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OtherRealms Issue 22 Part 01
Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 1
Copyright 1988
by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved
OtherRealms may not be reproduced without written permission from Chuq
Von Rospach. The electronic edition may be distributed or reproduced
only in its entirety and only if all copyrights, author credits and
this notice, including the return addresses remain intact.
No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way
without the express permission of the author.
Table of Contents
Part 1
Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach
Masthead
Part 2
Behind the Scenes: The Troupe
From Sideshow to Center Ring
Gordon Linzner
The Dragon Never Sleeps
Danny Low
Ivory
Dean R. Lambe
A Splendid Chaos
Neal Wilgus
Orphans of Creation
Michael A. Banks
Part 3
Scattered Gold
Charles de Lint
Part 4
Pico Reviews
Part 5
The Agony Column
Rick Kleffel
Part 6
Just for the Fun of It
Alan Wexelblat
Part 7
Much Rejoicing
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Part 8
One Writer's Journey
M. Elayn Harvey
Stuff Received
Publishing Notes
Part 9
Dreams of Flesh and Sand
Johhn Zed
Michael C. Berch
Brightsuit Macbear
Neal Wilgus
At Winter's End
Dean R. Lambe
Antibodies
Dean R. Lambe
The Big Lifters
Dean R. Lambe
Part 10
Words of Wizdom
Chuq Von Rospach
Part 11
Interview: Joel Davis
Part 12
No Prisoners!
Laurie Sefton
Part 13
Your Turn
Letters to OtherRealms
Part 14
Your Turn
Letters to OtherRealms (part 2)
Editor's Notebook
Chuq Von Rospach
A new fiction magazine in the SF world is a rarity. A successful one
worth reading even more so. The last successful SF magazine to start up
was Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, and it was long, long ago. Since then,
a number have tried, but none have been able to survive the cutthroat
market. Even in Science Fiction, there isn't a lot of market to share.
Which makes it nice to see Aboriginal SF make it. The latest issue has
encouraging news on circulation and distribution, and the conversion to
a full glossy magazine from that early, horribly ugly format seems to
be a complete success. Good, solid fiction and a growing readership
show that there does seem to be a market for new blood.
The success of Aboriginal seems to be encouraging folks. George
Scithers and friends are bringing back Weird Tales. There's a new
magazine coming out of the Northwest called Argos that I'm really
impressed with. All three of these are well worth the time to track
down and look at, especially Argos. It seems to have the worst
distribution and smallest circulation right now, so it'll be the
hardest to find -- the address is in Stuff Received this issue.
To have three successful magazines show up in a short period of time is
a good sign for Science Fiction, especially if they can stick around.
But there is more on the horizon.
Not all of it is good, though. The newest magazine to show up, Marion
Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, has some major problems. I had hopes
for this one, because major short Fantasy markets are in short supply.
Unless something happens between issue one and the next one, though,
this isn't the magazine to fill the void.
MZBFM is a classic example of what happens when Desktop Publishing
technology gets in the hands of people whose motivation outstrips their
skills. I don't want to sound too negative, but it is obvious that the
magazine was put together by people who were learning as they went
along. Each story, for instance, shares the same body typeface, but the
introduction page, the bylines, most of the major typographic pieces
change from story to story and page to page. There are pages where it
seems like they had contests to see how many fonts they could use at
once (including the ultimate no-no, a bitmap font filled with pixel images).
The result is chaos. The magazine is a classic case of how not to use
DTP technology, and a great example that DTP is a tool, not a skill.
Just because you have fonts and PageMaker and a scanner and a laser
printer doesn't mean you can publish anything. MZBFM is so cluttered it
ended up looking more like a ransom note than a magazine.
All that said, I could have ignored the look of the magazine if the
contents had been worth it. But the fiction ran from above-average
fan-fiction to what-do-I-have-in-my-closet pro fiction -- decent, but
not salable to a major market. Nothing really worth reading. The only
story that did anything at all for me was Jennifer Roberson's 'Final Exam.'
