Electronic OtherRealms #13 March, 1987 Part 1 Table of Contents Part 1 Beasts Alan Wexelblat The Hercules Text Donn Seeley The Ecologic Envoy Dan'l Danehy Oakes The Uncanny X-men Alan Wexelblat The Berserker Throne Jim Day Teckla Jim Johnston The Unconquered Country Donn Seeley Editor's Notebook Chuq Von Rospach Part 2 Books Received Pico Reviews Part 3 Much Rejoicing Dan'l Danehy-Oakes Words of Wizdom Chuq Von Rospach Letters to OtherRealms Beasts John Crowley [***+] Reviewed by Alan Wexelblat Copyright 1987 by Alan Wexelblat When an author's first novel wins the World Fantasy Award, it is hard not to compare his second novel to the first. This is one of those cases; Crowley's Little, Big was a masterpiece of fantasy that richly deserved the 1982 award. Beasts is a more modest effort both in scope and in tone. Its language is less complex and ornate than that of Little, Big, but it is still a pleasure to read his fine wordsmithing. The story, however, is not so pleasant. Beasts is aptly titled. It is a story about beasts--animal and human, individual and organizational. It is also a story about how these beasts act and interact. The story is set in a not-too-distant future in which the United States had been fragmented and badly decimated by civil war. The population has been reduced, allowing the remainder to survive, although at a lower standard of living. In addition to the human population, there is a small population of genetic constructs extant. They are artificial crossbreeds of human and animal genes. Most of these mutants do not survive the laboratory. Some do, but are forever sterile. However, one species, a cross between man and lion called leo, survives and reproduces outside the lab. Painter, the character around whom the story revolves, is a leo. Beasts, though, is not "Painter's story" so much as it is "a story about Painter." In particular, it is the story of the dying Federal government to recapture its escaped "lab animals," prime among whom is Painter. Their extermination is seen as the first step toward purifying the land so that it can be reunified. This is not a pretty story, nor a nice one. The leos are more lion than man and have culture, society, morals, and behavior that reflects this. Throughout the novel, they do what they must to survive and achieve their goals, often without concern for the humans around them. In this novel, Crowley has drawn a fascinating picture; his characters are exceptionally well-developed. He shows a keen perception for the bestial ways and his leos are more alien than most aliens found in SF. He is particularly adept at showing how the differing bestial cultures clash when they meet. The action takes place against a fine mesh of detail; in this sense, Beasts is a richer tapestry than most novels its size. On the other hand, this richness works against the plot. There is material for a larger work, but the story seems lost against that background. Painter's story just isn't enough to totally capture and hold the reader. Aside from this weakness, Beasts is a good book, finely written. Buy Little, Big first, but don't pass up Beasts. The Hercules Text Jack McDevitt Ace Books, 307 pages, $3.50 Reviewed by Donn Seeley Copyright 1987 by Donn Seeley I've seen a lot of first contact stories. When a new one turns up, I look first for solid entertainment and then for some original speculation, something new about an old genre. I've read many novels which succeed at one or the other but not both... Stanislaw Lem's novel His Master's Voice, for example, is the heavily analytical tale of a mathematician who was a member of a team of scientists who were assigned to decipher an intelligent signal from the stars. While Lem comes up with some very intriguing ideas about what we might see in such a signal, the story itself is extremely dry, a style quite befitting its arrogant and obnoxious narrator but very wearing on the reader. I keep hoping to see a competent first contact story which is as deep as Voice but less alien, more human. Terry Carr has a much better than average record in picking first novels for his Ace Specials line and thus I was ready to be pleasantly surprised by Jack McDevitt's The Hercules Text. Harry Carmichael is a NASA bureaucrat who supervises a group of scientists at Goddard Space Center who are studying X-ray pulsars. On the night Carmichael's wife tells him she's leaving him, he gets a phone call from the office about a peculiar change that has been observed in the signal from an X-ray source in Hercules. Something is modulating the pulsar's pulses to produce a little table of powers... Well, of course, what the Goddard scientists have detected is a transmission from an alien civilization, and as the signal monitoring progresses it becomes apparent that a huge amount of data is going to arrive on a variety of subjects. Carmichael has to fight to keep the project from being taken away from his people, and as he gradually discovers the importance of the information in the Hercules Text, he must struggle to prevent the new technology from being misused. What happens when a new, cheap source of electrical power is made available? What about a simple and inexpensive way to turn an object of Earth's mass into a black hole? By the end of the novel, I