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OtherRealms Issue 30 Part 04
Electronic OtherRealms #30
The Parody Issue
Science Fiction and Fantasy in Chaos
Spring, 1991
Part 4 of 4
Copyright 1991 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.
From Beyond the Edge
Reviews by Our Readers
A Brawl of Sphinxes
Judith Tarr
Taurus Books, 1991. V.5 of the Abraxas Falling trilogy, 666p, $29.95
Reviewed by Julie Barr
I came to A Brawl of Sphinxes expecting it to be the conclusion of the
worst schlock-fantasy trilogy I've seen in years. Well, I was wrong.
It's the worst fantasy trilogy I've ever seen in my life. Worse than A
Blizzard on Mirthsea. Worse than Floored in the Rings. Even worse, if
any such thing is possible, than Tarr's own earlier trilogy, the
thirteen-volume multigenerational elves-and-unicorns family fantasy
saga, The Dog and the Bird.
So what's this latest bow-wow about? People who, like me, can't resist
reading books this bad because we can't believe they can be this bad,
will know that the story so far is completely irrelevant. Tarr, who
claims to have made a career of flunking out of PhD programs, and who
is well on her way to flunking out of the one at Harvard, not only
couldn't sustain a point of view in a scene if she had a gun to her
head; she can't keep her characters or her plot straight for longer
than a page. When she isn't ripping off historical personages right,
left, and center, and then forgetting which ones she ripped off when,
she's piling together a farrago of literary allusions, obscure
academic in-jokes (the one about some weirdo named Umberto Eco and the
vat of pigs' blood--pigs' blood?--is particularly feeble), and
pseudo-Shakespearean stylistic tricks ("Yea verily and forsooth, I
shall go check it out, babe"). By page 5, she's so confused, she
doesn't know where she's going. By page 10, the reader is as confused
as she is. However, your intrepid reviewer persevered to the bitter
end, and managed to distill the following essence of story--if so
dignified a word may be applied to so hopelessly muddled a work.
The Little Shit is a little shit who also happens to be the
lately-lost heir to the obligatory fantasy empire. It's supposed to be
an evil empire, but its rulers persist in being good, kind, somewhat
spineless worshippers of Muchamora, the goddess of blancmange. What's
an author to do? Why, bring in The Hunk, the not-yet-lost heir of the
other obligatory fantasy empire. This is supposed to be the good
empire, the Empire That Saves the World For Imperialism, and Never
Mind Democracy, except that its rulers keep turning out, shall we say,
a little bit psycho, but sexy as hell. Naturally the L.S. and the Hunk
fall in love. But wait--aren't they both male? I thought so.
Apparently Tarr didn't; or she just forgot. Suddenly the L.S. is a
she, and she's pretty insipid, but the Hunk likes insipid blondes.
They look so good next to his bronzed muscles. They get together, they
do what comes naturally considering that the Hunk's muscular
development is not equaled by his development in another salient area,
they go on the usual quest. What they're questing for, I can't tell
and Tarr obviously doesn't know, but by the time we start to wonder
what all the running around is about, Tarr suffers another amnesic
attack. Suddenly the L.S. is bit on the small side but perfectly hunky
and male out to here--and the Hunk is suddenly the Bimbo, brains of a
retrograde flea, body of a Kama Sutra heroine, and what's more, she's
pregnant. Daddy is not amused. Daddy, remember, is psycho. Daddy is
also the Great Good Emperor, except by now he seems to be the Big Bad
Wolf, and everybody is fighting against him, except the Great Bad
Emperor, who's really the Little Nice Sheep, and he's actually quite
pleased that he's about to be a grandpa. What the goddess Muchamora
thinks, Tarr doesn't say.
Everything comes to something resembling a conclusion. There is a
magnificently inept hommage to Indiana Jones in the middle of the
Obligatory War Between the Mages: all the bad guys drop their
grimoires and pull out laser cannon and start blasting away. Laser
cannon? Don't ask. Do the good guys win? First you have to figure out
who the good guys are. Do the bad guys Get Theirs? Depends on who the
bad guys are. Since Tarr doesn't have a clue, it's hardly surprising
that the rest of us have a little trouble figuring it out.
Reviewers are supposed to come down heavy on originality. Union rules.
Well, this is original. I've never seen anything like it. I hope I
never see anything like it again.
Rating: Bow-wow-wow-wow-wow+
Dodgerspell
Katharine Kerr
Green Dwarf Books, book 107 of the Deverry saga.
