Electronic OtherRealms #17 July, 1987 Part 1 Table of Contents Part 1 Editor's Notebook Chuq Von Rospach Why Times are Hard for Hard Science Fiction James Brunet The Shattered World/Players at the Game of People Rich Jervis Part 2 Much Rejoicing Dan'l Danehy-Oakes Part 3 Bimbos of the Death Sun Danny Low The Biofab War Danny Low Dark Seeker K.W. Jeter Star of Gypsies Jim Johnston Pico Reviews Part 4 Stuff Received Letters to OtherRealms Part 5 Words of Wizdom Chuq Von Rospach Alice Sheldon, An Appreciation Editor's Notebook Chuq Von Rospach They're at it again. When last we left the Moral Majority (which is neither, in my eyes) at the Scopes II trial, a few fundamentalist Christians were trying to tell the world, with a straight face, that The Wizard of Oz was unChristian and therefore unacceptable in their schools. After all, it has witches and things in it. The latest censorship case I'm aware of happened in Bay County, Florida. Among the books that have been banned from classroom use at the High School and Junior High levels are: Dante's Inferno (going to Heck just isn't the same, somehow), Hamlet, King Lear, Animal Farm, Great Expectations, Watership Down (fuzzy bunny rabbits?), The Call of the Wild (no bathrooms in the great outdoors, I guess), and my personal favorite, Fahrenheit 451. After all, you don't want folks reading about what you're doing to them. Reports show that letters to the local newspaper are running 100-1 against the ban, that when the local library put the banned books on display, there was a steady stream of folks checking them out to read them, and that a bunch of people are putting together a class action suit against the action. The latest report is that the School Board overruled the Superintendent and removed the ban. A class action suit by the teachers and students is continuing, however. The board stated that this was done not only without the backing of the board, but after the board attorney told him it was legally unsupportable. He did it anyway, because he felt that the word "goddam" was inappropriate to teach children, according to the board public affairs person. I've personally never heard of a curriculum that teaches cussing to students, but somehow they seem to learn them anyway. It sounds to me like this man shouldn't be in education -- he should be a minister if he wants to deal with peoples morals. The end result of all of this is that many people are upset, the school system is saddled with a potentially expensive legal suit, and many people have gone out and read the books he was trying to keep them from reading -- which, I guess, is a positive outcome in some ways, since most wouldn't have if he hadn't decided he knew better. Now, I'll be the first to agree that some material isn't appropriate reading in the classroom, but many of the items being banned these days are being banned not because they're too mature for many children, but for religious or philosophical reasons -- not because they are inappropriate for a person to read, but because the ideas they have disagree with what you want folks to think. What I find very depressing is that in almost every case, the people involved in the ban have never read most of the works in question. They know it is inappropriate -- don't bother them with facts. These folks are trying to force the schools to do what parents should be doing -- building the moral basis for a child. When I was in school (not that long ago, I like to think) if someone felt a book was inappropriate, the student was given a pass to the library and an alternate assignment. There is no reason (or excuse) to try to ban a book from the entire curriculum -- if you don't like it, don't read it, but don't force your beliefs on others. So, do yourself a favor, and read a banned book today. And if someone tries to pull this in your area, get involved and get it stopped. If you know of new censorship actions, pass them by me, and I'll get the word out. If you're interested in getting involved in the censorship controversy, you should contact People for the American Way at 1424 Sixteenth Street NW, Suite 601, Washington D.C. 20036. We have nothing to lose but knowledge, and nothing to win but what the Constitution gave us in the first place. Judy-Lynn Del Rey The loss of another of the important editors of the field, Terry Carr, has started me thinking of Judy-Lynn again. It looks to me like she's being forgotten already, which is inexcusable, so I'm going to resurrect my call for a Judy-Lynn Del Rey memorial award. See my thoughts in the letter column this issue for my latest view. I really believe that we can't let this person fall from view -- without her, Science Fiction would not be an accepted part of the publishing world, and would not be the quality field it is. So, I'm willing to do whatever needs to be done to get this award off the ground --Jincluding sponsor it, although I'd rather see a major convention take control, since that would lend it more legitimacy than I could. Anyone interested in working with me in founding this award, drop me a line. Hugo Nominees I'm sure that many people are going to find things to scream about with this years Hugo Award nominees. At the top of the list has to be Black Genesis by L. Ron Hubbard and the accusations of block voting. While I will agree with most folks that Black Genesis doesn't match up with a Count Zero or a Speaker for the Dead, I'm going to have to take the (probably unpopular) position that it is just as legitimate an entry as any other. This nomination points out quite clearly what I've felt for a long time -- that the Hugo is primarily a marketing and publicity award, not an award for quality. Marketing and publicity are two things Bridge, the publisher of Black