OtherRealms A Reviewzine for the Non-Fan Where FIJAGH Becomes a Way of Life Issue #9 October, 1986 Table of Contents Part 1 The Dream Years by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes Reviewing the Reviewers by Chuq Von Rospach Schismatrix by Michael C. Berch Books Received Part 2 Pico Reviews 1986 Hugo Awards OtherRealms Notes Part 3 Words of Wizdom Reviews by Chuq Von Rospach Insufficient Transmission Fiction by Jim Brunet End Papers by Chuq Von Rospach The Dream Years by Lisa Goldstein Bantam Books, $2.95, 195 pages [****+] Reviewed by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes djo@ptsfd.UUCP Copyright 1986 by Dan'l Danehy Oakes This is not the easiest book in the world to read. It isn't "difficult," in the sense of DHALGREN, but it keeps yanking the rug out from under its readers -- the reader builds up a set of assumptions about "what kind of novel this is," and then the damned thing goes and violates those assumptions. The first thing to notice about it is that nowhere on the cover is THE DREAM YEARS marked with the term SF, Fantasy, or indeed any genre label whatsoever. This is good, for reasons I'll come back to later. Things become rather more problematic if one reads the blurb, which is both misleading and egregious: it will tend to encourage the reader to think they are in possession of a sf novel, which is not true. We are introduced to our protagonist immediately; he is Robert St. Onge, a novelist in the Surrealist movement in Paris, 1924. The reader may thus begin to organize the data as if this were an historical novel about that place and time. By the end of Chapter 1, however, Robert has moved, with neither intention nor explanation, to the Paris of 1968, and returned. The reader who (whether because of the blurb, or because the book was found in that section of the bookshop) was expecting science fiction now believes that they have confirmed that expectation. But, in the same sequence, the antagonist is introduced: a horned human figure constructed mostly of fur and metal, with a droning, hypnotic voice; in short, a mythic figure. The mythic nature of this creature becomes more pronounced in subsequent appearances, jarring with the science fictional elements until the reader may be forced to reorganize his/her reception of the novel as fantasy. THE DREAM YEARS is not, however, fantasy, any more than it is sf or historical. Ms. Goldstein has succeeded in producing a true surrealist novel, a novel whose images, actions, and characters derive from the subconscious, not of the individual writer or reader, but of the culture, and which, finally, transcend that culture. You may have gathered by now that I liked this book. I did, very much. It is NOT a perfect book. There are a few lines of dialogue (particularly when the principal female character, Solange, talks about "a love more powerful than time," or words to that effect) which struck me as nothing more than heavy-handed cliche, and the one thing that a book of this sort can not afford is cliche. Nonetheless, THE DREAM YEARS overcomes what is, finally, a very light dose of cliche. THE DREAM YEARS is a very, very impressive book, a major achievement from a writer whose first book (THE RED MAGICIAN) seemed to leave her nowhere to go but down. (THE RED MAGICIAN, because of its "type," because of its extremely personal nature, and especially because of its unusual (for a first novel) success, seemed to me to threaten a career of endless repetition; and at the same time, I had some concern on picking up TDY that, given her success at writing one type of novel, Ms Goldstein might prove unable to make the "leap" into another. She has skimmed very neatly indeed between this Scylla and that Charybdis.) I recommend this one with no reservations. Reviewing the Reviewers by Chuq Von Rospach Copyright 1986 by Chuq Von Rospach There are upwards of 100 titles published in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres a month. Trying to keep up with this number of books is impossible, and no single person or publication, can hope to cover everything. With a limited amount of time and money to spend on books, everyone must set priorities on which books to buy and which to let pass. Helping a consumer make those decisions is the primary purpose of a book review. Most magazines review books to some degree. In this article I'm going to take a look at the magazines and their reviewers to give you an idea of other places you might want to look for ideas on what to add to your reading list. First, though, a quick sidetrip. A distinction has to be made between the job of a reviewer and that of a critic. A reviewer asks the questions "What?" and "Is it good?" They try to put themselves in the place of the reader and help the reader decide which books they want to read and which they want to enjoy. The critic, on the other hand, asks the question "Why?" They look at the book as it relates to the genre and try to put it in some kind of perspective. Reviewing is a practical, down to earth evaluation. Criticism is an attempt