Reviewed by Al Turnafraze
Although the latest entry in this popular if interminable fantasy
series sounds all of Kerr's familiar keynotes--gruesome violence,
Elvish profanity, weird sex, and obscure poetry--it does mark a new
turn to her work. It gave me a turn, anyway. For some time now Kerr
has been threatening, in her stories themselves as well as in a recent
interview in the British magazine Loathing, to bring the saga of Jill,
Nevyn, Rhodry, and their whole howling barbarian pack into the modern
world or at least into some alternate universe's equivalent of the
modern world. Well, folks, she's done it, by having them all reborn
into the technologically advanced city of Dinas Dewi, (David's City,)
a town that looks suspiciously like San Francisco in a landscape
suspiciously like our own Bay Area. The only conclusion we can draw
from this location and name is that the Deverrians have discovered not
only California but the Old Testament as well. As she usually does,
Kerr has given her characters and places remarkably consistent
Deverrian names (except for the ones in High Elvish, Low Dwarvish,
Middle Bardekian, New Dragonese, Old Trollish, and Sheer Nonsense),
but rather than type all those "W's" and "Y's," and to spare you all
the trouble of thinking while I'm at it, I've worked out the English
equivalents from a twenty-three volume dictionary of the Welsh
language[1] and The Dialects of Ancient Gaul by Joshua Whatmough.[2]
Here, then, is the clef for the roman under review.[3]
The book opens with a prologue set in the 1850's when we find Nevyn
reborn as Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown. (Oh yes, it seems the
Deverrians have also discovered upstate New York.) He's just about to
invent baseball when a beautiful blonde damsel in distress (Jill
reborn, of course) seduces him into inventing the British magical
order of the Golden Dawn instead. However, his disciple, Rhodry
reborn, invents baseball in his place and restores the time continuum
to its intended course before disaster strikes. Meanwhile, off in a
town called Lyndyn[4] (but looking suspiciously like London,) Nevyn
prevents an evil genius, Herr von Gizmo, from inventing the atomic
bomb in the wrong century, that is, before Bertrand Russell exists to
lead the protests against it. At this point Jill reveals that stopping
von Gizmo was her real motive in luring Nevyn to Lloegr[5], not
founding the Golden Dawn at all--but too late! The cipher manuscript
has already been placed in the fatal bookstall for Wynn Wescott to
find[6]. In a vision Nevyn sees that his ill-considered action will
later lead to the downfall of William Butler Yeats[7], tying yet
another karmic knot for the dweomermaster to untie--in yet another
volume, though, since Yeats himself never does get into the one under
review here.
With the Prologue disposed of, Kerr takes us to the main story, for
about three pages, anyway. We find ourselves in the dugout of a major
league baseball team whose Deverrian name translates to the Very Big
Men, which for convenience I'm rendering as "Giants." Just when we
realize that Nevyn's been reborn as Roger Craig, there's another
damned flashback, this one set in Bardek in the year 899, one of
Nevyn's "missing years" in those islands. While curing a bad case of
boils for a wandering beggar (who's really a prince in disguise but
that's another story, though mercifully Kerr lets it lie instead of
adding more flashbacks,) Nevyn sees a group of boys playing with a
stick and a leather ball. "You know," he remarks to a convenient
gnome, "that gives me a cursed idea! What a cursed pity that I've no
cursed time to think of cursed innocent diversions now, what with my
cursed Wyrd hanging over me and cursed all."
When we return to the main story, we find that the Giants are about to
start the National League West play-off series against a team whose
name can be translated, given the references to vermin trying to avoid
wicker rat-cages, as the "Dodgers." In supremely dramatic fashion, we
meet the beautiful blonde daughter of the Dodger manager, Jill reborn
again,[8] and a secret Giants fan, although since she's awfully young
for Roger she's in love with his star power hitter, Rhodry. (The
descriptions of their midnight meetings in the Will-call booth at
Candlestick Park are particularly steamy; "hitting the long ball"
doesn't even begin to describe this guy.) Back in her Los Angeles[9]
mansion, Jill's just about to steal the Dodger line-up cards from her
father's study when he waddles in and discovers her. We realize at
once that this Tommy Lasorda[10] is the reborn soul of the evil Herr
von Gizmo. Although Kerr does tell you exactly how Herr von Gizmo's
soul got tangled up with Nevyn in the first place, she restrains
herself to a footnote rather than a flashback, (a two and a half page
footnote, true, but the print isn't all that small.)[11] Here, though,
we must leave our summary. Not only would it be unethical in the
extreme for me to give away the suspenseful twists and turns of the
rest of the plot, but Kerr breaks off in the middle of the fourth game
of the series with the Dodgers ahead by a single run. We can only hope
that she'll eventually get us to game seven and, come to think of it,
that she finally finishes off the Deverry civil war while she's at it.