was on the edge of my seat wondering whether even some sizable fraction of the planet could be saved... What's good about The Hercules Text? McDevitt writes some very nice suspense; once the action gets moving, it stays moving very smoothly. He does an excellent job of describing the effects of the Text on our culture--we hear the reactions of the Catholic and fundamentalist Protestant clergy, we find out how the Text turns into a political football and observe how it affects domestic politics and international relations, and we see how the dusty towers of academia are tumbled by a tidal wave of alien thought. The chapters of the novel are interleaved with 'monitor' sections presenting headlines, excerpts from interviews and papers, and so on; I found this to be a perspicacious means of keeping attention on the way popular culture adapts to the alien influence. McDevitt hasn't quite hit his stride with his characterizations, but overall he does a more than adequate job. He makes his bureaucrats seem like real people rather than caricatures (I do take issue with one incident, in which Carmichael goes over the head of his creepy superior to the White House, and this superior does not subsequently find an opportunity to decorate his office with Carmichael's guts...). McDevitt's casting suffers from tokenism -- the Eminent Scientist, the Beautiful Female Psychologist, the Catholic Priest Who Must Struggle With His Conscience -- but it's not offensive. Unfortunately The Hercules Text has its weaknesses too. There are some quite glaring mistakes in the science, mistakes which an editor really ought to have picked up, mistakes which were so blatant that even a non-scientist like me could spot them. At one point in the story, the Goddard scientists have encountered a dead end in analyzing the signal: they've run it through their best search programs on their biggest and fastest computer and can't make the least sense of it. Someone suggests that small is beautiful, and perhaps their office PC could decode the signal more easily than their vast number cruncher. On a lark they feed the disk into the PC, load up Star Trek, and guess what--the Enterprise encounters a mysteriously spinning cube beyond the edge of the galaxy. Ouch. McDevitt doesn't seem to know the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist, he apparently thinks that optical disks can be erased by electromagnets, and he has a biologist state that myopia could be cured in adults using DNA repair techniques. A lot of other 'science' looked fishy to me but I don't have the right background to catch it all. I also felt that the plot had some gaping holes in it. I won't spoil the ending for you, but I thought that it suffered from what Arthur Clarke calls a 'failure of nerve.' (I think Bear's Blood Music and Wilhelm's Welcome, Chaos are examples of how to conquer this.) There are a few practical problems, too--for example, when the characters are worrying about the possible destruction of the Text, they never seem to consider the possibility that the Alien Broadcasting Company might show reruns... I hope I don't sound too hard on this book, because it really was fun to read and showed some good thinking. But I'm still waiting for the definitive first contact novel. The Ecologic Envoy L.E. Modesitt, Jr. [***] Tor Books, $2.95 Reviewed by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes Copyright 1987 by Dan'l Danehy-Oakes In an era of jaded, cynical cyberpunqs, this book is refreshing -- the author has created what I'm fairly sure is the first "technoyuppie" novel. It follows a fairly standard cyberpunq plot: High-tech protagonist uses superior technology and underhanded methods, including murder, to achieve his ends. But it's full of reversals on the cyberpunq feel: The hero is a "Professor of Trade" (Read: MBA in international economics) and "Ecolitan" (Read: agent provocateur working for his planet's Establishment) who acts from idealistic, rather than cynical, ends. The book is filled with loving descriptions of gourmet meals. One chapter is basically an argument about the economics of protective tariffs (which suspiciously reminds one of the current US-Japan situation). Yuppie. It is also a finely plotted book. The story of Nathaniel Whaler's attempts to negotiate a simple(?) trade agreement in the face of mysterious intrigue and repeated assassination attempts is fascinating. It kept me turning pages -- in fact, I wanted to give it four stars. But there are two problems. (1) Character. A number of the supporting characters are fascinating, but the personality of Whaler himself is about as thin as a crepe. (2) Style. The writing is mostly inoffensive, if pedestrian, but in a few places the author drops syntactical glitches that made me want to scream. In all, a somewhat flawed book, but too good for two stars. The Uncanny X-Men Chris Claremont and John Byrne [***+] Marvel Comics Group Reviewed by Alan Wexelblat Copright 1987 by Alan Wexelblat I can hear it now: a chorus of groans. "A comic book?" "That's kiddie stuff." Well, if you'll bear with me a minute, I'll explain myself. If you have any interest in the illustrated/comic art form, I think it'll be worth your while. It's true that the majority of American comic books aren't worth the