Electronic OtherRealms #18 Fall, 1987 Part 5 Rebellion, Counter-Revolution Blemishes and Potential Commentary by James Brunet jimb@ism780c.uucp Copyright 1987 by James Brunet Books in this column: Hardwired Walter Jon Wiliams Tor, 1986, 343pp. Voice of the Whirlwind Walter Jon Williams Arbor House, 1987, 248pp. The Uplift War David Brin Bantam/Spectra, 1987, 638pp. Neuromancer William Gibson Arbor House, 1986, 278 pp. Count Zero William Gibson Arbor House, 1986, 278pp. Speaker for the Dead Orson Scott Card Tor, 1986, 415pp. The Year Before Yesterday Brian Aldiss Franklin Watts, 1987, 227pp. Fire Watch Collection from Connie Willis Bluejay, 1985, 274pp. Cyberpunk now comes in a spray can. At least that's the impression fostered by some current novels cashing in on the latest hot trend within SF. 'What should Science Fiction be?' is just an allotrope of the old question 'What is Science Fiction anyhow?' We all know that the only proper answer to that one is 'Shut up.' -- Joe Haldeman** Well, okay, but before we talk about cyberpunk spray, what is cyberpunk, anyway? Someone needs to know. Cyberpunk is held by some to be merely a marketing label; others hold that it is the only worthwhile work being done in SF today. With literary antecedents that include Alfred Bester, John Brunner, and P.K. Dick, the current cyberpunk movement catapulted to prominence with William Gibson's Neuromancer, which swept the major SF awards of 1984. Which is not to say that the current wave labeled cyberpunk began with Neuromancer. Certainly Gibson's short fiction "Burning Chrome" and "Johnny Mnemonic" had received critical attention two to three years previously and writers such as Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and John Shirley were already influencing each other. But it was Neuromancer that brought cyberpunk to the masses. Defined by Gibson's example, cyberpunk is marked by high-tech flash, dwelling particularly on human-computer interfaces and biological modifications to the human body. Cyberpunk prose traditionally (traditionally? already?) is intense and energy-filled, hard and glittery. Cyberpunk's heroes come from the ranks of the anti-heroes residing in the underside of society. But these characteristics are superficial. Cyberpunk is most intensely a matter of rebellion. Rebellion permeates its tone -- the attitude of the authors toward their material. But rebellion against what? The rebellion takes on two forms. Many cyberpunk writers and fans are fond of saying that the future is different now, meaning that the old futures of SF -- optimistic techno-imperialist visions where virtue and hard work pay off an upgraded version of the American dream, replete with success on technical, social, and personal fronts -- have been dumped into the dustbin of history. Cyberpunk's visions are different, drawing upon a legacy of urban decay, political corruption, assassination, formation of an international corpocracy, and social decadence. Cyberpunk's characters are no less revolutionary than the vision. Many characters from traditional SF are idealized. They never seem to have a problem finding a parking space or an empty bathroom stall (some seem as if they never need the facilities of the latter anyway), they've never had a baby vomit in their hair, their family relationships are either well within bounds of tolerable normality or else conveniently absent.... Cyberpunk rebels against this image, choosing as its heroes the sleazy, the losers, and, well, the rebels. Beyond vision and character, cyberpunk's whole ethos is different. The ethos of traditional SF seems to be, "Things will work out if we try hard enough and in the right direction." Cyberpunk seems to counter with "Life is a bitch, and then you die, but a little hedonism and nihilism in the meanwhile is not a bad thing." In some ways, cyberpunk seems to be a redirection of the New Wave which swept SF in the late 60's and early 70's. But New Wave seemed to concentrate most intently on matters of form, considering content mostly in terms of what it should not be as exemplified by traditional SF. Returning, then, from our thumbnail exploration of cyberpunk, consider Hardwired, a first novel by Walter Jon Williams. Hardwired is the story of Cowboy, a panzerboy. As a panzerboy, Cowboy plugs into the computer of his heavily armed and armored vehicle and smuggles compact, high-priced products such as scarce pharmaceuticals from one side of the Balkanized ex-USA to the other, eluding the state militias, competing smugglers, and agents of the rich, powerful, and oppressor Orbitals, corporate space-based de-facto states. In the course of his adventures, Cowboy links up with Sarah, the hard- bitten, tough-as-nails bio-enhanced freelance mercenary. Thrown together as allies -- neither can afford to have friends -- they fight to survive against lethal doublecrosses and the intrigue of some Orbitals who get the idea that smallfry like Cowboy and Sarah can upset their nice little status quo. While passing time on their escapades, they punctuate bouts of taunts and suspicion by screwing each other silly, which I suppose demolishes any notion that emotional environment has something to do with sexual