Besides, in a work of this depth, mere matters of plot and character
are only trivial distractions. If we look hard enough into Kerr's
Celtically convoluted prose, we see baseball take its place as a grand
metaphor not just for Life itself, as it has been previously used by
incalculable hordes of American writers[12], but for the Progression
of the Soul through Many Lives. Consider the deep symbolism of the
three bases, those temporary stops on our grand journey Home, or the
heartbreaking frustration of a .200 batting average--an apt parable
for the struggles of the Soul as it seeks Eternal Fulfillment. Kerr,
though, is especially good at portraying the Big Innings of Life.
Every now and then, when faced with a great challenge, the Soul girds
up it metaphoric loins and strides to the plate of Life. The pitcher
of Fate winds up and prepares to throw the baseball of Chance while
the Soul holds high the bat of the Will.[13] What will be the result?
An ignominious strike-out or the grand slam of Ethical Action? Kerr
makes us feel, usually at great length, the inner agonies of the soul
screwing up its courage to the sticking point.[14]
All in all, Dodgerspell is one of those books that makes me glad to be
a book reviewer. I've got so many charts of incarnations and
historical details, lists of symbols, and notes on significant themes,
to say nothing of all those Deverrian\Welsh\English translations and
coordinations, that my future in grad school is assured. Thank god for
semiotics[15] is all I can say. Of course, I wouldn't be a real
reviewer if I didn't say something nasty about the book, so let me
point out that you really won't understand Dodgerspell unless you've
read all of the hundred and six previous volumes. It's here that we
find the benefit of believing in reincarnation. You can start the
series in perfect faith, knowing that even if you don't finish it in
this life, you've got a lot of time ahead of you.
Notes:
[1] Don't laugh. This is a real set, published by the University of
Wales, Cardiff.
[2] Harvard University Press, and this one's real, too. Oneupped you
again, didn't I?
[3] You should have paid more attention in high school French.
[4] Well, the occasional Y won't hurt anything.
[5] If you can't figure that one out, what are you doing reading
fantasy literature anyway?
[6] Real manuscript, real person, real magical order--fooled you
again, didn't I? We reviewers have access to sources beyond the reach
of the common herd, you know.
[7] Dan Simmons isn't the only one who gets to drag British poets into
his books.
[8] So you maybe expected Kerr to waste her time inventing another
female lead or something?
[9] I'm calling it Los Angeles, that is. The Deverrian name has six
W's, four Y's, and two pair of double D's.
[10] Did you know that "la sorda" means "the mute" in Italian? This
has nothing to do with the story, but I know it, and so I 'm
putting it in.
[11] Besides, there's nothing wrong with footnotes. They make a review
look properly Literary.
[12] Well, by George Will anyway.
[13] The spiritual will, that is, not Will Clark. See Madame
Blavatsky's writings if you don't believe me.
[14] That's Shakespeare, and if you thought it was a dirty joke,
you'll never be able to write real science fiction.
[15] If you don't know what that is, why don't you consider a career
in flocked Christmas trees or something else equally suited to your
mental talents?
(Originally published in the New York Review of Sciatic Function,
republished by permission of the author)
Dodgerspell
Katharine Kerr
Green Dwarf Books, book 107 of the Deverry saga.
Reviewed by Biff Bock
There is a lot of baseball in this book. That is good, because
baseball is clean and pure and masculine and American. There is also a
lot of romance, which is okay, because romance is dirty and
complicated and feminine, but you can skip over those parts, and
besides, the author's a girl, so what do you expect. However, there
are a whole lot of foreign names, which is really bad, because. .
.well, because they're foreign. European. Weird. Old. Not American.
Science fiction is supposed to be the people's art, and that means the
American people, and we don't need any weird old European stuff in our
books.
There are also flashbacks in it, but flashbacks are okay because Frank
Capra used them in movies. The real trouble with this book is that
it's too long. Long books aren't American, either. What the people's
art needs is short books, to fit our American minds.