paper they're printed on. In animation and sophistication, American products almost invariably trail their Japanese counterparts. U.S. products are usually aimed at a younger audience and most submit to the censorship of the comics code. Sometimes a story rises above the muck. Sometimes idea men like Claremont and Byrne team up with good artists and put together a nice graphic novel. This book, the story of Dark Phoenix, is such a novel. It is a reprinting of the nine issues of the X-Men comic book series that made up that story. Phoenix is the name given to an alien being. An extremely powerful creature, it normally exists as disembodied energy. However, the mutant Jean Grey has managed to tap into this energy, and the Phoenix manifests itself through her. The Phoenix has no concept of human morality; it has only hungers and desires. The story centers around Jean's struggle to control those hungers and to use the power of the Phoenix for good ends. I liked the story, although the ending was not as good as it could have been. (As noted in the introduction to the book, that ending was and is one of the most hotly debated happenings in the Marvel comics world.) The characters of the X-Men are well-drawn. Jean is a strong female lead; her character is equal to or better than the males around her. One of Claremont's triumphs is his ability to write good female characters. The universe of the X-Men is populated with things we normally associate with SF and with fantasy: FTL travel, mutants with strange powers, space warps, psionics and magic. One of the best things about this novel is that these elements do not tell the story. Rather, they serve as the canvas on which the stories of the people involved are told. This is not, however, deep or sophisticated writing. In the condensed, action-oriented world of comics, some things are outright explained that would have only been hinted at in a textual novel. On the whole, I recommend it as a good afternoon (or airplane ride) read. The Berserker Throne Fred Saberhagen [***] Tor Books, $3.50 Reviewed by Jim Day Copyright 1987 by Jim Day Programmed to kill, that's what the berserkers are, deadly doomsday machines created long ago as ultimate weapons in an interstellar war between the Builders and the Red Race. Repairing and replicating themselves, the berserkers search the galaxy to fulfill their goal of total extermination of all life. This is the premise of Saberhagen's popular Berserker series. I've enjoyed all of the Berserker stories and found Berserker Throne to be a well-written tale of action, suspense, human conflict and the continuing struggle against the implacable berserkers. The book held my interest from cover to cover, although the first half proceeds at a rather leisurely pace compared to the second half. Most of the action takes place in the Templar Fortress, a hollow sphere of stone and metal surrounding a very small, starlike object. The main character, Prince Harivarman, has been exiled to the fortress by the Council of the Eight Thrones. Base Commander Anne Blenheim, responsible for Harivarman's welfare during his exile, agrees with him that the galaxy must unite to combat the berserkers but otherwise remains neutral. Chen Shizuoka, a shy university student from the planet Salutai, is a minor character who serves to connect several important elements of the plot. Unjustly accused of treason and regicide, he joins the Templars to elude the Salutai secret police. Harivarman's political enemies hope to use Shizouka, dead or alive, in their plot to dominate the Eight Worlds. The Templar Fortress is twelve kilometers in diameter, enclosing a hollow sphere eight kilometers across, in the center of which is the tiny Templar Radiant. One of nine known to exist, the radiant produces an exponentially decreasing field of inverse gravity, providing the inner surface of the fortress with earth-normal gravity. The two-kilometer thick shell of the fortress contains about six hundred cubic kilometers of stone and is honeycombed with a maze of chambers and corridors. The fortress is also the locale of an earlier Berserker story, "Some Events at the Templar Radiant," which first appeared in the May-Aug 1979 issue of Destinies magazine and was reprinted a month later in The Ultimate Enemy, an Ace paperback collection of Berserker stories. In this earlier story, an inert but potentially functional berserker is discovered in a remote area of the fortress by Georgicus Sabel, Doctor of Cosmography. Sabel tries to extract scientific data from the berserker's computer-like brain, with tragic consequences. Like the unfortunate Dr. Sabel, Prince Harivarman discovers a damaged berserker in a remote area and tries to probe its brain. While doing so he discovers in the berserker's memory banks a code sequence that he believes might allow him to control not only that particular berserker but all berserkers, giving humanity a way of putting an end to the berserker menace for all time. To reveal more of the plot would spoil the story for prospective readers, so I'll just add that the ending takes a dramatic and unexpected turn that some readers may find lacking in plausibility. Teckla Steven Brust [***+] Ace Fantasy, $2.95, 214 pages Reviewed by Jim Johnston Copyright 1987 by Jim