response. Among other things, Hardwired is an homage to Zelazny and Gibson. The panzerboy dash across country is right out of Damnation Alley; at least Williams has the good grace to acknowledge Zelazny and Alley in his dedication. The Orbitals, the mercenaries, the computers, and the drugs are all ripped-off from Gibson, much as the fotocopy-fantasy writers rip-off Tolkien. To Williams' credit, at least the ending is a reasonable compromise. If Evil does not triumph, at least Case and Molly, er, I mean Cowboy and Sarah, do not amble off to live happily after. But when all the dust settles, this is not the cyberpunk novel that you might expect from the cover illustration and superficial indications like prose style. Yes, we have a whole slew of cyberslang terms such as mudboy, dirtgirl, zonedancer, buttonhead, etc. And all the computer-jacking terms are there. But it's all sprayed on. What Williams has written is a good old- fashioned adventure romance and then lacquered it over with cyberpunk imagery. Now I happen to like some good old-fashioned adventure romances. As such, Hardwired isn't bad. But it will give aid and comfort to those who see cyberpunk as a marketing label, and it will betray any reader who picks it up expecting something of a cyberpunk sensibility. Beyond the issue of a horse in camel's clothing, Hardwired fails to convince on its own terms. The world has a papier-mache feel to it. As an example, the Orbitals are supposedly rich and powerful, keeping the earthbound states fighting over dregs and scraps. Yet in this allegedly impoverished society, arms and armament are everywhere, as are bio- enhancements and recreational pharmaceuticals. Who pays for all of this, and how? Another problem is the lapse into pseudo-profound philosophical reflections that are difficult to take seriously, to wit: ""He and the other deltajocks were not an abstract response to market conditions, but a continuation of some kind of mythology. Keeping a light burning in the darkness, hope in the shape of an afterburner flame. The last free Americans, on the last high road...."" Hardwired is not a novel I would hand someone as introduction to SF. It is, however, the sort of passable entertainment suitable for a plane trip or a day at the beach. But a first novel is a first novel. For every writer that breaks in with a brilliant best-seller, another dozen begin slogging at the bottom of the ramp, hoping to work their way up. Williams' second novel, Voice of the Whirlwind is less self-conscious, more original, and shows some promise. The story is that of Steward, a ex-corporate mercenary. The Steward in this book is a Beta, a clone of the original who was murdered. Only the original (the Alpha) was sloppy in keeping his memories updated, so Beta Steward must figure out who murdered his original, and why, or else life could be terminated just as easily a second time. And this time Steward doesn't have the financial resources to set up clone insurance. Steward careens around the solar system in pursuit of his mystery. He comes into contact with the aliens who maintain trading posts in the asteroid belt, dirty tricks operatives from various corporations, a hard- bitten female with whom he maintains a shaky alliance (does this sound familiar?), another ex-mercenary who served under Steward's Alpha, and a full menu of sleazy, conniving, no-goodniks that would make Boris Badunov proud. Voice of the Whirlwind has two outstanding flaws. Considering how useful it would be to produce various characters in the flesh on demand, it's amazing that this very corrupt universe doesn't find clone insurers running off illegal copies of people for various purposes. Secondly, Steward always winds up getting to where he needs to go, regardless of what part of the solar system and how tight the security, never questioning the apparent serendipity. If I were into duplicity and paranoia as part of my trade, I would surely have suspicions if a taxi always appeared, heading toward my destination, just as I needed it. Yet this is what effectively happens to Steward and he never stops to consider whether or not someone might be setting him up, and if so, why. Michael Swanwick wrote "A User's Guide to the Postmoderns," an essay which appeared in the August, 1986 issue of Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine. It was a coherent, insightful analysis of the cyberpunks and the humanists -- the two main camps of post-New Wave groups of SF writers. Unfortunately, Swanwick's novel Vacuum Flowers represents a triumph of incoherence over accessibility, plot, character, and other literary values. The story concerns a woman who steals a hot personality implant, the equivalent of getting a copy of next month's hot video release that everyone will want and bootleg distributors will pay dearly for to have an advance copy. Of course the problem is that the woman, Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark, is essentially wearing this new personality, with her original personality, which went by the name of Eucrasia Walsh, completely suppressed and gone. More than this, I can't tell you, because I found it impossible to continue. Pity, because Swanwick has previously demonstrated