Return-Path: Date: Tue, 21 May 91 09:28:25 -0700 From: chuq Reply-To: chuq@apple.com Precedence: bulk Subject: OtherRealms #30 (Spring, 1991) [4 of 4] Apparently-To: bzs@world.std.com Electronic OtherRealms #30 The Parody Issue Science Fiction and Fantasy in Chaos Spring, 1991 Part 4 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. From Beyond the Edge Reviews by Our Readers A Brawl of Sphinxes Judith Tarr Taurus Books, 1991. V.5 of the Abraxas Falling trilogy, 666p, $29.95 Reviewed by Julie Barr I came to A Brawl of Sphinxes expecting it to be the conclusion of the worst schlock-fantasy trilogy I've seen in years. Well, I was wrong. It's the worst fantasy trilogy I've ever seen in my life. Worse than A Blizzard on Mirthsea. Worse than Floored in the Rings. Even worse, if any such thing is possible, than Tarr's own earlier trilogy, the thirteen-volume multigenerational elves-and-unicorns family fantasy saga, The Dog and the Bird. So what's this latest bow-wow about? People who, like me, can't resist reading books this bad because we can't believe they can be this bad, will know that the story so far is completely irrelevant. Tarr, who claims to have made a career of flunking out of PhD programs, and who is well on her way to flunking out of the one at Harvard, not only couldn't sustain a point of view in a scene if she had a gun to her head; she can't keep her characters or her plot straight for longer than a page. When she isn't ripping off historical personages right, left, and center, and then forgetting which ones she ripped off when, she's piling together a farrago of literary allusions, obscure academic in-jokes (the one about some weirdo named Umberto Eco and the vat of pigs' blood--pigs' blood?--is particularly feeble), and pseudo-Shakespearean stylistic tricks ("Yea verily and forsooth, I shall go check it out, babe"). By page 5, she's so confused, she doesn't know where she's going. By page 10, the reader is as confused as she is. However, your intrepid reviewer persevered to the bitter end, and managed to distill the following essence of story--if so dignified a word may be applied to so hopelessly muddled a work. The Little Shit is a little shit who also happens to be the lately-lost heir to the obligatory fantasy empire. It's supposed to be an evil empire, but its rulers persist in being good, kind, somewhat spineless worshippers of Muchamora, the goddess of blancmange. What's an author to do? Why, bring in The Hunk, the not-yet-lost heir of the other obligatory fantasy empire. This is supposed to be the good empire, the Empire That Saves the World For Imperialism, and Never Mind Democracy, except that its rulers keep turning out, shall we say, a little bit psycho, but sexy as hell. Naturally the L.S. and the Hunk fall in love. But wait--aren't they both male? I thought so. Apparently Tarr didn't; or she just forgot. Suddenly the L.S. is a she, and she's pretty insipid, but the Hunk likes insipid blondes. They look so good next to his bronzed muscles. They get together, they do what comes naturally considering that the Hunk's muscular development is not equaled by his development in another salient area, they go on the usual quest. What they're questing for, I can't tell and Tarr obviously doesn't know, but by the time we start to wonder what all the running around is about, Tarr suffers another amnesic attack. Suddenly the L.S. is bit on the small side but perfectly hunky and male out to here--and the Hunk is suddenly the Bimbo, brains of a retrograde flea, body of a Kama Sutra heroine, and what's more, she's pregnant. Daddy is not amused. Daddy, remember, is psycho. Daddy is also the Great Good Emperor, except by now he seems to be the Big Bad Wolf, and everybody is fighting against him, except the Great Bad Emperor, who's really the Little Nice Sheep, and he's actually quite pleased that he's about to be a grandpa. What the goddess Muchamora thinks, Tarr doesn't say. Everything comes to something resembling a conclusion. There is a magnificently inept hommage to Indiana Jones in the middle of the Obligatory War Between the Mages: all the bad guys drop their grimoires and pull out laser cannon and start blasting away. Laser cannon? Don't ask. Do the good guys win? First you have to figure out who the good guys are. Do the bad guys Get Theirs? Depends on who the bad guys are. Since Tarr doesn't have a clue, it's hardly surprising that the rest of us have a little trouble figuring it out. Reviewers are supposed to come down heavy on originality. Union rules. Well, this is original. I've never seen anything like it. I hope I never see anything like it again. Rating: Bow-wow-wow-wow-wow+ Dodgerspell Katharine Kerr Green Dwarf Books, book 107 of the Deverry saga. Reviewed by Al Turnafraze Although the latest entry in this popular if interminable fantasy series sounds all of Kerr's familiar keynotes--gruesome violence, Elvish profanity, weird sex, and obscure poetry--it does mark a new turn to her work. It gave me a turn, anyway. For some time now Kerr has