Johnston Teckla is the third in Brust's tales of Vlad Taltos, not-quite small-time mobster, part-time assassin, and all-around good guy. Vlad and his wife, Cawti, who killed him once, (just in the line of business, mind you, nothing personal) were introduced to us in Jhereg, the first and perhaps most original tale of Brust's Cycle series, which was perhaps not intended to be a series. In the second, Yendi, we are introduced to the younger Vlad and learn something about how Vlad got to be a not-quite small-time mobster, part-time assassin, and all-around good guy. In Teckla, we meed Vlad and Cawti at some time after they're established in their mutual career. Teckla, we're told, are lazy and stupid, only smart enough to realize that they should be cowardly. Of course, the Teckla are also revolting, which certainly represents at the very least a change in their behavior. Vlad, we're also told, is in very good shape, and is wondering what to do with all of his money. He's debating if he should buy a small castle somewhere, perhaps a better title than Baronet, or perhaps expand his operations, and naturally he's not terribly interested in a small, ill-fated revolt, even if he might sympathize. Of course, life just isn't quite that simple. While I could spoil the story, I'll let Brust explain it all because he's so good at it. Teckla seems to represent somewhat of a change for this series. While Jhereg and Yendi were both self-contained, and not necessarily part of a series, Teckla has unanswered questions, some unclear motivation, and, one suspects, at least one sequel forthcoming in order to clear things up. I found this a bit annoying, as one of the enjoyable things in all of Brust's other books was the neat trimming and crocheting together of the loose ends. Teckla didn't do that, and I docked it a quarter-star as a result. Vlad grows a bit as a character here, seemingly at the expense of Cawti, who has a lot to do, but whose motivation seems lacking. Of course, I'm hoping to have that explained later. For Brust, Teckla seems to be somewhat off his usual, although he's given himself a lot to live up to. If I had to rate his books, I'd put Teckla next to last, well above To Reign in Hell, and a bit below Yendi. Of course, that's a pretty good recommendation, given that all five of his books are in the top 5% of the fantasy books that I've read, and Brokedown Palace threatens to take first place. Would I recommend it? Yes. Without hesitation. While I've complained quite a bit in the last few paragraphs, the book is satisfying, well written, interesting, and hard to put down. It's fun to read, fun to second-guess, and likely to contain a few surprises. The Unconquered Country Geoff Ryman Allen & Unwin (UK) Reviewed by Donn Seeley Copyright 1987 by Donn Seeley Sometimes you hear things in the news that you know just couldn't have happened. I felt that way when I first heard about the massacre of Cambodia, when I saw the pictures of blood-stained torture chambers and their manufactured products, the neatly stacked piles of human skulls, decorating the museum at Tuol Sleng. Intellectually I know that human beings are capable of boundless cruelty, but I still manage to be surprised every time I see another example of it. To me it seems to take place in another universe... When I find a story that drags me into that other universe, it can prove to be a shockingly alien experience. Geoff Ryman's The Unconquered Country took me on a tour I'm not likely to forget. The Unconquered Country is a little Buddhist nation which has never before been occupied by foreigners. Third Child lives in the capital city, a refugee from the perilous hinterland where the Neighbours are conducting an extermination campaign against the villagers in preparation for the final attack which will wipe out all resistance. Third supports herself by selling her body, but not in the way you'd expect: Third rented her womb for industrial use. She was cheaper than the glass tanks. She grew parts of living machinery inside her -- differentials for trucks, small household appliances. She gave birth to advertisements, small caricature figures that sang songs. There was no other work for her in the city. Third's world has living houses, living trucks, living aircraft -- a burgeoning life which is unprepared for the approaching massacre. A culture which is built upon respect for life lies in critical danger before the murderous forces of the Neighbours, the Big People and... the Country's own army of resistance? Fantasy isn't supposed to work this way... I found Ryman's Country to be superbly strange. It's not quite the same as any real country: not in culture (it's perhaps more like Thailand than the real Cambodia, which has been conquered many times), not in recent history (the Neighbours, an analogue for the Vietnamese, are shown as invading before the massacre rather than after), and certainly not in technology (houses with feet and elephantine trunks). But Ryman manages to capture the gritty feel of the war and immerse the reader in its alienness. The many fantastic elements of the story combine to enhance the tale rather than to distract from it, and lead to a quite moving conclusion. In its original form as a novella in Interzone #7, this story won the