Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
OtherRealms Issue 25 Part 16
Electronic OtherRealms #25
Summer/Fall, 1989
Part 16 of 17
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.
Your Turn -- Letters to OtherRealms
Thomas Maddox
Responding to Bruce Bethke's pathetic bit of self-advertisement
certainly ranks as a guilty pleasure, but what the hell? He mentions me
by name, and someone needs to do it.
Bethke says he spent a "miserable hour" listening to me call him a
"semiotic accident." Well, if I did, I'm certainly sorry. Whether
Bethke is an accident of any sort, I wouldn't know; he should consult
his parents on that one, if he's in doubt. However I phrased it, here
is what I meant: Bethke's connection with the [movement, sub-genre,
whatever] known as Cyberpunk is a semiotic accident. It seems that he
wrote a story called "Cyberpunk" and thus coined the term; somewhere,
Gardner Dozois heard the word and applied it to the work of Wm. Gibson
and some others . . . and so forth -- check Cheap Truth, Mirrorshades,
Fantasy Review, SF Eye, and a whole bunch of other places for what
ensued, *none of which had anything to do with Bruce Bethke or his story*.
So: Bruce Bethke invented the term cyberpunk but otherwise has no
connection to the fiction known as cyberpunk. That seems easy enough to
grasp. That he did not receive credit for the coinage is regrettable
but perhaps understandable: so far as I know, none of the people usually
associated with cyberpunk had ever heard of him or his story until last
year at Nolacon, where Eileen Gunn and I found to our surprise that we
were on a panel with "the guy who wrote a story titled 'Cyberpunk'."
In the rest of his screed -- i.e., the "Contrapunk Manifesto" proper --
Bethke separates himself out quite clearly from cyberpunk itself and
takes a principled stand in favor of keeping sf a gutter literature,
saying no to drugs, etc.
Well, good luck with it all, Bruce, but I do have one question: given
your absolute distaste for all you associate with cyberpunk, why do you
want to give your novel that title? Could it be in order to cash in on
the success and prestige of writers such as William Gibson and Bruce
Sterling? I certainly hope not, because that would be utterly
hypocritical and unprincipled, given your stated distaste for cyberpunk
and your affinity for the anti-literary right wing of sf.
In fact, given your "contrapunk" position, I wonder why you don't distance
yourself as much as possible from all those nasty cyberpunk types. Call
your book Contrapunk or give it a Pournellean title like Death and War
Will Continue, and We Will Like Them Because We're Manly Men . . .
To put the matter more sharply: why shouldn't I look at your titling
your novel Cyberpunk as an attempt to cash in on the success of those
you profess to despise? Were I of a draconian moral nature, I might
advise you just to say no to cyberpunk, but, alas, I'm not, so I'll
merely wish you the best of luck with your novel, whatever its title.
I'm absolutely certain that no one will have any difficulty at all
distinguishing your 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.
[[Editor's note: since "The Contrapunk Manifesto" was published in
OtherRealms, Bruce has sold his book Cyberpunk to Baen Books]]
Martin Morse Wooster
While I agree with your comments about David Hartwell, my biggest
problem with The New York Review of Science Fiction, aside from its
silly title, is not Hartwell's castor-oil approach to sf (if it's
painful, it's good for you), but that the editors are also high-ranking
editors at Tor, Morrow, and other publishers. This leads to an inherent
conflict of interest; will the NYRSF ever publish a nasty review of a
Morrow or a Tor title? I'm sure Hartwell and his colleagues have taken
precautions to prevent a conflict of interest, but the suspicions will
always be there.
I'm glad you have Dean Lambe reviewing for you; he was one of the
better reviewers in Science Fiction Review, and he has gotten better.
But why, in his review of Twistor, does he feel that $18.95 is "beer
money"? I believe the original reference was Poul Anderson's comment
that money for new paperbacks competes against alcohol consumption, and
the price of a new paperback ($4.50-$4.95) is still about the same as a
six-pack of decent beer. But to consider an $18.95 hardcover "beer
money" infers either that the reader drinks swill by the case or has
very expensive tastes in alcohol.