(Originally published in Fun and Stranger Fun. Republished with the
permission of the author)
N-Space
Larry Niven
Tor Books
Reviewed by Narry Liven
This novel disappointed me. Niven usually keeps his story lines
tighter. Here they wander all over the place. Characters appear once
and vanish offstage; they number in the hundreds, and are very hard to
keep track of. There are several Tuckerizations (I think I recognized
Hal Clement under the name "Robert Forward".) Basic assumptions change
from chapter to chapter. Style varies from clumsy to polished, from
lovingly detailed to mere notes, from prudish to graphic to obscene
cartoons. Often the auctorial voice falls lnto blatant lecturing.
Loose ends thrash about the ending. I would not be much surprised to
see a sequel.
Helen Arlinson's Just Looking
Commentary by Helen Arlinson
Episode 44
Dangerous Visions Have I
A number of years ago as I lay lounging in true Holyworld style,
waiting for the phone to ring and wondering what tripe my agent would
try to plead for me to write next, I had a vision of the future, so
sharp as to steal your breath, so poignant as to raise a tear, so true
as to now be scary. You, of course, now have the opportunity to share
my vision.
I saw small, oblong, darkened rooms, sprinkled full of glazed eyed
zombies, their cuds working on fat sprinkled vegetable matter while a
veritable orgy of destruction flickered above them. I saw bankers
crying with joy as slovenly producers of nothing wheeled bag after bag
of money into the vaults. I saw concentration camps of
writers--individuals shackled hand and foot to the corporate guide to
profit. But worst of all I saw the movie.
Little did I know then that all this indeed would come to pass, nay
would come to the forefront of society and ingrain itself into the
lives of nearly every common man, woman and child. If I had known, I
would have been hard pressed not to end it all right then and there.
The shocking credulity of this vision remained buried beneath some
sub-strata of grey matter--just above the place where I keep respect
for corporate managers who have so ruined the movie industry--until I
happened upon a screening of Predator II. Within minutes of becoming
seated on the slightly sticky seat in this coffin sized viewing room
it all came back like the sharp slap of a final re-write done by some
hack in Illinois. As I struggled to maintain attention of a sequel to
what was a less than literate creation to begin with and one in which
the main star remained absent while those behind the scenes scrambled
to kiss the butt of higher ups demanding profits and by my guess and
judgement to receive them, the parallel seemed obsequious if not
downright eerie.
Gasping for air, I rushed out into the lobby, hoping that by drowning
myself in cardboard Milkduds I might be able to reintroduce my
internal equilibrium. Imagine my surprise when upon my arrival at the
candy counter I found the scraggly teenaged critter who so customarily
inhabits such places writhing on the floor and covered with popcorn.
Angry candy indeed! And if even the inanimate now rose in revolt,
responding to the drivel produced so regularly by individuals whose
heads rarely leave the rarified air of the bank vault, was not change
soon to follow? Sadly, this has not come about.
And so, we add one more piece to the slice and dice volume of film
noir gore. Another tribute to the bread and circuses mentality
gripping not only this country's leadership but most of the major
corporations--film making included and leading the way in
"give-'emwhat-they-want" as long as it makes a profit. This sad state
of affairs is only worsened by the multitude of cud-chewing attendees
who slaver and drool over body counts and body parts--a hint the
butchers of this country should take, opening up their slaughter
houses to public admission. Perhaps a dose of messy reality is what's
needed to return to at least a semblance of quality, craftsmanship and
vision. As it is, plot becomes relevant only as a place to dump the
gore, story is reduced to brief respites intended to let the audience
out to the bathroom between blood baths and art is left to those
selfsame bathroom walls. This is "if-it-moveskill-it" theater at its
lowest and one wonders if soon audience participation will become
mandatory.
My vision ended with a scolding, a dressing down by the celluloid god,
who shook his fingers at me, made faces and thundered in pestilence
breathed anecdotes "might makes right," "the many shall be served,"
"let them eat cake," and "get off your high horse."
"Wait," I railed against this proletarian onslaught, "are you trying
to tell me the people get what they deserve? That the mass should be
allowed control? What about art? What about quality? What about film
as an echo of life, an adjustment of the uncommon in common terms?"
"Fool, get with program. People are lemmings, waiting to be led. They
don't want complications. Nor do they want visionary work unrelated to
the lowest common denominator. They want entertainment."
"But who," I cried, "should be allowed to make those decisions?