World Fantasy Award. The novel adds detail to the original story, but I still rather like the novella because I think it has more punch, an uncut dose of weirdness. I'm not unhappy with the novel form, which is illustrated with some very nice drawings by Sacha Ackerman and has an afterword by Ryman which relates how he came to write the story, but if the novel sounds intriguing to you, you might want to track down the novella and try it first. Editor's Notebook Chuq Von Rospach Polly Freas dies I'm very sad to have to announce the death of Polly Freas at 12:45AM, January 24th of cancer. Polly was a long time East Coast fan and the wife of artist Kelly Freas. A fund has been set up to help Kelly offset medical costs. Your donations should be sent to Butch Allen, C/O HAROSFA, P.O. Box 9434, Hampton, Va. 23670. According to CompuServe, the news broke at Confusion, and an impromptu auction raised over $2000. Kelly has requested that donations be sent in her name to the Children's Welfare Fund, Stabur Graphics Inc., 23301 Meadow Park, Detroit, MI 48239 in lieu of flowers. This is an organization that she helped found, and it is appropriate that we support it in her memory. Cards and letters to Kelly should be sent to him in care of OtherRealms and I'll make sure they get forwarded. There are other comments on Polly in this months lettercol. My sympathy goes out to Kelly and all of their friends. We've lost another of the wonderful people that makes Fandom a wonderful place to be. Publishing News St. Martin's Press will be publishing a mass market paperback line to supplement their hardcover offerings. Horror is edited by Lincoln Child and Science Fiction is edited by Stuart Moore. Baen Books is also starting a Fantasy paperback line. It will be edited by Betsy Mitchell. Murphy Strikes Again Dept. A couple of issues ago, Locus converted to a laser printer, and Charles Brown discussed some of the startup problems they had. So it was with some glee that I put last month's issue (my first on the Laserwriter) to bed ahead of schedule and with no pain whatsoever. I'd done a lot of planning on it, and having worked with the technology for a while, felt I had all the angles covered. When nobody was looking, I even chortled a little bit for outsmarting my arch-nemesis, Lord Murphy. Well, just to make sure everyone knows that the proud will do themselves in, it wasn't until the last issue of OtherRealms was printed, stuffed and stamped that I found out that the database with my subscription lists in it wouldn't print mailing labels on a Laserwriter. A couple of days of frantic scrabbling and patching and I finally got a set of usable mailing labels. This little episode shows a couple of things: that when you know nothing can go wrong somewhere, it will go wrong somewhere else, and even someone who knows technology can get tripped up by assuming the obvious. When a computer salesman tells you that what he is selling you is a complete solution, you better make sure that your definitions match. Murphy will out. By the way, since last issue I've got new and wonderful software that does mailing labels just fine, as well as a few things the old program couldn't do. The new functionality is useful enough that I'm finally getting around to indexing OtherRealms reviews, a compilation of which will be out as soon as I'm done. The New Address Astute readers will notice a new address in the masthead. OtherRealms has moved, so please make sure your mailing lists, publicity departments, address books and whatever else might be interested in the new address get the information. If I get mail from you, you'll probably get a private note as a reminder as well, just to make sure everything gets where it belongs. Actually, OtherRealms hasn't moved, but since we're planning on finding bigger quarters in the next few months, I finally got around to renting a drop box. Both U.S. Mail and UPS are acceptable, and with any luck, this will mean the suicide notes from my postman will stop. Grade Inflation? A couple of people have written in complaining of grade inflation, suggesting that in the last couple of issues the reviews grades have been trending upward. Well, thanks to my new database and the OtherRealms review index (see next item) I've been able to crunch some numbers and see what's been happening. The numbers are really aren't changing. The average for all reviews in a given issue has been solidly around 3.2 or 3.3 since issue five. The low point was a 3.1 in issue 5, and the hight point was issue 9 with a 3.5. The last three issues were 3.2, 3.3, and 3.3 respectively. So there isn't any real grade inflation in the magazine, the averages are staying pretty steady. That's the good news. The bad news is that looking back over the last couple of Words of Wizdom columns, there has been a tendency for me to get into "best book of the year this month" mode. Part of this is on purpose -- I firmly believe that the good books should be featured, so I select my reviews to emphasize the positive works I've read. Average or lesser works, in general, go into the Pico Review section. At the same time, though, I've seen situations where a given book might deserve the rating I've given it, but in comparison with other books, things get out of skew. I'm