been threatening, in her stories themselves as well as in a recent interview in the British magazine Loathing, to bring the saga of Jill, Nevyn, Rhodry, and their whole howling barbarian pack into the modern world or at least into some alternate universe's equivalent of the modern world. Well, folks, she's done it, by having them all reborn into the technologically advanced city of Dinas Dewi, (David's City,) a town that looks suspiciously like San Francisco in a landscape suspiciously like our own Bay Area. The only conclusion we can draw >from this location and name is that the Deverrians have discovered not only California but the Old Testament as well. As she usually does, Kerr has given her characters and places remarkably consistent Deverrian names (except for the ones in High Elvish, Low Dwarvish, Middle Bardekian, New Dragonese, Old Trollish, and Sheer Nonsense), but rather than type all those "W's" and "Y's," and to spare you all the trouble of thinking while I'm at it, I've worked out the English equivalents from a twenty-three volume dictionary of the Welsh language[1] and The Dialects of Ancient Gaul by Joshua Whatmough.[2] Here, then, is the clef for the roman under review.[3] The book opens with a prologue set in the 1850's when we find Nevyn reborn as Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown. (Oh yes, it seems the Deverrians have also discovered upstate New York.) He's just about to invent baseball when a beautiful blonde damsel in distress (Jill reborn, of course) seduces him into inventing the British magical order of the Golden Dawn instead. However, his disciple, Rhodry reborn, invents baseball in his place and restores the time continuum to its intended course before disaster strikes. Meanwhile, off in a town called Lyndyn[4] (but looking suspiciously like London,) Nevyn prevents an evil genius, Herr von Gizmo, from inventing the atomic bomb in the wrong century, that is, before Bertrand Russell exists to lead the protests against it. At this point Jill reveals that stopping von Gizmo was her real motive in luring Nevyn to Lloegr[5], not founding the Golden Dawn at all--but too late! The cipher manuscript has already been placed in the fatal bookstall for Wynn Wescott to find[6]. In a vision Nevyn sees that his ill-considered action will later lead to the downfall of William Butler Yeats[7], tying yet another karmic knot for the dweomermaster to untie--in yet another volume, though, since Yeats himself never does get into the one under review here. With the Prologue disposed of, Kerr takes us to the main story, for about three pages, anyway. We find ourselves in the dugout of a major league baseball team whose Deverrian name translates to the Very Big Men, which for convenience I'm rendering as "Giants." Just when we realize that Nevyn's been reborn as Roger Craig, there's another damned flashback, this one set in Bardek in the year 899, one of Nevyn's "missing years" in those islands. While curing a bad case of boils for a wandering beggar (who's really a prince in disguise but that's another story, though mercifully Kerr lets it lie instead of adding more flashbacks,) Nevyn sees a group of boys playing with a stick and a leather ball. "You know," he remarks to a convenient gnome, "that gives me a cursed idea! What a cursed pity that I've no cursed time to think of cursed innocent diversions now, what with my cursed Wyrd hanging over me and cursed all." When we return to the main story, we find that the Giants are about to start the National League West play-off series against a team whose name can be translated, given the references to vermin trying to avoid wicker rat-cages, as the "Dodgers." In supremely dramatic fashion, we meet the beautiful blonde daughter of the Dodger manager, Jill reborn again,[8] and a secret Giants fan, although since she's awfully young for Roger she's in love with his star power hitter, Rhodry. (The descriptions of their midnight meetings in the Will-call booth at Candlestick Park are particularly steamy; "hitting the long ball" doesn't even begin to describe this guy.) Back in her Los Angeles[9] mansion, Jill's just about to steal the Dodger line-up cards from her father's study when he waddles in and discovers her. We realize at once that this Tommy Lasorda[10] is the reborn soul of the evil Herr von Gizmo. Although Kerr does tell you exactly how Herr von Gizmo's soul got tangled up with Nevyn in the first place, she restrains herself to a footnote rather than a flashback, (a two and a half page footnote, true, but the print isn't all that small.)