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OtherRealms Issue 19 Part 01
Electronic OtherRealms #19
Winter, 1987
Part 1
Table of Contents
Part 1
Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach
Part 2
Behind the Scenes: The Kindly Ones
Melissa Scott
Part 3
The Jehovah Contract
Rick Holzgrafe
Marooned in Real Time
Wayne Throop
Interview: Jack Chalker
Part 4
Bibliography: Jack Chalker
Stuff Received
Part 5
Scattered Gold
Charles de Lint
Part 6
Pico Reviews, Part 1
Part 7
Pico Reviews, Part 2
Part 8
Words of Wizdom
Chuq Von Rospach
Part 9
War Stories
Alan Wexelblat
Mindplayers
Fred Bals
Part 10
No Prisoners!
Laurie Sefton
Much Rejoicing
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Part 11
Letters to OtherRealms, Part 1
J.N Williamson
Kevin O'Donnell, Jr.
Neil Harris
Greg Benford
Frank Miller
Fred Bals
Gene Wolfe
Melissa Scott
Larry Kaufman
Steve VanDevender
Michael Kupfer
Graham Higgins
Part 12
Letters to OtherRealms, Part 2
Susan Shwartz
Ted White
Michael C. Berch
Breaking Strain
Danny Low
The Masthead & Other Gory Details
Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach
This issue kicks off a new feature for OtherRealms. Author Melissa
Scott talks about how The Kindly Ones (Baen Books) came into being and
some of the background and research that went into the creation of the
book in our first feature in the Behind the Scenes series. I think it
is important not only to review books, but to understand the what and
the why of books, and I hope the Behind the Scenes series will contribute
to that. I'm looking for future installments of the series -- if you have
a book you want to write about, let me know.
The readership statistics are in for issue #18. According the the
USENET readership reports, OtherRealms was distributed to 7,100
electronic mailboxes. The OtherRealms mailing lists add another 500 to
600 addresses. The printed edition was mailed to about 200 people. You
add all of these numbers up, and OtherRealms is now seen by close to
8,000 people (perhaps more if many folks share their copies, but I
don't have any idea how many do). That's up by about 60% from when I
checked six months ago, and rather mind-boggling. I guess I must be
doing something right.
As of this issue, I've dropped any pretense of covering the Horror
scene. While it's been part of the masthead, the actual amount of
Horror coverage has been minimal, and I don't see that improving any
time soon. I'm the only regular writer for OtherRealms that seems to
have a taste for horror, and I've been unable to find someone willing
to do a special Horror column. At the same time, my discussions with
readers on the various nets indicates that few of you are reading
Horror, and fewer are interested in trying it, my exhortations
notwithstanding. Rather than continue a fruitless search for someone to
cover the Horror scene, I'm changing the official focus of the magazine
to match what it's really covering. You can bet that there'll still be
some horror coverage in OtherRealms, but this way people looking for a
source of Horror reviews aren't misled into believing that OtherRealms
is doing something it really isn't. Maybe, when I can increase pages
and find someone to cover Horror, it'll be back. Until that happens, I
suggest you take a look at Ed Bryant's book review column in Twilight
Zone magazine. He covers more than just horror, and does it well.
Contributor Notes
Have you seen Brad Foster's comic book? Mechthings is a bimonthly black
and white from Renegade Press. Two issues are out, and Renegade has
committed to at least six. If you like Brad's art here in OtherRealms,
you should track it down -- it's up to his usual high quality and
detail. Brad's one of the few artists I can think of that really seems
to understand black and white drawing, and it shows.
Fred Bals, who has written a number of reviews for OtherRealms, has
sold a short story to the original anthology Full Spectrum, due out in
1988. Fred's first published fiction, by the way, was The Ozzie and
Harriet, published in OtherRealms #10 before I decided to specialize.
He's a good writer, and I'm glad to see him breaking through. Congrats
to Fred!
On a sadder note, James Brunet has resigned OtherRealms as contributing
editor. He's been with me since issue one, and we're going to miss him.
Trying to free-lance full time, keep his fiction writing up going and
keep to the deadlines I needed didn't leave him enough to polish things
as much as he demands of himself. He's putting the time he was spending
for me back into his fiction.
Publishing News
[I've merged publishing news here due to the paucity of
material. When it grows large enough, I'll split it back out
into a separate section. As always, I'm looking for information
about publishing, writing and the people in it. If you know
something that should be printed here, drop me a note.]
