Electronic OtherRealms #19 Winter, 1987 Part 11 Letters to OtherRealms Part 1 Corrections I was glad to see your review and that by Mr. Danehy-Oakes of my How To Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy, and SF, but his criticisms of George Clayton Johnson's piece seemed the most unfair I've ever read -- because Mr. Johnson is not in my How To! Check it out; a serious mistake, indeed, was made. I know whom he meant and how the error occurred, but I doubt the competence of reviewers who don't even glance at a byline again to be certain their targets have work in the book under attack! Curious; all those "people (Danehy-Oakes) never heard of" weren't nearly as mistaken in their remarks as the critic. J.N. Williamson [Dan'l responds: Mr. Williamson is absolutely correct. I managed in the space between the book and the keyboard to do a mental swap of George Clayton Johnson and his collaborator on the novel Logan's Run, William F. Nolan. It was Mr. Nolan who wrote the article which I attributed to Mr. Johnson. Apologies are hereby tendered to Mr. Johnson, Mr. Nolan, and Mr. Williamson for the error. And my apologies to everyone involved as well. As editor and final proofreader of everything published (and having also just read the same book, for that matter) I should have caught the mistake. Since I didn't, final responsibility lay here. -- chuq] I'd like to correct one point of fact in Charles de Lint's review of The Shelter. I am not Mary Kittredge's husband. Never have been. I'm married to Kim Tchang. A completely different person altogether. They don't even look a little bit alike. Kevin O'Donnell, Jr. [Charles de Lint replies: While Kevin O'Donnell, Jr. has lived around the corner from, workshopped with, and published Empire: For the SF Writer while she editied it, he is not and never has been the husband of Mary Kittredge. He is married to Kim Tchang and my apologies go to all three of them. Please go back to your copy of OtherRealms #18 with a black pen and put a nice thick line through the misinformation] In James Brunet's piece in part 5 of Other Realms 18, he calls "Hardwired" a first novel. Not only did Walter Jon Williams have two prior SF novels in print ("Knight Moves" is one, and I can't recall the name of the other at the moment), but he was an adventure novel author under a variation of his byline before he started writing sf. Neil Harris (atari!neil) And Comments Good issue. I enjoyed the Mike Resnick interview a lot and found myself agreeing all along the way. I, too, simply like writing although most pros like to have written. He's quite savvy about the genre taking what it wants from an innovation (New Wave, Cyberpunk) and throwing the rest on the ashcan. I remember pros telling me copies of the 1960's New Worlds would be priceless in a few decades because they marked the true maturing of the field... I'll buy Harry Turtledove's thesis about Historical Realism. He's a welcome addition to the great practitioners of that mode. What makes it work in SF-type writers is the constraints of accuacy, which such readers enjoy. Similarly, they like mysteries and adventures which Get The Facts Right. I, too, find much SF that doesn't bother to learn and science or other such details rather shallow. Most of the big prizewinners lately have been of this type, suggesting that we're losing that facet of the genre... to our detriment, I feel. Greg Benford Please thank Alan Wexelblat for his generous review of Ronin. One correction is required, though. Lynn Varley's remarkable work on Ronin is hers and hers alone. If it wasn't black, I didn't to it. This is an understandable mistake, and one from which Lynn takes no offense. Her work has transformed a largely dismissed and ignored aspect of comic art into a powerful and versatile tool for storytelling. Even within my field, her contribution has gone largely uncreditted. Frank Miller De Lint looks like he's going to be a worthwhile addition to the mag. You can tell he likes doing reviews, and perhaps more importantly, knows how to do it. Nice to see jayembee's article. He's a good - if still unmet - friend here, one of the better writers I know, and certainly one of best-informed people I know about almost any subject under the sun. I use him as an information-resource often, and he's never failed to have an answer for me - or to point me to an answer. Hope to see more from him. I think you're finally got the review headings working. Certainly they were easier to follow than past issues. Fred Bals (bals%nutmeg.DEC.com) Conspiracy Comments My impressions of Conspiracy were generally like yours, though I went with lower expectations and so was less disappointed. I also had the advantage of staying in the Grand, an expensive but excellent hotel. I read your review of Writers of the Future III with a good deal of pleasure, as you can imagine. But perhaps someone ought to point out that there is no real conflict between Clarion, which attempts to train promising beginners, and the Writers of the Future contest, which attempts to encourage and reward them. It would be very surprising to learn that Clarion objected to training beginners who have been encouraged and rewarded by WoF; and certainly WoF has no objection to encouraging and rewarding beginners trained at Clarion or anywhere else. Gene Wolfe Someone I met, who is himself in the construction business, was estimating that a good