I enjoyed Bruce Bethke's rant against the cyberpunks, which reminded
me, in a small way, of the sort of "Old Guard" rants used against the
New Wave in the 1960's. Some of his charges are a bit unfair; Bruce
Sterling, for example, is hardly a johnny-come-lately to the field,
since his first novel was published in 1976. I predict that Bethke's
claim that many cyberpunks will "do the Barry Malzberg" will be
accurate, but that the best cyberpunks (Rucker, Sterling, Gibson) will
be around ten years from now -- and won't use the cyberpunk label. Bad
writers, I've found, tend to have huge egos, agonize about the immense
difficulty and burden of producing art, and spit on their readers. Good
writers, provided you don't insult them, tend to be friendly and
interested in what their readers have to say. Compare Gene Wolfe's
behavior at conventions with John Shirley's as an example.
R. Allen Jervis
I read Dan'ls review of Cinnnabar and I was quite pleased! I remember
reading it in high school and the bit about the road being paved with
the burnt-out shells of buses has been a favorite quote of mine ever
since. This is the first time anyone's ever indicated that they've
heard it before.
I also noticed that the address you printed for my zine, Hardwired
Hinterland, gives a CA instead of an IN for the state. I hope that's
not what it says in the colophon! everything else looks good from this
end so far, keep it coming!
R. Allen Jervis
P.O.B. 743
Notre Dame,IN
46556-0743
George Walker
The War Against the Chtorr[*****]
The Labyrinth Gate[not rated]
This radical difference is ratings is good. I like to see a sprinkling
of books with serious problems mixed in with your reviews of good
stuff, because your contrasting analyses show what makes and breaks a
good read. Overall, your credibility as a reviewer goes up (for me, at
least).
[[Generally, OtherRealms tends to print more positive than negative.
There's a limited amount of room and given that, printing bad reviews
doesn't make as much sense as printing good ones, unless I feel there's
something that deserves being said. My position is that no publicity is
worse than bad publicity. Also, since reading time is limited, if a
book is a dog (or simply uninteresting) I tend to put it aside, and I
hate to review books I haven't finished. -- chuq]]
Sheryl Birkhead
I hunted, vainly, for credits for the logos -- unless I'm slipping more
cogs than I thought, the logos this time are FAR different than
previously -- or is it just my imagination? Everywhere I look these
days I'm seeing Diana Stein's nice little fillos -- please keep them
coming. Nice cover by Tad Williams - I mean really nice. I've not been
seeing much work by Brad Foster lately, so seeing the one on page 6 was
a surprise. He is a talented artist -- but hasn't been in the fannish
scene as much lately -- and I'm still pushing Harvia for the Hugo this
year. We'll see ... we'll see.
Somewhere recently (no, I don't remember where or when) I saw some
information on Aboriginal SF -- that they had tripled their
circulation, etc. Perhaps I am one of the few readers who did not care
for the magazine -- and did not renew my subscription. I took out the
sub based solely on the reviews I had read -- never having actually
seen an issue. I was not exactly enamored with the publication. I do
know that during the time I had the subscription it was in flux and
changing dramatically, so perhaps things have changed.
For Laurie's column -- I guess I'm lucky in that, by not having the
money to just go out and buy novels (I prefer anthologies since I have
small bits of time) I've been spared, pretty much, the prequel
syndrome. Doesn't sound like a lot of fun for the reader. She reminds
me that I need to go look and see what of the Orson Scott Card "Alvin"
books are available and which ones I've read.
I've never seen an ish of Thrust so I cannot get into the brouhaha (minor!)
about it. I think, in general, any publications are to be encouraged
and most -- given time -- cut their permanent teeth (if they survive)
and become respectable adults. Of course if you'll look back over the
sf (etc.) field, you'll see that our survival rate is abysmal -- but
those that make it ... I wait to see what else is said in following issues!
[[All uncredited artwork is done by yours truly, also known as the man
with ten thumbs. One of the things I've been experimenting with is
computer art and as my skills have improved I've started using some of
the better pieces for logos. I'm trying to build a higher profile for
the art and graphics in OtherRealms to make it a nicer looking zine,
and the ability to get the Macintosh to do some of the work has been a
great help. It's also got me starting to work in traditional media (the
computer won't protect you from a brain-dead artist, just make some
aspects of it easier to control) but don't expect to see any real art
from me soon....