[11] Here, though, we must leave our summary. Not only would it be unethical in the extreme for me to give away the suspenseful twists and turns of the rest of the plot, but Kerr breaks off in the middle of the fourth game of the series with the Dodgers ahead by a single run. We can only hope that she'll eventually get us to game seven and, come to think of it, that she finally finishes off the Deverry civil war while she's at it. Besides, in a work of this depth, mere matters of plot and character are only trivial distractions. If we look hard enough into Kerr's Celtically convoluted prose, we see baseball take its place as a grand metaphor not just for Life itself, as it has been previously used by incalculable hordes of American writers[12], but for the Progression of the Soul through Many Lives. Consider the deep symbolism of the three bases, those temporary stops on our grand journey Home, or the heartbreaking frustration of a .200 batting average--an apt parable for the struggles of the Soul as it seeks Eternal Fulfillment. Kerr, though, is especially good at portraying the Big Innings of Life. Every now and then, when faced with a great challenge, the Soul girds up it metaphoric loins and strides to the plate of Life. The pitcher of Fate winds up and prepares to throw the baseball of Chance while the Soul holds high the bat of the Will.[13] What will be the result? An ignominious strike-out or the grand slam of Ethical Action? Kerr makes us feel, usually at great length, the inner agonies of the soul screwing up its courage to the sticking point.[14] All in all, Dodgerspell is one of those books that makes me glad to be a book reviewer. I've got so many charts of incarnations and historical details, lists of symbols, and notes on significant themes, to say nothing of all those Deverrian\Welsh\English translations and coordinations, that my future in grad school is assured. Thank god for semiotics[15] is all I can say. Of course, I wouldn't be a real reviewer if I didn't say something nasty about the book, so let me point out that you really won't understand Dodgerspell unless you've read all of the hundred and six previous volumes. It's here that we find the benefit of believing in reincarnation. You can start the series in perfect faith, knowing that even if you don't finish it in this life, you've got a lot of time ahead of you. Notes: [1] Don't laugh. This is a real set, published by the University of Wales, Cardiff. [2] Harvard University Press, and this one's real, too. Oneupped you again, didn't I? [3] You should have paid more attention in high school French. [4] Well, the occasional Y won't hurt anything. [5] If you can't figure that one out, what are you doing reading fantasy literature anyway? [6] Real manuscript, real person, real magical order--fooled you again, didn't I? We reviewers have access to sources beyond the reach of the common herd, you know. [7] Dan Simmons isn't the only one who gets to drag British poets into his books. [8] So you maybe expected Kerr to waste her time inventing another female lead or something? [9] I'm calling it Los Angeles, that is. The Deverrian name has six W's, four Y's, and two pair of double D's. [10] Did you know that "la sorda" means "the mute" in Italian? This has nothing to do with the story, but I know it, and so I 'm putting it in. [11] Besides, there's nothing wrong with footnotes. They make a review look properly Literary. [12] Well, by George Will anyway. [13] The spiritual will, that is, not Will Clark. See Madame Blavatsky's writings if you don't believe me. [14] That's Shakespeare, and if you thought it was a dirty joke, you'll never be able to write real science fiction. [15] If you don't know what that is, why don't you consider a career in flocked Christmas trees or something else equally suited to your mental talents? (Originally published in the New York Review of Sciatic Function, republished by permission of the author) Dodgerspell Katharine Kerr Green Dwarf Books, book 107 of the Deverry saga. Reviewed by Biff Bock There is a lot of baseball in this book. That is good, because baseball is clean and pure and masculine and American. There is also a lot of romance, which is okay, because romance is dirty and complicated and feminine, but you can skip over those parts, and besides, the author's a girl, so what do you expect. However, there are a whole lot of foreign names, which is really bad, because. . .well, because they're foreign. European. Weird. Old. Not American. Science fiction is supposed to be the people's art, and that means the American people, and we don't need any weird old European stuff in our books. There are also flashbacks in it, but flashbacks are okay because Frank Capra used them in movies. The real trouble with this book is that it's too long. Long books aren't American, either. What the people's art needs is short books, to fit our American minds. (Originally published in Fun and Stranger Fun. Republished with the permission of the author) N-Space Larry Niven Tor Books Reviewed by Narry Liven This novel disappointed me. Niven usually keeps his story lines tighter. Here they wander all over the place. Characters appear once and vanish offstage; they number in the hundreds, and are very hard to keep track of. There are several Tuckerizations (I think I recognized Hal Clement under the name "Robert Forward".) Basic assumptions change >from chapter to chapter. Style varies from clumsy to polished, from lovingly detailed to mere notes, from