Kevin Anderson sold his second novel, Gamearth, a Fantasy, to Signet
through agent Richard Curtis. He has also sold to Full Spectrum.
Chuq Von Rospach, editor and publisher of OtherRealms, and Laurie
Sefton, associate editor, were wed in a private ceremony on November
14, 1987. The couple honeymooned at Worldcon in Brighton.
According to the November Nebula Awards Report, the top ten nominated
novels are: The Shore of Women by Pamela Sargent; Soldier of the Mist
by Gene Wolfe; The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy (a second novel); Radio
Free Albemuth by Philip K. Dick; Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick;
.gypt by John Crowley; Lincoln's Dreams by Connie Willis (a first
novel); The Uplift War by David Brin; When Gravity Falls by George Alec
Effinger and In Conquest Born by C. S. Friedman(a first novel).
Charles de Lint has sold Wolf Moon, a high fantasy, to NAL. He's also
sold a three book package to Berkley which includes Svaha, an SF
thriller, The Killing Time, a straight Horror, and Drinking Down the
Moon, a sequel to Jack the Giant Killer.
The Best of 1987
The end of the year is upon us, and it's time to take a look back and
see what happened. In trying to come up with lists, it is immediately
obvious that there is a lot of good fiction out there -- more than
anyone can possibly find time to read, regardless of the type of
fiction they prefer. My biggest regret is that I couldn't shove more
into my schedule; for every book I read last year, at least two others
went by the wayside with a sigh. To me, that says more about the
viability of the field than anything. If someone tells you there isn't
any good fiction being published anymore, run away -- they simply
aren't looking.
For me, the highlight of the year has to be the new talent. Again, if
someone tells you that new writers aren't published, or they need an
"in" you should run away. I've seen at least 25 books cross my desk
this year that were first novels. There are many more that I didn't see
or didn't catch. When a new talent rises out of the slush pile, it is
time for rejoicing. This year, C.S. Friedman's In Conquest Born [DAW]
, Emma Bull's War for the Oaks [Ace], and Loren J. MacGregor's The Net
[Ace] were the best of a strong set of first novels. For the class of
1987, these are the three I'm watching closest to see where they go next.
The old hands were at it this year, too. Robert Heinlein comes up with
the best book in years, perhaps one of the best of his career in To
Sail Beyond the Sunset [Putnam[. Gene Wolfe continues the wonderful New
Sun series with Urth of the New Sun [Tor] and starts a new series with
Soldier of the Mist [Tor]. And, non-genre but a sentimental favorite
for me, Ray Bradbury publishes his first book in over 20 years with
Death is a Lonely Business, a wonderful look at his earlier days.
Steven Brust changes gears with Teckla [Ace]. It's not as funny, but
the writing is his strongest ever and the emotions run long and deep.
It may be his best work ever.
Finally, a new media is struggling for legitimacy, and shows signs it
may well get it. The Dark Knight Falls [DC], a graphic novel, makes it
to the Hugo ballot, and losing partially because it was hopelessly
miscategorized and partially because it was up against Brian Aldiss'
The Trillion Year Spree. The Watchmen, another graphic novel, stands a
good chance of making the final ballot as well. Both show unequivocally
that some stories can be told as well with a minimum of words. Comic
books take a bad rap as "kid stuff" that needs to be re-examined. No
media is inherently good or bad -- it is how the media is used that
determines that. Dark Knight and Watchmen prove that comics can tell as
good a story as a novel; some stories they tell better. The graphic
novel format is where the next evolutions in the field are coming. You
should keep an open mind and check it out.
The Best from the Rest:
Contributing Editor's Look at 1987
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes: Other reviewers hunt for trends. I like to think
of each author as a movement unto herself. The authors below moved in
directions I found particularly admirable in 1986. If there's one
connecting theme, it's that you won't feel you've wasted your money on
any of these books:
David Belden's The Children of Arable -- a first novel by an extremely
interesting and promising voice. Describes the fall of a unisex culture.
Ben Bova's The Kinsman Saga -- an all-around tour-de-force of character
writing. Consists of revised versions of Kinsman and Millennium.
John M. Ford's How much for just the Planet? -- the most thoroughly
gigglesome book I've read since I stumbled across The Hitchhiker's
guide to the Galaxy. Recommended even if you hate Star Trek. In fact,
especially if you hate Star Trek.
