Electronic OtherRealms #16 June, 1987 Part 3 Words of Wizdom Reviews by Chuq Von Rospach Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach God Game, Andrew M. Greeley, Tor The Grey Horse, R.A. MacAvoy, Bantam The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars, Steven Brust, Ace Cardography, Orson Scott Card, Hypatia Press Sword at Sunset, Rosemary Sutcliff, Tor The Discovery of King Arthur, Geoffrey Ashe, Henry Holt Take Off Too!, Randall Garrett, Donning/Starblaze The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fourth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, St. Martin's Press A long standing debate between authors and the critic/reviewer is the relevance of the book review. Does a good review help sales? Does a bad review hurt? Does it matter? A review must be written in context to the work itself, a fact many reviewers seem to miss. Reviews where a book is mentioned in passing, or a book is thrashed because the reviewer would have written it different. Abusive reviews, Ghetto reviews ("This isn't bad, for *snif* Science Fiction"). You cannot forget why you are here -- to help someone find something they will enjoy reading. You don't review Moby Dick as light reading, and you can't take a Conan novel and fit it into the Great Art category. This is a rather roundabout way of bringing up Andrew M. Greeley. Greeley recently wrote some disparaging, but generally true, things about book reviewers in a Publisher's Weekly editorial, thoughts rather similar to what I've written above. Not surprisingly, the book reviewers of America are outraged, and have been screaming back about relevance and the importance of the book reviewer, never realizing how silly they all sound trying to prove that the review is as important as the work itself. Greeley, besides twitting off some stuffy critical egos, is an author and a Jesuit Priest in the Chicago area, known for writing things the Vatican wishes he wouldn't. In God Game [Tor books, $4.50], he uses Science Fiction as a way to examine the concept of the Author as God. After all, isn't writing the book the same as creating a Universe? If Author was really given Godhood, could they hack it? And how does that relate to our reality and how God has handled it for us? Greeley (the character, as this story is written about a writer who is writing about the story) is given a new interactive fiction game by his friend the mad programmer to test. He fires it up, and is working with it when a bolt of lightning strikes his Satellite dish, mucking up the works and tying the computer game into another reality. From then on, the commands given to the game are translated into actions into the alternate universe. We follow Greeley as Greeley (the author) writes about his slow acceptance of the fact that he has become God, and the changes and problems this new responsibility create. Through all this, Greeley does things that are obviously designed to irritate the upper echelon of the Vatican. Greeley (the character) insists on calling his God Her. One of the societies in the other Universe worships in their underwear, to be closer to their God. But it is always in good fun and never gets in the way of his main story, the search for And They Lived Happily Ever After. In the hands of many writers, a plot like this would degenerate into a pseudo-metaphysical mess. Greeley, fortunately, is trained in God. He understands the implications of what he is saying, and avoids the traps a more naive writer would fall into. His main theme seems to be that God isn't perfect, and can't be. God works in real-time, and makes split decisions, and sometimes lives to regret them. But She has a responsibility, and does the best She can. I enjoyed God Game thoroughly, for the writing as well as the story. There are deep concepts in this book, but they never get in the way of a good story, and Greeley is as good a storyteller as you'll run into. [****+] People who have read OtherRealms for a while will know that I've been rather critical of R.A. MacAvoy. Anyone who enters the field with a gem like Tea With the Black Dragon is bound to disappoint later, but I've felt there has been a slow, constant decline in the quality of her work, each book a little more shallow and less inviting than the previous. MacAvoy's strength lies in strong people and strong stories with just a hint of the Fantastic, and as she moved away from that to other parts of the field (the heavy Celtic Fantasy of Book of Kells, or the murder mystery of Twisting the Rope) I believe she wrote things she wanted to write but couldn't completely control, and did both herself and her readers a disfavor. So I went into The Grey Horse (Bantam books, $3.95) hoping to enjoy it, but expecting another disappointment. It kept me up until two in the morning. In the time when Ireland is fighting