Thrust is still improving. I just saw issue #34, and it looks like I
did my negative review just as it hit bottom. Which is good -- the more
good publications looking at the field, the better. I generally agree
with you that publications need to be supported and nurtured, given the
survival problems in the field. On the other hand, there is only so
much money in any budget, and eventually you need to ask yourself
whether the money is better spent on a magazine that isn't doing what
you want or on another book or two. I've chosen to not renew my
subscription to New York Review of SF, primarily because what I saw in
issue 12 was the same quality and style as I saw in issue 1 and I just
am not impressed. So it goes. While I think criticism of the field is
important, I just don't feel that what NYR is producing is worth
spending money on. Others, I know, disagree with that. I did, however,
renew both Thrust and SF Eye when they came due, which probably says
more about my tastes than the quality of the magazines. -- chuq]]
Richard Brandt
Your gripes about the cyberpunk slant in Gunn's Encyclopedia leads
rather directly into Bruce Bethke's column. I'd say "cyberpunk" is and
remains a convenient label and nothing more. Mainstream critics who
seem to have just discovered the term are emulating some genre critics
and describing an "archetypical cyberpunk story" which sounds as if
it's Neuromancer or maybe "Johnny Mnemonic" but bears little relation
to anything else I've ever read. That reinforces my feeling that the
c-word was just coined as a handy label to lump every hi-tech novel
whose protagonists aren't mercenaries or engineers into one category --
using a term which really translated into "imitations of William
Gibson". ("Novels of Gibsonian sensibility," Ed Bryant called them.)
There's really not much call for lumping the works of authors as
diverse as Pat Cadigan, Lewis Shiner, Rudy Rucker, Paul di Filippo,
John Shirley and K.W. Jeter into one "movement". The whole idea of the
"cyberpunk movement" itself was rather silly -- since the two ultimate
cyberpunk stories were by those two ivory-tower academic types, John
Kessel ("The Pure Product") and James Patrick Kelly ("Rat"). Now Gibson
and Sterling are collaborating on a Victorian period romp -- at the
same time that Tim Powers and Jim Blaylock are abandoning that "genre"
in the face of diminishing returns to the amount of research necessary
to plow into each book. There's another cautionary tale: the minute
someone coins "Steampunk" as a tongue-in-cheek expression, we have
another movement on our hands ...
PS. Putting on my other hat, the conrunning one -- thanks for your
donation to the auction for Amigocon 4. The auction was quite a success
-- the con, too, or so I am told to my face. I hope we do business
again...
[[My position on Cyberpunk is well known. It's a marketing hype in
search of a movement. For the most part, all of the Cyberpunk authors
are doing other things, and the noise is being generated either by
Publicity types who haven't figured out it's a dead issue or fans who
don't realize the authors got bored and moved on. I was interviewed by
AP at Noreascon and said as much (and got my name on the newswires for
the second time this year -- oh boy! yippee! -- and although I said
then that Cyberpunk was dead, what I really think is that Cyberpunk was
never alive in the first place. A Movement is not half-a-dozen books,
three or four authors and a bunch of conscripts. It's a group of people
who are trying to change the state of the art and move the field in new
directions. Look at Impressionist art, or even the New Wave of the 60's
in SF. None of that existed in Cyberpunk, which is essentially a couple
of gimmicks wrapped around some fairly common plot pieces -- and held
together by the glue of William Gibson, who was able to take all that
and make it really interesting. Much of the rest is coattail work. Some
people jumped on the bandwagon and found it didn't sell nearly as well
without Gibson's name on it, others adopted the pieces and fragments
they liked and got drafted into the Movement, and then everyone went
off and did other things. There is, frankly, no there there.
