OtherRealms A Fanzine for the Non-Fan Where FIJAGH Becomes a Way of Life Issue #8 September, 1986 Part 3 Godbody Theodore Sturgeon Donald I. Fine Books [SFBC] [*****] and Radio Free Albemuth Philip K. Dick Arbor House [SFBC] [**] Reviewed by Chuq Von Rospach Copyright 1986 by Chuq Von Rospach It is unfortunate that the books I am reviewing were published posthumously. Both authors were at the forefront of the field, constantly searching for and expanding the horizons and testing the limits of the genre. It interesting that both books are echoes of past works. GODBODY is similar in feel to Sturgeon's MORE THAN HUMAN. ALBEMUTH is a new examination of the society Dick wrote about in MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. Sturgeon's work is more successful. GODBODY is probably his best work, and it is definitely his most controversial. It is not SF or Fantasy. It could be defined as a softcore religious novel. It involves a being called Godbody and the effect that He has on a number of people in a small American town. Godbody is about the return of Christ, a being that is openly hostile to the structures and hypocrisy of the Christian religious organizations. Sturgeon has written some very explicit sex scenes. Readers that are bothered by this material should avoid the book. The sexual material is not there to titillate but to open the mind of the reader and make them see the effects of Godbody's work. The plot is simple. Godbody enters the town, some people accept Him and heal, some reject Him and don't. The latter eventually kill Him, but He rises to continue His work elsewhere. This is an intense book, driven forward by the characterization and the emotional response it forces from the reader. It cannot be skimmed; it forces the reader to dig in and react. You may love this book or you may hate it, but it will not leave you unaffected. GODBODY is an appropriate epitaph for Sturgeon. GODBODY is about what Sturgeon was about: that LOVE is all, and that to love is everything. This is the book I think he would have wanted to be remembered by, it does his memory justice. RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH, unlike GODBODY, is an older manuscript (written around 1976) and unpublished until after the authors death. Undiscovered manuscripts worry me because if a work is written and not published, there is usually a good reason. Bringing it out posthumously rarely does an author justice. So it is in this case. ALBEMUTH is a pale cry to Dick's best works. The book looks at a society similar to THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE; unlike that other work, it is not an alternate universe, but a near future society in which the radical conservatives have taken over America. This work is really the first try of the novel that was published as VALIS. The book opens in Berkeley, portrayed as an enclave of liberal sanity in a world gone mad. Nicholas Brady sells records in a Berkeley store. He also hears voices. He is given a chance to join a record company in Los Angeles, and moves into the conservative country of Orange County so that the voices can speak to him more clearly. Brady, with the help of the voices, is attempting to save the country from its oppressive self, while not giving himself (or the voices) away to the authorities. The voices (known as Valis) are really coming from some alien satellite in orbit around the Earth. There are a number of problems with the work. One major one is that it is a self-referential novel. The lead character is Phil, SF author. He is telling about his interactions with his friend Brady. He makes comments about the story, about other novels he has written, and generally gets in the way and confuses things. The book would have been better off switching the point of view to Brady and tossing Phil out. More importantly, though, is that this work is little more than an anti-conservative rhetoric. It doesn't explore the issues, it postures. Unlike MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, which looked at the ramifications of repression, this book is so dogmatic in its views that nothing else is given a chance to come through. It is shallow, one-sided and not very well thought out. The book is flawed, and there is good reason why it wasn't published before now. It can be of interest only to Dick completists. Letters to OtherRealms -------------------------- On Women in Fantastic Armies -------------------------- Courtenay notices the prevalence, in recent Fantasy literature, of women in low-technology armies on equal footing with men. Courtenay finds this unrealistic. I will not address all of Courtenay's points, since many of them are valid points about writing style. Some of them, however, seem to be based on ethnocentric assumptions. I agree that there are unarguable differences between men and women. My experience is that this difference is overrated by most people due to unconscious sexism. When dealing with soldiers or martial artists, any comparisons of the "average" man with the "average" woman are irrelevant. A trained fighter who maintains training is NOT to be considered average. Courtenay mentions that men are stronger and larger than women and therefore have a combat advantage. It is true on the average that a stronger, quicker, or larger person is at an advantage when dealing with a smaller, slower, or weaker person who is otherwise of approximately equal skill. However.... A woman of normal size and weight, who has practiced with a foil, sabre, epee, or sword, will be about as strong as the majority of men who have undergone similar practice. The upper-body mass becomes a significant consideration only with some men, and then only after they reach about age 21 or so. Teenage boys will be on about the same footing as women. In any low-tech setting, this means that the women are on about the same footing as most of the men in the army; remember that low technology implies other things, like a general shift downwards in the average age. With this consideration, looking objectively at human history and at social forces, the presence of women in the armies becomes less of a problem if, as in some of the early Macedonian-region city-states, a way is found to keep the women in the armies from getting pregnant. The real barriers, and those which keep women out of active combat roles in modern, high technology armies, is that sexism is very much a part of the military