for independence, we have the story of the romance of Ruari, a prince of the stallions, and Maire, his chosen. Romance it is, as he must find a way to prove himself to her and win her to himself. As he does, as he must. As it was with Tea, the Fantastic elements are subdued and secondary to the history and the romance of the story MacAvoy tells. It is a good book, if not as good as Tea then better than she has done in a long while. Give this one a try. I don't think you'll be disappointed. [****] The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars (Ace books, $16.95) is the first volume in a series of authors re-telling classic fairy tales. In reality, the Hungarian tale on how the Sun, Moon and Stars were placed in the sky, is less than 40% of the book. The rest of the book is an introspective view of Artist and Self-Doubt. Greg is part of an artist co-op that has been sharing a studio for three years and going nowhere. The book is the story of this co-op, the struggles, the doubts, the very human problems of having to come to grips with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you aren't going to succeed. The rent is due, the critics haven't noticed you, neither have the buyers, and maybe you should just throw it all in an get a Real Job, because you aren't doing anyone any favors the way things are. What Brust is saying about artists is just as true about writers, so it is impossible to read this book without assuming that it is primarily auto- biographical in feeling if not fact. Whether this is true or not, only Brust can say. The truth is, that this book connected with many of my own feelings, and caused me to react very negatively, so it is hard for me to review this book objectively. There are a couple of minor structural flaws -- a major relationship that ought to be pivotal to the book is ignored, and Brust never really ties the fairy tale into the story. For some folks, I think the book might be a disappointment, if only because it is merely a good Steven Brust work. It is better than many of the books being published, but it isn't as good as Brust is capable of writing. [***-] Although Orson Scott Card is not well known for his Fantasy, Hypatia Press has come out with a limited edition hardback of his stories. Cardography [183 pages plus foreward and afterword, limited to 825 copies total and 750 signed and numbered] collects five works. Only one ("Porcelain Salamander" from Unaccompanied Sonata) has been previously published in a collection of his works. The others are from works as varied as Swords Against Darkness #4 and Dragons of Darkness, so it is likely that many of you haven't seen most of these works before. All of the works are wonderful, and I'm hard pressed to choose a favorite. Least typical to me was "Middle Woman," a Chinese parable that really shows off Card's writing abilities in ways you wouldn't expect from someone who primarily writes SF. I'm also very impressed with the quality of the book itself, with truly stunning art, and a loving care put into the production that makes not only the words a work of art, but the vessel that stores them as well. Highly recommended. [****] It seems that every writer tries to write about King Arthur. In recent years, Arthur has been back in vogue, thanks in large part to the well written and highly successful Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. The problem with many of them is that they don't really add anything to the mythos -- they are satisfied at rehashing what other others have endlessly rehashed. As a confirmed Arthurian fan, I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting works in this subgenre, and they are few and far between. For all lovers of Arthur, Tor has reprinted Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset (498 pages, $4.50), a classic 1963 work. Unlike T.H. White's Once and Future King and Mary Stewart's Crystal Cave series, both of which explore Arthur as legend and myth, Sword at Sunset brings Arthur down to earth without removing any of the glory or wonder. There is no magic here, no Sword in the Stone, no Camelot or Round Table. What we have is a War King, a supreme ruler attempting to turn back the tides of barbarians in the hope, not of winning, but simply to gain a few more years of civilization. Sutcliff's Arthur is very real, fighting very real battles and dealing with the end of a united England. By stripping the myth from the man, Sutcliff has shown that the man is the myth, and has written what is, to me, one of the three best interpretations of the Arthur legend ever written (the other two being Stewart and Bradley). For Arthur fans, and for everyone else, I can't recommend it highly enough. [*****] For real Arthur aficionados, a neat book to find is Geoffrey Ashe's The Discovery of King Arthur (Owl Books, 224 pages, $8.95). This