that he has an understanding of what is going on in the SF field and has written some good fiction in the past (In the Drift, et al.). David Brin is a clever man. With The Uplift War he has managed to avoid that affliction of so many SF writers, sequelitis tedious. For instead of a sequel to the Nebula- and Hugo-winning Startide Rising, Brin has given us the third piece of a four-dimensional jigsaw puzzle (Brin's first novel, Sundiver, was the first piece). The pieces are related in time, plot, and theme, but strictly speaking they are not sequels to each other. The distinction is important, because it means that Brin is not trapped trying to flog new life and new complications out of a set of continuing characters. While I think that ultimately some characters may reappear, in cameo roles or otherwise, they will still be fresh enough, unfettered enough, that they can still be dynamic -- changed as a result of their previous experiences but subject to being affected by the new adventures -- instead of being forced into a static mode like so many on-going characters of endless series. In response to questioning during a signing at The Change of Hobbit, Brin said that he expected that there would be six or seven novels when the grouping is complete. He also indicated that the Streaker and its crew from Startide would probably figure in a future novel, that he (Brin) wanted to find out what happens to them. The Uplift War takes place on the planet Garth, one of the Earth's few colony planets in a Galaxy (actually, Galaxy cluster) teeming with intelligent races, all of whom have been "uplifted" to intelligence by other races, their patrons. This chain of uplifts extends back millions of years, back to the mythic progenitor race. When life with potential for intelligence is discovered on a planet, it is subjected to genetic manipulation by the discoverers. The client species, in turn, must serve their patrons for a period of 100,000 years. As established by Brin's two previous novels set in this universe, Earthlings have stumbled out into the Galaxy without the benefit of Uplift. Furthermore, they themselves have already begun uplifting two of their own "client" races, dolphins and chimpanzees. From the standpoint of many of the races in the Galaxy (called Galactics), Earthlings are a "wolfling race" due to their own lack of patron, and as such are effectively religious heretics. The tension erupts to a flashpoint in Startide Rising, where a Terran starship, captained and crewed mainly by dolphins, discovers a derelict fleet of spacecraft. To the conservative Galactics, possession of the derelict fleet would be an enormous advantage in their internecine religious and political disputes. As a result, they are determined to wring the location of the fleet from Earth by whatever means possible, and war ensues. The Uplift War concerns Earth's colony named Garth. The only reason that Earth has this colony is that the Galactics consider it to be hopelessly ravaged by ecological mismanagement of a now-exterminated client race. Poor possession that it is, one race of Galactics, the birdlike Gubru, decides to invade Garth and hold it hostage in exchange for information regarding the location of the Progenitor derelict fleet. Garth defends itself sharply before being overrun, thereby gaining points in Galactic politics, which resemble nothing so much as an elaborate game of shifgrethor[*] Most of the colonists -- a mixture of humans and uplifted chimpanzees, the mineral salts of Garth's waters being poisonous to dolphins -- either sullenly or actively collaborate with their overlords. The three main characters are Robert Oneagle, son of the Planetary Coordinator; Fiben Bolger, a chimpanzee military pilot; and Athaclena, daughter of the Tymbrimi Ambassador. (The Tymbrimi are one of the few Galactic races openly sympathetic to the Terrans.) The Gubru expect an easy occupation of Garth because they have used biological weapons to cause all humans to surrender (Robert escapes the effects of the biological agents) and they hold the Terran's chimpanzee clients in disdain. Yet Robert and Athaclena forge a band of chimpanzees into an effective, er, guerilla fighting force. Brin handles the chimpanzee personalities and culture fair enough, certainly in a more satisfying manner than the lone chimpanzee, Dr. Charles Dart, who seemed something of a buffoon stereotype in Startide. The treatment of the chimpanzee characters falls short, however, of the inventiveness Brin displayed in capturing the soul of his dolphins in Startide. Brin does carry over, though, one of his greatest strengths from Startide, the treatment of the various Galactic races. He manages to convey alien cultures, alien ethos, alien personalities in a multi-dimensional manner captured by few writers. And he has done this with not one or two alien races, but several. Indeed, I often found the chapters written from the Galactic's points of view to be among the most interesting. One of the threads buried in Uplift that seems as if it might warrant future development is the existence of hydrogen-breathing races in the galaxy which remain almost entirely outside the political and cultural commerce of