mindset. For various reasons, human societies in Fantasy tend to be slightly changed versions of the late-20th century Western society. In our society, the military mindset says that men must protect women, who are (it claims) unable to protect themselves, and necessary as producers of new soldiers. The modern army is very male, very macho, and rather hidebound when it comes to changing ANY of the rules, written or unwritten. This overblown machismo is the reason why women are no longer accepted as combat troops in the Israeli army: the super-macho attitude of the Arabs they were fighting would not allow themselves to be captured by women, who in their society were considered slightly less than animals. They would die before they would surrender. Societal rules partition the roles of men and women. Low-tech cultures tend to reflect the roles which were part of the more primitive culture from which they probably derived. If women were not hunters, then they wouldn't be likely to be warriors, because the warrior tradition derives from the competition between two tribes for hunting grounds. Similarly if women were the keepers of ritual and knowledge, then they would be likely to hold positions of leadership in armies. Finally, my experience with several martial arts have shown me that, in fact, women make good hand-to-hand combatants, with the advantages of a lower center of gravity, greater flexibility and endurance, and a more objective, less emotional and competitive attitude than most men seem to have. Stephen Hutchison hutch@volkstation.GWD.TEK.COM -------------------------- More on Women in Fantastic Armies -------------------------- I beg to differ with Courtenay's article on women in armies. While she did say that it was merely for general army use, most armies in speculative fiction are not merely handtohand. As an example, Diane Duane's armies used Flame as well as the usual projection weapons, such as arrow and spears and such Very little combat is only hand to hand. In swordplay, there is no distinct advantage to one that can sprint, do lots of pushups, and has long arms. In fact, if one does not know exactly what one is doing long arms can be a distinct disadvantage. Balance, flexibility, control, and eye-hand coordination along with training are equally important, and I would say that given two combatants, female and male, with the same amount of training there would be no edge, as women are generally better balanced, are better able to control reaction, and are more flexible. The only reason that I don't see as many women in fencing is because the prevailing attitude in the Real World is one that says women shouldn't Fence!! Taller is never an advantage, stronger and faster are only advantages if one is able to control them. Anyone can learn control, however it seems that women are more able to learn in the early stages the patience needed for control and timing. My female fencing students are usually the best students. So, for an ill-trained or semi-trained army that uses only swords, perhaps women would be more feasible than realized. I, a 5'10" female, have handily beaten 6'5" males, and have been beaten by 4'11" females, and all of us had about similar training. And one of the smaller ladies weighed the same that I did... Once you get to the higher levels of any martial art you find that physical differences, no matter what they are, can be turned to an advantage. Take the featherweight boxing at the Goodwill games. There was one boxer that I saw two rounds of. In the first, he was the taller of the two by about four inches, he stayed back and planted punches from a distance, making the shorter one back up, and never get into his range. In the second contest he was the shorter by about three to four inches, and he made a complete switch in strategy, he would go into clinches, body blows and stay inside the distance of the taller boxer where the taller fighter had to keep his arms back and mostly bent, where they had the least power and control. The boxer I was watching used his height, and even- though it was shorter, he used it to an advantage by taking away his opponent's possible advantages... So, I disagree with the assessment of females in speculative fiction. From my own experience in fencing, tai-chi, tai-qwon-do, and watching people in combat, I can say that females are just as capable of learning how to use weapons and, perhaps, better able to learn them quickly. Liralen Li li@uw-vlsi.arpa [There are a lot of factors that complicate things. For example, women have better stamina than men, better eye-hand coordination, and better balance. Any man that doesn't overwhelm a woman quickly in battle may find themselves in trouble. Also, women make better calvary. There are many situations where a woman could fight as well as (or better than) a man, and if an author wants to do so, let them. They do need to think it through, though, and many authors get needlessly sloppy here and fall into some of the traps that were pointed out in the article. From what I've read, the number of books that screw it up significantly outnumber the ones that don't. chuq] -------------------------- Comments on #7 -------------------------- On THE SORCERY WITHIN Chuq lists the author as Dave Smeds and then says, Feist works a number of seemingly unrelated subplots together with great skill. Which one is it?! [Argh! It is Dave Smeds. I think I'll start a new contest: Screwup of the Month award. That way I'll be able to claim that I do these things on purpose. chuq] On FUZZIES AND OTHER PEOPLE It seems unfair to accuse Piper of "Ewok cuteness," since he died twenty years before RETURN OF THE JEDI. Accuse Michael Whelan, rather, of painting covers for the new editions of the "Fuzzy" novels to look like Ewoks. On OtherRealms Formatting In print, the titles of novels are underlined or italicized; the titles of short stories are enclosed in quotation marks. Electronically, the quotation marks can still be used for short stories, but something else needs to be done for novels. I prefer all caps, and have a distaste for the USENET custom of preceding and following the title with a single underscore. The underscores don't set the title apart enough for my taste. [I agree with you on the underline problem. Using underlines is ugly, but with both single quote and double quote used, the ASCII character set doesn't leave me a lot of choices. You end up either doing something substandard or