Leslie Gadallah's Cat's Pawn -- a well-made first novel about a human
surviving in an alien culture. Carries some of the seediness of
cyberpunk without the by-now-cliche gadgetry.
William Gibson's Burning Chrome -- a short story collection, originally
from 1986, but out in paperback late this year. This is the Gibson
that everyone raves about: clean, incisive, high-tech, low-rent
science fiction. Watch that man.
Robert A. Heinlein's To Sail Beyond the Sunset -- if this were to be
Heinlein's farewell, it would be more than satisfactory as such.
George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards 3: Joker's Wild-- The most tightly-
woven shared world piece I've ever seen; not an anthology, but a
genuine multi-author novel.
L.E. Modesitt's Dawn for a Distant Earth -- a good adventure story, no
minor accomplishment in itself, and very promising as first in a series
books go.
Connie Willis's Lincoln's Dreams -- probably the best fantasy novel of
the year. Do not wait for the paperback. Buy it now.
Walter Jon Williams's The Crown Jewels -- a stylish caper novel in the
spirit of the lamented Anthony Villiers.
Gene Wolfe's The Urth of the New Sun -- Severian journeys again.
Flawed, primarily in that it makes explicity much of what was
deliciously implied by the original tetralogy, but still some of the
most beautiful writing SF has ever had.
Laurie Sefton: A Flame in Byzantium, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro: This is the
first book about Olivia, the Roman matriarch from the St. Germain
series. Yarbro paints sucha a detailed portrait of Byzantine
Constantinople that it's sometimes hhard to tell where the history ends
and the fiction begins.
Intervention, Julian May : Rogatien Remillard is only one of the
exquisite characterizations in this bridge between the Pliocene Exile
and Galactic Milieu series. May moves the story through current time,
and make you hold your breath througout.
The Hall of the Moutain King, Judith Tarr: Tarr creates a fantasy
world that doesn't need elves, dwarves or magic quests to be magic. The
characters are full of life and the story is enthralling.
The Throne of Scone, Patricia Kennealy: The best of the Celtic crop, by
far. This is the second book of the Keltiad, and mixes the best
elements of fantasy and science fiction.
Teckla, Steven Brust: The third of this series, Brust takes a turn from
the light hearted style that flavored Jhereg and Yendi. This makes for
a harder read, but a deeper story.
Cycles of Fire, William K. Hartmann & Ron Miller: Subtitled, "Stars
Galaxies and the Wonder of Deep Space," this is a magnificent
collection of art. The reproductions of the painting depict planets
star systems and galaxies, that if they weren't this exciting, we'd
wish them to be.
Reviewers in Review
Last year I wrote the article Reviewers in Review in OtherRealms #9.
Since then, lots of things have changed. Science Fiction Review and
Fantasy Review are dead. Fantasy&SF is supplementing A.J. Budrys
criticisms with a more traditional review column by Orson Scott Card.
Card does a good job, and seems to be slanted towards the more obscure
books in the field, which I have to applaud. Who needs another review
of Asimov?
Tom Easton at Analog continues to be my favorite reviewer, with Baird
Searles continuing his fine column at Isaac Asimov's. One unfortunate
thing to note is that Searles has lost one column a quarter to an
essay/criticism by Norman Spinrad. Spinrad's column, unfortunately, is
high on personal attacks and emotional content and low on critical
material or insight. He remind of nothing less than an angry Harlan
Ellison without the facilities of the English language or the ability
to make a positive use of the anger. As far as I'm concerned, Spinrad's
column is a waste, and I hope Baird is returned to full time status.
At the semi-prozine level, Debbie Notkin, my favorite Locus reviewer,
has left to become an editor at Tor books. A mixed blessing, for while
I miss her reviews, I'm certain that she'll be an asset at what is
already one of the best publishing houses there is. Locus is still
looking for a permanent replacement, and Tom Whitmore (not so
coincidentally a co- partner of Notkin's in Berkeley's Other Change of
Hobbit specialty book store) is the strongest candidate they've
published yet. Also on the plus side, Dan Chow, who I jumped all over
in the original article, has improved steadily and is turning into a
solid reviewer. Overall, of the pro and semi- pro magazines, Locus
consistently has the most complete and strongest coverage.
A semi-prozine that seems to be trying to take the place of Fantasy
Review is Thrust. I've only read a couple of issues, so it is to early
to make a definitive statement, but my initial feeling is that Thrust
is missing a strong focus. There's nothing I can say about it either
very positive or negative. My best advice is to get a copy and see for
yourself. Another semi- prozine that started within the last year is SF
Eye. It's been highly recommended to me by a number of people I trust,
but I haven't seen a copy yet. I'm looking forward to it, though.