the oxygen-breathers. A substantial sub-plot of Uplift is the romance between Robert and Athaclena. The Tymbrimi, who look somewhat like elves with tentacles in their hair, have the useful ability to adapt their physiologies, within limits, under conscious control. If Brin ever takes a stab at writing SF porno, this is a natural. (Which shape do you prefer? This? Or this? Is this tight enough? Tighter? Etc.) The basis of the cross-species romance is explained, though I found my credulity wavering at that point. And unfortunately the romance is not resolved in any satisfactory manner. But what struck me as most interesting was the psychological resemblance of Athaclena to any number of adolescent heroines from Heinlein's work. Which brings us to a controversial contention. Brin is making a move to occupy the niche held by Heinlein for so long, that of the master storyteller. In terms of tone and content, Brin's work is a throwback to the fifties and early sixties, but with a fresh coat of paint. His work is optimistic, there is a sense of wonder, the heroes are drawn from the ranks of the heroes, the good guys -- at least so far -- do win. Brin belongs to the counter-revolution and his work is sure to grate the teeth of any dedicated cyberpunk. And yet Brin is a counter-revolutionary, not a reactionary seeking to restore status quo ante. His plotting, themes, and general literary craft are superior to most of the work from the fifties and sixties. And the optimism is not pure; there are cautionary notes, explicit reminders that we are on the edge of disasters -- technical, economic, political, and ecological. Writing is a curious, complex activity. One way to make distinctions between parts of the activity is to divide the whole into the storytelling and the writing (literary craft) -- the way the story is told. Certainly the two aspects are interrelated, one affects the other. Quibble with labels, if you will, I use them only as reference points. Brin does not declaim from under a proscenium arch on the stage of an amphitheater. No, instead he is squatting in front of the fire, telling us a tale that begins "There were these guys, see..." as we listen and try to forget for a moment the howling of the wolves away in the night or the fact that the morrow's hunt will be long and demanding. Brin is a storyteller. He leaves to others the finely polished prose, instead just trying to tell a tale, but well. His narrative breaks every now and then to throw in an aside seemingly intended for only the reader, the single listener at the edge of campfire to the exclusion of all the others. It is in this capacity as a storyteller that Brin is taking aim at Heinlein. Heinlein, who these days seems to be writing a series of valedictory novels (his latest may prove me wrong), secured his place in SF history not on the basis of his writing per se, but his ability to spin out engrossing yarns from his fecund imagination, year after year. There are literary 800 lb. canaries who, having established a popular reputation, manage to get published anything that rolls off their printers. This is because as long as their name is on it, the masses will continue to buy it, even if it's nothing more than a translation of the Albanian national anthem. If Brin continues in his present vein, assuming that he does not let himself become one of the aforesaid 800 lb. canaries, he will be pressing hard to claim Heinlein's niche. It may be premature to declare Brin heir to Heinlein's mantle, but perhaps it's time to start measuring the fit. "It seems to me that we are too ready in SF to praise or condemn too loudly, and without perspective. Too often what passes for real criticism...reads not much different from the blurbs on the backs of paperbacks." -- John Kessel *** The 1987 Hugo Awards are history. Two of the leading contenders for Best Novel were William Gibson's Count Zero and Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead, with Speaker garnering the award. Both are decent novels. Yet in the context of discussion about the best that SF has to offer, both present problems that make them fall short of the ideal. Count Zero is a good flash-and-grit novel of the cyberpunk variety. It's characters include a cynical corporate-world mercenary, a bright but naive punk kid with ambitions of becoming a bright punk wheeler-dealer, a betrayed down-and-out artist given a shot at achieving financial, if not artistic, status, and a whole gaggle of opportunistic, manipulative, street- wise, electro-cunning, software-enhanced morally-zeroed thugs. Gibson does a nice job of threading our heroes -- and compared to their opponents, they're certainly the morally superior human beings -- through their intense, high-energy adventures, which are interesting. Only... the ending. If the name Joe Schlobotnik had been on the manuscript instead of William Gibson, an editor would have written back, "Gee, this is nice. But do you think the ending could have a little more to do with the actions of the characters?" The plot lines converge only for the characters to find themselves in one hell of a pickle, and what happens? A minor character -- out to revenge another minor character killed early in