you use caps and YELL AT PEOPLE ALL THE TIME. I changed this starting this issue. To some degree, titles should stand out. The readers of the hardcopy OtherRealms don't have this problem, thanks to the wonders of the Macintosh, but using all caps on the network makes the electronic OtherRealms a little cleaner looking chuq] On the "no media" rule: I notice this was new in this issue. While I don't want to see OtherRealms turn into another "let's-all-reviews-ALIENS-this- month-and-wasn't-STAR-WARS-great" magazine, I think this rule may be too harsh. The folk music group review, for example, was worth printing. I hope that you won't be overly strict in interpreting this. I do not think an occasional reference to film or TV, when appropriate, will do much harm. [The new rules are just part of my ongoing process of defining what OtherRealms really is. When I started it I planned on printing just about whatever came in. There are two problems with this. First, I simply don't have the space to print everything, so I feel that to continue publishing a good magazine I have to specialize. Second, the interests of the readership of this magazine tend to be pretty specialized -- reading SF and Fantasy. The thrust of OtherRealms is to review the field, help people make purchasing decisions on books, discover new authors, and learn more about SF and Fantasy. I don't feel movies fit into this mold. Discussion of media as it relates to books would be fine, though. What this is is a prioritization. I did the same with the writing oriented material. The group of people interested in that material is a small percentage of the total readership, so it makes sense that the limited number of pages I can print each month go to things that most people will appreciate. If I have the space, I'll happily run articles that range far and away from the primary goals of the magazine. If an article is really good, I'll make room. But given an review on a book and an equivalently written article on wildflowers, I'll print the book review. chuq] Evelyn C. Leeper (201) 957-2070 ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl mtgzy!ecl@topaz.rutgers.edu -------------------------- Bermuda Triangle in '88? -------------------------- Chuq, Just thought I'd drop you a line and let you know that Bermuda Triangle in '88, a 1988 World Science Fiction Convention bid, can be reached at: ihnp4!homebru!bermuda Any and all mail will be properly appreciated Send all requests for information to the above address. Ben Liberman Cruise Ship Liason Bermuda Triangle in '88 (an out of the country bid) OtherRealms Notes Fiction! OtherRealms is starting to publish fiction. I've been considering this move for a while and trying to decide the best format to use. I've decided to simply add a new article slot to each issue, after the Pico reviews. If I have a story, I'll use it. If not, I'll drop in an article of some other type. This will make OtherRealms a little larger, but I think this is a much better method than a quarterly supplement. Easier on my nerves, too. Submissions should be made to the normal addresses, E-mail or hardcopy. Works should be SF or Fantasy, or both if you can figure out how. Works up to 10,000 words will be considered, but longer works will be serialized over two issues. The Swimsuit Issue I've made a decision to take December off. Why? The month of December is full of holidays and things get slow in the SF world. Since I don't want to do what Sports Illustrated does (how do you get a Troll in a bikini, anyway?) I'm just going to skip a month. The December issue will be out the end of November, as usual, and OtherRealms will take up again in January with the February issue. Masthead This issue is Copyright 1986, by Chuq Von Rospach All Rights reserved One time rights only have been acquired from the signed or credited contributors. All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors. Reproduction rights: Permission is given to reproduce or duplicate OtherRealms in its entirety for non-commercial uses. Re-use, reproduction, reprinting or republication of an individual article in any way or on any media, printed or electronic, is forbidden without permission of the author. OtherRealms is Published monthly, except for December, by: Chuq Von Rospach 160 Pasito Terrace #712 Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USENET: {major_node}!sun!chuq ARPA: chuq@sun.COM CompuServe: 73317,635 Publishers: Review copies should be sent to this address for consideration. Submission Policy OtherRealms publishes articles on Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror with an emphasis on reviews. Please, no media articles. I am very interested in the newer and lesser known authors. Anything of interest to the serious reader of the genre is welcome. Pico reviews are welcome from everyone. Duplicate the format used in this issue and limit your comments to one paragraph. OtherRealms is accepting fiction. Fiction must be previously unpublished, under 10,000 words, and first serial rights are requested. Authors should include their U.S. Mail address, even if submitting by E-mail. Bionotes are welcome. A writers guide is available. If you want to write for OtherRealms, please ask for a copy.All letters will be considered for publication unless requested otherwise. All published material is subject to editing for length, content and style to conform to OtherRealms standards. Subscriptions OtherRealms is available in two forms: electronic and paper. The electronic OtherRealms is available through the newsgroup "mod.mag.otherrealms" on the USENET network. For those on the UUCP, ARPANET, BITNET and CSNET computer networks without access to this group, a mailing list subscription is available. OtherRealms is also available through the following bulletin boards: SCI-FIDO, (415) 655-0667. The Terraboard, Fidonet number 14/341, (612)721-8967. Dim_Sum Fido, Fidonet number 146/5, (503) 644-6129 UNaXcess, 781-6201, log in as "bbs" Other BBS systems are welcome to make OtherRealms available on their systems. Either copy it from an available system or contact me. If you do make it available, I would like to hearing about it. The paper OtherRealms is available from the above address for $20 for 11 issues, $10 for five, or $2.00 for one. Please make checks payable to "Chuq Von Rospach." Fanzine trading rules apply: if your article is printed in OtherRealms or you send me your Fanzine you get a free copy.