In general, the reviewing field is as good or better than it was a year
ago. Even though we lost Fantasy Review, I frankly can't feel too bad
about it. By the time it died, it had turned into a weak invalid of a
publication, its potential squandered and lost. It's loss can even be
considered a plus, because it was almost embarrassing to read some of
its articles the last few issues (especially the brutal and completely
off-base attack on Card in the second to last issue). With Thrust and
SF Eye stepping in to its place, there's a good chance that the
small-press review market will improve significantly because of it.
OtherRealms in Review
Finally, a look at myself. Which is always the most difficult. Working
as closely as I do to OR I see the glitches, the typos, the things that
got through into the final product that make me wince. It's hard to be
objective when you eat, sleep and breathe something like I've done with
OtherRealms for the past year.
The biggest change to OtherRealms has to be the conversion to
quarterly. It's a controversial one, since the reviews are a little
less timely, so there has to be a corresponding advantage. Having now
put together two quarterly issues, I have to say that I think it should
have happened long ago. The change in schedule has definitely helped me
-- I have more time for tweaking, for editing, for cleaning up the raw
edges. I turn out a better product, I think. More importantly (to me),
I have time to do something other than OtherRealms. I'm finally able to
focus on other projects a little, take a deep breath, occasionally just
goof off for a weekend. This makes OtherRealms a lot more fun and a lot
less of a task than it was, which makes it easier to continue publishing.
Also, I think the larger format gives me a lot more flexibility, and
the ability to use more (and wider varieties of) material makes it a
better magazine. I've gotten lots of positive feedback on last issue,
which makes me believe I've made a good choice. More importantly,
OtherRealms is finally starting to resemble my vision for it. I'm
finally publishing the magazine I set out to publish two years ago.
Things aren't all perfect, of course. While the magazine itself has
prospered, this has implied larger subscriptions, a larger set of
correspondence to deal with, more material and information from
publishers and sources, and lots of administrative details that I used
to be able to handle on the side. No more. Frankly, my filing system is
still in the Dark Ages, and it's starting to create glitches. So my
current focus is more towards the administrative, cleaning up the
subscribers database, building up some of the filing and administrative
tools that I need to make my interface with publishers cleaner (one
place I'm hopelessly weak in is getting tear sheets back to publishers,
which I hope to have fixed permanently by next issue). The subscriber
database needs an overhaul, because while I haven't lost anyone (that I
know of!) keeping track of them isn't as easy as it should be, either.
If subscriptions double in a short period, I'd have some pain getting
the current system to cooperate.
And, of course, the long promised review index is still on the
"hopefully next issue list." On the plus side, however, good progress
has been made, primarily because it's tied in very closely to fixing
the tear sheet problem, and because it hooks in with the system I'm
building to track review copies. All of this is being done with Apple's
wonderful HyperCard program for the Macintosh, and when it's done I
expect to make the program available to interested parties -- it'll be
a database for a book collection, among other things, and for folks who
have Macintoshes you'll be able to track down reviews on-line rather
than on paper (a paper version of the index will be made available,
also). Eventually, I hope, the Book Index stack will become the
equivalent to an electronic Books In Print for the SF and Fantasy
field. We'll see.
I'm still playing a little bit with the layout of OtherRealms, but I
expect that to settle down. I love graphic fesign, but there's only so
much tweaking I can do before it starts getting in the way. The biggest
design change I expect in the next year is a stronger use of art, with
more pieces by a wider variety of artists. I also hope to go offset, so
I can do the art justice and make OtherRealms a saddlestitched
publication. I may also experiment with high resolution scanners to see
if I can make use of them. This may be premature, however. I would
like to start working with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to save
re-typing of non-electronic articles, if I can find a system that works
reliably. If anything of note shows up here, I'll pass it along --
wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to hire a data entry person to
type in manuscripts, and a proofreader to fix their mistakes? (you
would, of course, still need someone to fix the author's mistakes but
why complicate your life?)
As always, your feedback is welcomed. Let me know how I'm doing, what
you think, and what I'm ought to be doing. The things that have made
OtherRealms a success are many -- and an important part are all of the
other people who have bought into my dream (and obsession) and taken
the time to work with me, to comment, to suggest, to join and and be a
part. Thanks to you all!
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