The other thing that really bothered me about MZBFM was the art. It was
scanned in, laid out electronically, and then printed out on their
laser printer. For OtherRealms, I've been evaluating scanning
technology for over a year -- and I still lay all my art out by hand
and wax it into the masters. When you see MZBFM, you'll see why. Even
with the best scanning and printing technologies available, you can't
reproduce art properly. Scanning line art is possible. Scanning for
halftones simply makes the art look horrible. If I were one of the
artists in MZBFM, I'd be upset with the reproduction quality. I may be
'just a fanzine' but I'd never do that to my artists.
There's a learning curve to Desktop Publishing, as looking at back
issues of OtherRealms will clearly show. If this was a fanzine, I'd say
it had promise and suggest you keep an eye on it. But this is a
professional magazine, and an expensive ($3.95 an issue, for 64 pages)
one at that. Considering the lack of quality of the fiction and the
long way these folks have to go to get even close to professional
quality. As much as I like supporting new ventures, I can't with any
conscience suggest you bother with MZBFM. For the price of four copies
of this not-even-fanzine quality magazine, you can get a six issue
subscription to Aboriginal, or two years of Argos. Either is a much
better magazine and deserves (and has earned) the support.
I'm personally going to wrap my copy of MZBFM in plastic, because I'm
going to be hanging onto it for years to come. Not for the collectible
aspect, but because when I end up on the obligatory Desktop Publishing
panel at conventions, it'll make a great casebook study of how to not
Change in Venue
I'm happy to announce a slight change in venue for one of my editors.
Laurie, who's not only one of my columnists but also assistant
bottle-washer and typo-catcher (the ones that get through are the ones
I put in the night before I paste things up for the printer, when she's
asleep and can't proofread). She's also taken on the responsibility as
Science Editor here at OtherRealms.
Why? A long running discussion between us has been the inability for
authors to get the Science right, especially in non-traditional fields
for SF like biology or genetics. We've seen books where the author has
obviously gone to a lot of trouble to work out the orbital mechanics of
the story, only to take two blond, blue-eyed parents and spawn off a
red-headed, green-eyed child (if I were the father, I'd take a close
look at the milkman....). In certain scientific fields lots of time is
spent getting it 'right,' yet these same authors either make up or
ignore sciences from other disciplines. Laurie's going to start looking
at the sciences in books more closely from now on, and focusing more on
what it takes to get it right across the board.
She has a couple of articles planned, including one on post-holocaust
agriculture and the surprises awaiting survivors, courtesy of agribusiness.
And when she runs into books with problems, she's going to let you
know. Her background is in the biological sciences, with degrees in
Zoology and Psychology; she's worked in the Chemical industry, and
holds a number of patents in high-density drilling fluids for the oil
industry. She's even been licensed to operate a sewage treatment plant
-- a function many stories seem to forget is necessary. It's gotta go
somewhere when you flush, you know. It doesn't just disappear.
If you find a book with problems in the Science, drop her a note on it.
The idea is not to make the author look foolish, but to help improve
the field in areas where the knowledge base is a little weak. I think
it's going to be fascinating. When you see it, I hope you'll agree.
Femto-Reviews
No, not really. Honest. But I'm going to be starting a new section in
OtherRealms. It will be a compilation of what people are reading and
what they think about them.
Here's how I hope it will work. If you read a book you want to recommend,
drop me a note and tell me. This can be by E-mail or by regular mail.
All I need is the title, the author, and the publisher, with either a
"recommended" or a "not recommended." If you want to say more, that's
fine -- I'll take selected blurbs and print them, space permitting.
What I'll do is take all of the comments and recommendations, tally
them up, and publish a list of the most often mentioned books, positive
and negative.
The deadline for submissions is six weeks before publication or
November 15 for the Winter issue. If you don't get tallied one issue,
you'll show up in the next. If you want to make multiple
recommendations at once, that's fine (at $.25/letter, I expect most
non-E-mail types will appreciate that). We'll see how things go for the
next couple of issues.
Spring Announcements
The other new feature I'm announcing is Upcoming Titles. After leafing
through the latest Publisher's Weekly Fall Announcement issue (a
monster issue full of advertisements and information on books being
published in the next few months) I realized that there is less and
less coverage of SF.
