Electronic OtherRealms #12 February, 1987 Part 1 Table of Contents Part 1 Editor's Notebook Chuq Von Rospach Burning Chrome Fred Bals Voice of the Visitor Dan'l Danehy-Oakes The Silent Tower Danny Low Little, Big Alan Wexelblat Agents of Insight Dan'l Danehy-Oakes The Quest of the Riddle Master Liralen Li Echoes of Chaos Danny Low Children of Flux and Anchor Dan'l Danehy-Oakes Review Feedback Books Received Part 2 Pico Reviews Part 3 No Prisoners! Laurie Sefton Words of Wizdom Chuq Von Rospach Letters to OtherRealms Editor's Notebook The New Look OtherRealms is back from the break with a new look. If you're not interested in the changes, skip along, but since OtherRealms is as much a place for me to experiment with technologies as it is a place to review Science Fiction, I want to talk about some of the things going on with the layout and look of the zine. First, and foremost, I'm now the proud parent of a bouncing baby Apple Laserwriter Plus, and the newly released Ready Set Go! 3.0 desktop publishing software. By switching from a dot-matrix printer to a laserwriter, I can put more material in the same page space and make it look significantly better. Ready Set Go! 3.0 gives me a lot more flexibility than I could get with MacPublisher II, my old software, as well as giving me better access to the power of the new printer. For those that care about such things, I'm now using the Palatino typeface in a 9/10 point size for the text. Headers are done in Zapf Chancery. I occasionally use something else, but I'm trying for a clean and simple style that complements and shows off the words rather than upstages them. These new faces are smaller than I was using before (the old layout was based on a 12/15 point size) but because of the increased resolution of the printer, significantly easier to read. Another change is that OtherRealms is going to start using a lot more artwork. You see the first results of this decision in this issue [special thanks to Brad Foster and Barb Jernigan for acting as guinea pigs, and Alexis Gilliland for lots of early support and advice] and I hope that it makes OtherRealms a prettier zine to look at. If you do genre art, now is a great time to submit it to me, since my inventory is small, and I'm actively seeking new sources of material. I'm currently experimenting with using cover art as a supplement to the reviews, and if that works, you should be seeing it in a few issues. You do it monthly? Another change, this one down the road, is that I don't plan on publishing OtherRealms monthly forever. One problem with a monthly schedule is that all you have time to do is publish the zine. It means I don't have time for any of my other writing projects, or OtherRealms misses a deadline. Because of this, I've decided that, sometime this summer, probably after the July issue, OtherRealms will convert to a quarterly. I'm waiting because I need to let the changes I'm making this issue settle and take a close look as what publishing 70 pages a quarter instead of 30 pages a month really means. Note that with the change to the Laserwriter, that is about the same material as before, it just is delivered a little less often. Even though the amount of material doesn't change, their is a significant reduction in administrative overhead that should free up a fair amount of time. The New Names in the Block I've added some names to the masthead beginning this issue, and with them comes the final change in the format. Starting with this issue, I've appointed two of the people who have been writing for OtherRealms to the post of Contributing Editor, and each one will now be doing a quarterly column instead of the individual reviews they'be done in the past. Jim Brunet has been with OtherRealms since issue #1, and Dan'l Danehy-Oakes has been a major contributors in the last few months. Why? Partly because I feel that they deserve some recognition for their continuing support of OtherRealms, partly because they have shown a professionalism in their writing , so that I want to let them write in a column format and give them more flexibility in how they write their reviews, and partly because I'm getting so much material from them that it is hard for me to get it published while it is timely -- this way they have to decide what to do with their word quota, rather than me. This should also make it easier for other, less frequent contributors to get their material published with less delay. The third addition is my "new" associate editor, who has actually been keeping me honest and sane since the first issue. Laurie has been doing a lot of the background work, proofreading, critiquing, and helping out on the administrative end. Her first column, No Prisoners!, debuts with this issue, and she's finally in the masthead where she belongs. I think the new column