to look at something from the point of view of Art, to look beyond the words into their underlying importance, and to spot the places that the field is going (or should be). Criticism requires a strong knowledge of writing, of the genre, and of the people in it. Lets look at some of the people who look at the books for you. There are five major fiction magazines: Amazing Stories, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF), Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (IASFM), and Omni. Of these, Omni does not have regular book reviews, and Amazing stories is in process of changing reviewers (prior to the November, 1986 issue reviews were split between Robert Coulson and John Betancourt. November has no review column, and I've heard that Charles Waugh will be taking over the position). The book column in Analog is written by Tom Easton. As fits the strongly SF bent of the magazine, there is little Fantasy in his column. He tends to be analytical, taking whatever length necessary to put the book in perspective for the reader. He doesn't get overly wordy, though, and rarely emotionalizes or hypes a book. For me, Easton is the epitome of the reviewer. Art rarely rears its head in his column, and he rarely misses the point in a book. I consider this the best review column in the industry, and SF readers should have him on their list every month. At the other end of the spectrum, Algis Budrys writes the book review column for F&SF. A.J. is a critic from the word go, and his columns wander far and wide over the genre and life in general, using the books he reviews as cornerstones for discussions of the wider ranging topics that revolve around SF and Fantasy. If you are interested in seeing those books put into perspective with the whole of SF, then A.J. is the only game in town. A.J. happens to be indirectly responsible for the existence of this magazine, since he was willing to sit and talk at length about reviewing at Baycon a couple of year ago, and was silly enough to suggest that a reviewzine might not be a bad idea. The results you hold in your hand. I've decided I want to be A.J. Budrys if I ever grow up; higher praise is not possible. Baird Searles writes the column for IASFM. He is somewhere between Easton and Budrys, writing what are primarily reviews with an occasional sidetrack while putting things in perspective. He reviews a lot more Fantasy than Easton, but I don't think he does quite the same analytical work; he is more intuitive and emotional. I also don't feel that he has quite the critical grasp as Budrys, but he doesn't pretend to. His writing is quite accessible and he is fun to read. Being third in this race is nothing to be ashamed of, it is almost a photo finish for all. All of the reviewers in the prozines do a fine job. You could read any one of them and find books you probably would have missed otherwise. For a serious reader, any of them would be a good reason to subscribe to the magazine if you aren't already. My only real problem with the prozines is that space is always at a premium, and the columns aren't given enough space to do a thorough job. The books they review they do fine, but they don't review enough of them. To some degree or another they also tend to review works that don't need further comment at the expense of the newer and lesser known works that deserve some publicity. My belief is that Asimov or Clarke don't NEED another review, especially when it means that Dave Smeds' or Katharine Kerr or Marty Asher don't get any notice at all. The reviewers should spend more time nurturing the next generation and new new trends in the field, not creating more publicity for the old masters. The second place to find reviews is in the semiprozines. Of these, the two best known are Locus and Science Fiction Chronicle. Both are monthly newsmagazine for the SF field and keep their readers informed with what is happening in publishing and fandom. The magazine Fantasy Review is less well known, but is a Fantasy and review oriented monthly. Locus runs three review columns, by Faren Miller, Debbie Notkin, and Dan Chow. Amy Thompson has also started reviewing short fiction, both magazine and anthology published. There is no duplication between the columns, so a large number of books get covered every month. Of the three, Notkin is far and away the best reviewer. She tends to review fewer books than the Miller or Chow, spending more time with each one. She has a good mix of both SF and Fantasy, is strongly analytical and at the same time has a good feel for criticism. I consider her reviews, alone of the semipro group, to be on a par with the pro magazine columns. Notkin is just one of many good reasons for subscribing to Locus, but she is an important one. Faren Miller reviews a lot more Fantasy than Debbie. She has a good sense for Fantasy, less so for SF. My only problem is that she seems to aim for criticism, but falls short, leaving some of her reviews muddled and unclear. There is potential here, sometimes unrealized. When she is good, she is good, but I find