What I want to try is a special, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror only
version of the Spring Announcements. Publishers are welcome to send me
their information on upcoming titles for the Spring and Summer (April
through September). I'll compile it up and publish it in the Spring
issue. Deadline for material is January 30, for publication March 30.
Stuff Received Redesign
I'm planning a format change in the the Stuff Received column because
the information in it is complete, and I don't think it is as easy to
find things as it should be. I'm not quite sure how it's going to look
yet, so I'm asking for some feedback from everyone on what they'd like
to see in it.
One thing I am planning on doing is separating titles by publication
date first, and then publisher, rather than just by publisher. Another
change I want to make is to add a notation for original or reprint;
also to show whether the book is a novel, collection or anthology.
What I really want to do is make it more useful to readers and, hopefully,
easier to create and maintain. I know what I want in the section, but I
need to know what information you think is useful as well.
If you have ideas of what you'd like to see in Stuff Received and how
you'd like it to look, let me know. We'll see what happens.
Change of Hobbit bookstore in trouble
The Change of Hobbit bookstore's building has been put up for sale,
and it looks like it will be unable to continue there after the lease
runs out in 1990. This is not just a case of losing another well-run,
independent book store. Change of Hobbit not only serves a large
part of the Science Fiction world in the Los Angeles area, but is a
major resource nationwide by doing mail-order for people without
access to a decent local store.
They are looking at ways of keeping the business open past the end
of the lease. They have found a new storefront, but will have to raise
$40,000 to cover the cost of the move. Various fund-raising efforts
are being set up, including a reading/signing extravaganza by Clive
Barker, Dean R. Koontz and Robert McCammon on October 23. If
you're interested in knowing more or helping out in some way,
contact them at 213-GREAT-SF.
Worldcon
I'm going to cover Nolacon next issue, since deadlines on this issue
preclude sitting down and doing a good trip report. I've got mixed
feelings about Nolacon -- having been home a couple of weeks as I write
this, I'm still not sure how I feel about some of the things that
happened. In general, I felt it was a better convention than Conspiracy
-- and I know of many people who would disagree with me on that. One of
these minutes, though, we're going to have to come to the conclusion
that Worldcons are simply too large and complex to be run by
inexperienced, albeit motivated, amateurs, and turn over the chores of
running conventions to the people who do it for a living. next few
months) I realized that there is less and less coverage of SF.
Halofacon: the T-Shirt
One of the things we did at Nolacon this year was create a new Worldcon
bid: Halofacon, Sri-Lanka in 2001. We had some T-shirts made up, and
whenever we wore them around they got lots of attention and interest.
Many of the shirts I brought for friends got wrested from me by amused
and insistent people who had to have one. The shirt design is on the
back cover of this issue, and I do have some left. See the masthead for
details on how to get them. I thought it was a kick -- except for the
folks who really thought we ought to put the convention together. For
me, the best parts of a Convention bid are the T-shirts and bid
parties. I'll leave the actual convention to someone else.
Have you backed up your hard disk?
And even if you have, will it do you any good?
Unfortunately, the Stuff Received column held over from last issue
disappeared sometime during final production. Worse, I didn't notice
until after the file had purged off my backups, so the books and magazines
that should have been noted last issue are gone to the great bit bucket
in the sky. The damage could have been worse, but it's frustrating to
think you have things under control, only to find out Sir Murphy's
found a loophole. I've changed my backup procedures to (hopefully)
eliminate the chance of this happening again. My apologies to everyone
who should have gotten a mention and didn't because of this.
The Editor's Series
This issue starts up a new series of cartoons on the Editor's Notebook
page. They're by Marge Simon, and I thought you folks would get a
kick out of them. Of course, they're Fantasy pieces -- all the editors I
know are nice, kind, patient, generous people. They'd never do
anything like this to their writers....
Subscriptions
An single copy of OtherRealms costs $2.85. A one year (4 issue)
subscription is available for $11. Complimentary subscriptions to
members of the publishing industry are available. OtherRealms is
available on a returnable basis to specialty shops and bookstores.
Please contact me for details.
OtherRealms is also available for arranged trades with your fanzine or
at the whim of the editor.
Is this your last issue?