format will both improve the overall quality of OtherRealms and make it easier for others to get their material published as well. If it works,I expect I'll be appointing new Contributing Editors as I find other people who write well and want to contribute to OtherRealms consistently. Warning! System Failure! Just a quick warning to people who submitted material to me in December. Just before Christmas, my Mac took a nosedive and completely destroyed my hard disk. I do regular backups, but not regularly enough -- the failure caught me after I'd gotten a some material downloaded from the network and before I got it onto a backup. I know I lost some material, but I don't remember what, so if you submitted something to me, check and see if it went into the byte bucket so I can get a fresh copy. Technology is wonderful, but Murphy is always looking for a way to make your life interesting... Just when you least expect it. Until next month! Burning Chrome William Gibson Arbor House, $15.95 [*****] Reviewed by Fred Bals bals%nutmeg@decwrl.dec.com Copyright 1987 by Fred Bals From now on, things are going to be different. - Bruce Sterling, in the preface to Burning Chrome. The luckiest of those riding the crest of history's wave are sometimes privileged to see the transition from old perceptions to new visions. Perhaps "lucky," is an inappropriate term. The shock of the new is always unsettling, often frightening. Riots broke out in the audience at the premiere of Stravinsky's, "Rites of Spring." Bob Dylan was booed off the stage when he played electric guitar for the first time in public. And it's easy to forget, as warm, glowing Muzak versions of "She Loves You" emanate from elevators and supermarkets, that the Beatles were as often reviled as hailed in the early days of the group's career. Closer to home, the "New Wave" movement that arose nearly two decades ago heralded a new view of SF, opening the field to both authors and fans who were not overly interested in stories concerned with hardware and celestial mechanics. The "New Wave" caused an impact that -- while considerably lessened -- is still being felt to this day. All to the good. Science fiction at its best should always be a genre for risk - takers. It comes with the turf. Yet over the past decade, the bulk of SF writing has become increasingly sluggish and bloated as the genre slowly edges out of its ghetto into mainstream popularity. Established authors have fallen prey to market demand and answer the fan's outcry for familiarity by recycling plots and characters in never - ending series and sequels. Even many of the new kids on the block have seemingly come to realize that the best synonym for "marketable" is often "familiarity." It's been a long, boring winter for SF -- one that has lasted much too long. But the ice is starting to break. The ice - breaker's name is William Gibson. Burning Chrome collects all of Gibson's published short fiction under one cover. The book consists of ten short stories, three written in collaboration with other "cyber - punks," John Shirley, Bruce Sterling, and Michael Swanwick. They are all excellent, and like Gibson's two novels, "Neuromancer" and "Count Zero," they are all opening rounds in the battle to reclaim SF as the genre of the new and unexpected. "From now on things are going to be different." Of special interest in Burning Chrome is Gibson's second published short story, "The Gernsback Continuum." In this, Gibson deliberately takes aim at some hoary SF conventions and reworks them with devastating effect. It is a cry of triumph from Gibson to all who would listen, "This is the way things were. It's not like that anymore." The three works that operate in the future - history of the Sprawl series, "Johnny Mnemonic," "New Rose Hotel," and the title story, "Burning Chrome," evoke a clear, beautifully wrought picture of the future. It is not the future of space empires or of the postapocalypse. But it is a future cunningly extrapolated from today, a future that seems real enough to smell, to touch, to hear. It is a future that you can fully expect to live in. Gibson's characters live on the edge in this future. They inhabit the underside of society, the alleys, backways, and dark corners of their world, where high - tech is seen as only another means for survival. But rather than doom - saying, Gibson's characters take a wild, fierce joy in beating the odds. They've seen the face of the Apocalypse... and are mightily bored with it. Burning Chrome transcends any attempt to judge with stars, pluses, or awards. What it can be seen as is a trail into completely new territory by someone who is the literary descendant of those characters who lived on the edge of the American Territories; the ones avoided by their neighbors when they started wondering what was