is an archaeological and historical expedition into the facts behind the legend. If you assume that there has to be a factual basis for a myth as firmly rooted as Arthur, then Ashe's explanation of who Arthur really was and how the legends propagated is a fascinating blend of history and detective work. [****] If you read Randall Garrett's wonderful series of satires and pastiches in his collection Takeoff! you should be aware that a companion volume is now available. Takeoff Too! (Donning/Starblaze, 306 pages, $7.95 trade paperback) is a different sort of book than Takeoff! was, but an important addition to the collected works of Garrett. Randall Garrett was stricken with a brain infection in 1979 that left him with permanent memory loss, so this volume was compiled by his wife and collaborator, Vickie Ann Heydron. Its purpose was to try to compile in one place the best of Garrett's humorous works he'd written over the years. It contains 26 works (plus biographical and commentary material by Heydron) spanning the years 1953 to 1978. It is uneven, but when Garrett is good, he's wonderful. My only gripe with the work is the tone that Heydron takes when talking about Garrett, for while he is permanently disabled, he hasn't (as of this writing) died, and her insistence of talking about him in the past tense bothered me. A minor problem in the light of having a single collection of a great (and in my eyes, underrated) author's work. My hope is that this collection is followed by future ones until all of Garrett's work is easily accessible. [***+] Finally, a quick note on The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fourth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois (St. Martin's Press, 602 pages, $11.95 trade paperback). This year Gardner seems to have attempted to print the Year's Best by seemingly sticking everything published in 1986. That isn't quite true, but at 27 stories and 250,000 words of fiction, he's covered most of the bases. Only one of the short Nebula winners is missing (Kate Wilhelm's "The Girl Who Fell Into the Sky"), and he's limited himself to a single story by every author, so Lucius Shepard, who could have been represented by three or four stories has only "R&R" published. I won't quibble with his selections on a case by case basis -- what I will say is that this is a very strong collection and well worth grabbing to take a look at the stories that you might have missed in some of the magazines you don't normally read. [****] Strut Your Stuff Reviews by Alan Wexelblat wex@mcc.com Copyright 1987 by Alan Wexelblat Teckla, Steven Brust, Ace Fantasy Drinker of Souls, Jo Clayton, Daw Fantasy Beyond the Dar Al-Harb, Gordon Dickson, Tor Fantasy AEgypt, John Crowley, Bantam Books There is a real correlation between creative writing and performance arts such as theater. In both cases, a cast of characters is brought forth to perform upon a stage of some kind. In the theater, the stage is a physical one; in writing, the stage is an environment -- either real or fictional. There are other parallels, of course, but what is interesting is the one major difference. In theater, the production put on for the audience is inevitably a team effort. The characters are created and given dialogue by an author, but it is the actor who makes the character live. This is done on a stage, under lights, in costumes all of which are designed and built by groups of people. Directors and producers are often as well-known as the actors but they, too, work with a team of assistants, stage managers, crew people, and so forth. In a novel, however, all these roles must be played by the author. One person takes on an enormous task and the result is very much a tour de force of the writer's talents. If the author is good, the novel will be good; if not, there is no one else to blame. In a way not possible in theater, novels allow authors to strut their stuff. Of course, editors, publishers and so forth affect the success of a novel in many ways. In a future column I will review some books that I think suffer for reasons that are not the author's fault. This month, however, I will consider four books which show authors strutting their stuff with varying degrees of success. Steven Brust is, without a doubt, one of the best authors in the business of writing Science-Fantasy today. He has a knack for characters that most others lack; the people in his stories come alive within the space of a few well-chosen phrases. The characters grow and develop, and in his stories even the minor players have life. He also has a knack for description; he seems to know instinctively what to spell out and what to omit. This makes for some fascinating reading. Teckla [Ace Fantasy $2.95, 214pp.] is indeed a fascinating book. I devoured it in the course of a long afternoon, stopping only to change