could have used more. There was too much "gray space"
for even the well-attired eye to bear. The art I'm sending includes
scantily attired subjects which should be viewed by the naked eye. I'm
doing this for several reasons. All great artists are required to do
"figure studies". I'm not a great artist yet, and I think it's because I
haven't done any figure studies. Also, I have been assumed by several
people to be one of David Thayer's/Teddy Harvia's personas. I am not.
This art should prove it. Maybe it will confuse me with Brad Foster, who
does "figure studies" professionally. At least he's won a Hugo.
Both you and Thayer confused "spell checkers" with "spelling checkers."
Spell checkers are, of course, software for witches, warlocks, and
wizards of the computer age. Spell checkers do include specialized
spelling checkers which do for incantations what conventional spelling
checkers do for word processing.
It's particularly intriguing to me that you and your co-editor work for
Apple. I was beginning to think it was staffed by fictitious persona
(like Reader's Digest). I'm a Macintosh devotee, but Apple itself is
rather aloof if not snobbish. I bought a Mac+ for home from an
authorized dealer who didn't tell me about the Educator Buy Program
discounts even though my wife discussed using it for teacher related
activities and we paid for it with a credit card issued by the National
Education Association. When we found out a few months later that we were
qualified for the discounts, neither the dealer nor Apple acknowledged
that we'd been had (Apple is not responsible for its dealers, etc.). I
like what I can do with the Mac, but I look to third party sources for
hardware.
[[Last issue was grayer than I wanted. Because of the amount of material
that had piled up, forcing me to make the text as dense as I could to
the issue at a publishable size (60 pages equaled 4.93 ounces; to take
it to 62 pages would have cost me another $60 just in postage, which I
wanted to avoid). So I squished and scrunched a bit. There were also
some copying problems, some remnants of earthquake-related copier
unhappiness that muddied it out some more. This issue should be somewhat
more open and easier to read (I hope) without those obnoxious little
dropouts where the copier stripped some of the toner off the originals
when I wasn't looking.
Also, I do agree with you on "spell" vs. "spelling" checkers --
unfortunately, it seems that the jargon in the computer industry has
adopted the former, bad English or not (since when have computer people
really worried about English, though? We've created some really horrible
jargon and hacked our way through the language over the years). Just
because it's in general usage doesn't make it right however, and I'll do
my part in trying to stomp it out.
Re: Apple. Problems with Apple dealers. It's a problem. I've been hit by
it before (and before I went to work for Apple, I also did a lot of
third party shopping) and I do most of my shopping with either mail
order or with dealers I know I can trust (who aren't necessarily Apple
dealers; the folks at ComputerWare are what all Apple dealers ought to
be like, except they aren't authorized and only sell non-Apple marked
products). The dealer network and the 90 day warranty are Apple's two
big black eyes in the field -- but I feel Apple realizes this and is
looking for ways to better police dealers who don't take proper care of
their customers. I hope it happens, too]]
We also heard from: Sheryl Birkhead, Chris Friend, David Thayer, Ray
Feist, Mike Resnick, Richard P. King, Laurie Mann, Bucky Montgomery,
Heidi Lyshol, Bruce Bethke, Steven Sawicki, joan hanke-woods, Jack
McDevitt, Chris Lacher, Andy Behrens
Subscriptions
OtherRealms is available for The Usual or by arranged trade. You can
also spend money on it: $2.85 each or $11 for a four issue subscription.
We do not currently offer paid subscriptions outside of the United States.
Artwork
We're currently well stocked with art. Submissions are welcome, but we
generally use only one or two pieces per artist in an issue and I don't
like to hold art in inventory for more than a year. Please keep this in
mind before submitting your entire portfolio.
Submissions
OtherRealms publishes reviews of Horror, Fantasy, Science Fiction, and
related books.
Authors are solicited to discuss their work 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.
SF, Horror, author interviews and special items should be submitted to
Chuq. Fantasy, Behind the Scenes and Science Fact articles should be
submitted to Laurie.
Please query on everything except reviews. Please include a SASE if you
want a response.
Letters
We solicit your feedback and comments for the letter column. Letters
will be considered for publication unless otherwise requested.
To contact us
Chuq Von Rospach
chuq@apple.com
CompuServe: 73317,635
GEnie: CHUQ
Delphi: CHUQ
Laurie Sefton
lsefton@apple.com
CompuServe: 74010,3542
Delphi: LSEFTON
35111-F Newark Blvd.
Suite 255
Newark, CA 94560
OtherRealms is published quarterly in January, April, July and October.
Deadline for the Next Issue: March 15
OtherRealms
Science Fiction and Fantasy in Review
Issue 26, Winter, 1990
Editors:Chuq Von Rospach
Laurie Sefton
Contributing Editors: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Charles de Lint, Rick Kleffel,
Dean R. Lambe, Lawrence Watt-Evans and Alan Wexelblat
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.
------ End ------