on the other side of the mountain. The ones -- who finally becoming so deadly bored with the familiar -- struck out to see what they could find. Voice of the Visitor Larry Slonaker Avon Books, 1986 $3.50 [***] Reviewed by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes djo@ptsfd Copyright 1987 by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes The cover of Voice of the Visitor is of a type that always puts me off immediately. It shows a woman's head, in an uncertain but intense grimace, her hair tendrilling off into a swirling cloud and her neck appearing to grow out of the bottom surface of some type of box. There is a little slogan saying that this is "a novel of unending terror." Bad start. The inner blurb is a quotation from the book, a scene of graphic violence: the protagonists husband, recently injured, takes a can opener and rips the stitches out of his scalp, becoming extremely bloody in the process. To my surprise and delight, that proved to be the only scene of real graphic violence in the entire book. Rather than resembling King, Voice of the Visitor bears a more-than-passing resemblance to the works of the late Shirley Jackson. This is not an egregious comparison; with all its ambiguities and innuendoes, this tale of a pregnant woman receiving dictation from an evil revenant could easily have been plotted by Ms. Jackson. But have no fear, Larry Slonaker is not receiving dictation from Shirley Jackson -- or if he is, he does it poorly. Jackson was a past master of style in the English language. She would never have written this: About halfway to the cabin, the good trail petered out, denigrating into a rock-strewn, partly overgrown path. [P 188] There are only a few of these, ahem, infelicities in Voice of the Visitor, but each of them set my teeth on edge. One other flaw: ambiguity can be too ambiguous. The protagonist's pregnancy is apparently important to the story, but I was never able to figure out exactly why. Evil is neither victorious nor defeated at the story's end -- though the ending is a definite and satisfying ending (no, I won't explain that). Recommended with reservations; if you don't like horror stories because of the gross outs, this is for you. On the other hand, if you're bothered by the kind of story that slowly draws icy-cold cobwebs across the back of your neck... Stay away. The Silent Tower Barbara Hambly Del Rey $3.95 369pp [****] Reviewed by Danny Low hplabs!hpcc!dlow Copyright 1987 by Danny Low This book has many points of similarity to Hambly's Darwath trilogy. Based on the story situation at the end, the series is probably restricted to just two books unless Hambly pads out the second book tremendously. Someone has opened a Gate through the Void connecting our universe to another, magical, universe. Abominations from other universes are slipping into the magical universe causing havoc. However, the abominations are only a side effect of having an opened Gate. The mystery of the book is who opened the Gate and why. Clearly, the motive bodes ill for the magical universe. Joanna is a computer programmer from our universe who is caught up in the intrigue. Antryg is a wizard who is the prime suspect. Naturally, the two fall in love. These two, along with the swordsman Caris, are the main characters in the story. Caris is convinced that Antryg is the villain. The government is convinced that Caris' grandfather is the villain. Caris needs Antryg to prove his grandfather's innocence. Antryg professes to be innocent. Joanna is torn between her love of Antryg and the evidence that Antryg may well be the villain. Hambly has improved greatly as a writer since the Darwath trilogy. The characterization is very much better. Even the minor characters have distinctive personalities. The mystery is handled well. Joanna, it turns out, is not just an innocent bystander. She was deliberately brought into the situation by the villain although it is not yet clear what her role is in his intrigue. The story development is done well. Little, Big John Crowley copyright 1981, Bantam book, 627 pages [****+] Reviewed by Alan Wexelblat texsun!milano!wex Copyright 1987 by Alan Wexelblat It's 102 Texas summer degrees outside; my poor window AC is struggling to bring the room temperature down to 85. And I'm shivering with cold. Why? Because I'm reading a winter scene in John Crowley's masterpiece Little, Big. The cover blurb is actually quite good: "Somewhere beyond the City, at the edge of a wild wood, sits a house on the border between Here and There, a place where Somehow reality and fantasy can intertwine and mortals can believe in fairies. Sometime in our age, a young man comes here to be wed, and enters a family whose Tale reaches backward and forward a hundred years, from the sunlit summers of a gentler time, to the