planes in Denver and LA. But when I was done, I was left feeling vaguely unhappy. Teckla is the third story in the tale of Vlad Taltos and Cawti, professional assassins of the house of Jhereg. Readers not familiar with this series should pick up its predecessors Jhereg and Yendi before attempting this book. Although Brust tries to make the story of Teckla stand on its own, there is too much background that is needed. Unlike the first two stories in the tale, Teckla is not a simple adventure story. Instead, it is a philosophically-oriented story, in much the same style as Brust's To Reign in Hell. It tells the story of the revolt of the Easterners and how Vlad and Cawti end up on opposite sides of the revolution. This dose of philosophy mixed in with the adventure was not what left me unhappy. While the perceptive reader may spot the shadows of Marx and Lenin in the speeches of the Eastern leader, Kelley, these shadows do not impede the story. Brust's characters are easily strong enough to carry off this clash of Communist and Libertarian ethics. What caused my unhappiness was the ending. Both Jhereg and Yendi came to definite ends. But Teckla does not. Its end is like a cease-fire in a war zone or an intermission in a play. You know instantly that it is not a resolution; rather, it is a brief respite before the action continues. And it didn't have to be that way. In fact, Brust organizes the story along lines that lead the reader to believe exactly the opposite. It will not spoil the story any to say that Brust opens with a letter from Vlad to his laundry/tailor, giving a list of repairs and cleanings to be done. The chapters of the novel are each headed by an item from that list and the action of the chapter shows how the item came to be on the list. So why, then the list is done, is the story not done? I don't know; I can only wait for the curtain to go up on the next act. [****-] While waiting, Jo Clayton's Drinker of Souls [Daw Fantasy $3.50, 335pp.] is poor intermission fare. It's the same story she's been telling for nine or ten books now: Woman with Special Powers crosses Strange World in pursuit of Objective. Ho Hum. If you put Brann -- the protagonist of Drinker of Souls -- next to Aleytys -- the protagonist of the Diadem series -- in front of me, I couldn't tell the two apart. For those who haven't bought the Diadem series, I recommend buying Drinker of Souls instead. For those who have read any other Clayton book, skip this one. [**+] On the other hand, Gordon Dickson provides a very interesting interlude in Beyond the Dar Al-Harb [Tor Fantasy, $3.50, 253pp.] This work is an unusual collection of three of the author's short stories. The title story provides a fascinating glimpse of an alien culture. Not on another planet, but here on Earth. These days it is easy to find shelves full of Western-European and Celtic Fantasy; even the Chinese and Japanese mythoi are beginning to see some exposure. Never one to follow the pack, Dickson instead takes us to the dark and mysterious world of Crusades-era Arabia. He gives us a tale of an exiled Scots prince, Jami al-Kafir (Jamie the Heretic), and the revenge he takes on an old Bedouin enemy. The culture of the Moslem world is alien to what we are used to, and Dickson uses this to great effect. The reader is given just the right amount of background to savor the tale. The simple themes of lust, hunger for power, and revenge are spun into an engrossing story. The second story in the book, "On Messenger Mountain," is a 1964 work. Still, it provides a refreshing angle on the old SF theme of "first contact." It is also well-written; Dickson's protagonist is easily to dislike, but we are eased into his thoughts so smoothly that we forget our initial reactions. The story here is also quite simple: a battle between an alien and Earth ship causes both to crash on an inhospitable world. The race is quickly on between the survivors of each ship to reach the top of a mountain from which a rescue rocket can be launched. The aliens are shape-shifters armed with awesome natural weapons -- teeth and claws. They seem murderous and unstoppable, but are they really? The final story is called "Things Which are Caesar's". It is a straightforward psychological tale, dealing with one of my favorite themes: what would happen if Jesus reappeared? What if God came down to Earth and performed a miracle for all to see, something that no one could doubt, like stopping the Earth? What would happen to people who experienced this Sign? What about people who do not believe in God? Dickson's answer may surprise some readers; it surprised me. As with the previous two stories, the characters are finely drawn and the ideas in the story are fascinating. The plotting is tense and even though I was surprised, none of it seemed unreasonable. Taken as a whole, I was quite