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OtherRealms Issue 30 Part 01
Electronic OtherRealms #30
The Parody Issue
Science Fiction and Fantasy in Chaos
Spring, 1991
Part 1 of 4
Copyright 1991 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved.
OtherRealms may be distributed electronically only in the original
form and with copyrights, credits and return addresses intact.
OtherRealms may be reproduced in printed form only for your personal use.
No part of OtherRealms may be reprinted or used in any other
publication without permission of the author.
All rights to material published in OtherRealms hereby revert to the author.
Table of Contents
Part 1
Editor's Notebook
Dramatis Personae
The people who really did all this
Inexpensive Rhetoricisms
Much Rejoicing
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Part 2
Acerb
An Advertisement
Fear and Loathing in F&SF
Hunter S.M. Key
Pissed Imagining
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Part 3
A Writer's Day
Melanie Rawn
Miz Maneurs
Jakes, Jacks, and Johns: An Analysis of Elizabeth Moon's Use of Waste
Technology as a Metaphor for Feminist Survivalist Philosophy, or "Why
So Many Jacks and So Little Shit?"
E. Sophia Burks
Part 4
From Beyond the Edge
Reviews by our Readers
Just Looking
Helen Arlinson
Letters
Masthead -- subscription and submission info, plus
all the administrivia
Editor's Notebook
Comments and Ramblings from Chuq Von Rospach
This Page Is True. Really.
Welcome to the OtherRealms Parody issue. This issue has been in
development for eighteen months, and something I'd been thinking about
for two years. I wanted to do something very different--give people a
chance to let their hair down, perhaps burst some bubbles and mostly
have some fun. Last year, I sent out about 100 letters to regular
contributors, fans, authors and artists requesting material for this
issue. The groundrules were simple: no libel or slander--except
against myself and OtherRealms (I'm happy--no, thrilled--to note that
nobody took me up on that).
The results are here. When I started the Parody issue I had no idea
whether it'd be hilarious or a complete bust. Now that I have all of
the pieces in place (this editorial is the last piece to be written)
I'm happy with the result. I hope you are, too.
This is issue #30, which is a minor anniversary as far as issue
numbers is concerned, and the beginning of my sixth year of publishing
OtherRealms (issue #1 was issued in January of 1986, so issue 29
finished out my five years). It is also an end of an era, since this
is the final issue that will be released on the networks. In the
future, it'll only be available in the printed version. I know this is
an unpopular decision and will be making OtherRealms unavailable to a
large number of my current readers--all of which is true, but as I
continue to distance myself from the networks (and their ability to
act as an infinite timesink) and my need to focus my time and energy
towards other projects, I still feel that this is a necessary, if
regrettable step. I'm sorry to those I'm disenfranchising--but it's
been the situation for a while that the needs of OtherRealms and my
own personal needs have been in conflict, and this change is necessary
to try to put my various priorities in their proper place.
The ability for OtherRealms to survive this long is reason for
celebration--it is a tribute to everyone involved, especially the
people who have supported it with their submissions and their
feedback. This issue is an attempt by me to say thanks with something
that is a little different and, I hope, a little special. The
celebrations are muted, though, because for many of you this is the
last issue of OtherRealms you'll see. This issue is both an ending and
a new beginning.
So enjoy. I hope this issue is as much fun to read as it was for me to
put together.
The on-line aspects of OtherRealms--rec.mag.otherrealms and the
back-issue archives on apple.com--will continue to exist until June
15. At that point, I'll delete the group and the archives and they
will no longer be available.
It's been a long and varied journey we have traveled together with
OtherRealms. I'm happy to have been able to share what I have with
you, and I hope you enjoyed it.
For those of you getting this on paper, OtherRealms continues as
usual. The next issue should be out sometime in the fall (hopefully in
time for Chicon), with a deadline of July 15. Next issue we return to
our normal format of reviews, commentary and interesting stuff. Hope
to see you there.
In a few other things, Laurie and I will be in Chicago for the
Worldcon (and the pizza); other than that, we're not planning on going
to any conventions for a while, since we're a little burnt out on
using all of our holidays on the convention circuit.
See you next issue!
Dramatis Personae
Acerb Kevin O'Donnell, Jr.