twenty percent of Brighton was being rebuilt while were there. I can't help wondering if your view on paying for things isn't just a difference in expectations. After all, you pay 60p and up for a program when you go to a British theater, so perhaps this is just the way things are done.... Never having been to a British con before, I don't know, though I will agree that the Masked Ball wasn't worht the #10. Wasn't there supposed to be a hall costuming contest attached to that? Or was it cancelled in one of the progress reports I didn't get? I'd also like to put in a good word for the Holland people I met, who were perfectly nice and rational when I was talking to them.... Melissa Scott Having had the pleasure of bumping into you at Brighton, you know I survived my first WorldCon, too. And while you are correct in your description of the facilities, I cannot forget just about the first thing that my friend from Boston said to me (he being the "convention expert" of my little group). As we took our first stroll between buildings he said something like, "Every American in the place is going to bitch when they realize they have to walk outside." You neglect to mention that all the facilities were directly across the street from the ocean, and a nice long esplanade. As you say, for Brighton, the weather was very cooperative. It was nice to stroll between programme streams and look out over the ocean and get a breath of fresh air. You say the British fans made you feel unwelcome. I can name at least two British authors who at the mere mention of my friends and I going to take a post-con wandering tour, insisted we drop by -- and they meant it. And the same with some fans giving us great advice on where to go, where not to go, where to eat, etc. etc. (And apologies to our new author friends, we got to see wonderful parts of Scotland -- it was all wonderful -- but we never made it to Glasgow. We realize this is a tragic mistake, but it gives us an excuse to go back again!) You missed the Bedford. This means you missed the "Which Lift will get stuck with 30 people in it next" contests, which happened quite a few times. Rather than complain, most of us in the lobby formed a nice pool and used it as a conversation starter. Now you run fanzines, and I was on vacation, so my viewpoint was perhaps a bit more relaxed. Sure, there were inconveniences. But there were great panels and great stories. Alan Cole And Chris Bunch ("Sci-Fi on Tee-Vee") come to mind. Here were two American TV writers slamming the industry execs up one side and down the other, telling hysterical stories about some big stars (I'd name them, but you never know what lawyer might read this), and they were clearly having a fun time, as was the audience. British and American alike, there was a true one group feeling, and we all loved it. As for the bitterness of the Holland group, etc. Seems to me all the "vote for us for the next con" groups were the most business oriented and unpleasant lot of the whole convention. I was treated just as rudely by the people from Los Angeles and Orlando, as I was by the people from Holland. After that, I just stopped talking to all of them. If everyone was like that, I wouldn't go to any other Worldcon again anywhere. And what amazed me were so many of the "big names of Science Fiction" I met who were truly pleasant and very helpful. These are human beings, and this is their big time too pitch their stuff, but given all that, the vast majority were amazingly open and cheerful. To parallel our own computer industry, the authors at the Con did a lot better than most company reps at a "Unix con". This was my biggest surprise of the convention. For example, the panel Frederick Pohl and Robert Silverberg did ("On Writing Books", though my marked up programme and memory might be wrong) was sheer enjoyment, indeed, it was sheer poetry. And we'd still be there today listening to their stories and banter if we could. In any event, even though I really agree with most of what you said, I found your viewpoint was a little bit too "ugly American" so I thought I'd write. My little group had a swell time, and I would like Britain and your readers too know that, with the right attitude, the Worldcon was a great time, much appreciated by this American and his American friends. Larry Kaufman lsk@mabstoa.sun.com While reading your account of this year's WorldCon, I cringed a little every time you mentioned how you had to go up and down stairs to get to places around the convention sites. Being a non-biped, I hold stairs and the bipedal architects who build them in the highest contempt. Also, after experiencing this year's Alternacon (aka Norwescon) in a hotel which had ramps so steep that I decided getting out of my 'chair and pulling it up the stairs after me was easier to manage (although I fortunately found more accessible but more circuitous routes later) the thought of attending a con so horribly set up gave me visions of feeling for extended periods the sort of annoyance and loathing for bipeds I feel briefly when I find some idiot has parked in front of the only curb cut on the block. What I found refreshing was that you actually pointed out that the convention site was living hell for non-bipeds (at least more so than it was for bipeds). Generally I find that the only person I know who has much feeling for whether a place is accessible, and who cares about it, is me (although several family members and close friends have absorbed the talent). Seeing a self-proclaimed biped voicing these same concerns makes me regret chanting "Death to Bipeds!" to myself when facing the difficulties of being a non-biped in a bipedal culture. (The terms "biped" and "non-biped" came from an utterance of a friend, which was approximately "Well, you know it's tough for us bipedals." This came after he had listened to me brag about what I considered to be the superior speed and grace of the wheelchair, and complaining about the annoying traffic habits of pedestrians who seem to have far less foresight and care than I do when I weave through them at high speeds. I stuck with the terms because of the humorous connotations they have for me, because "non-biped" is easier to say than "wheelchair user", and because they lack the negative connotations of other terms.) Steve VanDevender stevev@oregon1.BITNET A friend of mine forwarded to me a copy of Hard Hat Fanzine #1. While I agree with much of what you wrote, I'd like to rebut at least one complaint. Then there's the Con Suite. Or, rather, the lack of one. Most of the folks who normally hang out there moved to the Fan Room. Finally, the bar. ... if you wanted something in the Fan Room, even water, you paid for it. Most of the folks who hang out in the bar moved into the Fan Room. Y'know, they did warn us about this in at least one of the PR's. Apparently this is the way the Brits run their cons. We Yanks get sugar highs at our cons, they get sloshed at theirs. I imagine they get rather annoyed at coming to an American con and having to pay large sums of money for icy cold beer. Not having free water anywhere is one of those quaint European customs - like smoking - that one simply must endure while traveling there. When I saw a water fountain at Gatwick I did a double-take, almost thinking I was back in the States... The only hotel at all tolerant of con parties seemed to be the Grand. The Grand was even helpful. They loaned the @-party wine glasses so that we could drink the orange juice that the hosts had brought in. Michael Kupfer Michael_D._Kupfer.osbunorth@Xerox.COM Internal WorldCon politics sound much like the politics of any international organisation. 5000 is too big for any convention, I am an AI worker - not animal husbandry - and now steer clear of the "biggies" like the US national conference and the Internation Joint Conference - too many people. The smaller ones have a much better atmosphere. Do you think it's possibly time to abandon the idea of a single WorldCon and have a USCon & a EuroCon & an AfroCon ... etc.? The Brighton hotel sounds fairly typical of a major UK conference facility, why were you so surprised? You are used to the superb conference facilities available in the US. Considering that the UK has only twice the population of California, it's hardly surprising that the US has developed superior facilities to provide single- site accommodation for extremely large conferences! I'm surprised that you weren't aware of the strong anti-American sentiments over here. Well, perhaps that's one reason for their existence, I have found on my US travels, that Europe has a fairly accurate perception of modern-day America (albeit primarily gathered from the media), but we seem to meet a lot of visitors who have laughably (and often insultingly) simplistic and inaccurate perceptions of "The Old Country". Let me hasten to add I am aware that this is not true of the majority of Americans, but why is it so frequently true of those Americans who can afford to tour "Yurrup"? Additionally, it can be difficult to separate one's attitudes towards the people of a country from one's attitudes towards its government. Your President is something of a laughing stock over here - well he would be, if he weren't so dangerous. The recent arms reduction agreement with the Soviet Union is a case in point. How come the US and the Soviets are negotiating over nuclear weaponry in Europe? If you see my point - it seems to shut the Europeans out of a situation which is a hell of a sight more important to those of us living here than it is to a foreign government 3000 miles away! It's a pity that the force of this argument is so vitiated by the fawning behaviour of our own Prime Minister, who seems hell-bent on keeping nuclear arms for no apparently sane reason. Three decent-sized air-bursts spaced down the North Sea would completely irradiate the UK. Did you notice that the "survivalist" mentality is noticeably missing in Europe - you can fit the whole of England, Scotland and Wales into California, twice over (Holland is about the size of Wales, a little smaller), there's just nowhere to hide! We are still suffering from the Chernobyl effects, did you know? There are several Welsh farms where the sheep still show unacceptably high levels of radiation contamination - and the source of that was about 1500 miles away. It provides a clear warning of something a little closer to home could do! You should also recognise that there is a substantial difference in standards of living. A return air flight from London to San Francisco costs about half a month's pay. Compare that with cost of a US internal flight from Chicago to San Francisco. There are many factors which promote European resentment, a substantial amount of British (and I presume other European countries') heritage is being freighted to