the story -- comes in and wipes away the Threat, Deus ex Machina. Gibson creates a brilliant background. He tells his stories lucidly, brilliantly at times. His characters, even if they aren't the people you want to have living next door, are adequately drawn, if at times they rely upon novelty rather than depth. Against this background, a failure of the storytelling apparatus is frustrating. SF is renowned for its nitpickers, particularly those of the flavor that write authors to inform them that they missed a technical nuance that would have affected the fifth and sixth decimal points of an equation's result. Curiously, the nitpickers fall silent when it comes to non-technical details. The situation is not unlike a conference on computer animation where some individuals sneer at those who don't know what an algorithm is, only to be sneered at in turn because they lack any training in art or even a sense of esthetics. Before I make my first nit at Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead, I should make it clear that I don't particularly care for Steven Spielberg movies. The connection is one of manipulation. Spielberg pulls the heartstrings by using scenes and components that are all but guaranteed to get an emotional reaction. Sure, I got bleary eyed during ET; I was also angry at the palpable manipulation on a level not far removed from showing Lassie run over by a truck, Bambi being vivisected in a laboratory, or Snow White being molested by the dwarves. Card performs similar manipulations with his characters in Speaker . He isn't content to let us feel sympathy or pity for the orphaned girl or the abused children, he makes sure we sympathize. A separate, more astonishing point in Speaker is Card's treatment of the Catholic church, which is portrayed more than 3,000 years in the future as having regressed by 250 years as an institution. The conservative bent of the present Pope not withstanding, even a cursory review of Church history finds that attitudes and doctrine continually evolve, if at a glacial pace in some areas. Card trips up on the rendering of practical details of Catholic communities as well. Speaker features a woman who has several children, even though her husband suffers from a lengthy disease, of which one of the first symptoms has been sterility in every other case ever observed. The resident medical expert writes this off as an anomaly, and it never occurs to anyone that the woman is having her children fathered outside of marriage. Catholic communities and Catholic priests are well acquainted with human frailties. In practice, Catholics are expected to aim at perfection, while simultaneously holding that such perfection is impossible to achieve. From a sociological point of view, the institutions of confession and penance (or reconciliation if you prefer the newer terminology) provide a method for containing and controlling moral transgressions. Note, contain and control; there is never any serious expectation that such transgressions will not occur, even though Christ-like perfection is the aim. Therefore a Catholic community will not find adultery impossible to conceive and will not be terribly surprised when it does occur. A third facet of Speaker to argue over is the character Jane, a computer-resident consciousness that, via instantaneous ansible link, is connected to computers on a network spanning light-years. Jane maintains that she has 50,000 levels of awareness, and that government, academic, corporate, and personal computer files are an open book to her; not a significant action occurs anywhere without her knowledge. Furthermore, she manipulates these files to the ends of Ender Wiggins' needs, sometimes without his foreknowledge or consent, thereby causing desired actions to occur. Thus, Jane is effectively both omniscient and omnipotent. She also seems omnibenevolent. Folks, forget the technobabble explanation of how Jane came into awareness. What we have here is the Fourth Person of the Holy Trinity and Ender Wiggin is the first human to experience Her grace. Card ducks all but the most trivial implications of Jane and misses a lot of potential for it. Finally, Card sets up a major moral conflict and then simply washes it away with a convenient accident to keep things from getting too sticky. Because of the adulterous relationship previously referred to, two characters find that they are half-brother and half-sister, not completely unrelated as they had thought. The discovery shatters a deep romance. But instead of struggling with conflicts involving the nature of love and the potential of incest, Card ducks the entire question by having one of the characters become severely crippled -- effectively aged by several decades -- and shipped off-planet on a mission for the Good of the Planet. Fooey. Card has set up a powerful situation between love and morality, worthy of some compelling storytelling, and then bails out. This is not a signpost of superior writing. One curiosity finding its way into my reading pile lately was Brian Aldiss' The Year Before Yesterday. I say curiosity, because it's difficult to know what to make of this book. Year is published by Franklin Watts Press as part of a