Genesis, is quite good at. Many of the same people I've heard screaming about the nomination are people who don't bother to nominate or vote for the award. These folks got exactly what they deserved. If you don't like the way the nominations went, and you didn't nominate something, you have only yourself to blame. My personal gripe with the nominations this year is that the committee, for lack of a better place to put it, shoved The Dark Knight into the non- fiction category as an art book. This makes no sense, but it is as logical as any other place on the ballot, since the Hugo currently doesn't handle graphic material well at all. The Dark Knight is, in my eyes, one of the most important publications of the year, and well deserves its rightful place on the ballot, wherever that it. It also has single-handedly legitimized the graphic novel as an art form, so I expect to see more of these problems until the Hugo is tweaked to handle it. The only positive thing about it being placed in the non-fiction category is that it will likely win the award, if it had been placed in the novel category (the other place I think it could have been squeezed into) it would have lost handily to both Speaker for the Dead and Count Zero. So maybe this is for the best, if we learn from it. Next Issue Next issue will be out the end of August, in time for Worldcon. It will include an article on Historical Realism by Harry (An Emperor for the Legion) Turtledove, an interview of author Mike (Stalking the Nightmare) Resnick, an Alexis Gilliland cover, and lots of the normal stuff. I'm also planning a new, improved format for the Pico Review section, and with any luck the long awaited review index will finally surface. Submissions need to be in by July 15, Letters by August 1. See you in Brighton! Corrections There was a glitch in the electronic version of Books Received that made John Crowley's book AEgypt come out as gypt in issue #14. In issue #16, I claimed that The Stars My Destination won the 1956 Hugo. Not true; Heinlein won the 1956 Hugo for Double Star. Alfred Bester won his Hugo for The Demolished Man in 1953 -- serves me right for not paying closer attention to somewhat misleading cover copy... Why Times are Hard for Hard Science Fiction James Brunet ism780b!jimb Copyright 1987 by James Brunet (A version of this article was originally published in Pyrotechnics) Like many SF readers, I grew up with an affinity for hard Science Fiction; it was the natural bent of any young science-oriented student in those days before Tolkien became a household word and shelf after shelf of Fantasy innundated your local bookstore. Today, I find very little hard SF that is really good, Sturgeon's Law not withstanding. The demand for hard SF is strong; yet editors and publishers complain that not enough saleable hard SF is being presented to them. And as the quantity of hard SF has fallen, so has the quality. The Bears, Brins, Benfords, Nivens and Vinges are rare. Why, then, the hard times for hard SF? I suggest three reasons for the dwindling of hard SF: the expansion of the frontiers of science, the literary coming of age of SF, and ultimately, the excess demands placed upon hard SF by its admirers. **The expanding frontier of science.** Twenty years ago, Scientific American was for the most part accessible to the knowledgeable lay reader; today, most articles are written by specialists for specialists. In a nutshell, this is symptomatic of all science in the past quarter-century. In 1960, it was possible for the educated layman to have a moderately decent comprehension of what was happening at the boundaries of physics, astronomy, and bio-chemistry. In the interval since, fields of knowledge have converged, merged, and diverged again to form an array of specialties such that it is all but impossible for, say a physicist, to be aware of the the facts, nuances, and implications of more than two or three specialties other than his own, if she bothers to keep up at all. What are the implications for the would-be writer of hard SF? It is simply impossible to keep up with the new theories of constructs of all science. One can read Science News, Discover (alas, Science 8x being now defunct), and one or two professional journals -- assuming that one has the requisite background -- and still not have more than a superficial understanding of the current view in most scientific disciplines. Assume that additional research will be done on the most salient scientific disciplines of a given story, and there will still be large gaps where the writer will be left to rely on out-dated popular views or dated memories of high school or college lectures. Hence, it is not at all surprising if we read a story where a writer has gotten the astrophysics and artificial intelligence aspects correct only to bungle the biology or the psycho-chemistry. The writer has ways around this, of course, such as reducing the scope of the story or finessing some questions by stating a technological result with no indication of how it was achieved -- hyperspace travel being a typical example of the latter. And yet there are times that the finessing and hand-waving simply will not do, where the story will wither without a fuller explanation. In such cases, we read out-dated science or science with holes and improbabilities. Some might say, "Well, do more research." For the novel, this is sometimes a possibility. Greg Bear is one of the best hard SF writers today. As a non-scientist, Greg compensates by doing a copious amount of research; it doesn't hurt that he is also generously endowed with intellectual faculties. Yet Greg has an advantage that most SF writers don't have the luxury of having: his writing career is a full-time pursuit. The great, great majority