By the way, this is probably a good time to plug this again. Since
OtherRealms gets galleys as review copies, when I'm done with them I
make them available to fannish causes on an as-available basis. If
you're going to be running a fund-raiser for something, drop me a
letter and I'll see what I can do -- chuq]]
Gary Farber
Thanks for issues 23 and 24. To render due praise, I'm very pleased
that OR exists and am grateful that you put all the caring effort and
work that you do into it. As you note, there are (understatement) few
enough journals commenting on sf, and OR is obviously a labor of love
for you. I quite enjoyed the two issues. I liked most of what you
published in #24 as well, with an occasional exception, chiefly in
"Pico Reviews". I don't see the use of most of these. To be specific:
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes' review of LeGuin's essay collection. He says: "what
can you say about..." and indeed has nothing to say. The same for Chuck
Koebel's review of Wolfe's There are Doors: all he says is that he
recommends it, at about 100 words length. Why not just print the one
word: recommended? What point is served by these short "reviews" that
say nothing? And, while I'm at is, let me praise you for all the other
good reviews, and in particular for Koebel's comments on Italo Calvino.
Your review of reviewers is well-taken. More critics should be
criticized, leading to a better informed readership and improved
criticism (or reviewing). Your opinions of the reviewers are generally
accurate. I'm interested that you praise Tom Easton for "having the
ability to put a book into perspective without wasting words, although
((...)) he gets so succinct he never says much of anything." I think
the latter is the problem with the lesser of the reviews you publish.
To lay my opinions out straight, I think your reviewers, as such, run
the gamut from decent to poor. In this issue the better are Alan
Wexelblat, Rick Kleffel, Charles de Lint and Laurie Sefton. They have
something to say about what works, what doesn't, and why.
The poorer reviewers are you and Dan'l Danehy-Oakes.
Your stated aim is to be "a consumer advocate ((...)) get information
to the buying public to help them find the books that are right for
them" and not to be a critic who "...try ((s)) 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." Wondering why you don't want to do the latter
again makes me scratch my head, but never mind.
I think that the flaws of the poorer reviews you publish are, in short,
that they are either only plot summary or a mass of words that don't
boil down to anything more specific than thesaurus variations of "this
is rilly, rilly, rilly good." I hasten to add that this is nothing
unique. This is the commonplace of most bad fanzine reviews, of which
Lan's Lantern is typically full.
But there's a simple, objective mechanical test. To restrict myself to
your aim of only reviewing, your better reviewers are better because
they are specific in a) making overall analytical and descriptive
points, and b) specific in detailing exactly what elements of the story
are praiseworthy or not. Rick Kleffel's opening paragraphs and reviews
in #23 are typical examples.
Your poorer reviews, on the other hand, don't say anything. Take your
review of Ellison's Angry Candy -- scrutinizing this, all I get out of
it is that you like it. The same for your next four reviews or some of
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes.
I'm generalizing at your expense, for which I apologize, but to make a
point. Any idiot can write a plot summary and declare "a rattling good
yarn" or "I didn't get it." This, however, tells the reader nothing and
will never help make a decision to buy a book except via ultimately
determining statistically whether the reader's tastes match that of the
inarticulate reviewer, and buying on a roll of the dice. Surely this
isn't worthy of being called "reviewing". Surely even a reviewer should
be held to standards of "putting a book in context" and telling us "how
it relates to us and the field." Sure this requires "knowledge of the
genre". Else why shouldn't the reader merely read the covers, first and
last pages of the book and judge from that, or walk randomly round a
convention, or club, or even down a street, asking opinions?
Don't publishers publish reviews that say "What can I say about X? Not
much ..." Too many bad fanzine reviews consist of nothing more than
enthusiasm and a desire to burble. Whole "tributes" have been written,
such as Lan's Lantern's, that consist of multi-page puffings that boil
down to this: "Goshwowboyohboy, I sure like Writer Y." It's great to
feel this way, but when you take pen to paper, more is expected. If you
merely want to share the notion that you love a book and urge people to
buy it, give us a list. If you're writing a review, have something to
say. Be articulate. Okay?
End of today's sermon. So, like, keep up the good work, stout-hearted
fellow, and try harder. I shall wonder if you'll ever send me another
issue. I hope that you accept this in the spirit that "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."
To finish with some random further comments: congratulations to Doug
Beason for selling Return to Honor to Pocket. It's difficult, though,
not to be amazed and take it as symptomatic of a larger syndrome among
many sf fans that it took him a year to realize that his novel might be
a better fit in another publishing category (and pay more) and that
there's "a whole world of publishers out there". Yeah, this is a great
reason to have an agent, but doesn't everyone understand that to
publishers "sf" is a label on the spine, a way to market to people who
only know to look at the signals on the cover: the art, the tag
phrase? All fiction is speculative. Does anyone really want to act as
dumb as publishers treat you by not looking at books coded to you on
the cover? What is this "mainstream" sf fans toss about, anyway? (By
the way, Pocket can't publish sf due to its contract with Baen.)