last, dark days of this century -- and beyond to a new spring." The book is a fantasy novel, telling the Tale of a group of people and how their destinies come to pass and how the world changes them and is changed by them. I think this is one of the finest books ever written. People who have given up on fantasy as hackneyed and repetitive should read this, if only to rediscover what fantasy is all about. The novel is written in an unusual style which may take some getting used to. Crowley writes long sentences. Up to 75 words, by my count. In addition, his writing style is very rich and dense. At the beginning I couldn't read more than six pages at a time. At the end, I stayed up until 1 AM to finish the last 100 pages. The plot begins with the induction of Smoky Barnable into a strange family. He marries Daily Alice, a woman with a Destiny. Smoky thus becomes part of a Tale and Little, Big tells this Tale in bits and pieces following characters forward in time, flashing back to tell the stories of Daily Alice's family. The title of the book is significant at several levels. It refers to the fact that Smoky is smaller than Daily Alice. It refers to a theory about the fairies. And, it refers to actions and their consequences. Each of these themes is neatly run through the appropriate parts of the plot. The plot is divided into six books, each of which has four or five chapters. The story runs fairly continuously throughout; I'm glad Bantam published it as a single volume. Little, Big won a World Fantasy Award; its preface is loaded with complimentary comments from big names. Crowley is a master of description and character development. There's not a single two-dimensional character. I was not exaggerating when I described it as a masterpiece; I recommend it strongly to all of you. So, why four stars plus, and not five? Well, some people may not like the way the book shifts viewpoints. There are many threads being woven together here. Some people may not like Crowley's ornate writing style. Some people may not like the fact that there are no "good guys" or "bad guys." There are just people who sometimes do good things and sometimes do bad things. I didn't mind any of that; what bothered me was the ending. Crowley is a master; he tells you 100 pages in advance that the end is coming and keeps you in suspense the whole way. And yet the ending is a let-down. Most of the threads get tied up neatly but some are let slip and the ending comes out, well, wrong. Still, Little, Big is well worth its cover price. Agents of Insight Steven Klaper TOR Books 1986 $2.95 [**+] Reviewed by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes djo@ptsfd Copyright 1987 by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes I was standing in the parking lot at Chef Chu's when I saw the Big Guy coming. He had a book in his hand. He gave it to me. "Read this," he said. "I need a review." So I looked over the evidence. Steven Klaper, eh? Never heard of him. Must be a new punk in town. The style was Chandleresque, if you know what I mean. Short sentences and fragments everywhere. Like this: My problem. Yeah. I put on the insulsuit, brushed the curtains aside, and scanned the window. Nothing but a thin paste of soot and bugs... (P 13) The plot was Chandleresque, too. Hard-boiled. Guys in trench coats running around trying to solve their partners' murders, people getting beat up left and right. There were enough levels of conspiracy and betrayal to make a Republican faint in sheer disbelief. Now, I got nothing against Chandleresque except maybe the name. Ought to be Hammettesque. But I couldn't help wondering whether it would work in a sci-fi book. My concerns immediately proved to be well-founded. The plot was borderline cyberpunq: some telepathic spy/'tecs go searching for the Mysterious Device that kills t-paths...or makes them kill themselves. The way is blocked by disinformation, renegade t-paths, and common stupidity. The best characters didn't come on stage until the book was more than half done. The protagonists were just ho-hummers I couldn't bring myself to care about. But take Vox, now; there was a fun guy. So I plowed on and finished the damn thing. Untidy. I mean a lot of loose ends stay loose. And not in the way that leaves space for a sequel; things just got dropped. Like I said, untidy. But what the hell. I had fun reading it. There were two characters I actually liked, even if they did come in late. The plot was twisty enough that I didn't feel like I knew everything before it happened. Give it two and a half. The Quest of the Riddle Master The Riddle Master of Hed (2.25) The Heir of Sea and Fire ($2.25) Harpist in the Wind ($2.25) Patricia McKillip Del Rey Fantasy Reviewed by Liralen Li li@vlsi.cs.washington.edu Copyright 1987 by Liralen Li At first glance at