going to work on consistency in the next few issues, to make sure this doesn't get completely out of hand. OtherRealms Review Index Thanks to the wonders of computers, I've compiled an index to all of the reviews in OtherRealms. Over the previous 12 issues, there have been 433 reviews. Issue one had 13, issue 12 had 71; I feel like we covered a lot of territory in the last year. I'm still working out the report parts of the database, so the index isn't quite ready to distribute. What I'll probably do is key in this issue, and then make it available next month. Having all those numbers in the database gives you a good chance to play around and see what happens. According to the database, the most popular publishers (based on number of works reviewed in OtherRealms, a definitely biased sample) are Ace (46), Tor (42), Del Rey (37) and Bantam (30). Not surprising, since they are the largest paperback houses and have the widest distribution. What was more surprising, though, was that two hardcover houses (Doubleday at 19 and Arbor House at 16) had more reviews than major paperback houses such as Daw (18), Questar (6), and Signet(12). OtherRealms readers seem to read more hardback books than I'd expected. The number of different publishers reviewed were 73, which means the readership of OtherRealms gets around. Another thing I took a quick look at was the popularity of a given author. If you base popularity on the number of works reviewed, the Frederik Pohl, with 12, was the most read author. Orson Scott Card was runner up with 10, and Larry Niven and R.A. MacAvoy both had 9. If you look at the average rating, you get different names. If you throw out people with three or fewer reviews in the last 12 issues (to make sure a single 5 star review doesn't skew things too far), the favorite authors is Steven Brust, with a 4.4 rating. Runners up include: Raymond Feist (4.2), William Gibson (3.9), Orson Scott Card (3.75), David Brin (3.75), Ben Bova (3.4), and Anne Rice (3.8). What does all this mean? Damned if I know. Statistics are wonderful for proving whatever it is you want to prove, but beyond that the utility of things like this are left up to the reader. Regardless, the index should be out by next issue. OtherRealms Recommends The other night, a friend that I haven't seen for a couple of months asked me the fatal question "So what do you recommend reading?" Twenty minutes of rooting through the bookshelves later, I had a stack of books that will keep him busy for most of 1987, and a chance to give a second mention to some works I feel define the good side of Science Fiction in 1986. So, in no particular order, OtherRealms recommends: Death is a Lonely Business by Ray Bradbury; The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy; A Malady of Magicks and A Multitude of Monsters by Craig Shaw Gardner; Sword-Dancer by Jennifer Roberson; Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock; The Sorceror's Lady by Paula Volsky (which seems to be her second novel, not a first novel as Locus claimed); Teckla by Steven Brust; Bridge of Birds by Barry Hugart; A Baroque Fable by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro; Wild Cards edited by George R.R. Martin; Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams; Silence in Solitude by Melissa Scott; Windmaster's Bane by Tom Deitz; Artificial Things by Karen Joy Fowler; and Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe. Which means I don't have to write a 1986: the year in review column. Thank Ghod... And Now a Word From Our Sponsor This month has been an interesting month, working out glitches in the layout and the software, playing with the new database, keying in the index data (ouch, my poor fingers...) and trying to catch up on all of the administration of publishing a magazine. The one thing this didn't leave a lot of time for was reading, which is why Wizdom is very short this month -- most of the books I read simply didn't deserve more than a Pico, so I'm filling space here rather than pushing books that I don't feel should get that much push. Besides, after reading the new Bradbury, everything else is anti-climactic. There are a few formatting changes since last issue. The typeface for the headlines has changed because the original face, while quite pretty, simply disappeared into the page. Also, I've put a little more white space between lines (from 9/10 to 9/11 points for you publishing types) because the text looked cramped. Thanks to everyone who sent me mail discussing the new layout and making suggestions--your feedback is making a good start even better. Finally, if you sent me an article or review prior to January first, and it hasn't been published yet, it won't be. As far as I know, all my old inventory is gone, so if I haven't printed it or contacted you, either the December disk crash (see last issue) ate it, or some other random factor has come into play. If something is missing, please let me know. See you next month... Electronic OtherRealms #13 March, 1987 Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach. All Rights Reserved. OtherRealms may be reproduced only for non-commercial purposes. With the exception of excerpts used for promotional purposes, no part of OtherRealms may be re-published without permission.