of SF writers find it necessary to hold part-time or full-time jobs to buy groceries, keep a roof over their head, contribute to the support of a family, etc. In this situation, research time is a direct trade-off with writing time. What profit gaineth the writer if he learns his subjects but hath not the time to produce? After all, the business of a writer is writing, and for most there must be some hope of reasonable economic return for time invested. If intense research is a difficult proposition for the writer of the SF novel, it is all but impossible for the short story writers. Ugly economic reality again comes into play. To keep the lupine beastie from the portal, short story writers must, in general, turn out their stories quickly. The established pro who writes shorter work needs to produce quickly to justify the income; the aspiring amateur must turn stories out quickly to gain experience and to maximize the possibility of sales. Extensive research is a luxury and time is the excise tax that most short story writers simply can't afford to pay. And because most beginning writers begin with short stories, an entire generation of SF writers is learning its craft without the regular exposure to intense research. These writers face hard choices when they graduate to novel-length work: acquire the inclination to do the research hard SF, or foreswear hard SF for less demanding endeavors. **SF comes of age.** To some extent, all science fiction is a victim of its own success. Its popularity has meant ever wider audiences, to the point where SF regularly makes the best seller list. With the wider audiences, and with its coming of age as a literary form, the literary standards have risen. No longer is a great plot alone be sufficient to garner praise, justify publication, and -- most important to an editor or publisher -- make money; SF must have the same standards of depth-of-character and deftness of execution as other literary forms. What does this mean for hard SF? The scientifically and technically inclined still constitute a small minority in our society. Those who have the literary skills to be good writers, possessing the balance of intellection and intuition, a command of language, and a sensitivity to human character, constitute an even smaller minority. The intersection set of these two groups is smaller still. Raise the literary standards and the set of good writers diminishes even further, making the intersection set even smaller. This is what has happened to hard SF. Just as expanding frontiers of science have made it more difficult for the writer to stay scientifically cognizant, rising literary standards have short-circuited a number of writing careers. This is not to say that only superior work is being published. There is still a lot of "crud" on the market; as it is, so it ever was. But it does mean that writers who have the hard science handled correctly do not necessarily receive the great recognition, sales, and popularity that they might have in an earlier time. Robert Forward and James Hogan come to mind in this regard. Hogan in particular I desperately want to like. I like his ideas, but his writing has left a lot to be desired. (I haven't read his latest and I'm told that the writing has improved dramatically, so here's hoping.) Faced with the lukewarm popularity of scientifically correct but literarily weak work, publishers are going to be cautious in publishing same, feeding enough to supply the core demand and no more. The public's tolerance for "weak" Fantasy seems much higher, perhaps because it's more broadly accessible. Hence, the shelf after shelf of Tolkien magic- sword-and-quest knock-offs. **Excess demands upon hard SF by its readers.** If part of the hard times for hard sf rests with the writer, part with economic realities, and part with changing literary standards, then a final part of the responsibility rests squarely with readers of hard SF who expect to much of their genre. Hard Science Fiction is, first and foremost, fiction. Fiction is an artform, and as such is much more closely akin to painting than, say, photography. The purpose of fiction is not to capture precisely "what is" or "what might be," but to suggest an external reality and through that, develop a psychic landscape in the mind of the reader that includes not only the physical elements of the story, but emotional, moral, and tonal elements. Using the metaphor of impressionistic painting, what matters is not the precise rendering of line and color, but whether or not that aggregate impression conveys not only a reality, but Truth. A cleverly rendered implausibility will be much more satisfying than a clumsily handled certainty, even if the latter is presented accurately to within five decimal places. Some readers complain about inaccuracies encountered in SF stories. The question that should always be asked is, "Does it matter?" Roger Zelazny wrote "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" in 1965, knowing that the space probe data was going to render his view of Venus obsolete. He wrote the story quickly, wanting to get one good story set on Venus before his view became untenable. The story was an award-winner; was it suddenly transformed from a good story to a bad one when fact and theory changed? No; the story is as fine a read today as it was when it was written. Readers should remind themselves that SF is fiction. Even David Brin and Greg Benford -- two of the best among contemporary hard SF writers - - have scientific "mistakes" in their work. Brin, for instance, has acknowldged that he overstated the current intelligence of dolphins as imputed in Startide Rising. Does this weaken a wonderful tour de force of a novel? No. The more ambitious and broadly based