the back cover blurbs and introduction, this trilogy seems to follow a particularly common trend of Tolkien look-alikes. It seems to have a protagonist with a hidden heritage, some sort of talisman that will bring out that heritage of power, a journey all over the protagonist's lands (making a map of the area absolutely necessary), a love interest, a final meeting of Good and Evil, and the protagonist wins the war single-handed due to that special hidden heritage. It has been done, redone and seemingly overdone. And while Tolkien, LeGuin, and Donaldson have done wonderful things with this formula, most of the authors in this area have done terribly. Almost badly enough for me to have missed this marvelous trilogy by Patricia McKillip. When I first sat down to read these books it was from a sense of duty, because I had loved her The Forgotten Beasts of Eld so very much; and I thought that it would be a good thing to see what else she had written. When first faced with that formula staring at me from the back of the books, I groaned a little inside. But I wanted something to read for the time before bed, so I started reading. And I didn't finish reading until dawn broke the next day. McKillip creates a fantasy land, full of magic, lore, legend, and challenge, rooted deep in history and emotion. The language is rich, and as smoothly and tightly woven as a Persian rug. Her characters live and breath, love, hope, despair, and share not only thoughts and words, but experiences with the reader. They are not the one dimensional good or bad characters of many of the stories by the formula, they are people growing, trying to find not only what would help and hold what they love the most, but also trying to find that which would define themselves. The two main characters are Morgan, the Prince of Hed, and Raederle, the Princess of An. The first and third books are devoted to Morgan, and the second is devoted to Raederle. The books are in chronological order, and are a single story told first from Morgan's point of view, then Raederle's, and, then again from Morgan's. In the beginning of their stories both of the protagonists are defined by their lands, their parents, their history, and their teaching. McKillip then shakes the very foundations of what they have known to be the truth of their pasts and lets them go to find their abilities and work through their fears to the future. The balance of the books between introspection and action is amazing. She manages to convey most of the characters thoughts through their actions, instead if the old "he thought," "she thought," or "somebody could sense that he thought." Morgan and Raederle go through, not only a search for the powers to hold their world together, but also through learning and accepting the responsibility for those powers. The first book follows Morgan, a born prince of the earth, whose main heritage was of growing things, who farmed from his home that his sister cleaned and the chickens and dogs ran through. He is different from the usual, stolid Princes of Hed in that he has a curiosity and a sense of wonder for that which is outside his island realm and because he was born with three silver stars on his face. His curiosity was such that he was sent to study at the College of Riddle-Mastery by an understanding father. The first book follows him as he discovers the meaning behind those stars, driven by the tenets of his education and heritage as well as love and fate. The action conflict is that of him against the mysterious shape-changers that threaten him as well as everything that he has ever loved. The emotional conflict is that between knowledge that he should take up the powers needed to protect what he loves and the knowledge that those powers may alienate him from all that he would save. The second book is about Raederle, the Princess of An, introduced in the first book as nothing other than the "Second most beautiful woman" and the woman that Morgan loves. Promised to Morgan by a vow made by her father that she would marry whoever won a specific riddling battle, she has known for a long time that she really does love the solid, stubborn Prince of Hed. She also knows that he would not claim her as some prize from a fight. So, when he does not come her, she starts out to find him. In her wanderings she finds that she is as important as Morgan, the Starbearer, in the confrontation between the shape-changers and the powers of their earth. She also finds that the heritage of An, land of war, ghosts and the knowledge of hidden things had hidden her powers not only to those who would look to destroy them but also from herself. Her struggles are as much to accept what she finds herself to be as against a mysterious and powerful foe. The second book lacks the letdown of most transition books in a trilogy