Electronic OtherRealms #28 Fall, 1990 Part 18 of 18 Copyright 1990 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. Your turn Letters from our readers [[Most of the mail OtherRealms got over last issue was, of course, about the termination of the Electronic OtherRealms. Since I cover that in my editorial, I'm not repeating a lot of that mail in the lettercol unless there's something notable in the letter. My thanks to everyone who wrote on the subject, supportive or not- chuq]] Wayne G. Morrison I want to thank you for mentioning Westlin' Wind in the Fall '89 issue. I don't know if I'd ever heard of Axolotl Press prior to that, but if so it hadn't made much of an impression on my memory. Ever since fortuitously stumbling upon Moonheart one winter five years ago, I have been an avid de Lint fan. I have snapped up anything by him I could find, searched diligently for his "out of stock indefinitely" book I have only heard the title of, and recommend him to anyone who will talk books with me. (This has caused some amount of frustration for my wife, herself an unpublished author and de Lint fan, in that she doesn't think I'll ever feel the same about her work.) Now that I have been given a reason to acknowledge Axolotl's existence, I have given them a nice amount of business- three books and one magazine in the space of two or three months. Anyway, I wanted to thank you for putting me on to them and so further enabling me to fulfill my de Lint addiction. [[Then you'll be thrilled to know that de Lint's latest in the Moonheart cycle, Ghostwind is now available from Axolotl/Pulphouse Press.- chuq]] Wayne Throop Sorry to hear that electronic OtherRealms is soon to be no more, but I certainly sympathize with your reasons. It might be realistic to boost the reviews-to-noise ratio of available USENET by creating rec.arts.sf-reviews a-la rec.arts.movies.reviews. While it is a far cry from "filling" the void left by OtherRealms, it would at least provide a service to the uunet without the noise that makes sf-lovers such a time-sink. Has anybody else proposed members of such a class of things? Do you have any thoughts on the pros and cons, or of how to set such a thing up? Should I contact the RAMR moderator for advice, do you suppose? If a chicken and a half lays an egg and a half... uh, sorry... I get carried away with long lists of questions. [[As I told Wayne in mail, one of the reasons I gave as much notice as I did about the termination of Eeyore was because I hoped someone would take the hint and volunteer to either start their own on-line fanzine or some kind of moderated group. With a year's notice, the hooks could be in place and the network could move on without missing a beat. It didn't happen- frankly, I didn't expect it to. Wayne was the only person who suggested the idea, and is still trying to figure out if he has the time to do it. So here's a public call to the people on the net: quit complaining about Eeyore going away and do something to replace it. Complaining is easy. Try contributing. rec.arts.sf-lovers.reviews is a great idea. I'd hate to see absolutely nothing come out of the years of publishing on the net except some fond memories -- if you really want, you can keep what I started alive. -- chuq]] Cathy Howard My city launched a recycling campaign on Earth Day which is still going strong. I will admit my comments were (1) about time, and (2) they need to recycle more types of things. What's being recycled is aluminum cans, clear glass, newspapers, plastic milk jugs and soft drink containers. It's made a real difference in the amount of trash outside this house. I hope they expand the program in the future. I'm sorry you are having to cut back on OtherRealms' publication, but agree heartily that you can't let it take over your and Laurie's life. "Behind the Scenes" by Michael Kube-McDowell was a fascinating account of how he wrote The Quiet Pools. I hung on every word. You'd mentioned you're working on a book. How is it going? And, of course, thanks for the reviews. Your zine has pointed me in the direction of more than one book whose charms I'd overlooked. [[I'm happy to say that, to some degree, my pessimistic view on Earth Day wasn't warranted. People do seem to be taking things more seriously. I'm encouraged, but we have a long way to go (on the other hand, I recently read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, a classic work in environmentalism. How far we've come is amazing, especially when you realize how far we have left to travel). We're now recycling cans and bottles (we've always recycled newspaper) and I've started mulching the cut grass back into the lawn to reduce garden wastes. By spring I hope to have a full compost pile running, in