handsomely designed hardcover line that also includes a reprint of Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man. The cover of Year is right out of a pulp tradition, portraying a blaster-carrying hero wearing an Izod tunic (complete with alligator symbol), with a Union Jack fluttering in the background. Nothing unusual except that the Union Jack has a large swastika superimposed on the center. The cover also informs us that Brian W. Aldiss is a winner of the Hugo Award. The story begins in an alternate universe, one where the USA stayed isolationist as German and the Soviet Union, the latter aided by their Japanese allies, gobble up most of the world. The main character is a Finnish composer whom we meet walking home from a concert. Finland has managed to maintain its independence between its powerful neighbors to the east and south, but the independence is so precarious that concert music has its political implications. On his walk home, our composer discovers the body of a murdered woman by the side of the road. He carries the body to his house, where he discovers two American science fiction novels, which he characterizes by the Finnish term "Maybe-Myth," in her knapsack. He calls the police, checks on his wife sleeping in the other room, and then sits down to read. Most of the rest of Year is an excuse to tell the two condensed novels found in the knapsack. Each is mildly entertaining in their own right, and there is something of a nod to P.K. Dick's Man in the High Castle with the alternate views of history. Surfacing from the Maybe-Myths every now and then, we learn about the composer's unsatisfying relationship with his wife, a bit of Finnish international politics, and that the composer ultimately is arrested as the prime murder suspect. Add to this melange the fact that the policeman who arrests the composer periodically metamorphoses into a reindeer. Either I am Missing Something, or this is what passes as a literary joke among the British, or the publisher wanted a manuscript by a Hugo- winning author (cf., 800-lb. literary canary). "I try to write about adults. A lot of readers don't understand that. I try to write about adults who matter, men and women who are in the midst of the great forces of change that swirl around us. Like any writer, I am not always successful. And sometimes I relax and write something that is not meant to be taken all that seriously."-- Ben Bova ** Connie Willis will be an acquired taste for readers accustomed to wish- gratification adolescents-disguised-as-adults science fiction. A nice sampler of her work is her short story collection Fire Watch. Willis writes for and about adults. Her characters have adult sensibilities and adult problems. Many of Willis' stories feature what could be called ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, though often the situation itself is muted, lacking the splashy pyrotechnic plots of conventional SF. In the Fire Watch collection we meet a collection of characters. As with any group of people that we meet, we will like some more than others and our tastes will not necessarily be in agreement with that of others. I particularly liked the stories "All My Darling Daughters," "Mail Order Clone," "Samaritan," "And Come From Miles Around," and the wonderful "Blued Moon." I won't reveal much of the stories except to say that few authors have tackled orangutans wishing to be baptized, hell-for-leather students at an orbital boarding school (complete with sandstone buildings), the universality of the scientific persona, or the interrelationship between language and reality. I'm afraid that Willis may be a writer's writer, which is perhaps odd for someone whose literary career began by writing women's confession stories, such as "I Called for Help on My CB...and Got a Rapist Instead." In an introductory note in Fire Watch, Willis says that she still enjoys writing confessions when she gets the chance. Whatever, Willis writes some nicely crafted adult-centered science fiction. Give her a try. Footnotes: * Shifgrethor -- From Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, an elaborate social game governing all important relationships, taking into account fine points of etiquette, protocol, and "face." ** Quotes from Joe Haldeman and Ben Bova reprinted from the Spring 1987 issue of the Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, by permission of the authors. *** Quote from John Kessel, reprinted from The Humanist Manifesto, published in Science Fiction Eye, Volume 1, Number 1, by permission of the author. Plugs Some sources for this Column Science Fiction Eye Box 3105 Washington, DC 20010-0105 $7.00/year semi-prozine devoted to cyberpunk. First issue includes interviews with Gibson, transcript of panel discussion including Spinrad, Shirley, Benford, Brin, et al. The SFWA Bulletin Box H Wharton, NJ 07885 $10/year to non-SFWA members. Includes articles, reviews of non-fiction, market reports. A User's Guide to the Postmoderns Michael Swanwick. Published in Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, August, 1986. Excellent article on the two current "literary camps." OtherRealms #18 Fall, 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.