Al Turnafraze and Biff Bock Katherine Kerr
Bored Sirs Stephen Sawicki
E. Sophia Burks Elizabeth Moon
Helen Arlinson Steve Sawicki
Hunter S.M. Key Charles de Lint
Julie Barr Judith Tarr
Miz Maneurs Marge B. Simon
Narry Liven Larry Niven
Inexpensive Rhetoricisms
The official and semi-anonymous house organ
of the ClonePunk movement.
Inexpensive Rhetoricisms is brought to you by the Plaid Warlock, a
pseudonym for someone who's decided he'll never be as good a writer
as Gene Wolfe or as rich as Piers Anthony, so he's going to try to
get on David Letterman instead. [editorial note on the on-line version:
this was a special one-page fanzine included in OR#30 and should be read
as a separate publication. It still loses something in the translation,
but if you don't realize that at the beginning, I think you'll be
completely lost -- chuq]
Welcome to the inaugural issue of Inexpensive Rhetoricisms. We have a
new Movement to flog, and we are here to flog it until is squeals.
Accept no clones--only IR will do.
How this all came about: During a discussion on GEnie about Kate
Wilhelm, I made what I thought was an innocent remark. On her book
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, I said that with genetic engineering
becoming a common topic in the news that I expected to soon see a
trend towards SF books involving cloning and genetic engineering. This
new Movement, which I called ClonePunk, would be a lot like Cyberpunk,
with a few really good books, a lot of hype and a realization that
when all was said and done, people would realize that Kate Wilhelm did
for ClonePunk what John Brunner did for Cyberpunk with Shockwave
Rider: do it better than 95% of the Movement and do it ten years ahead
of them.
I thought it was a harmless joke. I woke up the next day to find myself
the father of a Movement. I tried to deny it. I tried to kill it.
Then I realized that the Father of the Movement gets to do all sorts
of neat things. He can do the definitive theme anthology, and nobody
even cares if the stories don't fit in the Movement. He can write lots
of articles about how his Movement is going to save the field and how
everyone else's work is obsolete (he might even get *paid* for these
articles). He can write books and use the Movement as a marketing
wedge.
It's not just a Movement! It's a source of income! Sign me up! Stay
tuned for BlueGenes, the definitive ClonePunk anthology. And my new
ClonePunk novel If I were my sister, would I let me marry myself?
But first, and most important, a Movement must have a vehicle, a
fanzine where the movers and shakers of the Movement can gather and
define themselves and shape the Cause for the future of all fiction.
These speakers, these few bold individuals willing to sacrifice their
writing careers for the Cause must, of course, speak out anonymously --
the better to write reasoned, intelligent puff pieces about their own
work and slander and libel their friends and neighbors.
Not one above a little slander and libel in good fun, I follow this
time honored tradition here in Inexpensive Rhetoricisms. Our cast of
characters include (remember, these are all anonymous pseudonyms --
nobody is using their real names):
Coito Ergo Sum: the up-and-coming father of the ClonePunk movement and
occasional fanzine hacker.
Harry Silvershades: a second-rate hanger-on of the CyberPunk movement,
Harry figures that as well as the coattails of Cyberpunk worked
for him, this time he's SURE to earn out on that book.
Tinius Moronus: Not really a writer and not really interested in
either SF or ClonePunk, Tinnius sees a great opportunity in the
Movement as a place where he can hone his abuse and slander
techniques.
Charles Platt: obviously not his real name, but we figure that if
someone can steal a pseudonym and raise hell with it, the least
we can do is return the favor by stealing his real name.
Soon to be a major motion picture! ClonePunk. It's not just a
movement! It's a great way to make a buck!