The number on your mailing list is the issue your OtherRealms
subscription dies. Negative numbers indicate complimentary
subscriptions. If it is zero, this is a one-time mailing, so if you
want to see it again, you should Do Something about it.
Electronic OtherRealms
A text-only version of OtherRealms is available on many different
computer networks and bulletin boards. On the Internet, BITnet, CSNet
and UUCP networks, send E-mail to chuq@sun.COM for information. On
USENET, it is available in rec.mag.otherrealms. It is also available on
the Delphi timesharing service.
Submissions
OtherRealms publishes articles about Science Fiction, Fantasy and
Horror. Our primary focus is reviews of newer authors. Material about
books and the people that write them are welcome, including interviews,
bibliographies and biographies.
Authors are invited to write articles for Behind the Scenes. It allows
you to describe the background and research that went into a book and
the things that make the book special and interesting to you. Submissions
can be made on either Macintosh or MS-DOS disk, via E- mail on the
networks listed above, or the old-fashioned ink-on-paper format.
Include a SASE if you want to see your submission returned. I take
first serial rights unless other arrangements are made.
Deadlines
Deadlines for all material is the 15th of the month prior to
publication. Publication date is the 30th. Next deadline: November 15.
Material for the Reader's Column and Pico Reviews may be submitted at
any time, and will be used at the first opportunity. Deadline for the
Spring Window on the Future is February 1st.
What are you reading?
What are you reading, and what do you think? Submit your thoughts to
the Reader's Column. See the editorial this month for details.
Art
I'm always looking for good genre-related artwork, from small clip- art
pieces to covers. Originals will be returned after use. I can now
handle electronically generated art in EPS format. I ask non- exclusive
one time rights.
Publishing news
OtherRealms is interested in publishing news about the happenings in
the field -- contracts, promotions, sales or market information. If
something has happened you want the world to know about, I want to know.
Window on the future
Publishers are encouraged to submit lists of upcoming books to the
Windows on the Future column. This will be a biannual look at coming
attractions in the field, similar to the Publishers Weekly Spring and
Fall Announcement issues (minus the ads, of course). See this month's
editorial for more details.
Sri-Lanka in 2001
OtherRealms supports the Sri-Lanka in 2001 Worldcon bid. The T- shirts
that made it to Nolacon this year went quickly, so I'm making them
available through OtherRealms for those that could not get them. The
Halofacon #1 design (shown on the back cover) is in Royal Blue on a
white, 100% cotton shirt in sizes M, L, and XLG. You can have them for
$9.00 postage paid ($7.50 in person) or in trade for your own fannish
T-shirt. They're available while supplies last.
Letters
OtherRealms solicits your feedback. We want to know what you think
about the magazine and Science Fiction. Letters will be considered for
publication unless you request otherwise. Letters may be edited for
length or content if necessary. Addresses will not be printed unless
you let me know you want me to.
Colophon
OtherRealms is published on a Macintosh and a LaserWriter Plus.
Software used to generate it include FullWrite Professional, Aldus
Freehand and Ready, Set Go! 4.0a. Data-entry is done both in-house and
by TypeSmiths. Typos are done exclusively in-house. The body typeface
is Garamond. The display faces are Univers in various weights and sizes.
Book ratings in OtherRealms
[*****] Ones of the best books of the year
[****] An above average book
[***] A good book. Recommended
[**] Flawed, but has its moments
[*] Not Recommended
[] To Be Avoided
OtherRealms
Science Fiction and Fantasy
In Review
Editor
Chuq Von Rospach
Science Editor
Laurie Sefton
Contributing Editors
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Charles de Lint
Rick Kleffel
Alan Wexelblat
OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Copyright 1988
by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved
One time rights have been acquired from the contributors.
OtherRealms may not be reproduced without written permission from Chuq
Von Rospach. The electronic edition may be distributed or reproduced
only in its entirety and only if all copyrights, author credits and
this notice, including the return addresses remain intact.
No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way
without the express permission of the author.
OtherRealms is published in March, June, September and December by:
Chuq Von Rospach
35111-F Newark Blvd.
Suite 255
Newark, CA 94560
USENET: chuq@sun.com
Delphi: CHUQ
CIS: 73317, 635
GENie: C.VONROSPAC
----
End of Part 1