pleased by the book. It is truly a tour de force of Dickson's talents. [****] Once in a very great while, an author makes a reviewer feel justified. When I reviewed John Crowley's Little, Big in these pages, I got indignant messages from readers. They wanted to know why I had rated the book as five-stars-minus. The book did win the World Fantasy Award and I did use the word "masterpiece." So why, I was asked, did I give it a minus? My answer usually did not satisfy these questioners; I replied that I thought he could do better. Now, having read AEgypt [Bantam Books, $17.95, 390pp.], I feel justified. This work is better than Little, Big and I have no hesitation about giving it a full five stars. What's better about it is hard to define. The plot is, if anything, even more tenuous than its predecessor's. It is not, in any strict sense of the word, Fantasy. Therefore, it may be harder for many readers to relate to. The thing that separates AEgypt seems to be the writer's level of experience, which has increased with age. Crowley's writing style has always been dense, ornate and articulate. He uses words that are unfamiliar to casual readers and puts them together in sentences that are forty, fifty or even seventy words long. This creates a style that requires an enormous talent to master and to pull off properly. In early works, such as Beasts, Crowley seemed not to be in control of his own writing. In Little, Big he came very close to putting it all together. And in AEgypt he has finally matured into his style. AEgypt is a joy to read. The flow of the words catches you up and transports you into the story. I carefully rationed the book, allowing myself no more than one or two chapters a night. In the end I gave in, though, reading the last hundred pages in one sitting. When I review Crowley, I spend most of my time talking about his style, his ability to put together incredibly beautiful writing. I have also mentioned his incredible skill at description, at setting moods, and at building characters. Yet for the most part I avoid talking about his plots. These are as hard to describe as smoke is to grab. The more words I throw at them the more elusive they seem. On the surface, AEgypt 's plot is maddeningly simple: it is the story of a history professor's search for himself, set against the backdrop of the Eastern US during the late sixties and early seventies. But there is so much more going on behind the scenes. Stop for a moment and think: Why do people believe gypsies can tell fortunes? It doesn't matter whether they can or not; why do people think they can? And what if there was more than one history of the world? What if when Dante wrote about Heaven and Hell there really were crystal spheres in the heavens and there really was a Pit and a Satan and all the other things he wrote about? And what if history didn't simply flow the way we ordinarily experience Time? What if it changed suddenly in a quantum way so that things that were once true of history were suddenly no longer true? And lastly, what if there was a place called AEgypt that was much like ancient Egypt and only existed in one history but might exist again in the history of that young college professor in those turbulent times? Read the book carefully, and maybe you'll find out. [*****] Terry Carr (1937 - 1987) An Appreciation Terry Carr is dead. The facts are pretty straight forward. Born February 19, 1937, died April 7, 1987 of congestive heart failure as a complication of diabetes. Terry won three Hugos: in 1959 for best fanzine for Fanac; in 1973 best fan writer; and 1985 for best professional editor -- the only non- magazine editor to win this award. He was an occasional novelist with Warlord of Kor (1963), Cirque (1979), and short story writer, The Dance of the Changer and the Three (1968, Hugo and Nebula nominee). He was best known, however, for his editing -- he edited the classic Ace Double series as well as the recent Ace Discovery series, the highly acclaimed Universe original anthology series and the Best SF of the Year anthology series. What the facts don't say is how important Terry Carr was to Science Fiction. In his first stint as an editor at Ace, he published such works as Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin and Right of Passage by Alexei Panshin. For his second round of Ace Specials, specifically aimed at first novels, he published Neuromancer by William Gibson, The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson, and Green Eyes by Lucius Shepard -- three of the brightest stars of the 1980's. He was one of the few people who actively shaped Science Fiction with their own internal view. John W. Campbell brought the magazines out of the pulps; Judy-Lynn Del Rey brought the genre a commercial viability and acceptance, and Terry Carr brought it quality, a sense of worth, and