a story, the more difficult -- both technically and artistically -- it is to have everything technically correct. Ultimately, fictional reality is not the same as reality. Better anyday to read a well conceived, plausible sounding tale involving realistically complex human beings than any of the flock of sf stories featuring cardboard characters where Noble Engineer (or Scientist, or Brilliant Layman) devises solution to every problem from alien invasion to the heartbreak of psoriasis. If a reader must have 100% accurate science instead of general accuracy to two significant figures, he is better advised to read a textbook. Better, considering how textbooks become obsolete by the time they appear in print, read the scientific journals instead, taking care to spot the errors appearing there. Specialists will always nitpick. There is an anecdote about two scientists, an astronomer and an anthropologist, discussing Velikovskian theories. The astronomer says, "Well, his astronomy is crackpot but the anthropology is damned interesting." The anthropologist looks blank for a moment and says, "No, it's the other way around." Chances are, that if a nit picker is pleased with an SF work, either the holes are outside his area of knowledge or the work has a very limited scope. Science Fiction is fiction, not science, and it will remain that way. **Prognosis.** Despite the fact that hard SF is under siege, I have a sense of optimism about its future. Traditional hard SF survived the New Wave, becoming stronger and more resilient as a result from the encounter. Now, the Cyberpunk Wave is simultaneously challenging traditional hard SF while infusing a new vitality into the field. Thesis-antithesis-synthesis; I feel that hard SF will endure the problems that I've outlined. It may take longer for writers to become competent in the hard SF field, but the impulse will remain and the rewards, both economic and artistic, will guarantee that good hard SF will continue to be written, if not in the quantity that we might like. The Shattered World Michael Reeves Baen Books Players at the Game of People John Brunner Del Rey Reviewed by Rich Jervis c78kck@irishmvs.bitnet Copyright 1987 by Rich Jervis A bit of a hit and a miss, if you will, I'm reviewing something old and something... well, not so old. The something not so old is Michael Reaves' The Shattered World and the old is John Brunner's Players at the Game of People. The first is a Fantasy where some very serious events are taking place, and the second is a real world story that deals with people's Fantasy. I'm happy with both books for the most part, but Brunner's novel lacks something that Reaves' has. The Shattered World is set in an alternate-earth future where the earth is shattered into fragments by a necromancer. Each fragment is held in orbit around all the others by the combined magic of all the other living practitioners of the time. Now, however, things are falling apart; fragments are starting to collide and the runestones which hold them in orbit and provide independent gravity are disappearing. The book focuses on Beorn, a thief who has been hired to steal the runestone from Darkhaven fragment, virtually from under the nose of a Sorcerer Supreme. Beorn isn't just a simple thief, there's more to him than meets the eye, and I would bet that Tolkien fans out there have already guessed 70% of the truth. There's a lot going on in this book. In a rare moment of reflection Beorn muses: No doubt about it, he told himself; if he managed to live through this adventure, he would be assured of free drinks for the telling as long as he lived. Already he had robbed a magician, fought a brace of monsters, survived the Abyss, dodged a falling fragment, leapt from land to land like a man crossing a stream by stepstones, and now, unless his wits served him, it seemed he might pay a call on the Demogorgon himself. Truly his life was anything but dull. Beorn isn't the only embraceable character in the story, all the principles are clearly motivated and anticipated confrontations are well worth the the wait. Now I turn to the near miss. Perhaps it's not fair of me to place Fantasy and Science Fiction back to back, but they aren't entirely the strange bedfellows they might seem. As an avid reader of authors like Ray Bradbury and M. John Harrison, I can safely say that they not only mix, but blend into an amazing cinnabar-like alloy. So that is my justification. Players at the Game of People grabbed my attention early, had me guessing about the whole picture and I anticipated a strong confrontation when the climax came. I was let down. The confrontation came but was skipped around. I can only allude to what happens, to say more would render the book unworthy of reading. Perhaps I can say that whatever you think a character by the name of Godwin Harpinshield would be like isn't even close to the reality. The other characters, while from as vast a background as those in The Shattered World, didn't seem to matter to me as much. I have to admit that perhaps only Heinlein could have brought together a more bizarre collection of characters and made them work in real time. The difference is in the final summation, both books had intriguing premises, both have conflicts in which the characters are faced with self doubt and the repercussions of their actions. But when the last page of The Shattered World was turned I was left wanting to know what would happen next, in Players at the Game of People, it was simply wondering what happened? OtherRealms #17 July, 1987 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. OtherRealms may be reproduced in its entirety only for non-commercial purposes. No article may be reprinted without the express permission of the author.