prudish to graphic to obscene cartoons. Often the auctorial voice falls lnto blatant lecturing. Loose ends thrash about the ending. I would not be much surprised to see a sequel. Helen Arlinson's Just Looking Commentary by Helen Arlinson Episode 44 Dangerous Visions Have I A number of years ago as I lay lounging in true Holyworld style, waiting for the phone to ring and wondering what tripe my agent would try to plead for me to write next, I had a vision of the future, so sharp as to steal your breath, so poignant as to raise a tear, so true as to now be scary. You, of course, now have the opportunity to share my vision. I saw small, oblong, darkened rooms, sprinkled full of glazed eyed zombies, their cuds working on fat sprinkled vegetable matter while a veritable orgy of destruction flickered above them. I saw bankers crying with joy as slovenly producers of nothing wheeled bag after bag of money into the vaults. I saw concentration camps of writers--individuals shackled hand and foot to the corporate guide to profit. But worst of all I saw the movie. Little did I know then that all this indeed would come to pass, nay would come to the forefront of society and ingrain itself into the lives of nearly every common man, woman and child. If I had known, I would have been hard pressed not to end it all right then and there. The shocking credulity of this vision remained buried beneath some sub-strata of grey matter--just above the place where I keep respect for corporate managers who have so ruined the movie industry--until I happened upon a screening of Predator II. Within minutes of becoming seated on the slightly sticky seat in this coffin sized viewing room it all came back like the sharp slap of a final re-write done by some hack in Illinois. As I struggled to maintain attention of a sequel to what was a less than literate creation to begin with and one in which the main star remained absent while those behind the scenes scrambled to kiss the butt of higher ups demanding profits and by my guess and judgement to receive them, the parallel seemed obsequious if not downright eerie. Gasping for air, I rushed out into the lobby, hoping that by drowning myself in cardboard Milkduds I might be able to reintroduce my internal equilibrium. Imagine my surprise when upon my arrival at the candy counter I found the scraggly teenaged critter who so customarily inhabits such places writhing on the floor and covered with popcorn. Angry candy indeed! And if even the inanimate now rose in revolt, responding to the drivel produced so regularly by individuals whose heads rarely leave the rarified air of the bank vault, was not change soon to follow? Sadly, this has not come about. And so, we add one more piece to the slice and dice volume of film noir gore. Another tribute to the bread and circuses mentality gripping not only this country's leadership but most of the major corporations--film making included and leading the way in "give-'emwhat-they-want" as long as it makes a profit. This sad state of affairs is only worsened by the multitude of cud-chewing attendees who slaver and drool over body counts and body parts--a hint the butchers of this country should take, opening up their slaughter houses to public admission. Perhaps a dose of messy reality is what's needed to return to at least a semblance of quality, craftsmanship and vision. As it is, plot becomes relevant only as a place to dump the gore, story is reduced to brief respites intended to let the audience out to the bathroom between blood baths and art is left to those selfsame bathroom walls. This is "if-it-moveskill-it" theater at its lowest and one wonders if soon audience participation will become mandatory. My vision ended with a scolding, a dressing down by the celluloid god, who shook his fingers at me, made faces and thundered in pestilence breathed anecdotes "might makes right," "the many shall be served," "let them eat cake," and "get off your high horse." "Wait," I railed against this proletarian onslaught, "are you trying to tell me the people get what they deserve? That the mass should be allowed control? What about art? What about quality? What about film as an echo of life, an adjustment of the uncommon in common terms?" "Fool, get with program. People are lemmings, waiting to be led. They don't want complications. Nor do they want visionary work unrelated to the lowest common denominator. They want entertainment." "But who," I cried, "should be allowed to make those decisions? Bankers, Lawyers, Indian Chiefs? What about emotions? What about character development? What about issues transcending the common plain?" "It all means nothing. Theater is but the little screen in bigger dimensions and with the commercials better hidden in the product. You wail in the wilderness for things no one cares about. Stop beating your head against rocks. You weren't such a great writer yourself you know." With that final utterance, the great being dissolved in one of those slow fades to black, and as the music--some common theme