the new ideas that shaped and expanded the genre. His editing abilities were tuned to the next wave, the next barrier for the field to tumble, was was always in front leading the way. His Universe series of anthologies was generally considered the most innovative and important professional market available. The writers and magazine editors tend to get most of the publicity and credit, but it is people like Terry Carr who make the work accessible to the public and can see a new trend before it happens. Terry Carr's life was Science Fiction, and to a great degree Science Fiction today is the vision that Terry Carr had. Like the loss of Judy-Lynn Del Rey, Terry's death leaves a vast hole in the fabric of the genre -- a far seer is gone, and they are born, not built. Most editors publish SF, Carr molded it. Carr is survived by his wife Carol. His professional commitments are being taken over by Robert Silverberg, and there will be a Universe 17 and a Year's Best Science Fiction 15. For those in the San Francisco Bay area, there will be a memorial service on Saturday, May 30, from 1PM to 5PM. He will be missed. He already is. -- chuq von rospach One of Science Fiction's least flamboyant and most talented editors is dead. I knew Terry Carr mainly as an editor; I'm told he was very active in fandom early on, and I don't doubt it, and a good short-fiction writer. That I don't doubt either. But what I can confirm was that he was one of the best editors in this field. Not content to simply buy what the rest of the pack was buying, Terry set different standards, standards evident in the well- regarded Universe anthology series and the first and second series of Ace Specials. Much like Ed Ferman has done with The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Terry made writers have to stretch their abilities for his anthologies and novels. He also was one of the most personable people in the field. At conventions, his low-key, dry humor enlivened many panels. He knew how to make a few words say a lot. And when he spoke with you, it was as equal- to-equal, no matter what your standing in the field. Did I know Terry Carr well enough to call him a close friend? No. But anyone who knew him knows he was a friend of Science Fiction's, a friend who worked to make the field stronger, richer and more diverse. -- Frank Catalano We've lost another book editor. A lot, maybe not enough, has been said of the debt SF owes to Judy-Lynn Del Rey. If SF as a commercial genre is a ghetto, "those books on the rack in the back," then Del Rey did more than anyone else to get us recognized by the mainstream. She made a place for SF novels to be commercial successes without (necessarily) giving up literary merit. At about the same time, thanks perhaps to Star Wars and other SF media phenomena, a rush of non-SF readers started rushing to the rack in the back. They were looking for fun trash, and soon enough, they found lots of it. I don't know that there was any less non-trash on the rack, but there sure was a lot of trash. Terry Carr had yet a third influence. With his Universe annual anthology of original short SF, and his revival of the Ace Special line, he kept alive the dream that enjoyable, accessible SF could be literate. A lot of the newest "New Wave," notably Kim Stanley Robinson and William Gibson, wouldn't have been recognized as soon or as extensively without Carr. Carr was to '80s SF what Analog's Bova was to '70s SF, and what Campbell was for years before that: the cultivator of new talent. But Campbell and Bova were magazine editors. Carr's medium was books, and he used them as a showcase for SF of all lengths. Terry Carr made a place for SF with literary merit that didn't have to give up the chance of commercial success. He didn't make or find the gems we've read, but he polished and set them. I'll miss the jeweler of the rack in the back. -- Paul S. R. Chisholm psc@lznv.att.com Letters to OtherRealms Chuq, A few words on your rating system. There are several very good reasons why ratings are compressed into the 3-5 star range. Let us assume that are books published with a full gaussian distribution of 0-5 stars. Having only limited amount of time (and money) to spend reading, I try to only buy books that I will like (4-5 stars). I'm fairly successful at it, I mostly buy books from authors that I know that I like, what other people recommend, plus the occasional book that looks interesting. Since I recognize most of the 0-2 star books on sight, why bother to buy them? I don't need the aggravation of wading through the latest "Gor" book. I also read more books than I review (I simply don't have much interesting to say about many books other than I like/disliked them). I find I'm far more interested in writing reviews of books that I liked than books that were only OK. There is the public service