By the way, I've been trying to spread the word about Bruce Bethke's
coinage of "cyberpunk" for years now -- take heart, Bruce, some of us
notice these things. Oh, and it was, or course, Howard Hawks, not
Howard Hankes, you want to credit for dialogue in THE THING.
I'd be intrigued to see your review of Gardner's The Art of Fiction.
Review comments: since you say you're attempting to edit attacks, I
think Dean R. Lambe went over the line in his review of Melinda M.
Snodgrass's Final Circuit. I haven't read the book, and if Lambe
doesn't like it and thinks it's bad, fine. But what do the two other
writers he rings in "ladies, if you don't understand the rules, don't
play the game", have to do with it, and "women writers if that's the
only language you speak" seems completely gratuitous to me unless
something fell out of his review. Eh? Incidentally, Snodgrass has been
added as a story Editor to STNG at Paramount.
A trivial point on Danny Low's comment that the Visual Guide to Castle
Amber "should have been a 4-color slick coffee table book" is that the
publisher, Avon, doesn't publish hardcover books, that another
publisher is unlikely publish a guide to another company's books, and
do thousands of Amber fans really want to pay $40-$50 a book anyway?
Lastly, I feel guilty for not having the time at present to write a
full review of the very wonderful Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner, which
Neal Wilgus hated. The point of this book, which Wilgus can't see, is
brilliant writing, superb wit, lovely characterization, a clockwork
plot that is deeply, elegantly intricate, and is a joy to read. Wilgus
thinks the "strange set of rules, that are not historical, but might
be." is stereotypical; I sure don't, nor do I think anything else in
this book is. His main objection is that it is fantasy instead of
historical fiction, while missing the obvious that no known society has
ever functioned in the way Kushner describes, or similarly existed --
so how could it be historical? No, it has no Del Rey magic, or elves;
is this a reason to pass on a marvelous first novel?
Anyway, I look forward to the next issue, Chuq. Thanks again, very
much, for this one.
[[Why don't I try to put a book into context? Well, actually, I do --
at some level. The context I was speaking was that done in criticism,
looking at a story as part of the larger field. When I speak of that,
I'm thinking in terms of the work of James Blish (as Atheling) or Damon
Knight or Dave Hartwell (in Age of Wonders, highly recommended). Criticism
requires a knowledge of the field that I don't feel I have. It's not
something you can open a book and acquire; you have to open lots of
books and spend a lot of time. So, in general, I avoid in-depth criticism,
because I hate listening to people who don't know what they're talking
about try to sound like experts, and I don't want to be one.
Reviews are relatively easy to write. Criticism is not, and requires
skills I haven't yet acquired (I'm working on it, though). So I stick
to the things I'm comfortable with. I would love to write criticism. I
would love to publish some in OtherRealms. Unfortunately, good
criticism is very rare in the field these days (John Clute and A.J.
Budrys are the only two consistently writing that I know of, and
neither is, frankly, in a class with the three I mentioned above). I'd
rather publish no criticism than bad criticism. (consider this, by the
way, an open call for critical works for OtherRealms).
I have been trying, over the last few issues, to start being more
strict in the quality of material I publish. OtherRealms is now in the
enviable position of having more than I can comfortably publish, so I'm
going to get somewhat more hardnosed about "book reports" and plot
summaries. There is a fine line between getting as many varied
opinions out as I can and getting meaningless opinions out. Where you
cross the line varies from person to person, but I'm going to do what I
can to raise the standards I set in the next few issues and start
rejecting more of the marginal material.
What do I think of The Art of Fiction? Gardner sometimes has what I
perceive as an anti-genre bias which drives me crazy. He's also one of
the most fascinating and educational writers about writing fiction I've
ever run into. It's a love-hate relationship, since I *like* living in
the genre ghettos, but his work is a must-have on any writer's shelves
(and a must-read, which is an entirely different thing). -- chuq]]
------ End ------