her inconsistent. The third Locus reviewer, Dan Chow, is hard for me to comment on, simply because I stopped reading him months ago. Chow has a tendency to fall into two reviewer traps: reading the authors motivations into a book and using a book as an excuse to review or comment upon an author. In my eyes, the only thing that matters is the word, and the person behind it should be safe from attack. Chow has, on occasion, stepped beyond the realm of good taste and gone after an author, and I just won't tolerate that. I went back through recent issues for this article, and he seems to have gotten this tendency under control to a good degree, but I still don't think he has picked up a sense for evaluating books and turning them into reviews. His columns have little personality and little to recommend them. Science Fiction Chronicle has one reviewer, Don D. Amassa. He seems to have taken as his task reviewing everything in the world -- a recent issue had 42 reviews in it, and he rarely reviews less than 20 a month. He gets the completeness award, but there is always a tradeoff between volume and quality, and he falls well short in the latter. Most of the reviews are little more than a typical Pico review in OtherRealms, and many of them are nothing more than plot summaries. In a number of cases, it is impossible to tell what he thinks about a work or whether it is worth reading from the review -- just what it is about. I wonder if he really reads all of those things, or whether he's cribbing from the cover notes. He would likely do everyone a favor, and enjoy the books a lot more, if he would read less and discuss them more completely. As it stands, though, his column is not recommended. Fantasy Review(FR) takes an approach similar to our Pico reviews. It has a large section of reviews written by a number of different people. Because of this, the quality is erratic, but in general FR is a useful tool for finding a comment about most recent books. They try hard to cover the entire field -- Fantasy, SF, Horror and non-fiction entries. Overall, they do a very good job and, for me, do the best of the semi-pro magazines. They have just been bought by a new publisher, but the editor will remain with the magazine. All this is for the good, as it looks like the chronic financial shortages will finally end. On the negative side, the person running the review section, Carol McGuirk, is leaving the magazine for a number of reasons, not the least of which is getting stuck in the middle of an assinine political battle with the Science Fiction Research Association. The SFRA is being idiotic, and we're losing a serious genre resource because of it. She's left a strong reviewing system, though, and hopefully someone will step in and carry it forward. Fantasy Review is highly recommended. Finally, an honorable mention. Science Fiction Review, a Fanzine published by Richard Geis, has been the premier review oriented fanzine for a number of years, and a number of different authors have been known to hang out there. There are quarterly review columns by Geis, by Paulette Minare, by Gene DeWeese and Elton Elliot. Other people also review works on an irregular basis, including Larry Niven, Dean Lambe and Charles de Lint. Orson Scott Card does the Herculean job of trying to review AND criticize the previous few months short fiction, and does a great job of it. SFR is what a reviewzine ought to be, and it is a lot more beside. I would normally cajole all of you into subscribing, but Geis has decided to end the magazine. A lot of very good voices, especially Card and deWeese, will be stilled when this happens. I will miss my quarterly SFR fix. If you only want to read one reviewer, read Easton, and anyone serious about SF should be reading Budry's column for the perspective it brings. I also highly recommend subscriptions to Fantasy Review and Locus, not just for reviews but for all of their material. The most important thing, though, is to find the reviewers that match your style of reading and stick with them. Subscription Information Here are the prices and addresses to subscribe to the semiprozines mentioned in this article. The prozines can be found at most large newstands. Fantasy Review: $20/year (12 issues) 500 N.W. 20th Street Boca Raton, FL 33431 Locus: $24/year (12 issues) P.O. Box 13305 Oakland, CA 94661 SF Chronicle: $23.40.year (12 issues) P.O. Box 4175, New York, NY 10163-4175 Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling Ace, 1986, 288 pages, $2.95 [****+] Reviewed by Michael C. Berch mcb@lll-tis-b.ARPA Copyright 1986 by Michael C. Berch At a recent con panel on the Cyberpunk movement, John Shirley called this "the novel that should have won the Hugo" instead of William Gibson's NEUROMANCER. I'm not sure I agree, but SCHISMATRIX is nonetheless a very fine, absorbing, and complex book. SCHISMATRIX is a novel painted on a very large canvas: the numerous orbiting worlds of the solar system after humanity has expanded beyond Earth. These worlds and their political and cultural movements dissolve and re-form