Much Rejoicing
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Episode 284
In Which We Take A Close Look At The Best
Fantasy Series Ever Written
Piers Anthony:
From Del Rey books:
On a Pale Horse, 0-345-33848-8, $4.95
Bearing an Hourglass, 345-31315-1, $4.95
With a Tangled Skein, 345-31885-4, $5.95
Wielding a Red Sword, 345-32221-5, $5.95
Being a Green Mother, 345-32223-1, $4.95
From Avon Books:
For the Love of Evil, 0-380-75285-9, $4.95
And Eternity, 0-380-75286-7, $4.95
Regardless of our hypothetical extension of semiosis beyond the
boundaries of the biological community -- whether, that is, we wish
to stick with the firmly established levels or wish also to
consider the possibilities of a physiosemiosis in nature antecedent
to and subtensive of the later and more restricted phenomena of
biosemiosis -- what is clear at this point is that semiotics is the
name for a distinctive series of investigations, distinctive for
the same reason that any investigation is distinctive, namely, by
reason of what it studies, in the present case, semiosis. But how
is such an activity as semiosis possible in the first place?
-- John Deely, Basics of Semiotics
Fantasy, when wielded by the hands of a master, is often nothing less
than an exploration of the fundamental philosophical questions that
face humankind; by its distortions of reality, fantasy permits the
author to isolate, dissect, exaggerate, remove, or alter any aspect or
all aspects of the world- that-is-the-case and create an arbitrary
universe-of-discourse, in which -- unlike the pseudorealistic world of
bourgeois/mimetic/literary (BML) fiction, where all objects are
significant primarily as subjective emblems or allegorical symbols and
only secondarily as objective objects -- the ding-an-sich rules
supreme; the object is an object primarily, to be evaluated for its
own being prior to and indeed in preference to any attempt to
interpret beyond the surface.
This paradox -- the objectification of the subject tied willy-nilly to
the subjectivity of the object -- lies at the heart of fantasy, and it
is therefore often necessary to understand this if we are to
understand how certain books, while their subjectively-objective
content bears little or no resemblance to the world-which-is-the-case
and with which we all deal daily when we dally duly, nonetheless
address issues vital to the human enterprise: issues such as death,
time, fate, war, nature, and the problem of good and evil.
The problem with discussing such issues, of course, is that they are
essentially abstract quantities, for, since there is no thing you can
point to and say, "this is good, this is evil, this is time;" they in
fact exist solely because and to the extent we have names for them.
The linguistic and metalinguistic distortions fantasy not only permits
but requires, then, allow the writer of such texts (ignoring the
problem of intentionality) to objectify such abstract quantities,
permitting them to be examined as if there were such a thing as, say,
the web of fate, which a scientist could hold in his hand, examine,
and so on.
The great strength of SF (in the fantasy-inclusive sense of the term,
"speculative fiction") over BMLF is that this can be done at all;
while its greatest weakness is the danger of this technique, a more
intense form of the danger that inheres in all metaphorical
explanative activity: the immanent danger of category-confusion, of
mistaking the map for the territory, of believing that because we have
a name for a thing it exists. Heinlein, in Stranger in a Strange Land,
pointed up this kind of confusion with admiral precision: Jubal
Harshaw asks Michael, "Who made the world?" and Michael responds that
"I do not see that this is a question." In logical terms, the mere
fact of being well-formed [grammatical] does not give a formula
[question or statement] meaning.
To tread this very dangerous line, then, of objectifying the abstract
phenomenon, examining its essence while neither granting nor denying
its existence, is a feat no hack writer should have the temerity to
attempt, while, contrariwise, to attempt it with even marginal success
is to demonstrate that the fantasist in question is a master indeed,
and no hack. That it has been done occasionally in the history of SF
is undeniable, as the best works of C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams,
Ursula K Le Guin, Mervyn Peake, Patricia McKillip, and a select few
others (though not JRR Tolkien, who, for all his virtuosity, was not
at his best with this sort of fantasy: see, for example, Smith of
Wooton Major or "Leaf, by Niggle") adequately demonstrate; but a brief
look at the proliferating masses of pusillanimous pseudo-fantasies
cluttering up the bookshop racks (and even the airport racks) will
convince even the hardiest optimist that the attempt fails far more
often than it succeeds, and that when it fails, the results are simply
miserable.