fact, and I'm starting to take white paper to work, where Apple has a full-scale waste-paper recycling plan going. Earth Day was the last straw in getting me motivated on a lot of this- and it seems to have had that effect elsewhere, too. Maybe there is hope for humanity. The status of my novel is that it's moving forward very slowly. Before I retired from working the Writer's Workshop on CompuServe, I ran the first few chapters through, and it was pretty heavily (and correctly) savaged. I've been slowly rebuilding the story to remove the more obvious stupidities, but between OtherRealms, the Nebula Awards stuff I do for SFWA and work I haven't had a lot of free time. When I thought I was going to have a few weeks of evenings free, Marion Zimmer Bradley got ill and I found myself helping out with the layout of the Summer issue of her magazine.As soon as I finish this issue I should have six or seven weeks without ANY deadlines (other than work), and I plan on taking the phone off the hook so nobody can borrow it. With any luck, I can be halfway through the fixed-up first draft before the end of October. We'll see. I'd hoped to finish Marowan by year-end, but right now that doesn't look likely. But it's happening. Slowly, but it's happening.- chuq]] Arthur Hlavaty I've been telling fanzine fans for years that apas, and now nets, don't just suck talent out of the zines but open up two-way traffic. I'm glad to see you of an example of this, and I look forward to the new print-only version of OtherRealms. I'm a bit bemused to see people burning out on the nets when I haven't even started on them. It reminds me of the way I felt in my 30s, when many of my contemporaries were on their second marriage and I hadn't had one yet. [[I agree with you about APAs- I think they're a place where you can stay involved when the time it takes to do an independent zine just doesn't exist. For newer people, building mailing lists and learning the ropes can be a major problem, and APAs definitely help that. For some folks, it's a choice between an APAzine and gafiating and I'm glad they have the choice. I'm not so sure about networks. They seem to be sucking potential talent out of both. There are not many people who are making the transition from network fandom to traditional fanzines- network fandom encourages shallow work with immediate feedback and it's *easy* to do (although it isn't easy to do well). Fanzine publishing takes a lot of time and energy, and so it's easier just to stay on the nets. Some people make the transition, but they're likely folks who would have found fanzines anyway.- chuq]] We Also Heard From: Mark Hill, Sheryl Birkhead, R. Allen Jervis, Larry Estep, Mike Gunderloy, Evelyn C. Leeper, Richard Wexelblat, Alex Heatley, joan hanke-woods, Teddy Harvid and David Shea. Thanks to everyone for writing. Masthead OtherRealms Science Fiction and Fantasy in Review Issue 28, Fall, 1990 Copyright 1990 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. OtherRealms is published three or four times a year. Next deadling: December 1, 1990. Editors Chuq Von Rospach Laurie Sefton Contributing Editors Dan'l Danehy-Oakes Charles de Lint Dean R. Lambe Lawrence Watt-Evans Contacting us Chuq Von Rospach chuq@apple.com GEnie: CHUQ Laurie Sefton lsefton@apple.com CompuServe: 74010,3542 Delphi: LSEFTON U.S. Mail 35111-F Newark Blvd. Suite 255 Newark, CA 94560 Subscriptions OtherRealms is available free fro arranged trades, your published letters, articles, reviews, or artwork, or at the whim of the Editors. If you prefer spending money, send $2.85 for one issue or $11 for four. Checks should be made out to "Chuq Von Rospach". Canadian and overseas people, please write about rates. Because my bank things foreign currency is the spawn of Satan, all monies must be in U.S. Dollars. Submissions OtherRealms publishes reviews of Science Fiction, Fantasy and related books. Authors are soliciety to discuss their work in the Behind the Scenes section. This series allows you to describe the background and history of your works in the kind of detail that helps make a book successful but isn't obvious from the writing. Let us know why the book is special to you. Please query everything except reviews, and please include a SASE if you want a response. Artwork Submissions are welcome, but be aware that we only use one or two pieces per artist each issue. We need work of all sizes and types, from good full page or cover works to clipart. If possible, send a good reproduction. If you wish the art returned after use, please let us know. Letters We solicit your feedback and comments, since they help us make a better fanzine. All letters will be considered for publication unless otherwise requested. ------ End ------