the US (OK, we got our own back, with that moron buying "London Bridge"), but both the Government and the major heritage trust organisations frequently have to make special efforts to gain funding to prevent significant collections from vanishing into American museums. It has been noted that we seem to send the US all our best quality things, fine antiques, clothes, leather, china - what do we get back? fast-food chains, Coca-Cola and vulgar tourists in Hawaiian shirts. A friend of mine, who is extremely keen on SF - (I just like reading it, he's really into it) observed that now that SF is "acceptable", it seems to have lost a lot its "magic" and appeal. Once upon a time, you could be an SF fan and (gratifyingly) be considered weird because of it. Now everyone's into it (courtesy of Spielberg, et. al.), it seems to be less exciting, fantasy is rapidly going the same way. The exclusivity has been lost. Perhaps that's what they mean when they complain that the US has "highjacked" SF. That's a fairly strange claim to make, I don't see any references to the European equivalent of John Campbell and the like - it was largely an American "scene", almost from the beginning. However, the "old days" have gone and SF is now "acceptable fiction" (almost), all things must pass. Your comments in "Hardhat" imply that you aren't a "typical" American (OK, they aren't as common as they once were). I'm glad you enjoyed your trip to London (the restoration is repairing 150 years of pollution and decay). I appreciated your recognition of the importance of books, in which I think "SF" is primarily embodied, the literary tradition is still strong over here, but then again it's a different country. For instance, what would contemporary US society make of a man who sings in church, grows flowers and plays darts? (He's a Welsh coal miner, typically and usually hard as nails). Graham Higgins Hewlett-Packard Labs, Bristol. mcvax!ukc!hplb!gjh [I think SF is big enough these to support a North American con and European con each year. I don't know exactly how to deal with Australia in all of this. Practically, we do this already, with NaSFIC, and there is no reason why we can't have both each year The competition and boundaries are artificial, and while they helped get the European worldcon off the ground, they're now in the way. Perhaps a better way of handling it would be to change the boundaries to put foreign bids, rather than make them poor cousins to the Real con-people. Instead of the current three boundaries, set up four: American West, Australia, American East, and European. American's can run NasFIC's during the foreign slots, and the rules can be set up so that if no qualified bid arrives for a slot, it gets thrown open to all comers. There's no need to 'protect' or otherwise make special dispensation for the foreign con bids anymore. For the record, I've got my slew of horror stories about bloody American's. Boy, I can tell a few nasties about my own crew. Loud, nasty jokes about the shape of the money in restaurants. Loud, obnoxious people in restaurants in general. I had a ball in Brighton for the two days I was there before the con started. Once the con folks moved in (and most of the hassles I saw were from American fans) it was a zoo. And it wasn't Brighton's fault -- a small but noticable percentage of American fans left their manners (and in some cases brains) at home. I was at various times embarassed to admit to being (1) part of the con, or (2) simply being american. Americans need to learn some foreign phrases: "please" and "thank you" at the top of the list. And to say them like they mean them. "Sorry" would be a nice addition, too (spending two weeks in england taught ME the difference between "excuse me" and "sorry" -- I hope I never forget... Now I firmly believe the Bloody Americans were a very small minority. But they are the ones you notice. And they are the ones that make all Americans look bad. I'll happily apologize for them, since they probably don't notice how obnoxious they are -- and I'll hope I wasn't one of them at some time without noticing. The reason HHF #1 emphasized the negative was because it was short on space. Frankly, a lot of the positive things are things you would expect at a con. I tried to emphasize the extra-ordinary and point out the problems in the hope that others might avoid them in the future. In general, England was wonderful. While I don't think I'd attend a Worldcon class convention in Britain, I do plan on going back and visiting in the future and perhaps look in on a smaller British con -- one better suited to the size of the convention facilities. The people were invariably wonderful, and I want to see how things work when they're done on a scale a little more suited to the kind of function British people are used to. -- chuq] OtherRealms #19 Winter, 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 not be reproduced in any form without written permission of Chuq Von Rospach. The electronic edition may be distributed or reproduced in its entirety as long as all copyrights, author and publication information remain intact. No individual article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author. OtherRealms is published quarterly (March, June, September and December) by: Chuq Von Rospach 35111-F Newark Blvd. Suite 255 Newark, CA 94560. Usenet: chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