Bankers, Lawyers, Indian Chiefs? What about emotions? What about
character development? What about issues transcending the common
plain?"
"It all means nothing. Theater is but the little screen in bigger
dimensions and with the commercials better hidden in the product. You
wail in the wilderness for things no one cares about. Stop beating
your head against rocks. You weren't such a great writer yourself you
know."
With that final utterance, the great being dissolved in one of those
slow fades to black, and as the music--some common theme sampling
stolen from a dozen films--welled up, I awoke, shaking and shivering
though full California sunshine, at least what made its way through
the smog, beat upon me. In that instant I knew I had to share this
with you, to tell you I have seen the future and that it is bleak
indeed, to tell you what others think of your ability to think and to
hope you will respond with a resounding no to future drek pumped out
for your consumption. And when they approach you with their latest
product, still dripping with gore and festering with pustules,
beseeching you to buy into yet another round of blood, guts and
cardboard, stare them straight in the face, give them a broad smile
and say, "no thanks, just looking."
Your Turn
Letters
Judith Tarr
New Haven, Connecticut
1 April 1991
Chuq Von Whatever
Whatever That Stupid Fanzine Is
Somewhere in California
Sir:
I have had word of the review of my latest masterpiece, A Brawl of
Sphinxes. To say that I am not; amused is to put it mildly.
First of all, I am not about to flunk out of Harvard. I am about to
flunk out of Yale. Please make the correction. Second, Abraxas Falling
is not a trilogy. A trilogy consists of either four, ten, or thirteen
volumes, depending on the publisher. Abraxas is an Endless Series.
Your reviewer would be well advised to get her definitions straight.
And finally, while she can be forgiven for her confusion as to the
sexual, political, and theological alignments of the characters--they
are complex, although they should be obvious to anyone who is not
functionally illiterate--if she had read past the third page of the
second introductory note she would have seen in footnote 433b a
reference to the fact that this novel should be read exclusively as
subtext. The point of the entire exercise is not to read what the
author says, but what the author meant to say. It is not the author's
fault if the reviewer fails to display an adequate level of
clairvoyance.
I hope that, when my next work of genius appears (Farce Plastica,
Phantom Plectra, later this year), your reviewer will have learned to
appreciate my genuine and unparalleled brilliance. Or, better yet,
that she may have taken up a more congenial occupation. My colleague,
Professor Montresor, is now interviewing candidates for an experiment
in high-stress sherry-tasting. Would this be of interest to your
reviewer?
Starchily yours,
Judith Tarr,
BA3, MA3, PhD (failed)
Helen Arlinson
Chuqie Rospach
OtherRealms
Newark, CA (NJ?) 94560
Dear Chuqie;
Mr. Sawicki informed me that you would be interested in seeing one of
my columns. To that end I have written one especially for you. Mr.
Sawicki did not say whether you paid your writers or not but I am
assuming that at this point you do not--given the economy and
everything and the current state of publishing. In fact, Mr. Sawicki
informs me that there are fewer and fewer paying markets and that even
some of the established magazines no longer pay. I mean, who would
have thought that Analog would end up paying only in copies. And just
after they purchased three of my stories! Still, as Mr. Sawicki says,
the experience is well worth it and perhaps some day I will make more
money at this. Mr. Sawicki has been great, subsidizing my career. He
also handles my accounts as that is one of the few things they do not
allow in the places I occasionally stay.
I hope you enjoy the column and that you will soon become a paying
market and will once again want to see some of my work. By the way,
are you dutch? I knew some Dutch sailors once and the memory is quite
good. Perhaps we could get together sometime and have some cheese.
In any case, if there is money to be had here, please send it to Mr.
Sawicki and he will send it on.
Until we meet again, I remain,
Helen Arlinson
The Masthead
Administrivia
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OtherRealms
The Parody Issue
Science Fiction and Fantasy in Chaos
Issue 30, April, 1991
Editors
Chug Von Rospach
Laurie Sefton
Contributing Editors
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Charles de Lint
Dean R. Lambe
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Copyright 1991 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.
OtherRealms is published three or four times a year.
Next deadline: July 15, 1991.
Contacting us
Choq Von Rospach
chuq@apple.com
GEnie: CHUQ
Laurie Sefton
lsefton@apple.com
CompuServe: 74010, 3542
Delphi: LSEFTON
U.S. Mail
35111-F Newark Blvd. Suite 255
Newark, CA. 94560
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