because one is introduced to a new protagonist and a new problem The final book is the finale. Where Raederle and Morgan go out and attune their powers, go through all sorts of difficulties and trials to find not only the extent of their powers, but also break many of the internal barriers from their childhoods. Much of the third book is purely physical, as the two battle their way across the land to where the main seat of power and the final confrontation will be, and the final confrontation is as spectacular as any I have read. However, even in the end McKillip chooses to define the battle in the terms of self-control, self-knowledge, and the necessity of love in making power effective. The books are action packed. They move well, and the unique and beautiful elements of the culture are introduced as they are needed. The tone of the books is somewhere between the scene by scene descriptive style of Tolkien and the dreamlike style of LeGuin's EarthSea trilogy. The lore and magic are broadly based on the four elements and their interaction with life, as well as the concept of inner knowledge before use of external knowledge can be effective. A personal favorite was her use of riddles as the structure behind all knowledge. Each riddle has the question, within or as a natural adjunct to a story; the answer, sometimes natural, sometimes horrible, yet often phrased from the question; and a stricture or moral without which the riddle would have no meaning. The riddles helped to tie the story to itself, weaving throughout the telling, sometimes appearing as a tale, sometimes as a question, occasionally as a bittersweet reminder of the fallibility of legend, and gave a leavening of wisdom to the stuff of fantasy. There are many lessons to be learned in the books; however they are introduced so naturally and integrally, there is no feeling of being lectured to. I enjoyed the trilogy immensely. McKillip has a sense for language that makes the story flow into the rich and strange, laying out her story and lands for the reader to see and enjoy. I highly recommend this to those that enjoy a fantasy of many layers, where the characters are fully fleshed out and endowed with fears as well as the courage to overcome those fears. Echoes of Chaos Robert E. Vardeman Berkley Books 1986 183pp $2.95 [***] Reviewed by Danny Low hpccc!dlow Copyright 1987 by Danny Low The plot of this book can be summarized as "Indiana Jones and the Doomsday Machine Part 1." The story is built up from standard SF plot elements. Experienced SF readers will quickly guess what the story is about from the back cover blurb. However, the quality of the writing is well above that usually associated with such a cliche ridden plot. The transformation of Michael Ralston from mild manner xeno-archeologist to super competent adventurer is believable as the reader is forewarned by casually dropped hints of Ralston's past before he became a professor of xeno-archeology. The pacing is a little erratic. The story starts off slow, accelerates to a high speed and has a foreshortened end. However, the story does end at a natural breakpoint in the story. There is much about the story that is appealing. Ralston is the perfect hero for a SF fan. Ralston is very intelligent, highly principled, an outsider because of this and yet has friends in the right places. The mystery of the doomsday device is well handled. It is clearly established that such a device must exist but nothing else. The reader is left tantalized. In summary, unless the reader has a definite aversion to this type of story, this book should be worthwhile reading. My only real objection to the book is that it is rather short for a novel. It really is a rather long novella. Soul Rider Book Five: Children of Flux & Anchor Jack Chalker TOR Books, 1986 $3.50 [**+] Reviewed by Dan'l Danehy - Oakes djo@ptsfd Copyright 1987 by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes How do you review the fifth book of a series when you haven't read the first four? Quick, let's see, is there a summary? Hmm... "To New and Old Readers of the Soul Rider Saga." Well, he says it's the last one, and that's a relief. "Familiarity with [the first four books] is assumed, although the book will, I hope, stand on its own." Well, there's a tactic. Does the book stand on its own? Do you really need to have read the others? Does it make you want to go out and get and read the others? These are the questions I tried to keep in mind while reading SR5. Tried, but not entirely successfully. There were places where I just got picked up by the story and carried along. A point in its favor right there. On the other hand, there are places where I wanted to make a book - shaped dent in the wall. In particular, Chalker shares with Piers Anthony (and L. Frank Baum, for that