value, however, of warning people away from real dogs. Self-selection in both buying and reviewing books conspire to leave 0-2 star books unreviewed. John Wenn wenn@gandalf.cs.cmu.edu Chuq, While it's nice to see that you're getting more material of an original nature, i.e. art, I'm disappointed that you want to shrink the Pico Review section of OtherRealms. Frankly, I've been thinking that the individual Pico Reviews are getting quite a bit too long, but I don't think that there are too many books getting reviewed. In other words, if you have to shrink the space available for Pico Reviews, please do it by encouraging and editing shorter reviews. JJ ihnp4!icarus!jj [[I'm shrinking Pico Review space for a number of reasons. One, I'm not getting as many as I used to -- this could be cyclic of course. I can't print what I don't have, as many an editor has bemoaned. More importantly, though, I'm unhappy with the Pico Review format, and the utility of them. There are too many reviews from too many people, and there is little consistency in the ratings from review to review. This significantly reduces their utility to most people. And I don't really believe there is enough information in a Pico Review for someone to make a reasonable buying decision, unless they have dealt with an individual reviewer enough to make a judgement on the reviewer -- and since few of the Pico Review reviewers review for me at length as well, that is tough. I'm looking at ways of changing the PR format to make it more useful. Perhaps modifying the length limit and sorting them by reviewer first insteadof title, so that you can find the reviews of a given person more easily. I don't know, though. I think short reviews are useful, but I'm not sure the Pico Review format is really the best format I could use for them. We'll see. chuq]] OtherRealms Reviewing the worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. Editor & Publisher Chuq Von Rospach Associate Editor Laurie Sefton Contributing Editors Dan'l Danehy-Oakes Jim Brunet Alan Wexelblat OtherRealms #16 June, 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 only for non-commercial purposes. No article may be reprinted without the express permission of the author. OtherRealms is published monthly, through July, the quarterly by: Chuq Von Rospach 35111-F Newark Blvd. Suite 255 Newark, CA. 94560 Usenet: chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ Review copies should be sent to this address for consideration. Subscriptions OtherRealms is available for the usual bribes & trades: a copy of your zine, submissions, letters, comments, artwork or because I want you to see it. People who don't like to write can still get OtherRealms for money: $2.50 for a single issue, or $8.50 for four issues. Folks in the publishing industry can qualify for a free subscription. Just ask. OtherRealms is available at Future Fantasy bookstore, Palo Alto, California. Stores interested in OtherRealms should contact me. Electronic OtherRealms An electronic, text-only version of OtherRealms is available on a number of different computer networks and bulletin board systems. On the Arpanet, Bitnet, CSNet, and UUCP networks, send E-mail to chuq@sun.COM to subscribe. On USENET, OtherRealms is distributed in the group rec.mag.otherrealms. It is also available on the Delphi timesharing service and a number of Bulletin Board systems across the country. Submissions OtherRealms publishes articles about Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. The primary focus is reviews of books that otherwise might be missed in the deluge of new titles published every year, but the magazine is open to anything involving books. Authors are welcome to submit articles for the Behind the Scenes feature section, where you want to talk about the research and background that went into your book. I'm also interested in author interviews. Interview yourself, and finally get to that question you've always wanted to be asked. Any thing of interest to the reader of book-length fiction is welcome at OtherRealms. We don't cover shorter lengths, media, or fannish news. I NEED ART. Lots and lots of art. Especially small filler art for those little white spaces and cover art. I am also desperate for a few good pieces of cover art. The covers for my Westercon and Worldcon issues are still not filled (as are almost all the other issues, for that matter). Cartoons. Genre art. Anything! Help me make OtherRealms more fun to read! Book Ratings in OtherRealms All books are rated with the following guidelines. Most books receive [***]. Ratings may be modified a half step with a + or a -, so [***-] is somewhat better than [**+] [*****] One of the best books of the year [****] A very good book -- above average [***] A good book [**] Flawed, but has its moments [*] Not recommended [] Avoid at all costs