and Sterling traces their fulminations through the eyes of Abelard Lindsay, a former diplomat and current revolutionary, entrepreneur, and politician. Life extension and mental/physical enhancement are available through various biotechnologies, but humans have split into two factions: the Mechanists, who use prosthetics, bioelectronics, and lots of drugs and the Shapers, who prefer genetic engineering and physical/mental conditioning. The two factions are at war, but the fighting is on many fronts (military, commercial, technological), and the battle lines are blurred. Indeed, Lindsay is himself a hybrid of the two factions, and he is alternately drawn to one or the other, or as often as not to a new faction that is an offshoot of both. The Mechanist/Shaper universe will be familiar to readers of Sterling's other work, such as "Swarm" and "Spider Rose"; in SCHISMATRIX we get to see what's really going on underneath. "Life moves in clades" is an aphorism that Lindsay repeats often, and it forms the central idea of the book. "Clade" does not appear in my Random House Unabridged, but "clado-" is a Graeco-Latin prefix meaning "branch" or "offshoot", and Sterling's meaning is clear: throughout SCHISMATRIX various cliques such as the Nephrine Black Medicals, the Neotenic Cultural Republic, and the Cataclysts appear, become centers of political and cultural attention, and either fade or become the bases for new "clades" on newer orbiting worlds. Partway through the novel some aliens show up. They're known as the Investors, and some readers will remember them from the short story "Spider Rose" (1983). Investor culture and artifacts mix with the factions of humanity in flux; as one might expect, the result is murky and unclear, and Lindsay's diffident involvement with the aliens further obscures our view of his character and motivations. I grant that this is by Sterling's design; Abelard Lindsay is the antithesis of a Heinleinian or Asimovian protagonist: we do not really understand him, and we suspect that he does not understand himself. The novel begins (as does Gibson's NEUROMANCER) with a distinct Japanese flavor -- an orbiting world that proclaims itself a Zaibatsu [corporate republic], characters named Ryumin and Kitsune, and a mysterious financial/sexual cartel called the Geisha Bank -- but by midbook the flavor has essentially disappeared; perhaps because the time span involved is longer than a normal human lifetime. The cyberpunk movement has always had a preoccupation with Japanese tech culture, and many of the the images from NEUROMANCER, SCHISMATRIX, and works like BLADERUNNER seem pulled from the pages of contemporary Japanese comics. The political and cultural intrigues of SCHISMATRIX reminded me of two other novels that I greatly enjoyed: Kim Stanley Robinson's recent ICEHENGE, and TRITON by Samuel R. Delany, which appeared in the late 1970's. Robinson and Delany enthusiasts, as well as followers of the cyberpunk movement (the core of which is formed by Sterling along with William Gibson, John Shirley, and perhaps Michael Swanwick) will appreciate SCHISMATRIX. It is clearly a major SF novel of the 1980's, and is worth the time spent in exploring its complexities. Books Received Books Received lists copies of books sent to OtherRealms for review. Since review copies are sent out near the time of publication it is a notice that these books are now (or will soon be) on the shelves of your bookstore. Arbor House Asher, Marty. SHELTER, 1986, 136 pps, $12.95 hardback. Gibson, William. COUNT ZERO, 1986, 278 pps, $15.95 hardback. Roberts, Keith. KITEWORLD, 1985, 288 pps, $15.95 hardback. First U.S. publication of an English work. Slonczewski, Joan. A DOOR INTO OCEAN, 1986, 403 pps, $17.95 hardback. Baen Books Allen, Roger MacBride. ROGUE POWERS, 1986, 401 pps, $3.50. Sequel to THE TORCH OF HONOR Henry Holt and Company Asimov, Isaac. FUTUREDAYS, A NINETEENTH CENTURY VISION OF THE YEAR 2000, 1986, 96 pages (many color plates), $12.95 trade paperback. Tor Science Fiction Anthony, Piers. STEPPE, 1986, 252 pps, $3.50. Bishop, Michael. ANCIENT OF DAYS, 1985, 408 pps, $3.95. Bova, Ben. PROMETHEANS, 1986, 278 pps, $2.95. Bova, Ben. VOYAGERS II: THE ALIEN WITHIN, 1986, 344 pps, $15.95 hardback Dickson, Gordon R. PRO, 1978, 183 pps, $2.95. First Tor printing. Modesitt, L. E. Jr. THE ECOLOGIC ENVOY, 1986, 287 pps, $2.95. Tor Fantasy Baker, Scott. FIREDANCE, 1986, 380 pps, $2.95. Roberts, John Maddow. CONAN THE VALORIOUS, 1985, 280 pps, $2.95. First mass market printing. Tor Horror Masterson, Graham. DEATH TRANCE, 409 pps, 3.95 Walters, R. R. LADIES IN WAITING, 1986, 411 pps, $3.95. Williamson, Chet. SOULSTORM, 1986, 307 pps, $3.95. OtherRealms is Copyright 1986 by Chuq Von Rospach All rights reserved One time rights have been acquired from the contributors. All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors. Reproduction rights: OtherRealms may be reproduced only for non-commercial uses. Re-use, reproduction or reprinting of an individual article in any way on any media, is forbidden without permission.