matter) an inability to disguise the "expository lump." The first two and a half forpetessake pages are one monstrous expository lump. There are longer ones, but this is particularly hard to swallow because of position; when I start a book, I want something to happen right away. You can read and understand this book without having read the others. I'm living proof. Several of the expository lumps seem to exist for the sole purpose of making it possible; they must be terribly boring for those who have read the others. But despite this, some important information is missing. It took me better than 100 pages to figure out what a "stringer" was (basically a combination caravan leader and communications technician), and I never did find out why Cass was so important, which would probably have made her appearance (sort of) late in the book much more exciting. What's it about? Fifty years after the Big War with the Aliens, the people of World (clever name, huh?) have discovered a New Weapon of War that threatens to let one country impose its lifestyle on others. Potential allegories abound, although Chalker has the grace (or the lack of understanding) not to use them in a heavyhanded manner. A stringer and several wizards try to settle the war between the Sexist Male Culture and the All - Female Pseudo - Lesbian Culture in a manner that will protect the rest of World. A few pointless and not particularly erotic sex scenes establish the sexual mores of the main characters; the subject of sex is then kept on the political level. Mind control is used by all three sides. It's hard to decide who the good guys are, except that Chalker tells us. The first and last chapters seem to have nothing to do with the rest of the book; they exist only to close the series off semi - permanently. Does all this make me want to read the first four? No. One more quote from the opening note: "If anyone gets through Chapter 15 and claims not to be very surprised, I guess I should hang it up." That made it particularly hard for him to surprise me; I was thinking, "What can he do here that will be a surprise?" Damn if the sonofabitch didn't take me for a ride anyway, and make it make plot sense too. That seemed to me to be a major achievement. Jack Chalker is one hell of a story teller; it's a pity he doesn't write better. Review Feedback Every so often, your fearless editor blows it. My review of Ancient of Days was too harsh. The book has its flaws, but it isn't as bad as I held it out to be -- I went into the book with a set of expectations that weren't there, which isn't the books fault. It really deserves a rating of [***-] and a recommendation. More serious, my review of The Summer Tree is offbase completely due to terminal Celtic Fantasy burnout. I've commissioned a rebuttal review because there is so much bad Celtic Fantasy being published I'm no longer really able to enjoy the good stuff when I see it, and from the feedback I got on that review, I definitely missed it. Pretend I didn't say anything, and I apologize to Kay for lumping him in with the rest. Books Received Books Received lists books sent to OtherRealms for review. OtherRealms tries to list books around the time they are shipped to bookstores, so these books are (or soon will be) in distribution. Avon Horror Asimov, Issac; Waugh, Charles G.; Greenburg, M. H. The Twelve Frights of Christmas, December, 1986, 263 pages, $3.50. Avon SF Anthony, Piers. Bio of a Space Tyrant #5: Statesman, December, 1986, 310 pages, $3.50. Harrison, Harry. Bill, The Galactic Hero, 1965, 185 pages, $3.50. A classic farce back in print. Whitmore, Charles. Winter's Daughter, 1984, 220 pages, $3.50. A first novel. Tor Fantasy Cooke, Catherine. Veil of Shadow, 286 pages, january, 1987, $2.95. Harris, Deborah Turner. The Burning Stone, 307 pages, January, 1987, $7.95 trade paperback. Orr, A. In The Ice King's Palace, 170 pages, January, 1987, $15.95 hard cover. Book 2 in the World in Amber series. Perry, Steve. Conan the Fearless, 275 pages, 1984, $2.95. Resnick, Mike. Stalking the Unicorn: A Fable of Tonight, 314 pages, January, 1987, $3.50 Tor Horror Farris, John. Catacombs, 522 pages, 1981, $3.95. First Tor printing. Masterson, Graham. Night Warriors, 405 pages, 1987, $3.95. Tepper, Sheri S. The Bones, 315 pages, January 1987, $3.95. Tor Science Fiction Bear, Greg. Beyond Heaven's River, 192 pages, 1980, $2.95. First Tor printing. Bova, Ben. Voyagers II: The Alien Within, 344 pages, 1986, $3.50. Paperback of a hard SF story reviewed in #7 [***+]) Laumer, Keith. Galactic Odyssey, 252 pages, 1967, $2.95. Modesitt. L. E. Jr. Dawn for a Distant Earth, 340 pages, January, 1987, $3.50. Schmidt, Stanley. Tweedlioop, 233 pages, January, 1987, $8.95 trade paperback. OtherRealms is Copyright 1987 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.