sampling stolen from a dozen films--welled up, I awoke, shaking and shivering though full California sunshine, at least what made its way through the smog, beat upon me. In that instant I knew I had to share this with you, to tell you I have seen the future and that it is bleak indeed, to tell you what others think of your ability to think and to hope you will respond with a resounding no to future drek pumped out for your consumption. And when they approach you with their latest product, still dripping with gore and festering with pustules, beseeching you to buy into yet another round of blood, guts and cardboard, stare them straight in the face, give them a broad smile and say, "no thanks, just looking." Your Turn Letters Judith Tarr New Haven, Connecticut 1 April 1991 Chuq Von Whatever Whatever That Stupid Fanzine Is Somewhere in California Sir: I have had word of the review of my latest masterpiece, A Brawl of Sphinxes. To say that I am not; amused is to put it mildly. First of all, I am not about to flunk out of Harvard. I am about to flunk out of Yale. Please make the correction. Second, Abraxas Falling is not a trilogy. A trilogy consists of either four, ten, or thirteen volumes, depending on the publisher. Abraxas is an Endless Series. Your reviewer would be well advised to get her definitions straight. And finally, while she can be forgiven for her confusion as to the sexual, political, and theological alignments of the characters--they are complex, although they should be obvious to anyone who is not functionally illiterate--if she had read past the third page of the second introductory note she would have seen in footnote 433b a reference to the fact that this novel should be read exclusively as subtext. The point of the entire exercise is not to read what the author says, but what the author meant to say. It is not the author's fault if the reviewer fails to display an adequate level of clairvoyance. I hope that, when my next work of genius appears (Farce Plastica, Phantom Plectra, later this year), your reviewer will have learned to appreciate my genuine and unparalleled brilliance. Or, better yet, that she may have taken up a more congenial occupation. My colleague, Professor Montresor, is now interviewing candidates for an experiment in high-stress sherry-tasting. Would this be of interest to your reviewer? Starchily yours, Judith Tarr, BA3, MA3, PhD (failed) Helen Arlinson Chuqie Rospach OtherRealms Newark, CA (NJ?) 94560 Dear Chuqie; Mr. Sawicki informed me that you would be interested in seeing one of my columns. To that end I have written one especially for you. Mr. Sawicki did not say whether you paid your writers or not but I am assuming that at this point you do not--given the economy and everything and the current state of publishing. In fact, Mr. Sawicki informs me that there are fewer and fewer paying markets and that even some of the established magazines no longer pay. I mean, who would have thought that Analog would end up paying only in copies. And just after they purchased three of my stories! Still, as Mr. Sawicki says, the experience is well worth it and perhaps some day I will make more money at this. Mr. Sawicki has been great, subsidizing my career. He also handles my accounts as that is one of the few things they do not allow in the places I occasionally stay. I hope you enjoy the column and that you will soon become a paying market and will once again want to see some of my work. By the way, are you dutch? I knew some Dutch sailors once and the memory is quite good. Perhaps we could get together sometime and have some cheese. In any case, if there is money to be had here, please send it to Mr. Sawicki and he will send it on. Until we meet again, I remain, Helen Arlinson The Masthead Administrivia Subscriptions OtherRealms is available free for arranged trade, your published letters, articles, reviews, or artwork or at the whim of the Editors. If you prefer spending money, the cost is $2.85 per issue of $11 for a four issue subscription. Checks should be made out to "Chuq Von Rospach". OtherRealms is not available outside of the United States of America. Submissions OtherRealms publishes reviews of Science Fiction, Fantasy and related books. Authors are solicted 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 this 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 types and sizes, including some good full page or cover pieces. If possible, send a good reproduction instead of the original. If you wish the art returned after use, please let me 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. OtherRealms The Parody Issue Science Fiction and Fantasy in Chaos Issue 30, April, 1991 Editors Chug Von Rospach Laurie Sefton Contributing Editors Dan'l Danehy-Oakes Charles de Lint Dean R. Lambe Lawrence Watt-Evans 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. OtherRealms is published three or four times a year. Next deadline: July 15, 1991. Contacting us Choq 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 ------ End ------