The proper function of a critic and book reviewer, then, is to help
the reader wade through this miasmic morass, hacking with a verbal
machete at the undergrowth, warning against poisonous beasts and
generally acting as guide. The average reader, after all, doesn't know
what he really wants; it's up to us to show the poor slob. A high and
lonely calling it is, you may be sure. And do we get one bit of
appreciation for it, I ask you? Do any of you ever write to thank us
for pointing out a really good book you might have missed, or for
warning you away from a twenty-dollar turkey? Hah! Not bloody damn
likely, you ungrateful pissants! Here we are, reading and staring at
VDTs until all hours till we go blind, getting paper cuts in all our
fingers, our hands permanently stained black from the ink; reading
terrible book after terrible book until we feel ready to go insane
from the amount of verbal shit we've ingested, and you can't even be
bothered to thank us! Oooooh nooooo, ask the average man on the street
what he thinks of critics and he'll tell you it's some kind of cushy
job where you watch one or two movies a week and give a thumbs up or
thumbs down on them. Hah! You call that criticism? Siskel and Ebert?
That's not criticism, that's television, that's entertainment.
And you authors, who think you're so damn smart and get all offended
if we bumrap one of your books. Has it ever occurred to you that if
you wrote better books we might have something nicer to say about
them? Have you ever seen me say anything nasty about Gene Wolfe, or
Samuel Delany? No? Well then, maybe I'm not just out to slime on my
betters, eh? Maybe your books just aren't up to the standard they set.
Maybe every time a page of your pathetic puling prose sees print the
massed shades of Robert Heinlein, Philip Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, and
Alice Sheldon wring their hands and wail. Maybe trees are going to the
axe, despoiling the planet when there's already an atmospheric crisis
due to those numbnuts in Brazil who keep slashandburning the
rainforests, and we just can't afford to keep chopping them and making
paper for books that just aren't fucking worth it. Maybe the average
reader only has so much money to spend and we're trying to help them
get the most out of it.
And then again, maybe I was just having a bad day when I reviewed your
book. You never know. It was probably some combination of the above.
Excuse me. I've needed to get that off my chest for a while. I feel
much better now. Shall we get on with discussing the books that
areclearly the capstone of Mr. Anthony's long and intermittently
distinguished career?
Yes. Let's.
Consider, for example, Death. Death has traditionally been portrayed --
at least in Western cultures -- as a male figure, possibly
skeletal, usually covered in dark robes that hide most or all of his
features. Often, death is shown riding a horse.
Now, how could such an archetype arise? Since it's clear that (setting
aside the distortions of fantasy) such a figure does not exist, that
death is not a thing, but an event -- or, rather, the simultaneous
cessation of a number of semiperiodic and highly mutually
interdependent events -- what biological, psychological, or cultural
process of semiosis allowed this (image of man with sickle) to "stand
for" (whatever "stand for" finally turns out to mean) this
(simultaneous cessation of biological processes)?
One can conjecture about some stages of the process. The first, the
creation of a label for this simultaneous cessation, is fairly clear;
that which came to be called "death" is a phenomonologically common
occurrence, is in fact frequently, if not universally, regarded as the
sole certain phenomenon common to any life: its ending. Similarly, one
can easily see the category-confusion arising in a people who have not
yet developed any sophistication concerning the use and abuse of
language.
The growth of grammar, of course, intensifies this objectification of
the abstract, at least in western cultures: by creating a category of
word called the noun, and including "death" with terms like "rock" and
"tree," the earliest grammarians helped to fix the idea that "death"
had the quality of existence in common with "rock" and "tree," whereas
death, as we have seen, does not exist, it occurs; in this sense,
"death" should, perhaps, be regarded as a verb: or perhaps abstract
nouns, which refer to processes rather than objects, should be
assigned a separate grammatical category from the noun: things which
have essence but no existence.
Once "death" was fixed in the cultural overmind as a thing, it was
inevitable that some sensory images would become associated with it.
Paleness, skeletality, are both easily associated with the dying and
the dead: so it was little more than a metonymy to associate the
qualities of the dying and the dead with Death. The robes, of course,
hide Death's face, emblematic of his proper invisibility -- for, since
he doesn't exist, nobody has ever actually seen him. The sickle may be
interpreted in various ways, ranging from the idea of reaping human
lives like grain to a more abstruse but equiplausible association with
the ever-dying and revenant Grain King central to so many cults. And
the horse, which was once the ultimate in speedy transportation, was
necessary if Death was to be everywhere at once and un-out-runnable.
All of which goes a good long way to explaining the quality of
Anthony's books. I do hope I've convinced you.
------ End ------
